"If you can't be pretty, you might as well cause trouble" – Florence King
Aug 1st, 2011 by Meetzorp
Mixed media: chewing gum, broken glass, mounted to an asphalt base.
A three dimensional expression in found materials. (or a load of horseshit cloaked in big words, constructed from debris found in a parking lot
Further elucidation forthcoming at my upcoming gallery show. I’ve got a spot at the coveted Alley-Galley. I’m totally stoked.
Jul 31st, 2011 by Meetzorp
I think this pattern’s pretty badass.
I’m going to make it up in yellow cotton with an orange daisy print and orange topstitch detailing on the yoke and inset, but what I REALLY want to do is make it up in red, with black for the inset and yoke, and be all
Cardin-meets-Starfleet. Geek Chic, baby.
Jul 31st, 2011 by Meetzorp
I was just thinking about this song earlier.
If I had illustration skills and videography skills, I’d make a stop motion animated music video for this song. I can see Pressed Rat in his red jodhpurs and Warthog wearing a striped tie (it is yellow, orange and green in my mind’s eye).
Pressed Rat and Warthog have closed down their shop,
They didn’t want to – ’twas all they had got.
Selling atonal apples, amplified heat,
And Pressed Rat’s collection of dog legs and feet.Sadly they left, telling no one goodbye.
Pressed Rat wore red jodhpurs – Warthog a striped tie.
Between them, they carried a three-legged sack,
Went straight round the corner and never came back.Pressed Rat and Warthog have closed down their shop.
The bad captain madman had told them to stop
Selling atonal apples, amplified heat,
And pressed rat’s collection of dog legs and feet.The bad captain madman had ordered their fate.
He laughed and stomped off with a nautical gate.
The gate turned into a deroga tree
And his pegleg got woodworm and broke into three.Pressed Rat and Warthog have closed down their shop,
They didn’t want to – ’twas all they had got.
Selling atonal apples, amplified heat,
And Pressed Rat’s collection of dog legs and feet.
Jul 31st, 2011 by Meetzorp
Do you ever read something and just find your face stuck like this 
?
Yeah, so I read a woman’s blog entry recently that just made one eye squinch up, while the other bugged out, and my mouth perhaps went “wha’ th’…you have got to be kidding me…the hell you say…” and maybe something incoherent about skirt/cold-dead-ass.
The thesis of said blog entry, if you don’t feel like clicking through, is that when we “ladies”* wear skirts, we diminish our credibility.
One more thing: The Black Skirt Initiative = the same woman. So. Does or doesn’t she want you to wear a skirt? Maybe she doesn’t want you to wear one, but she sure wouldn’t mind if you bought one from her.
I think the main thing that irked my working ire is the notion of women policing each other as to what to wear, how to present themselves, especially doing so in ways that evoke shame, that invoke the “Male Gaze” as a threat, and that aim to stifle legitimate means of expression (and I consider fashion sense a legitimate means of expression). I also think it dodges dangerously close to the accusatory tone one hears out of the anti-feminist camp which states that women who dress “provocatively” bring sexual harassment and rape upon themselves.
It’s also related to one of the things i find so tiresome about celebrity magazines and their endless stream of best-dressed/worst-dressed/who-looks-fat/who-looks-ana articles. It’s all about laying completely subjective judgments (written in authoritative tones) on what should clearly be considered matters of personal taste and inclination. Like Princess Beatrice, upon whom I have a bit of a girlcrush. This child has a stupid quantity of money at her disposal, a beautiful face and figure, and regularly goes about looking as though she’d been styled by Pippi Longstocking on a gin bender. Somehow, I find it incredibly endearing that she apparently deliberately dresses as oddly as she does.
The voyeur culture surrounding celebrities, especially the bitchy, snarky looks-ism that is woven deep into the fabric of that culture spreads outward, and we all end up wearing a bit of it. Some of us, like Lesley and her swimming suit and All Mel, All the Time say “fuck it” and wear whatever the hell they want for comfort, personal style, and just because.
