grandweerachael

Blogspot, it's been real

2009-10-05T19:29:00.005-04:00

After some thought and some fiddling around, I'm moving this blog over to Tumblr. Things are real pretty over there, and quite easy to use, and I'm ready for a change. (Everything already here will remain as an archive, at least until I get too embarrassed by it in my old age.)

If you've got a Tumblr, follow me! If you don't, you can read along as usual—just subscribe to the new RSS feed, update your bookmarks and all that jazz. It's the Internet. You know how to use it.

rachaelmaddux.tumblr.com

getting crispy

2009-10-01T19:27:00.002-04:00

In a perfect world we'd have fall weather on summer hours, or at least I'd remember that we don't and would plan my post-work granny-walk accordingly. Well, another day, then.

it's brutal, it's brutal

2009-10-01T14:14:00.001-04:00

all the sweet promises

2009-09-29T20:13:00.001-04:00

"I liked going to work, liked the soothing and satisfactory rhythm of getting out a magazine, liked the orderly progression of four-color closings and two-color closings and black-and-white closings and then The Product, no abstraction but something which looked effortlessly glossy and could be picked up on a newsstand and weighed in the hand. I liked all the minutiae of proofs and layouts, liked working late on the nights the magazines went to press, sitting and reading Variety and waiting for the copy desk to call. From my office, I could look across town to the weather signal on the Mutual of New York Building and the lights that alternately spelled TIME and LIFE above Rockeffeler Plaza; that pleased me obscurely, and so did walking uptown in the mauve eight o’clocks of early summer evenings and looking at things, Lowestoft tureens in Fifty-seventh Street windows, people in evening clothes trying to get taxis, the trees just coming into full leaf, the lambent air, all the sweet promises of money and summer."

—Joan Didion, "Goodbye To All That"

not a dam, but damn

2009-09-24T21:46:00.005-04:00

The Chattanooga Nature Center was the site of many happy elementary school field trips and probably a couple of summer camps too but maybe not for me, maybe I'm just adopting other peoples' memories of my own, because now that I mention it I don't think I actually went to any camps there myself, but regardless, I really liked going to this place when I was growing up. The taxidermied foxes and birds of prey and whatnot in the visitors' center were all slightly more than mildly terrifying but there was this big awesome room with a to-scale replica beaver dam that you could crawl inside and also there was a turtle tank, and a boardwalk over what I thought was a swamp that was like hundreds of feet below, but that was actually just a creek floodplain that is maybe about ten feet down at the very most.

But you know what they did not have back then? They did not have a treehouse. Not any kind of treehouse, but especially not a treehouse that you could rent out for birthday parties. Do you know who would have been all about this? Me. And Sarah. Yes, this has Maddux Sister Late October/early November Trolls and/or Reptiles and/or 101 Dalmations-themed Joint Birthday Party Circa Early-Mid 1990s written all over it. It's not even all that far off the ground which I'm sure would have been my main concern at age 7.

I'm not even sure what it looks like on the inside because when we were there some other little girl was having her birthday party inside, although I guess I could have just been a real creeper and just barged in. I think my mom would have supported that decision. I could see it in her eyes: "This would've definitely been a better choice than Discovery Zone."

cooking, come hanger or high water

2009-09-23T17:34:00.004-04:00

Joe thinks that runny, fried eggs are one of the most beautiful foods ever, and I have to say I agree with him. Look at that.

The day of the flood I decided that I needed to cook dinner for myself, and that it needed to be Orangette's boiled kale with fried egg and Ezra Pound Cake's chai-apple pie coffee cake. My trip to the DeKalb Farmer's Market for ingredients was technically a bit ill-advised, and I actually messed up both of the recipes (did not cook the kale long enough, had to double the baking powder in the cake because I had no baking soda), and I hadn't had a good snack so I was kind of panicked and hangry by the time it was all done—well after Gossip Girl, which I'd planned to watch while face-stuffing my spoils—but it all turned out quite great, actually.

