Best antler buds and Doc Martens and poppin socks of 2014!

Oh man, I'm out on a limb here, but naysayers -- and there will be -- sit down.  When I see little bleached buds beginning to form on the upper corners of the noggin and footwear gloriously free of salt stains and laces (every time I look at the word laces, I see feces which is absolutely not indicative of a problem because these kicks are feces-free too), all friendly and rounded and six kinds of Marlon Perkins about the toes with snug side panels of swingin London elastic, well,  I just go ahead and lay my cards on the table.  A two, a three and a four.  That's something, right?  
See how the blue ankle adornment keeps it from looking like she has legs that end in soup spoons?  Brilliant!
I'm stunned, stunned I tell you,  by the difference the smooth unbroken landscape of leather makes!  I get an itchy rash when I see the the usual Doc design, inspired by a stitched wound.  Brings to mind the 90s when I was doing acrylic on an industrial scale and Mr. Yuk hair.  Boy, glad that's in the past, right?  Right?  She said she got these boots yesterday these boots made it all the way through the winter, as if winter was also in the past. Ha. Ha. 
Anyhoo,  I like them so much I was thinking... She's small.  I could def take her,  push her over, wrestle the boots from the socks, leave the socks as a gesture of goodwill and make off like ... like Newman with a mullet.  But her boy friend was stage right and I would have had to embarrass him too with my mad boot-removal skills. And that's wrong.

multimedia presentation

Boy, are you ever lucky I was out and about before the monsoon, because I ran into artist Anna Miller who wears sock art and leather representational earrings and and a really beautifully layered bob that she got just recently at Moxie, in St. Paul.  But here's the best part -- being an artist, she sketches her outfits and a tri-panel graphic diary on her blog:  sketchyattire.blogspot.com.  See?  A pencil rendering of this very same incident.  And she pencil-shopped my eyebags!  I like art.

shut up -- vintage wedding dress

Don't even reveal your naivete.  This gorgeous assemblage of virginal lace and hope was not made for a Dr. Seuss character of very lean proportion, as we can see by the photo of the bride. She's a dumpling and a beautiful one.  The dress is A) bias cut and B) stretched with age.  Again, something about that sounds so familiar....
Arlene, of My Sister's Closet fame, insisted the fabric was so fragile it would disintegrate upon touching.  Sure enough, it did.  Now Arlene has instituted a few rules about things that are bias cut, or lace, or old, or not made out of plastic...

 

here are some smokin people and a bag

Normally, when I stumble up to people who are enjoying a smoke and ask if I can disseminate their photo all over the internets,  they take one last drag and then sort of sheepishly toss the cig or hold it behind their back while tons of relaxing tobacco is wasted and I prattle on and forget to turn on the camera, almost as if I wasn't a big pain in the kiester. 

 [A true journalist, I looked up the correct spelling of kiester and discovered it's a city in Minnesota, population 501.  Also, the correct spelling is ass.]

But this guy actually took out a fresh one and lit up just for the occasion.  I like people who are unrepentant about their vices.  I like unrepentant people. There,  I said it.

Aside from smoking and wearing hats and boots and way sexy leg covering (hers are not bad either), they both dig thrift store shopping.  Which is where he got his peacoat and she got her fully tooled bag.  When I just wrote that -- fully tooled bag -- it resonated in a very personal way.  Ah well, here's to unhealthy, life-shortening blogs habits.

impressionist manscape

Between the profile view, the boater beancover (courtesy of Heimie's in downtown St. Paul) and robust facescaping (managed by Lush products), I had the Impression (a-thankyou) I'd seen this scene before.  Rendered in oils with baguette on the side.  Renoir's enthusiastic Dudes, Underdressed is not the one I had in mind but it's the best my impatient imperfect search returned.  The bon vivant at far left gives a similar vintage contemplative feel, as in, this is the way people used to wait for the next thing to happen.  The other highly retro element to our Man Of The Bus Stop is what we don't see -- a small rectangular device that he is attending with the focus of a minesweeper. Probably that's why he looks so lifelike.

The limited issue Stefan Janoski/Nike kicks keep him grounded in the present and ready to spring onto the ACTC shuttle at a moment's notice.

Tommy meets Paul Bunyan

They chill. 

The end.

I have a pretend camera

It's called the Internet.  

My real camera beeped in a whiny way and when I took it back to National Camera they discovered the problem.  It was one week beyond the warranty.  The lady at National Camera was real nice and sneaky and suggested we send it to the Olympus doctors with a note that said the illness happened before the warranty ended.  I hope no one from Olympus repair department is reading this.  If they feel like it  believe us, I'll get the camera back in two months. Or two years. Same diff.

Soooooo...

I'm going to post pictures of vintage wedding dresses. As you would. The one above is very Princess Grace.  You can tell it's vintage because it doesn't look like Snooki Does The Chapel.  Brides used to believe in the sleeve...

I say, good show.

This is fine if you're the sort who goes for all that gorgeousness.  
I know this will shock the heck out of you, but at the time, I could have cared less about my gown de nuptual. I went to one store with my mom. As we walked in the door, I said,  How about that one?  I tried on two, for the sake of comparison, and chose the one whose bodice was like a bedazzled t-shirt -- short sleeves, crew neck. All that was missing was a chest pocket.  I'm pretty sure it was machine wash and dryable.  I still have it, taxidermied and hermetically sealed. It's real scary.
I can't stop. V worried about foundations. Corinthian.