The art car parade is tomorrow!!

The Vroom Vroom Room is car number 244, and will be driven by Graham. I, of course, will be on hand to supervise.

And make sure the bar works.

Tags: vroom vroom room

Check it out!! The Vroom made the Chronicle video of the art car parade.

Right at the 1:03 mark of this video, they interview Buttery, with S. and Smash the left and K. and Candyman on the right, and you can see Puppy behind Candyman, on the Vroom Vroom Room.



Twas an awesome parade, though of course, I had to be taken home and put to bed afterwards. I was up until 3:30 stuffing gift bags for the VIPit party the night before, was at the parade site by 7:45 and worked until about 12:15 on parade stuff. Then I hopped on the Vroom and started drinking heavily. Those who saw us said we looked like we were having a GREAT time.

Sadly, the day ended on a very sour note for the art car community in Houston, as a drunk driver killed the curator of the Art Car Museum at about 2 in the morning on Sunday.

Tags: art, friends, houston, party, vroom vroom room

I'm in crazy mode right now. As usual, I'm gearing up for the art car parade on Saturday, and I'm wearing multiple hats.

One of those hats is that of art car artist. I spent about two hours re-glittering the piano in such a way that Liberace would be proud. I was pretty much covered in polyuruthane and glitter, and at some point, my friend Buttery referred to me as the Glitter Goddess. I went through more than half a can of polyuruthane and 20 dollars worth of glitter. But it's shimmy and shiny and no one is going to miss it. Incidently, the coffee scrub my mom gave me a few years ago for Christmas or my birthday or something is phenomenal for getting polyuruthane off your hands.

The other hat is co-chair of the VIPit party. As I type, dozens of boxes full of crap are arriving at my house, and for the next two days various members of my extended family will be mindlessly filling canvast tote bags with that crap to hand out to the VIPit guests. Experience tells me that this sort of thing takes a lot longer than anyone would think. I suspect we'll get a lot of television watching done.

On top of that, I'm going to Flipside in two weeks, and I haven't even begun to start thinking about it. Flipside is a regional Burning Man event outside of Austin, and since a lot of our friends are coming in from California, we're doing a lot of the leg work. I have no idea of what costumes I'm going to throw together for it, I have no idea what sort of food we should plan for, and I'm sort of thinking about the whole thing later rather than sooner.

And of course, there's the triathlon and an attempt to get as much training as possible in between now and 31 days from now. There's also my birthday, my dad's birthday and a variety of parties and other obligations thrown in just to make things interesting. I was sort of hoping that I'd be able to swing another Bay to Breakers trip this year, but with all the other crap, I'm just hoping to make it to June more or less intact.

Tags: art, burning man, party, vroom vroom room

Last night, we put the Vroom Vroom Room back together again. She's running, and she's all more or less in one piece, but we still need to do some work on her.

I decided to take charge of the piano. It's been banged up a bit since the last time we put her in the parade, and it needs some paint and glitter and TLC. I don't think it'll be all that much of a pain in the ass to put her back into tiptop shape, but there'll be some work.

There are a lot of other maintenancy type things that need to happen to her in the next two weeks before she's parade worthy: her poles need to be repainted, some rust needs to be sanded down, the carpet needs to be nailed down. But compared to last year, this isn't all that big a deal.

It's amazing, thinking back, how much work we did on her last spring. I spent pretty much every weekend and a lot of weekday nights from February to mid-May working on that car. She was my blood and sweat and every moment of free time. She wasn't "finished" until about an hour before the parade rolled last year, and even then, we probably had another day or so of work that we could have done on her.

This year, we have time and luxury to make her perfect for the parade. We're not going to have to scramble or otherwise have difficulty getting this whole thing done.

Sitting on the Vroom last night, I felt a little nostalgic, too. I'd met Graham the first day I got to Burning Man last year; he'd come by our camp to help set up our bar, and I was putting together the pillowasis at the same time. I'd talked to him a few other times over the course of that week, but it wasn't until we'd taken out the Vroom Vroom Room for her first really public display on the playa, a nurses' rampage (I'm the one on the piano holding the stripper pole), that we got together. Several art cars from Gigsville were part of the rampage, and he was riding on the Cheshire Cat at first. A MASSIVE dust storm hit when we were in deep playa, and we we stopped the cars and huddled together to wait it out. After the dust storm was over we regrouped (having been joined by the Sandcrawler), and hit Center Camp to pour tequila down innocent hippies' throats. Graham was armed with a megaphone, and my friend Smash and I had a bottle of tequila and a bottle of chaser. He yelled at pretty much everyone, and we followed up with "medicine." We stayed close to each other pretty much the whole time, though we sorta kinda tried to make it not quite look like we were close to each other. When that particular part of the rampage was over, Graham hopped on the Vroom, and we started talking and talked some more. Actually, that's wrong. What really happened is this. For the rest of Burning Man, we weren't apart.