Except that I woke up feeling sick the next morning. Cold-sick, not food-poisoning-sick, so I know I didn't poison myself or anything, but I don't like that apparent cause-and-effect. However, one could surely do worse than being left with nothing to eat from one's sickbed except this stuff. (Pound of butter? What pound of butter?)

At any rate, I recommend both recipes and I can't wait til it's Really Actually Fall so that I can enjoy them without that nagging feeling of it actually being 80 degrees outside. Still. Wugh.

Go Dawgs (!?)

2009-09-20T15:26:00.005-04:00

What's more shocking, that I've lived my whole life in the South but have never watched one entire college football game, either in person or on TV*? Or the sheer number of beers on tap at the Lindbergh Taco Mac?

* I would add "until last night" to that—we were there to watch the Georgia-Arkansas game—but I'm not sure it's even true. Apparently, when I get a few Blue Moons in me, all I want to do is watch YouTube videos of French bulldog puppies via other peoples' iPhones. And also post to said other peoples' Tumblr. SORRY, SPORTS. AGAIN. (Kristen, thank you for my Very Special Night.)

treasure trolls, where you at?

2009-09-18T18:55:00.004-04:00

I love getting my hair cut! Or, as I sometimes like to think of it, "getting a little 1992 back in my life."

pink of perception

2009-09-16T20:53:00.008-04:00

It's funny what you can figure out by just deciding to do one simple thing. A few weeks ago I decided that I wanted to take pictures of three different pink things—and only one of them could be a flower or a plant. Turns out, there is not a lot of pink in my life. I decided to do this after I found and started reading Pink of Perfection, which got me thinking about the color, especially after she posted photos of her new, empowering pink bathroom (which was funny, also, because another one of my recent favorite bloggers, Morgan at The Brick House, has a pink bathroom that she has quite opposite feelings about).

Saying "there's not a lot of pink in my life" is not supposed to be a metaphor or euphemism but kind of can't help sounding that way. There's plenty of "pink" in "my life," but looking for my third pink photo—the first two came easy—kind of weirdly got me on this "appreciate the small things" kick. I've been keeping my windows open and listening to rain and crickets more. (It helps that I can hear both better from my apartment—the rain, in particular, because I live next to a tin-roofed carport and also because the gutter above my front door is massively clogged and turns into a mini-Niagra Falls if it so much as sprinkles. It started as quaint and nature-y but now, actually, it's getting kind of annoying. But. Pink pink pink!) I've been unusually happy with my one cup of coffee each morning and the strained gurglings of my coffeemaker which I am pretty sure means it's about to brew its last breath but, now, are reassuring and homey to me in my zombified morning state of heightened smallness appreciation.

I'm not about to paint my own bathroom pink—I'm still recovering from the great Mary Engelbreit Binge of 1994 which resulted in me dictating that my mom paint my bedroom a particularly heinous bubblegum-ass hue. But I'm trying to notice it whenever it pops into my life, and it's bringing a lot of other stuff to the surface. And even if that's just glaring need for maintenance requests and possibly soon-to-be-defunct home appliances, it's something, at least.

Beyonce vs. Fleet Foxes

2009-09-16T20:47:00.002-04:00

God bless you, Hood Internet.

in photographs and diaries and mirrors

2009-09-15T21:13:00.003-04:00

Then again, I really love this song.

And going bald is the most manly thing that I'm ever gonna do.
I tell the earth, "Thanks for the hair, thanks for the skin, thanks for the bone.
Though I now slowly give it back, I still appreciate the loan."

lookin' goooooood

2009-09-14T22:37:00.008-04:00

Lindsey is maybe one of the best things happening for girls on the Internet right now, and her book is going to be super important and awesome for a lot of people quite soon. She posted this Very Public Service Announcement about street harassment just one day, actually, after my most recent experience with that very thing. I am weirdly—sadly—used to this by now because, while it doesn't happen all that much to me while walking to and from work every day, it still happens more than it used to when I commuted by wheels. I'm actually not sure if it happens more than the automotive equivalent—the prolonged gawk, sometimes accompanied by slight upward chin thrust, through multiple car windows while stopped at red lights—but I guess that's another matter entirely.

