Photo Friday: Pinterest Edition

Good morning!

In case you didn't know about it, I am on Pinterest, and am I ever! Back in the dark ages, I used to have folder up on folder of vintage photos that I'd want to save for a later date, unmanaged, all over the place, and taking up tons of space on my hard drive. No more! Now, every time I see something that interests me in the deep waters of Flickriver, I go ahead and pin in the item so I can go back and see it whenever I was on the world wide web! This morning, I found a bunch of photos I liked, but none that particularly told a cohesive story. I thought maybe today I would show you just a random smattering of the kinds of things I like to collect on my Pinterest "(Not My) Family Photos" board!

This stream featured the user's parents throughout the sixties', seventies', and eighties', and I was struck particularly by the mother's sharply v-shaped chin and moon child eyes, highlighted by white eye shadow. She has an unusual kind of strikingness that made her stand out from a bunch of other photos I looked at this morning. I love this set of photobooth shots because you get to see the parents as newlyweds, crammed into one of those curtained little boxes and giving their best "just married" smiles and smooches for the camera.

This one is captioned "Amherst, Mass. c.1967", and doesn't it just look it! I want to BE that little girl in the green tights and the polka dot skirt ensemble. There's a less twee, more organic strain of Wes Anderson's aesthetic running through this photo and I could not love it more if I tried. I love the little kid on the drum, too. "Hey! What about Jerry? Oh, put him on the djembe, let him rock out." The floral gazebo wall paper is also gorgeous.

I couldn't get over this pretty high school girl's knit graphic sweater. IT FEATURES. A BUCKING BRONCO. AND HORSESHOES. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM LIFE. Hold on to your hat, cowboy-in-silhouette! Everytime I see something Tasha's done on By Gum By Golly (squirrel cap, anyone?) or Solanah on Vintage Vixen (this one KILLS me), I want to renew my efforts to learn the art of knitting. I am so slow and clumsy with precise, measured activities, though! Maybe I should just raid my piggybank for an Etsy solution.

Doesn't this woman look like a movie star? I want my hair to attain that height in the front while still looking as fresh and natural as it does on this knockout.

How do you like these gals on the beach with one lucky sailor? This is a good reference for what you wear over your little swimming briefs. I'm having trouble thinking of what to wear when we go on our honeymoon, as a major portion of said vacation will be on the beach. I'm not a fan of those sarong-type, wrap-at-the-hip cover ups, but I am also in no way a fan of the way my legs look from the knee up. What to do! I've found a shorty little cover up dress or two, but maybe a cotton skirt like any of these would be another solution!

Last but not least, I want that necklace, those sunglasses, that dress, and this woman's carefree expression as she boats down some 1950's body of water in style.

So! What do you think of these random snaps? If you're a fan of old pictures and these Photo Friday posts, why not follow me on Pinterest, or at least check out my board, "(Not My) Family Photos"? Compulsive e-hoarder that I am, there's a lo-o-o-ot more where these came from. :)

Well, that's all for today! I'll see you kids back here on Monday for more vintage fun. Have a FANtastic weekend. Til then!

Zombies Ate My Neighbors (1993)

Good morning!

As birthday fever dies down, I tell you what I've been doing for most of my nights this week-- rockin' and sockin' zombies in Zombies Ate My Neighbors. Brother, have you heard the good word about this fine, fine Sega Genesis and SNES game, released in 1993?

One thing you might not know about me-- I am a tenth degree black belt at a certain number of Sega Genesis games released in the early 1990's. At this young age, I developed a surgeon's own precision at titles like Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition, Paperboy II, all the Sonics, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Lethal Enforcer, Afterburner II, Desert/Jungle/Urban Strike, among others. I may be completely hopeless at modern video gaming when it comes to controlling "the camera" or using joypads to direct lifelike characters around an open world gaming environment, but I will put myself toe-to-toe with your most insane power gamer when it comes to any of those titles, or sidescroller/ run-and-gun games in general. My parents were ultra frugal when I was growing up, but Christmases and birthdays for four or five years after the purchase of a Sega Genesis console always yielded one or two video games among the other presents. I can remember going to Toys R Us in Rivergate when the exterior decor was still dominated by those multicolored striped panels and Geoffrey the Giraffe's looming presence, and picking out the hang tags for these cartridges to retrieve the physical property in a locked box at the front of the store. Thinking about a game like Jurassic Park retailing for enough money that it had to be kept under lock and key....crazy!! What a trip.

