December 19, 2005

Minnesota Laughter And The Need To Scratch
The Portland weather people were at it again yesterday, forecasting great fear and untold troubles that were going to swoop down the Columbia Gorge and bring the city to a dead stand still. One weather personality claimed that the weather was going to be so bad that he had brought enough clothes to the studio to last him till Thursday. Ha! As punishment for his bullshit overstatements, he should be forced to wear every article he brought with him for every forecast until Thursday.

Sure we got a little dusting of snow and some rain but nothing remotely representative of those 'Ice Storm 2005' graphics that the news channels had running. Pretty underwhelming really.

It might just be me tho. I'm a little more than irritated. I've been plagued for a week now with a vicious case of Poison Oak that I picked up at my Dad's property last weekend. It's spread all over my belly and although the belly is not the worst place one could get the rash (I've had it in far worst places in my lifetime) it's proven to be quite uncomfortable. Very fucking uncomfortable.

I've been pretty fortunate in life thus far. There's only one thing that I'm allergic to and that's the dreaded Poison Oak/Ivy weed. Unfortunately, I'm very allergic to it. When I get it, I gets it bad. The simple solution would be for me to just stay in The City. But from time to time I like to get out amongst the Wild Things and run through the forests. If I stick to well worn trails usually I don't have a problem. Funny then, that my father would buy a piece of property that is completely overrun with the one thing that can bring his son to his knees. It's like, if I was Superman, my father (Jor-El) has built a house made entirely of Kryptonite. Could be that when this Poison Oak clears up I'm going to have to check myself into therapy to figure out why my father would do this to me.

December 14, 2005

Say Hello To My Little Friends
Yup. Snowbabies in the house. Gaze upon these petite porcelain statuettes with all your holiday jealousy. I got 'em and you do not. You think you got holiday spirit? Oh no, my friend. You got squat next to my bedecked babies. This is just the beginning - the tip of the iceberg of what will go down in history as the greatest collection of Department 56 figurines ever amassed by one human. My previous collection of illuminated holiday animals will pale by comparison. I will start a new blog just to document the building of my porcelain empire. A new day is dawning...

December 13, 2005

Happiness Fashion Spread!
More poor decision making: trying to use the Remington 870 to fell your Christmas tree. It's messy and unless you're using slugs or good buckshot it's pretty damn time consuming.

(Model: Afrojet, Photographer, DRF from the Verb Squad, Hooded Sweatshirt: Champion Sportswear, Corduroy Jacket: The Gap, Jeans: Levis, Boots: Red Wings, Gun: Remington)

Also, vintage photos with santa, and Beatnik Snowman available on eBay.

December 12, 2005

The Holidays Are Magical
I should be hung up by my thumbs for some of the loose and lazy thinking on my part this weekend. Indeed, sometimes the best made plans go catastrophically awry. Certainly, chief amongst those poorly thought out weekend schemes was the idea that I might save a few Christmas dollars by chopping down my own tree on my dad's property for regal display at the Ranch. I had imagined a tree display that would make local headlines. What I got was something that would make even Charlie Brown cry.

My dad's property doesn't lack for evergreen trees. There's thousands of 'em. Unfortunately, through years of Christmas commercialization, we've all got a good idea of what makes a proper Christmas tree. It's about six and a half feet tall with a straight stem, it's shaped like a nice tapered triangle, and dense as hell. For good or ill, those are the proper measurements. My tree looks like a gawky stringy teenager who grew too fast for her feet and has trouble with the whole balance thing.

Somehow, when hunting for a tree I lost all sense of scale and domestic proportions. The tree I brought home measured 15 1/2 feet from head to tail, which, when properly set up meant that the top five feet of the tree ran across the ceiling like some ridiculous Dr. Seuss drawing. After trimming it down to a more manageable eight feet, the thing was a hopeless embarrassment - a mean caricature of 'Holiday Spirit'.

To make matters worse, ALL Christmas tree stands are sold out around town! The only thing I was able to purchase was a lonely stand on some back shelf at Fred Meyer. And even though it clearly stated on the box: "For Trees Up To 7 Feet Tall", I bought the fucking thing anyway. I was desperate. Turns out they weren't kidding about the 7 Feet thing. My trees continual refusal to stand properly means that this afternoon I will be feeding the entire thing face first into my fireplace. Then I will pay the neighbor kid $50 to go to the Boy Scouts Tree Farm and buy me a $100 Christmas Tree.

December 09, 2005

Going Down South
Heading down to Pa Skelton's Southern Oregon Ranch this weekend. Plans have been made for rural styled wild west target practice, including the purchase of plastic crow decoys! Also, we'll be bringing down other appliances and "white elephant" household items that have been voted off the home decor island. I'll be shooting a 38 revolver for the first time so I'm more than a little excited.

In addition to shooting there should be some chopping as well. My Dad said he's got some nice Christmas tree specimens on the property that we can claim as our own.

