This morning, I was thinking about some of the jobs that I've held through the years. Some of them good and most of them? Well, not so good - like my stint in a video store in a small conservative Georgia town that was actually a thinly-veiled front for a porn shop.
Holy heck, I'll never forget that Summer. It was the only job that I could get, having recently moved there from out of State. I could tell right away that it was going to be a hard job search when I wasn't getting jobs because nobody knew my family. That's big in those small Southern towns - people want to know who your family is. I remember always being there alone at night and having to deal with creepy guys who'd go into the back of the store for a long time before coming up and asking for a porno flick by giving me the title. All that they were supposed to do was give me the ID number but no...nooooooo...instead, they'd give me the full titles. And let me tell you, if you've never taken a peek at titles of the genre, you are in for a real treat!
Luckily, I only had to stay at the video shop for one Summer before getting a job at the local florist. I don't even know how I got that job. When I left my interview, I put my car into drive instead of reverse and plowed right into the side of the building! It turned out to be another job that I just wasn't cut out for. I never could master making ribbons (which is a huge deal in a floral shop) and soon got delegated as the one who put the greenery into funeral sprays and who tied off balloons. The owner of the business was a very sassy and blunt little lady named Rachelene who at the staff Christmas party got drunk and revealed to me that a lady had once committed suicide in the walk-in closet of my rental home. A home that already gave me the creeps. I'll never forget going home that night in the dark.
Okay, now back to videos. I was once offered a job in a video matchmaking agency and like a fool, I turned it down. I'll forever wish that I'd taken the job at least for a while. I think that it would have been one interesting story after another. Have you seen these old video dating videos from the 80's? I can never get enough of them.
Some of you younger readers might not realize it but yes, in the 80's, we actually dressed like that with no sense of irony whatsoever. You guys and girls might be bringing back some of the fashions in the spirit of retro fabulousness but I double-dog-dare you to bring back the hair!
Ellen Degeneres was able to find three of the men and get updates on how they're doing now and if they found love. Go here.
And do you remember "Love Connection"? Check out Lee Little.
I love that guy! I'd love to know whatever happened with those two.
On the waaaaaay flip side, did you know that there was once an infamous serial killer on "The Dating Game"? Not only was he a contestant, but he actually won the date with the bachelorette!
To make things even scarier, Rodney James Alcala was on the show during the time that he was on his killing spree. Lucky for Cheryl, she didn't go on the date with him because she thought he seemed "creepy". He as actually out on parole for rape when he was approved for the show. Yikes.
Wow, I really know how to bring down a mood, don't I? Let's lighten things up. I can't think of anything that can lighten a mood like well, Rip Taylor. Let's go!
Can you imagine what taking a trip to Mexico with Rip Taylor would be like?
I would definitely like to find out!
And does anyone remember Jamie Foxx's character Wanda from "In Living Color"?
It's interesting to see now how many big stars were born on that show.
Okay, that's enough tripping down dating memory lane. I hope that you all have a great Saturday!
Five years ago today, the Mister and I were at the hitchin' post.
The Mister hates to have his picture online but you can see me about to break out into the ugly cry in this shot. He was wearing his late grandfather's pinstriped suit and just like Doris Day said in the movie Calamity Jane, I was wearing my "frilled-up, flirtin', man-rustlin' petticoat" crinoline in bright red as my "something new".
It was a beautiful Fall day just like today and he played the wedding march on accordion as I came down the aisle.
Well, I say "aisle" but it was just a green lawn! We had a small wedding with only ten guests. With he and I both being the shy type, it was just perfect. We threw our own wedding so that we could keep things thrifty.
We had it planned so that when the preacher pronounced us husband and wife, a friend of ours would cue up the Victrola and one of our favorite songs would play.
Which of course went awry. We were having our first kiss as man and wife and the song started. But wouldn't you know that the victrola hadn't been cranked enough?
Before we could even complete the kiss, the record wound down and was kind of like, "Iiiiiiim braaaaanddddding myyyyyyy daaaaaaarliiiinnnnn...." and then went dead. Then the Mister ran over and cranked it up and came back so that we could recreate our first kiss. We all had a good laugh over that one! Oh, the best laid plans.
Oh, and our preacher was late to our wedding! Everyone was sitting outside in the direct sun waiting and I was nervously pacing in the house when he called saying that he was lost. And hello, he actually lived in that town! We had wanted to get a friend dressed in a bear suit to marry us and after that, we regretted scrapping the idea. A bear in the hand is worth two preachers lost in the bush.
I got a florist at home to make my bouquet and I carried it with me. My wedding dress came from eBay and oh what a mess. When it arrived, it was absolutely coated in nicotine. It wasn't white at all but a putrid shade of yellow. Oh, and the smell! I sat down and cried when I pulled it out of the box. I ended up finding an amazing cleaner here in town who got it spotless for me. And the good news was that the Seller refunded all of my money - so my wedding dress was free! Yee Haw!
