Jo and I have been feeling very patriotic, nostalgic, and a few other things that end in "ic." The Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty set we worked on this week took care of the patriotism we were feeling, but to exorcise nostalgia, you have to crack open an old yearbook. He's a link to our art...
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
...and here's a page out of my 1990 high school yearbook.
I'll give you the brief tour of some of the characters I knew...
A: Me.
B: Used to ask Jo out all the time.
C: Used to invite me places, then ask me for a ride there. I still can't picture him driving a car...or paying for anything.
D: Used to show up at my house in a big straw hat and carrying a copy of A Clockwork Orange on VHS. He also asked Jo out, but she actually said yes to him.
E: Best Man at our wedding.
F: That's Howard Dorough. He's better know today as Howie D. from The Backstreet Boys.
Hope you enjoyed this trip down someone else's memory lane.
Until next week,
-Dylan Curry
If you would like to be removed from our mailing list, just email us to let us know...or ask Howie D. to pass that along to me.
Here's the latest batch...hope you like them...
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
Each week, we have the pleasure of making something new for you, but each week we also have to part with our creations. Normally, the art just hangs on our walls for the week. We try not to look them in the eye. We try not to get too attached. This week, I decided to take a few of those pieces off the wall and shelf, and make a complete fool of myself. I made a short video with them that is partially animated...and completely strange. It's called Cart Before The Horse's First Annual Spelling Bee.
I had some last minute problems with photobucket, which is where I was going to host the video. For some reason, when I put it in their new video section, the audio and the video no longer matched up. It ended up looking like the nightmare of a badly dubbed Kung Fu hero. Hopefully I will have it resolved soon. I will be sending you all a link to the video as soon as the problem is fixed.
It doesn't seem like that long ago that I was crouched behind a cardboard box in my second grade class, singing "C is for Cookie" with an Oscar the Grouch puppet on my hand. It didn't occur to me until just now that I may have chosen the wrong puppet for that song. Anyway, as you will see from the video...little has changed. Until our technical difficulties are solved,
-Dylan
Well, we didn't get as much accomplished this week as we normally do. Here's what we did make...
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
Our lack of productivity this week was caused by a few factors.
1. I spent a couple days last week making that silly video.
2. Jo spent a couple days this week making me a fine birthday present.
3. Jo was in a car accident this week.
Actually, the car accident only slowed her down for about fifteen minutes, but putting it on the list seemed like a good segue into telling the story. But now that I've blown that...here's the story.
Jo was passing by a Dairy Queen when a car backed out of their parking lot... onto the street... and into our favorite artist. The man that hit her was nice enough, but Jo wasn't exactly sure what to do, so she called me. This was her second accident (and I haven't had one), but somehow I'm still the expert on these matters. When she tried to call me, I was at my work table sanding a rooster's face and listening to some of that new fangled rock-n-roll rubbish. On Jo's sixth attempt to call, I finally heard the phone and picked up. She said that she'd just been in a car accident. My reaction was:
1. "Are you OK?"
2. "Whose fault was it?"
Pay close attention to the order here, my friends. You can not ask these in any order you feel like, or perhaps in the order you thought of them...especially if you're a man.
Luckily, Jo was kept safe by the tank-building engineers at Volvo. Many thanks to them and to God.
Until the next Dairy Queen disaster down the road...
-Dylan
PS- Jo would like me to make it perfectly clear that the car accident was NOT her fault. This time.
If you who like to be removed from this mailing list, please just email us to let us know. It's no use trying to bump us off while we're still driving that Volvo Wagon.
Once again, we're finding it hard to produce as much as we'd like. Here's what we've finished...
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
...and we'll have more listed on Tuesday.
We like to take our work with us when we can, but it's baseball season for our son...and I don't want to be the only dad in a folding chair along the third baseline sewing dollies. Our son might never recover. Jo could probably get away with painting at the games if it didn't rain here so much.
