Belated Birthday Post: Pre-Birthday Glitter

In all the Birthdayween excitement, I completely forgot to tell you about the pre-birthday crafting.  On Birthday Eve, a bunch of folks got together to create glitter art in my honor, a traditional activity for celebrating one's entrance into the latter half of their 30's.  With the sparkle of the glitter being symbolic of youthful exuberance and the arduous, post-crafting clean up representative of the later years in life spent rectifying the mess left in the wake of a capricious early adulthood, glitter art has become synonymous with the 36th birthday.

As was expected, the night was a complete and total success, and I feel that I've been properly launched into this brave new age.  But don't just take my word for it, have a look at the artful outcome:

Each piece is for sale.  Only serious offers will be entertained.

It's a lot to take in, I know, but allow me to take your hand and guide you through this glitter gallery:

• Tree - Summer (2 of 4)
• Jack-o-Lantern - Fall (3 of 4)
• Blue Ribbon - Winning is everything
• Lines #2 - Further exploration of the theme
• Bee - Spring (1 or 4)
• Lines #1 - An exploration of a theme
• Seattle - A summation
• Flowers - For me???
• Owl - They're everywhere these days
• Snowflake - Winter (4 of 4)
• Shooting Star - Ode to Bad Company
• Bubbles - Circles?
• L + A - Reunion
• Bloobs - For petting
• Cactus - Not for petting
• HBDHT♡ - Self explanatory
• Fox - No fair.  Who brought the artist to the craft party?

It's amazing what human beings are capable, isn't it?  To create such beauty from something so simple as chopped up plastic and decorative paper?  It was a truly elegant and inspiring evening, and I couldn't be more excited about being closer to my 70th birthday than I am to my birth.  Yup, definitely happy to be 36 and playing with glitter on my birthday instead of, like, I don't know, sipping cocktails while floating in my glass-bottomed infinity pool on my penthouse balcony.

Birthdayween: The New Oneness

Holiday idea: Birthdayween.  Every July 2nd, people must dress up in costume to celebrate my birthday.  It's a mashup of my two favorite holidays, so let's get this movement started.  Here are some costume ideas:

• Sea Otter
• Bicycle
• Steve Yzerman
• Cat
• Wizard
• Armadillo
• Xenomorph
• Flickering Fluorescent Lighting in a Horror Movie
• Meerkat
• Cool Breeze
• Kurt Vonnegut
• Anything that Eats Mosquitoes
• Juniper Tree
• Apple Cider Vinegar
• Polychromatic Jasper
• Banana Wearing a Bandolier
• Snow

In other news, Lauren took me to see Ween on my birthday and it was great.  The show was at Marymoor Park, they played for two and a half hours straight, and Tae gave me a pin for my birthday:

Hail Boognish

Having not seen Ween in a few years, I hadn't realized how far they'd been sucked into hippie jam band culture.  Not that Ween is a bunch of hippies, but there were some serious Phish-level behaviors going on in the crowd.  There's the culture of commodification and collection that permeates the jam scene and it is now strong within the Ween community.

Between limited run merch peacockery, show count braggary, and best version of a song argumentary, it felt like I was back on the East Coast.  "Dude. Jones Beach. Spring Tour 1998. Hands down best Guyute ever!  And I'd know because I've been to 150 shows and bought posters at every one.  You should come over sometime and see them."  It's like shows, songs, and merch are the adult baseball cards for little boys that grew up and didn't know what to collect anymore.  (I used "boys" because it seems to be a male-dominated phenomenon.)

Anyway, the show was way awesome, the Marymoor is rad, and the Ween still rocks hard AF.