pottery in action: Mother's day wrapup

(some vases and weeds by Gary Rith and a wicked cool pizza)
The missus wanted to try an unusual pizza recipe with, get this, corn, hot peppers, beans and (soy)cheese. I could have spent the whole weekend in bed with Balvenie and South Park re-runs, but I make a rather good crust and so it was my half of the job, and I dragged myself up.
A very unusual pizza, but: superb. There is no reason next time that we cannot put MORE hot peppers on it, however.

TWISTED SISTER

We're not gonna take it, that anarcho-punk classic, nay, anarcho-punk ANTHEM!
The strange thing is, it is an awesome tune, but probably sung by the most ridiculous hair band, maybe the most ridiculous band ever.

Armenian coffee

So my sister sends me some Armenian coffee, which is finely ground coffee and cardamom spice, which you boil unfiltered and drink. In my case, drink it with a little pig.
Turns out, of course, that it is commonly prepared ths way from Greece through the middle east, and is a strong little wallop in a tiny cup, promoting wakefulness and high levels of brain activity.

::sniffle::happy mother's day!::sniff::

(all my children and a few freshly fired pots by Gary Rith)
I am sick as a log. Some small and rotten child sneezed on me repeatedly at the store, and so here I am. My mother visited yesterday, and I spent most of the time on the couch blowing my nose. It would be awful if I gave this to her. 'Happy Mother's Day, here's this cold!'

mamasita and papasan

And their energetic little dog Abby are visiting today. They live in the rural hills an hour away, but my father has some party in Ithaca with a bunch of his college buddies. I was just going to be the dog sitter, but I told my mom she didn't want to hang out with those guys, swapping stories of the good old days, when fraternities could haze with impunity and a C was a decent enough grade.
So my mom can hang around and I can bake some chocolate cookies for her for mother's day and the four dogs can roll around and get underfoot.

XTC

80s goodness!!!!!!! "Genrals ad Majors". Hey, is that Richard Branson in there???

Mona's poetry Friday

Mona asked me to cover her Poetry Friday, and as I have said, I chose the word 'doggy' because I am not a poet and I felt I would do a stupid job. I feel, however, that I have risen to the occaision. Last night, as I was falling asleep, a petite bolt of lightening struck and I produced a somewhat brilliant haiku. Copyright! All rights reserved!

Doggy

Soggy doggy doo
messy froggy, smelly too
piggy diggy, eww!

(copyright 2008 by Gary Rith)

Ha! See, I did it. I realized this morning that it covers many of my favorites, my daily work and business largely consists of making mugs and teapots etc with frogs pigs and dogs. Penny below shows a bowl with a little model of herself on the side.
--Special shout out to Chatty! Hullo! Testing one two!
---another hello to Spilling Out, who wrote a brilliant doggy poem with pictures!

Jack*ss and The Pest: bachelor movie choices of the week

It is fortunate for my wife that she was teaching a sewing class 2 evenings this week and missed my bachelor movie choices: TERRIBLE!!!!!!!!!!
Whereas Johnny Knoxville and the golf carts and bottle rocket roller skates is somewhat funny, and the whole wasabi thing hysterical in a gross kinda way, it is surprising that the thing with the tight rope, alligators and chicken is less upsetting than the paper cuts. Jack*ss gets a firm 10 thumbs down out of ten for movies.
Then there's The Pest with John Leguziano. He's a pretty funny guy, with a show he did called SP!C and then he was in To Wong Fu, with Wesley Snipes and Patrick Swayze--a great movie there. Whereas John Leguziano knows how to lay it on thick, another loser, another 10 thumbs down out of ten.
Both of thse movies? Turned them off halfway, now where's my book?

Mona: le doglet

Penny reminds those of you who are interested: we are subbing for Mona's poetry Friday. The word is "doggy".

(large bowl with frogs by Gary Rith)
Yes, a whole lotta popcorn would fit in here.

who's at first?

Dreamt, and this would be just a short time ago, that I was a catcher for the Yankees. I spent all night, hours really, playing each inning. I woke up in the sixth!