We rented a house way up on top of Lookout Mountain (about three hours from home) just up the road from Rock City and it was both the site of our night-before party, our wedding and the reception. Oh, and it was also our honeymoon cottage! I told you - thrifty. We had never seen the place in person before we went there for our wedding and were thoroughly relieved when we drove up.
It was so beautiful and had this big porch on the front where we all hung out each night. And even though it was Fall, all of the flowers were still brightly in bloom and the grass was like lush green velvet. We got really lucky. Our plan had been that we'd come back there every year for our anniversary but it never happened because the rental company sold the house the very next year.
So, every time that we go back up there, we ride past and stalk the house. Very romantic.
When our guests came in the night before, some of them stayed with us to save money. I made an enormous pot of soup and these monsters made out of biscuits. Or maybe they're snakes.
Which makes me laugh now. We had seen these guys in a recipe book on Halloween treats at the register as we were buying the supplies for our soup and just had to make them! When I watch that TLC show where brides rate each others' weddings, I often wonder what they'd think about the Biscuit Monsters. I'm sure they'd find them incredibly droll but in all actuality, they were delicious! Their innards were made of delicious cheddar cheese. Yum!
We had really great food at the wedding. We got a cafe up the road to cater lots of sandwiches and salads for us and had a picnic on the lawn of the house.
My Mom brought a bunch of her quilts from home in South Carolina. She also brought pretty much every vintage table cloth that you see in these photos. And she let me pick out a quilt to keep as our " wedding quilt ". Everything but the chairs at our wedding either came from my house or my Mom's house. Finally our vintage hoards came in handy!
She also made our wedding cake - a homemade coconut one.
I can't believe that I asked her to lug a cake up from South Carolina - but her coconut cakes are legendarily delicious! She also made those truffles down front and my sister-in-law brought amazing red velvet cupcakes. My new mother-in-law made sugar cookies shaped like hearts and wedding bells from cookie cutters that had belonged to her Mom. She brought those all the way from Kansas by car. I tell you, there is nothing like having great cooks in the family. We had food coming in from everywhere! The wedding topper was found on eBay. There are SO many on eBay. It's seriously hard to choose if you're in the market.
Since gnomes are a huge part of Rock City, the Mister and I personalized gnomes for each guest and also gave gifts of boxes of regional chocolates like goo-goo clusters and moon pies. Fancy!
Did you know that Jones Soda will put any photo on bottles of soda for you?
We saved a bottle to have with our anniversary wedding cake a year later.
Then we headed further up the hill to Rock City and took photos and explored the park.
I love this shot from one of the caves.
We had our friend, Libby take photos at the wedding and also brought our laptop and borrowed all of our guests' camera cards on that last night and stole their photos too. Talk about super cheap wedding pictures! - and it was fun to see photos of the event from each guests' points of view.
Rock City was actually where we fell in love way back in 2004 so we knew that we had to have our wedding up there. Here is a shot from that first day that we ever went there. I think that was our third date.
Look at those young punks!
When we met, he had bleached his hair the color of a baby chick and gah, I can't even tell what color mine was. Something with "cherry" in the name, I'm sure. I remember that it was a ridiculously hot day in July and he had no air conditioning in his car. We got stuck for hours behind a wreck on the interstate and as it was the only way home and we were melting, he finally drove the wrong way up the exit ramp (I know, totally uncool...I told you - punks!) and we hung out at a Western Sizzlin' salad bar, bought tons of fireworks and sat in a field watching goats. Oh, the heart wants what the heart wants. Our love potion was in part goat smell, croutons and those fireworks where flames shoot out of paper chickens' butts.
Anyway, I've overshared enough. I'm sure y'all feel like you're trapped in someone's living room and being forced to watch their vacation slides. Anyhoo, here's to my hubs!
Who is quite obviously the one for me.
I'll leave you with our wedding song as it should have been played. This one goes out to my honey. And to all you young lovers and long-timed together couples out there. And heck, to those of you who are even moderately interested in pitchin' woo. This is the song for you.
Today would have been Gail Davis' eighty seventh birthday.
You may or may not be old enough to remember that Gail played the rootin' tootin' Annie Oakley in a show by the very same name between 1954 and 1956. She also had roles on television shows such as TheCisco Kid, The Lone Ranger, The Adventures of Kit Carson and The Gene Autry Show. And she was in more than two dozen Western films. That's some pretty fine Western themed acting lineage if you ask me! I definitely approve. I also approve of this outfit.
Looking back through videos, I found this wild commercial for Friskies dog food from that same era. I love the little dogs and honestly, I can't get over how they brag about horse meat being the ingredient. I mean, of course I know that horse meat was used in pet food and unfortunately, still is today but it's interesting to me that Gail was on all of those Westerns with horses - and you know that cowgirls and cowboys love their horses. Eh, I don't know... I guess they were different times and quite honestly, it would probably be a lot better world if manufacturers were that upfront about what's in their products these days. Oh, I ramble. On to the video!
