a few pieces...

(pottery by Gary Rith)

A patriotic message from Penny

Penny is wearing her TEAM USA jacket and we thought we would tell the world we support US hockey today against evil Canada, but my sign looks a little small doesn't it?
You would think I would be down at my third favorite bar later watching the game, but NO, I shall be at the cinema watching WALLACE AND GROMIT's new short movie.
Here's Penny doing some dancing and rolling in the snow.

a pottery post for a change...

With Spike the cat and some lewd videos thrown in.
This groovy elephant teapot is an unusual color scheme for me, as it was coated with some experimental glazes at Cornell. The blue green is MYSTERY and the red is something like VOLCANIC LAVA and the end result is rather wonderful. More customary elephant color schemes on these mugs.

Spike is probably sick of me and my flash.


My British pal Grit in the Gears introsuced me to this comic genius.....

"you're like a POTTERY ROCK STAR"

So, you know, we're down at the Chapterhouse Bar with the beers, per usual on Friday afternoon, and Tommy and the missus and me are messing with the camera, and this stranger comes up (the Chapterhouse is a super friendly place) and sez she'll take our picture:
"I always have time to take pictures of the famous potter" and I am like
"Who are YOU?" and she sez something about my elephants, my mugs and looking me up online and I must admit I lost track of the convo there but I introduce us all and then she is like
"Yeah, I drive past you walking your dogs all the time too!" and she is wonderfully nice and moves off with her pals and Tommy turns to me
"wow, you're like a POTTERY ROCK STAR!"
Ahem.
Anyway, in case you were wondering, across from the Chapterhouse Bar is this creek at the bottom of a gorge which is hundreds of feet deep. You will see it here, including a tiny little bridge way down there, and a boatload of snow.....

"your house looks like a cupcake!"

I am outside shoveling and Terri Ann and Chris across the street are also shoveling and then we are talking and they tell me
"we decided that your house looks like a cupcake!"
HoHOHO! So festive and bright and yummy looking :)

losing the flamingo

A wee bit snowy out there today :)

More teapot JOY! More snow JOY!

SO, as I have said, I have been making zillions of these little one and 2 cup teapot experiments which is such a fun exercise I may never go back to full size (that is not true). I have developed a theory: Beagles come in 2 sizes, 15 inch which are the most common, and the much smaller 13 inch size. Whereas a beagle is cute, if you make it SMALLER it is MUCH cuter. Like my Penny. Here in the snow last night.
At that point, according to my neighbor and his ruler, we had 15 inches of snow. We shoveled. This morning there seems to be at least another 12-24 inches on my porch. I could only push my door open a few inches to let the dogs out, the snow is blocking the dooor closed. They couldn't go more than a couple of feet, and did their business right there in the snow on the porch....







Remember the early 00s when the Killers came on the radio and kicked AZZ? Before their cute boy singer grew a beard and their music went down the tubes? Dig some awesome stuff from their beginning....

the CUTEST thing you have ever seen in your life

(teapot by Gary Rith)
I take my responsibility as an obsessive-compulsive-anarcho-punk-neurotic-ironic-jokester blogger seriously. I figure if I keep throwing spaghetti at the wall, something will stick, ie: you will be amused. Because I am amused and I cannot help myself, I love blogging. And I love potting---I am so excited, this little teapot JUST came out of a kiln firing (having repaired the kiln twice this week it feels like a miracle) and it is a TINY one cup teapot (I have a couple of these tiny handles I want to use) and of course I wuv my pets. Who know what to do when its cold out...

"UNUSUAL PRACTICES"

A friend who shall remain anonymous sent this rather funny article to me. When you think about it, 1960 or so, this was what our parents (of GEN Xers) were told.
You kinda wonder what these UNUSUAL PRACTICES are, but you are NOT surprised that the late 1960s ushered in a WHOLE NEW way of looking at relationships and unusual practices....