I'm sure we got this game around 1994 (we were big on the sale rack games), and the box I have still has the manual and a number of handwritten level codes in the back of it. We used to play THE FOOL out of this! Meaning I would play and Sus would watch, in the den of our old house/my current house, drinking Grape Kool Aid that was 90% sugar and eating fudge revel ice cream, zapping zombies into the after-afterlife with little squirt guns, battling mummies, space aliens, chainsaw maniacs...you name it, this game has it. Weapons include six packs of sodas, plates, popsicles, ray guns, bazookas, weed-whackers, holy crosses....I mean, it's kind of amazing the variety of things you can try to chuck at the undead. Each level has a number of hapless innocents (cheerleaders, babies, an overweight tourist couple, army men, a mean schoolmarm, etc) that you have to rescue from the marauding monsters by getting to them before the creepies do! And just look at the titles of the levels. Here's the first fifteen:

1. Zombie Panic (Bonus Level: Day of the Tentacle)
2. Evening of the Undead
3. Terror in Aisle Five
4. Lumberjack Hedgemaze Mayhem
5. Weird Kids on the Block
6. Pyramid of Fear
7. Dr. Tongue's Castle of Terror
8. Titanic Toddler
9. Toxic Terrors (Bonus Level: Mushroom Men)
10. No Assembly Required
11. Weeds Gone Bad
12. Mars Needs Cheerleaders (Bonus Level: Cheerleaders Versus the Monsters)
13. Chopping Mall
14. Seven Meals for Seven Zombies
15. Dinner on Monster Island

You already want to play this right?

Around the same time, the cable channel American Movie Classics (AMC), Sci-Fi channel, and TNT's late night programming with Joe Bob Briggs and I think later William Shatner (right?) would show movies like Them!, Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman, The Incredible Shrinking Man...a lot of the source material for this kitsch-a-palooza. Not to mention MST3K! And The Twilight Zone. And Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In 1994, at the formative age of 9, I was as well versed as any child of the fifties' or video store habitué in the culture of schlock horror or just plain horror, even, so I remember this game particularly fondly as being "right up my alley" in the best of ways. And by "my alley" I mean a dark, sinister space between buildings where you may or may not get body snatched. I hope my kids are as wing ding as I was as a little gal! Or am now! Haha.

I've been having so much fun playing this over again, but I have to admit, without the cheat codes, this game would be TOO. FLIPPING. HARD. Example, the Sandworms in Level 25? TAKE FIFTY PLUS HITS TO KILL. I was throwing soda cans at them and Matthew was counting down like it was a hot dog eating contest. "TWENTY! TWENTY ONE! TWENTY TWO!" he called out as I shrieked in the background and made some unlady like comments about the Sandworms' family background. If I didn't have infinite lives thanks to the Game Genie, I would be baldheaded this morning from the amount of hair torn out and tears shed over the 90th time I was killed. A plus though? THE MOST ACE SOUNDTRACK. It's so good! I wish I had a cd of it. Check out this playlist of memorable tunes from the game:

            

Fabulous. Just fabulous. I've made it to level 28 of the 55 (!!) level strong game, and hope to finish it before the week it out!

So! Are there any games you remember fondly from this golden age of nineties' Sega and SNES titles? What kind of spooky horror or sci fi did your impressionable young mind witness at a tender age? Have you played this game? What'd you think?

That's all for today, but I'll see you guys back here tomorrow for Photo Friday! Have a great Thursday (we're almost to the end of the week!). Til then.

A Grand Day to Be 28 (Oh My God, the Stevie Nicks Shirt of My DREAMS)

Good morning!

First of all, thank you everybody for my kind birthday wishes! I had a fabulous time Monday and Tuesday both, hanging out with my family, buying cacti in bulk (wedding prep), and being spoiled rotten by my soon to be spouse. I am actually speechless at his major birthday present for me this year:

How do you like my new haircut? A wedding/birthday present from Jen Q!

Oh this? Just my SIZE MEDIUM VINTAGE STEVIE NICKS TOUR SHIRT FROM THE 1983 WILD HEART TOUR. This came in the mail a day early on Monday and I was near-hysteria. Remember the post I did about how heartbroken my fruitless search for a Fleetwood Mac tour shirt on the internet had left me? Bereft of hope? Completely convinced I would never boast such a wardrobe jewel in my crown? MATTHEW TO THE RESCUE.

This shirt popped up on Etsy, and was only mildly unreasonable in terms of expense, instead of impossibly unreasonable, and in a vintage size medium. Have I mentioned that Stevie Nicks tour shirts are 1) rare as hens' teeth, in spite of her staggering popularity at the time (I guess people are holding on to them?) and 2) always in either an XXS or an XXL (I am neither). I pined and pined over it for a few days, and then saw that it was sold. Little did I know, Matthew was the one who had been looking over my shoulder and pulled the trigger on the greatest t-shirt of my life. AAAAH! I am so pleased.

