I'm Backula

That sounds like a confession that I'm actually Scott Bakula.

I came here just to reminisce, so many weird memories are encapsulized in this blog. That strange transition moving from Florida to California, dealing with getting a crappy job, finding an apartment, it's all here. I gotta say, I coped really well. I forgot certain details like having no tv, internet or smartphone. It's like the transition from being a normal well adjusted person to a millennial dick nose. Not that I'm an dick nose but let's face it, we're all dick noses. After reading back a few posts I decided to pick things up where I left off. 

Let's see, what's changed...

• I no longer work in a retail inferno. I abandoned that almost two years ago and started pursuing jewelry making full time. About a year ago I started doing wardrobe on web series, commercials and music videos. It's freelance so it's not always steady, but it's been hella awesome and is related to my background in design. Whenever work is slow I still have jewelry!

• I drive a mini-cooper, high five.

• I lost a ton of weight last year! More high fives.

What HASN'T changed...

• Still living in a too-small apartment in Pasadena

• Still making jewelry and watching movies EVERY DAY.

• Still not blogging about either as often as I should.

• Still cook A LOT. More than ever actually.

• Still have 1 husband + 2 cats. (that's barely worth noting, of course I do)

• Still obsessed with Asian markets and Lisa Frank...why would that ever change?

My thumb prints are still all over the net. You find me at all of these places...

http://wizardboobs.tumblr.com/

http://letterboxd.com/scumbalina/

http://atomiccaravan.blogspot.com/

https://www.etsy.com/shop/atomiccaravan

I have some errands to run but I just wanted to re-introduce myself. I have much to say. I shall return.

I love to eat bad food for me

Just kidding! I've been stuffing my face with fruits and vegetables lately and walking 2-4 miles a day. I get out of work ridiculously early now so I have like the ENTIRE day of a whole lot of nothing. I've been slacking on pretty much everything lately including decent eating habits so I decided to cut back on the flaming hot fuckin' cheetohs (which I miss like WHOA) and eat a goddamn carrot. The thing is, Pasadena is gorgeous and Florida was like a hot sweaty bunghole. I couldnt do anything outside of wanting to kill myself. Here it's nice and breezey and there are nice things and places in walking distance in every direction. Want to go to Out of the Closet? One mile. Trader Joe's? Half a mile. H&M and Sephora? 2 miles. There's also a nice walking park less than half a mile away. Why am I talking about this? I DON'T KNOW. I have nothing else to talk about cause I'm LAME.

My ipod's been getting a workout lately too. Been listening to a lot of Lucrate Milk, Palais Schaumburg, Maximum Joy, Grass Widow and of course Van Dyke Parks who I saw perform at Amoeba a few days ago FOR FREE. (still not over the whole free concerts at Amoeba thing). He was darling.

He doesn't look like this anymore but I still want to kiss him forever.

We sold a bunch of cds and  I won the drawing for a $20 gift certificate which amounted to about $300 total! I bought a stack of movies, mostly really bad ones! Mostly ones I've been craving for a long time but didn't want to make the leap on limited funds. Free-ish money makes you spend more liberally. I normally don't like to post about movies here because I feel like it'll make me post less about movies on Atomic Caravan, but I've been so neglectful of both blogs I don't think it really matters. This is the one I'm the most excited about...

Beautiful. I'll definitely make a point to share my thoughts on Atomic Caravan when I watch it.

I ate some vegetarian sausages from Trader Joe's for lunch that were delicious but gave me some serious farts.

On that note I will leave you.

Good day, Sir.

Beachez Foreverz

Visiting Florida for a few days. As much as I hate Panama City, it's abrasive tackiness shaped me. I wouldn't have such an unmatched lack of taste if it weren't for growing up in airbrushed t-shirts and collecting shell art.

There's a magical awfulness I love and can only try to recreate in my little one bedroom Pasadena apartment.

 On a more serious magical music note, I discovered the greatest bath product of all time. Crabtree and Evelyn has made the most lovely products. I grew up with Nantucket Briar in the shower, but I rarely buy it or experiment with their other pricey scents. This weekend being sort of an early birthday celebration I splurged on some things that make me feel like a lady! I bought this Vetiver soap that has changed my life...

intense bath time wizardry.

dainty juniper dreamz.

