Thoughts on a Few Days in Dublin

I've only been in Dublin for a few days now, and have recovered mostly from jet lag to write down a few things I've noticed about this lovely place. Mostly it's little unexpected things- those things that as a newcomer you think are rather novel, but once you've been here for a while it's just totally normal and unremarkable.

Sports are obviously huge here, but sportswear seems to be more popular for everyday wear than elsewhere in the world, I'm sure influenced by soccer/rugby-playing culture and role models. Wven after what I thought was the biggest surge of running suits and track pants in the '90's and 2000's, people still wear full track suits which also match their shoes. Thank goodness a lot of different fashion is happening throughout the city. Currently tie-dyed tee-shirts are big again, and cuffed pants.

Ireland has a lot of tropical plants! It must be the temperate climate and lots of moisture that makes them happy. I did not expect to see palm trees, giant calla lilies, and lots of giant hibiscus-like flower bushes here. But there they are, growing in the park or happily in people's front gardens.


Credit cards have changed here; now most foreign credit cards (without a chip and PIN) will not be accepted for transactions. This is okay if paying for cash (which is still a much more common transaction type than in the States) but a little tricky when you have to budget ATM withdraws.

Shopping malls are still kind of big here in Dublin. I've been getting used to outdoor plazas in Denver, or avoiding shopping malls entirely, but many of the better grocery stores are in a shopping mall here so they're a bit unavoidable. On the plus side, Indian food and curries are huge here, as in Britain, which they are not in Denver, so I will have my fill before I return home.

And finally, two words I've heard spoken here which I've not heard before: naff (lame or stupid), and lodgement (deposit of funds).

I Made That Shirt

Here in Iceland you may end up putting your foot where your mouth is, sotospeak, if you aren't careful about what you say, where you say it, and to whom. Everyone knows everyone, shops at the same stores, goes to the same bars. It can be comforting in a weird way. But the moment you want to criticize something, be careful. There isn't the same kind of removed constructive critique of artwork that I've found in the States--which is usually a blessing, to try and do whatever you want, learn as you go, but it also puts a lot of weird crap into the world, sometimes without much forethought.


Me: "I love this shirt, but it was printed kind of crappily. And the tag is sewn on badly."
New Friend I'm Trying to Impress: "That's my best friend's shirt company, she made that."
Me: "I, uh, well, the design is great, that's for sure."
Thankfully the shirts have indeed gotten better since then. So all is right in the world.

Winter Observations in Iceland

Here are a few random things I have observed about Iceland in the winter time.

I am surprisingly not as tired as I thought I would be. In fact, I am weirdly not at all tired when I should be, because it is so dark so much of the time that it messes a bit with your internal clock. I am a bit restless in bed, and then sleep in late, a vicious cycle. What with the sunrise at nearly 11:30am, it's a surreal experience to wake up at 9am and it is still dark for a couple hours, then you have lunch, and it gets dark soon after.

The Jólasveinar, or Yule Lads, are awesome and make for much holiday amusement and a delightful change from a fatty Santa. There are 13 Santas in Iceland, and each one is traditionally a trouble-maker, though now many of them have adopted Western Ways and give children small gifts for being good instead of doing sneaky things like plugging up the chimney, or eating all the sausages, or gobbling up the skyr. Jólasveinarnir also come out of hiding one per day, 13 days before Christmas. Their hideout is the mysterious Dimmuborgir, which I visited in late September.

I did not know about the existence of the Christmas Cat, or Jólakotturinn, nor Grýla! They are also holiday traditions here- the Christmas cat will steal children away unless at least one knitted good is given to a child for the holidays. You don't want to mess with that cat. Likewise Grýla, who will also steal children, is a scary-ass hag who is fabled to have long tails coming out of her backside, and the tails have bags strapped to them in which she hides 100 children per bag. Frightening. Nothing you'd ever see in America, even in The Nightmare Before Christmas.

I recently heard that about 90% of Iceland's published books come out during the holidays. The people here are well-read, or so it appears; at least they buy a lot of poetry and give it to others, who knows if it sits on the nightstand unread. There are even displays of new books that pop up at the grocery stores- I think in the States we would more likely see piles of cheap toys and DVDs. Iceland has plenty of those too but the books seem a little more respectable.

This Christmas I hardly did anything for gifts, but the things I did do I made almost completely myself. I bought one item for my parents and two souvenirs for relatives at local shops, but everything else was hand-crafted. It cost about as much to ship home the gifts as it did to buy all of them, but I think my family will appreciate them.

