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mdwatchestv · 7 years ago

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Dirk Gently 2x02: Everything is Connected Blah, Blah, Blah

Episode two, we are here, we are doing it, it is happening. I feel like we have experienced a veritable season's worth of content this past episode and frankly my dear, I am exhausted. Both figuratively in the sense that my mind and spirit have absorbed so much exposition they are wearied, and physically in the sense that I feel like my body is going to turn to dust any moment. And yes there were still many bright spots, I smiled, I lolled, I felt holistic universal joy. But I also feel adrift in a plot ocean, gasping for breath in an endless sea of names and relationships. Okay that's enough couching and complaining, let's submerge fully together and try to shed some light into the murky depths.

Once again this episode begins in the whimsical land of Wendimoor, where the moon becomes increasingly terrifying to me the longer I stare at it. Like is this just a waned Majora's Mask moon? Does the season end with it killing everyone? Help. In this first scene Silas, boyfriend of Pink Hair, and that big guy he was with, return to their castle where they have some 'splainin to do to their queen (right?). Queen lady lays out the reason for their kingdoms feud with Pink Hair’s family, although to be frank with you all I got up during this scene to get a ginger ale because I was super hungover so my understanding of what was said is limited. But I think the gist is that the Queen's family stole the land/is mining the land/built that weird castle on the land, that rightfully belongs to Pink Hair’s family. Queen believes Pink Hair to be a rogue and wants him killt. In this world/dimension/dream-space Dirk Gently is a legend/fairytale that Silas believes in, to the chagrin of the queen. That's right, right? If there was more going on in this scene, I honestly don't want to know about it.

Back in the real world, there is even more happening. Amanda Walsh (Suzie) discovers her witch-powers in an enjoyable montage that, as a fellow witch, really spoke to my heart. Suzie goes for the classic witchy glam-makeover, lookin' good, feelin' good. But despite these gains, Suzie still has her miserable family of sucky dudes to deal with. Her super-mean husband delivers a surprisingly articulate and character-illuminating speech though before Suzie turns him into her zombie slave. Apparently Suzie suffered some sort of earlier accident (perhaps the origin of her limp and cane) and hasn't been able to move past it. What could it be! I know we are supposed to see Suzie as a potential bad guy because she *literally* kicks the dog, but any lady who uses questionable witchcraft for personal gain is a-okay in my book.

Meanwhile back at the Blackwing center, Friedkin is spinning out over Dirk's escape. Is he invisible, can he teleport? Friedkin doesn't know, because honestly he doesn't know a whole lot. We the audience, who know quite a bit more, know that Mona transported him with a glass of water. Ya duh. Freidkin decides to poll the audience and asks Ken (still trapped in the taxi with Rapunzel) and the captured members of the Rowdy 3 (on ice and more vampirey than ever) if they have any Dirk intel. They do not. Skipping right past 50/50, Friedkin phones a friend to come in and clean up his mess - and it's Alan Tudyk as the likely meaningfully named Mr. Priest! Thankfully Mr. Priest seems to be the real baddest bad, because I am still not feeling Freidkin. Also I just LOVE bad guy Alan Tudyk, and he is going wild and out with an accent, and weird chuckling. I'm here for it. Chew it up baby, chew it up.

Speaking of the Rowdy 3, Vogle and Amanda are still on the run trying to triangulate their missing compatriots via Amanda's visions. I am so digging Amanda's look this season, I am also digging her disregard for personal safety. This show likes to stick in little clues and clever foreshadowing (which I love), so let's take a little looksy at Amanda's vision and see what we can pull out- There’s the abandoned mansion, what looks to be Suzie’s zombie husband as well as the motor park where he works, Sherlock getting shot, Montana and Alan Tudyk as well as a child (the boy?) drawing what could be either Pink Hair or Dirk on a wall. She also sees things we know to identify with Wendimoor such as the scary moon and scissors. In all the visions we’ve seen so far this season there has also been a recurring menacing face with super scary eyes. Who dat?

