Oddities

Mary, my landlady, tells me all the time that I attract wackjobs.  She sees them come and go, as her business is right next door to mine, and after having been open for business where I am now for over 4 years, I have to say she's right.  I mean, most of my customers are "normal" (If there is such a thing) but there are quite a few who are...well, quirkier than most.  I like them the best.  Well, most of them (some of you are familiar with the Jock Strap Incident).  Mine is an alterations shop; not really the sort of place where one would think to find a high concentration of odd people congregating, which makes me suspect that maybe it's not the business, it's me.  Let's not delve into THAT theory too deeply.

But I have found a place that makes my weirdest people look boring.  The Science Channel has a series called "Oddities" and I am completely fascinated and grossed out.  It is a reality series sort of like "Pawn Stars", only the shop deals in antiquated medical equipment and quackery, taxidermy, skeletons, jewelry made from kidney stones....but still, I'm not sure if the title refers to the items in the store, or the customers. Nothing I could say here would do justice to their clientele;  you really have to watch the show.  The day we discovered it was a day there was an Oddities marathon, and we sat glued to the TV for over four hours and blew the better part of a nice afternoon because we just couldn't tear ourselves away.

The proprietors of Obscura in NYC, and hosts of "Oddities".  They LOOK normal, don't they?  Oddities airs on Saturday nights at 8:00 and 8:30 on The Science Channel (NOT the SyFy Channel), followed by the all new "Oddities: San Francisco".  Bicoastal lunacy.

This has been the view out my door for the last week.  Pretty much.  We did have a couple of non-raining, even briefly sunny days, but today it's raining AGAIN so I don't remember when they were or if I just dreamed them.  It's actually not a bad view now that I look at it, I just wish it was drier.  Where my sister lives, way up north in California, it rains all winter.  She once said she sure hoped spring would come before she had mildew growing up her legs.  I know how she feels. One day last week, in the space of 10 minutes, it was cloudy, then pouring, then sunny and thundering.  When they say if you don't like the weather in New England, wait a minute, they mean that literally.

So I've been just laying low and getting a lot of work done, and fun stuff too; got inspired a few weeks ago to make some patriotic kids clothes, and I actually have them almost finished in time for the 4th!  

Watched Dropkick Murphys live from Fenway Park last night on Palladia (I love the Palladia network.  You can only get it if you have HDTV, and I don't know how I lived without it!)  I had never seen them perform, and since Boston is their stomping ground it was no surprise that the audience was totally into it.  They look, for all intent and purpose, like a bunch of random guys who were hanging out in a bar and said "hey...we should start a band".  And then they called on stage members of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones for THE song, "Shipping up to Boston", which I tried in vain to find for you on YouTube.  All I could find were videos posted by people in the audience, and this was the best one I could come up with.  If you have Palladia (and if you have HDTV you do, it's a free channel) I highly recommend checking this out.