Big Freedia

If you can't see Big Freedia (pronounced Big Frida) live, this will give you a taste of what you are missing.  Big Freedia is biologically male, but everyone refers to her as female.  Artists have their privileges.  No one can usurp their right to primacy of definition.

Heaven held me, I am a Big Freedia fan.

The Great Jewelry Armoire Debate

Some links do kiss and tell.

"Why do you call it a jewelry armoire?” he asked.  “You could just as easily call it a jewelry cabinet, or a jewelry chest, or a place to keep your jewelry.  Whatever it is, it is a fine-crafted piece of jewelry storage technology.”

She said, “I like to say jewelry armoire.  It makes me happy.”

It was easy for him to see what made her happy.  Her jewelry cabinet was a chest of jewelry treasures.  It was the perfect jewelry box, with tiered jewelry storage.  There was a ring drawer.  There was a drawer for bracelets.  There were necklace hooks in necklace cabinets.  There were bangles racks.  There were plush, contoured earring mounts for stud earring storage, hoop earring storage, and dangle earring storage.  Her jewelry armoire has space for navel rings, nipple rings, and any other jewelry an elegant lady may own.  An elegant jewelry armoire is more than a thing of beauty.   

Keep jewelry in a stylish jewelry armoire.

She studied her face in the armoire mirror.  She was pretty in pink.  She opened a ring box drawer and chose a ring from the velvet-lined cushions.  She chose her earrings from the armoire earring cabinet.  She opened the velvet-lined bracelet drawer, and considered the diamonds, but she turned to the bangle tree.    

An elegant, wall-mointed jewelry armoire is a lady's best friend. 

“I like to say jewelry chest,” he said.  “Jewelry cabinet works for me, too.  Sometimes I think Best Jewelry Cabinet should be a proper name.  But if you like your jewelry armoire, I like it too.  I see why you like it.  Your jewelry armoire is beautiful.”

She looked at him.  They kissed.  The armoire mirror saw it all.

Legion of Four

Which one is Element Lad?

Limbo is where unbaptized infants go when they die.  Sophie Wright told me this, this morning, while we were smoking cigars at the bus stop on the corner of Magazine Street and Napoleon Avenue.  We sat on the bench, in the shade of Ms. Mae's awning.   The oaks in the neutral ground dripped from the fog.

I keep saying, "Balaenius Rex!"

If this isn't a New Yorker cartoon, I'll eat my hat.

Don't you find it strange that you don't notice something till it's obvious?  All day I found myself writing 2010.  It wasn't until this afternoon that I realized my autonomic nervous system is more than a year off.  It is 2012 as I write this.

I met a woman named Farrah today.  I said it was a popular name, for babies, when I was a boy.  She said she was named after her grandmother.  I said I wasn't that old.

My house guests departed this afternoon.  They had stayed for nine days.  Lovely folks, they kept me from my usual armchair.  Seven days separated from fine furniture makes one weak.  I put my feet up  on an ottoman.

I was thinking about how Istanbul was once Constantinople, and old New York was once New Amsterdam.  New Orleans has always been New Orleans.  The city's history is silent until it gains its name, then it sings.  New Orleans is a city that begins by being true.  It is forever-new in a way that is eternal.  It is what it is, like nowhere else.  The women look prettier, and the men seem smarter, in New Orleans, Louisiana, especially at night.

How do you illustrate the passage of time?  If life isn't like an S. Kelly cartoon from the Times-Picayune's editorial page, I'll eat a dozen Gulf oysters, puttin' on the ritz, just the way I like 'em.  Between Calliope and Thalia, there is Erato.  I was sitting between two ladies at the Two Muses, on Frenchman Street, two days ago.  A night can move in strange directions in 2012 AD, you only have to wish it hard enough.  I can't tell you more without switching to a romance language in la Nouvelle Orleans!

Another kind of comic art.

It isn't always easy to live a day in the life of Whalehead King.

A Salute to Dave Spinelli

Shhhhhhh.....

It doesn’t matter where you put the accent, but it does matter how you tilt your hat.  Everyone is a Berliner.  Everyone is a pilgrim.  Tying a bow tie is like tying a shoe.

An orca can devour a giant squid.  I saw it in a diorama in a museum.  I saw it in a movie.  I saw it in a dream.

If you are going to walk like a man, come out swinging.  If you are going to talk like a man, make it good.  If you get better than you give, the taste of a split lip is worth it.  War is a kind of poetry, and, needless to say, war is hell.  When a howling commando fights the good fight, he or she earns a medal forged from the alloy of a nation's gratitude.

When you’re bowling candlepins in a private, automated, basement bowling alley on State Street, the champagne factor can go to your head.  When you are rolling the bones on the bar at the veterans' club, the commotion at the shuffleboard table drowns out everything else.  This is what it sounds like when gulls cry.  


