which way do you swing?

SEAN VS DANIEL CRAIG

We are watching quantum of something or other tonight. Daniel Craig is pretty dang good in the first one, probably this one too. Roger Moore, George Lasenby and Pierce Brosnan were all OK, but I didn't like that Timothy Dalton AT ALL. So we skip them and go back to the original, Sean Connery.
So, Sean or Daniel, which way do you swing in this important matter, which do you prefer? ME? Daniel is good. The second best. Sean kicks AZZ. Always will. Plus he had the hottest little roadster, the one with the ejector seat....

Five favorites on Friday

Lynda has this thing going on Friday. Five favorties, what a fun game! You can play too. Either list your five favorites in comments here or do it yerself on yer own blog. But let us know.
She tells us this week 'favorite design'. WELL! Obviously I love sock designs, and so first, of course, you have argyle, then you have striped....and I wish I had polka dot (none in my drawers at the moment) and I wish I had cheetah print and tiger stripe, YEAH!

frog legs and turtle soup

(turtle butter dish by Gary Rith)

Keep on Loving You

So I am at the Cornell studios yesterday poking around and making elephants and all and somebody has the classic rock station on, and there's REO Speedwagon. Never my favorite, but you have to admit, their songs were very catchy. So I endeavored to post their Keep on Loving You and DISCOVERED to my great delight that it has been covered by many bands, and BETTER.
First, that Texan Lisa Loeb (holy cats she is SOOOOOOOO CUTE!), then the Donnas (HOLY CATS THEY ARE SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO CUTE!) then the original, which is not cute, but you know, it is what it is.

I'll be your Richard Gere if you'll be my Deborah Harry

(Blondie, the first girlfriend I never had....)

Missus Babycakes needed a ride home tonight.
I said "just call me baby,
anytime....."

go picnik or go home!

My pal red dirt mule asks how I do the funky thang with my pics. PICNIK baybee! Text, stickers, wild colors: all free. Lynda showed me, thanks Lynda!!!!

And in pottery news, it is remarkable how much time you can spend fiddling with a big cookie jar sporting 3 elephants....

MAGNUM and me

(Gary Rith with Petey and Jack, 1996, Magnum PI in 1980)
Times were different back then. In 1993 I was 27 and about to teach high schoolers. I looked 15 and KNEW I'd be cool with a stache. Just like my boyhood hero MAGNUM PI. You loved that show, funny, a little action, a lot of slacking, a lot of chicks on the beach, every boys dream. So I grew the stache.
The wife, who is very polite and reticent, never told me anything until the day ten years later, in 2003, when she came home from work, it was gone, and she admitted shw would NOT miss the stache. By then, of course, twas quite a bushy thing. I thought it meant MACHO but times had changed and to a lot of men of a certain type it meant Village People and leather boys, and sorry, I don't play for that team. To a lot of women it meant "tee hee, p*rn star!!!" and to my high school students? It meant Ned Flanders, which always kept the little monsters laughing "HAHA Mister Rith you look like NED FLANDERS!!!". OK, whatever. We had ten good years together. Then you get to the age where suddenly you are NOT trying to look older!

whoa, lookit that!

(Gary Rith in 1996 teaching at Cush!ng Academy, and working in the Bennington College ceramics studio in 1986 with one of his vases)

I was looking for the cafe logo, below, and came across these old pics I had scanned. I had taught English and art at a boarding prep school in Massachusetts in the 90s (yes I had to wear jacket and tie all the time--interesting contrast to my scruffy self in college and now, eh?), also coached cross country and track and ran the yearbook and was a dorm parent--they run you f###ing ragged when you teach at a boarding school, it was fun for awhile. Now I hate kids. (kidding!) (but wait, they are childless, so maybe he isn't kidding)
Then the lower pic is me in my college student days. Art students had to study two disciplines, and mine were architecture and ceramics. I came to hate architecture by the time I was a senior (not kidding!) but it made for a good design background.

I dreamt that me and Missus Chocolate Brownie were thieves. We were taking all kinds of stuff out of a garage and loading it into a rickity cart and there were people all around but we were playing it nonchalant....and she distracted would-be witnesses by stripping down to her HAWT undies as we made our escape. Presumably my wife's idea was that in looking at her in her hawt undies they wouldn't notice the cart full of electronics we were escaping with....

Today I deliver a load of monster mugs to Manndible Cafe. That is their logo, and it makes for a very amusing handmade mug. I should make some more to sell here.....

over at Ben's.....