I had lunch at my folks' house with my mom, dad, and Sus. Sus and Matt, in their infinite wisdom, even got me a vegan pie from Whole Foods the night before! We had fun gabbin' and eating pie before I had to head to my next birthday engagement. Matthew, who was shooting a commercial earlier that day (fancy!), took me out to dinner at the Silly Goose, and I felt a little bit like I was in an episode of Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares AFTER the restaurant had been streamlined and chic'd up. Our table top was granite, and the silverware was wrapped in cheery red bandannas. Water glasses were little canning jars, and the menu presented on an office clipboard (wine list on a smaller clipboard). Something about this was very charming to me-- well-thought out. Also impressive--the waiters had POS's on their iPads! They could close a check completely paperlessly via said system. I have seriously only seen this on tv before. Sandwiched between Jeni's and Ugly Mugs in that Eastland restaurant district, I walked in and thought "Oh, please let this be as nice as it as it seems to be." Even more impressive than their check-closing abilities? THEIR FOOD. I had the Double AA vegetarian plate, which was couscous and a kebab of marinated mushrooms, peppers, and tomatoes. A lot of the time, getting the vegetarian plate at a restaurant turns out to be getting a plateful of raw garnishes for other meat dishes. Not so, in this case! This was honestly one of the best meals I've had out in Nashville, and strictly on my diet. Three cheers for Silly Goose! (and my own, Gomer Pyle like awestruckness at their modernity)

Here's a collage of some of the presents I received yesterday:

Including:

1. A coffee pump pot (nice name, right?) from my folks, and a pretty green beaded necklace. I begged them not to give me presents this year because they're doing so much for my wedding, but they would not let the occasion go unmarked! :) I've been wanting one of these serving pots for FOREVER, but used ones ook me out (who knows if it was put away and left to mildew? Or what's been in that carafe?). Also, a card from my Grandma.
2. A panther head necklace from Sus and Matt (to match my panther bracelet!!).
3. A Kit Kat clock from David and April (OH. MY. GOD.)
4. A floral chip and dip and a Yahtzee strategy guide from Deb (amping up my Yahtzee AND hostess game, two of my most important traits).
5. A Blu-Ray of Wizards, the Tolkien-esque Bakshi animated movie from the seventies'...I watched this CONSTANTLY as a kid, and Matthew thought it would be neat if we had a copy to show our kids some day! Also, that white walker bobble head (scary!) and that Ted Hawkins's record ON VINYL (blue vinyl, no less!).
6. A nice card and rememberance from Matthew's Memaw.
7. A vegan strawberry-with-pecans cake from Whole Foods inscribed "Happy Birthday Babu" (from you know who).

Here's a closeup of the cake, taken in the dungeon-like lighting conditions of my kitchen at night (I must replace those bulbs!!):

All in all, it was a fabulous day! Even more than the swag (though I love each and every of my presents), it was so sweet to be thought of by everyone on my birthday. 

So! How do you usually celebrate your birthday? Do you make a big fuss, or do you prefer a low key (or no key) activity to mark the occasion? Have you gotten a present that BLEW. YOUR. MIND. for any recent holiday? Let's talk!

That's all for today. Back to regular vintage stuff tomorrow, I promise! Have a great Wednesday, and I'll see you then! :)

Happy Birthday to Me!

I'm 28 years young today, folks! So crazy. To commemorate the fact, I give you a pair of vintage photos of me at my childhood best (or beast):

"What are you doing, four year old Lisa?" "Oh, you know, just hanging out in my yard, rockin' some pigtails, sittin' next to a pile of Pound Puppies. The usual." I remember as a kid I spent 90% of my day outdoors, with a book. Maybe this is inspiration for today! Replace the Pound Puppies with a stack of library loans, and we are cookin' with gas!

"Let's make sure and get a picture of Lisa in her Gunne Sax dress with her favorite Halloween toy, which has transcended its holiday-based use into every day companionship. Yeah, it's an oogie little tarantula! So what!" I love how much like an album cover this completely weird photo of me looks. Honestly, I would wear this dress and carry this spider into my late twenties', no regrets!

I have to go research what kind of free swag you can get on your birthday, then off for some date-of-birth Goodwill perusing, then lunch with the fam, then dinner at some secret location Matthew has planned out! I'll get back to you with all the festivities and deets tomorrow. Have a great Tuesday, and I'll see you on the other side! Here's to the big 2-8!