Now before you go picturing your local baseball field, let me tell you something about baseball here on the Oregon coast. First of all, it's not even official Little League. It's under-funded and organized by the community center. Our ball fields here are a far cry from the meticulously manicured ones we left behind in Florida. The other day at practice, the coaches lined the kids up and had them systematically pick up rocks from the infield's grade-Z dirt that was delivered the day before, and spread around by the kids themselves armed with shovels. I say we give up on trying to pass this off as baseball. Let's just call it "Pioneerball" and get these kids some coon skin caps to top off their uniforms. Let's leave the stones in the field, and let the infielders hurl them at the base runners.
One thing that does remain the same out here is the ball field language. There are certain phrases that you only hear at a baseball game. I have decided that these phrases are a bit depressed that we bring them out like Christmas ornaments on these rare occasions. I have taken it upon myself to work them into everyday life. I've complimented several strangers with the old "Good eye!" but I keep getting mistaken for an Australian. I even let loose the meaningless sing-song phrase "Here we go, here we go, here we go now!" while advancing in line at the grocery store. I've been asked not to shop there anymore.
Until next time, remember...keep your back foot planted, and your eye on the ball.
-Dylan
If you would like to be removed from this mailing list, please email us to let us know. There's no shame in sitting on the bench for a while.
Jo and I have placed foam earplugs firmly in our ears and continued with our work...despite the noise. Here's what we have to show for our efforts...
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
I've played lead guitar in several bands during my life, but I never gave much thought to the people in the other room as we practiced. I am now officially the guy in the other room. Our daughter has formed a band with the young lad down the street. He plays guitar, she plays bass, and they usually invite our son to bang on whatever he can find to fill in for the drums. When they actually play music, they're pretty good...but much of their time is spent experimenting to see if they can strip the paint off the walls with shear volume. I guess you reap what you sow. I remember being 17 and taunting a business owner next to our practice warehouse. He used to call the cops on us all the time, and we'd play the simple "nanny nanny boo boo" melody on our instruments as soon as the cops left.
Now there's nothing to be done but wear earplugs and wait for the storm to pass. Here's a tip you won't find on the box of earplugs...be sure to remove them before eating a bowl of Captain Crunch. 'Tis quite disturbing...
Until the ringing ceases,
-Dylan
If you would like to be removed from this mailing list, please just email us to let us know. The police can't help you.
Here's what we worked on this week...
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
...and there will be a few more listed on Tuesday.
I hope you all had a great Mother's Day. We celebrated in the usual fashion by going out to breakfast to an overcrowded restaurant to be served by panicky waitresses.
Yesterday was a memorable day as well. Our son's baseball team was playing an away game in a small cow town just south of the cheese making town of Tillamook, Oregon. The baseball field looked suspiciously like a cow field with bases, which leads me to wonder what the pitcher's mound was made of.
Our boy had a rough game. The errors seem to follow his glove around, and he got pulled off the pitcher's mound in the last inning for walking too many batters. He cheered up quickly after the game as he headed to his friends' house (the twins) to spend the night. He wasn't there an hour before he broke his arm in a mid-air collision on a trampoline with a boy from the neighborhood. Strangely, Jo and I both knew he was hurt when we heard the phone ring.
So it seems he's done with baseball for the season, and he'll be cutting his pancakes in overcrowded restaurants with one hand for awhile. But I told him that I'd rather take my lumps in life than live in fear. Our bodies will heal, and we'll laugh our way towards another glorious disaster.
Until then,
-Dylan
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A cartbeforethehorse newsletter on a Tuesday???
Is this the seventh sign of the apocalypse???
Relax.
Many of you wrote to me on Sunday after trying to see our auctions and coming up empty handed. It seems that eBay's search engine had run out of gas and made the link I sent useless. All is well now it appears, so here is that handy-dandy link again. There are a few more items that we just listed as well.
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
-Dylan
Here's a few of the items we have ready for you...
