Only in dreams

Last night I had a nightmare so frightening I was whimpering in my sleep and Marc had to wake me up and calm me down.

I the light of day, it's not at all that scary--I was sleeping in my childhood bed and some intruders were trying to break in from the balcony. And now all I can think about is how much better the balcony doors were in my dream than they are in real life--leaded glass, transom, no ugly cream eyelet curtains.

Screw the intruders, I want that balcony back!

Is there a ghost in my house?

Maybe I'm being a baby because I was home alone last night, but this was a little creepy, guys.

So, last night I lit a few tea lights to add some ambiance as I plowed through the bulk of the first season of Dexter (maybe not the best idea). I blew them out around 11:30 and went to bed a little after midnight.

When I woke up this morning (full disclosure: I'm a HUGE baby and slept on the couch), one of the candles was burning. Creeeeepy. I know I blew them out (that's what she said) and there's no way a puny tea light could burn for seven hours, right? And I would have noticed it burning when I fell asleep in the dark. Oh yeah, and I just checked. The candle in question has a good amount of wax left to burn...the same as the other candles that were only lit for about 90 minutes.

So are we thinking ghost? Ice truck killer hiding under my bed and biding his time? Or did the wick somehow smolder for hours and then amazingly re-light itself at some point this morning? Please tell me scenario C is the case and you've all had this happen to you a million times.

Somebody needs to dazzle me with some marvels of science talk to put me at ease.

Trick or quinks!

Hey punkins! In honor of Halloween, I'm organizing this week's links based on a strict, candy-based rating system. Best loot to worst:

Toblerone: I'm in San Francisco for a super fun wedding, and I'm going to get to meet up with Jess, The Wife of an Artist herself!

Full-sized Snickers bar: My pal Shan and I started an Etsy shop to sell vintage goods!

Blow Pops: It's decorative gourd season, motherf*%@ers! (via What Possessed Me)

Twizzlers: The Twilight Zone turns 50 this week!

Nerds: Someone is making calendar tea towels. Remember when I asked for this!?!

Junior Mints: Revisiting Brad and Angie's remarkable W magazine shoot.

Laffy Taffy: GOOD Magazine's infographics are now available in poster form.

Smarties: Cute, eco-friendly clothes. (ding for being too expensive for me!)

Mr. Goodbar: These adorable shoes are on super sale! (ding for not having my size)

Bit-O-Honey: Cute wreath how-to. (self-imposed ding for posting something related to Christmas in October!)

Raisins: New York Magazine kinda steals George Louis' Esquire cover designs.

Can't get you out of my head

I'm kind of having one of those days where crawling inside a giant skull sofa that's lined with a sheepskin rug doesn't seem like such a crazy idea.

Come play with us forever and ever and ever

Just some suggestions for those pesky house guests that just won't leave.

P.S. Happy almost-Halloween, guys. My reign of posting terror is almost over.

It was a graveyard smash

Rock n' roll and its accompanying imagery can be very creepy. When I was a kid, my dad went to a Grateful Dead concert and brought me a t-shirt as a souvenir. I was terrified of the skeleton printed on the front and refused to wear it. Also, I've never been a giant hippie, so there's that.

Why he didn't choose something with those adorable dancing bears for a seven-year-old girl is beyond me. I was always the skittish kid who, in Indiana, went through a phase of sleeping on top of my blankets because I was afraid tarantulas lurked at the bottom of my sheets. My fevered imagination didn't need any help from a dead guy on my clothes.

Back to the subject at hand....



Hand! Get it? Haha. Oh! I got you!


There are for sure plenty of rock posters out there ready and waiting to scare the crap out of you:

You've got your mummies...


And your wolves...


RAAAR! Don't forget monsters...


And a little ghostie (these last two were sort of cute, actually)...



Some poisoned candy. Very nice.



Tons and tons of skeletons (what is it with musicians and skeletons?). This one was just the scariest, I thought.


A spooky bird being grabbed by a sea monster tentacle...


Fun Halloweeny fun...and finally...

