Thrift Store Finds

It was a good night, but I spent money I don't really have to spend.

Oh well. It was all for stuff for Lee's little side biz or hobby or whatever it is.

The rub is that a great load of Native American art came in, and it was decent stuff, not really the touristy shit most people buy out there. Okay, most of it was probably made for tourists, but these tourists had made some good finds. These items might not have been produced in a tribal context, but they really look like they have the same quality of items that were. I see tons of faked-up native art, and I never buy the shit, but these struck me. They had just come in the door so I had dibs, and they priced them so low. I've seen a lot of really faked-up touristy things, but these appear to have been made with care for how the originals were made. The sand paintings aren't great and are really a mockery of what the art form is really meant to be (they sort of have a disclaimer on the back) but the thing is they are still very pretty and beautifully matted, etc. so I got them. That's Navajo of course. The sand paintings were done on the earth and they were left to vanish naturally. They were not produced as wall art. That's just silly. But that's the idea some probably horrible "entrepreneur" got. The artist signed but I'm sure he's not a collected artist. I'll check. Maybe I got lucky.

But then there was some just gorgeous beadwork done by Natives. A little medicine bag with a turtle worked into it. And a pipe that was fired in the old way with quality artisanship and decorated with feathers and such. An animal skin drum with a really beautiful little painting on it. The rattle is just unbelievable. It looks like a musuem piece. They made it look ancient. And the materials and methodology look exactly like the pieces like this I've seen in museums.

The best finds were some red clay sculptures done by a Native artist (signed/dated). These are very imaginative. One of them is a semi-abstract interpretation of Coyote. I love it. It stays true to the Native American vison. It's a plique-a-jour piece. Not enameling but the technique by that name. Maybe I should have just said openwork. Well, the French use that generically rather than specifically and I guess I do too. I'm sure someone paid a hell of a lot more than I did tonight when they originally bought that. That's clearly a gallery purchase. I have to research it, but I'll be surprised if this artist isn't collected/listed.

EBAY is tricky about the selling of Native American art. You have to adhere very closely to their guidelines on that. It's respect and propriety, and I dig that.

The funny thing is I'm part native (isn't almost everybody) but we don't talk about that. It's a ways back (again like most Americans) so it was never a big factor in my life. Which is a shame, I think. I wish I knew more. It's the maternal side, and can you believe they actually used that excuse for my grand-uncle's suicide at the close of the 19th or start of the 20th century. It wasn't a proven suicide, and my Grandmother maintained to her dying day it was a murder covered up--there was apparently a love triangle--but when people actually acknowledged that it might have been a suicide, they blamed it on the Indian part of our blood. As a little kid, I just swallowed that. But now I find it hilarious. Hot blooded. Check it and see. "Now it all makes sense. I just thought I had a natural tendency to be an alcoholic and a knack for catching syphilis!"--Jeri Blank, on discovering her Native American heritage.

And this Injun is more pecuniarily straitened than that Injun over there that owns the casinos, so I think I should be able to sell any damn artifact I want to on EBAY..

A joke. I got jokes.

I'll probably just give these to my Mom to give to my nieces and nephews.

They can go unpolitically woo-woo all over the yard and shit all over their (forgotten) tribal heritage.

Greek/Native American/German.

No wonder I'm so fucking confused.

So I added all the Native things on at the very end and shot my wad, but what I found beforehand was fun too....again, mostly for Lee...all were either 1.99 or .99.

First edition of Dinotopia. Love the art. I watched some of that on t.v. It's fun stuff. It's an odd sized hardback. A long rectangle.

Gorgeous old edition of Moby Dick with a gilded latticework on the front. Lovely shade of green. The last one I gave Lee was the Modern Library from 1926. People snap those things up. That's long gone. This is much prettier than that.

A decorator's book of Williamsburg Reconstructions/Reproductions. Has great paint color charts in the back and breaks down the Colonial design house by house, room by room, piece by piece. Very well-researched and beautifully-designed. I guess the heyday for that was in the seventies but it's still very lovely. I'm sure it's still a vogue down that way where the design elements hold a certain historic charm for the nouveau riche, right? Gauche. Garish. Gump.

A couple Richard Scarry books. I loved him as a child. I got the book art one; it opens up accordion-style to create Busytown (I typoed Bustytown at first; dads would like that!) and will easily occupy most of the child's bedroom floor...unless the child lives in a palace, in which case he can occupy himself with torturing serfs and servants, and doesn't need Richard Scarry.

