Georges Le Soq takes Manhattan.....

We were on the bus to NY city Saturday, and somewhere around I-80 I hear sounds coming from the wife's backpack. We had a STOWAWAY, my rotton French sock monkey Georges Le Soq...we considered leaving him in the backpack where he might have run out of oxygen, but he was kicking and screaming so much the other people on the bus were starting to look at us strangely....
we got off the bus in Bryant Park behing the NY Public Library and went down into the subway and headed downtown....


.....our destination was Nolita, where Georges saw this store full of monkeys, the area just east of Soho for lunch at

Wild Ginger on Broome street...YES, we were there in August...vegan Thai place, holy cats it is dynamite, my favorite restaurant on earth....
..then we joined all the other Eurotrash like Georges over in Soho so we could shop and have a coffee at the same dang yuppie coffee joint on every other city corner on earth..except, you see, I have a gift card, so why not go to starschmucks and dig the sexy scenesters and supermodels?
The wife tells me I am a HIPSTER, oh yes she does....


I had lived briefly in NY city in the mid 80s, on Wooster St in SOHO, near that starschmucks (but long before there were overpriced coffee joints). NY city was a shaggy and and funky place then, a lot more safe and clean nowadays for sure. I walked a lot when I lived in NY city, and still do. Just north of SOHO is NY University and the village and Washington Square park, a favorite neighborhood of mine, with a zillion wonderful artists, writers, transvestites and pug dogs in costume... Georges wanted a photo of himself framed by the arch looking up Firth Ave at the Empire State Building....


A big goal of the day was to head back up to midtown---a relative just bought an apartment on 57th street and we wanted our first look at the place. I know, we have a relative living at the center of the UNIVERSE!!!!! This is the terrace...and you are welcome to say HOLY CATS that is sooooo cooooooooolllllll.....

Dinner, as in August, at heartland Brewery, whose beers I would kill for....Georges says the same thing....

Usual tourist type shots eh?




The wife got these awesome Versaci pants in NY--she is a skinny b!tch, isn't she (Just like the book of that title) But by GOD she is super gorgeous...(thanks Cheri for the San Diego tee and emily for the purple hat!)

Georges Le Soq = psycho killer + chef

"Can it be true?" I ask myself yesterday as I hear the gleeful and sadistic screeching of my rotton French sock monkey, Georges Le Soq downstairs. And it IS true, he has again gotten into the fridge AND the knives.
I arrive downstairs and discover a bowl full of tasty pineapple chunks and I am like
"Georges! Did he put up much of a fight?" and help myself and Georges is like
"mon ami, for a 'peaceful vegetarian' you are, like me, how you say, a SICKO"
and I cannot really argue with that.

Georges and I are on a BIG AZZ adventure and we will catcha again Sunday.
1) what are you doing for Halloween?
2) done anything sicko yourself around the house this week????

Georges Le Soq and whispers of Christmas....

My best pal Cheri in Cali sends a package yesterday: a Georges Le Soq hat! He is THAT famous, indeed he is. An early Christmas present! Maybe good for me on Halloween? We were all trying it out. I look rather BAD AZZ I think :)




We walk the dogs through fields and woods and parks every day, and our neighbor has a few baby pine trees on the edge of land that is being cleared, and we swiped some.
I was going to plant them in the yard and realized that FIRST they would make an awesome Christmas tree (we did this a few years ago with great success). I pulled the wife's dead okra plants out of this pot with Penny's help and planted our magnificent little Christmas tree and brought it into the living room: about 5 inches tall, at the most. And YES, it has a little elf stuck in there that I made....

Georges Le Soq: PSYCHO KILLER????

You hear dreadful sounds coming from the kitchen and run to look. My rotton sock monkey Georges Le Soq is chasing vegetables around the kitchen, swinging a large knife and screaming "I GEEEET YOU!".
The result, of course, was this stunningly good pizza.


Believe it or not, work is getting done too, like glazing and such......

It is all HER fault

This morning I am sitting there at the table, the usual feverish, runny nosed self, and the wife tells me:
"when you were snoring last night, I didn't poke you" and she seems pleased with herself.
And I am like
"I snored????" and she is like "well, sorta UCK, nuck sounding..." and I am like
"oh, heavy breathing?" and she is like "no, snoring, but I didn't wake you!" and I am like "well, I poked YOU when you were snoring" and she is like "I know" and she gives me this superior look and says "more than once".
She is a better human being than me, but she KNOWS she is the one responsible for this cold, and so she wrote this:

So, I gave Gary a bad cold and I really didn’t mean to and, geez, if I had realized what I had done, believe me I wouldn’t have done it, not for one little minute. I mean, I was sick and I was out for two days from work and my big accomplishment? Filing my nails. And that was on the second day when I was feeling better. And here was my hero, showing up at my bedside every now and then plying me with meals and hot beverages and such so I could keep up my strength.



The problem with being a potter and working every day is that, well, you work every day. So I had skipped off to work, granted a little wan and turtleneck clad, and my poor schweetheart succumbed to all of this awfulness. But there is no one to tempt him with treats and meals and coffee to separate the waking and moaning from the sleeping and groaning. And every time a dog needed to go out he had to get up (he did not get up every time a cat claimed to be hungry). Which is often enough, even if they did come right back in and return to being heater woobies. And then it’s back to making and trimming and finishing pots and working until your hands freeze and resting until they thaw and back again. See how long it would take to get better after those harsh conditions?



