1. Professor Longhair, “Tipitina” (1953)

2. Ray Charles, “I Got a Woman” (1954)

3. Big Joe Turner, “Shake, Rattle and Roll” (1954)

4. LaVern Baker, “Tweedlee Dee” (1954)

5. Champion Jack Dupree, “Junker’s Blues” (1958)

6. The Drifters, “There Goes My Baby” (1959)

7. Ray Charles, “What I’d Say” (1959)

8. Solomon Burke, “If You Need Me” (1963)

9. Booker T. & the MG’s, “Green Onions” (1962)

10. Wilson Pickett, “In the Midnight Hour” (1965)

11. Aretha Franklin, “Respect” (1967)

12. Dusty Springfield, “Son of a Preacher Man” (1969)

13. Dr. John, “Iko Iko” (1972)

14. Doug Sahm, “(Is Anybody Going to) San Antone” (1973)

15. Willie Nelson, “Bloody Mary Morning” (1974)

16. The Sanford/Townsend Band, “Smoke From a Distant Fire” (1977)

17. James Booker, “Winin’ Boy Blues” (1978)

18. Etta James, “Take It to the Limit” (1978)

19. Dire Straits, “Lady Writer” (1979)

20. Bob Dylan, “Gotta Serve Somebody” (1979)

—————-

[beginning to end ... full of awesome and win.

just makes you realize what a legacy this man has left behind

and where today's music just falls pitifully short of any sort of soul

or staying power.] somehow, i have 24 on the copy he burned for the jefe:

Bloody Mary Morning - Willie Nelson 2:51
C.C. Rider - Chuck Willis 2:34
Down In The Alley - The Clovers 2:21
Giving Up - Donny Hathaway 6:23
Gotta Serve Somebody - Bob Dylan
Honey Love - Clyde McPhatter & The Drifters
Hoy Hoy - Little Johnny Jones 2:40
I Got A Woman - Ray Charles 2:53
I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You) - Aretha Franklin 2:51
I’ve Got A Thing About You Baby - Tony Joe White 2:43
Iko Iko - Dr. John 4:10
In The Midnight Hour - Wilson Pickett 2:34
(Is Anybody Going To) San Antone 3:11
Junkers Blues - Champion Jack Dupree 3:11
Just Out Of Reach (Of My Two Open Arms) - Solomon Burke
Lady Writer - Dire Straits 3:46
Since I Met You Baby - Ivory Joe Hunter 2:45
Smoke From A Distant Fire - The Sanford & Townsend Band 3:33
Son Of A Preacher Man - Dusty Springfield 2:29
Soul On Fire - LaVerne Baker 3:05
Soul Shake - Delaney & Bonnie & Friends 3:06
Take It To The Limit - Etta James 4:08
Tipitina - Professor Longhair 2:39
TV Mama - Big Joe Turner 2:50
1.2 hours
68.9 mb

hooray! my media uploader works again!

thanks, monica, for helping me discover that.

on a related note, i disabled the contact form, it seems to have been the culprit to breaking the uploader to begin with. there is a fix for it, but i can’t be bothered with that much reading and following directions.

. . . . .

more good news …. i faxed the police report to the insurance company … they accepted liability. woot!!

now, just to find the time to get this taken care of.

stopped at home depot and got my GREAT STUFF. booya.

flickr has been pretty damned awesome with the new contacts. i received an offer to show my work at a gallery in NYC, but turned it down. statements like “only a few slots left, so sign up now!” do NOT bode well with me … especially if:

1 - you personally invite me
2 - your sign up page says there’s a non-refundable $50 entry fee AND i’m to be emailed the artists agreement within two days after registering [paying]

i checked out their site, they seem reputable, and i guess that sort of business ethic seems to work with other folks. but i don’t have 50 bucks to piss away without looking at a contract first.

i received another invite from santa barbara for a show on dia de los muertos. they are interested in the FAITH shrine [the very first one i did, that i sold]. i emailed them back, thanking them, and started a replacement. i should have it finished by tomorrow. hopefully.

i think i just got bit by a spider, but i don’t know for sure. i felt a sting [but i've had fireants invading my room, i thought it was one of them]. i looked down and about a foot away was a scurring spider. could it have moved that fast? i dunno. but there are no ants around right now that i can see. the worst part is, i can’t find the bite. it happened to have gotten me between my toes, and i seem to have this issue with “phantom sensations”. that is to say, if i experience a sensation on the inside of one toe, i can’t tell if it’s the adjacent toe. am i the only that experiences this? it happens also, to a certain degree, with my fingers. if i get bit on the inside of my ring finger, the skin adjacent to it on my middle finger itches, too. [i guess i'll just have to wait and see which toe swells and falls off. :P]

hi, i’m a freak.