Also, where are the gays. It's been a few months in Iceland and I have yet to really meet any gay men my age. I've met teenagers, and middle-aged men. Are the 28-year-olds hibernating for the winter? Gone abroad? Some I know are already married, seeing how marriage often happens at younger ages here, and you can get gay married and it is no big thang (our prime minister is lesbian). But I go out on weekends to a club and everyone looks all stylish, I can't pick out the gays from straights, the society is so integrated. Eurochic style is a godsend, and a curse.

Finally, Iceland in winter is a place that one can go out wearing a custom-designed cape made from a sleeping bag (the designer Andrea Sisson made me a long-lusted-after cape, it's very warm and even has snaps and beautiful sewn folds) and in Reykjavík, no one bats an eyelash. It's like, oh, I have one of those too, no big whoop. 'Cept mine has a sleeve.

Sage Sage Derby Derby

I found out that there is a cheese called 'Sage Derby' which has this crazy green marbled look. I don't know if I'd like to eat it, but I did realize that the two words are also things unto themselves. What if you could make a sage-colored derby hat whose structure was made out of sage derby cheese? It would be a sage sage derby derby, of course. Here's a quick prototype. I'm sure it's gonna make millions, like the Cheeseheads of the 21st century.

Cookie Monster Model

Okay, now Cookie, you're going to stand here and pretend you're the letter F in front of this brooding model. Fur is the new skin, people! And Monster with No Name (who are you, anyway?), you're going to pet his titties. Beautiful! Work it, people, work it, I'm loving it! Give me more! Now Vogue!

Guy in armpit

This is a very important collage, done circa 1999. I'm sure it will be remembered long after I'm gone for its ingenious use of scale and proportion. Look at how that model uses another model as an armpit crutch! That's what you're allowed to do when you're rich and fashionable.
What you can't see was the high-heeled shoe on the right was attached to a head of Britney Spears (but no body, just a head coming out of a leg), and also somehow the head of Patrick Swayze was attached in there too. But I had to do some serious cropping to get the armpit shot into view.
This also probably infringes on copyright by using pictures of models without any kind of creative manipulation to the images. Way to go, me! I'm so creative it hurts sometimes.

Shirt Dress

Thank heavens I don't work in clothing retail. I'm all for pushing the boundaries of fashion, but sometimes girls' spring fever can get a little ridiculous.

Project Nunway

This year's premise is hotter than ever: 10 nuns (and select gay friars) compete for the chance of a lifetime- a fashion spread in Elle Magazine and one hundred thousand dollars to start their own religious fashion line. Every week one nun is eliminated.

Tim Gunn gives rosary beads of wisdom like, "Have Faith in Fashion, people! Make it work!"

The flamboyant gay nun calls every outfit "fierce", "Tranny" or, at best, "Hot Messiah".

But when it comes down to the judges, you're either in or you're Excommunicated.

One nun tries to design a sexy swimsuit for a Russian nun-slash-model but ends up falling short.

Michael Kors criticizes: "Magdalene, it looks like you've fallen right back into your old habits again. What happened to sexy swimwear?"

Magdalene replies, "I don't know if the Lord intended me to be a fashion designer."
And we all know what that means.
auf Wiedersehen.

Teeshirt Necklace

This necklace made its debut for the Wungsten concert performance, but in case you weren't there (heaven forbid) and seeing how it's about the only new piece of jewelry/sculptural design/tumor-like protrusion/recycled material homage to Louis Bourgeois that I've made in a while, I thought I might highlight it. It's made of one whole teeshirt! I cut it up and tied it, and wound with string and a few black glass beads. Here the strap is also doubled- it can hang low as well. Perfect for those star-studded red carpet events I know all my readers are attending this year. Nothing says 'Glamour, Now!' more than knobby black fingers poking out of your neck (+ Balenciaga gown, and you're good to go).

These Things, They Are All But(t) Words

I debated whether this would be appropriate for my dear readers. I'm not usually a terrible vulgar person, and I try to keep my posts somewhat educational (a music review here, a collage there) but this idea was too good to pass up, so if you're easily offended, move on.
We all know of the pants with 'PRINCESS' on the butts, or even 'bitch', 'sexy', and others. But I think we could really pump up the volume on this cliched fashion. I just know the corporations could make some big bucks on these ideas for sweatpants/gym shorts letterings, so these are so totally copyright moi. If I see 'The Fact That I Have Words Here is a Feminist Discourse Which Empowers Me' as sewed-on letters to the next Abercrombie pants I'm gonna be furious. (That one's a little hard to read in this image, it's a lot of letters to sew on.) Here are a few ideas for re-envisioned words on the behinds of all the sorority girls you know and love.