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
...and we'll list more on Tuesday.
As many of you know, we live on the coast of Oregon. It's an incredible place to live, but sometimes I feel like we're characters trapped in a Northern Exposure rerun. Right about now the Northern Exposure theme song should begin to play in your head... and if you replace the moose wandering around with an elk, then you have a decent picture of our life. Unfortunately, we didn't have a Dr. Joel Fleischmann here to set our son's broken arm and give him a cast. We had to drive about two hours on Monday to Portland to have a doctor's assistant wrap up our son's arm...a procedure that took all of 20 minutes. Our son actually set his bone himself just after the trampoline accident...and just before the message of pain reached his brain.
It's a strange feeling to be virtually cut off from emergency help. In the early evening, you can hear our distant neighbors on all sides practicing their aim with small firearms. Maybe it's because they know that dialing 911 out here for the police is about as useful as sending up smoke signals. I've never dialed 911 out here, but I wouldn't be surprised if I reached an answering machine...with that haunting Northern Exposure theme song playing in the background.
See ya next Sunday,
-Dylan
If you would like to be removed from this mailing list, just email us to let us know.
I lose track.
Nice to see you though.
Here's what we made this past week.
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
Next week at this time, I hope to at least have an amusing story for you, but we probably won't have much art to share with you. Some good friends of ours that used to live down the street from us in Florida just bought a house down the street (and over the mountain) from us here on the Oregon coast. Since Jo is such an addict of those home makeover shows, she's volunteered us to whip their new house into shape, and art up the walls a bit. (If art isn't a verb, it should be.) I think Jo is picturing us in matching team outfits, fixing up their 40 acre house in a convenient time lapse scene with perky theme music. No... we'll be pulling up those carpet tacks one at a time. One difference from the TV world that I welcome is the fact that we won't have to sit through a tearful heart to heart with Ty the carpenter. When did that guy lose his hammer and go to medical school anyway?
See ya next week.
-Dylan
If you would like to be removed from this mailing list, just email us to let us know. If you would like us to remodel your home, just gather $20,000 in unmarked bills and await further instructions.
We spent this past week working on our friends' house, so we only have one piece listed this week...and here it is...
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
I learned a lot this week while working on their house. I learned that if you have to... you can paint right over a spider. Jo and I turned our friends' basement into a family room/ game room, and we painted all of the walls, beams, and ceiling in the process. There are now a few spiders that are a permanent part of the ceiling. It's going to be like the Pompeii of the spider world. Generations of spiders will come visit that ceiling and marvel at how you can still see the expressions in the faces of all those victims. What they must have thought as the paint roller washed towards them???
I took no joy in it.
And for the record, the spiders had been thoroughly warned with the business end of a broom... so they had plenty of chances to accept that the end was nigh.
Jo and I have never worked harder. In six days we painted a huge basement and built a cushy reading platform. We made three enormous wall hangings for the kitchen and built a ladder for a loft play area. Here are a couple pictures of the wall hangings (click on the links below.) The whales are 5 feet tall, and the salmon is 7 feet long.
-Dylan
If you would like to be removed from this mailing list, just email us to let us know.
Only foolin'.
Nice to see you.
Here's what we have for you this week...
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
...and we should have more listed on Tuesday.
This week went by without much to report. A year from now I'll probably forget that this week even happened. No one broke a bone...no one crashed the car...and no one did the dishes. I suppose we were too tired from working on our friends' house last week to get into much trouble.
Our son did manage to scribble out enough lines with a pencil to win a poetry contest at school. For his poetic efforts he was presented with a yoyo. That's right...a yoyo for winning a poetry contest. Were they all out of propeller hats? I wasn't there for the ceremony, but I pictured his teacher ruffling his hair and saying, "Keep writin', kid. Maybe one day you'll master the Walk the Dog maneuver."
I'll keep writing as well, and I'll see you next week.
-Dylan
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