A finicky guy's exploits in finding gustatory (and other) satisfaction in his kitchen, his neighborhood, and beyond.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Getting some color

As you can see in this picture that I took on my way to the gym, today is very grey here in Manhattan:


I decided that if Mother Nature was not going to provide us New Yorkers a glorious springtime palette, I would take it upon myself to dabble in color.  So what follows today is just a bit of silliness....a polychromatic pictorial panoply of brightly colored images.  I hope it makes you smile, whatever the weather in your neck of the woods.


Is this outfit just too Mr. Roper?  Peter made me the terrycloth shirt last summer — along with a tank-top of the same fabric which became my uniform on vacation — and it's bright enough on its own, but I decided to go all psychedelic by adding a scarf in complementary hot orange.  (I don't mean that I expected compliments, but that orange and blue sit across from each other on the color wheel.)  Do you think it's too much?  (I wore this ensemble when Peter's mom took us out to lunch at a local Thai restaurant.  I'm sure by East-Asian standards my color scheme is nothing out of the ordinary.  For an orchid.)

(just in case you've forgotten your color wheel)

Then when I went to the gym later that day wearing the same scarf, I just had to snap my picture in front of the rather Mephistophelean blood-red wall behind the big white-marble stairway leading to the locker rooms.  (As I said, DBG is the gayest gym in the world, color scheme not excluded.)  Don't I look positively Satanic in this shot?  Even I'm frightened of me.
Today, I thought this wall (not in my gym, but on the way there) contrasted interestingly with my new hoody —  analogous colors, or those sitting next to each other on the color wheel —which I  picked up yesterday from our newly renovated Salvation Army, finally open again after a long closure.  I must have been in a mood indigo while shopping, because I also bought a wool hat in similar shades and some deep-blue dishes that I'm sure you'll see soon in pictures of food.  (You'll remember, this is a food blog, although today I am barely providing food even for thought.  Sorry if your brains are still hungry after feeding here.) 
It's just so wrong to whip out a camera in the locker room that I had to indulge my urge to do so.  (The devilish vermilion of the walls brings out my wickedness, I guess.)  I strategically managed to avoid capturing anyone else's image in my camera's lens, although the temptation to start snapping away at exposed flesh (with my camera!) was overwhelming.  I took this one innocent picture only, managing to leave everyone else's privacy and my gym membership intact.
Peter took this kooky picture the other day when I happened into a prismatic spot of sunlight in our living room.  (The sun was shining through a glass paperweight on the windowsill.)  I would like to say that the rainbow followed me wherever I moved, but that would be false.    When I see the colors seeming to spill from my mouth, I can't help thinking of a song my sister Beth sang in her 6th-grade chorus: "I Can Sing a Rainbow."

Red and Yellow and Pink and Green, Purple and Orange and Blue:  I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow too.  Listen with your eyes, listen with your eyes, and sing everything you see.  I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow; sing along with me.
Why can I remember all the lyrics (and the tune!) to a sappy song that Beth sang 35 years ago?  "Listen with your eyes"? Isn't that what we call LOOKING?  (My irritation over the cloying doggerel of these lyrics has been building up now for 3 and a half decades!)
And now, today's pièce de résistance!  But don't even try to résist the bravura use of color or the charm of the imagery in the following work of art, publicly shown here for the very first time.

I give you..........."The Willies":



6 comments:

  1. Thanks for the smiles (not to mention the hysterical giggles)! :o)

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  2. Giving me the willies? Nah. The sillies, yes.

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  3. You need to give a copy of your Satanic shot to all of your voice students. They'll be so terrifed they'll practice for sure!! And then if they still don't, you can sing them the rainbow song. The author could have at least done the correct rainbow colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) so they'd know them for science class.

    I did enjoy your pictures though. You got some cool looking photos.

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  4. Great idea, Liara, but I'd be more likely to try to scare my students into refraining from practicing.

    Like my approach to most things, my approach to teaching singing is not exactly traditional. You can read what I have to say about the virtues of not practicing here.

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  5. Oh, Willie is sooo cute! But you were positively frightening in that satanic pic. It made you seem like a really scary person. Can't wait to see the new dishes. Aren't thrift shops the best!

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  6. I was worried this posting would prove a bit of a challenge for the color blind among us. But the hues were of such vibrancy that even I had no problem enjoying along with everyone else. Thanks for the consideration. :)

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