Weekend Finds: A Bit on the Light Side

Good morning!

Well, for once this year, it's been a pretty low key weekend! My dad and I hit estate sales, but had more luck cracking each other up about this that and the other than we did actually picking up items to take home. Pappy actually put some things BACK, shaking his head in the way of a picker who recognizes a bargain, but has no room for anything but the TRULY STELLAR to put in one's collection. I finised the Conversations with Orson book, and am looking forward to starting Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations. Partially because Variety  recently headlined an article with the piquant byline, "‘Ava Gardner’ More Explicit Than Perhaps Any Other Superstar Memoir", and by Godfrey, I want to find out why! I'm also 80% through Joe Hill's new book, NOS482, which is taking me on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride itself emotion/suspense wise. Dude is amazing.

In the meantime, I did manage to take a couple pictures of the meagre Goodwill scores from this weekend. I apologize in advance for the photo quality being VERY poor, even for me! It's thundersome outside this morning and a bulb's out in the kitchen, meaning I had to rely on the flash to shine a light through this Brontë like gloom! #reallifeblogadventures

The haul totals:

1. Two (2) vintage cameras.
2. One (1) antique photograph.
3. One (1) mystical unidentified metal charm.
4. Three (3) polyester dresses.

I know! You're going, "Lisa! Say something only you would know! Where's the twenty-strong intact collection of tiki mugs from the sixties'? Where's the bearskin rug you couldn't  leave behind? Where's the fifties' ballroom dress with the wearer's name sewn into the hem? This is so unlike you!" Folks, the creek run dry this weekend! Still, I'm very pleased with little trinkets I did take home. Let's take a closer look.

These two cameras were in an estate sale just around the corner in Madison that Eartha and I went to last weekend. The pictures boasted an array, and I'm talking every color, every fashion under the sun, of men and women's square dancing ensembles from the midcentury. DANG. By the time we got there at 9:30, an hour into the sale, every scrip and scrap of dance floor finery had been snagged already. Curses! We were impressed by the number of hand hewn benches, coffeetables, and side tables in the house (former owner was talented!) and I did manage to pick up some string ties that had somehow been overlooked (not pictured) and these two cameras. Check out the Polaroid in particular! Look familiar, Instagram users? This late seventies'/early eighties' model of the One Touch Land Camera features a VERY similar design to the logo used in the app's commercial presence. Neat, huh? For a dollar, the Hawkeye Instamatic II also had to come with me.

Next, one of the things I was most impressed with in my estate sale runs. I went to a Michael Taylor estate sale near St. Henry's out in West Meade, where everything was pretty much "stuff left behind by recent occupants". New purses and rugs and Christmas decor and that kind of thing. When I stepped back in the front room where the cashier was, OH MY GOODNESS. I usually leave this room til last as its the most crowded and peppered with things-people-have-already-bought. Heaven help the poor soul who actually picks up something in one of these haphazard rock piles of pyrex and dishtowels while the other person is there... "THAT'S MY STUFF. EVERYTHING OVER THERE IS MINE." I've been snapped at before in this fashion, and have avoided it ever since. However! In this case, the front room was completely filled with old photographs and medals. Piles of cabinet cards and scrapbooks (one from a woman's 1930's trip to an out of state revival somewhere in the North, complete with telegrams and postcards from home while they stayed at a hotel there...I was almost tempted). This drew my eye because of how amazingly clear and unscratched the image was:

And how pretty the subject is!

I need to brush up on my photo types, as I used to know the difference between an ambrotype and a tintype and a daguerrotype, but no more. Know that this image was recorded on a baseball card sized piece of tin, and is as clear as something taken with a good camera NOW. The picture I took with my Kodak is way blurrier than the 150 year old image itself! I'm guessing this is sometime in the 1860's-1870's, based on the clothes, and delighted that you can see the detail of her dress all the way down to the ribbon at her neck and the earrings she wore. SO COOL. And $5. I've never seen this old a picture for that little money, so I snatched at the opportunity. Only question now...how to display it? I'm terrified of scratching the image if I put it in a frame!

I really hope this doesn't summon some kind of demonic presense on me, but for a dollar, look into the eyes of this primitive/Deco-y medallion. I can't wait to string it on a chain and see what kind of curse I end up with (it's like a Cabbage Patch doll, you never know what you're gonna get). Seriously though, isn't it neat? I wish I knew anything else about it.

