A little eye candy, a little ear candy: It is Friday.

So let's celebrate!

I'm getting 2 rolls of Holga film developed this weekend, so to whet my appetite, I pulled gems from my favorite Flickr photographers.  Most of these are Holga pics, but some are not.

mariczka

hey azi

jean marc crocfort

This next photographer is very, very special. Her name is Pamela Klaffke, and I kind of stalk her site. A bit. Here is why.

Isn't that magical? I wish I could make my camera do those things.

Also, for your ears: Here's a delicious treat from the ol' YouTube. I pulled it specifically because Classixx is playing tonight for Learning Secrets' birthday show at Beauty Bar. If you like Phoenix, you might dig this too.  And, I can pretty much guarantee you'll get a kick out of the video.


Happy Friday, everybody!

My first post on Planet Green!

So this is a short little post y'all, but I am excited.

As of today, I'm officially a Planet Green blogger!

My first post is about getting your craft on, and turning one of your old coats into stocking stuffers, such as button rings, wrist cuffs, tea clutches and the like.

If you fancy this post.....wink wink.....you can click on "Was this article helpful?" at the bottom and it will turn into a vote. Imagine me hugging you if do that.

Anyway, I will be writing lots of these little green / eco-friendly articles for Planet Green, so if you have any ideas for posts I'd love to hear about them. Thoughts?

O Room Service, how do I love thee?

I am happy to report that this morning, an angel entered my email inbox, and she granted me a ticket to today's ACL (i.e. "Austin City Limits Music Festival" for the uninitiated)! So if you read yesterday's post - which is highly unlikely since most of you were - nay, ARE - at ACL already, then we happily have a crisis-averted situation on our hands. Thank you, interwebs!

Anyway. With a few free hours to kill this morning, I decided to have a little fun here in the neighborhood. You see, I have been so inspired by Sarah Dean over at The Year of Living Thriftily - who, if you haven't heard, is chronicling her year of wearing zero new clothes (as in....wearing all vintage, not wearing zero clothes, which I think we can all agree would be a different mission entirely) - that I've been itching to don more vintage duds myself.

Behold. I give you: Room Service!



Every time I walk into Room Service (there are two, by the way - one on South Lamar, and one on North Loop, the latter of which we shall be discussing here today), I freak out a little bit. Why? Well....look how pretty!!!



Now, in the name of objectivity, I should tell you that although Room Service consistently wins both MY love (pant! pant!) AND "Best Vintage" in the Austin Chronicle every year, not all Austinites drool over this comely, kitschy place.

Kelley R. from Yelp, you have the floor:

"I've never found anything here that I'd actually spend money on. It's pricey [O RLY?] and a lot of the stuff is just old crap [der, is resale]. Sometimes it smells funny too [that's actually a good point]. But I do looking at old crap. "

I'm gonna have to call shenanigans on this one, Kelley R. Hear you loud and clear about the smell - like an olfactory cocktail of rose, mothballs, and Grandma's closet - but then, what vintage store does not smell like that. Ditto the presence of "old crap" - is thrift store! A clearing house for old stuff!

But anyhoo, internet sparring aside, let's move onto what delectable items Room Service had in store for us today....


No, I'm not quite sure what that face in the middle is, but I did find a few cute things in this area to try on! These included: A polka dot turquoise skirt, patent leather green flats, and a couple of cotton '80s dresses - wrap-around, horizontal stripes - with shoulder pads happily removed. So with that, I schlepped it on over to the dressing room.

Now guys, correct me if I'm wrong here, but compared to most thrift store dressing rooms, the one at Room Service is downright thrilling. Normally the dressing room area in thrift stores is just a lame siphoning-off of existing floor space, right, with curtains draped in front of makeshift stalls. Not a proper room by any means.



But oh, what a difference we have here! The dressing room at Room Service is indeed it's very own, walk-in space, much more of a "dress-UP" room really. That's the mirror on the right, surrounded by silk scarves and HATS!

(PS - is anyone looking at that black and white number down on the bottom right, with what appear to be wings on the side? Just how much moxie do you have to have to pull that off? Not even the mannequin, it looks like, who has damn near covered her face with the thing.)