Or like me and my skirts. It’s hot as hell out there right now. I can’t show up to work in shorts and a tank top, but I can pass muster in a sleeveless blouse and a knee-length skirt, and so by gosh and by golly, I sure as shit will. My skirts are age, setting, and and lifestyle “appropriate.” I’ve hit upon a formula that works and from which I rarely deviate. My skirts are generally knee-length or somewhere within a couple of inches thereabouts. A-line or somewhat flared. Printed, or solid, dark colors (usually brown, like my trousers). I find that this length (circa knee) is ideal for my purposes…long enough not to scoot up too high when I sit, short enough not to blow back into the rear brake caliper on my bicycle as I ride to and from work. Likewise an A-line or a moderately full gored or gathered skirt works well for mobility purposes. I have ease of movement for walking, filing, stair climbing, and general flailing about, but the skirt isn’t so wide as to be obtrusive, and again, stays free of that nasty rear brake. With the right top, accessories, decent shoes, and when my hair co-operates, I end up looking about as good as I ever will, and what’s more important, being comfortable throughout the day. That way I can concentrate on more important things, like writing letters that will wow potential clients, like coercing Adobe X to co-operate with headings for multiple page sizes, or with deciphering a project manager’s cramped and globby hand-writing. You know…using that brain that my skirt somehow magically obviates.
I have a hard time believing that a skirt muffles a woman’s message. Or that overtly feminine clothing automatically decreases my credibility as a worker, as an intellect, or in society at large. Talk to me for five minutes, and I’ll make you think whatever I want you to think about me. I’m no dummy; I just like to play dress up once in a while.
*I take exception to being called a “lady.” I’m a woman, not a girl, not a gal, not a lady, and only a chick when I say so. The lady/ladies thing invokes an outdated image of being delicate, wimpy, and lesser. It places the woman as a secondary class citizen, someone who requires protection and regulation, who is not an agent for herself.
Oh…also:
Because you can’t open up a ranty blog post about feminism and fashion with a Dead Kennedy’s reference and then not deliver on the promise.
I’m drunk with the re-found power to post photos directly to my blog from Flickr. It has taken me an embarrasing four years to figure out how to configure a remotely hosted, WordPress-powered blog for said feature.
But I’ve got it now, by golly!
Jul 28th, 2011 by Meetzorp
Jul 27th, 2011 by Meetzorp
After a decade of being vaguely broke and more than vaguely pissed off about it, I have finally paid off my student loan.
Before the July payment was set to draw, I shut off the automatic draft, transferred an extra $1,000 from my savings to my checking, and paid that bad boy off. I just received the “paid in full, no promissory note†letter, all nice and official, yesterday.
For the past 10+ years (except for two, three-month hardship deferments) I have been paying Sallie Mae slightly more than I could comfortably afford as penance for pursuing an ill-advised MA in Medieval Studies.
For a long time, I thought that when I got my student loan paid off, I’d throw a big-assed party, or have a shopping spree to the tune of a monthly payment, or do something extravagant, but now, I’m just kind of over it. I threw double birdies 
in the general direction of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania as I clicked “make payment†and felt a profound sense of relief. I’ve no longer got a $500-a-month reminder of the indiscretions of my youth poking me in the ribs every month. I can bung more money into savings, or invest in fixing up the house. Or maybe buy a new pair of boots without agonizing over it for a month beforehand. Whatever.
It’s done, it’s behind me, and I say never, EVER again. No more loans. Not negotiable. If I can’t afford something straight out, I don’t need it.
Jul 26th, 2011 by Meetzorp
Most people are seriously more articulate than I am…and it appears that some of us are feeling a particular malaise these days.
I just read Sarah Spahr’s entry for today and thought, “gosh, she pretty much said just and exactly what’s on my mind right about now†as regards Norway, Amy Winehouse, and just generally not feelin’ it. So I’m going to give you the link to her blog, you can see what she’s talking about, and then come back.