Le Blizzard, Le Pennster

Not the world's worst snow storm, but a) it is quite snowy now and
b) s'posed to become super windy and more snowy this afternoon therefore
c) I cancelled my Cornell U. ceramics class for this afternoon.
Fork it. I am not risking life and limb for the sake of a few pots. Much as I love my students :)
As I said in the post below, Penny has a new winter jacket, her first, JUST IN TIME! Isn't she cute? And check the movie. I noticed the last movie I posted of her has only one star out of 5 probably because some idiot 15 year old in Singapore came across it and thought he would be MEAN and give it a low rating.....

my little winter olympian

We live in a little speck of a town just outside of a little city, but the buses come through regularly and that is how the wife travels to work at Cornell. Over the years she has gotten to know many of the other riders, and they are all pals (except for a few of the scary looking guys in the back of the bus sipping who knows what out of paper bags).
I often wait for the wife to hop off the bus by our house at the end of the day, so everybody knows she lives in a purple house and has a cute 13 inch beagle. Yesterday another lady on the bus explained
"I had a 13 inch beagle but she passed away. This was her winter coat. I feel like I should have burned it when she died, but maybe you would like it for Penny?".
Penny is, naturally, pretty good natured and up for any adventure, but extra cold weather is hard for a dog with a thin coat and HOLY CATS this jacket is an exact fit! Doesn't she look sharp! Tres patriotic too in red, white and blue.
And we are in it today alright, HUGE blizzard in the making. We already had a foot of snow on the ground, it started falling last night, supposed to accumulate and be horrible until tomorrow. She will need this coat. I have a class to teach at Cornell this afternoon. I am not sure yet whether to cancel.




Ohmygoodness, you have seen me post this video before, but it is SO good...

Mr Gnu and Me

The Cornell Sun newspaper runs Mr Gnu the comic, which is pretty perverse, and I noticed some enterprising young tagger has made a stencil to decorate campus with Mr Gnu flipping the bird....and sometimes you just want to flip the bird at the world, don't you????

Exquisite music, all over the radio, enjoy them live

ROCKIN' THE RASPBERRY PANTS

OK, here's a story you won't believe. Keep reading....
(me doing that ZOOLANDER thang)

Alright, so last week? My kiln craps out, right????? I am able to fix it and it fires correctly twice then today its all loaded and ready to fire to 2200 degrees today, BUT THE ALARM goes off at 8am when the kiln reaches 700 degrees, DAMMITALL!
I am cursing, I am cussing, only thing to do is unplug, let it cool, take it apart later and fix whatever is broken NOW. But I have no time to fire the kiln Thurs-Sunday, I needed to fire it today and go to the store tomorrow etc. But I get this flash of inspiration, and tell the wife that early today I can go to the store instead, and if she comes along before work (this being her birthday week) I can drop her at her favorite second hand store for 45 mins or so. And I do.

I return and she is like "which brown skirt do you like?" which is like the KISS OF DEATH to a husband--I mean, who cares what I think, husbands have to sort of nod and smile and let the wife decide----except in this case it was easy.
"Look honey, this one looks OK, but that one is babysh!t brown. Get the un-babysh!t brown skirt" and she sees the logic of that, and we go to the register.
And there, shining brightly behind the check out is THE MOST GORGEOUS leather jacket you have ever seen in your life and I see the tag sez COACH and XS, the wife being tiny: and I say to the lady
"hold on a sec with the skirt, can my wife try on that jacket?" it being her birthday week and all and we step over to the side, and the lady sez
"there are more over there"
but this one is SO BEAUTIFUL and close to brand new and a PERFECT FIT and a PERFECT STYLE but we go look at the others and I am like
"holy shirt, lookit those men's raspberry colored Levis!!!!!!!!!! MY SIZE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
and we go up to the register AGAIN and get the 2 dollar skirt, the 4 dollar RASPBERRY COLORED LEVIS for me and the not-exactly-free-but-fantastic-price leather jacket and empty out or wallets and off we go....
and then Georges and Jacques Le Soq are all over me. Georges is like
"mon ami, get zee gold jacket, I try on dese pants" and he does and I am like
"HA! I don't have to share with you, they are TOO BIG!" and since the wife isn't around, he grabs the leather jacket and puts it on and I am like "HAHA she doesn't have to share her jacket either!!!" and Georges is like
"MERDE! Dese greedy Americans...."
"



I got these boys TOPPED....

she was a 9 and a half....

The wife tells me this joke over the coffee:
"On a scale of one to ten she was a nine and a half.
But I'll settle"

The wife sez "don't make Alannis Morrisette angry" when she hears YOU OUTTA KNOW
but really what I was thinking last night as I sipped my chardonnay "its like a black fly in your chardonnay...." etc :)



(mug and bowls by Gary Rith)

Death and taxes, tea and cookies, bunnies and _____

(teapots by Gary Rith)
Awesome joke, thanks MARY STAROSTA!
The local bar was so sure that its bartender was the strongest man around that they offered a standing $1000 bet.