need sleep. but first … gotta wash my dirty hands.

oh! speaking of dia de los muertos, lawndale has already started handing out the retablo tins. i’m picking up mine tomorrow during lunch.

ilu sundance

big girl’s blouse

i lamented about this before. i picked up “the wrong kind” that didn’t harden as i’d hoped. i left the “Icarus” to dry properly and it never did what i expected. sure, it dried, to a nice poofy texture, but i knew it would not suit my needs, so i began to scoop out the foam. the insides had the consistency of angel food cake. nice, and perhaps purposeful in some way it was originally intended, but it was not going to work for me. here’s the stuff:

so when i went to home depot i found the REAL stuff:

this is really what it says … GREAT stuff. messy as heck, but it poofs up better than the other stuff and dries to a consistency of packing peanuts. i was so happy , it was on sale. it was the first thing i grabbed.  …. so why the heck isn’t in my bag? [because as some of you know, me and self-checkouts do not get along and i'm a moron and forgot to scan it].

alas and alack.

i miss the short hair for several reasons ... it was cute, it was easy to take care of and i could style it a number of ways [strange, but i could do more with my hair when it was short than i can when it's long]. simple matter of fact is that i don’t know how to care for long hair. i’m not used to it. at all. most times i just wear it pulled back in a headband or ponytail. i don’t like wearing it loose too often because it’s so unmanageable, and if i straighten it, the flyaways are a nightmare [i can't stand when it brushes my face]. i wash it every two or three days, because any more often than that and it breaks. but because i have to use a mild product to keep it from frizzing, i am prone to acne just below the nape of my neck. ick. i also have not learned how to properly blowdry it [blowdrying is pretty much NOT an option for hair like mine unless i wish to look like gene wilder]. so it’s left to air dry, which i don’t mind except for the fact that it traps moisture against my scalp, causing this horrible outbreaks and itchy scalp. ugh. i’m just so done with it.

and tim’s hinted at me doing away with it, too. not that he doesn’t like it, just that he’s tired of seeing i shed more than the cat does. he’s gone through a bottle of drano in the bathtub and that didn’t work, so he asked me to fish around with a wire hanger before trying a different type of drano.

i did.

what i found was enough to make a sizeable wig for a chemo patient. [a slimy, stinky wig, anyway].

so i’m a bit torn. especially on a day like this when my hair actually looks nice, and my family has finally stopped teasing me about having a boy cut for so many years.

a girl who works on my floor, who is always so nicely groomed in her little pulled back bun, asked me one day if my curls were natural. “ugh, yes, unfortunately, what a mess they are!” [they really were that day] she said her hair is the exact same way and she was growing tired of it. then said she was going to chop it off that weekend and donate it. she returned the next week with a really nice shoulder length do and said they took away 10 inches. wow. i should look into this. it could be just the thing. though i’m not sure anyone would want to be cursed with my frazzled hair.

i dunno. still debating. alexis asked me a while back how long i intended to grow it. i figured just enough to get some kick ass braids …. but i need to learn to braid properly first.

yeah, this is what i’m aiming for …

now if i could just have that figure and those boots, too.

during his first administration, it was all too evident to me, an ignoramus, that what was happening was wrong. how did i know? it wasn’t because i’m familiar with constitutional law [because i'm not]. no, it was something i learned when i was a wee little person:

then again, a lot of it was just common sense. i wonder how many people, citizens and administrators alike, now regret getting carried away by their emotions following 9/11 and allowed for the atrocities that followed. not just allowed, but frothed at the mouth for vengeance, believing what was put before them. oh, the time was right for such things. i’m sure it was a wet dream for many of those in power. an opportunity to bend the law, infringe on our liberties and create an orwellian nightmare like Homeland Security. illegal wiretaps? torture? breaking the rules of geneva convention? total disregard of the united nations? pre-eminent strike? i feel as if our government failed us as they mocked the very existence of the Constitution. but our government wasn’t the only one, it was our people. fueled by ignorance, fear and thirst for revenge [never forget!] that made it all too easy to end up where we are.