My flight was canceled today so instead of going through Houston tomorrow I'll be connecting through Baltimore. I keep day dreaming I'll see John Waters on my flight *heart*

Unicorn Destroyer

I want a rainbow cheetah.

I want a pizza.

I want Rosie from the Jetsons to clean my headquarters.

I want to roll around in a field of enchanted flowers.

I want to climb a crystal mountain.

I want to tug Zeus' beard.

I want a big diamond to descend from the sky and give me a kiss.




Today was almost magickal.

my tackiness knows no boundries

I just ordere these!!! WOW!

In other news, Fred Savage is really scary in the 1996 Lifetime orignal "No One Would Tell".

I'm gonna go eat a burrito.

Dirty Brown Extra Terrestrial Hashbrown Love Machine

TOBACCO - Super Gum from TOBACCO on Vimeo.

Devo and Xuxa.

I saw Devo. That's right. And it was glorious. Indescribable. Magic.

I might also add that I recently acquired a dvd of miscellaneous episodes of Xuxa. Yes, Xuxa, the vixenous children's show hostess. How I loved her. It was a pocket of my childhood I remember well. I was seven years old, it was at the peak of kid's variety shows like "What Would You Do?" and "Wild and Crazy Kids". This show is obviously a cash in on both, the success of such shows and an American vehicle for the Brazilian sensation, Xuxa. I remember colors, shoulder pads, hot pants, dancing, singing, animals, kids having fun...

Then I watched it now.

It's so terrible. Her english is so atrocious, she has no idea what's going on. The jokes aren't funny, the music's pretty lame. It's really just an awful show. Does this mean I dislike Xuxa now? Of course not. Her memory will live in my heart forever, and apart of me wonders if that's where she should have stayed. Thankfully, no matter how sucky the show might have been, there will always be this...

Do you prefer Fashion Victim or Ensembley challenged?

I always felt a kinship towards Phyllis Diller, like we're somehow the same on some basic obnoxious female level. I have every intention of being like her when I'm a little old lady.

Last night I dreamt that I got a job working with Klasky Csupo. Pretty much the great dream in the history of ever. All morning I've been wondering how impossible this dream may actually be to make a reality. I know exactly where the Klasky Csupo studios are, it's not far from where I'll be living. Surely they have some grunt work for a girl who's spent her whole life drawing monsters inspired by them.

I've been looking at a lot of fashion blogs lately. Some are so great like White Lightning, who mixes amazing thrift store finds, cool records and videos with a big helping of humor. There are some other I'm coming across though that get on my nerves. Most of the posts aren't even about fashion just repetive pictures of the blogger. You can see a lot of ego in these types of blogs. I just want to look at fun clothes and fun-other-stuff.  Faces aren't fun unless they belong to Phyllis Diller.

I watched Clueless last week for a long time in WAY-TOO-FUCKING-LONG. In fact that's part of what inspired my last post. I haven't been able to stop thinking about a few things...

*the line when Elton (Jeremy Sisto) raises his hand in class and says "I can't find my Cranberries cd!"

*How cute Brittany Murphy was when she had boobs.

* And just in general, Ambular.

What an underrated charcter. I'm so glad Elisa Donovan got to explore her a little more in the tv series. She did NOT get enough screen time in the movie. She had the funnest clothes and she was a great counterpart for Cher. I always felt like they really kind if liked eachother deep down but in that "Mean Girls" kind of way.


Just because I can't think about anything else here's an obligatory wedding update:

Spent ALLLL yesterday at my Mom's painting. I painted the rafters of the loft while watching "The Pregnancy Pact" a wonderfully awful Lifetime movie about teenage girls making an agreement to all get pregnant at the same time. How HORRIBLE! Umm...I still need shoes and some make-up from Ulta. We also need to finish our wedding playlist/mix. Things are coming along though. I'm only mildly freaked out.

That's all I got.