The slaughter in Norway was particularly horrifying to me because it was conducted so personally. This man, in cold blood, shot nearly 100 teenagers simply because he decided he didn’t like those kids’ parents’ politics. Reports stated that he actually lured some of the campers out by pretending to be a police officer and shouting out that the gunman had been captured. When the kids heard this news, they started to evacuate upon his “orders†and he shot them. What can you say about actions like that? I just can’t wrap my head around what would make somebody think this was a noble way to act.
Back in 1995, when the US Federal Courthouse in Oklahoma City was bombed by Timothy McVeigh, it was shocking. But I think in some ways, the bombing was less horrifying although it killed more people and wrought greater destruction. McVeigh was at a distance; his crime(s) weren’t executed personally. They weren’t the act of a single, ruthlessly efficient madman with an agenda and a gun. But they are altogether too similar. One unbalanced man who saw himself as a disenfranchised martyr takes the hate, the venom he has been building up over a course of years, and unleashes it on the innoncent, believing, inasmuch as he has a capacity to, that he is acting “for God and Country.”
Chilling.
I’ve been thinking about Amy Winehouse a lot lately too.
I remember the first time I heard about her music. I was at a party with my friend Jennifer, and we were talking about music we liked.
(Jennifer, the night of said party, brandishing the remains of a Cinderella piñata)
I’d been on one of my periodic Motown binges and told her about singing an accapella version of “Stop, In the Name of Love” with two of my co-workers earlier that week. She told me I really ought to check out this new singer called Amy Winehouse (I hadn’t known how she spelled it, so I had originally Googled “Weinhaus”). Jennifer sang part of “Rehab,” and I thought, “man, this chick must have one hell of a sense of humor…I absolutely must find out more.
That bold voice, the sassy diction, the hugetastic hair, the wild makeup…I was totally smitten. I got the “Back to Black” album and eagerly awaited future offerings. (I’d listened to some of the stuff from her first album which was in a more Jazz style, and didn’t really dig it as I’m not generally terribly tolerant of most jazz, though of course her voice was just as awesome on that). But instead of the meteoric career trajectory she so richly deserved, she got mired down in the rock-and-roll party lifestyle that has claimed so many talented musicians. She was so young, and maybe a bit delicate. Too fragile for the vicious world of entertainment, for the pressure, for the extremes she put her body to.
Instead of becoming my generation’s Aretha Franklin, she became my generation’s Janis Joplin.
Amy Winehouse had a protégé…a young girl named Dionne Bromfield.
This kid is amazing. In the video above she was only 13. Much like LouAnn Rhimes of yore, Miss Bromfield is a kid whose vocal cords have grown up ahead of her stature, and a grown-woman’s voice surprisingly belts out from such a small girl.
Here she is, covering “Ain’t No Mountain (High Enough)” and with aplomb, I might add.
For reference, here’s the mark they had to hit:
They handled this song with skill and respect!
So I have really high hopes for this girl; I hope she keeps her head together, keeps a sensible lifestyle, and carries on the tradition of music her godmother started her on.
Jul 23rd, 2011 by Meetzorp
I’m sure many eyes will roll, but I’m going to let Detroit tell it like it is. Summer’s here, and the time is right:
Incidentally, I’d like to note that I freakin’ love that striped, double-breasted suit. There were some seriously cute fashions in the 1960s.
More Martha & the Vandellas, singing about a Heatwave! 
And comin’ at you from the summer of 1966, here’s the Lovin’ Spoonful looking for some shade, a breeze, and a sweet lil’ gal. Can you dig those muttonchops?
The Drifters suggest that you go under the Boardwalk to cool off and have a good time.
Or you could get up on the roof…not to cool off so much as to chill out.
Right-o…now I’m going to go outside and ride my bike and get all sweaty, then visit a “Sprayground” or two…
Jul 21st, 2011 by Meetzorp
Today, boys and girls (probably mostly girls) I’m going to show you how to turn this:
Raggedy, damaged men’s suit jacket into these:
cute and cheeky women’s shorts.