And we pretty much haven't been apart since then.

I have a great affinity for the Vroom Vroom Room.

Tags: 'stina, burning man, graham, relationships, vroom vroom room

Almost three years ago, Claudia started throwing parties at the Museum of Fine Arts. They were co-sponsored by Starbucks, and they became what is now known as Mixed Media.

The first set of parties was centered around an exhibition that focused on Jean-Michel Basquiat. Basquiat was a street artist in New York in the 1980s, and his paintings are very much reflective of early hip-hop, and Claudia and the promoters from Starbucks attempted to find musical artists to pair with the exhibition. It was called "The Beats of Basquiat." Claudia's first party was November 26, 2005 and a good 3000 people showed up. The fourth and final party from that exhibition, on February 11, 1996, featured Grand Master Flash, and 10,000 people showed up at the museum. Only 7,000 made it in. It was one of the most amazing parties I've ever been to, in Houston, Texas or otherwise.

There have been three other exhibitions highlighted by the Mixed Media series. The Gees Bend quilt show in the summer of 2006 featured three parties that had a sort of Americana set of DJs. Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Color featured artists in three parties in the winter of 2007 with a more Brazilian bent. And the DJs at the three parties for RED HOT - Asian Art Today from the Chaney Family Collection exhibiton in the fall of 2007 had a more Asian flair.

Because of these exhibition related parties, I've had the chance to learn and appreciate what DJs do with and to music a hell of a lot better than before 2005. Most of the DJs spinning at these parties are from all over the country, some from other countries, and they've all been top notch. I've also been more acutely aware of other DJs that I encounter. A dear friend of mine collects music from all over the world and loves to show us all this amazing music no one else plays. He DJs at every opportunity, and begged me to let him bring his equipment to the Christmas Tree Cutting Party this year so he could keep us entertained. I know two other DJs who spin here in Houston fairly well. Their music is always pretty awesome, and they're pretty good at reading a room and figuring out what to play next.

And in August of 2007, I met Graham. The night after we hooked up, never to separate again, he DJed on the Vroom Vroom Room. Given the constraints of DJing in the middle of the desert in a moving vehicle, his sets were mainly things he's found in random places all over the internet put together in his way. But it wasn't stuff I'd ever heard before. His set was almost entirely made up of mashups--songs taken apart and put back together again with other songs to make up something familiar, yet totally different. And the reaction was pretty awesome. People stopped to move closer to the car and dance to his music. One guy, dressed in all white and walking by himself, dropped everything he was carrying and solo danced until a song was over. Then he picked up his belongings and wandered off into the night, never to be seen again. That was one of our favorite moments of last year's burn.

I've come to love this music, this playing with music to make different music. In some ways, I've always loved it, since taking from others and making it better and different, yet familiar is what our culture is all about. In the last six weeks or so, while Graham has been working on this gig of his, I've been listening to his mashups. I was originally just looking for a song of his, a combo of the Chemical Brothers version of "Galvinize" combined with the Imperial March from Empire Strikes Back, to put on my iPod for running at the gym. But I couldn't help myself and grabbed a whole bunch of other mashups. Part of it, of course, was to have Graham with me while he was away, but another part was to listen to these songs and find new ways of hearing them.

On Saturday night, I got to hear yet another world class DJ, mixing and mashing and just playing some pretty awesome stuff. She was from LA, having just returned from Europe, and she was just fantastic. Graham was working for a good hunk of the night, but I found myself in the middle of the dancefloor, by myself and with his friends, dancing my heart away to this awsome combo of music.

Today, I stumbled upon a pretty interesting lecture, delivered sometime in the last year, by DJ Spooky, the very first DJ to be featured at the Mixed Media event. He talks about this culture of mixing and remixing and shows how this digital age we're in has opened up some massive doors to how we look at music and art and film. It's very long (almost two hours), and I doubt most people will be able to take it in in a single sitting, but it's pretty damned awesome. He brings in, of course, all sorts of media to show how reimaging works. If you have any interest in this sort of thing, I highly, highly recommend this lecture.



