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Sitting by the dock of the bay

by Thompson Lange

I’ll never forget the first time I saw the houseboats in Sausalito…I loved them instantly and swore I’d live on one someday.

Sausalito marina

It was 1970, I was with my family, and much to my un-dying shame my younger brothers and I were dressed in identical clothes.  (Even the Brady Bunch kids were cooler than that…sheesh..but our step-mother, Momma Sue, liked the look and so whatchya-gonna do when you’re 9?)

Anyway, I was daydreaming about how life would be when I was an adult and in control of my own destiny (and clothes), musing about my future life on water. I was walking along “balancing” on the edge of a walkway, acting like a tight-rope walker and thinking how cool my life would be…and then Momma Sue, who was walking ahead of me,  fell off her mile-high wedgies.

70s wedgies

S0 I moved away from the edge.  If an adult couldn’t even balance herself on her SHOES, the certainty of my remaining high-and-dry on the walkway’s edge instead of wet and floundering in Richardson Bay was suddenly questionable.

Ahhh…the 70’s.  Good times, bad fashion.

While I HAVE lived in Sausalito as an adult (twice, actually),  I still hadn’t full-filled the old houseboat dream.  Until this week.

Waldo Point houseboat marina Sausalito

My friend, Joe rented a houseboat to celebrate his birthday and I got to share in the experience.  He found a great boat on the VRBO website,  booked it and away we went.

houseboat-from-the-baySausalito houseboatSausalito houseboat floating garden pontoon

Tiny little place that rocked with every step…which I loved (being a Californian I’m so used to the earth moving under my feet now and then that I don’t even notice it…usually).

Houseboats of Sausalito

Houseboats of Sausalito by Phil Frank

Great time, great boat, great to have finally “lived” on a Sausalito houseboat.

Excitement is Growing….

by Thompson Lange

My group, Junction68, is performing at a Valentine’s Dance at Hidden Valley and our local paper, The Monterey County Herald, ran a picture and recommendation in their GO! Magazine entertainment supplement.

Clearly the Herald’s graphic artist wasn’t aware of the implications the adornments they added would suggest.  The picture now seems to suggest a need for…ahem…censorship.  It looks like Paul and I will go to any lengths to promote the show.

Junction68 Valentines Dance in Herald GO Magazine

Commemoration/inspiration

by Thompson Lange

Just got back from Dallas.  In a deja vu all over again moment, Homescapes was once again nominated for an ARTS Award.   I wrote about it in 2006 and 2007 when last we made our appearance on the ballot, so I was expecting a similar “otherwordliness” about it this time, and again I wasn’t disappointed.

Arts Awards Dallas 2010As always, the Dallas Market Center did it big (even going as far as a stick-thin model coming out in a unitard and headdress before - BOOM- opening her cape, raising it up and becoming a ” peacock.”)

Arts Awards Dallas 2010

Other than her and the poster, the rest of the evening stayed peacock-free (though one winner had thought ahead and wore a peacock feather in his tux pocket…or maybe he just plucked the model.)  There was even a shortage of preening from the winners, which I found interesting.

Arts Awards Dallas 2010

Arts Awards Dallas 2010

The mood in the room was more thankful than joyous, it seemed to me.  Many of the speeches gave thanks to people who had perservered and put up with the winners through 2009, so the bright side was that I wasn’t the only one in a wistful, sorta shell-shocked mood.

Or at least it seemed that way to me.

But don’t get me wrong, the evening was fun and worth the trip, and not just ’cause we won again.  Over the years I’ve gotten to know a number of the people who were in the room not just from doing business with them but  from conferences, roundtables and panel-discussions, so it really did feel like being surrounded by friends.

My speech, I’m told, went fine (though I always sort of black out about that kind of thing), but I hear the hi-def 15 foot screen was a bit “harsh.”  I overheard a friend tell another friend of mine that he’d never realized she had so many freckles.  “You looked like you had leprosy,” he said.

Yikes!

I do NOT want to see the DVD.

Thompson Lange, Homescapes, Arts Awards Dallas 2010