These look so sad sack all folded up and unloved in this photo, but I guarantee you heads will turn when I actually wear these loud vêtements out on the town! It seems harder and harder to find pre-1980 clothes at the Goodwill anymore, but that has never stopped me from trying, and these three are the fruits of my labor. The two at front are flirty mini dresses, and the  one at back is one of those long sleeved, floor length, sweeping skirted hostess gowns. Good bye, jammie pants, and hello hostess gown! I love it.

So! That's it and that's all! One more aerial view from my darkened kitchen table:

Did you find anything neat this weekend? Which of these finds do you like the best? Know anything about my mystery medallion or the photo I posted? Did you get "warshed away" in the flood like conditions here in town over the last week? Let's talk!

I have to go get ready for my day off (Jen Q's meeting me for Indian lunch and then taking me to get my hair did! Win and WIN?), but I'll see you cats back here tomorrow. Til then!!

Photo Friday: Where's That Lamp Edition

Good morning! 

We made it Friday, people! I can almost TASTE the weekend! I'm still digitally rifling through the USB drive my dad gave me a couple weeks ago of the FULL family archive. There are snips and snaps from Victorian times to the present, but what's funny about my attitude towards these photos versus the ones I usually seek out on the internet is that I actually gravitate towards ones with the most mundane, recognizable backgrounds. When I'm looking at Flickr, I tend to scrutinize forties' footwear or how a pretty blonde did her makeup, where the setting may be, who the guy with the umbrella with her is. In these photos, most mysteries are solved-- I know the people in the photos, and where they were taken. However! One background detail has caught my eye in sixities' and seventies' photos of my mom's family and it's driving me nu-u-u-uts.

I love my grandadddy's "No Pictures Please!" response to my grandma's papparazzi attempts at catching a slice of life photo. This is the living room their house, and that's the same couch (reupholstered in the late seventies', I think) and coffee table that was still sitting in the same spot in that front room all my childhood. The pinch pleat drapes had a complicated system of closing via pulley system that always confounded me when late afternoon was upon us and my grandma had sent me from the back room to get her a Diet Rite and "close the front curtains". It was like cat's cradle, except harder. However! The one thing I DON'T recognize from this photo is the freakin' fiberglass shaded lamp on the far right of this tableau. Where've you been all my life!

I know it's not the most amazing fifties' lamp-- there's no stalking panther or embracing gypsy couple or atomic whoosh as the base, but still! Look at that shade! Turquoise, with black lined swoops. Having a curator's-own memory of each and every object both in the house and the substantial garage of this property, I can vouch for the fact that it must have been given away at some point before my 1985 and onward tenure as a frequent visitor in the house. The lamps in this room in my childhood had foot high black square bases in high gloss, with two foot high, tall barrel shades.

I bet this thing looked gorgeous lit up. Oh, wait, I don't have to bet. Here's another photo of it lighting the room for a Christmas past (early 70's judging by others from this same set) on my granddaddy receiving a wallet for a yuletide gift.

I love you, lamp. Why couldn't you wait for me!

My grandparents were always a little weird about hanging onto something forever and then throwing it out/giving it away in a fit of cleaning pique that never made sense to me. Example, in the late nineties',  I found something like fifteen boxes of old Redbooks and Better Homes and Gardens magazines from the sixties' and seventies' that had been kept in the garage since they were recent. You can imagine my little heart quailed with love of old fashion spreads and advice columns for the totally ace Nixon-era housewife I could have been! I came down one weekend, expecting to dive back into this moldering archive, when I found the boxes were gone. When I asked about them, my grandma related that they'd taken them "over to the school to be recycled". My tiny heart sunk. It was the right thing to do for space in the garage, but dang! I could have really enjoyed those! Ah, well. Nothing g(old) can stay.

Do you have any old photos of familiar interiors made unfamiliar by just a couple decorating touches that predate YOU? Are there any items from your childhood home that are long gone now, but you wish you could have kept in the family for just ONE more generation? What surprises you most about looking through your own family photos?

That's all for today, I gotta hit the sales, people! Have a fabulous weekend, and I'll see you on the other side. Til then!

Blogs I Miss! (2010-2012)

Good morning!

In the haze of trying to get a blog together for this morning, I was thinking about some of the blogs I followed in years past that are no longer updated on a regular basis. And it's no wonder why! Life, and all the constant attention that minutae relating to day-to-day blog operations demands, can get in the way of producing stellar content and witty commentary indefinitely, even from the best of us. In light of their contributions to my own vintage knowledge, I thereby tip my cap to three OUTSTANDING blogs which are no longer au courant, but still hold a great deal of good information for those who weren't aware of them. You need to know about these if you don't already!

