Dallas - grace grits and gardening

One ringy-dingy…Two ringy-dingy…

February 16, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

Harold Green butt dialed me at 12:30 am this morning. It startled me. Anytime the phone rings in the middle of the night, you immediately think someone’s in jail or dead. Or both. I was completely delirious – sick with a cold – dozing from warm bourbon & lemon juice (medicinal). I couldn’t seem to answer my cell phone, even with a dreadfully loud Adam Ant ringtone blasting directly beside my head. I knew it was Harold Green. He left no voice mail, but as my smart phone rang, his picture brightly lit the dark bedroom, as if he were the one bellowing out Desperate but not Serious. How on earth had I changed my ring to Adam Ant?

Maybe it was Chester calling for Lucy? Chester, Harold’s dog, lives in the neighborhood and has a thing for our oldest schnauzer. They like to hang out down the street on Harry’s porch. (Harry is not to be confused with Harold – two separate neighbors…) Harry is without a doubt Munger Place’s most interesting neighbor. He generously hosts a daily happy hour, weather permitting, for anyone who wants to partake, complete with true life tales of the union business and mafia entanglements. Oftentimes there are more dogs than people present. Chester and Lucy have a standing date nearly daily around 5:00 on Harry’s porch. Even so, he should know better than to call her at such a godawful hour.

Smart phones and caller id have certainly eliminated prank phone calling which was a favorite pastime of certain bored little kids in Arkansas. Terrible I know. We loved to randomly call people in the phone book, identify ourselves as disc jockeys with WHBQ, and ask the person who answered to sing the Campbell Soup song. They ALWAYS sang. Now, there is no way we sounded remotely mature enough to be radio personalities, but they always sang, hoping to win chicken noodle soup for life or something. Then we would giggle and hang up. Crazy hoodlum children.

When Mam-maw Tate died, we got the call in the middle of the night. “We lost Ruby,” Papa Homer said. What? How did you lose her? Why would you let a nearly 90 year old wander off in the middle of the night? It took us a minute to realize what he meant. Wee hour phone calls are almost always bad news.

Although we have become pretty good ‘acquaintances’, I don’t think I’m Harold’s emergency contact person. I don’t think I rank that high on his list. Not yet anyway. When I cleared my head, I texted him.

Me: Harold, did you call me just now?

Harold: No, but it seems my phone did. I don’t know why my phone felt the need to call you so late.

:)) Butt dialing. It happens sometimes. Stupid smart phones.

talya

Musical Pairings:

Adam Ant, “Desperate but not Serious”
Peggy Lee, “He’s a Tramp”

PeopleAreOdd

February 14, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

There are some things I will never understand. I drove over to the Lakewood Library for some quality quiet time. I was interested to see how my neighborhood library compared to the non-libraryish library of Osceola. The parking lot was completely full, forcing me to park on the street around the corner. Wow, the library business was good in Dallas! I saw my friend Marcia, who was also looking for a parking space. She enlightened me – it was “story time” for all the neighborhood preschoolers. Ahhh maybe the library wouldn’t be so quiet after all. I wonder if dogs are allowed?

Lakewood Library

As I walked toward the front door, I noticed the light posts that lined the walkway were covered in yarn from top to bottom – each a different color combination – to keep them warm??? It wasn’t even cold. This yarn trend had become quite common in Dallas and apparently across the state as of late. Maybe it’s popular everywhere, I have no idea, but I have not seen any tree scarves in Arkansas – ever. It’s just very odd to me.

I selected a table near the window in a far corner. In the Hispanic area. Half the Lakewood Library – books, signage, periodicals – is designed for Spanish speaking visitors – an obvious difference from my hometown library. This was not surprising given our neighborhood mix. The library was very neat and orderly and organized. It was nice. It was libraryish. Mrs. Perry would approve. The Spanish books were aligned evenly just as she required.

In Osceola, most of the people inside were obviously using the computers to look for jobs. In the Dallas library, there was a balance of patrons – moms and/or nannys with kids, elderly men reading the WSJ, people apparently working, and several homeless people. If I become homeless, I will hang at the library.

While there, no one asked me to spell anything. I do not believe the librarian was cooking behind the counter. It was quiet. Later, as I walked back toward my car, I looked at those light posts again and contemplated this new strange trend. All the trees in the Dallas Arts District were ‘yarn bombed’ last summer. (I know this to be the correct terminology only because I googled it.) The Winspear Opera House requested its trees be covered for the opening of the musical Hair. An arborist was consulted to insure no trees would be harmed in the project. In Austin, the trees around the State Capitol and on the University of Texas campus were covered with these crocheted scarves. Who does this? Why?