The bartender would squeeze a lemon until all the juice ran into a glass, and hand the lemon to a patron. Anyone who could squeeze one more drop of juice out would win the money.

Many people had tried over time (weight lifters, longshoremen, etc.) but nobody could do it.

One day a scrawny little man came in, wearing thick glasses and a polyester suit, and said in a tiny, squeaky voice, "I'd like to try the bet."

After the laughter had died down, the bartender said OK, grabbed a lemon, and squeezed away. He then handed the wrinkled remains of the rind to the little man.

But the crowd's laughter turned to total silence as the man clenched his fist around the lemon and six drops fell into the glass.

As the crowd cheered, the bartender paid the $1000, and asked the little man, "what do you do for a living? Are you a lumberjack, a weight lifter, or what?"

The man replied, "I work for the IRS."

OH CANADA....

On their way back from lower NY to the great white north, Gord and Bridget (see the thing on the irish visitors down a couple posts)stopped here so they could snorfle some more triple chocolate cookies. People will travel across states, across borders, across OCEANS for my triple chocolate cookies. You can see Penny was about to rip Gord's lungs out, channeling her inner pit bull (OK, truth is, a visit here might include cookies and a small and adorable beagle in your lap.)
Our older dog Buster who turns 11 this week, sadly has terrible trouble with his back legs today. Yesterday morning he walked 2 miles and then was running around in the yard with Penny--really running--and maybe he pulled a muscle or something, but now he keeps slipping on the ice outside, which makes it worse. Sweet dog, hope he'll be OK.


At Cornell I like to use this white and blue color scheme.

(mugs by Gary Rith)
Heaven is half pipe, you didn't know that did you????

the wife turns FIFTY :)

When you meet a 29 year old woman do you say to yourself "in 21 years, is she still gonna be FOXY? Is she gonna be this HAWT in a whole new century, when we are both OLD? I mean, when she turns 50, I will still be 43"
No. You don't say it. You don't think it.
But what if she isn't 29 like the first time you met, she is now turning 50, and more gorgeous than ever? You're like "MAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan, I hit the lottery" especially if she is such a sweetie pie like my missus, facing her fiftieth birthday this week. And the bonus has always been, she is nice to ME. I always feel like this ridiculous Roger Rabbit character, this silly little guy, and as Jessica Rabbit said when asked what she saw in Roger
"he makes me laugh". I try and she is worth it :)
(doesn't she look forking AWESOME?)

the Irish are the cutest people on earth: an international blogging incident

I guess Irish people probably don't get out of bed everyday and say "damn, I AM CUTE", but with the way they talk? That Irish accent that sounds like a poetic purr? THEY COULD say that.
We drove down to suburban NY yesterday to meet Louise and Benny and have an engagement party, but not just any engagement party. They are from Ireland, and none of us had ever met for real (well, we have met Gord from Canada and his wife, and Kate and Jim visited us here a couple of years ago).
You see, for several years we have all read the blog Old Grey Poet from Great Britain, exchanged comments and blogs and even gifts...and thanks to that single common thread, now we have all met up.
No axe murderers amongst us, and we are all as we might have imagined, except you pretty much want the young Irish couple to just sit there and TALK :)
In other news, Jacques Le Soq, Georges cousin, flew in from France, but you know how the French get at parties, sorta eating everything in sight and drinking all the wine and arguing existentialism...








(Back row--Benny, Bridget Campbell, Kate and Jim our hosts, front--Louise, Gord Campbell, My Missus, me and a kitteh----Georges le Soq and Jacques Le Soq were in the kitchen finishing the cookies)

Bowls and Beers: must be Friday :)

Last week on Friday afternoon, we are all down at the Chapterhouse bar and I had been working at Cornell Pot Shop all afternoon and I am like
"Benji, you outta join me next week at the pot shop, check it out" cause Benji is a painter who has also done a lot of ceramics and sculpture, and so today, he comes along and Max and Tommy are there and Paul and Sofia and we are all makin' stuff and gossiping about YOU (really!) and then, of course, you celebrate week's end by going to the Chapterhouse and Nicki came along and my Missus of course and Benji carves a little lanscape into the table and....

HEY, I am on a secret mission--reporting back Saturday eve or Sunday :)