The url is here if you just want to grab it and save it for later.

Tags: art, burning man, graham, music, vroom vroom room

She's a temperamental bitch, but I love her.

She's always been a drama laden car, even back when we were making her the first time for the parade. She is always late, and it takes forever to make her look pretty.

Three days before we put her on the container to go to Burning Man, she had no body. We managed to bend one of the axles on her original chassis, and we knew that there was no way in hell that Mercedes would support much in the way of people. So Katie found a van, repaired it, got the body off, got the Vroom's redesigned frame on, and got it on to the container in a few days.

When I got to the playa on Monday, everyone was in full "get the camp built" mode, and the Vroom was off to one side, naked with her various parts around her. At one point during that period, one of the piano throwing trebuchet people was eyeballing Dora Lee. (Did I mentioned that we named the piano after Dolly Parton's character in 9 to 5?) I threatened all sorts of unpleasant things if they launched our piano.

It wasn't until Tuesday that we could really pay attention to the Vroom. And attention she needed. We got Dora Lee into position, we got the bar stools and benches arranged. We worked on the framework around the car.

We realized that the new frame was pushing down too much on her tires and we had to weld down the suspension so the frame didn't move around much. Fortunately (and I say this about a lot of things) we were camped in Gigsville, and the Skynyrd camp wasn't more than 100 yards from us. The Vroom spent a good part of her day up on jacks at Skynyrd under the tender mercies of JetFuel and Casey.

Wednesday, we worked on the sound system and the frame and all the little things that needed to be done to the Vroom. We couldn't get the lights and sound working, and there was something really wrong with her keyboard, but we got her registered for day time use, and that afternoon, we took her to the DMV to be all official and shit. It was awesome driving out there: people wanted to hop on and ride, other people got their cameras out to take pictures. We were just running an ipod, and we realized that the speakers needed to be better adjusted, after this test ride, but we got all official and shit, though only for the open playa because we're so damned big. Afterwards, we drove around a little and explored our newfound freedom. We swung on giant swing sets; we played games; we looked at art. We also picked up a few riders, one of which said she may know someone who could look at our keyboard or maybe even had a keyboard to lend us.

As the sun was setting, we rolled back home and got ready for the Gigsville prom. ( More adventures from the Vroom Vroom Room )

I love this car. I put so much of myself into it during the construction phase, and at times I thought it'd never get going. I got to give it to Katie that she never wavered on it, no matter how frustrating the car can be. Graham would introduce me to friends as a part of the Vroom Vroom team and I'd beam with pride at the association. She's a kick ass car, and she brought joy and happiness and some pain to people on the playa. I'm looking forward to working on her some more to get her even better and better and better over the years.

Tags: burning man, vroom vroom room

There's a tropical storm sorta here today. I can't really see outside my windows and there are fairly frequent rumbles of thunder. There was a really impressive (and loud) lightning storm at around 4 this morning.

It's not really a big deal, though. Just a lot of rain. And this summer has been one of a lot of rain. It'll blow over sooner or later, but in the meantime the temperatures have dropped and our air conditioners are going to be given a bit of a rest.

The only slight inconvenience is that I have a rug drying outside. It's an Afghan tribal carpet that I've had for a few years. I'm taking it to Burning Man, but as it was the victim of efforts to housebreak Crianza, it needed to be cleaned before I inflicted it on the general public. I soaked it for awhile, to try and get the smells out, and now it's sitting on my back porch, under an umbrella, getting further soaked. I think, actually, that the sand and playa dust may actually do wonders for it out in Nevada, but it needs to be dry(er) before I can take it there. I'll drag it to the warehouse tonight and hope that the humidity doesn't slow down the drying process for the next couple of days.

Last night, we got a lot of work done. The entryway into the camp was stenciled, and it looks beautiful. I think we're going to finish most of the camp structure tonight, and there are some adjustments to make to the Vroom Vroom Room so it can be loaded onto the container on Saturday.

Next week will be dedicated to fine tuning the costumes. Of course, that's what everyone is looking forward to.

Tags: burning man, vroom vroom room, weather

I think I'm getting sick. I thought it was just allergies related to plane travel, but it's probably recent exposure to two toddlers in preschool and breathing recycled air. Ugh.

