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Wow! It's a pumpkin likeness of everybody's favorite mop-topped asian Scientologist baby. I'm sure Lord Xenu carved this with his special "laser". One day, Tom and Katie will look back on their human procreation as "quaint" and "old-fashioned". Oh wait! That time is now! They're probably wicked pissed that they didn't adopt an African baby!
Link via Goldenfiddle
Woo Hoo! Life is bittersweet right now, because I found some pictures of the other costumes from the Martha Stewart baby costume episode. Much to my horror, the items sold on eBay a few days ago, and I missed my chance for a $40 boiled lobster costume to give to some friend's baby. C'est la vie. To your left, witness the amazing sushi outfit. Other auctions from the site include the turkey, lobster, green salad, apple pie, and lemon meringue pie. I hope Martha realizes how high she is setting the bar. I predict the baby costume wars will be mighty ugly. LINK to sushi costume
Okay...so Wednesday's child, according to the Mother Goose poem, is "Full of Woe". Cedar, daughter of Supernaturale Majordomo Tsia, is anything but. This year, I asked Tsia what Cedar was planning on being for Halloween, and I got a doozy for an answer. When Tsia asked Cedar what she was going to be for Halloween, she nonchalantly replied, "Wednesday". When Tsia asked her how she was going to be Wednesday, she shot back, "I'm going to jump there!" with a roll of her eyes that implied "DUH, Mom!". So here, in all its glory, is Cedar's Wednesday costume. I personally think that she should market the thing. It would look great in Wal-Mart as a plastic Cedar mask with an elastic band, and a plastic Wednesday costume that a child could slip on. Congratulations, Cedar! You win this year's Extreme Craft costume contest with a special merit badge in metaphysics.
How's married life treating me? I'll tell you! Now I have to deal with my wife hanging out at delinquent pumpkin carving parties, coming home at all hours, breath smelling like CIDER! She did create this loving carved pumpkin portrait of me, though. Halloween is so close, I can almost feel the peeled grapes and cold spaghetti!
So Martha Stewart is getting a lot of time on Extreme Craft lately...So how about you getting off my goddamned back about it! This shit is huuuuuuge! Who wouldn't want to dress their infant like a roast turkey? After finding out about Martha setting up a FREAKIN' BUFFET OF BABY FOOD COSTUMES on her show last week, I rushed to the computer to share with you. That's just how I roll. You can go to Martha's site and get a whole tutorial on making your own roast turkey baby costume. There's even a TEMPLATE that you can download. We thought that MAYBE Michael Jackson would try something like a baby buffet, but Martha? When the little baby dressed as a turkey wiggled its legs, the turkey legs would wiggle! Delicious! Is that....cranberry sauce in its diaper?
I enjoyed NPR's spot yesterday evening about challenging project Runway designers to come up with an easy to create, yet fashion forward halloween costume. Laura for the current season reflected on her efforts to dress up her brood, which was entertaining. Some other costumes were floated, like Katherine Gerdes' ingeneous iPod outfit. Diana Eng, tech goddess that she is, came up with a great concept:
"Eventually, she'd like to design a parent-child lightning bug ensemble that would help mom or dad keep track of their kids. Her concept: When the parent and child stand close to each other, the costumes glow. But if the child strays to far from the parent, then the costumes go dim. So of course the child will want to stay near by to keep glowing."
I was a huge fan of HBO's Six Feet Under, and I'll cop to getting sucked into the reruns that Bravo has been running lately. The HBO website has always had great little extras for the show, such as obituaries for the people that die at the beginning of each episode. I just ran across this amazing overview of the art that was created for Claire's character, ranging from angry goth high school art to the photo-collage masks that showed up in the final seasons. The art directors, artists, and episode directors get a chance to sound off about each piece, giving us some background on props that we only got fleeting glances of during the show. If you were a fan of the show, spend some time reminiscing via HBO's great web gallery. If you haven't watched Six Feet Under yet, do yourself a favor, and take advantage of the reruns on Bravo.