Finally back to that car in a tree and our main story heroes. Surprise Dirk is in the trunk! I thought surprise Dirk in the trunk was a little easy, but I'm not mad about expediting his reunion with Todd. Their friendship is the beating heart of the show and their repartee was sorely missed in the first episode. After our heroes reunion, our trio is arrested by Sheriff Sherlock (in his first ever arrest). While Sherlock is a little rusty on police protocol it turns out he is SUPER DOWN with holistic detectiving and may be Dirk's spiritual soulmate. That development was unexpected, but welcome and I am hoping for some jealousy on Todd's part about no longer being Dirk's go-to-guy (he was recently downgraded to assistant after all). Sherlock seems to get what's going down and takes his new prisoners out on the road to investigate the old mansion and wet circle wall. We have now arrived at our second exposition dump.

I stayed on the couch raptly watching this part, ginger ale in hand. So here we go. The car that fell out of the tree was 50 years old, although brand new (with only 42 miles...wink) and also contained the body of Marina Cardenas who has been missing for the same amount of time. The disappearance of Marina and her husband Hector are a local mystery. Bergsberg has many a local mystery including an electrical burnout that fried the town's power and caused a mass exodus of residents, and the random boat in the field that we saw last episode. Although Sherlock assures Farrah these things are not connected, I can't help feeling like they probably are. A wild guess, I know.

But wait there's more! Farrah and Sherlock follow muddy footprints (left by John Hannah at the end of last episode) into the abandoned house (previously lived in by the missing Marina and Hector). Inside they find more mystery footprints, a single red phone (Chekov's phone), height markers, and a disconcertingly ghost-like John Hannah himself. Clues people. Clues. Out in the back they make an even more startling discovery- Hector Cardenas entombed in a tree. A tree that they find because Todd and Deputy Tattoo Face are practicing a sonic gun out on it. Exhausting, truly. Anyway, we have found the missing couple! Although their corpses are definitely suspish. Both tree-related, and both suggesting time-travel tomfoolery. I'm sure there will be more on this. But there is even MORE Cardenas mystery to be had! As Farrah astutely wonders "Where's the kid?" As she has deduced from the height markings in the house they must have had a child. Perhaps a boy! Oh wait where have we heard this before? Dirk assumes this is the boy, THE boy, the FIND the boy, boy. There is a LOT going on, but connections are starting to be made. This is positive.

Finally Pink Hair pops out in the middle of a road, he's not in Wendimoor anymore. How did he get to our world? What is the means of that transport? Did Bart swap places with him? More questions, always more questions. Honestly this episode made ME feel like I was hit with a car. While there was a welcome return to the team dynamics that worked in season 1, and continue to shine (team Farrah/Dirk/Todd) as well as some intriguing new characters (Amanda Walsh/Alan Tudyk), this episode was over-laden with plot. It's not that I need anything watered-down, in fact one of the aspects of the writing I enjoy is the fact that it assumes the audience can keep up with its clever tricks and clues. Season one was a rare season of television storytelling that had both organic twists and surprises and a commendably tight plot that contained time-travel and body-swapping. Season two seems to be attempting to top the first seasons tale with an even more outrageous case and an even wider reaching world. This is fine and expected but if the first season was a perfect clear chime, this season is more of a...thump. Not unpleasant, thumps can be satisfying too, and there is still much about these episodes that has been genuinely delightful. I am still a believer, and maybe like last season this is the info dump that will then provide a foundation for the rest of the season to be picked through and expanded. What I fear is additional piling on without the reprieve of investigation and character development. Time will tell.

CORGI WATCH:

NO CHANGE.

XO MD

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adventurepunks · 3 years ago

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thedemonconstantine:

“What a very capable detective you are, my lady! Very clever indeed,” Praised Jason as he as always would accede to the many whims of Alexis, scooping her up into his arms to take her upstairs to the second floor of the shophouse where his library and living room were.

“And here we are, my own personal library. And this is my desk from where I write my letters to you. This is your very own pigeon hole, the top drawer to the right where I put all your letters, and the stairs there leads to the third floor which is my bedroom. I have more books there for my library here has run out of space, as you can see.”

He would not go into the hidden door behind one of the bookshelves that would lead to a pocket dimension which held all of his other belongings that spoke of his life a long time since. His coat-of-arms, his armoury, his lance and sword and shield.

“I’ll be up shortly,” John grunted as he cleaned up in the backroom, taking the dishes and nursing a cigarette whilst washing the cups and such, might as well help himself to a pint from Jason’s fridge. The old knight had a fondness for sweet mead.