In other news, I'm in charge of "pillowasis" for the DFTs.

Lemme back up.

There are several ways to do Burning Man. You can just show up, pitch a tent, and join on in. You can show up with a bunch of friends, pitch a small group of tents and join right in, or you can get a larger group of people together for a theme camp.

I'm in a theme camp that's been going for about four or five years called the Damn Fucking Texans. I think the name is sort of self-explanatory, especially to people from Colorado*. The camp's theme changes from year to year. Last year it was the Texas Embassy to the United States. A lot of us Texans remember the good old days when we used to travel abroad, say we were from Texas and be greeted with open arms. Since 2000, not so much. This year's camp theme is The Texas Foreign Legion: a bunch of Texans wandering around in the desert trying to impose our culture on the locals. Seems topical.

Anyhow, the camp has a bar with Texas beer on tap for the entire duration of Burning Man. We're building the bar this weekend. We're also building a structure out of scaffolding that'll sort of resemble one of those old French Leigon castles. And we're building what's called Pillowasis, a soft lounge area under cover where people can, er, lounge. I've been put in charge of that, so I have to build the structure that the pillows and cushions and other soft things will go in, and then locate a shitload of pillows and cushions and other soft things. In a serendipitous event, amberlynne let me have her mattress and box spring when she moved, so I'll donate my old ones to pillowasis. It's a start.

The container with all the stuff that we're taking to Burning Man leaves a week from tomorrow, so we have to have everything figured out, built out and stored in the container by then. A week and a few days after that, we'll put it all back together again. We also have to start packing our personal stuff. I have to get my tent and sleeping bag and all the camping stuff, plus start thinking about costumes and other things to bring with me.

So tomorrow will be work, and Sunday will be work, and I think pretty much every day until next Saturday will be work. And then I have to figure out the details of what to bring on my hiking trip with Liv.

But this is going to be a blast. I helped them build the bar a few years ago but I didn't end up going to Burning Man that year. I've been hearing about it for years now, and I spent a good hunk of my spring building an art car for this adventure in the desert. I have no idea really what to expect, but I think that all the work that's going into it is going to be totally worth it.

And I'm going to make sure that it's the best damned pillowasis ever.

ETA: This is what the DFT camp looked like in 2005, the year I helped with the bar. You can see the pilowasis made out of a kiddie pool there in picture 27, and then it's filled up in picture 30.

*My freshman roommate in college was from Colorado. All she knew about me was that I was from Texas. Some Texans tend to regard Colorado as an annex state. At various points of the year, you'll year a lot of Coloradians muttering about the damned fucking Texans. :D I had some preconceived notions to overcome that weren't helped much when I answered in the affirmative about the ownership of a Suburban by the family. (My family, btw, would never look at Colorado that way. We've got New Mexico.)

Tags: burning man, vroom vroom room

I was telling someone on Sunday that this car took a piece of everyone who was involved with it. My fingernail (smushed, if you recall, by a garage door while we were building the piano) fell off right after I hopped on the car.

It was totally worth it.

Friday night, I couldn't work on the car, because I was working on the party. Jose, one of my co-chairs for the VIPit party, and I were stuffing gift bags until about two thirty in the morning. As I understand it, most of the art car team, plus anyone else they could find, were up all night finishing the final details on the car.

Jose and I got to the VIPit area at around 8:15 in the morning on Saturday. Volunteers were in full swing, and in my five years of being involved with the party, four years being some sort of co-chair, it was the most organized I've ever seen it. One scheduled restaurant didn't show up, which for some reason happens every year. This year the excuse was that someone turned off the power where the food was and it went bad. It seemed, though, that we didn't suffer much from lack of food.

Guests started showing up around 10:30ish, and Jose and I turned into full host mode. At some point, I went down to the parade line up to find the Vroom Vroom Room, but it hadn't quite gotten there yet. Claudia's best friend was getting married that night, and she had some maid of honor duties to perform before she could get there, but I think she arrived somewhere around eleven thirty.

Jose and I welcomed George Clinton to the party, and we made sure that people could find their tents, and made sure people had mimosas, and answered questions, and greeted people, and otherwise made sure people were having a good time.

