Sweet Jebus, it's been a hell of a day...To sum up, and in order of occurrence... shopping, books, street art, art gallery, random shopping, rain, specific shopping, food, dance. Essentially we're talking about a ten hour day...
But that was the short answer, and as anybody who has spent any time around this blog knows, I never just go with the short answer...
We started off the day with the usual Supermarket Safari... I was a little narky with myself because I'd gone to all the trouble of actually writing a few things down on a shopping list, things I actually needed... and I forgot the list. Buggeration. And I could only remember about half of the things I'd put on it. Luckily though, when I got home and checked, I actually picked everything up. Result! (I know, small things amuse small whatevers)
When we were finished shopping, we didn't even go back to my place and unpack, we tootled on over to Prospect Town Hall for their seemingly annual booksale. Unlike last time we weren't at complete and total efficiency, so we didn't get there before the doors opened... and when we did arrive it was a little bit chaotic. And I have to say, nowhere near as good as last year. Either that or all the early birds scored all the bookworms (okay, that sounded slightly funnier in my head... yeah, not that much funnier to be honest). I don't think they actually had as many books this time around... once stuff was gone from the tables it wasn't being replaced by new stuff, it was just gone, and giant spaces were appearing... so much so that the volunteers were laying the books flat in some spots. Madness!
Speaking of which, the Book Sale Etiquette was even worse this year, and I really did want to smack some of the people... mostly the ones who were going in the complete opposite direction around the tables to everybody else... closely followed by anybody with any form of trolley or mobile wheelie whatsit. I was much more restrained (from a book grabbing perspective rather than a people smacking one) this year and only ended up with 11 books, partly thanks to the fact that Ma and I did some "grab for each other" things (a couple of the things I originally grabbed went to her pile and vice versa).
Once we waited for the massive exodus line to dissipate, we paid for our purchases, picked up some yummy Apple Cakes and teeny Banana Muffins from the stalls outside, dropped the books in the car and wandered back to Honeysuckle Lane to see what had changed in the street art landscape.
And boy I'm glad we did...
Possibly the BEST Benzo piece of recent times!
We didn't even have to go very far along the lane to find this either... right at the end of the first section, I turned... and there is was...
Allow me to wax slightly poetic for a second and get slightly "wanky art-fag"...
Part of what I love most about Benzo's work, especially a lot of the recent stuff I've been seeing is that there is this amazing development in ideas and style and form... and I can see how the ideas develop, I can see the how, if not the why, of were he's going with ideas... and you know what. I fucking love it! This pencil guy (I kinda want to call him The 2B General) owes his lineage to the Playing Card King... who in turn owes his look to the Waymouth Face... but in the SALA exhibition he replaced the King's sword with a pencil, which obviously lead him eventually to this pencil laden guy. And there's something of his Army Men about it too (the hat mostly)... plus an ongoing obsession with bendy arms.
I just need somebody to explain to me what the hell this "Alaska" tag is all about... it was on the Turtle Master piece, and the piece that was there before that... and I'm sure I've seen it a couple of other times too. And if it's another street artist, then what's the connection with Benzo?
While we're on this particular train of thought... after Ritual Unpacking, we headed off to the gallery to FINALLY pick up our Benzo artworks!
So! Excited!
I want to take a photo of the piece tomorrow, but next to existing things in my apartment, to give it a sense of scale... because I can tell you right now... it's fucking HUGE! I'm sure it didn't seem that massive in the gallery, but then the gallery is a big empty room with empty white walls. Here at my place, well... it seems bigger than I remember.
I do adore it though. It's sitting on my bed at the moment, right across from me, and whenever I stop typing or collect my thoughts for a second, I look over at it. And the more I stare at it, the most I love it.
As I said to Ma at some point today though... I am glad that she got the other piece. While my piece is big and bold and calls attention to itself (hmmm, that sounds kinda filthy out of context, doesn't it), the piece Ma chose is kinda quiet and reflective and a lot more subtle. But equally gorgeous.
I can't believe that the large piece that evolved from the ideas in the one I bought (and was featured on all the promo material for the show)... it didn't sell! And, I'll be honest, if I'd had a spare $1250 laying around, it is absolutely the piece I would have bought. I actually did the justification math in my head a couple of times to see if there was any way I could have gotten away with it. Never could quite manage it. And even if I had, then I would have had to find somewhere to hang it.
I'm not even sure where the hell my little blue German Graph Paper Jamie is going... I have a vague idea, but it's going to take some finagling... so it might just be hanging around at ground level for a while.
After we bid the voiceless Mr Walker goodbye (poor lamb, he could only whisper), we headed back to Honeysuckle Lane (because I remembered to bring my camera this time) so I could snap the shot above (amongst others... although all of the one piece), then we hauled ass down to Arndale for a random wander... nothing much to report on that front... although we did pick up a few bits and bobs and hang around looking at cross-stitch magazines for a little while (I wanted to show Ma the stuff I'd seen the other day). I'm happy to report that none were purchased... because really, that's just taking it to a scary place.
Conventional wisdom says that we really should have headed back to my place at this point... we had two and a half hours of SYTYCD to watch, it was bucketing down with rain and we'd really done all the important stuff... but the cross-stitch bug was a-callin me... and we'd seen some of the Harajuku Lovers perfume I got Ma at Christmas on special, but the shop was in town. So, town it was.
On the way down Port Road, the rain went from "bucketing" to "sheeting" to "Are you fuckin kidding me?". But fortunately before we reached the city it wore itself out and had settled down to a very light sprinkle. Bless you Mother Nature!
While we still couldn't find any of the 666 red (although I'm assured that it's on reorder or automatic restock, or whatever it is that Lincraft does... but it seems weird that three different places are out of the same colour... and it's not even near Christmas), I did buy a giant piece of cross-stitch fabric for the toy soldier squadron (I'm leaning towards two rows of ten).
Then we stopped off to have some late lunch (lunner, dunch... I'm not actually sure there's a word for it like with brunch) before we headed back here for the SYTYCD semi-finals. In a word, awesome. And it's nice that I don't actually know who's going to win... I know who comes second (and based on the particular styles of dance next week I may work it out), but the person that I thought was the winner got voted off a couple of weeks back, so I'm still somewhat in the dark. Which, in this instance, is a very nice place to be (and if anybody tries to spoil that, I will kill them in all kinds of interesting ways). I am pleased that my little choochyfaced Evan made it to the finals though.
Due to the extreme amount of SYTYCD, Ma didn't end up leaving here until just before 6... so, like I said... a hell of a day... long, occasionally intense, exciting and pretty damn good.
Of course there is always a downside and a price to pay for these things... because of the extreme wind and rain earlier in the day (and it sounds like it's blowing a baby gale out there at present, plus the occasional bout of rain), I discovered after Ma left that my hot water heater had quit on me again... but since I allegedly know how to fix it now (hmmm... I was sure I blogged about that... obviously not... but after last time, the plumber did come out and walk me through the process), it should be fine. I haven't actually bothered going out there to relight it yet... it's still pretty windy and rainy, so I'd rather leave it and do it once in the morning than do it now and have to do it again in the morning.
Stoopid weather... stoopid water heater...
Other than that though... awesome...
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