Music: the Formative Years

I'm sitting here drinking Turkish coffee dreading a certain visitor who'll be arriving today. I don't have to worry about him seeing this because he's way too self involved to read anyone's blogs. He's one of Arthur's "friends" from back home. I try not to be mean to him but he's a conversation hog, an attention whore and a general social retard. He seeks approval but when he gets it, he abuses it by acting out like a fool. His idea of "charm" is to be loud and flamboyant. He staggers around with no real direction flopping into total strangers. It can be pretty embarrassing to be in public with him, especially if he decides to start dancing for no reason. He claims to be interested in film and "music" but that's pretty much limited to his Tom Cruise blu-ray collection, U2 and Lady Gaga (sorry, I've got no love for her, but that's another blog), and of course the Beatles and Bob Dylan because that's like hipster 101. You can't be christened into an edgy persona before you've passed that milestone. See, I can't help but feel a little ruthless when it comes to this guy. I also feel like he's gay for Arthur and see's me as some kind of eminent threat to his "friendship". There has been more than one time he'll stick his neck in between me and Arthur if one of us is saying something to the other quietly. I can't believe he actually is coming to my territory. We're going to be back in California in a month and then I'll never be able to get rid of him. This Florida visit seems somewhat unnecessary.

ANYWAYS. That little vent should probably be under lock and key in my private journal but I just couldn't resist. These are stressful days leading up to the wedding. No, he's not staying for the wedding, he just came to distract us from everything. I told Arthur that if things get hairy I won't hesitate to leave and go shopping. He laughed and said "fair enough".

Ok, back to what's happening in Nowsville. On facebook someone tagged me in a note where they list the 15 albums that have stuck with them the most. In turn, I make a similar list with my choices. So naturally I start this epic list of all of these albums I love and have loved for years. It was hard to eliminate to a measly 15. Summing up 24 years of music listening into something like 20 hours of music. That's not even an hour for every year of my life!! It was really difficult and I felt guilty leaving some important albums off, so I decided to apply this same thing to a much more elaborate blog (or blogs, rather). Also, I think it will help get my mind off of all the stress. I'm not going to limit myself to a certain number. But I am going to break this up into eras. For this entry, I'm going to focus on everything pre-highschool. Omg, this might be a little embarrassing but here it goes in semi-chronological-order-to-when-I-discovered-it.....

This was officially the first piece of music that was "mine". I'll never forget Christmas morning when I was SIX YEARS OLD opening a big present. It turned out to be a GIANT purple Caboodle!! Remember those??? I'm pretty sure they still make them but as far as I'm concerned they belong to the 1990's. My Mom was so sneaky! She put the Roxette CASSETTE TAPE inside the Caboodle so it would be a surprise when I explored all of the compartments. And it was a wonderful surprise! One I still remember 18 years later! I really don't remember what this album sounds like at all though, I should download it!

Oooooh! How do you say Deee-lovely? Deee-vine? How do you say Deee-lite! Naturally being like 6/7 I was taken in by the amazing catchy-ness of Groove is in the Heart. I wanted the whole album but my Mom got me this Cassette single. Which was still fine! I played it until it warbled and warped. Now I've several of their albums on cd and pop them in any time I need to put on my platform shoes and go-go dance with Miss Lady Kier...which is all the time, by the way.

I believe this was my very first cd! I think I was ashamed of that for years but now looking back I'm kind of proud! En Vogue was pretty fucking hip. They got a little modernized with their late 90's albums but this one was a lot fun. Kind of Pointer Sisters-esque. I always thought they were GORGEOUS too, all of them! OMG...I need to download this or something.


...are you noticing a trend of female vocaled groups?? Make note of it.

I'm not sure where but somewhere along the line I heard "Sugar, Sugar". Maybe on the radio, maybe in a movie. I can't remember, but I thought it was the cutest song ever. I asked my Dad who it was and he said "the Archies"...I said "WHAT?? Like...my favorite comic???" I had NO idea that the Archie Digest books I'd been hoarding for years had anything to do with music. This was when I was given a brief lesson in the whole Archies sensation in the 60's. Not long after this my Dad came home with two records in hand, making this my very first LP. Isn't that cute?? I still have it :-)

Don't ask me why Dad chose this as my OTHER first record. I'd never seen this movie but I think he thought I'd enjoy the disco tunes. He was pretty much RIGHT! I LURVED this! Oh God. I'll never forget my Beegees phase. It's sort of like the Big Chill soundtrack though. The movie isn't good, you see it EVERYWHERE, you want to deny that you like it but somehow it's just a staple of it's time.