Only somewhat related to chopping, Peanut Butter Wolf has a great Holiday Music Mix up on Stomesthrow.

And iTunes Signature Maker "analyzes your music collection and creates a short audio signature to represent who you are and what you listen to". Here is what mine sounds like.

December 08, 2005

The Cuisine of Comfort
As the nights turn brisk and the wind more penetrating, the home cooking has hunkered down with heavy carbohydrates. The menu around the Skelton dinner table this week reads like a heavyweight fighter's dietary training schedule. We shield ourselves from cold temperatures with fortresses built from blocks of cheese and mortar made from starch.

The beginning of the week saw a return to midwestern roots and family values as I prepared a traditional tuna hot dish garnished with crushed potato chips for extra love. Tuesday was a ten hour slow cooked chili with mountains of Tillamook cheddar and double dollops of sour cream. Wednesday night, the chili returned for round two, complimented by a sun dried tomato dip that caused such a sever food coma that I actually drooled on one of the cats while watching the season finale of America's Next Top Model.

Tonight I will show the kitchen (and my stomach) no mercy as I prepare a scalloped potato recipe that will border on gastronomic lunacy.

If you've got a staple comfort food recipe in your winter culinary arsenal (remember the Skeltons are pescatarians) I want to know about it. Send it to me and I'll rate it on a scale from one to five, where 'one' is Iggy Pop and 'five' is John Candy.

December 06, 2005

Yuletide Technicolor Champions
I gave into neighborhood holiday peer-pressure last night and went out and bought some holiday lighting 'flair' to give the Ranch a more festive appeal. After this last weekend we were the only house on our side of the street that wasn't representing some kind of holiday cheer. We were the one dark house - the lightening display scrooge of the community.

Lately we've been having some epic fog up here on the hill. The effect of the erie supernatural fog and the holiday lights combine to make a blurry translucent yuletide scene that's more reminiscent of a Hollywood Christmas slasher movie then a Bing Cosby 'White Christmas'. This is a new experience for someone who hails from the land of ice and snow.

To procure the lighting display, I had to brave a Target Store last night that was brimming with freakish masses of screaming little urchins. Every aisle was another gauntlet run through childhood discontentment. It was as if they were all in cahoots with another. Like they had organized a plan before hand with one little kid running around giving secret hand signals that indicated to the other kids specifically what level of tantrum they should throw and the sonic pitch that their screaming should attain. Exhausted parents were seen crumpled in the aisles crying softly to themselves. Others, with more energy, grabbed whatever shiny objects were nearest and attempted to hypnotize their baby with furiously spastic promenades. It was altogether surrealistic and borderline magical.

Looking for some good Christmas music to throw on the Hi-Fi? I highly recommend Christmas with the Rat Pack (Sammy Davis kills on this one), Esquivel's Merry Xmas From the Space-Age Bachelor Pad, and John Fahey's Christmas Record.

December 02, 2005

The Kitten of Alcatraz
A patient darkness, filled with cold biting rain, has filled this mornings skies. It looks and feels more like midnight then it does early morning. Yesterday, the Portland weather personalities were prognosticating that significant amounts of snow would blanket our area but their forecasting rubric was a bit off and we didn't see anything white upon the ground when we awoke. But the weather was ugly. It was a mix of icy rain and heavy wind gusts. To make matters worse, I completely lunched locking the front door at night and in the morning, when I pattered from the bed to the coffee making machine in the kitchen, I was shocked to see that the front door had been blown ajar sometime during the night. A quick head count revealed that one of the cats had seized the opportunity that the open door provided to do a little exploring. Crap.

Our cats are not outdoor cats, we keep them locked inside the safety our own personal al(cat)raz - safe from the wheels of cars, the tendencies of children and the hunger of dogs. However, our cats were born in a barn. Hence, I believe, they gravitate to the curiosities of the wilderness whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Of all the days for a kitten escape...yesterday was not a good one. We spent a good half-hour combing the Alfred Street neighborhood looking for our little runaway to no avail. The truth was she could have been anywhere. But the weather was so bad outside that we thought she wouldn't have wanted to go very far. During our search the trash men came through our block and emptied all the vessels of their purchase. Lightened of their loads all the cans at the top of the hill quickly blew over and began rolling down the street towards our house. Everything was just too weird outside.

We retreated to the house, locked the other cat away in the downstairs and then opened up the garage and the rest of the house hoping that the delinquent cat would get fed up with the nasty weather and return to the warmth of its proper home. Sure enough, ten minutes later, a soggy and vocal cat ended its truancy when it came in through the garage. Crisis averted. It did however take the remainder of the day for me to get over the heavy guilt of allowing for this to happen.

In other news: I've had the 'Greasy, Grimy, Gopher Guts' song stuck in my head all morning. It is slowely. driving. me. INSANE.