Beergasm, Fall Memories, Leafy Shirt

It feels like fall outside! I am just so excited I can't express it with words. The weather lately has felt sort of like:
Warm, but exuberant. Like a beergasm hot tub full of boys, or beakers full of bubbly champagne. And the evenings feel a bit like this:Like a feeling of being in a hot tub full of boys and then hopping out into the chilly night air. Autumn (or at least the promise of it) makes me very optimistic, reminiscent, nostalgic. So does the time of my birthday, which is next Monday. This time in September also causes me to wax poetic about a string of very strange and random things:
1. Fancy pens. Every year from K-12 I'd buy some fancy pens for school. Color-changing, pens with aquatic animals on them, mechanical pencils, and pencils with trolls on the top.
2. Back to school, walking down the long driveway to the school bus.
3. A shirt I had with autumn leaves on it, circa fifth grade. It was strangely similar to this beauty from tobicollage.com:
4. My semester in Scotland. Better in hindsight than in actuality, considering the strange cultural differences to be overcome and the lack of a quality educational system. But I would love to go back and teach, live/work, or maybe just soak up the essence there.
5. One chicken tandoori sub. (Or hoagie.) Eaten in Princes St. Gardens, Edinburgh. I was famished, a stranger in a foreign country, with pulled tendons in my feet from cobblestones and jet lag. A chicken tandoori sandwich saved me.
5 1/2. A tomato and olive pita pocket which did not save me. It was disgusting and I spit it all out on the ground.
6. Vassar.
7. New apartments, and making a home for your few precious things.
8. New and amazing friends!

It's the same every year, when the wave of 'fancypensback2skoolleafyshirtscotlandtandoorivassarapartmentfriends!' hits me suddenly and unexpectedly. The list grows longer with every autumn, but I certainly look forward to it extending with new and wonderful things. I've retired the leafy shirt, though...I don't want to be too cool for school and intimidate all the new kids.

BIBLE

Overheard in Pittsburgh: An elderly woman on the 71A bus, Center Ave., wearing a grossly-oversized sweater emblazoned with the acronym 'B-I-B-L-E'.

"I'm from the old school, you know. Mmm-hmm. Where kids treat their parents with respect. None of that bossing their parents around. I've seen some crazy things nowadays. Kids with their pants around their ankles. No, sir! They don't know what they're doing. Probably sinners. Parents are cheatin' around. And don't even think about the gays! Homosexuality is a sin and those mortal sinners will burn in hell for eternity!! And bestiality. It's immoral. We gotta praise Jesus. Burning homosexuals in hellfire. It's an abomination. We gotta put faith in the Lord!! Well, it's my stop. Ride safe, and it was good to see you. Bye now."

(The response from the man sitting next to her as she gets off at her stop?
"Well, she means well, but she goes off on a tangent.")


Elderly women these days. You know, honey, I'm from the new school! Mmm-hmm! Where crazy elderly women treat their fellow bus-riders with respect!

Midnight Haircuts of Yesteryore

Hey kids! It's first-grade Midnight Shoveler. By popular demand, I've decided to dig a little into old photos to show the many transformations of Midnight Shoveler's hair since...birth. Well, almost birth. And along the way we get to see the changes in American culture , like, in the change from 'scrunchies' to 'no scrunchies'. It's pretty revolutionary. So hang onto your mouse buttons, kids, this could be a long post.
We'll start with the very beginning. This is me, circa first grade! Note the lovely hairdo which emphasizes that my face has yet to expand to the rest of the front of my head- I think it shows how big my brain must have been. A stylish cut, I must say, for not having a choice in the matter.

The gray striped shirt is around my eleventh year. I discovered 'the part', which is big news for an 11-year old. School photographers also discovered the ladder as the pre-eminent prop on school photo sets. I kind of want this haircut again.

