25 Days of Minis

6x6 Oil on panel, black floater frame

But was he really so mean? Just because he hated noisy neighbors? You’d hate them too, if you had to listen to them blowing floofloovers and banging tartookas, all friggin’ season long.

OF COURSE he wanted to live alone with his dog in a cave. Who wouldn’t? I mean besides most people.

In fact, does anyone know if Realtor.com or Zillow have any cave listings? Cause I’m in the market.

8x8 oil on cradled panel, black floater frame

This is from the Rankin/Bass Christmas special:  “The Year Without a Santa Claus”, which I really think needs to be retitled to: “That Year Mrs. Claus Had to do Literally EVERYTHING”.

Shirley Booth (as Mrs. Claus), was CLEARLY the star of the show, but did they put HER name in the title? No they did not. Instead, they put “Santa Claus” in the title … probably they were worried people might think it was a “chick flick”. 😡

Someone (not named Karen) needs to send Rankin and Bass a strongly worded letter.

TIA

8x8 oil on cradled panel, black floater frame

 Regular readers of my newsletter will be familiar with my love of all things stop motion and my particular adoration for Rankin/Bass Christmas specials like “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”, “The Year Without a Santa Claus”, etc. This painting is from the film called “The Little Drummer Boy” (1968).

There’s a meme that perfectly describes the plot:
Mary, exhausted, having just gotten Jesus to sleep, is approached by a young man who thinks to himself: What this girl needs is a drum solo.

Oh, internet. You crack me up.

6x6 oil on panel, black floater frame

This one is of Kermit playing Bob Cratchit in “A Muppet Christmas Carol”.

Poor Kermit. Not only is it not easy being green, it’s also not easy being the stage manager to a group of crazy people. He’s got to deal with that one weirdo who likes being shot out of a cannon and a pig who is not only a massive diva, she’s also an obsessed creepy stalker who doesn’t know when she’s been friend zoned. (Oh honey, that frog just isn’t in to you).

It’s no wonder Kermit likes to sit alone on a log in a swamp, playing sad songs on a banjo.

6x6 oil on panel, black floater frame.

Ah Gonzo … All the chicks love him. Get it? Chicks? As in chickens?

(His girlfriend was a chicken named Camilla).

You get it.

Moving on…

What I loved most about Gonzo was his weirdness. And he absolutely reveled in being odd. He celebrated it. It was even a long-running gag on The Muppets that no one knew what he was … (an animal? A Bird? An Alien?)  So, while we can’t be certain about exactly “what” Gonzo is, we do know the guy liked to wear a red velvet tuxedo and call himself “The Great”, while doing stupid shit on a stage. Look, I’m not saying he’s a billionaire tech bro. But I’m not NOT saying he’s a billionaire tech bro.

6x6 oil on panel, black floater frame

Fozzie was the guy with all the dad jokes that usually ended with “Wocka Wocka”.

He looks suspiciously like the Irish comedian James Mulgrew, better known as Jimmy Cricket, who was big in Britain in the 70s and 80s. I was unable to confirm, but I would swear Fozzie was modeled after this guy … with the goofy hat, tie and really dumb one-liners. Go find him on YouTube. You’ll see I’m right.

6x6 oil on panel, black floater frame

This poor guy. His cooking always ends in disaster. (The struggle is real).

While I love Ina Garten, I more closely relate to the Swedish Chef than the Barefoot Contessa.

8x8 oil on cradled panel, black floater frame.

This is Jack Skellington from the stop motion (be still my heart) movie “A Nightmare Before Christmas”.

It has come to my attention that some of you like Halloween more than Christmas. This one is for you weirdos.

8x8 oil on cradled panel, black floater frame

Ed Asner played Santa in the movie “Elf” with Will Farrel. This quickly earned a spot in my top 10 favorite Christmas movies when it came out in 2003. Can you believe it’s been 22 years? Sweet Cheesus and the Holy Ghosticle … what even is time?

Did I just fall into a tesseract? If I’ve entered a wrinkle in time, I’d better get to meet Oprah Winfrey, or I’m gonna be pissed.

ETA: Ed Asner will forever be Mr. Grant to me. R.I.P. #edasner

8x8 oil on cradled panel, black floater frame

So I don’t know if this is accurate, but I read somewhere that although the copyright has expired on the 1928 short film, “Steamboat Willie”, there was a catch … and my limited understanding is that while Disney lost the copyright, they haven’t lost the trademark.

All this is to say, if Disney comes after me, I’m gonna need one of y’all to bake me a cake with a file in it.

Thanks in advance!