Reading the one Richard Scarry book, it just confirmed me in my intention to begin writing a series of novels which masquerade as children's books. I love that faux-naivete. I love simple sentences, mostly because I never allow myself the luxury (and sanity) of simple sentences. Cacoethes loquendi is my native tongue.

Lee made a little kid in Ottawa happy this week because he was able to replace a beloved Grizzly bear put out by Animal Alley. This according to his Grandmother. The bear's somewhere between here and Ottawa. Dru tried to fuck it, but we got it in time.

I mention this because a cute chihuhua I found tonight turned out to also be Animal Alley. They are a good maker of realistic-looking animals. And they know all about the plush! Very soft and cuddly! No I'm not a plushophile. But my cat is. The last thing I need is to hear someone tell Lee there's mung on a child's bear. I dont' think I would survive it.

Harper's Dictionary of Contemporary Usage. Big hardcover. This one's for me, as I find it fascinating. It has these extended roundtable discussions of grammar with authors of different stripes (from Asimov to more literary canon type figures) where they throw out a controversial grammatical point, and the authors natter on about how they feel on this; the purist and the precisian battle the advocates of the living language position. If I were on one of those panels, I would just advocate a Jamesian form of English and punish all breaches or deviations with a standard abacination. DEATH TO THE GRAMMATICAL POLYMORPHS!

Another joke. I got jokes. "Oh, you got jokes." That's what a child of the streets says right before he or she's gonna pop ya. And then you realize--that ain't no child. That's Genghis Khan in shortpants. Run.

A book of bedtime stories, which I figured I might share with my readership of five or six people. And thus alienate them with the warm milk of condescension. But I LIKE these stories. They're cute and very short. Obviously this is a book for parents who can't stand their kids, because the stories can be read in like fifteen seconds stop talking shut up and become unconscious already mommy needs her vodka stinger goodnight why are your lips still moving do you need another ativan? That type book.

The Franklin Library edition of Benet's John Brown's Body. Looks like it just came from the pretentious warehouse. Mint condition. Yuk Yuk. Get it? Franklin Mint..oh never mind. Lovely binding and ridiculously lavish endpapers. The usual spine wales and ridges and quality tooled leather. Yadda yadda. It doesn't get much more bourgeois...or "boozhy" as the black girls say 'round here.

And lastly...

The Metrosensual!! Gimmicky book cut in the shape of a handsome man's head. The right edge of the book is his silhouette or profile. He has a diamond earring that's inset in the book cover. The girls were cooing over this and paging it through it. It's a "respectful" (cough) examination of the metrosexual male--his mores and his natural habitat, his clothing and his women, his men and his art. You know...the Katy Perry song said it succinctly...she didn't need to be prolix like this book. (I mean the "You're So Gay" song..."and you don't even like boys.") Then they realized it was filled with a lot of half nude guys and man candy, including some Chippendales ass shots and they were in heaven. I told them they could keep it if they want, but they're always too nice for that. Plus they're too smart to waste their money on shit like this.

No you don't even like

No you don't even like

No you don't even like...

penis!

I love the way Katy says "penis" at the end of the song.

The dripping frustration.

She was a real bitch on American Idol the other night. Really nasty. Even to Cara, who was trying to keep her nails back.

Maybe she found blond pubic hairs in Josh's bathtub or something. You know, the kind that are all curly and long, like little piggy tails. Not the paintbrush kind. Dear Katy, that big blond German youth is not just a bodyguard. They never are.

Everybody secretly wants an Aryan asshole. At least once.

I know I had Boris Becker dreams when I was just a "chile."

Oh Boris, your hair...it's strawberry blond!

He was married to a black chick. Maybe he still is.

My friend Melinda is black and she was a military brat, and she swears that growing up in the eighties (the eighties mind ya!) over there, that Germans would come up to her brothers and her on the street and touch her on the ass, right at the base of the spine. Here was where she touched me on the ass, right at the base of my spine, to demonstrate (we were cubi neighbors at work and she knew I was gay, so it was okay). And I looked at her in puzzlement. And Melinda said: "Tails, Bill. They were checking to see if we had tails!" And then we both busted up laughing. She because she was seeing my face, and I because I couldn't believe this happened. But she was so convincing. She's beautiful. She used to model. She brought in this book of some of her work one day and then of course every other woman in the place hated her. And the funniest part was she didn't care.

The hubris of beautiful people.

But she was sweet. What are you gonna do.