Moby, Gwen Stefani: Southside

Talk about over the top!

your Bacon number

Ha! This blog is so full of nothing.
So, the guy on the radio just now, as I was finishing cups for Linda, starts talking about your 'Bacon number', or in six degrees of seperation style: how many direct connections are between you and Kevin Bacon???
WELL! My old pal Denis and I have a very low and good number. It goes like this for us:
Denis and I were freshmen at Bennington College, starting in 1983, living in Leigh House. We were, as all freshman boys are, little weenies, and there was this handsome upperclassman GOD living up the hall a couple of doors, Rob Sedwick. Rob is Kyra Sedgwick's brother, and he has acted in soaps and whatnot for years. In 1983, if I remember correctly, he was big, muscular, handsome (do I have to say this? his sister is beautiful, so it isn't a surprise), and went around in wife beater t-shirts and one can imagine he did well with the ladies, because there were very few men at our college, the ratio was something like 2 women for every man. But anyway, so we lived down the hall from Rob, and even said hello to him in passing, and his sister is Kyra, who married KEVIN BACON! Heck, Kevin is like, practically my cousin, wouldn't you say, and he seems so cool, and she does too.
OK, so I think Denis and I can claim a THREE. We are only 3 steps from Kevin Bacon, and if he ever stops by my house, the beers are cold and there would be plenty of chips and salsa.

Filling in for Mona: Poetry Friday

Mona asked me to fill in for her, with the Poetry Friday word. I complained "but I am a simpleton! a NOBODY! I'd probably choose a word like DOGGY! (besides, I have, ahem, never participated in poetry Friday, not being a poet or anything, but I'll have to change that)".
Mona, of course, is a fun loving person so she told me to do it anyway, doggy and all.
So. According to Penny here with my teddy bear, and me, the poetry Friday word is:
doggy.

the butt brush factor

Spike and Emily, 2 (chubby) peas in a pod.

the cost of ....everything

There was talk on the radio news of gas prices at 122 a barrel, headed to maybe 200 bucks a barrel by next year. I wonder how people, myself included, are gonna afford THAT. Gas at 5 bucks a gallon (I know, Europe and Canada already pays a fortune fo gas)? Bread at 5 bucks a loaf?
So, because my SSN is a certain number, I rec'd the first of W's bonus economic stimulus checks last week. You could say 'yippee!' and of couse I did. BUT, my wife and I are the bottom of the 'working families' payscale, basically we make doodley squat together, so we sure as heck didn't get 1200. We got the minimum, but, hey, happy to have it. As for splurging, what could I splurge on? I spent 170 at the grocery store yesterday. I have never spent anywhere close to that before. (no, that does NOT include beers) And because gas is at 3.77 a gallon, I prudently do ALL my errands together. Yesterday that was county dump, hardware store, UPS store to ship 4 boxes and the grocery. (my wife gets a free bus pass from work--worth a LOT of money all of a sudden, and I don't commute past the back end of the house)
But, OK, my gas and grocery prices are up, fair enough, we have it good as Americans. But postage goes up next week, like it did a year ago, and will probably do again next year. I shipped for Kate and Jim yesterday 2 boxes and 6 items, going only 100 miles. It was 24 bucks. I will ship one item to Texas this week, and if it is ten bucks I'll be surprised and call it a bargain. So, God forbid, what will happen to my income if people don't want to pay the same price to ship an item as the item's cost itself?
Frankly, the world needs to adjust to some realities, I understand, but it is easy to see that for people who are less than rich, there is gonna be a squeeze.

Chatty and farmer's wife, hello!

(dish/bowl and corkers by Gary Rith)
My pals Chatty and Farmer's wife asked for corks and a dish/bowl combo. The cork toppers still need the gorilla glue and cork, but they look so pretty together like this.
And Farmer's wife, what a clever idea, bowl and dish together. It is a pretty baby blue color with green accents, and didn't photograph very well here. My wife says it is big, for a lot of food, but she is a very tiny person, so ignore her. It is 12.5 inches across, and looks PERFECT for soup and salad, or chili and peanut butter or....

punk cat teapot!

(by Gary Rith)
Linda in Montreal asked for a cute cat teapot. Have a look, Linda, whaddya think?

Summer of 69

By Bryan Adams. How could you not play this, with spectacular spring weather every day?

fire and 3

(my 3 dogs, Jack, Penny, Buster last October when Penny was dressed up for Halloween)
Tink's weekly photo challenge is fire and three. I have 3 dogs and 2 cats, all wicked cute. See below for fire, as the kiln warms up.