Oh, Clueless. How you changed my life. Being an impressionable FOURTH GRADER I pretty much made a conscious decision to become a character in this movie. My back to school clothes for the following year consisted of brightly colored mini skirts and knee socks. Yes, I was like 11 and dressing like Cher Horowitz. My Mom thought it was adorable, I got made fun of by the rednecks at my lame Christian school, but I didn't care. They were a bunch of "Barneys". This soundtrack made a HUGE impact on me. Discovering bands like Luscious Jackson and the Muffs lead me to riot grrl and that would of course become one of the most character defining aspects of my teenage self.

Say what you will about the Spice Girls. They're loud, obnoxious, garishly dressed and put together by a studio. It's apart of Pop Music history that most people try to forget. I remember the first time I heard "Wannabe"! I was in my room, my Mom was having a dinner party downstairs and it came on the radio! I turned it up so loud that she came and yelled at my to turn it down :-).  I was already inspired by the bold fashion statements of Miss Lady Kier and Cher Horowitz, the Spice Girls were the proverbial nail in the coffin of my day-glo freak-fest attire. And yes, "Girl Power" totally attributed to what would later become my riot grrl obsession, although I've read it was supposed to be a sell-out cash-in on the growing trend of grrrl bands. Ha! What 5th grader cares about those kind of politics though?

Did anyone out there ever read Twist magazine? It's a teen magazine from England that I bought because the Spice Girls were on it and it became my staple teen-mag for years. I was sad to see a copy the other day at Books-a-million with Justin Bieber and a bunch of other retards plastered all over it. It now looks like Tiger Beat or something. Kinda sad, I thought it was so cool! The fashion and articles were a little different from other teen-mags like Seventeen and YM since it was published in Europe.

holy shit....this is ALL really bringing me back.

omg. this album is SO good. I actually rebought it this past Christmas. She samples Donovan and a bunch of other great stuff. She has this kitschy sound that I love. The ENTIRE album is good. I farking love it!

Wow, so the Cardigans were pretty much just amazing. I'm sure I wasn't alone in totally falling into the "Lovefool" obsession. I think they may be considered one hit wonders but this WHOLE album is good! Although I don't remember the cover being this "blah".

Another one that was considered one hit wonders, again I say, this whole album is worth a look. And I had the biggest crush on the lead singer!

My first Beck cd! That's kind of a milestone! I remember being disappointed because I wanted Odelay, but naturally ended up loving this one. I don't think I could pick which one I like better!

Discovering the Monkees is an important part of a young girls life. They make the Arches look like popcorn. The Monkees defined everything I wanted from the 60's. Their music is fucking amazing, ALL OF IT, and they're ADORABLE. They would remain of my all time favorite bands FOREVER.

If Clueless gave me the itch for girl bands, Jawbreaker pushed me over the edge. It's basically Clueless
with murder so it opened up a whole new world for me. Discovering bands like Letters to Cleo, Shampoo and the-fucking-Donnas was like tapping into a goldmine!! I listened to this cd every day on my way to school on my discman :-)

Indeed, Letter to Cleo is necessary part of 1990's sanity. This has always been my favorite of their
albums.

SHIT! Where is my head?? This should have gone like 5 albums ago. Ok, so the Weezer Blue Album isn't really anything to be proud of. It's really just a staple and I'd be lying to myself if I didn't include it because there was a time I was OBSESSED with Weezer Blue, Pinkerton and Green (nothing after green though, and that wouldn't be until 9th grade)...there are worse things a pre-teen could be obsessed with? Look at what teens have to deal with now!

Oh Goodness. This looks so tacky but the music was so fun! I kind of need this again.

I remember getting this album! I was in 7th grade I think and my Grandma took me to the Commissary. I was looking for something else and then I saw THIS. I didn't know what it sounded like but it was brand new and I remembered several years earlier thinking "stupid girl" was amazing. Soooo, I begged my Grandma for it! She bought it for me and it became one of my most listened to albums of my middle school days. I need this one again too!!