Before we get into the slicin’ and dicin’ of this crafts hack, I have a word of disclaimer or two.
So, with that out of the way, let the fun commence.
1. So, to begin, you must slaughter one freshly caught suit jacket. The best hunting ground for such is your local Goodwill, Oxfam, or equivalent. Find a particularly irredeemable old jacket and put it out of its misery like so:
Lay it out so that the shoulder seams are up. Slice along the should seam until you reach the top of the armsceye. Cut around the sleeve, leaving it intact. You will need the sleeves soon.
Once the sleeves are cut out, you might as well fold the jacket in half as such, and lay it aside. Now, we’re on to the sleeves.
2. Slice your sleeve open along the shortest of the inner-arm seams.
Here’s a handy picture to elucidate what I’m talking about. You want to end up with the cuff buttons just off-center of the laid-out-flat sleeve. After both sleeves are laid open, pair them up, wrong sides together, matching up buttons. You may wish the pin the cuff edges together to keep them even. The cuff edges will be the finished waist of your shorts.
3. Pattern layout! If you are really prissy about grainlines and such, this is definitely not a good project for you. Because we will cavalierly disregard grainlines, among other essential rules of proper sewing. What we mostly want is the most amount of shorts for the least amount of sewing. We’ll re-use a lot of the finishing and tailoring of the original jacket, as you’ll soon see.
Lay out the shorts front sections so that the waistline of the shorts is lined up along the cuff edge of the flattened out sleeves.
Note about pattern selection: For this project you will need a pair of shorts meant to have a faced waist and a back zip. What with what will become the button trim, you end up with far too fussy of a front view on these shorts if you go with a fly opening.
And there’s not really a good straight run of fabric on a jacket for making a waistband. I suppose you could fashion a sectioned waistband out of the back of the jacket, but honestly, the whole point of these shorts is “as little sewing as possible” so it makes better sense to just go with the whole faced-waist thing.
Anyways:
You’ll want to add about 1.5″ to the legs of the front sections of the shorts for a hem. I also added about an extra .5″ along the seamlines to accommodate for the lining, which I highly recommend you leave in and handle as an underlining.
For the back of the shorts, the key thing is to line up your pattern so that the pocket flaps from the jacket fronts will be centered over each buttock. If you look at my photo closely, you will see two red straight pins marking where the pocket flaps are. Allow the finished edge of the bottom of the jacket to form the finished edge of the back shorts legs.
When you cut the shorts back sections out, leave an extra 5/8″ or so along the top edge to allow for finishing. Also, you may want to leave a little extra ease along the outside edge to accommodate for the lining, as with the front sections.
To keep the lining in place, as well as to reinforce/finish the raw edges of the fabric, I like to zig-zag stitch them together:
4. From here, you proceed mostly like normal in preparing the shorts. Make the darts. You may have to shuffle the front waistline darts to the outside or inside of the buttons or omit them entirely. You may have to make the back darts shallower so that they don’t interfere with the pocket. Sew the fronts together along center front seam, leaving about 2″ open at the crotch. Stitch the back together, leaving the zipper opening open and the last 2″ at the crotch, as you did with the fronts. Press seams. Install zipper as you normally would.
Looks pretty cool with that lining, doesn’t it?
Outside view!
5. Now, it starts getting a bit unorthodox. The next step is to finish the back waist. I recommend bias binding tape.
That’s pretty nice, eh? Easy-peasy for the lazy seamstress in each of us, too.
Okay, once that waistline is tidied up, you might as well join the front and back together along the side seams, like so:
Ah, there’s that extra 1.5″ I asked you to allow yourself. Very good.
All right. Go on and join the inseams, as you do. Sew shut the crotch. Right, all that’s taken care of?
Press up and and-hem the lower edge of the fronts, and you have a new pair of shorts for cheap or free.
Yay, shorts!