FIRE

So here's my larger of 3 kilns, just loaded at the start of a firing Sunday, then ramping up, showing orange in the peep hole around half-way through at 1300 degrees of 2200 degrees. The kiln uses about 3 dollars of electricity per firing, surprisingly little considering 12 hours and 2200 degrees, and it has computerized controls like a big microwave oven: firing time, speed, temp, etc is typed in and zip, off it goes.

a teapot is born

(teapot by Gary Rith)
Sunday I made these parts, Monday they were half dry and I assembled the teapot. I had made the smaller solid donut for the handle. The larger donut, as you see middle pic, is hollow, and intended to be the spout, but I asked myself, for the sake of aesthetics, maybe part of the hollow donut is the spout, the rest is the handle??????
The only question I ask myself, finally, is 'where do pigs fit in here? one, 2, 3????'

I am Iron Man--head-banging in its infancy

Speaking of Ozzy. I am no fan of Ozzy Osbourne, not at all. I think he is stupid and his brains addled and the rumors of his early touring days are....
well, anyway, there's no denying that his early band Black Sabbath, whereas Crosby,Stills, Nash and Young were all about peace and love, they were about darkness and noise. (I love CSNY, but that's another day..) You have to admit, if you are a hard rock fan or metal fan, that maybe Steppenwolf brought the expression 'heavy metal' to rock, Led Zeppelin got the ball rolling, and then maybe Black Sabbath ran with it. In this video, Black Sabbath live in Paris 1970, you see what just might be the night "head-banging" was invented, hair and all!

In the dark

By Billy Squier. The thing you love about 2008 is instant access to your every musical whim. Fans of heavy metal and hard rock or classic rock or Van Halen or pre-hair band 80s metal will remember Billy Squier. He had a couple of good years when I was in 9th-10th grade. You had Asia, Blue Oyster Cult, Van Halen, Boston, Yes, Foreigner (YUCK!) Ozzie, ELO and even the Who and Pink Floyd and the Kinks were still alive and kicking, and the Stones did their last best work then...

(mugs by Gary Rith)

(mugs by Gary Rith)

Cure

Pictres of you, the full 5 minutes!

g-rated

(mug by Gary Rith)
I don't want to be too predictable or humdrum, as yesterday's post showed.
But cute, not _____ (even if its funny!), is the general theme here at potsblog.

This is the Day

By The The. I was dreaming this when I woke up! Nice happy 80s tune everybody can enjoy.

"The job is done, the b*tch is dead"

Just saw "Casino Royale", the new, stark and muscular Bond movie. Good double crosses, astounding fights, sweet female co-star, 9 thumbs up out of ten.
I have a story about this book: when I was teaching remedial English, we read this book. The original is a bit simpler than this movie, having been written around what, 1958? My teenage students would have enjoyed reading the book a lot more, now that they could watch THIS movie when they were done.

is he?!?

Was at the museum yesterday and this fine pot (circa 600 ad or so) caused me stop in my tracks and have another look: "Is this guy playing with his ding-a-ling?!!!".

HOT HOT HEAT!

I dreamt last night I was hanging out and performing with my friends the Rolling Stones, then in the evening, my pals the Grateful Dead came over (I really did dream this!) but the reality is:
An unusally active day full of outings for Mister Potsblog. I went to a huge concert, a museum exhibit, a bar, my wife's office and a party and art opening where I was a featured artist.
First, this exqusite little frog. I went into Cornell's art museum to see their new exhibit of pre-Columbian pottery aquisitons, and oh joy! I am in love! I have to go back! All these pots hand-made centuries ago, many with people, mythical beings, animals. I was standing next to a guard when I took this pic and THEN I noticed the 'no photography' signs. The guard hadn't noticed! I decided to buy the book.
I had also come to Cornell yesterday afternoon for Slope Day, the last day of classes. That is a drunken festival with frisbees, beers, and young people who havn't started studying for their exams yet. I watched a lot of the show from the sculpture garden on the museum's 2nd level, the awesome shot you see lower, and as you can see, there was a fence, students only allowed IN. But of course the bands were so loud.... I saw ambulances in and out, etc, typical student party with 15000 people, right? Anyway, the first band I saw was Hot Hot Heat and they were superb.



The headliners which I did not want to see were Gym Class Heroes, a noisy rap band, and as you see in the photo up there, the stone building on the left? That's my wife's office and we had to hear most of the show before the end of the day, unfortunately, whether we wanted to or not.

starring at the party and opening

(Mr Potsblog at Korova, then in the exhibit at Clinton House with his wee little teapot on display)
Our final stops for the day included a fill up (brown ale!) at Korova Bar then onto the Greater Ithaca Art Trail artists exhibit at Clinton House. You don't have to memorize that. I am not one of those social types, so our visit to the opening, even though I was supposed to stick around, was brief, maybe 20 minutes out of the 3 hours. God, who could talk for 3 hours???