Ponies, Pepperoni, Happiness, and Pot

July 27, 2010 45 Comments read Attractions

On Saturday, a large group of pasty-white people (the better to glow with, my dear) assembled and visited the Auburn Supermall, making it the largest crowd that particular mall has seen since 1988, for the express purpose of playing blacklight minigolf. I had offered to have people over to paint their faces with UV-reactive makeup, and I myself had intended to do a glowing neon sugar-skull mask, but as the hours crept by and no one showed, I decided to go for something a little more subtle, as I didn’t want to be That Douche in public.

I was That Douche in public regardless, as while we waited for stragglers to show, I volunteered to test out the hurricane simulation booth, because if I didn’t do it, who would, right?

My hair was a series of very fine knots for the rest of the day.

We also noted that the nearby Hippy-Dippy-Do-Dah store sold suspicious-looking ‘massage wands’.

Sean takes his minigolf quite seriously–the glowing hat and glasses make all the difference in the world…if we were keeping score. Which we weren’t.

I learned an important lesson that day as well, namely, that it is incredibly difficult to minigolf while wearing a feather boa, which tends to wrap around the handle of the club and choke one just as one is taking an important shot.

The course itself was designed by a sadist who hates minigolfers–the very first hole involved a bridge under which the ball got stuck nearly every goddamn time, forcing the golfer to their knees and use their club like a pool cue. The course was also set up in such a way that balls tended to shoot off-course and toward other people in the venue.

I sincerely feel that if three wolf moon can be a thing, five glowing sharks should also be a thing. There are five of them! And they’re glowing!

At the end of the course, there was a hole set up like minigolf pachinko–if you managed to get your ball into the orange hole, you’d win a free game. I didn’t actually get that far, as, completely disenchanted with the course and choking myself with feathers, I declared myself done and handed over my club and ball at the counter. Rob, however, won a free game!

After golf, we made our way to Shindig for delicious booze, and then over to Emily’s for dinner and board games–first we played Quelf, which was both ridiculous and highly entertaining–we were dancing jigs and making animal noises and holding hands and singing songs and even had a round of group therapy, and by the time we were tired and slap-happy, we started playing ‘Things’, where each round, everyone wrote down their answer to card prompts like ‘Things you shouldn’t do in a graveyard’, ‘Things you would do you if you were invisible’, ‘Things you shouldn’t experiment with’, etc. My name popped up frequently as a ‘thing you would do in the dark’, a ‘thing that is dirty’, and so on and so forth. Eventually we even started recycling slips, and the phrases ‘donkey punch’, ‘pepperoni’, ‘fuck a ghost’, and ‘electricity’ started popping their way into most rounds.

…Something is seriously wrong with my friends.

Which is why I love them, of course.

RichArt’s ArtYard

July 20, 2010 42 Comments read Attractions, Pacific, Travel, USA, Washington, West

Richard Tracy has been working on an outdoor installment for nearly thirty years, his ArtYard, working with found and repurposed materials. Everything he makes is at the mercy of the elements, and so his pieces are constantly in a state of flux; creation and destruction with the new springing from the ashes of the old. On Sunday, I drove to Centralia to visit Rich and see his creation.

There were a several other visitors there, and Rich greeted and spent time with every single person, dragging his reluctant round dog behind him. I liked him immediately. He rounded us up near the entrance and handed each person a tassel and told us that if we particularly liked something he made, we should thank him by hanging that tassel off of the piece, “high or low, naughty or nice”, but that we were not to allow him to see us putting the tassel in place. He explained that because he’s constantly in the yard, he’s lost the ability to see it the way visitors do, and whenever he finds a tassel, he goes silent and contemplates the art, because we’ve then given him the gift of perspective.

He brought us over to his first piece, The King & Queen, saying “The Queen is larger because she has more power. We would have fewer wars if we had more queens.” We were then mainly left to our own devices in touring the yard. It’s almost beyond description, almost beyond comprehension. Even photographs do a poor job capturing it. It really must be experienced. Every few minutes, Rich would make the rounds and point out something about the piece we were looking at. He encouraged everyone to look at the space around the art as well, at how nature has incorporated itself in and around the art, making it something more than it was before. The yard itself almost reads like a study in variation and repetition; his fondness for the number five, for circles and spheres, the way the same materials will pop up in similar yet different configurations–what could be a jumble of unrelated items is made cohesive with an underlying theme.

As I looked at this wall, Rich approached me and said the head mounted on the right is one of the most-photographed pieces in the yard, the people’s choice. He’s wanted to throw it away many times but has stayed his hand at the last moment because he can’t bring himself to destroy something that so many people like. Mainly, he is disappointed that the face on the right gets so much attention, and the face on the left comparatively little, given that the face on the left is one of his personal favorites, inspired by Picasso’s Girl Before a Mirror. But he said it was ever that way in the art classes he taught as well; he would teach no more than five students at a time, and everyone’s voice was as important as his own. He also described his process for me, and said that he works very hard to get out of his own way when he creates–that he can’t stop and scrutinize every step along the way or he’d never finish anything. He just keeps working until it comes together and feels right. Sometimes it never does reach that stage, but he won’t know until he puts it all together. I think that’s useful advice for anyone engaging in creative endeavors–just keep working, things you were intially unsure about may come together in a way you wouldn’t expect. We parted with him telling the story of the day he watched Mount St Helens erupt, saying that he hadn’t intended to send people off with something bad ringing in their ears, but it was just like being at the dinner table, knowing you oughtn’t say anything nasty, and having something nasty be the only thing you want to talk about. Something else that’s nasty–within five days of Rich’s death, a friend with a backhoe will completely eradicate the ArtYard within a five hour period. *Edit* As of 2012, the ArtYard is no more.

Beach House Day Five: I do not roister with an oyster. I like my bed dry. An oyster, moister.

June 17, 2010 Comments Off read Attractions, Pacific, Travel, USA, Washington, West

In the limited time I had on Wednesday before I had to drive home, we decided to take a trip to Oysterville to see what there was to see.

And when you’re in Intercourse, you take home…? Hobo Station? Slaughterville? Hooker Hole? New Erection? Gaylordsville? Don’t leave me hanging, sign! Oysterville clearly fancies itself the Honolulu of Washington, and the resemblance is striking once you analyze the data. Honolulu, the capital of Hawaii, has attracted nearly 380,000 residents. Oysterville is an unincorporated community in Washington, and though there is no population information online, I can tell you that the one street that comprises Oysterville contains precisely twelve houses. Amazing similarities, no? A tourist trap is not a tourist trap without a general store, and while there, I learned some fascinating things about oysters, from a fascinating book called Oysters A-Z. There was a book next to it called Oysterville A-Z, so clearly someone has cornered that market. Surprisingly enough, nothing caught my fancy enough to want to make it mine, and I wandered outside to watch something much more interesting: someone had gotten his truck caught out in the beds, and even pushing it from behind and attempting to tow it out with another truck couldn’t do the job. Eventually, the Gorton’s fisherman (most famous for his role in ‘I know what you did last summer’) wandered out with a piece of rope so ratty he likely got it from his last trip to Atlantis, they hooked his truck in, chariot style, and with two trucks pulling plus half the town pushing from behind, they were able to free the truck. Now that the problem had reached a conclusion and the most excitement the town had seen since the great oyster molester of ’23 had passed, we decided it was time to move along ourselves. Thus endeth Beach Week 2010.