Went over to Ben's today. Ben is a painter who has also done some wild work with clay, and we are doing some projects together, like I make the vase, he paints newd ladies on them. Or whatever. Ben lives like a real artist: in a huge loft which is in a huge former chicken coop, which is inhabited by: a blacksmith, a furniture maker (both those dudes make pieces that cost thousands for EACH item) another painter or 2, a band who has a recording studio there 6-7 different artists doing amazing work. Plus a couple of dogs wandering around. Plus Ben's cat who is Spike's cousin, and this is, like Spike, a champion mouser (needed in a former chicken coop) and also totally sweet and purrific.
Look at the one pic there---it shows a long and narrow watercolor landscape, alongside a bright abrstracted landscape? That's Ben--totally skilled, totally experimental, totally able to perfectly copy a scene OR see it through another eye....

Spike gets down with Felix

(Gary and Spike)

As readers may know, I love Felix the cat. If you are a student of Felix, you realize that the original cartoon (see below) comes from 1919, then he was brought back in the 1950s, which was the series I grew up watching, and then again brought back in the 90s, as I posted yesterday.

So Friday I am wearing my new Felix tee and walking in downtown Ithaca, I am not kidding here, and a lady stops her car and sez "I love your tee, esp. the back!". Later me and the missus were at our favorite ratty bar and the bartender is like "awesome tee man!". I love my new Felix the Cat shirt so much, which Missus Buttercup gave me for Easter (and I happen to be wearing today) that I had to buy a second (which arrived today!)and you can get one for yerself!!!!!!!!

Felix was first called Tom and later renamed Felix.

le froig

(frog vase and mug and inch worm mug and 2 glaze test creamers by Gary Rith)

What's white on the outside, and green on the inside?
A frog sandwich!

What does a frog wear on St. Patrick's day?
Nothing!

NOT nekkid men....OK, maybe some

(2000+ year old Greek vase with a newd dude, vases by Gary Rith)
My real-life-lives-across-town-plus-he-blogs-and-paints buddy Ben (see below) and I are working on a project. Ben likes the traditionally shaped vases I make and he is a painter and wanted to go Grecian.
The Greeks of antiquity had a thing for painting newd men on vases. Ladies wore togas. Ben and I are thinking of decorating vases in the obviously much improved way of newd ladies and the men in togas. Or maybe forget the dudes entirely.
I am going over to Ben's with these tomorrow for stage two of Operation Nekkid Lady Vases.....

Spike and Felix

Spike is somewhat comical.
Here's a more recent Felix the Cat cartoon....nothing like the ones I saw when I was young!



and part 2

inchworm and frog mugs

Jack: Why was the inchworm angry?
Jill: Don’t know. Why?
Jack: It was told to convert to the metric system!...


(mugs by Gary Rith)

Dimitri from Paris

"How do I look?"
"Very good. I must say I am amazed."
"I am a very stylish girl."

selected shorts

We are going to the live broadcast of NPR's selected shorts which has come to Cornell for the evening.
I changed out of my jeans and sneaks.

the trivia of the day

(pots by Gary Rith being glazed and the glaze dungeon)
I have said it before: the trapdoor in my beautiful studio leads to a dungeon, where I store clay and glaze supplies and mix glazes (trying not to mix glazes very often because it isn't fun). It is a walkout basement, and I desperately need to fill my glaze buckets. But it is an inside-outside thing, because I wash the buckets out back with the hose. It was sunny and 68 all weekend and I didn't get around to it and today is windy rainy and 30s, yuck! I mixed glaze all morning and froze. I'll get back to it when it is warmer.
Also as I say, our house was built in 1865, and it may be purple now but it was originally a one room log cabin, and when you go into the basement you see LOGS and you see rocks from the river behind the house. This is the only basement in the area that does NOT flood in the springtime if you can believe it. This house is unbelieveably solid (knock on wood).

Penny and Buster wrestle at dinner time. Here they are.

monetize your cat

There was talk about monetizing your blog at Cheri's. I am monetizing Spike. He is a helluva spokesman.

Creed

My pal Lynda posted a rather good music clip from her church. NOT choral, an ensemble.
Got me thinking of the Christian band Creed who also happens to be a kick azz hard rock metal band, or would you say they are a hard rock and metal band who also happens to be Christian?
Oh my goodness, they are so good, you have to give them a listen.

a real hamster and a fake elephant or 3

A dream come true? This is not my dream hamster Robert, this is George. I was hamstersitting over the last few days. He warmed up to me a little bit. Hamsters are cute, but not really cuddly, snuggly and intelligent, are they?

(elephant teaset by Gary Rith)