party party
December 31, 2010
Barbie cake, November 1971. It was for my youngest aunt’s 8th birthday, 3 weeks before I was born. I wish I had this beautiful formica table from my grandparents’ kitchen; the chair vinyl is printed with the same pattern as the table top. LOVE.
Scanned from old negatives (Kodak Safety Film).
Posted by jodi on December 31, 2010 at 6.55pm
cinzano and music
December 28, 2010
Tonight on The Listening Project.
Posted by jodi on December 28, 2010 at 8.12pm
joy, 1957 to 1973
December 22, 2010
Scanned from my granddad’s negatives, shot on 35mm Ilford HP3. Granddad had labeled the negative “Glynis on lawn”; I think Glynis is my dad’s cousin. That’s my dad rolling in from the left, in danger of being kicked on the bum by (I think) his sister Sally.
Me playing the same game with my cousins Jon (in the jumper that matches mine) and Karen (flopping in from the right of the frame) in our grandma’s living room. Scanned from old negatives; a wee bit of the next frame left in just because it’s awesome.
Posted by jodi on December 22, 2010 at 5.48pm
from saturday: why i love ray hudson
December 20, 2010
Barca: being awesome (as usual) and kind of cheeky.
Phil: Oh look inside the box.
Ray: (chortling) Absolutely delightful, audacious, radiant football, inside their own six yard box, in front of their goalkeeper they play it ticky-tacka.
Phil: If you’re the manager you wouldn’t be having a heart attack on the sidelines?
Ray: Kissing their bums in the shower, Phil, is what I’d be doing.
Posted by jodi on December 20, 2010 at 10.05am
the smug satisfaction of making food out of garbage
December 19, 2010
Leeks, celery, a few onions and several grocery bags of saved carrot ends, broccoli stems and cauliflower hearts (which I save up in the freezer until I have enough), ready to yield up their last bits of goodness into soup stock. This much stuff in a 20 quart stock pot filled to the top with water and boiled for half the day yields six or seven two-cup containers of beautiful dark golden strong-flavoured stock for the freezer.
Posted by jodi on December 19, 2010 at 8.54pm
record cleaning machine
December 17, 2010
Cleaning records in preparation for our first ever installment of The Listening Project, which starts tonight! In half an hour, in fact!
We mixed up a cleaning solution of distilled water, vinegar and dishsoap, which is much less expensive than the little bottle of cleaner that came with the machine, but also more work because you have to rinse it off with water. You dribble the fluid on the spinning record, work it into the groove with a stiff brush, then lower the vacuum nozzle which sucks all of the liquid off the record’s surface. It’s totally cool (and a little dorky).
Other necessary preparations completed: seeking out as many youtube videos as possible for songs that appear on the 4 records we’ll be discussing in our first listening party, so that our friends out on the internets can listen along; mixing up a can of frozen concentrated orange juice, for the bourbon; assembling pillows and laptops and an afghan for my feet in the upstairs music room. Since I don’t expect anybody to show up at the door tonight I might get into my pyjamas before we start. I still have about 20 minutes to decide, not accounting for bourbon-and-orange-juice mixing time.
Needle drops at 8:00!
Posted by jodi on December 17, 2010 at 7.33pm
eryngium (sea holly)
December 15, 2010
A little early birthday gift to myself. I’ll now spend the rest of my life telling people no, it’s not a scotch thistle. Don’t worry, it’s not crooked, I’m just holding my arm funny.
Drawn by me, inked by qpaukl kimmerly at rEvolution gallery + studio in beautiful downtown Kingsville, Ontario.
Posted by jodi on December 15, 2010 at 11.40am
watch this space
December 14, 2010
I only just realized this morning that my desire to cross the line between “person with tattoos” and “heavily tattoed person” is a symptom of the same horror vacui that dictates that my prints must be buried under a stifling amount of imagery, that my dining room plate rail must overflow with tchotchkes, that the paper, fabric, yarn and drawing materials in my home studio must be visible at all times, that my wardrobe be a ragtag mess of colourful layers. Possibly also the same instinct that has me lugging around a purse containing three notebooks, a pencil case full of markers, anywhere from four to eight cameras at a time, two or more knitting projects. . .
Heading to Kingsville today to fill up some more empty space.
Posted by jodi on December 14, 2010 at 9.40am
introducing. . . the listening project
December 13, 2010
It’s been two years in the making, but Peter and I are finally ready to launch the listening project. And we’ll be hosting our first ever listening party this Friday night! The format will be as follows: we’ll choose a selection of 4 or more records (working through our collection in chronological order by release date), announce in advance what we’ll be listening to on a given date, and invite anyone who likes music (or talking about music) to join us in a conversation in the listening project weblog comments, which will open for each album as the needle drops. We’ll be posting images of the sleeves, discs and any ephemera found inside (the letter from a teenager to her brother in juvenile detention, found inside my used copy of Ozzy Osborne’s Bark at the Moon, is still thus far the most amazing such example). So if you don’t care about the music, come and talk about the cover art. Or tell us your remember-whens about that time when that music played a part in your life, or that awesome adventure you still associate in your mind with whatever was in the car’s tape deck at the time. We want it all.
We won’t be streaming the music or offering it for download, but we’ll try to provide links to online archived music when possible for anyone who wants to listen along. Of course if you have your own copies of the records we feature then you can cue them up and listen with us that way. And if you’re in our neighbourhood, you’re welcome to drop by to listen with us, sift through our record collection, or play along on the keyboard, accordion, drum machine, balalaika, air guitar, whatever (please bring your own air guitar). I’ll make snacks!
When we started planning two years ago we had just over 600 records in our collection, and since then we’ve been actively building the collection in anticipation of this project. There are currently 1067 records in the collection but we’ve still got some areas in which we hope to expand further, particularly the following: early Canadian country and female country vocalists, Motown, early funk and soul, lesser known new wave and punk, early electronica that is not disco, 60s underground psychedelia, and the core essentials of CanCon like the Tragically Hip and Rheostatics. We’re always open to offers of donations and trades (I’m looking at you, Dad, and all of those Skeeter Davis records I spotted on your shelves last week!).
You can read a little more about the inspiration for the project here: about the project.
Please feel free to browse the online database of our record collection here: browse the collection (there’s also a link in the sidebar to view the collection in chronological order).
View the first listening party announcement, and the list of records we’ll be listening to, here: listening party!
And add us to your RSS feed reader to get updates on other listening parties, coming soon.
Y’all should join us! All you need is an internet connection and something to say.
Posted by jodi on December 13, 2010 at 7.58pm
photo
December 11, 2010
Discount Liquor, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Shot with the Harinezumi digital, October 2010.
Posted by jodi on December 11, 2010 at 8.38am