Nana crocheted. She made blankets and doilies and Christmas ornaments. I don’t think she ever crocheted scarves for her apple trees or blankets for her irises. She tried to teach me. I could do a long line of stitches, but never turn, so maybe this is the one thing I could crochet – if my trees get cold this winter…

Dallas Arts District

I can’t imagine the time someone devotes to this. Who is this graffiti knitter? Is this one person with way too much time on her hands? or a group of people? Do they have nothing more productive to do all day long? Someone wraps all these trees and just leaves their hard work behind for others to see and critique and hopefully enjoy – what if no one does? Maybe everyone thinks its bizarre. Maybe people laugh and roll their eyes. Maybe people drive by and shake their heads. Maybe no one understands why anyone would spend all that time… They do it because they enjoy it?

Sorta like blogging.

talya

Musical Pairings:

Journey, “Don’t Stop Believin'”

John Mayer, “Waiting on the World to Change”

Austin

Couture for Big Dummies

February 11, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

I live 5 minutes from the Dallas Arts District. The district is a magnificent collection of venues designed by Pritzker Prize winning architects, with world class art collections, opera, musical performances and sculpture. People travel across the globe to this destination in downtown Dallas. I travel through it quite often on my way to watch the Dallas Mavericks play at the American Airlines Center. It’s an impressive cultural district. My favorite is the annual Dallas Symphony’s Christmas Spectacular. John and I also attended South Pacific at the Winspear Opera House. We chose this particular performance because a) it was not an opera, and, b) my dad allegedly named me after some Polynesian chick in the book South Pacific. I was curious to see if Talya would be included in the cast of characters. Not. I feel just a bit hipper knowing our home is so close to all this culture – in case we want to partake – which we rarely do. But, it’s good for re-sale. (I hope.)

Yesterday, my mother and I set off to soak up a bit of Dallas culture. Her friend, Carlos, a tour guide at the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA), invited us to attend the current exhibit – The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier, From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk. The exhibit had received rave reviews and was ending soon, so we quickly jumped at the chance to attend. And, with our own tour guide! Prior to this invitation, I really had no desire to see this. I didn’t know much about Gaultier other than he designed those pointy conical boob corset rigs for Madonna during her 1990 Blonde Ambition World Tour.

I studied up for about five minutes before the tour. According to the DMA website, Gaultier is “unquestionably one of the most important fashion designers in recent decades…. draws inspiration from dance, pop-rock, cinema, television…..eclectic and vibrant sources of inspiration… over 140 haute couture dresses and ready-to-wear pieces made between the early 1970s and 2011.” Well that sounded pretty interesting! Maybe there would be Oscar dresses on display – like the first lady inaugural ball gowns at the Smithsonian? I loved that. So elegant and historical. My favorites were Mamie Eisenhower and Lady Bird Johnson. Hillary – not so much.

What to wear? I felt as if I had to pay particular attention to what I wore as I would be surrounded by high-class fashion. Well that thought was fleeting – I wore jeans, boots and a gray sweater – my typical uniform. It was haute enough for me. The first thing of note when we arrived was the lengthy line of cars waiting to park inside the DMA parking garage. Very strange for a Thursday morning I thought. Was Madonna actually going to be wearing that corset inside?

Making our way inside, the place was jammed packed! Wow. This was impressive! Obviously the economy is improving. Well attended artsy fartsy events are a very dependable good leading indicator. Waaaaay more reliable than the volatile stock market. The Nasdaq fluctuates based on Lloyd Blankfein’s lunch selection. Is someone without grocery money really going to spend twenty bucks to see high fashion, when you can see it for free down the street at Neiman Marcus? I think not. But, of course, Neimans does not have Madonna’s actual bustier, complete with sweat stains. My consumer outlook was becoming more positive.