“Aye well soz buh Ser Goldfish is much too oul fer yeh, me darlin’ ‘n Da is nah ready ‘ta give yeh up just yet,” Said John as he lingered by the door to the living room.

“COR BLIMEY mate, yous nah got a bookcase yous runnin’ a library or somma?” Alexis’ eyes went wide at how huge his bookcases were, they were at least twice as tall as her uncle Chas!

“Gosh yous proper posh mind? Fancy pants yeh are!” Alexis of course ran up the stairs to look at his bedroom because children had no concept of private space and he mentioned it.

She ran and jumped to sit on his piled cushions. “DAAAA! I WANTS CURTAINS ON ME BED TOO!” she yelled down the stairs never mind that she had the top bunk.

“Look at all yeh space. Yous kin do cartwheels in ‘ere.” she got hyper and ran towards Jason to cling to his legs.

“I ‘ave me own drawer?” she asked looking up at him as if he just gave a starving child a warm bowl of stew and actual tears formed in her eyes which of course she had to hide by smashing her face into his stomach to hide her face.

Never mind that she head butted his belly. Nope, not allowed to see her tear up.

John’s voice only made her surrender the death grip on Jason for despite the fact he was tall and an adult kids could cling for dear life if they wanted to.

“MA IS TA OLD FER YEH BUH YEH DUN ‘EAR ME COMPLAIN DOES I” Alexis called out.

“Me ma is older than me da.” she spoke to Jason as if he couldn’t hear the whole conversation.

“I wants ta see me drawer. Show me, show me!” she demanded running back down to the living room jumping two steps a time.

“Da looksie ‘ow much space ‘e got. I would put me TY bears there-” she pointed to a space by the window.

“Da shuh up. Is tha’ yeh spare till?” she asked pointing to the old looking thing at the very right side of his study space.

“Yeh likes yeh space tidy don’t yeh.” she made a contemplating face. Could she really be happy with a husband that was so into tidiness.

“Sit on yeh chair... I wants ta know what yeh look like when yeh write ta me so I kin imagine yeh” she even pulled out the chair for him!

“Da? Does ma ‘ave a study in her other ‘ouse?”

#thedemonconstantine #guest muse:alexis constantine

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normendubium-blog · 7 years ago

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The editor (eip)

Christine leaned forward across the booth, her elbows dominating most of the table. Anticipation glimmered in her eyes.

“Ok. Show me.” She rubbed her hands as if I was about to hand over a long lost treasure.

“Did we have to do this here?” I asked. I searched the cafeteria for prying eyes. “It’s just so… ” A group of four was playing Magic the Gathering a few tables away, and all the other tables were occupied by couples loudly talking at each other, or solitary students trying to study. “Public.” I finished.

“Who cares? Let’s see it!!” She rubbed her hands together.

I took another glance around the cafeteria before I started digging through my backpack for the papers. When I found them, my hands were shaking. I pulled them out and pretended to give a thoughtful looksy over the paperwork. Yes, yes, I could imagine myself saying. Everything seems to be in order here. I don’t need your help after all.

I heard Cristine whisper, “Oh for fuck’s sake.” She snatched the loose papers from my hand. I winced. Small droplets of liquid rubies started to bead and form tear drops on the tip of my thumb. I sucked my thumb and the stinging pain started to fade.

Christine's eyes darted from line to line. I couldn’t decipher the look on her face. Was she annoyed? Frustrated? Confused? I could read doubt in the downturned corner of her mouth, her eyebrows were determined to portray a feeling of resignation, and with every breath she took I could only feel naked. I sat there, sucking my bleeding thumb, studying every minuscule move she made, and regretting ever touching a pencil. Then she flipped to page two.

I forced myself to breathe. Waiting wasn’t productive. I needed to be productive. I needed to get something done. I needed to move on. I started going through my backpack. Books. Textbooks I had paid for and never bothered to read. Novels I had tried to read. And writing resource books with well-worn spines and careful notes on every page. I wanted to be back in those the most. It was easier inside those books. To read about writing, pretending I was putting in the effort, putting off writing until I had read the next book that promised a finished draft in thirty days, that’s where I belonged. I was a reader posting as a writer. That’s all I was. That was all I’d ever be. Any minute now, Cristine was going to wad up the paper and I’d move on with my life. I’d be a janitor forever. Oh well. At least I tried. She flipped to the last page.

