JAPADOG!

The Croquette

The Lovemeat

The Yakisoba Dog

Top: Orange Cream Fizzy Bottom: Raspberry Lime

Smooth rich and creamy.

Tart and sweet in all the right ways.

Bwains! Bwains!!!

Last of the pics is my sweet Matthew being taken over by the zombie cake. You can see the transition for yourself! It was THAT good that it turned him into.....

Matt is fearful. Does eating the zombie make him a zombie?

He succumbs to the sugar pulsating through his veins.

Alas Matt becomes what he fears - ZOMBIE! KILL IT! KILL IT!

I am coming to the slow realization that I may actually be a walking stereotype of a big gay man. (For those of you who read and don't know me, I am a woman with a sense of humor, not a man in sexual crisis.) I say this because I have seen exactly two plays this past year. The first being End of the Rainbow, sort of a cheeky dramedy about the last days of Judy Garland. The second being what I just witnessed - Showgirls the Musical. And it's exactly what the title offers, the campy script of Showgirls with added campier song and dance numbers.

Interesting ending to this tale. Sara has a good sized following from her delicious business You've Been Cupcaked. When she tweeted these photos, Believe in People tweeted back to her. Myra may get her wish after all ;-)

Below are the close up shots Myra took at the end of our day as we were losing the light. Featuring Jillian Lyons Designs!

Thursday April 4th was another spectacular RAW event held at The Russian Lady in Hartford. This show was called Marvel and featured comic book style artists and geek themed goodness. It was an incredibly busy show! I took what pictures I could given the crowd and artists willing to let me take snap shots of their work.
This was the last show put together by RAW Hartford director Melissa Erdman, who did an amazing job helping to build RAW from the ground up in it's Connecticut branch. When I met her I was bowled over by how on top of things she was. I had run a team of artists for a little over a year and thought I did good. But after seeing Melissa I was super impressed, girlfriend schooled without even knowing it! I personally need to thank her for inviting me to join RAW this past year. My little baby business has new doors to open and is beginning to grow thanks to RAW and the amazing people I have met within it. Always with a hug and a smile, words of encouragement - Melissa is one in a million. Thanks for believing in me lady!
 This was also the last show for the Hartford Russian Lady. RAW Connecticut as it will now be known, will have a new home at the all new Russian Lady in downtown New Haven. The show's new director, Jess Brey, will be taking on the re-branding and switching the show to every other month but with double the artists showcasing at each event.
Marvel was a fantastic send off for Ms. Erdman and a lovely ushering in for Ms. Brey!

Jess Brey (right) Melissa Erdman (left).

This was also the last show for Ms. Kavita Ashok, whose fine art work Kaptured on Kanvas was on display. Kavita will be moving back to her native India. I had the pleasure of meeting her back in September of 2012. I just adored these little mini paintings she did featuring some of my favorites like Audrey Hepburn. She is one of the kindest people I have had the pleasure of chatting up. She did smashingly at her last show here, and walked away with new friends, a smile and a bag full of money. A great note to end on in my book! I wish you the best my dear!

On display, the work of Kavita Ashok's Kaptured on Kanvas.

But aside form all the hellos and goodbyes there was some phenomenal work on display as always! See folks, you go to a RAW event and you get fabulousness! Great drinks, good music, and talented people who deserve some serious recognition! I took as many pics as I could.

Bradford Photography

Mary Murph

The Tiny Hobo Illustration & Design

Tom Ryans Studio

Tom Ryans Studio

Spectral Sanctuary

VOID Illustrations

Everyone has them. Those movies that you watch when you're alone. The ones you might not want to admit that you like or even own. Come on, admit it - everyone has a dirty little secret. I'm about to get real up in here. My guilty pleasures are the movies that I genuinely like and not even ironically. I watch them over and over alone in the dark with ice cream. (I miss having my old roommate Meg who would be so kind as to get drunk with me and break out these ridiculous movies all the while saying "you know you love it!") I say I hate romantic comedies... but sometimes... my vagina rears it's ugly...vagina.

1) Waiting to Exhale - It's not the story of friendship and shit. Fuck the sisterhood story. It's all about Angela Basset losing her mind over her man leaving her for a white bitch. First, I identify with that level of pain and heartbreak where you devote your entire self to someone and help them come up, only to have them shit all over you. So yes, setting fire to their status symbols does in fact seem like the appropriate response to that. Whitney Houston's fling with the growling weed man and Gregory Hines secret crush on the big girl Loretta Devine also makes for guilty love. Eventually I went so far as to BUY this movie! Now I just need a rainy day in and Hagan Daaz.