Clowns. Big-mouthed, cackling, going-to-eat-you clowns. Oh Jesus. Not clowns.

Not cool, Gig Posters. Not cool at all.

All the girls walk by dressed up for each other

Jessica at What I Wore (and fellow Hoosier) is doing such a creative job coming up with fun character-based Halloween costumes sourced from her own closet (having an amazing wardrobe helps immensely). So far, she's shown how to whip up a Little Edie Beale, George Washington, Karl Lagerfeld and omg Frida Kahlo.


I'll tell you my best costume if you tell me yours.

Grinning skulls

We're in the homestretch! It's only 10 days to Halloween, my favorite holiday.

In honor, I'm going to try to treat you to a post a day that is at least tangentially related to the big day.

First up, the art of James Hopkins.



Prosperity and Decay and Consumption and Consequence, respectively.

"Hopkins’ work draws from the techniques of optical illusionism through which he involves viewers by teasing with their visual consciousness. His sculptures allude to Symbolist literature in their spin on decadence and the self-indulgence of dandy-ism: they recall the impermanence of objects and their persistence in memory, in a similar way Pop Art made use of iconic images derived from vain consumerism. His sculptures utilise everyday objects that are turned into impossible variations, even into sly commentaries of themselves." (Taken from maxwigram.com)


"...Hopkins rendered oversize Death's heads. These works are poetically succinct meditations on longed-for pasts and inevitable futures, the impermanence of objects and their persistence in memory. Prosperity and Decay (2006) operates similarly, but aligns itself more closely with Holbein's precedent, substituting middle-age, middle-class extravagances—a wine rack, bottles, and glasses; antique maps, clocks, mirrors, and a chess board; leather-bound literature and a violin—for the adolescent possessions used earlier. It is likewise a more subtle composition; whereas the earlier sculptures relied on tonal differences to outline the memento mori, this piece forces the viewer to navigate a complicated interplay of positive and negative space. Perhaps unwittingly, Hopkins has, by thinning out the arrangement, formally echoed his thematic concern; in the end, there will be nothing left to position on these shelves. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

(via On Decorum)

The haunting

Eeps!
The Urban Decay Squad

Forget witches and monsters and psychotic brothers named Michael Myers, nothing gives me the willies more than old lonely abandoned buildings.

Eerie, creepy or spooky places

I was just innocently poking around Flickr, looking for pictures of vintage wallpaper and old limestone fireplaces when I got sucked into pool after pool of creepy, decaying spaces. And I can't seem to look away.

Decayed yet hauntingly beautiful

Super spooky. But yes, I can see the beauty that emerges when something utilitarian starts to fade and give itself back over to nature.

I tried to avoid the pools that were solely devoted to abandoned asylums (anyone else seen Session 9*?). But trust me, there are plenty out there. Just do me a favor and steer clear of the creepy veterinary hospitals of horror pool. Yipes!

Abandoned

I added the names of the pools from which each picture came in case you want to do a little urban exploring.

Pressed tin

Just make sure you have all your lights on and some snappy music playing.

Peeled and patched walls

Happy haunting!

The Forgotten
* Oh yes, someone did go to the real Danvers State Hospital and take some super eerie atmospheric photos.

Goodbye, Summer

I miss you already.

Birds, bikes and baloney

I apologize in advance for sounding like a total hater, but Renegade left me pretty cold this year.

I took a lap yesterday (a gorgeous day for an outdoor fair) and felt like I was being pummelled over the head with all things soooo cuuuuute. Don't get it twisted. I love cute. I have doll furniture on my windowsills. Right this moment, I'm wearing a pink polka-dot shirt and pink shoes. Every year, I hand make Valentines with hearts and squirrels and kittens cut from construction paper and doilies. I am no enemy of whimsy; for God's sake, I am the girl with toy animals in jars on my mantel.

So maybe it wasn't the cute.

