Watch Your Back, Kitty Wells

Have you heard?
In the last week, I have received not one, but two nominations for the "You Make My Day Award". First came a nod from Mama Brook at Frisk the Frigidaire, and most recently from my ever so thoughtful and generous friend Christie of Serenity Now. Thank you kindly, Dollfaces. Here are five blogs that float my boat:

Serenity Now- Besides being a complete and total Dollface, Christie has such a thought provoking, artistic, creepy cool, consciousness expanding gem of a blog.

Manic Thrift Store Shopper- Brian has a fabulous eye for design and a serious passion for second hand treasures. Makes me wish we were real world friends. Oh the thrifting we'd do!

Yard Sale Bloodbath- Meghan and Jenny take you deep into the treacherous (and often hilarious) thrifting trenches.

Cathy of California- A woman after my own vintage crafty heart.

The Museum of Kitschy Stitches- Be prepared to laugh until you cry at crafts that seemed like such a good idea at the time.

In other blog business, waaaaay back when, Christie also tagged me for a meme. I've read that it rhymes with "dream", but in my head I prefer to pronounce it as two words: "Me, me." As in straining to raise your hand as high as physically possible without your hiney actually leaving your desk, saying, "Ooooh teacher, me, me! Pick me! I want to talk about myself!" So, without further ado, here are seven weird or unusual facts about lil' ol' me.

1. This may come as a shock, but I have an issue with the word "retro", especially when someone uses it to describe my tastes or, god forbid, me. Seriously, the word is like nails on a chalkboard to my ears. For me, the adjective "retro" refers to something modern that imitates something from the past. I guess by my own definition I am, in fact, "retro", but my tastes and my clutter are, say it with me, vintage.
2. I once performed a routine with a show choir wearing a leotard, top hat, and sequined vest with tails. What makes this one of seven weird or unusual facts about me is the part where I tell you this particular show took place on a small stage in the gymnasium of the state mental hospital for a less than receptive, highly medicated audience of about a hundred mentally disturbed inmates. Well, there was the one guy who stood up, removed his shirt and began to whoop and yell loudly when I and my fellow teenage choir members got to the high kick line during "New York, New York". At least someone appreciated our artistry.
3. A few years back, I won a cruise by rapidly reciting a series of tongue twisters in the style of an auctioneer in front of about 500 of my fellow professional beauty product salespeople. I beat about ten other folks for the coveted prize, and then never took the cruise because "free" doesn't actually mean free, as in "costing no money", when it comes to cruises, I discovered.
   
4. I am a prolific, world class lyricist, as long as the song has already been written by someone else, and provided that by "world class" one means "dirty limerick". My cover of the Entertainment Tonight theme song stands as a monument to the beauty of the carefully turned phrase. It goes a little something like this: "Punch my fu-u-unbags, do do do do do, punch my fu-u-unbags, do do doo dee doo, punch my (slowing down now) fu-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-un (whispered sadly) bags..."
5. I eat roughly my own weight in sour cream each calendar year.
   
   
   
6. Once upon a time, when I was about seven or eight, my family went to see a performance by the "Queen of Country Music", Kitty Wells. After the show, we stood in line to meet Miss Kitty and ask her to autograph our programs. Apparently, while waiting for my grandma to wrap up the visit, I got a little too close to the Queen, and her body guard was forced to intervene. The look of death my mother shot him cut short the confrontation. Even back then I rolled hard.
   
   
   
7. "The Kitty Wells Incident", as it's come to be known, was not my first unwelcome brush with a Legend of Country Music. At the tender age of eighteen months, I nearly brought a Hank Thompson concert in the park to a standstill when I decided to throw a fit in front of the stage. Now, I was not in the business of screaming, kicking, or crying when I had a point to make. No, I practiced a stoic, dignified form of civil disobedience where one's disgust with a given situation is expressed by lying silently on the ground while raising one arm and its corresponding leg high into the air in defiance, all "power to the people" style. The resulting cuteness was apparently too much for the audience to bear, and their attention was diverted from ol' Hank for several minutes until my mortified father convinced my mother (who was barely able to walk due to side-splitting laughter) to retrieve me. Let's just say the "King of Western Swing" was not amused. Interesting side note: Thompson's number one hit, "The Wild Side of Life", spawned an answer song, "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels", which, when recorded by one Miss Kitty Wells in 1952, propelled her to superstardom. The story of the song, and the resulting controversy, is a fascinating one which you can read here. Looks like Hank and Kitty had more in common than they ever knew...evil lil' ol' me.