8x8 oil on cradled panel, black floater frame

Hey Marvel and DC: Can we have some more female superheroes please? And don’t just paint a woman green and call her She-Hulk, or give her a mask and call her Bat-Girl. I mean a female character with her very own origin story that wasn’t copied from an existing male superhero.

And for Gawd’s sake, don’t just dress her in Bikini armor and thigh high boots. We see what you’re doing there.

10x10 oil on panel, black floater frame

This old photo made me want to start watching that show “Kids Baking Championship”.

But sanity prevailed … because why would I want to watch little kids making perfectly baked macarons or who can intelligently converse with judges about the structural integrity of a sponge cake? It’s like the show was designed to remind us of our own crippling failures in the kitchen. (Rude!) They might as well have called the show, “So easy, a child can do it” just to really rub it in.

Nope. Not gonna watch it. Far better to remain ignorant of the truth and extent of my own domestic incompetence. Plus, I’d much rather watch Gordon Ramsey mock a professional chef’s overcooked smashburger, so I can feel smugly superior. That’s good content, right there.

 Many thanks to @sightsofthe50s60s70s On Instagram for allowing me to use their photo as a reference.

6x6 oil on panel, black floater frame

So, the main moral of the story in the Wizard of Oz is, we already have within us everything we need to overcome life’s challenges. Unless you had asked my 6-year-old niece, who’d have said it was: you can go anywhere you want, if you have the right sparkly shoes.

Especially if they’re pink.

And far be it from me to get wrangled into an intellectual quarrel with a six year old.

(I did have that intellectual quarrel with a six year old and I won the argument by sticking out my tongue and calling her a doo-doo head.)

8x8 oil on panel, black floater frame

So we’ve all seen Wicked, and we all hate Glinda “The Good Witch” now, and I couldn’t be happier. I always knew “The Wicked Witch of the West” was basically an angsty goth-girl, who got tired of everyone’s shit.  

Sure, she could have gone into a swamp, sat on a log with a banjo and started singing about how hard it is being green … but did she succumb to her emo tendencies? No she did not. She shot balls of fire out of her hands and flew around on a broomstick.

I’d have done the same if someone dropped a house on my sister. I don’t actually have a sister, and maybe if I did, I’d have dropped a house on her myself, but that would be allowed. Because she’s MY sister. That’s like the first paragraph of the first section of the handbook: “Teenage Feuds: Guidelines of Engagement” right there. We all know the rules.

8x8 oil on panel, black floater frame

I don’t think this painting requires any further explanation beyond its title. IYKYK.

10x10 oil on panel, black floater frame

This one was from that movie “The Help” about black women in the deep south employed as domestic workers for rich white bitches in the Jim Crow Era.  I’m not going to tell you what’s in the pie, in case you haven’t seen the movie yet, but let’s just say it’s a study in how a revenge dish is best served.

8x8 oil on panel, black floater frame

This would be me … I skip the skiing and go straight to the lodge because I read that book “The Other Side of the Mountain”, about the Olympic skier who became a quadriplegic after a tragic ski accident. I’m not trying to be anyone’s hero. The only obstacle I want to face in life is deciding which fancy cocktail I should order next.

10x10 oil on panel, black floater frame

As Author Lani Lynn Vale* once said: “It only takes one slow walking person in the grocery store to destroy the illusion that I'm a nice person.”  

Or in my case, it’s that one asshat who won’t let me merge into traffic… Don’t act like you didn’t just speed up as soon as I put on my turn signal! A Pox on both your houses.

(Quick aside: Why was Shakespeare only cursing people who owned vacation homes?  Shakespeare is the main reason I disliked English in high school, because I’m pretty positive he was lying about speaking English.)

 *Footnote: I don’t know who Lani Lynn Vale is, I’ve never read any of her books, but I stumbled on this quote of hers, and it may be the greatest quote that ever quoted, imho.

10x10 oil on panel, black floater frame

Happy Friday! Hope y’all have fun plans for the weekend. I, myself, have grand plans to attend the shenanigans.

Brief point of clarification:

These days, “the shenanigans” entail a glass of wine, a Snuggie™ (as seen on TV) and rage-watching The Handmaids Tale* for the umpteenth time, because if attending shenanigans means I have to put on a bra and look presentable, I’m out.

*Footnote: Am I the only one who hates Serena Joy, almost as much as I hate Commander Waterford? Can someone explain to me why dafuq June keeps helping her?!!!

Cute story: After watching The Handmaid’s Tale, whenever my husband asks me to do something, like take the dog out, I enjoy snarkily replying, “May the Lord Open” or “Under His Eye”.