Let's look, shall we?

Website: A Sip of Sarsparilla (http://sip-of-sarsaparilla.blogspot.com/)

Author: Susie

Dates of Operation: April 2010- March 2011

I miss this website! I miss all of them, but I remember particularly that when I got into "for real, we are blogging all the time, we are never stopping" blog authorship, this was one of the vintage sites that set the bar  for what kinds of things I'd like to showcase on my own blog. Susie is a picker extraordinaire, with a passion and an eye for really good vintage stuff. Do you ever think "Man, as long as she didn't beat me to the good stuff, wouldn't it be FUN to go picking with this blogger?" I do! And this gal made me think that every time she showed off one of her hauls on this blog, circa 2010. One of Susie's last posts was actually one of my favorites-- she found the three vintage swimsuits in the pocket of the case she photographed them with at an estate sale, and don't you know those cashiers would have kicked themselves if they'd realized there was JANTZEN GOLD in the zippered portion of the hat box below:

Look! At the SHARKS! On those briefs!

What I liked best about this blog was the warmth and true love-of-the-hunt that came through in each of Susie's "finds" posts, along with the actual vintage scholarship she put into her informational posts. This Dec 2011 post, entitled "Sears Roebuck 1938 Catalog...Glorious Colors 'Good Enough To Eat' ", features ice cream delicious patterns and pastels from the pages of that years' women's fashion spreads:

You can still see Susie's trinkets and treasures via her Etsy store, which is on vacation for the summer but still in operation, as far as recently sold items indicate. Look through her archives for more gorgeous and informative posts on bygone fads and fashions, and make sure you stop by her store at the end of the summer in case it's up and running by then! You'll be glad you did.

Website: I Heart Everything (http://ihearteverythingblog.blogspot.com/)

Author: Amber von Felts

Dates of Operation: February 2010- April 2012

Here's another blog I discovered just as I was starting out with regular weekly or daily postings, and was it a lot of fun or what. You can see by Amber's profile picture (in a bejeweled fez and with pipe, natch) and the cheery, Googie-inspired banner that this girl knows her midcentury kitsch, AND HOW. The kinds of things she would find at estate sales and thrift stores in her native California would just blow your mind, and FOR STEALS. Call me a reverse-snob, but I have always given great props to vintage collectors who can pull together breathtaking collections the old fashioned way-- not from curated inventory at consignment and resale boutiques, but with their own grit and determination in line at estate sales or in the oppressive summer heat of their fiftieth yard sale that weekend. Digging and getting actual dirt on their hands at thrift stores in sketchy parts of town because that's where the good stuff is. There's something to be said about that! See Amber's $15 fiberglass shaded thrift store pair of exotica lamps here or her actual Eames and Eames-esque wire chairs, the former from a dumpster and the latter from an estate sale for less than $30, here. I crowned Amber a junkster from the same tribe as me from first read, and was sad when her new job kept her from having enough time for regular postings.

You can still see her sold Etsy listings here, though I didn't spot anything new in the shop. Cheers to you, Amber, wherever you are! I hope you're still finding insane vintage stuff at insanely low prices with your hawk-like eye for goodies.

Her wire chairs...I die.

Website: Honey Hi Vintage (http://honeyhivintage.blogspot.com/)

Author: Janine

Dates of Operation: December 2010- February 2012

Hello, Janine's blog is named after a song that opens the fourth side of the double record Tusk, in my top five of favorite albums of all time-- how was I not supposed to love this site? What I loved about this blog was, like the other two I've described today, Janine's particular eye for vintage items. She wasn't per se looking for ONLY this kind of antique or JUST this value-book-approved type of tchochtke, but consistently showed her unique style and relic-divining-rod in what she DID bring home. Her blog post "Hairy Babies and Silky Blankets" (which sounds terrible, but is not), clued me in to the folk art practice of adding a baby's first haircut curls and baby blanket to a similarly sized magazine cutout of a baby and framing it for display in the home, which I had never heard of before. It was because of this post that I was positive I'd found something spectacular when I pulled this print out of a basement in a house off Briley Parkway in May of last year. Posts on one of the first celebrity movie-star couples, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, 1940's carved wedges, and early 70's rock and roll groupie magazines just make me want to pick her brain for more things I want to know more about. If "Awesome Taste" were a graded subject, her card would sport an "A++++++++++!!" all in red felt tip pen.

This dress is museum quality and in her Etsy shop right now...I wish I had that kind of dough!!