I’m not much on fancy clothing. If I won an oscar I would probably be Sharon Stone-like in a black Gap sweater with maybe a long black taffeta skirt. Slenderizing. In junior high, Anita Ashley and I went to charm school. Our mothers thought this would be an excellent idea. It was on Saturdays for several weeks and the grand finale was a fashion show at a restaurant in Blytheville. We selected a few outfits from some little boutique in town and walked around throughout this restaurant, during lunch discussing our outfits. OMG! This was so outside my comfort zone… We were charged with simply walking up to tables of lunching ladies to interrupt their meals with, “Excuse me, I’m wearing a Hang Ten Tennis Dress with a silk scarf. My shoes are Tretorn.” Please, God, just let me die in my sleep before I make a fool of myself at the Blytheville fashion show!!! Well, I survived the ordeal, no more or less charming, but recognized I would never walk the catwalk, or be on any stage in any capacity. All those years performing for Daisy Mae were for naught.

Carlos gave us a a brief synopsis of the exhibit before we began, telling us that the mannequins would be speaking to us. He told us to be sure and listen to what they had to say. Hmmmm. Ok… The first room was the Odyssey, inspired by the sea and religion. Half of the mannequins looked like the evil Inferius who nearly grabbed Harry and Dumbledore while hunting for horcruxes. The others were wearing an odd assortment of sailor inspired navy and white/beige striped outfits – an evening gown on a dude, lots of topless outfits, cage dresses, feathers, toile. They were all horizontal stripes so immediately I knew Gaultier fashion would not be for the normal person. Normal people avoid horizontal stripes.

The mannequins were as freaky as anything I had ever seen. Very, very realistic – somehow a projection trick. They spoke and blinked and all had terrible teeth. The wax museum folks really needed to get on board with this technology. If I could get my hands on one of these when the exhibit breaks down next week, this would be the perfect addition to my Halloween decoration collection. Must discuss with Carlos…

The Boudoir room was a bit more interesting. Madonna’s corsets were on display along with gowns made of ribbons and satin, most designed to be worn naked underneath, leaving nothing to the imagination. I would have worn one of these, maybe, with a wife beater and tights. There was a lavender velvet pointy conical breasted evening gown that was interesting until I realized a man was wearing it.

The Skin Deep exhibit was designed to represent the red light district in Amsterdam. So there was bondage. And leather. And overall bizarro clothing. There was a mannequin in the corner having a conversation with himself, “Should I wear this or not? Is this appropriate, etc.” Well, I could save him some time – hell NO. It was a dress! Carlos explained to us that Gaultier pushed the limits, challenging societal ways with humor. There were body suits that were actually designed to look like a naked body. So why even bother? Just go naked – be a streaker. Gaultier “clothed nudity with nudity.” My mother just stared at Carlos with her mouth open. When Carlos asked, “Does that make sense?” she blurted out, “NO!” I laughed out loud at my mom, but quickly composed myself. I must hang on. No laughing. It would be like laughing at Graceland. It just was not done. I looked around at all the hundreds of visitors. Did they really get this? I was having a difficult time making the stretch from Gaultier high fashion designs to Gaultier inspired t-shirts at my favorite Target.

Punk Cancan was the best exhibit in my opinion. There was a catwalk in the center with moving mannequins dressed in evening wear and more traditional clothing – traditional for Gaultier. If I squinted, there were a couple of dresses I could see wearing to Kelsey’s inaugural ball. Maybe. On either side of the catwalk were punk mannequins making fun of the fancy cat walkers. With the exception of the mannequin wearing a hefty bag, tin can bracelet and a steel wool soap pad around his neck, these outfits were the best – they included three camouflage ensembles. I had never been so happy to see camo. I felt like cheering.

The final exhibits included items inspired by outer space (weren’t they all?) and cultures and the environment. By this point, I had checked out. I was becoming a bit delirious. It was couture overload. Especially for me. I was really trying to take it all in, understand it, think outside the planet. My head hurt. I was hungry. There was a body suit on one mannequin in this area with a picture of Jason Kidd in the center. It was supposedly Gaultier but I knew it was really Jason Kidd. I wonder if Jason knew? I doubt any of the Mavs had set foot in this exhibit on their way to practice.

In all seriousness, Carlos was an excellent tour guide – very knowledgeable. I cannot imagine seeing the exhibit without someone to explain away the overall strangeness. To recap:

The Dallas economy is on the upswing
No need to waste one more thought on your wardrobe. There are no rules. Anything goes.

Afterward, we lunched at The Screen Door which was fantastic. After all that haute couture, I needed to see a normal, everyday screen door – with peeling paint. It was true art.

Thanks Carlos!

talya

(and the BAT)