Maybe it was the repetition of so much darling. Let's all be honest. There are only so many tea towels with nesting birds and t-shirts screen printed with old-timey bikes and adorably ugly stuffed animals and moustache-shaped throw pillows and posters with affirmative sayings and deer antler tote bags and saucer-eyed owls painted on some old plywood a grown person should own.

And of course booth after booth of same after same kind of defeats the purpose of buying handmade. I go because I want to see something novel and unique. I buy because I want to support the innovative people who come up with their crazy concepts, make them into reality and put them out there for the world to see.

And I get the concept of inspiration. You see something, it inspires you, and you create your own take on it. I just didn't feel like I was seeing much variation on a theme going on. Those sticky-sweet cupcake earrings you're peddling over there are getting a little stale. Yours too over there...and there...

Ok, enough of that. Out of it all. I did see some really lovely ceramics and jewelry, and I'm always happy to ooh and ahh over Dollybird's delightfully sinister spiderweb pendants.

I think it was all of the soft edges of everything else that attracted me to the hard lines of Plural's designs. It doesn't appear to be for sale online, but they were peddling the most interesting stark, geometric black and white wrapping paper.

Along the same lines was Beth Pohlman jewelry.

I'm absolutely in love with this pyramid necklace. Her earrings are pretty sweet too.

So I guess that's a long-winded way of saying I'll probably still attend Renegade next year (probably not the holiday show. That place gets way too crowded), but I'd probably buy more if presented with more variety.

No one wants go buy their one-of-a-kind whale-shaped chalkboard and then see it in the kitchen of everyone else they know.

Fall brings out the nostalgia

Aww. Look, it's my old bedroom on Apartment Therapy.

I can't believe it's been a year since I took that photo (or that I only ended up living in that apartment for about six months).

I never would have thought that in less than a year's time, I'd be shacked up with my boyfriend (sinners!) and sharing the joys and pains of home ownership(hello, very expensive window bars to keep out would-be robbers. Oh, didn't I tell you? Someone slit the screen in our kitchen window and tried to shimmy in to steal stuff. While I was home most of the day. Literally the day before we left the country for a week. Awesome times! Luckily, s/he was thwarted by our window locks and a vigilant neighbor. But still, the bars are worth it.)

So many changes. It makes me wonder what these next 12 months will bring. And it makes me curious: What big changes did you experience in the past year? And what are your hopes for the coming months?

I wasn't quite expecting to end up behind bars, but it's not quite a gilded cage either.

This is why we can't have nice things

Normally, I'm all about throwing things together willy-nilly when it comes to decorating my house. You kind of have to be when you're pretty much just buying secondhand and things are catch as catch can. I mean, if I buy it I like it, so new-to-me finds will get in where they fit in, right?

And I'm not into that whole super-perfect pristine look anyway. So no problems here--you'd think.

Except when you do get that perfect, pristine piece. Yes, yes, I'm so sorry to drag us back into the kitchen.

Now that I have my dream kitchen table, the one I would choose over an engagement ring if given the choice (hey, it's basically a big, round rock), I am having the worst time handling it. No chairs I've found seem to fit: they're too design-y and take away from the table or they're too plain and the table only brings that out, or chairs with arms look far to gangly, except I like chairs with arms, etc. etc.

I don't think I'm cut out for nice stuff, people. It's especially frustrating that I can't get it right when there are posts dedicated to the damn table's versatility.

This one, from the wonderful A Mad Tea Party with Alis even includes super-handy diagrams of high and low chair options:


Clearly, I need to get it together. So far, the one chair I've definitively wanted was this: And I'm bummed because a restaurant near my house has a bunch of these that came with the building when they bought it and they won't sell me two.

Which is well within their rights. As is it within mine to scowl in the restaurant's general direction every time I pass by.

But that doesn't make me want them any less. Quite the contrary--I'm getting even more fixated on them, which goes against the grain of my thrifting easy-come, easy-go ways.

Maybe it's time to take a little retreat with the sitter's bible

And kick back with an all-star team of fantastic, mismatched chairs You know, really get my head on straight.

It's that or the table goes.


Just kidding (mostly).