and it has only gotten worse. some folks are doing a 180, finding a way to clear their names and remove themselves so very far from that fury. but as they do, they are forgetting one thing … accountability. i’ve always held the position that we should have never invaded afghanistan or iraq, but since we did, we have a duty to its people to fix what we destroyed. [hospitals, basic infrastructure like water and electricity, schools] many have argued that that is their responsibility and they deserve what they got. but did they really? you can’t lump them all in one group. you may as well say that every american was behind bush the entire time.

we turned our guns [[sic]] on the dissidents. at many protest rallies across our country, people suffered at the hands of the authorities. we were called traitors and “unpatriotic”. what could be more patriotic than dissidence, i ask? question your government, let your voice be heard. i didn’t do as much as i could have during those days, and for that i’m ashamed. i am no better than those who were for the war, as i was too afraid to come under scrutiny of the ever watchful eye of big brother. the air was thick with an all too familiar history … mccarthyism, and i wanted no part of it.

but we have a duty now to demand more, expect more, and protect the very core of this country … the Constitution. it’s easy to be lead by the heart during times of crises, but remove yourself for a moment and use common sense. never forget, i say, never forget the common thread that binds us is found in a parchment written over 200 years ago.

while walking through the hall trying to figure out where to be next, i spied a red head and immediately knew it was stephanie. fancy that! her son blaine will be going to the same school! what a handsome and very charming fella … definitely takes after his mom.

the last class we went to was his spanish class. while waiting at the door, a father and his daughter were behind us. i recognized the exchange between them … he was asking her what the words were outside the door … she sounded it out, unsure of herself … and the father stifled a giggle. “what? i don’t know!”, she said, and still he pressed on with another word. it was all in playful jest, but i have been there … the gringa frijolera who gets picked on by her elders because she can’t speak spanish. i turned around, half giggling myself, and said, “ay! dejala!” ['leave her alone!'] and he cracked an embarrassed smile and i called him a meanie. heh.

. . . . .

school hasn’t even started and already we’re having transportation trouble with the boy. tim left from work to get julian to practice yesterday and i had to drive from downtown to deer park, pick up the boy and drop him off at his friend’s who lives across from the school, so he could kill time there until he his 2:30 gathering … they have a scrimmage game this afternoon. his school is a lot closer [3 miles] than the last school he went to, but it’s still to far to walk when the shortest distance is on a busy thoroughfare with no decent walkways. and unfortunately, deer park is not set up such that he could take the back streets to get there, since many subdivisions only have two entries/exits …. you get in and find yourself circling the neighborhood looking for a way out since none of the streets are throughways into the next neighborhood. i always wondered what was the point to that, i mean besides making the place unsafe if there were a disaster. if you have a neighborhood of even eight blocks and only two ways to enter/exit onto a main highway, think of the traffic and nightmare this would cause. [boy, did i ever go off on a tangent there. sorry]

at any rate, i won’t be able to make it to his first game, sadly. but it is only a scrimmage, he assures me. and says that in the future, if we ever intend to go to any of his games, to show up early since the stands fill up quickly. i am so ignorant in the way of sports, i still have to ask him what position he plays. they switched him out for different ones last year. this year he’s defensive end. we’ll see if it lasts. unrelated, he showed me his tummy which was a bit red. when i asked where it came from, he said it must have been when he was doing pushups in the grass, that he learned he has a mild allergic reaction to grass. WTF? never heard of that. weird.

*sigh*

growing up. whether i like it or not.

enter the heart

there was a lot of struggling with color on this piece. and i still feel as if there is too much negative space on the side flanks of the topmost level. some of the metallic paint and antiquing solutions were not reacting the way i’d hoped [i may just abandon that approach all together and just use paint exclusively, though i DID like what the pennies i used to fill space between the middle and top layers did when i applied the solution. the pennies served as a nice filler since i couldn't properly gauge the thickness of the fillings between where i used both wood spools and cardboard].

enough rambling, look at these instead:

MEMENTO MORI

there is a layer of prussian blue [which is sort of a pthalo blue, very dark with a greenish hue], but interestingly enough, a light uneven mottled application of gold paint actually makes the blue look like cobalt. very cool.

my aim was to echo the virgen de guadalupe, but with a twist. i’ve searched high and low for a figure that i could manipulate [that is small enough to fit in the 2.5 x 3.5 space] to my desire. when i could not find one, i had to improvise … and that’s where [at 2:00 a.m. this morning, under the veil of exhaustion and divine inspiration], that i implemented recent castings, matches, liquid nails and beads to come up with the “bones” of something original:

now, it’s still wet at this point, and it won’t stay this way. that’s just all i could do while wet. pretty neato.