At some point, the parade started, and everyone took their seats. I sat near the judges, and I twitched nervously as the cars came by. Occassionally, I'd yell at my dad about looking at the ballot, because he didn't have a need to know what the other cars were to vote on. Number 219 was all that mattered.

At around car 200, my friend from the car came roller blading by, holding two pieces of gold lame, looking into the crowd. The pieces she was holding were identical to the gold lame she was wearing. I yelled, she yelled, and handed me the lame through the fence. I quickly stripped down to my bike shorts, laced the lame on me in a rough facsimile of a skirt, handed my clothes to my mother, and ran out the gate upstream of the parade. Ten seconds later, I got to see my art car, totally finished, for the first time. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

We had a singer, in a black slip, lounging on the piano and purring into the microphone. We had a saxaphone player accompanying the piano player. The three musicians did awesomely together. The bar was stocked with champagne and bloody marys. There were kids and adults on the car. The guys wore guayaberas and shorts and the girls wore the lame skirts with black tank tops. I was hugged and kissed and adored as I hopped on the car, and I grabbed a seat on one of the booths. The bartender made me a drink. The crowd loved us, and we loved the crowd. We waved and sang to them and toasted them. Every now and then, someone would hop off and dance in the street in front of the car. We all loved one another, and there was just an unbelievable feeling of happiness and relief and oh-my-god-this-was-so-worth-every-single-moment-of-free-time-since-February.

Everyone was having a blast, and everyone felt a sense of ownership. We did this. We made this wonderful thing.


There are more pictures here.

Tags: party, vroom vroom room

Tomorrow is the Art Car Parade!

Go see the Vroom Vroom Room!!!

Tags: vroom vroom room

Gorilla glue is impossible to get off of your hands.

From the FAQ:

What should I do if I get Gorilla Glue on my hands?

Wash hands with soap and water immediately. We do not recommend using anything to irritate your skin. If the glue has dried on your hands, you may have to wait three to five days for the glue to wear off. Apply hand cream or moisturizing lotion regularly to soften the dried glue. We suggest you wear gloves or use disposable gloves while gluing.

I didn't read the FAQ before gluing.

In related news, the Vroom Vroom Room sign is the coolest thing I've seen in a long, long time.

I'm not sure if we'll make it to the party tonight. Not because the car won't be done, but because it's supposed to rain. I'd hate for our debut to be nothing less than spectacular.

Tags: vroom vroom room

Don't ask me why, but there are two Art Car Balls tomorrow night. There is the Artist's Art Car Ball at the Sons of Hermann Lodge (across the street from the Art Car Museum on Heights Blvd.) and there's the Outlaw Art Car Ball at the Meridian. I'm told that the former is "family friendly."

The Vroom Vroom Room will be at the latter. You can get tickets in advance at Ticketmaster for $10, or they're $15 at the door. If you come to the Meridian with an art car, it's free! The Meridian is at 1503 Chartres St, sort of behind the George R. Brown Convention Center.

The ball is a lot of fun. Lots of people, a costume contest at 10:30, belly dancing (at least there was belly dancing the last time I was there). And, of course, art cars!

If you stop by, hunt me down so I can give you the grand tour of the Vroom Vroom Room.

Tags: party, vroom vroom room

Any ideas on how to get black latex paint out of clothes?

Tags: vroom vroom room

Sometimes I wonder what other people think of my family. This conversation ensued when my father was trying to explain the art car to a third party.

my dad:. . . and so there's a piano with a stripper pole.

me: I'm not sure that we'll be able to get the stripper pole on in time for the parade.

my dad: What??? The stripper pole is the most important part!

me: Yeah I know, but we have a lot to do between now and then, I'm not sure if the stripper pole is going to make it.

my dad: The stripper pole has to be on the car for the parade. I'll buy it for you.

me: We have the stripper pole. It's not an issue of money, it's a time thing.

my dad: Tell them I'll come in any night this week to work on the stripper pole.

When the art car parade rolls on Saturday, we'll be the piano lounge with the stripper pole.

Tags: vroom vroom room

We're running close to the art car parade, and of course, there's Drama! as we're nearing the end.

Artists are such a touchy bunch.

Most of my weekend was spent on my knees, in front of a piano.

Tags: vroom vroom room

Drama! We have eight days until the parade and a LOT of work to do on the art car. I'm sure it'll get done, and I'm equally sure that we won't want to see a) each other or b) the car for awhile afterwards. We have yet to finish welding the frame of the car, decking the car, moving the steering, brakes and gas, and otherwise assembling all of the pieces. The piano, though, is 90% done, as are the booths, the bar stools, the tables, and the framing around the car.