Was it really only three pages? I must’ve looked pathetic. Three measly pages. Three pages of dialogue. I forgot the description. I forgot to tell her how the room smelled like old coffee, or how the red curtains cast a hellish light on the crimson carpet covered in unwashed clothes. I didn’t mention how unbearably hot it was in there. I could’ve made an analogy to my room being like hell. I could’ve mentioned how much like a Faustian bargain Cris’ deal was. Would that make me the devil? Why was I thinking about all this now when it was too late to change anything? She put the pages down.

She looked up with a smirk on her face. I raised my eyebrow and nodded toward the papers making the universal expression for ‘Well? What’d you think?’. She kept staring at me like I was an idiot. This was a mistake. All of this.

“Taste that good?” She gestured to my thumb, which I pulled out of my mouth.

“Papercut,” It had stopped bleeding.

“Aww, does the lil baby need a bandaid for his boo boo?” she teased.

“It stung.” I argued, “Look, did you like it or not?” It came out more demanding than I would’ve liked it too.

“Ok, Ok, I get it,” she pulled away with her arms in the air like I was holding a gun to her head. “It’s fine.”

“Fine?”

“Yeah, it’s fine.”

“But not good?” I leaned forward. She gave out an exasperated sigh. “Right, sorry, pushy.” I made a point to lean back.

“Just a tad.” she gave a nervous grin.

“Sorry… again. I just want this to be good.”

“Well… ” she said thoughtfully, “It’s not bad… there’s just nothing here to latch on to.” She smiled weakly. “Does that make sense? This really isn’t my thing. You should be talking to Mattie.” She got up to leave.

“No, wait!” I reached out to her and she spun around wearing a knowing smile.

“Gotcha.” She sat back in the booth. “Why’re you hiding this?”

“I’m not… ” I said in a low quiet voice. I ducked my head down. People were watching.

She rolled her eyes, “Whatever.” Her eyebrows furrowed and she looked off into the distance for a second longer than I would have liked, “She’s taken.” She said in a defeated tone to no one in particular. I ignored her.

“I really really need your help here.” I admitted, “I need a second pair of eyes. I need to see the things I missed. Didya see any grammar mistakes? Anything sound funny?”

She flipped through the pages again, “It sounds good to me.”

I nodded my head a little, “Ok, ok, that’s good. How about flow? Was it easy to read, or did it drag in places? How was the dialogue? Was it natural? Double words? I do that a lot sometimes. Oh! A lot,” She was flipping through the pages faster now, “I always spell a lot as one word. Did I do that? What about-”

She slammed the paper on the table. “I don’t know! It sounded fine, alright? It’s fine!”

She took a moment to re-center herself. “Sorry, I’m bad at this.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “I just don’t see the point.” I was about to apologize when she cut me off, “Like, I get that this is just a small scene, and I’m missing the context, but I don’t get the point of the scene.” She looked exhausted. She let out a heavy breath, “You really should get Mattie for this.”

It took a little time for me to process. I thought it was obvious. I looked her in the eyes and told her, “I wrote this for you... ” her pale face turned crimson.

She let out a quiet “Oh.”

“I was testing out your character. I, uh, I wrote your intro first cause I, uh, I kinda… Your character’s the pov character’s best friend, and I… I wanted to get you right… So to speak.” Kasedy was looking down at the sheets of paper again with a face just as white as the pages now.

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propertyhold · 7 years ago

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The Den: The Big Reveal!

Exactly four years ago today, I became a homeowner. That decision could be characterized in a lot of ways: crazy, stupid, optimistic, deluded, exciting, terrifying, and maybe a bit ambitious. I loved this house from the second I saw it, and if I was going to buy a house (something I was not particularly equipped or intending to do), it was going to be this house. There were no other contenders.

That part—the period of falling for a property and feeling committed to its acquisition—felt easy (the actual purchase part was not, but that’s another story). The stuff that came after it wasn’t quite as easy. I’m not sure I have much in the way of original thoughts on this topic: yes, it really does take twice as long. Yes, it really does cost twice as much. Yes, at times it’s satisfying, frustrating, overwhelming, thrilling, and challenging. It’s a process that can variably bring out both the best and the worst, exposing your weaknesses and fears as much as it reveals the heights of your capacity for joy and contentment. It’s a long, strange, intensely humbling trip.

