Big Eye/Sad Eye Awesomeness part One

Heeeeyyyyyy....I'm smashed. I'm making Mojitos in celebration of finishing a long, intricate, time consuming art project...and I have tomorrow off, sorta. Actually, I'm going to see Nobunny, and I'm spinning records in between bands. Any way...

I LLLOOOVVVEEE cheesy, kitschy, 60's/70's Keane influenced big/sad-eye stuff...here's a few pieces(notice where I put 'part one' up there...I gotta stretch this shit out!) from my collection/hoard pile.

I found this guy in my last trip to Shipshewana, which I previously blogged about here. He was buried amongst the MOUNDS of junk in that American Pickers-esque barn. There's STILL a few goodies outta that place that I'm saving for later posts. This Japanese Enesco piece might look familiar to readers of HOA...He's a less cool(but still cool), and beat up version of these. I got it for a dollar, just like everything else in the barn. I looked up 'Enesco' on google. As far as I can tell, they're still cranking out cheap junk...I typed "Enesco" into Ebay, and got 40,000-plus results!



The Enesco cats look like this cat. I dunno who made these...I know there were a bunch of these sad cats and dogs made in (I assume) the early 70's, and if I wasn't seeing double, and having to go back and re-type every other word, I'd probably look it up...

Anywhozzle, I grabbed this at a semi-local antique mall for $5.



I also have a lamp of it. I found this on my last trip to Ohio, at an antique store, while I was waiting in line to pay.



Here's another view...



...and another...



Speaking of Ohio, HOA is going on the road this July. I'll have a table at the record trade/flea market/Poppets and Sweet Sixteens show/cookout at Now That's Class on the 11th. Come buy some collectibles or some artwork(Saving up for Gonerfest/My band's tour), and say 'hi'. I'm excited...I've never spent any time in Cleveland. Gonna visit friend and fellow blogger Erin, of the wonderful Trash You Up blog. I gotta start getting stuff around to sell. I know Melanie is gonna bring a bunch of cool vintage dresses.

Anyway...Here's some 70's puzzles Melanie and I found and put together....

This one was missing a piece, bah!



I remember, we did this one during Obama's first State of the Union address...When Joe Wilson yelled 'you lie!', we were finishing the border of the brim of the hat.



Both puzzles are labeled 'Bright Eyes'...I wonder if that's where Conor Oberst got the name for his shitty music.



Wellll...like I said, I'm friggin' smashed, thanks to tasty mojitos. The Mojito has made somewhat of a splash as of late as a hip drink of choice. It's unfortunate that most places make them wrong. I make real Mojitos...a recipe I learned from my Italian friend Mario, who learned the proper technique while on vacation in Cuba(birthplace of the Mojito). Here's how to make a real Mojito

In a glass, crush half a lime and a generous few sprigs of mint, and some natural cane sugar. Add crushed Ice, and equal parts spiced and light rum...maybe a slight bit more light rum. I like to keep a spoon in the drink, and stir it before each sip, otherwise, the lime and sugar sink to the bottom.

A lot of bars just use light rum and a mix. Some bars use soda water, or sprite! That is not a mojito.

Amish Paradise...a Hoarder Of Awesome afternoon roadtrip

Shipshewana, Indiana is a strange place. It's a tiny little town near the Michigan/Indiana border. It's a famous tourist destination because of it's dense Amish/Mennonite population. I find it a pretty eerie place. I guess you'll have that with an ultra-religious town populated by nobody but Amish and cranky old Republicans(not to get too political on y'all), full of tourist attractions for the 70-plus crowd, but with a big stinky loud livestock feed mill smack in middle of everything, making the whole town dusty and smell like vaguely like dog chow. If you've ever seen the Documentary "Devil's Playground", it was filmed here and in neighboring LaGrange. Anyway, besides being a strange place to visit, it's also got some top notch antiques. Not the cheapest place to pick up goodies, but since the average antique shopper in the area is 300 years old, it seems that the cooler things are amongst the cheapest...and that, along with their fantastic candy store, keeps me coming back relatively regularly.

On the way there, yesterday, I planned on taking pictures of some of the sights, but somehow I missed the junkyard with the VW Beetle wall, and this REALLY cool California style, Eichler-ish atomic ranch house, and we took a different way back, so I didn't get a second chance on the way home...oh well, next time. I did get one cool photo from the car. This Depression-era gas station-turned tire shop still has the original porcelain Mobil oil Pegasus sign. I can't believe nobody's stolen it/offered so much money they caved and sold it. It's one of those things that I really want, that I'll never afford...like one of those huge fiberglass Big Boy mascots.



We were in a hurry on the way to Shipshewana, since everything closes at like 5pm(thanks a lot, old people), and I generally wake up at 2...and it's almost an hour drive. Not a big window for antiquing. We were in such a hurry, we flew past this big old ex-auto repair shop-turned storage building with a bunch of knick knacks in the window, and a garage sale sign, between LaGrange and Shipshewana. About a mile down the road we decided we'd better turn around and check it out. Good thing! The place was PACKED with old junk. We bought a ton of stuff, and everything was $1 a piece. I think it's because the old guy there liked us. He joked around with us for a while and even showed me the 1953 Studebaker hot rod he was building in the back. We left with armloads of nifty stuff...some of which I'm saving for later posts. One cool thing I got(actually, these were 50 cents for all of 'em, not $1), were these business cards from the Merry Mouse Stage Bar in Cleveland, Ohio. I looked up the addresses on the card on Google maps, and it looks like both buildings are long gone. I wonder if that's thee Cliff Edwards, the vaudevillian jazz singer, who voiced Jimminy Cricket. since he was on the club circuit in the 40's and 50's, I have reason to believe it is.



I looked around a little on the internet for formation on the Merry Mouse, and this is all I found...an ad from the Cleveland Press, 1948. One thing is for certain, and that is the swankiness of the club.



This patch was in the same box with the cards...I think I got this one for free. I don't have much else to say about it, other than it's neat.



This strange donkey ash tray is one of my favorite finds in the barn. readers of the ever phenomenal Gonked, Glooked, and Slurped blog are probably familiar with the worry bird cousin of this guy...

seen here.

...no doubt from the same manufacturer(T.C. USA?). This guy seems to be WAY more enthusiastic about receiving a hot load of ash in his ass, than the bird does.



Here's the other side. It reminds me a little of Jack Davis' Marx "Nutty Mads" figurines from the 60's.



This plastic-painted-to-look-like-wood poodle is from Hong Kong. I don't know who the manufacturer is, because that part of the tag is damaged, but I don't think that would help. Looking on Ebay, I found a few of these, and they all seem to say different things on the bottom. At least 3 different companies were importing these from Hong Kong in, I'm guessing, the early 60's, all with their own tags. I have a matching dinosaur one, and they made a squirrel too...probably other animals as well.



We made it to Shipshewana with time to spare, but we were pretty spent from playing "American Pickers" in that barn, so we ended up not buying anything at the antique mall. We did, however, get enough candy at the candy shoppe to give us both diabetes 7 times over.

We headed home taking an alternate route, so I could hit the usually fantastic Goodwill in Sturgis, MI. Glad I did, because I scored these fantastic trashy shellacked wood Elvis masterpieces! I also got a really clean 7" of Shaun Cassidy's "That's Rock 'n' Roll"...Ha!



On the way home, we drove past this old folks home that always has 5 or 6 people sitting outside in Eames arm shell chairs. I always hope they'll be on the side of the road with a 'free' sign. The chairs, not the old people.