Anyway, took some pictures of myself in here playing dress-up. Unfortunately, I am pretty much a TERRIBLE photographer when it comes to taking pictures of myself:



Like I said.......terrible. Do you like how I'm trying to pose?

But at least I got a close-up shot of THESE lovelies!!



Aren't those sweet? I don't know what we would call that, exactly - sunburst? Sunburst on the feet? Either way.....yummy.

Exiting the dressing room, then, I decided to take a quick spin around for home wares. Now, Room Service excels in many areas, but they really outdo themselves in the lighting department. For example, check out this lamp, with what appears to be a sassy little Poseidon on the front:


Don't you love how he is working it against that wave? And, wait, look at his face:



Girlfriend is looking fierce here. In fact, as soon as I took this picture, I kept asking myself...who does that remind me of? I've seen this vestige somewhere?

And then, it hit me:



Ru Paul, of course! Oh Miss Paul...you have neva looked better.

Austinites (by which I mean, ladies), do you like to go thrifting? Is one of my favorite activities, but I don't go often enough. I am partial to Room Service (obvs!), but where do you all shop when you get the vintage bug?

Speaking of bug - I'm about to go brave the little gnats that cluster in big mating sprees outside my front door (isn't it funny/disturbing that gnats mate in orgy-like fashion?), and hop on a bike for this ACL business, yo!

Polyvore art!!!

(PS: I don't actually own a Wii Fit.)

Calling my own bluff: The gym

So, like many a gal in her twenties, I go to the gym regularly. Why? Sheer vanity. Also, I have a Chilango Margarita problem.
I go to 24 Hour Fitness, where in the past, I have attended several things: hip-hop dance classes, kickboxing classes, spin classes, yoga classes, weight-lifting classes....one very awkward "strip" aerobics class, a brief fitness craze flash in the pan circa 2005....as well as countless individual sessions on treadmills, elliptical trainers, stairsteppers, stationary bikes, hand-weights, inflatable balls (effective, but comical), with an iPod or TV as my training companion.

But today, I am DUNZO!

I am completely sick of the gym, guys. Can anyone here relate? I caught myself yawning on the elliptical trainer tonight. Seriously. It's sooo boring.

Also: It's crowded. I know, duh. But guys - and I mean specifically males - what is the deal with you and your territorial behavior around the weights area? There is some serious hoarding and skulking going on around the weight benches in particular. I've noticed how some guys "claim" benches by draping their sweaty towels over them, after which, ew, none of us want to use it! Are you saving your bench in case you come back later? Are you going to go knock out an hour of cardio real fast in between sets?

I have clearly lost the gym fervor, so am considering adopting a new fitness routine. I decided to look to a trusted source for information: YouTube.

The first item a found is a "facial exercises" item from Greer Childers, at once hilarious and horrifying. WARNING: not suitable for young children.



The second absolutely warmed my heart: Canadians! You're so goofy! Do any of you own an i-Joy Ride Exerciser? Can I borrow it?



Ok, this last clip is a classic to most of you I am sure - but how did I miss this?? It makes me want to join a ginormous dance troupe stat, even if that means being in jail! Behold: 1,500 plus CPDRC inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in Cebu, Philippines doing "Jump!!!"



The same group also does Soulja Boy, Thriller, I Need a Hero...seriously, is this a documentary? Can it be please?

Funny how dancing inmates have totally derailed my train of thought...what was I blogging about again? Oh yeah - exercise.

I can't resist - one more!!

A gift from the internet: Heartless Doll

Guys!! Do you have some time to play on the interwebs right now? Yes? Poise thine finger to the mouse, and get ready to surf.

A glorious blog, Heartless Doll, landed in my virtual lap today at work. Even better - I think the blogger might be from Texas? And quite possibly Austin? I can't tell. The blog banner says "SF Weekly," and yet according to Google, Andrea Grimes (blogger of Heartless Doll) appears to be a contributor to both Austin and Dallas publications. Curious.

(If you have followed this blog for any length of time, you are probably aware that I like to stalk people. Clearly this is no exception.)