You can count bats in the jungle, but you can’t do it after dark.  Sometimes, home ways is best ways, even when the drinks are on the house and you have two on the bar.  Home is where the heart is.

A whale swims deep.  A pilgrim travels far.  Both play for keeps, doubling down on themselves, collecting the winnings, sharing the wealth.  

Fairfield County is one part of Connecticut.  New London County is its opposite.  The geographic center of the Constitution State is in Berlin, Hartford County, Connecticut, USA, the Provision State.  Ever heard of it? 

Whatever swamp or jungle a pilgrim finds himself or herself in, there is a way to go about things.  It is easy.  It isn’t a secret.  It is as easy as tying a shoe.  

Qui Transtulit Sustinet.  Who Transplants Sustains.  Everyone goes where they come from.

Love's Tinderbox

Even a coward can be a lion.

Have I told you about my anonymous friend who loves his thirty-inch, self-trimming, electric firebox?  You can’t blame him.  She is a beauty.  He’s got a special name for his Dimplex Essex White Electric Indoor Transitional Fireplace.  He calls it Mabel.

My anonymous friend likes to cozy up to Mabel with a good book and a snifter of brandy.  “We’ve spent many romantic nights together, reading John Donne, and Portuguese sonnets, ” he says. 

No man should keep a mistress, but an electric fireplace is the perfect fixture for a modern bachelor pad.  You’ll always find success when it’s a Dimplex, especially the Essex.  Just ask my anonymous friend who has on-demand heat from a thirty-inch, self-trimming, electric firebox.  

That’s Mabel: always able.  Three cents and hour with flame only.  Eight cents an hour for warm flame, hour after luxurious hour.  

The Dimplex Essex White Electric Indoor Transitional Fireplace.  He calls it Mabel.  His wife calls it May Belle.  

A bed to believe in.

The season of Advent is one of joyful anticipation.  On the 8th day, it was furnished...

A bed to believe in.

Imagine lying awake tucked in and sleepy, but anticipation keeps tugging you from the edge of slumber.  Tomorrow will be better than your mortal mind can imagine.  The Hillsdale Man will be knocking tomorrow.  Free shipping is a kind of miracle.  He’ll be bringing a Morgan Twin Size Duo Panel Headboard.  Forty-six inches isn’t too high a point on which to pin one’s hopes.


Once upon a fortnight, a baby was born in a barn.  The door was left open.  


The advent calendar is full of chocolates, one for every day.  Tomorrow will be a banana split.  There may be more than one place in which to be born, but there is also only one way to sleep in style.  The Hillsdale Man is coming tomorrow.

Anticipation makes the best sauce.  When every day is already sweet, a surfeit of joy is not out place.  The only thing that could make it better is a good night’s rest.

Mele Kalikimaka

The heart blooms like a tulip painted, trompe l’oeil, by a Dutch Master, when its owner slumbers peaceably in a beautiful bed.  The bud has not yet burst its bloom.  It may happen when you least expect it, or it may happen tomorrow.  This is the season of hope.   A fully-welded, tubular design mirrors the pattern of one epiphany unfolding from another.  Durable, powder, dark gray finish will never be sullied by things that go bump in the night.  A tree grows in Brooklyn.  The American Beauty rose has no thorns.

Imagine lying in bed, knowing that tomorrow you will be sleeping like an angel, resting against a headboard as graceful as a seraphim’s wing.  It could be you.  Some harps have optional fretboards.  The Morgan Twin Size Duo Panel Headboard does.

Every December brings gifts that nourish the spirit.  This is one of them.  

A simple lotus.

Thanks to everyone who is enjoying One-Way Thursday, which came early again this week.  WK is loathe to commit to a One-Way Tuesday, so let's just keep calling it One-Way Thursday, knowing it will fall between Tuesday and Thursday.  Every Wednesday is Sunday at Carvel.  Yippee the Whale is not going to argue with Fudgey the Whale about the constraints of the calendar.

The conceptual artist's lament

Living the life of Kerouac and Pottsy Webber at the same time.

A little beat poetry today.  More like beat doggerel.  It's against the law to beat a live dog, but you can beat a dead one to your heart's content.  Keeping with the Thanksgiving theme (Ed. note: Thanksgiving was yesterday] Whalehead Amalgamated Enterprises, GmbH, etc, is proud to present.....


The Conceptual Artist's Lament.

I didn't know domesticated turkeys cannot fly,
and so my project,
the one that was supposed to make my name,
was a painful belly flop.

Now I stick to Wild Turkey.

I have plenty of ideas,
all of them impractical.
Someday,
I will die.

-With a tip of the fedora to whoever wrote that Thanksgiving episode of "WKRP in Cincinnati,"