I don’t know why this brings me joy right now; it just does.
Baskerville, Comic Sans, and Impact are my favorites. I don’t even know why. They’re striking me as especially ridiculous right now.
I have a real red ass for that Comic Sans font. It needs to go away forever.
Oh, I just love this whole idea. Love it. Love it. Want one.
Life always seems a wee bit better when you stumble across the whimsical people.
I cannot get over the little blue typewriter.
I think of this every year now and it still gets me.
Every year, during The Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon, which was this morning, I think of an old customer of mine from little Boheme and his yearly marathon rendezvous.
This is what I wrote when he first told me about it two years ago:
…. He says he always stands at the same location every year to watch the runners and he always runs into the same woman and that they just chat and watch the marathon. So he says, “Now we have a kind of ‘Same Time, Next Year’ thing going on with the marathon. I’ll be standing in that spot tomorrow and I bet she shows up.†They just hang out for that brief period of time of the marathon; that’s all. It’s not romantic in the classic man/woman sense — (mainly because he’s gay) — but the fact that he does that and she does that, I dunno; it’s still romantic to me. It’s two people giving over to a kind of whimsy. They have no connection in life otherwise, but they are each other’s spontaneous marathon date. Every year, they are committed to that moment. And he was so looking forward to seeing her. His face just lit up talking about it and he was thoroughly unabashed, totally surrendered to what those moments are — their secret shimmering ritual.
It made my heart burst a little. The weird random ways that people connect. The ways they find each other. The spark of all that. How it has its own life, its own electric tingle. It’s like some divine serendipity. God’s a romantic, he is, up there in his heaven, not wanting people to be alone, just giddy sometimes with the ways he allows people to collide.
And, you know, every year when I think of this, I think of my customer, my friend, and smile because I just know he surrenders to the whimsy and brings her flowers.
I just know it.
He’s just that way.
This piece about kids and their lemonade stands is killing me. If you’re like me, you will be wiping away tears of laughter at the end of it. This piece is a sheer joy, a gift, the pick-me-up you need even if you think you don’t need a pick-me-up. Trust me, you do. Kids just kill me, I tell ya.
Some favorite things from the article, no context until you read it, of course:
“Rebecca is freaking.” (The kid is 5.)
“OREONADEOL.” (Hahahahaha. That is so crazy.)
The use of the phrase “start pouring.”
When “SAM” gives his financial advice. I love SAM.
Oh, and his “classy combo.”
The side service of “fortune telling.”
“One, two, three, four, I’m tired.”
Just please do yourselves a favor and read it. It’s short and hilarious and, honestly, I’m still crying with laughter about it. I cannot get over OREONADEOL. I will never be over OREONADEOL.
Please read so we can discuss OREONADEOL — and the rest.
Okay. Check out these photos from a lecture in a Civil Engineering class. Who knew how versatile pennies were?
And here I’ve just been puttin’ all of mine in a jar and ignoring them.
Also, because I seem to be all about wasting time this week, there’s now Mr. Picasso Head. Yep.
I’m sorry. I’m just a terrible influence. You should probably break up with me.
My inner slutty saloon girl also kinda likes this petticoat dress, from Gypsyville:
What can I say? My tastes run the gamut. Yes, they run and, oh, they veer, sometimes far afield. I’m a weirdo. Whatevs.
I feel a little frightened and tingly. The annual Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon will be tromping past Boheme early early Sunday morning. Oh, only about 20,000 runners. And I’ve never witnessed the sight of that many runners stampeding all at once. So I’m kinda tingly and overwhelmed about it all. Oh, and it’s not called the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon fer nuthin’. A band — The K*obbs? — will be playing right across the street from Boheme starting at about 6:30 a.m. Sorry, K*obbs. I don’t know you. But do please come on over and buy some coffee.
So some marathon-related stuff:
Today, a Boheme customer said her boyfriend ran in last year’s marathon as part of his life goal of running a marathon in every state. I love stuff like that. Like, who thinks of that, really? “I want to run a marathon in every state.” I love people who think or do stuff that I would never think of — mainly because I’m curious about what motivates them to say something like “I want to run a marathon in every state.” The girlfriend said, “If he does it, he’ll be part of this elite kind of marathoners’ club. He’s 38, hates to train, doesn’t really run, and whenever he crosses a finish line, I give him a beer.” Hahahaha! I love that; it’s just plain cool — the otherness of that, to me. I don’t run in marathons, so something like this wouldn’t even blow across my landscape. Still, it’s so interesting. There’s a certain whimsy to that kind of thinking that totally charms me.