This album mystified me. No one I knew had ever heard of the Eels (I live in a really shitty town), I had it special ordered at Camelot after hearing "Novocaine for the Soul" in a movie. I should really get more of Mr. E's music, it doesn't ever go out of style!

Best for last!! My last musical obsession of my middle school days was the discovery of Cibo Matto.
After hearing "Sci-Fi Wasabi" on my cousin Kat's mix I fellll innnnn looooovvvvvveeeee!!!! It's like all of my music listening had been leading up to that moment and my life would never be the same! Once Cibo Matto came in the picture I wanted to find more like it, and so my high school career became nothing less than a HUNT for the loudest, cutest, scariest, sweetest, weirdest, pop-iest, punk-iest, funn-iest, girl-iest music EVERRRR!!!!

...but that's for another blog.

Maybe not the hippest taste ever, but not bad for a kid stuck in Panama City Florida. I left out some things that I'd rather forget like Bush, Sheryl Crow, No Doubt, TLC...actually, I don't necessarily dislike those now (except Bush maybe), I just didn't want to emblazon them all over my unicorn blog!

I was only supposed to work on this until my coffee cup was empty but that was like an hour ago and I pressed on! Now I'm officially running late, but who cares? This was fun! Now I think I have to grab some middle school era music on my way out the door.

I love you, my baby-corns!!!

Hortense the Horrible Hag

When I was in third grade I had this awful teacher who I'm pretty sure was a witch. She was old, ugly and evil. She was the kind of mean spiteful teacher that you see in Roald Dahl story. Think Miss Trunchbull from Matilda. No, she never put me in the Chokey, but she made my entire third grade year feel like a Chokey. She even had a Roald Dahl villain name, Hortense Hair. Perhaps being given a name like that is apart of the reason why she turned out to be such a terrible teacher. I imagine she had a favorite student to pick on every year but in 1994/1995, I was her target. Other students noticed and made comments to me privately about how they also weren't sure why she treated me differently, but they dare not have spoken out about it. She had a general meanness that no kid wanted to aggravate.

Last night I went to a local arcade that's been around since the late 70's called Funland with my Mom and two little cousins. It's known for being covered wall to wall with loud neon clown imagery. Being there reminded me of a Hortense the Horrible Hag story, which inevitably leads to me reminisce about all of them. Being a 10 year old mortal enemies with a 70 year woman should be a thing of fairy tales not a daily routine that will haunt the child well into her 20's. One day we had an assignment that I guess I misunderstood. It was writing project about a clown. I can't remember his name, but let's call him "Jacko". There was a list of words and were supposed to write a short story using those words. I was under the impression that "Jacko" was an example and that we were supposed to write our own original story. So I wrote about a subject I always like, GIRL clowns, which there aren't enough of. I always thought that women seem less menacing and fewer people would be scared of lady clowns so why is it so rare you see them? I was still at an age where I loved clowns so it seemed like an appropriate subject. I wrote a story about Sassy the Clown, because she was Sassay. She had unicorns, living teddy bears, hot pink yarn hair and was always on the outs with the boy clowns. Well, I was wrong about the project. Everyone else wrote about "Jacko", and rather than just taking points of or GOD FORBID letting it slide since I still used all of the same words in my (much more imaginative) story. She proceeded to scowl at me while reading it allowed to the entire class making a point to repeatedly say that the person *shifts crooked eyes at me* who wrote this obviously doesn't know how to follow directions, before inevitably drawing a big red 0 on it. I believe that was the day I asked her after school why she hated me, she kept her eyes down at her desk and brushed off my question with an "I don't know what you're talking about". Like that's a proper way to respond to a question like that anyway.

Perhaps this should be a story for my private journal but I felt like sharing it here since it's about witches and clowns. I've built the life I live around imagination. Those aspects of my personality which were still in early stages of development were under attack. Maybe I had my head in the clouds, but why shouldn't I have? Your 10 year old school career shouldn't play out like a rigid boot camp. And your teacher shouldn't act like the fucking Gestapo. My interests at the time included India, the vintage stuffed animal collection I had just started, building forts, pretending to be a princess, writing in my diary and drawing mermaids. Having a personality was strictly verboten. I was a burdenless kid and I felt like she wanted to tear that down. I suppose she failed, though she left me with a lot to think about. Mostly about what I hoped to never be.