LINK via Goldenfiddle
God bless America. I keep having these little epiphanies about America's ingenuity...like when I watch America's Got Talent or play a game of Line Rider. While I was driving somewhere in central Illinois on Monday, a story came on NPR's Day to Day about "Disability Chic", the newest fashion trend among the "otherly able" set. Like any good NPR story, Day to Day covered both sides of the coin. On the positive side, the story profiled a woman who covered her cast in Swarovski crystals and bric-a-brac. By audaciously calling attention to her injury, the cast managed to have the opposite effect. People on the street would compliment the woman on her cast rather than dwelling on the injury.
Companies like Broken Beauties cater to the fashion-impaired injured and disabled, with pink skull cast covers, and Yves Saint-Laurent logo slings. My favorite, though, just for the name were "crutch muffins"--you know, the little pads at the top of crutches? You learn something new every day. I could have used something like that when I was in graduate school, suffering from tendonitis (a by-product of obsessive china painting). The lady at the Krispy Kreme would always ask me what happened to my wrist, and I got tired of explaining the china painting thing, so I would just tell her I fell off a horse.
The darker side of disability chic was covered in the story by profiling a wheelchair rugby player who had tired of pimping out his wheelchair with gigantic chrome rims. He stated that "pimping one's ride" is an effective way to seem friendly and accessible to those around you after an accident, but that it quickly became tiresome for him. After watching the quad rugby documentary Murderball, I'm not about to start an argument with him. Still, who am I to stand in the way of Swarovski Crystals and bric-a-brac.
LINK to Day to Day story
What is the thing about weddings that makes people the most happy? Basking in the glow of a happy couple? Seeing two people make a commitment to each other for the rest of their lives? A great party? My qualified opinion is now NONE OF THE ABOVE. The reason people go to weddings is to make crude (but not always unwelcome) jokes about bloody sheets and finally doing it "the real way". My wedding was filled with leering, nudging, and winking relatives and friends from both sides of the aisle. That's how I roll. As reports of my own dear mother's T.M.I. fest during the bridesmaid luncheon trickled back to me, I started to get some great, filthy, and crafty halloween recommendations from readers.
First off, kudos to "Masturbate for Peace" for forwarding me a great tutorial about making a (functional...edible) candy corn dildo and buttplug set:
When completely hardened, carefully unmold and wipe any residual vegetable oil off the surface. If using for penetration, dust with cornstarch to reduce stickiness and cover with a condom (putting anything sugary into the vagina can result in yeast infections). Body heat may cause the candy to soften.The tutorial is taken from homemade-sex-toys.com, which also has some other handy halloween-themed toys, including some very indiscreet pumpkins.
Secondly, a tutorial for a D.I.Y. viagra costume is making the rounds today, courtesy of magicbluepill.com. With a minimum of digging, I found that magicbluepill.com is a front linking to an online pharmacy specializing in....Viagra! Fuck Toyota's D.I.Y. guerilla marketing tactics, these viagra people have the pulse of the nation. With some styrofoam sheets and a glue gun, you can make yourself into a blue diamond-headed satyr, ready to hump halloween into submission...and then some! Thanks, Hilary!
Sorry about the weeklong silence on my end, Extreme Crafters...I got hitched! I had every intention of giving you the blow-by-blow, but fussy hotel wi-fi had other ideas. I'm happy to report that the wedding was a grand affair--trouble-free (if not scandal-free). Many many thanks go out to my compadres Head of Femur and Flaming Fire for playing the reception, as well as the friends and family who were able to attend. Claire and I had an amazing time, but we're (predictably) exhausted.
We received a ton of amazing crafty gifts, including a great prayer shawl from the folks at Grace Episcopal Church. The cheekiest/best gift so far was from my friends Tyler and Erin. Tyler is a ceramic sculptor of considerable reknown, so I was beyond touched when he gave me the amazing sculpture pictured above. Tyler and Erin just reproduced (what up, Asa!) this year, and the fact that this seemingly abstract sculpture is a sperm-fueled fertility totem didn't escape our notice. We'll proudly display it in our new house... but we're keeping it out of the bedroom (for now).
For those of you who are interested, I'll post a link to some photos in the coming weeks.