Next time I get sick I’ll be banished to a separate room with a narrow bed and all my meals will be slid under the door. With luck they will be quite flat. And no cat or dog will be able to comfort me because I’ll have germs and can’t get them on the animals to get on Gary. Oh, how awful! How soon is spring?

a guest post

(penguin mug by Gary Rith)
The wife went to a writer's conference of some kind this weekend, and used a photo of *surprise* somebody making pots on the wheel to write an essay.
She wrote this amusing piece as the sort of internal conflict and nerves that can go through somebody's mind while trying to get a blob of flying mud to behave...


Maude Rith Sunday, October 24, 2010



Okay, first impression, ha, ha, ha. We’ve got the clay centered now to shape it, bend it to my will. I am mighty. Ha! Oh, did I say ‘ha’ already? Different context.

Concentrate, Sweetie, concentrate, this clay depends on you. It's not all brute strength is it? No, work with the clay, be it, see what you want to do, where you want to go. Well, first of all I want to bring my fingers down closer to the bottom of the pot, then I want to pull the sides. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I coulda guessed that but where to you want to go? Oh, you mean like "I want to crate a lyrical, soaring pot that transcends the mere mind it's made of to evoke mythology in its most essential form to echo man's essence.”

Are you making fun of me?

Oh no, darling, I wouldn’t dare.

So you are making fun of me

Well, what did you expect me to say? I’m shaping a pot, maybe I don’t know yet. Maybe I won’t know until the second or third pull.

What?

What do you mean, what? What the pot wants to be, silly, cylinder bowl, vase, ginger jar, agora, water jug, flower pot, casserole . . .

Alright, alright already.

Teapot, mug, bean pot, gravy boat . . .

You would not make a gravy boat.

Careful, you’re going to wreck my concentration and I you do, so help me--

What? You’ll tell me to shut up?

Shut up! Now I’m thinning the walls and if it wants to be chocked in, it’ll be a vase or a ginger jar.

Well I’m supposed you didn’t pronounce it vahse.

Shut up.

Vase, vahse, vase, vahse, vase, vase, vase.

Will you just shut up already?

No way, I want to hear the list. Aren’t you going to say, “sardine dish?”

Any other Victorian accoutrements you wish to mention? I’m about to start concentrating and really shut you out.

I hope your finger pokes into it.

Thanks so much. Do you mind?

I’ll just sit here humming (You are here and warm, but I could look away and you’d be gone)

I really hate that song.

It’s on the radio.

Well, I was able to tune it out.

Ha, ha, no pun intended, huh?

Okay, you just made me goof the top edge. Now quiet while I fix it.

magnificent weekend :)

Penny has been spending a lot time on the computer lately, should I be worried?
I gave Spike a bird feeder outside the window. He sits there all day leaping at them....


We saw Zach Galiafin...(however his name is spelt) in ITS KIND OF A FUNNY STORY. Golly it was fantastico, brilliant, sweet, perfect! Dig this clip below

Georges Le Soq murderizes the MacIntoshes!

My rotton French sock monkey Georges Le Soq is running around the kitchen with a knife yesterday, chasing 2 frightened apples until he corners them on the cutting board. He is like:
"I geet you, you miserable red snacks, I geet you and I grind you into applesauce!" and I am like
"Georges, maybe you could make a tart instead?" and the knife FLIES and THWACK, there goes a slice and he says
"oui, I would zay she was a cheap tart, zo I make zee cheap tart" and again, the knife FLIES and THWACK another apple is sacrificed to the oven....and OH MY, so tasty....

well, OK, since its Friday.....

You know, Spike and Penny doing the usual horsing around...although this should have a comic book KAPOW on it, right?
Julie is like
"I will need elephant mugs!" and looking below, I hope she sees something she likes.
And I wrote a brilliant haiku last night:

Doggy snores loudly
Under covers next to me
Dreaming of bunnies

here at the north pole in Santa's workshop...

You hear on the radio and such: "snow showers" and you sigh but then again, there is just SO MUCH to do here in Santa's workshop: like these piggy banks, sugar bowls and a teapot, start to finish...some of the things I am making today. You need some of this in your stocking I bet....

about 32....

It was super cold, about 32, Wednesday morning, and Penny and I dusted off our coats before walking. OH WELL just 6+ more months of this cold stuff....

Denis sends this joke:
2 (he says blondes, but what could we say instead? 2 republicans?)
OK, so, 2 not terribly bright people fly to Orlando for vacation. Driving down the highway, they spy a sign "Disney left".
They each started crying, did a Uturn and flew home....

Which is appropriate: I dreamt I had gone with the wife to a resort like that, and I lost her. She disappeared! Some kind of medical emergency somewhere, I just couldn't find her, and I gratefully awoke.....

flinging poo

(sugar bowls by Gary Rith)
I think the first book I remember really liking, although it is a weird book, was Babar, and I think that the first movie I ever saw at a cinema was either Pinocchio (LOVE it still) or Dumbo. Poor Dumbo, everybody is so mean.
Anyway, I love elephants just like I love pigs, even though it does not mean I want to hang out with them, but they make great art subjects. Dr Seuss drew them best I think, with Horton.
I was down at the zoo near here last summer talking with an employee about elephants. I was remembering that the elephants at the zoo when I lived in Chicago were pretty ornery (with good reason, they belong in the wild not a dinky cage) and they would grab some of their SIZEABLE poo balls and fling it at people. There was always poo all over the walls, everywhere. So the zooo employee tells me that they don't keep elephants there because elephants have a reputation as very difficult, and I am looking at the tigers thinking "And those guys are not? Wouldn't they swipe off your head and eat your liver just for fun????"

that was Monday!

Penny and I went to Cornell Plantations Monday, to catch the very last colorful trees of our fall.
There are a couple hundred acres of woods and gardens, stream and pond....