Janine's Etsy shop, Guermante's Vintage, is still up and running, lively as the day is long, AND FULL OF OH MY GOD MOMENTS when it comes to looking at some of the stellar dresses dedans. I actually die thinking of having some of these things in my closet. I don't know what you're waiting for, go look already! :)


How about you? Are there any blogs out there that you miss being updated on a regular basis? If you're a blogger yourself, do you have any hard and fast rules about how and when and about what you post? What keeps you reading a blog even after it's no longer current? Let's talk!

That's all for today, but I'll see you back here tomorrow for Photo Friday. Til then!

"Women Cram Handbags" (Celebrities and their purses, 1945)

Good morning!

Boy, is it gloomy outside here in Nashville! I've spent most of this day so far gluing book spines back together and trying to get the chill out of my bones with some coffee and Google books. Today, while flipping through a wartime era Life magazine, I noticed an article on women's handbags. As I scanned through the photos, what to my wondering eyes should appear but celebrities of 1945 and the contents of their purses! Wow doesn't even cover it, folks!

Let's take a look!

Lovely Lucille Ball, who would have been a hundred and two on her birthday yesterday (!!), carries a circular brown felt hand bag with everything from sunglasses to tweezers and cuticle scissors inside. The caption reminds us that the initials on her leather notebook stand for "Lucille Arnaz", something nobody would have to be reminded of six years later when she and husband Desi became two of the most recognizable people in the country with their hit tv show. I see sunglasses, a billfold, Revlon cosmetics, lipstick, and a solitary key among her other belongings. What do you think is in the Revlon boxes? I can't make out the writing on it other than the brand name.

How fun is it to snoop through these purses in pictures? I'm straining my eyes trying to figure out what some of this stuff is!

Claudette Colbert carries cigarettes and matches, what looks like a driver's license (maybe?), and bicarbonate of soda. I also see a comb and a change purse, and look at the pecan roll CC has for breakfast on set every morning! How does she keep that tiny figure having the equivalent of a Little Debbie snack cake for breakfast? I'm partial to the rest of her outfit in the sidebar photograph. How about that pancake hat,  brooch, square neckline, and built-up shoulders? Yes, yes, yes, and yes!

Greer Garson, who I've never been a huge fan of but who would have been at the height of her stardom as wartime movie icon Mrs. Miniver just three years earlier, spills the most of all the stars here with letters, a movie script, a pocket knife...all kinds of junk! Do you see the little "see no evil" monkeys on a charm in the center of the photo? How about those tiny forties' sunglasses? I love that this is the equivalent of today's mammoth carry-all, only sixty five years ago!

How! Cute! Is! Betty! Grable! She had me at that ringlet up-do. I liked seeing the sunglasses, gum, cigarette holder, and....is that rock at the upper left hand corner? Maybe some kind of change purse? And a two dollar bill, to boot. Hornplayer and band leader Harry James would have been two years into his twenty-two year union with WWII's most famous pin-up at the time his photograph was traveling along the inside of her alligator clutch. How did she get all this stuff in that little bag? Shades of Mary Poppins.

Maria Montez made a splash in 1944 with Cobra Woman, a camp classic (even under Robert Siodmak's direction!), and left an impression on me for her marriage to French actor Jean Pierre Aumont. Look how cute he looks in that tiny photo! Also, the cigarette lighter shaped like a fish. The only thing I could find similar to it online (there's a TON of weird, bass fishing style lighters on ebay, but nothing gold or dainty or antique like this) was a Tiffany creation favored by Diana Vreeland (see below). Sign me up!

And there's even a youth-set actress to round out the bunch!

Little Margaret O'Brien wins my own personally bestowed award for LEAST cloying child actress of the 1940's. Remember her in Meet Me in St. Louis with Judy Garland? Her purse is similarly unpretentious or nerve grating, with a little porcelain doll and some other childhood flotsam floating around in her round, red leather bag. 13 cents in 1945 would be $1.64 cents in 2012 money. She's rich! Rich beyond her wildest dreams!

I figured it wouldn't be fair not to have a moment of introspection regarding the bits and baubles I carry around in my own little leather hand bag, but sadly, I forgot the transfer cord to my camera! You'll have to settle for this dramatic recreation, featuring lipstick-printed post it notes, a pair of chopsticks from the Thai restaurant the other day, and more makeup than I thought I had! Oh, well. Judge away, haha!

What do you carry in your purse or wallet? Are you a Spartan like little Margaret O'Brien or a pack rat like Greer Garson? What forties' movie star's purse would you like to see the interior of (coughcough JOAN CRAWFORD cough)?

That's all for today, but I'll see you back here tomorrow. Hope the grey skies clear up by that time! Til then.