2) He's Just Not That Into You - UGH! This is so fucking embarrassing. I had no intention of ever watching what seemed to be another big budget bullshit movie cashing in on women's relationship sensitivity and exploiting it. I hate Sex and the City, so I never saw that episode that sparked the writing of the book. But sometimes, when I am home alone or am not feeling well, or bored terribly, or drunk I watch things I would never in my right mind view. This was case in point. Sure it was nice to see a gaggle of starlets being ridiculous (ScarJo I think you hear me.) But it was the sweet sincere Ginnifer Goodwin, whom I LOVE on Big Love, that lured me into this otherwise steaming pile. I know her pain of awkwardly trying to find someone to love and just doing one horrible thing after another and scaring men away. So, she got to me. And Jennifer Aniston's quest to get her long time boyfriend the Affleck to take the plunge with her. Then breaking up with him only to go through the biggest family crisis she's ever dealt with. I'm a sucker. I hate to admit it - but I have seen it 5 times this week alone.

3) How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days - For me this is even worse then owning up to than He's Just Not That Into You. Typical big budget romantic comedy premise. The idea is timeless. It's as if someone took an adorable vintage screwball comedy ala Barbara Stanwyck or Kathryn Hepburn and shit all over it.
But hear me out. It's on this list, so there is something there. I think I was sold by the love fern. It's the idea of a love fern. But we really we know this as the stand in child. I have seen this girl in my friends, or in my male friends doomed new girlfriends who are so caught up in trying to entrap this guy they are super hot for into being the one. Awkward hilarity ensues. So, yeah, I kind of enjoyed it. Matthew McConaughey is dumb as shit, but who cares as long as he's shirtless. Oh and same goes for Kate Hudson, as long as someone puts tape on her mouth and I get to call her Penny Lane...

4) Music & Lyrics - A bit of an obvious guilty pleasure. Anyone who knows me well can probably figure out the attraction for me. It's that brilliantly cliche mock 80's pop tune POP Goes My Heart! That song gets into my head on such a regular basis that I actually forget that it's not from a real band! I love the Wham! mock band. I love the aging Hugh Grant playing to house wives at Knotts Berry Farms. I like Drew Barrymore as the semi-neurotic but sweetly talented un-songwriter. This is also one of the few times where I still find Drew Barrymore's weird lispy lip thing cute and not a tragic sad gimic. I rooted for these characters to get together! OH and I have to say I love love love the ridiculous character of Cora! An amalgamation of Madonna going through her zen-tantric phase, Shakira (who is breathing down her neck!) and Britney pre-crazy but post slutty. Ugh, they had me at 80's.

5) Steel Magnolia's - Truly a movie I can only watch ALONE. Although there was this one time that my very tough hispanic lesbian friend Patti and I found ourselves glued to the set and crying watching this, when suddenly my boyfriend of the time comes home early and stops dead in his tracks. "What the hell is going on?" He looks scared. "What did you do to Patti!" He yells at me. Patti is embarrassed and trying to Kleenex her way back to normal. "It just gets to me yo!" she snibbles. "But Patti! Your my homeboy! Homeboys DON'T cry at this shit!" Well apparently homeboys DO cry at this shit, like bitches.
Hence why I have to be alone to watch it.
I have diabetes. So now this movie gets to me even more and on a bigger, harder level. The movie centers around Truvy's Beauty Parlor and Julia Roberts, who is a selfish southern girl, a diabetic, and a stubborn woman determined to get married and have a baby despite her condition. She does this and her family and friends laugh love and rejoice, until Julia over does it and is hospitalized, then dies. Her little baby toddler cutie pants son finds her collapsed and is home alone for hours screaming before anyone finds them and 911 is called.
The worst part of this is god damn Sally Field. GOD DAMN SALLY FIELD! I'm not made out of stone here people. When she has her breakdown in the funeral scene and screams at the top of her lungs 'I WANT TO KNOW WHHHHYYYY!!!" I snap and cry every fucking time. She's not phoning this one in, it's genuine heart felt rage. It's the pain of losing someone way too soon, and everyone in the scene as well as in the audience can feel it.
While Daryl Hannah can go fuck herself for even bothering to be in this movie of otherwise interesting characters, I find more redeeming qualities in the other plot lines and actresses. I love Dolly Parton no matter what the role is. I love Shirley MacLaine and Olympia Dukakis constantly sparring it out through the film, and the inside of joke of track lighting = GAY. Ugh, of all my guilty pleasures this is the one that is the worst and runs the deepest. If it's on and I'm alone, chances are I'm watching.