None of this is immediately pertinent to this post, I guess, but it felt weird to not acknowledge the milestone of four years! Some days it feels like the house has come such a long way, and other days it feels like the amount of remaining work is insurmountable. So with regards to the den, this is a space that—until very recently—contributed to that whole insurmountable feeling. This room has never really been anything. For a while it had a bed in it for guests (who got to wake up looking at a half-demoed water-damaged acoustic tile ceiling…how charming!), but mainly it’s just been a place for stuff to spill into as other spaces got worked on. Which feels…weird! There’s this whole space in my house that, functionally, might as well have been some off-site storage facility (which certainly would have felt cleaner and more manageable!), and now it’s an actual room that I’m actually sitting in and actually writing this blog post and actually not seeing anything crumbling around me or making me feel crappy because “oh-my-god-I’ve-lived-here-for-this-long-and-this-room-is-still-a-total-dump.” Particularly on a DIY pace and budget, stuff just takes a long time, and it’s not always easy (or, necessarily, especially productive) to pinpoint exactly why. It just does.

SO! Shall we take a looksie around the new room? Let’s do it.

Ba-boom! If it looks like a different room, that’s almost because it is. That bay window situation in the “before” shot was not original to the house and I removed it last summer as part of a larger exterior renovation, and I believe this is actually much as the room would have looked when it was built! Time saw the addition of electricity, hardwood flooring laid over the original subfloor, and hot water radiator heating, but ya know—that stuff’s not going anywhere. The rest of it is just cosmetic—one of the ways I try to approach renovating vs. decorating is by renovating with more of a restoration mindset, and decorating however the hell I want. Somebody could move in here and swap out light fixtures and repaint (or wallpaper), furnish, and have themselves much more of a time capsule vibe, but I guess I’d rather just have a…me vibe? This room feels very me, to me. ME ME ME.

Here’s where we were at the beginning of March!

And today! Much improved, yes?

Sorry, I’m a sucker for a before-and-after comparison. Did we get it out of our systems? I really wish I had taken more pictures of the room before it started getting torn apart! It’s like I had learned nothing four years ago when I had the opportunity to take true “before” photos. I’m going to blame it on the fact that I saw much more of the house as a straightforward renovation/redecorating project than what it’s become.

So, maybe this room looks crazy and maybe it is crazy and maybe I have no ability to form an objective opinion on it, but I DO know that it’s filled with so many things I love and is so comfortable and cozy that I literally do not care at all if it could also be considered stylish. I think it’s pretty. I don’t know.

I’ve mentioned lots of these things before, so forgive me if I’m repeating myself, but…

This sofa!! I bought it from Susan and Will Brinson (of the obscenely inspiring blog, House of Brinson). 400 bucks! For a secondhand, high-quality, all leather sofa that is the most comfortable thing in the world, I think that’s a great deal. Even though this room isn’t really a guest room (it was supposed to be when I started working on it!), the cushion section of the sofa is roughly the size of a twin sized bed, and I can tell you from firsthand experience (of Netflix and chilling so hard that I fall asleep) that it’s SO comfortable. I wouldn’t feel bad asking a guest to sleep here because it really does sleep like a bed, not a couch. I love the wear on the leather, and I love that I don’t have to be insane about it because it’s already been lovingly broken in by two large dogs before my own dogs, so they just add to the patina.

Womb chair, womb chair! I love this chair but Mekko REALLY loves this chair. When I was a kid, my mom looked for a lounge chair for her bedroom for literally a decade, and as a teenager I recommended this one…which she purchased…and then hated…which I was secretly kind of excited about because it meant that if she didn’t get around to reselling it as she said she would, I could ask for it when I eventually had the space to accommodate. MY SCHEME WORKED and now it is mine and it’s the most expensive dog bed in the world.

The original (well, original to the house being heated by radiators—before that it was wood stoves!) radiator got a few coats of glossy black spray paint, and I love the pairing of the black-black with the blue-black walls! I don’t know why! Particularly with more ornate radiators like this one, I think black paint is a great way to really highlight the fancy Victorian scrollwork on each fin.