At any rate, I think her message is important, small but also big. If you're a person to whom this never happens, you might not understand what we mean. Even if you're a person to whom it happens, even if it happens frequently, you might not get it. But think about what it would be like to be able to walk down the street and not have that weird feeling of dread kinda nipping at your heels the whole way, if you could meet strangers' eyes—all of them—with an upturned face and a smile, rather than ducking your head or throwing down your gaze just to try to make yourself invisible just in case they're on the verge of hollering or whistling or whooping.

Think about how it makes you feel when it happens to you, and then think about not having to feel that way ever again. And then tell me how you like it.

The day before Lindsey posted this, I got whistled at on my way home from work. Sometimes, honestly, my first reaction is to laugh, just because it sounds so silly, so cartoonishly primal, like if I did look over at whoever this guy is he'd have one hand scratching the top of his head and the other alternately digging at his armpit or throwing his own poop around. Sometimes I make an openlly disgusted face at them, without even meaning to—this happens a lot when the whistle or honk is coming from a white maintenance van, which happens a lot (those City of Decatur guys, they just gotta let you know how they feel), but which is also just so frighteningly but also hilariously cliche.

And then other times, like last Thursday, what I do is I grimace. I grimace and, like last Thursday, my first thought besides ugh is that I hope they didn't mistake my grimace for a smile. Because it's never a smile.

Lindsey also posted this clip from Def Poetry Slam a few days back, which just blew my mind and which is relevant here, too.

There are bigger fish to fry, I know, in my life and in the world. But sometimes the little things just build and build and build and build and build. And sometimes all you really want is an ice cream cone that is free to exist in this world, out and open in the public, as an ice cream cone and nothing more. And sometimes you want to exist like that, too.

next search: "who is seth binzer"

2009-09-11T16:32:00.005-04:00

Actually, Google, I wanted to ask "did stephen malkmus play guitar in pavement" (sorry, I'm a bad music journalist), but I appreciate the effort. And ugh, suddenly I feel the need to know the answers of all of those questions. Did someone say party?

October needs to get here fast

2009-09-10T21:12:00.006-04:00

I want it to be fall so bad that I seriously just almost ordered the America The Beautiful check set from Wachovia just so I could see this every fourth check I write. Which would actually mean that I would probably see it, like, once ever before having to order new checks after moving again, which is the only reason I have to buy new checks now. How obscene is it that you can order no less than 150 of them at once? I'm not sure I'll ever write 150 checks in my whole life. But God, if I had this set, would they not be beautiful checks? I mean, I might even just tape the 143 extras up on my walls in a repeating tile pattern, 'cause that barn is real nice, too. America!

still prone to care

2009-09-09T14:14:00.000-04:00

Labor Day, an equation

2009-09-08T21:09:00.009-04:00

Car plus massive oil leak plus Lavonia, Ga., minus four hours minus $275 minus reading material plus eventual mechanical success plus excellent playlist plus Joe waiting for me at the end of it all in Greensboro plus fifty pounds of Indian buffet food plus mimosas at Indian buffet minus not noticing the mimosas earlier plus a Mad Men party minus not being appropriately attired plus little Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween plus Boone plus Kelly plus third grade classroom minus the third graders plus chinchilla cuddling minus Kelly's pseudo-fake-out speeding ticket plus majestic views plus majestic pose minus sizeable rock from overpass nearly crashing through my windshield and/or skull plus huevos rancheros minus leaving Joe for the 83289575th time for a month plus postcard from Marie from Wyoming waiting for me at home equals the weekend equals good.

pray for the thunder & the rain

2009-09-03T13:18:00.000-04:00

won't cost you one spare dime

2009-09-02T19:28:00.005-04:00

Joe and I spend so much time on the phone together (long-distance relationship and all that, for those just tuning in) that the phrase "gimme a ring-a-ling" has weirdly permeated our shared vernacular, and so we talk about or at least make reference to this song way more than I think most couples probably should. But somehow it's taken us years to consider the possibility that someone might have actually registered DingALing.com. Until tonight, at least.