Pretty pictures: The "looking at them helps calm my public-transportation induced rage" edition

Instead writing about this morning's walk from Chicago and Milwaukee to Jackson and Wells becase the Blue Line was messed up AGAIN (this of course, I found out AFTER paying my fare and going through the turnstile), let's look at a nice picture, shall we? I think I like the idea of having some ledges upon which I can layer and display pictures in our living/dining room area. That way, they can be swapped out without putting a million holes in the wall.

I'm looking and picking up a few of these at some point in my life. In fact, I've been so obsessed with picture ledges, that the other night, I had a dream I was Kim Kardashian and I was shopping at Target where I found some pictures ledges on sale for $14.99. When I asked Marc, who was there in the dream, if I should buy a few, he lectured me on measuring the pictures I have to see if they'd be a good match for the length of the shelves first (this was the reaction I got from him in real life when I tried to order the ones above). I, in turn, retorted that, "God! I haven't even been home yet! (I was probably too busy squeezing my booty into 27" jeans)How am I supposed to measure stuff that's at my house when I haven't even BEEN there? Stop LECTURING me. You're ruining everything!"

I woke up kind of mad at Marc and really relieved that I'm not Kim Kardashian (I would take her shiny, shiny hair, though).

So yeah, I guess I kind of want photo ledges.

Confidential to the CTA: Thanks for nothing! (and that goes for you too, every cab that wouldn't pick me up this morning)

Orange you glad people can tell how drunk you are by the radioactive color of your lips?

Sorry I haven't been around these days (I know you're all broken up about it. Shhh, child...here's an Interhug). I'm out of town for a bit.

But for a quick update, here's what I learned at Pitchfork:

Alcohol + caffeine + Sparks = Down for anything.

...which apparently includes givng an Oopma Loompa a beej.

I can tolerate a lot of beverages, just as long as they include some booze, but Sparks? That shit is nasty.

At least we still have real toilets

Sunday night after three days of steamy, sweltering standing around at Pitchfork isn't the best time to come home to a closed-up house and a non-working a/c unit.

I was so desperate last night, I took the tiniest scredriver man ever made (seriously, I think it was from an eyeglass repair kit) and tried to crack open our unit and fix it.

It's probably for the best that I couldn't get it open. Even though our house remained hot, I'm still typing this with 10 fingers.

I never thought I'd say this, but I CAN'T WAIT to go to the airport. Auntie Anne's and air conditioning. Mommy, is this Heaven?

Boo-la Cafe (aka Don't Believe the Hype)

Um, hi, everyone on Yelp, Metromix all of you who voted for Lula Cafe as best restaurant in the Best of Chicago 2008 reader poll. Did you all just get out of prison? Just begin eating again after having your jaw wired shut for a month?

Because I don't get it. At all.

I ate there this weekend, and this is what happened: Marc got the Wisconsin trout and I got the pork loin from the specials menu, entrees that were about $30 each. The fish was blander than a tongue depressor, and, judging from the layer of blubber encasing my meat, I think some farmer must have accidentally slaughtered a baby seal masquerading as a pig. You know how that sometimes happens.

Oh, but the lima beans were nice.

So there's that.

Guess what I did last night!

If you guessed "spilled 30 lbs of kitty litter all over the dining room floor," you win!

Will Alison switch to FOX News in protest? Tune in at 9 to find out!

So I just clicked on CNN to get my daily news dose, and apparently, the more sensational headlines are now being marketed as t-shirts.


Now, I'm not going to try to argue that the stupid, novelty stories will get more clicks than the real news as a result of these shirts--because they already do by virtue of the of the "rile everybody up" headlines themselves. But this seems kind of embarrassing. It rubs me as yet another way mainstream written news (TV news has been this way for a while) is becoming less relevant and more tabloid focused and soundbyte oriented.

These shirts may be even dumber than the one I saw in a shop window this weekend. It depicted a man sitting on a couch in front of a TV, while a woman behind him (his annoying wife, I'm sure) radiated voice vibrations. It read: "Less talkin'. More watchin'."

Indeed.