In related news, if the law gig doesn't work out, I think I may start an upholstering business. Aside from that one incident, I've gotten pretty damned handy with the staple gun.

I'm currently on hold with my sister. I think she may have forgotten about me. (Time of call currently at 7:21.)

The nail of the middle finger on my right hand is an interesting shade of mauve. It, if you recall, is the finger that got smushed by the garage door. The half moon is about a half a centimeter, and I think it's pushing all of the damaged part of the nail up. I'm curious to see what happens when it gets to the tip of my finger.

A week from today is the artists ball. I'm confident something will roll. It may, though, be the piano on a lawnmower engine.

(Time of call currently 12:22, still on hold.)

Tags: vroom vroom room

My best friend in college was a guy. We met our freshman year in an effort to hook up with each other's friends. He had a thing for a woman that lived down the hall from me. I was desperately in love with one of his friends. We agreed to do what we could to help each other out in each other's romantic endeavors.

As such things tend to go, our matchmaking turned out to be an unmitigated disaster.

But we became best friends. From two or so months into our freshman year until the end of our sophomore year, we were inseparable. We'd hang out in each other's dorm rooms. We'd go on adventures into LA together, since Marc had a car. We'd ski at Mt. Baldy. We'd go on spring break in Mazatlan. We made really, really awful fake IDs and used them at this crappy Mexican restaurant in Pomona called Tropical Mexicana to order pitcher after pitcher of very weak strawberry margaritas. We trolled thrift stores together to find our supplementary furniture for our dorm rooms (and I scored my favorite sofa of all time at a Salvation Army store for $25). We cleaned up after the LA riots together. We ate together. We studied together. We went to basketball games together. We never slept together.

Marc's uncle was an actor, and he did a spot for Edwards Cinema when we were freshmen. Edwards gave him a free movie pass for 1992-1993, and I guess that there were no Edwards franchises around his uncle, so he gave the movie pass to Marc. Marc and I went to see every single movie that came out that year and the following year, because the people at the theater didn't really care that we altered the pass.

When we were sophomores, Marc found the old pre-web, BBS bulletin boards, and he met this girl on line that lived in Boston. They were smitten. I remember arguing with him over and over and over again that you couldn't actually know someone that you'd never met before. He went to see her that year for spring break, and they had a good (for college anyways) run. Years later, I had to eat my words about online interaction because Marc found out about the Bronze, and how much I'd been sucked into a virtual life. (In the-world-is-a-tiny-tiny-place category, a Bronzer went to work as an intern in the same company that Marc worked. The co-workers discovered the Bronze because the Bronzer spent a lot of time at work there. They became fascinated with it.)

My dating life in college sucked because of this. Everyone thought I was dating Marc. Marc went to Cambridge and Washington, DC for our junior year, and I graduated a year early. When he was gone, everyone asked me how I was taking his absence. When he started dating someone in his senior year, everyone asked him when we'd broken up.

As is terrible, as tends to happen with time, distance and different experiences, Marc and I drifted apart. I think I saw him last when I was still in law school and going on interviews in DC. He was still working at the newspaper there, but he soon thereafter left for Chicago, I think, to get a masters in communication and then went to work for a fortune 500 company. He got into a few serious relationships shortly after college, and I think that they took up a lot of his time. I'm not the best correspondent in the world, so it takes effort to keep in touch with me if you're not part of my ordinary social circle (on-line or IRL). I googled him a few years ago, sent an e-mail to the address and got a reply, but we didn't really maintain communication. I assume he's still working at the same place, but I'm not sure.

I've been thinking a lot him in the last few days, though. My friend Katie, committing the cardinal Easter sin, came back from visiting her grandmother with two itty bitty baby bunnies. They're three weeks old and utterly adorable. She said she had to adopt them since there was a high likelihood that they'd get eaten otherwise. Farm bunnies tend not to survive too long. I cannot emphasize how cute these bunnies are.