Spin Magazine (1985)

Good morning!

I am damn near dead, friends-- it took everything I had to stay awake long enough to view the progression of the Ant Army march through their paces last night, and whatever I had left was taken from me à cause de sleeplessness after I DID get home last night.

However! I learned some things:

1. Adam Ant fans are predominantly in their mid to late forties, look nothing like you would think they would, and come out in droves for live shows.
2. They know EVERY. WORD. TO EVERY. B SIDE. AND EVERYTHING. IN BETWEEN. There was a guy behind me last night who was almost like a teleprompter, down to every "ooh" and "WAH-oh". I felt whatever the lyrical knowledge equivalent is to woefully underdressed. Do you know how rare a sensation that is to either me or Kelsey, being music nerds to our core?!
3. Highlights of Kelsey in-show conversation: 
1. K: "How does it feel to be a CASUAL Adam Ant fan? Because we're the only ones here."
2. K: "Do you think Adam Ant may be like the Dread Pirate Roberts? Do you think they just pass the hussar's jacket on to whoever and then THEY'RE Adam Ant? Because that does not look like Adam Ant."
3. L: "How many more songs can he even have?" K: "He's been playing for an hour and a half. Solid." L: "And yet none of them are 'Goody Two Shoes'." ((the first bars of "Goody Two Shoes" start at this moment))
4. L: "Do you think the girl drummer's hair is a wig?" K: "Almost definitely." L: "I want that wig."
5. L: In response to the song "Wonderful", "Do you think this is their 'This Must Be the Place'?"
4. Adam Ant used to live in Tennessee? He mentioned it in the concert last night and again in this interview: "I lived in Tennessee for a couple of years," Adam recalls. "And after a while I started to think about music. I missed it, the creative process and the live side of it." He LIVED in Tennessee! Can you imagine seeing him at Walgreens and not realizing it was him? It might have happened!

I could go on for days, but we have the pressing business of Tuesday's blog. Continuing with this week's 80's-centric music theme, did you know Spin magazine goes back to 1985 on Google books? It's true!

The very first issue features a Material Girl era Madge on the cover, beauty mark, full-eyebrows, highlighted hair and all! 

I used to collect old Rolling Stones from the seventies', eighties', and nineties' back in my teens-- in the pre-internet era, this was the most information I was going to get on bygone acts that were as current to me as if they'd released their first single two days, instead of two decades ago. It's interesting because I always think about Spin as a slightly hipper-than-thou, skinny on content version of tried-and-true RS. However! Reading from the inaugural issue here has been an eye-opener. Besides the dead-on contemporaneous record reviews, there are interview features and op-eds on things that are RIGHT. UP. MY. ALLEY. So maybe right up yours as well!

The June 1985 issue, for example, features Talking Heads in a cover story, hot off the heels of their Little Creatures release the same month ("And She Was" and "Road to Nowhere" are both on this record). The article itself was co-written by Glenn O'Brien, currently GQ's "Style Guy" columnist, former editor of Andy Warhol's Interview magazine, creator of the late 70s/early 80s cult public access show "TV Party". Also, personal hero of mine. I AM IMPRESSED.

Another article by O'Brien in the same issue delves into the state of Calypso music in its country of origin, Trinidad. There's an interview with Billy Joel about whether or not he's relevant in year of our Lord 1985:

There's an article on the origins and actors in Jim Jarmusch's seminal Stranger than Paradise, released that year; a profile of underground record stores; a column by producer Nile Rogers (the guy behind "Le Freak", "Let's Dance", AND Daft Punk's 2013 hit "Get Lucky"...the man is a legend) about the car stereo in his Maserati Bora (which apparently looks like this, for you fellow non-gear-heads). There's a profile of the Smiths and specifically Morrissey towards the back of this same issue. WHAT. IS NOT. TO LOVE. ABOUT 1980'S. SPIN MAGAZINE.

Oh, and besides all the street cred? How about these mid-eighties' tastic advertisements? You look, I can't, they're too perfect:

I even found two that combine both music AND commercialism. People, Daryl Hall and John Oates for Pontiac Fiero:

 And even MORE surprisingly, Lou Reed (LOU REED) for Honda. I am speechless:

So! Have you made any staggering online treasure trove discoveries lately? What eighties' act would you most like to see in concert in this modern age? How crazy is it to see Lou Reed shilling for Honda (I wonder if he got a bike out of the deal)? Let's talk!

I gotta get my sleep deprived self focused on work, but go check out Spin magazine's online archive on Google books, I guarantee you will find something you like.

That's all for today! See you tomorrow.