For some reason, he doesn’t find this nearly as hilarious as I do.

(But also, I made him watch that scene where the handmaids all poisoned their commanders and I may have told him it was a documentary).

Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum

#NeverLetTheBastardsGrindYouDown

8x8 oil on panel, black floater frame

This was a meme I just had to paint. Because wine at 8am pairs perfectly with that Lucy face.

8x8 oil on panel, black floater frame

I was trying to remember how we entertained ourselves as kids, before iPads and streaming services. Welllll.. let’s see … I was a kid in the 70s, so we gave strangers directions. (Especially if they had candy). We rode in the back of station wagons (seatbelts were optional). We threw lawn-darts (death javelins) towards each other. We cobbled together plywood and cement blocks to make a ramp for our dirt bikes (thanks, Evil Kneivel!). The ramp only worked once and resulted in a broken arm (Mikey Hollinger, because he was a doofus).

As the t-shirt says: It was the fuck-around-iest of times, it was the find-out-iest of times. And quite a few of us even lived to tell about it. The rest, wellll … the 70s were nature’s way of weeding out the idiots.

And if us Gen Xers always sound angry … It’s because we have no way to play our old albums or tape collections, or even CDs anymore! and we’ll be damned if we’ll pay a monthly subscription to listen to music. Of course we’re angry.

10x10 oil on panel, black floater frame

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is in my top 5 humans of all time. I especially loved her as Elaine Benes in Seinfeld, naturally. And if you also love her, you should listen to her podcast “Wiser Than Me” where she interviews badass older women. It’s delightful. And inciteful. And now I sound like I’m about to start singing a song from a Disney movie, but I assure you, I’m not. And you’re welcome.

8x8 oil on panel, black floater frame

Happy Festivus, for those who celebrate.  In case you didn’t know … December 23rd is Festivus.

My own family’s holiday season is a touch complicated. Half my dad’s family is Jewish, the other Italian. (They’re of the Brooklyn eye-talian variety. The kind that insist you call mozerella “mootzahrelllll”.)

In my dad’s family, they didn’t know whether it was time to play spin the holly, or deck the dradels. Festivus would have been a good compromise.

‍ 10x10 oil on panel, black floater frame

This image reminded me of my mom who was an Olympic-class shopper. She never missed a sale, and whatever you needed, she knew which stores had the best deal. We called her and her bestie “The Bargain Bettys”.   ‍

My mom could smell a buy one get one free discount from three counties away. The utility of the items was unimportant. It didn’t matter if she didn’t need two ... Frankly, it didn’t matter if she didn’t even need ONE! They were half off, so she bought two.

In every available color.

‍Our basement looked like a T.J. Maxx’s return bin after the holiday rush.

‍Although she did a lot to keep the U.S. economy going, she was also very “frugal” (that’s the word posh people use to avoid calling themselves “cheap”). We almost never ate out (we had food at home) and if you wanted Nike sneakers or Jordache jeans, you’d better hope they went on sale or it was Bobos and Wranglers for you.  She came by her frugality honestly. She grew up in Scotland during the rationing and economic desolation of the post-WWII era. She came to America with a friend, when she was only 21. Presumably having gotten a BOGO discount on boat tickets.

‍ ‍

‍ ‍

12x12 oil on panel, black floater frame

I had a hard time deciding on a title for this one. When I first saw the photo, it reminded me of Mary Poppins, though I don’t know why, exactly. So was thinking of calling it:

“You Know What Else Helps The Medicine Go Down? A Martini”.

But I wasn't sure if I was the only one who saw “Mary Poppins” in this image, and I didn't want people to think I was weird, talking about medicine and martinis. Or weirder than they already think I am. So I settled on “Watching Karma Take Care of People Who Did Me Wrong” … and it still makes me chuckle. (This is how I entertain myself).

Other alternate titles:

Watching Her Give A Shit Fairy, Fly Away.

Watching Someone Who Was Fucking Around, Find Out.

Me Pretending To Laugh When I Didn't Hear A Word You Said.

When They Didn't Listen To You So You Sit Back And Watch What You Predicted Would Happen, Happen.

I know, I know … my painting titles keep getting longer and longer. A testament to my lack of copy-editing skills. I’ve given up on brevity and have entered my “Ain’t nobody got time for this” era.

Which also leads me to my New Year’s Resolution: “Screw It.”

Feel free to borrow it yourself. It’s mercifully concise as well as being incredibly versatile. You’re very welcome.

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate and Happy New Year!

Reference, based on photo by Toni Frissell, The Library of Congress. Words cannot express how much I love her photographs.