Also interesting: Using the phrase "table quality" about dog food. I think that I might start rating the dishes that I make as "table quality" or "eating over the sink with much regret quality".
Shoot! ( Pow! Pow!) Where was I? Okay, so Happy Birthday to the lovely Gail Davis. She was a real force to be reckoned with and her role as Annie seriously gave young girls back in the day someone strong and admirable to look up to. And tell me that they didn't need that in the 1950's! We're all about that one!
And now on to a little Annie Oakley. Look at this cool old film of Annie from 1894.
She would have been thirty four years old there. At the end, she is shooting glass balls. Reportedly, on a single day she shot 4,472 of the 5,000 glass balls that were tossed in midair with a rifle. That makes my arm hurt just to think about it. I could never be an Annie.
For seventeen years Annie Oakley toured with the infamous Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show dazzling crowds with feats like shooting a dime thrown into the air while standing ninety feet away. She was also known for shooting the thin edge of a playing card from the same distance and if that wasn't enough, would fill it full of five or six more holes as it fluttered to the ground. She also often shot the ashes off of the end of cigarettes from her husband, Frank's lips from a distance. How many of our spouses with trust us with that one, eh? You might be thinking that with the way that my train of thought is going that I might mention Barbara Stanwyck or Betty Hutton here due to their amazing film roles as Annie Oakley. Though I do love them both, I think I'll throw you for a loop and put in Caglar Juan Singletary instead. He's one of my favorite people on one of the best documentaries ever entitled Off The Charts: The Song Poem Story and his song about Annie Oakley is amazing. Here he is with his Mother:
I have this fantasy about meeting him one day. He seems so earnest and sweet and I figure I can't go wrong with someone who loves Kung Fu, Priscilla Presley and Annie Oakley. I know I talked about the documentary before but if you haven't seen it, please do. It's riveting and inspiring and at the sake of being honest, had me boo hoo-ing right and left. It's in it's entirety on YouTube here. All of this Annie talk got me to wondering if there are any Annie Oakley Halloween costumes on the web. Well you know that there are.
First the nice one:
This one is real cute. Heck, I'd wear that every day!
Its from Target.
And since Halloween ain't nothin' if it's not slutting up every single female costume idea:
You're looking at her tiny, historically inaccurate rifle, aren't you?
Well, I also found this:
Meanwhile, back at the raunch.
Okay, I've rambled on enough. Sometimes I go completely down the rabbit hole and into other rooms that take me to entirely other rabbit holes, don't I?
I hope that y'all have a great weekend!
Until next time,
x's and o's,
Eartha
p.s. Okay, I can't resist. Betty Hutton as Annie Oakley!
Oh, it's Fall in Tennessee! And Fall is my favorite time of the year! Do you say "Fall" or "Autumn" in your neck of the woods? I love the way that "Autumn" sounds but feel too fancy saying it.
The weather is getting pretty nippy here and at night, we're piling on the blankets. And the cats. It's a wonder that I don't dream that I'm trapped under a truck with all of the cats that pile on my legs when I'm sleeping. They're complete and utter opportunists. Cute opportunists though.
Speaking of the cats, this is Mr. Kitten Pants' first Fall season. He's already started enjoying sitting in the window and watching the leaves blow around and is particularly interested in the squirrel that lives in the knothole of the tree out front. Today, he got particularly amped because he and Pip got to help me decorate for Halloween. Oh! And he got to see the first faux fire of the year! (and of his life)
Of which he was completely terrified.
I think it was the crackling sound that put him on edge.
He did everything in his power not to actually come in contact with the thing.
Then he discovered old Mister Skeleton lounging around.
And slowly, slowly, slowly crept up to him.
He never really did want to get involved with him but later on, he grew confident enough to
steal a closer peek.
AND A FOOT!
Here you see grainy video footage of his brazen skeleton foot thievery:
That, my friends would totally hold up in a court of law!
There's one thing about it though - after all of the edge-of-his-cute-little-seat adventure, he was pooped and soon fell prey to a catnap.
This Just In: Pip demands equal time in this post.
Doesn't this shot of Pip remind you of every scene in every horror movie ever where the female heroine doesn't know that the serial killer / creepy monster / alien from outer space is....
RIGHT. BEHIND. HER?!!
Have you ever noticed that in those films, upon hearing a noise, the victim always yells out, "Who's there?!" Never once have they been answered back the way that they'd want to be. Just a tip - never ask who's there. Oh wow, another thing that I love about Fall - scary movies! Want to see some of the worst (and thus in my mind - the best) horror movie monsters through the decades?
I think that I used to work for the Watermelon Monster. Always chewing on my arse, that one.
What about you all? Doing fun things to prepare for the change of season where you are? Anything that you're looking forward to the most? Do you have any cat burglars at your house? Do posts with nothing but cat photos make you break out in hives. Do tell!