Thinking about all of this reminded me another Hortense Hair story that makes me smile. It was around Halloween and we were given a worksheet with a witch on it. And wouldn't you know, the witch was named "Hortense the Horrible Hag"! I was one of the few students who knew her first name because my Mom had to call her to bitch her out so many times. After she gave the instructions she asked if anyone had any questions. Not even knowing what I was going to say, I raised my hand as knee jerk reaction. She glared at me with the wrath of Satan himself, scrunched up her shriveled lips and shook her head "NO!". She knew exactly what I was thinking. Perhaps this is why she hated me? Maybe I was the only one who knew she was a witch.

Things that come up when you google image search for "Hortense Hair"....

wtf?

And BEST of all....

This looks JUST like her. Amazing.

So how did it end? She was old and died of natural causes a few years later. I wasn't really effected by that obituary. I was glad she didn't have some terrible ailment but there was a strange sense of relief that she wouldn't be around to torment anymore children. Is that wrong? How do you mourn the Hitler of elementary school teachers?

I grew up and managed to forget everything I learned in that class except a few lessons of morality based on the strange isolation and punishment I had to endure. It's amazing how a a great teacher can effect you in wonderful ways. You remember their warmth and take it with you. A bad teacher leaves you with an antipathy that you won't forget. People like that are the example of what I know will never be so in that respect Hortense Hair served her purpose in my life and can now be filed back away in my memory bank along with Sassy the Clown.

Birth of the Unicorn

In the beginning, there was nothing. Vast emptiness of endless space. Only microscopic dust particles and galactic amoebas bouncing off of each other for eons and eons. Until finally a cinder of cosmos and a whisper of fantasm fused into a bright illuminous star crystal which gestated for another century, and then the first Unicorn was born. She made everything that is magical...



Pterodactyls, Lisa Frank, strawberry milk, rhinestones, Muppet Babies, lychee fruit, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Divine, video toasters, pixies, weird beards, dream weavers, mystic scrolls from the lodge, electric violins, LSD, gryphons, Sailor Moon, Penanggalans, sand worms, Sega Genesis, straight to video Danielle Steele adaptations, Norfin Trolls, Sphinxs, yard sales, Olivia Newton John, Ultraman, Robot Jox, Synergy, Annette Funnicello, megalodons, the Toxic Avenger, Klaus Nomi, Xanadu, super sentai, Russian Fairy tales, A Wrinkle in Time, peacocks, Mothra, Dschingis Kahn, Secret Gardens, Yma Sumac, birds of paradise, glitter, Nikola Tesla, whirling dervish, sword and sorcery, Pizzicato Five, hookers with hearts of gold, David Liebe Hart, Cerebrus, exotica music, Lemuria, Anunnakis, all seeing eyes, cherubs,  Planet X, Hausu, Pheonixs, sparkly eye technique, the 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, telepathy, JCVD, Piers Anthony, pogs, nail polish, Jem and the Holograms, monkey ninjas, astro turf, gem sweaters, mudskippers, the Amazing Criswell, sea serpents, ice nymphs, woodland creatures, tesseracts, single bullet theories, mix tapes, dancin' & romancin', the halls of Mountain Kings, forbidden planets, forbidden zones, Monoliths, dish frogs, root beer, Burgess Meredith, lasers, Bruceploitation, Fezs, trapper keepers, ring pops, sitars, 3 Devil Adam, Sun Ra, Paper Rad, birthday cake ice cream, Chinese Vampires, Holy Mountains, Medusa, owls, carnival glass, Pee Wee Herman, Gremlins, Munchie, Atomic Caravans, Dr. Herbet West, Nukie, Donovan, crystal skulls, Elves, Toynbee plaques, Moai, Mac Tonight, Space Ghost, the Red Shoes, Chuck E. Cheese, Killer Klowns, Patchwork Girl of Oz, Peanut Butter Solutions, H.R. Pufnstuf, H.P. Lovecraft, and Pipi Longstocking.

And on the last day she said...

Let There Be Cats.

And then she rested. She admired her creations and watched them blossom into new and interesting adventures. Inspiring new ideas and endless resources of creativity. Forever and Ever.