Also … another customer says he always stands at the same location every year to watch the runners and he always runs into the same woman and they just chat and watch the marathon. So he says, “Now we have a kind of ‘Same Time, Next Year’ thing going on with the marathon. I’ll be standing in that spot tomorrow and I bet she shows up.” He says they just hang out for that brief period of time of the marathon; that’s all. It’s not romantic in the classic man/woman sense — (mainly because he’s gay) — but the fact that he does that and she does that, I dunno; it’s still romantic to me. It’s two people giving over to — well, again, a kind of whimsy. They have no connection in life otherwise, but they are each other’s spontaneous marathon date. Every year, they are committed to that moment. And he was so looking forward to seeing her; his face lit up talking about it and he was thoroughly unabashed, totally surrendered to what those moments are — their secret ritual. It just made my heart burst a little. The weird random ways that people connect. The ways they find each other. The spark of that. How it has its own life, its own electric tingle. It’s like some divine serendipity. God’s a romantic, he is, up there in his heaven, not wanting people to be alone, just giddy sometimes with the ways he allows people to collide.
I love it when someone can give whimsy a physical shape and feel. It’s literally one of my favorite things. I love whimsy; I despise cutesy. There’s a difference between the two that I imagine is entirely subjective. I mean, what may be whimsy to one may be cutesy to another and vice versa. But for me, cutesy is self-conscious. Cutesy is trying SO hard to be cute that it sails completely past cute and splats dead all over cutesy and nausea and even horror. For me, cutesy is born when cute is the only goal, not creation, not self-expression, but rather the push of some sick inner mantra blaring “I will make something cuuuute!!” No, Peaches, no, you won’t. Because you won’t be creating from your SELF, you will be creating from your sense of what everyone else thinks is cute. You’ll be creating from inside that little prison of expectations where it’s dull and grey and stifling. The end result will have no choice but to be gross and eminently hateable. It’s vague — maybe I’m being vague — because I’m trying to think this out as I write.
I just hate the craftsy group-think of what’s cuuuute or adorable. I hate the whole “kit” mentality. The whole country-craftsy, let’s-draw-stuff-with-puff-pens mindset. It gives rise to woodworked bunnies with googly eyes and quilted tea cozies in the shape of roosters and isn’t that oh-so-CLEVER?? No. No, it’s NOT! Dammit all, anyway! And if someone is telling you it’s good, she’s either lying through her crafty teeth or she’s your blind lonely gammie who — frankly — is probably lying too, because maybe she’s blind, but she ain’t stupid, and what the hell is this quilted rooster-shaped monstrosity you just plopped in her blind wrinkled lap? SHEESH!
Okay. I’ve gotten myself all worked up.
Here. Pictures will tell the misguided tale of cutesy so much better:
The blue one in the middle with the cloudy bulging cataract eyes. I’m shuddering with horror. And what’s with the one on the right? Is it some kind of Breast Cancer Awareness rodent? Ugh. Shiver.
Ah, acid trips.
Lord. Let’s not forget the flavor that OAK adds to the appalling goulash of cutesy:
The oak is a hardy, beautiful tree. Look:
It deserves so much better than to die an ignominious death pasted over with faux brass numbers and a mincing little piggy going to market. Better to take your oak and give it to the bums in the alley to burn in their trash cans than insist it hang on your kitchen wall in perpetual porcine humiliation. Oak crap is all over my parents’ house and whenever I’m there, it cries out to me in a righteous, pleading rage: “Burn me! Burn me!! Burrrrnnn meeeeeeeeeeeee!!” Someday I will.
I don’t get it. Cook something wretched for your family and they probably won’t eat too much of it. Leftovers — and there’ll be lots of ’em — will languish in the fridge. And that’s your hint, Peaches: This did not taste good. But create something wretched with oak or googly eyes, and then what? It’s allowed to hang unopposed on your wall until you die or your daughter has to wear it to school and have kids laugh at how the reindeer eyes jiggle every time she heaves a sob? No, I say! That is how cutesy warps and ruins lives.
But whimsy. Ah, whimsy!
Whimsy, I think, comes from a place deep inside. It comes freely, unpackaged, unself-conscious. Things that I call whimsical always have something slightly off, a little wonky about them. Just like people. Someone who can make whimsy in a physical form creates from a solid sense of self. From an eye that knows how to please itself first. Someone who makes whimsy doesn’t listen to — or maybe doesn’t even hear — the chorus of people’s expectations or tastes, because there’s a stronger, louder inner voice that defies constraints. It’s a voice that says, “I will make something I like.” With that, comes a freedom to experiment and invent and discover something that may be just a little bit weird. Wonky. Not perfect, but beautiful. Whimsical.
From hop skip jump:
From petite collage:
From angry chicken:
I love this one — a fabric design — because the designer herself says of it: I’m all about the ugly, I can’t help it. Give me some little lines (I see them as hairs) and some mildly creepy biomorphic shapes, and I am all set.
Hahahahaha!
See? Not cutesy. Not self-conscious or coy or trying too hard. She says she’s all about the ugly, for God’s sake! And so it’s weird. Wonky. Whimsical.
And I love whimsy.