When we were sophomores, Marc and I went to a pet store, and he left with Murphy, a lop eared brown and white spotted bunny. She was adorable. I insisted that I could build a hutch for her instead of spending money on a fancy store bought hutch. We went to Home Depot, and I bought boards, wire mesh, and some nails, and I built a wonderful little hutch for her. It wasn't special, but it was hers and it was made with love. We'd go to the quad with her and hang out, letting her hop along. I'd threaten to dye her purple or pink or yellow. She'd sit on my lap and her nose would go a million miles a minute. I learned to love a rabbit.

Katie is in the construction business. She's the one who is building the container houses. She's also the ringleader of the art car. So I imagine, while we're building the piano tonight, we'll also be building a very cool looking home for the baby bunnies. And I'll think of Marc and Murphy and the bunny house that I built for them, and I'll smile at those memories while I do so.

Tags: 'stina, friends, memories, school, vroom vroom room

My finger got smushed in a garage door last night. Makes typing difficult. Closing that garage door was the very, very last thing we did in our work session on the car. We met in one of the guys' studio, which is the garage of another friend of ours. He has every wood working tool known to man, which makes making a piano out of 3/4 inch plywood a lot easier than it sounds. The pieces of the piano are totally cut out now--top, bottom, legs and some internal supports, and we can start assembling it the next time we meet. I stood inside the "bar" and I think it's going to be very cool indeed. It's also going to be very heavy. I suspect we're going to have to put casters on the thing just to get it out of his garage.

Anyhow, the finger smushing incident was due to my inability to figure out how to close a garage door. I was using one of the panels as leverage, forgetting that as it went down, it would become flush with the panel below. The tip of my right middle finger is purple now.

In other news, there's a protest in my neighborhood this afternoon. Thanks to deed restrictions, I live in a part of Montrose that still has more bungalows than townhomes, but the developers are looming. There's a hunk of property caddy corner to Al's Quick/Qwik* Stop on Waugh and Welch that was recently purchased and looks like it's about to be more townhomes. Anyhow, there are still deed restrictions on these pieces of property, and my neighborhood association is launching a protest to the city that they're not following deed restrictions and city ordinances when they grant permits to these developers to make our neighborhood even more dense than it already is. From the press release:

Hyde Park residents plan a peaceful protest and gathering at the corner of Waugh & Welch on Thursday afternoon at 5:00 p.m. to call attention to the City's repeated failure to enforce Hyde Park's Deed Restrictions, follow City Ordinance provisions providing notice to residents of applications to sub-divide lots, and other requirements that are designed to protect the neighborhood and its residents.

Hyde Park, a historic neighborhood in Houston, is a diverse community with deed restrictions and other protections in place. The residents of the area have been battling the Planning Department's "Rubber Stamp" for several years in an effort to stop developers from disregarding restrictions. While several bungalows and large trees have been destroyed, the citizens have become more organized as a result. Many residents feel that the City's repeated failure to hear their concerns are due to the fact that subdivision of lots brings in a higher tax base without raising taxes. While the individual lot values increase, the ability to improve the homes become more and more difficult if developers set a market for lot value only and the return on home improvement becomes marginal. Simply put: Hyde Park residents are not asking for any special treatment -- just the enforcement of what few protections are available.

A few years ago, my neighborhood won "Best Hidden Neighborhood" in the Houston Press.

Best Hidden Neighborhood
Van Buren Street
While driving through the maddening traffic of West Gray from Waugh to Montrose, take a turn down Van Buren. What you will find is an enchanting little neighborhood, filled with duplexes, fourplexes, gingerbread houses and pink stucco homes that would fit in well in Bermuda. The residents are mostly young working people on their way up and eccentric folk who make their abodes look magical. One creative resident built a house out of cinder blocks and glass, with a profusion of bonsai trees. Other houses feature Buddhas and tiny ponds in their front yards. Whether you're looking for a place to live or just an interesting locale to meander through one Sunday, take a turn down one of the side streets and enjoy the good vibes.

The townhomes that keep going up and up and up around the neighborhood don't do anything at all to foster neighborhood life. They're garages on small plots of land with 2500square feet on top of them. The people who live there don't make an effort to get to know the rest of us (I'm on a first name basis with all of the bungalow dwellers on my block. With none of the townhouse dwellers.)

I don't object to townhouses on principle, but I do object to crappy, dense, poorly designed townhouses whose sole purpose are to be sold for $500,000 each on a $200,000 piece of property. They're ugly, they take away street parking, they have no relationship to the rest of the neighborhood, and they add congestion to already crowded streets. I made a point, as did almost everyone else in my neighborhood, to sign the deed restrictions a few years ago.