I just checked, and was of course expecting to be confronted with either nasty nasty porn or some kind of Hi-Town DJs fansite (even a Chuck Berry shrine, for God's sake). But, quite shockingly, I found neither. DingALing.com appears to be either some kind of very half-assed ad-bot site or the incredibly misguided homepage of some memory-loss-slash-travel-agency. And then Ding-A-Ling.com is currently unregistered. I mean, I know the line isn't "Ding dash a dash ling dot com" but I still thought it might be an option—but no.

How is this even possible? I would think that one of the most prominent URL shout-outs in pop music history would be an absolute shoe-in for some icky robot ad site. Not to mention—this is the Internet, folks. It is a vile, disgusting place that fosters and encourages peoples' basest impulses at every turn. Anything you can think of, especially if that thing is of a sexual nature, no matter how gross or twisted or repulsive—actually, especially if it's gross or twisted or repulsive—it is here. So why is Ding-A-Ling.com sitting there empty, uncorrupted? My assumption that any euphemistic term for "penis" would have its very own corresponding website in every imaginable variant spelling, dot com dot net dot everything. But clearly I was very, very wrong about this.

Internet, you have let me down. You are not gross enough.

Now excuse me while I go drown my sorrows in the dulcet tones of the Hi-Town DJs.

crafty fun inadvertantly brought to you by terrifying prehistoric beasts

2009-09-02T14:06:00.007-04:00

Last week some folks at Etsy saw this sloth list I did for Paste and asked me to do one of their Shop Live events. After a couple of spit-takes and gobsmacked eye-rubbing I said YES YES YES PLEASE and so today at 5 PM EST I am going to be plugging in ye olde webcam and dishing on some of Paste's favorite animal-inspired goods. I even made a playlist. And I even brushed my hair! And I might even brush my hair again before this thing actually gets going a few hours from now. Come join me!

my baby's always dancin'

2009-08-30T15:34:00.006-04:00

I honestly have really never cared that much about Michael Jackson—never detested him or loved him, just duly noted his talent and influence and recent weirdness all from a comfortable distance—so I've experienced his death and everything that's come since like it happened to a close friend of a close friend, recognizing the loss and the absence and sorrow of everyone else but not really feeling it personally for my self. But two things have really broken through the haze and hit me hard.

The first was Joan Acocella's New Yorker piece about Jackson as a dancer. Of all the so many things about him that had been rendered into caricature before I was able to develop my own idea of who and what he was, the dancing seems foremost—the moonwalk, the crotch grab. Growing up in the 90s, I think I knew about those things before I really even knew his name. But Acocella really teases out all the nuances of his skills and how he presented himself as a dancer throughout his career, and I felt I understood him in a whole new way after reading it.

The second is this video for The Jacksons' "Blame it on the Boogie" which I just sat stone-still watching all of on BET (which is having an all MJ, all the time would-be birthday celebration for him this weekend, so I'm catching up). The cheesiness is remarkable—it's like whoever made it had just discovered that motion-effect the day before and was just like, "Yeah yeah, let's just do... a lot of that!"—but somehow, despite everything, Michael Jackson is totally and obviously a star, way greater than all the polyester suits and the awful sparkly star sweater-vest. You can just see it in how he moves, even though he's hardly even dancing there.

I can hardly walk sometimes, so this ability seems absolutely magical to me.

nesting like it's 1899

2009-08-29T10:10:00.006-04:00

My friends at The Wren's Nest have been really busy over the past year with an incredible conservation project. You can read all about it on their blog, and you can see the amazing photos Jonathan Hillyer took of some of the completed interior rooms here. Here is Hillyer's shot of the living room, which became my instant favorite room in the house the very first time I visited (for this story).