Above the radiator is a collection of frameless antique mirrors, which I hoard just because. When the foil backing starts to disintegrate on an old mirror, I think the effect is so beautiful and interesting and I just buy them whenever I see them, assuming the price is good and they meet my rigorous quality standards of being in one piece.

I always thought it would be cool to display them in some kind of grouping, and this steel ledge isn’t quite what I had in mind, but I bought the ledge almost four years ago (it was supposed to go in my first kitchen renovation, but I changed my mind!), so it was nice to finally put it to use since I didn’t get my act together and send it back to CB2 at the time.

The tea light candlesticks are originally from Dwell Studio, but I picked them up a few years ago secondhand. I love them so much! The wooden tray that they’re sitting on I bought in the fall when I was in Austria. So simple and pretty.

On the wall to the right of the window, the top little piece of art was made by my mommy as a kid! I stole it out of a box of old stuff in our basement years ago, and I’ve had it hanging somewhere since. I love it—someday I’ll upgrade the frame, but an IKEA RIBBA never hurt anyone. The muscleman below it came out of my grandparents’ house after they had both passed away, and nobody knows where it came from or who the artist is.

The light is from my internet pal and long-time design crush, Logan at One Forty Three. I’m so proud of that dude! Watching his business expand and grow, and all the things he’s created since I first became aware of his work, has been so exciting. I’ve had the lamp for…probably 5 years at this point, and it still looks and works like the day it was packaged up and sent to my then-home in Brooklyn. I’m so happy to have it hanging up again.

The dark walls do swallow up a lot of natural daylight (perfect for a chill zone room like this, I think!), but that can make houseplants difficult. I’ve never had a problem keeping one of these ZZ plants alive though—perfect for low light and thrive on neglect. The pot is vintage, found somewhere around Kingston. The candlestick is also vintage and used to be half of a set of two, but I MAY have not realized that absent a metal liner in the part where the candle goes, a candle will burn down and then light the candlestick on fire, and then that will burn until somebody notices.

I’m a hazard.

I bought the dog on a trip to China in 2005. I bought the side table a few years ago from JC Penney, when Terence Conran did a really nice collection for them, and then it all went on clearance, and then I panic-bought some of my favorite pieces from the collection just BECAUSE I HAD TO and I don’t regret it because I think it was like $30 for this cast iron and white oak side table that is just so cute and very well-made.

Also you can kind of get a sense of how the Diamante wallpaper from Hygge & West in the adjoining little office looks with this room. I feel like the two play well together!

You might recognize the two pieces above the sofa from my Brooklyn bedroom and then again from my current bedroom that I showed you just a few weeks ago, but naturally I’ve already moved them and I think THIS is where they belong! These hung in my grandparents’ bedroom at least throughout my lifetime, and it’s an honor to have them here.

Also, ORANGE NAKED LADY!!! Evidently, I wrote a blog post about her back in 2013 after I bought her at an auction, but she’s never really had a permanent home until now. I’m still exactly as tickled by her as I was when I spent $60 real-life dollars on her and got made fun of by other auction attendees for it.

SPEAKING of auctions…now is the part where if you didn’t hate me already, I give you license to hate me now.

I went to an auction shortly after I started working on this room.

I saw this rug.

I wanted this rug. Immediately. Intensely.

I prepared myself to spend $400-$500 for this rug, which is a chunk of change but actually a good deal for a rug of this age and size (and, I’d argue, uniqueness), and I’d been looking for one for this room, and here it was.

The bidding started.

Nobody bid.

I bid. $45. And won.

FORTY. FIVE. DOLLARS. That’s, like, a fancy tea towel. That’s, like, five burritos.

The guy next to me literally turned to me and asked what possessed me to buy that rug. ARE YOU BLIND, SIR?

OK I’m done gloating. I love that rug so hard. The colors are so weird and good. The wear is everything I want.

I haven’t painted the door yet (since it swings into the hallway, I can convince myself it’s part of the hallway restoration, which I’ve been great at putting off indefinitely), but you get the idea.

This space is pretty narrow, and that couch is ENORMOUS, and the space between the righthand corner and the door trim is about a foot, so I needed something very slim for under the TV.