My teenage years entered a long era of neo-hippiedom. I loved the tie-dye. I embraced all that is wonderfully New Age. I started to grow my hair long and wear lots of great retro items, like bellbottoms and a necklace with a holographic eyeball on it. I had the power to seem like I knew what it was like in the 1960's though I had little clue. Unfortunately, in the process of staking my own claim into my own hairstyles, I allowed my mother to have a say on one last haircut, which apparently gets its inspiration from either Swedish milkmaids or by placing a colander on one's head and then trimming all around. Don't forget really awkward bangs, either. But I think in this photo I was really excited about this flower arranging book I just got at a sweet bargain, so I'm showing it off in front of the local five-and-dime. A few years later, the hair is starting to grow, and I have one of the best mullets I have ever seen.
Seriously, I think this is one of the best pictures ever taken of me. If I had this much hair again, I'd probably have this haircut, because I could have the shaggy confidence to pull it off. Back in 1997, though, I was unawares at how many cool Scandinavians would be wearing my haircut a decade later! Here I'm just babysitting (note the pudgy baby). I also am wearing a delicious gold brocade vest without a shirt on underneath and canvas moccasins. Hot.
Okay, this time around, I'd skip out on the moccasins and the jean shorts. I'm just sayin'.

This picture's a little tippy, but it shows teenage me at equal-length long hair before it got really long. I like this length on me, and should have stopped when I had a good thing going.
It reminds me of some angsty teens who have good guitar skills and you know that down the road they'll do something interesting with their life. But for now, they just brood a lot. I wasn't that angsty, but I sure wanted to be.

Senior high school photos!

Rockin' out with the longest hair I've ever had, partying like it's 1999. I took some of the poses from art photography, but some, like 'Tiger in the Woods' type photo, were sort of improv. The theme of senior year was that I have some pretty cool shirts and my hair was too long, but I'm a better person now because of it. And I always keep my hair clean.


As college arrived, my hair went for a hike, and I came into the 'wings' period. I generally like this hair for its 1970's qualities. And its sheer abundance, which I now lack.

From then on, my hair sort of changes every few months, with several home-made haircuts and let-grow-outs of varied success. I went from a 'Farrah Fawcett' to a 'gay ninja' (complete with safety pins) to a 'Rufus Wainwright' to a quasi emo look with a scruffy beard within a year. This is also the first emergence of the facial hair for Midnight.

Of course, there was that one crazy night in college that I was a piano-playing drag queen with a platinum bob, but that was nothing compared to my freshman year roommate's hair.
There was also about five minutes where my hair stood straight on end.
I look pretty rough and tough here, n'est pas? Like I could rock-and-roll your face right off. That short phase didn't last long either. But the goatee did.
These hairstyles revolved a bit but pretty much stayed the same for several years, as my hairline gradually recedes and all the hairs I lose from my head get transplanted to my back. But I do think I will make a fairly stylish bald man, and I can wear a short beard pretty nicely, so I'm not too worried about the day that I run out of my warehouse supply of Rogaine.
In the recent past, bringing us up to present, I've had black hair:
And a sort of faux-hawk, which I cut myself:
And most recently, I've just been enjoying a 'do it up, do it down' kind of ease, especially good in hot summers.
I miss having thicker, non-receding hair. I feel like my hair is a part of my personality, like a good pair of glasses or a unique watch. But I know that no matter if I have blue hair or two-foot long hair, I'll probably still be friends with the same great people who don't feel afraid to tell me if I've missed a spot on the back of my head that I couldn't see to trim. If I could get a hair phase back for just a day, I think I'd ask the Hair Gods for circa 1998, when I could have put birds' nests in my long hair and braided it all crazy, but I was too shy then to try. One can only be so daring when there are gym class bullies around. Then again, maybe I'll soon be fed up with shampoo and I'll enjoy waking up with a freshly-shaved head, moisturized with baby oil, and all I need to do to wash it is slap a paper towel across my noggin', and I'm out the door. I'll probably be on my way to look into wearing hats. I hear hats are the new hair.


Photo credit where credit is due: the Hall household, Kate Casolaro, Jaime Gullotti, Erik Reuter. All images copyright 2007 Nathan Hall/Midnight Shoveler.

The Big Bag Theory

Summer vacation started for me 45 minutes ago. Unfortunately, summer work started 4 days ago. I took my last exam this afternoon and let out a sigh of Stravinsky relief, and now I'm looking forward to working at the Music Office and the Ceramics store, and hopefully starting my orchestral piece. I do wish I could hide in this big bag, though, and go with you to some place magical. You could store so much in here! It could be the next big thing in haute couture. Yes, I'd set up a little pillow and a book-reading light in there, if only for a little sleepover, 'cause I'll be off to work again in the morning. Thank goodness I can get paid for looking up celebrity fashion online and generally just smiling a lot, otherwise summer vacation would be kind of a bummer.