It's mostly the funky tree-print wallpaper that did it for me, but also that great marble-topped side table (with the glass lamp on it) you can see in the back left corner there. It was ordered from the Sears & Roebuck catalog, I was told, like much of the furniture in the house—so that probably means that the exact same table, which sits in my parents' own living room, which came from my great uncle's house after he died, probably came from Sears, too.

It occurs to me that, one day in the future, our generation's grand-progeny will be comparing their families' antiques with strangers and new friends and will be weirdly thrilled and amused to discover, "Oh, wow, I inherited that exact same birch Expedit from my great-great-great aunt Rachael! Yeah, I guess it was like a big thing to get furniture from that Ikea place or whatever." And then the things will all disintegrate into a poof of 100-year-old particleboard.

Oh well.

In the meantime, if you're in Atlanta and you haven't visited The Wren's Nest, you really should. They've been doing some really great things over there for a while, but now they're doing it all in super-spiffy historically-preserved style.

Austin wrote a really great story. This is my favorite part.

2009-08-27T09:59:00.002-04:00

“Pointing out that stuff sucks is not edgy or dangerous anymore,” he says. “Everyone knows what sucks. What’s better is to find the stuff that’s amazing and hold it up. Even something like the KFC bowl, in a weird way, I love it.”

—Anger Management: Growing Up With Patton Oswalt

the great frame-up

2009-08-26T19:42:00.010-04:00

I used to buy t-shirts as souvenirs when I traveled—apparently now I buy Things For My Walls. I think it's working out okay.

Colin Meloy & Laura Veirs show print by Carson Ellis & Crash Design bought at Flatstock 16. Kitschy prints over the stove from Kudzu.

Print of 826 Valencia mural by Chris Ware. General Lynx print by Mark Weaver.

Austin City Limits poster from my first trip out there (two years ago, now—whoa). Painting by my mom, in college. Small framed print by Ashley G. Oddly-sized Hatch print in a make-do frame that I actually rather like. Plus a few framed cards and one Matt Cipov squirrel mask print hiding in there somewhere.

And I haven't run out of walls yet. Onward!

Decatur, Or, Round Of Applause For My Neighborhood!

2009-08-26T18:34:00.004-04:00

My mom and sister drove down to visit me last night and to see my new place before Sarah goes back to school this weekend. They stopped at Kudzu to wait for me to be done with work. After I was done, they came and picked me up and then, because it's kind of impossible to just pop in and out of that place, we all wound up going back over. I did not buy anything because I sure don't need anything but Sarah was able to fuel her recent Vera Neumann obsession (a purchase duly agonized over, as evidenced by the above photo) and I got crotch-butted by one of the two giant poodles hanging out around the front counter, so I consider the trip a success.

Afterwards, we ate at Leon's—which, can I just say I love it more every time I go? I don't think there's a single bad thing on that menu. Even the burger is amazing, like no other burger I've had. And it feels just plain wrong to go and not get a cocktail—The Halemint kicked my ass last night, though the Miller's Cucumber Cooler is still one of most wonderful liquid things I've ever consumed.

When I was first thinking about moving a few months ago, the idea of leaving the immediate downtown Decatur area really broke my heart. Nights like last night make me feel so lucky that I figured out how to stay right here, with all these great places I love nearby (and that the ones involving booze are mostly all accessible by foot).

classy broads

2009-08-25T12:33:00.003-04:00

My sister drank cheap beer with and got some pretty great life advice from her 72-year-old boss the other night:

She reviewed for us the last two decades' worth of smut novels, and she made us swear never to return a piece of jewelry to a man after a break-up. She also strongly advised us not to fully unpack when staying with a man overnight, because "you never know when you need to get the hell out of there fast."

Y'all, Joan Holloway got old, moved to Soddy Daisy and now works at the Hunter Museum!