ANYWAY, Heartless Doll is a pop culture blog, but funny and smart. Don't get me wrong, I love me some PopSugar, PerezHilton, all the classics - but they are exactly what they set out to be, and that is crack-laced Laffy Taffy for your brain. A typical headline might read, "JESSICA SIMPSON PUMPS GAS WEARING MAXI DRESS!" which is, without fail, followed by 60+ reader comments of passionate feelings regarding Jessica's outfit. Some comments have such ridiculous spelling that it breaks your heart a little bit.

Heartless Doll, however, offers truly thoughtful and witty topics to chew on - stuff I wish I could have come up with! Here's a sample of recent post topics:

"Nuns: Too sexy for their habits"
"Google Earth proves cows are secretly magnets"
"Is Paula a cold-hearted snake?"

I should also mention that there are many more in the Heartless Doll blogger gang, and not just Andrea Grimes. But while we're on the subject: out with it, Andrea! The jig is up! Are you in Austin? And if so, can we hang out please.

Pop lock and drop it

This boy's not from Austin, he's from another planet!!



You're welcome!

Let's talk about Project Chanology.

I knew I had seen these masks before.

But I didn't know what they meant. Until tonight that is, with the help of South Park and Wikipedia.

So around February of this year, I was driving down Guadalupe. I can't remember where I was headed, but I do remember seeing a whole block of these people in front of the UT Campus, wearing freaky masks and holding posters. One of them was holding a poster that said, "Honk if you hate Xenu." They were standing across the street from the Church of Scientology, on Guadalupe and 22nd St.

Fast-forward: R. and I are watching an old South Park tonight, one (of the many) where they were ripping on Scientology. It's the one where everyone thinks Stan is the second coming of L. Ron Hubbard, and the like, President of Scientology or something walks Stan through Scientologist doctrine: you know, aliens, space ships, volcanoes, etc. Then a tagline appeared at the bottom of the screen that said, "This is what Scientologists actually believe."

Being the Wikipedia nerd I am, I jumped up and grabbed my laptop just to confirm it for myself. Here is a segment from the Wikipedia entry:

"75 million years ago Xenu brought billions of people to Earth in spacecraft resembling Douglas DC-8 airliners, stacked them around volcanoes and..."

...And do you really need to hear anything else? Well, ok:

"...and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls then clustered together, stuck to the bodies of the living and continue to do this today."

Well, I think that pretty much says it all. (Even so, I thought you should still see a Scientology video of the whole volcano thing. Yes, I found this through Austin's very own Scientology website.)

But what I wanted to tell you guys about was not Scientology, but Project Chanology.

So on that same Wikipedia article, I came across this intriguing sub-entry that said "Scientology and the Internet." I clicked on it, and there's a guy wearing one of those Guy Fawkes/V from V for Vendetta masks. Apparently, in January, February, and April of this year, a group dubbing themselves "Project Chanology" (an offshoot of the larger, more well-known group Anonymous) launched a world-wide protest against Scientology - including one right here in Austin, y'all!

I'm just really fascinated by the whole internet-organized global protest thing. This group is made up of people from at least - but not limited to - Berlin, Paris, Dublin, London, and AUSTIN. And in addition to the street protests, they apparently disabled Scientology's computer server, sent black faxes, and...RICKROLLED!!!

Guys! Project Chanology IS responsible for the "rickroll" phenomenon. You know, you get a link to a seemingly relevant site, click on it, and suddenly you're greeted by Rick Astley singing "Never Gonna Give You Up." Why, I'm not entirely sure. It's connection to Scientology? Again: fuzzy. If everyone's figured this out already and I'm just now catching on - sorry. But I'm going to sit here and be pumped for a minute, now that I've discovered the origin of rickrolling. Whoa!

Ok, so. Project Chanology's last big public demonstration was June 2008, in a protest involving pirate costumes. Again...pirates? What? Does it matter? All I know is: It's not the last protest. And as a matter of fact, here locally, more stuff is going down this summer.

Like paintbrush, only 50 times better

I can't stop playing with Bomomo. It's a website where you too can make gorgeous, gorgeous, original art work just like this. You're welcome! Now go play.