Anyhow, I'm not sure that I can make it by 5:00, but I'll try to swing by and honk as soon as I can.


*There are two signs. Depends on which one you're reading.

Tags: home improvement, vroom vroom room

We were supposed to work on the car all day Saturday.

The torrential rainstorm sort of changed the plan, so we hung out at Berryhill for three hours working on the piano design.

We've been operating on the basic assumption that the basic format of the car would be driver and pianist in the front a little higher than everything else, some sort of performance area in the middle, upholstered booths on the sides, and a bar in the back. There'd been a minor argument over the last few days over the placement of the piano. Someone had the bright idea of putting bar stools around the piano, but that was going to cut into performance areas. The stripper pole was constantly being moved around.

So on Saturday, we looked at the basic design again, and someone had an epiphany. Why not make the piano huge, put the bar inside the piano, and put the stripper pole in the middle?

It took us a few hours to hash it out, but now, the piano is six feet by ten feet (the car is 12 x 20) and will be placed on a bias. The front of the piano also doubles as performance space and the stripper pole comes through the middle of front section of the piano. There's a good twenty four square feet of dance space there. The back of the piano has a twenty inch by two foot hole in the middle so a bartender can serve drinks. The piano will be thick enough to hold a few twelve inch bottles inside. A chandelier over the bartender will double as a martini glass holder. And the piano will be surrounded by barstools.

On Sunday, we were able to get most of the frame around the car built and we were able to get the rough outline of the piano worked out on two pieces of plywood. Those will be the bottom of the piano. We have nicer, thicker plywood for the top, so it'll be able to support dancers better. I think we'll be able to finish the piano by the end of next week.

The frame around the car is almost done. The steel framework has been built, and I think there's maybe two more days of welding before we're done with that. Then we install the decking. I went to Home Depot on Sunday to take a look at indoor/outdoor carpeting, but it didn't look particularly interesting. I did, though, see some cheap vinyl flooring that looked like hardwood floors, so I think that the deck is going to have the appearance of hardwoods with some area rugs scattered around. I've also declared that I'm building a love den under the piano, so people can "rest" there. We're moving the brakes, accelerator and steering of the car, but that's not going to be too difficult.

The new design means that we don't have to build any more benches or the bar, so after the piano and the decking on the car are done, we'll be able to focus on the decor of the car instead of the construction of the car.

Six more weeks until the parade!

Tags: vroom vroom room

I'm sustaining a self-inflicted staple gun injury. We were upholstering the benches for the art car on Saturday, and I managed to impale my pinky finger. I was holding the gun the wrong way, put my finger on the end when I couldn't get the damned thing to work, and shot a staple through my finger. In my (sorta) defense, the staple gun was counter intuitive. As you can see from the diagram to the right, the handle is backwards. My experience with staple guns has always been with a rear facing handles. (See example) And we had two guns. One with a rear handle, one with a front handle. There were helpful arrows on the handle and on the base that pointed out where the staples would fly from in the counter-intuitive gun, but they were not helpful enough.

I'm just glad that it wasn't the compressed air staple gun that later showed up. That would have shot the staple completely through my finger.

Things I learned while dealing with the staple sticking through my finger:

• It doesn't immediately hurt. You sort of look at it and think, "oh fuck, that's going to hurt." But the pain doesn't really start for awhile. I almost wanted to leave it there.
  
• Pulling it out hurts. Don't test it by wiggling it to see how badly it's going to hurt to pull it out. Don't pull slowly. Yank that sucker out as quickly as possible.
  
• A hole through your finger bleeds a lot. Teeny tiny hole, but lots and lots of blood.
  
• Band-aids are a remarkable invention. They stop the bleeding pretty quickly and keep it stopped. Fortunately, I'm accident prone enough that I keep a stash of them in my car at all times.
  
• I had no idea how much I use my left pinky to type until this injury. You'd think that the infrequent use of the letters "Q" and "Z" would counterbalance the abundant "A"s but the damned shift key requires a lot of pinky movement.

In related news, two of the five or six benches for the piano lounge are upholstered with red and black zebra striped faux velvet. They're extremely comfortable, and I think building the rest isn't really going to take too much time now that we've figured out how to build them. Also! The car is about to have the frame welded on so we can build the platform on top. And the chandelier is looking beautiful.

Tags: vroom vroom room