Handy and Fun in the Great Recession

So being unsuccessful at beer traps for the snails I have dreams of wrapping m plants in copper which apparently gives the little things an electrical shock, but you have to use a lot of copper (which is expensive and has an impact on the earth)because some of them can nimbly maneuver themselves OVER the copper barrier. The copper barrier tape I saw at the hardware store was about two inches wide. Okay, imagine a slug or snail that was large enough to hop over a two inch wide copper barrier. This is why I don't live in the Amazonian rain forest where slugs get so large they feed a family of five.

Instead I've been having a wee bit of coffee and going out and picking the little buggers. They reproduce at a tremendous rate and I got about two pounds of young ones yesterday morning. But it's gross and it would help to have a wee drop o brandy in the coffee to do the work. But I refrain. Partly because we can't afford brandy and partly because it's not on the diet. Speaking of brandy in the morning, I was walking the pooches and my unemployed neighbor was walking his. He's been out of work for three months now and is starting to worry. He had either been out partying all night or he had been putting brandy in his coffee for he was tipsy and confided to me that he was not having fun looking for work. He had to fill out forms on the internet and he didn't want to make less than 250k. I thought "No wonder his house is so much nicer than mine and he has a pool and a French Bull Dog!" And then I thought, wow if I made 250k I'd live in a better neighborhood, I have to have the City of LA Graffiti Removal Hotline on my phone. Which just goes to show you that we live in a way mixed neighborhood.

I had ponied up 20 dollars in January for a sweater from J. Crew. It was a white v-neck sweater in cotton and cashmere and for 20 bucks it was a good comfy buy. I promptly spilled red wine on it and so I have drips down my chest that diligent application of eco-friendly stain remover wont remove. So I decided to save my coffee grounds and see if I could use them to dye my sweater. This didn't work. I can still see the red wine stains and instead of a white sweater I have a dingy sweater that isn't brown and isn't white.

Another money saving idea was to take some wine that we got over the holidays that we weren't going to drink and make wine vinegar. Mark Bittman gives an easy recipe (wine, water, vinegar, jar, cheesecloth, time) and pooh poohs anyone who would spend hard earned bucks on vinegar. So I put red wine and water and organic vinegar into a jar and 6 weeks later --- I don't have vinegar. I have something that tastes nice and mellow - like a flabby merlot which amazingly enough, is what I used as the wine.

So I have to dump this and see if I can make some wine from the La Mancha Recession Red I pick up at Trader Joe's. But I have a lot of this vinegar wine mixture and I can't decide what to do with it. It's not like it's vinegar so I can't clean the house with it or use it in salad dressings. I'm thinking the acid might kill the SNAILS, but what if the reservatrol in the wine makes SUPER SNAILS? Ones that grow large enough to go over a two inch barrier???? I'm also tempted to see if I can use it to dye the dingy sweater with stains - the stains are red wine (but a pinot noir) and the wine is red (but it's merlot, will it match?) and vinegar sets dies. But then I'll have a dingy red sweater with stains that smells like coffee, vinegar and wine. Maybe I'll put up a poll and let my friends decide - experiment with snail control or dye dingy sweater?

SOS - Big Art Group

So last weekend, in a fit of devil may care spending we went to the theatre. Unlike going to a broadway play, the symphony or the opera, CalArts' Red Cat is an affordable venture if you are willing to see stuff that is off the beaten track. I, for one, am obviously off the beaten track, so I've enjoyed everything I've seen at Red Cat, while I have spent money on Broadway tickets and been totally grossed out. I remember being appalled at seeing a revival of the Music Man - the content of the play was reprehensible and the direction was something to the effect of let's try and be as bland as possible for the IOWANS who are VISITING our FAIR CITY who would not be able to understand anything sophisticated and who will be wowed(!) by a little breaking the third wall by having a marching band go up the aisle.
So for a mere 30 bucks we saw Caden Manson's group perform SOS. It was a loud play with many video screens that were edited on the fly with the actors performing in front of small video cameras and changing scenes were created by holding up postcards for backdrops. There were three lines of action - one was Logan's Run with Plushies, another was Valley Girl Consumer Competition and the third was Bader-Meinhoff America's Top Model. In the end all of the actors encased themselves in balloon armor and had a fight.
At one point the contestants in Bader-Meinhoff America's Top Model were having a car chase. One actor held cards of streets up to a camera. Another actor held cut outs of a car hood, roof and windshield up to another camera. Two Actors stood in front of a camera - while another one (in the car behind) was in front of a fourth. Edited together it looked like there were two people careening in a car through the streets of a city with another person in hot pursuit behind them. The plushies - See here for a definition - were actors dressed in plush-outfits representing a raccoon, bunny, deer and wolf (I knew something was up when there was a carnivore amongst the ranks, quite frankly, that was a bit that you could see was coming from miles off) with a camera strapped on a pole in front of them and a flashlight that they could use to illuminate their faces. It was always dark during these scenes and the way to see the actors was to follow their flashlight faces or to watch the video screens which could only see the actors who had their flashlights on. Very fun.
Last weekend we also went to the Hammer to see Nine Lives work of 9 LA based artists. It was fun to see Jeffrey Valance's work again - I dimly remember him from nine thousand years ago and it's nice to see him alive and kicking, but the work I thought was totally standout in the exhibit was a series of large scale photos (I wouldn't be able to fit one in my house - don't have a wall big enough) about motion and stillness. They were black and white photos, exquisitely printed of a moving cat - where the exposure was long so that the cat was a blur, except for one where the cat was sitting curled up and still. Gorgeous work, really gorgeous.