I searched and searched and racked my brain for something I could just buy and be done with. I didn’t want to build a thing. It felt like…I just built a ROOM, do I really need to make myself crazy over building something big FOR the room?

Then I built a thing and I’m so glad I did because I actually really like the thing I built! It’s essentially just a plywood box that’s covered in lath from my very own walls and ceilings. I think I started it on a Sunday morning and had it hanging on the wall by Monday afternoon, and it holds a bunch and looks cute and cost me all of about $10 for the piano hinge. Also, it was really fun! Since buying the house, it’s actually very rare that I just kind of make something that isn’t part of a much larger renovation project, and I forget how fun it is to just play around with some tools and some wood and see what happens.

By the way, on top of the cabinet thing on the far left sits a Sonos speaker, and my Apple TV is turned sideways between the speaker and the stack of books. That’s all the technology! I’ve tried to make it a tradition to buy a Sonos speaker upon the completion of each room to spread the cost out—it’s kind of spendy for me, but I do really like the system and I love that the speakers come in white or black so it’s usually possible to keep it very inconspicuous. The speakers all tie back to the Sonos app on my phone, and can be controlled independently or in unison to play music, adjust the volume, play/pause, etc. I recommend it!

I didn’t do anything particularly nice about finishing the inside (I made it! for me! and I don’t care!), but it holds a ton! I decided to put all of my weird pottery and figurines and candlesticks and stuff in there, along with extra tea lights and candles for the room. It’s so nice to have all this kind of stuff in one place! I find that I love too many things and can’t display them all at once without my house looking like a thrift store that somebody lives in, but if I rotate stuff in and out of display it keeps things looking more sane and ALSO makes me appreciate stuff more when I don’t see it all the time. Kind of like shopping in my own house when I get the itch to move stuff around, which is an extremely frequent event because I love to futz.

LEST you had not hit your limit with me over RugGate 2017 (scroll up a few photos; it literally just happened), a few weeks ago I was tromping through some funny antique mall kind of place in New Jersey and spotted this little fella for a dollar. So tiny! Those delicate little brass feet! Immediately I was charmed. I picked him up and then couldn’t put him back down, so I shelled out my George Washington to take him home.

Fast forward a couple of weeks into our new blissful life together, during which I had unofficially named him Herman, and I posted an Instagram of him, and was immediately informed from multiple sources that little Herman is…kind of valuable. Oddly enough, Herman was designed by Jacob Hermann (how weird is that!) in Denmark in the 1950s, and is highly collectable, and seems to sell for a few hundred dollars up to several thousand for a grouping.

Lesson: never pass up a good tchotchke. Just build a cabinet to store all the tchotchkes.

Finally, the light! THE PINK LIGHT! PINKKKKK LIGHTTTTTT!

Here’s what had happened. I went to Germany in the fall. Essentially I landed from my red-eye flight, dropped my bag at the hotel in Berlin, and immediately went to a flea market. I was so tired and so not thinking clearly and before I knew it, I had blown my entire souvenir budget on three vintage rugs and this 1950s chandelier. This is what it means to travel with me, and I am considering the first clause of this sentence as fair warning to anybody who might someday travel with me.

I carried the light through Germany and into Austria, where I disassembled it and shipped it home via DHL, which was FREAKISHLY fast. It arrived before I even got home! Between the purchase and the shipping I ended up spending about $250 on this thing, which is typically more than I’d spend on…most things, but I REALLY WANTED IT for no reason in particular. A month ago I worked up the nerve to unpack the box—knowing that one broken shade would pretty much render the entire thing worthless—but luckily it had arrived intact so then it was just a matter of rewiring the whole thing, remembering how everything fit together, and hanging it up.

I love you, pink light. Never leave me.

Annnnnnnnnd, here is my attempt to keep up with the bloggers and make this post “shoppable”: A THING IN THIS ROOM THAT I THINK YOU CAN ACTUALLY BUY! I love this little candleholder from the Modern by Dwell Magazine collection for Target. Mine was on a clearance rack at a store in Virginia that I visited to buy clean underwear after the Baltimore kitchen renovation, but it’s still for sale online. So cute!

Is that it? I think that might be it. Opium den—check!

The Den: The Big Reveal! syndicated from your-t1-blog-url

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