Visit Me… at the Trenton Avenue Arts Festival

Want something to do this Saturday? Come out and support me, my mom, the East Kensington Neighborhood Association, and hundreds of other great local artists, galleries, organizations, food vendors and more at the 5th annual Trenton Avenue Arts Festival.

There will be music all day and lots and lots of unique art to buy. The day will start out with a type of derby you have probably never heard of… the 4th annual Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby. I know, I’ve been hearing about it for months and still don’t know what it will be exactly. I think it may just be one of those things you have to see to believe, or in this case, comprehend. Pretty much, people ride a parade route on human powered vehicles (i.e. must have wheels) ending with a run through a giant mud pit. Leave it to Philly, huh?

For a full list of artists and the band line up visit the Festival blog at: http://trentonaveartsfest.blogspot.com/. My mom and I will be selling amazing hand-crafted jewelry and other vintage/antique oddities for amazing prices. I would say look for the big white tents, but there will probably be hundreds of those, so I will say, look for the awesome colorful jewelry booths in the middle of the street 2/3 of the way between Susquehanna and Dauphin on Trenton Avenue! Bring you money, your sunscreen, your walking shoes, and a huge smile! See you Saturday!

Everyone Loves a Dog Hugger!

I used to create dozens of these advocacy campaigns daily for PETA. But I really like this one, it combines my favorite things: dogs (adopt, never buy), and the twilight saga. Kellan plays the awesome vampire Emmett and New Moon comes out Saturday!

Have you hugged a dog today?

Today’s Monopoly

Those guys over at The Daily Finance (I know, I’d never heard of it either) came up with a great idea to look at how Monopoly’s properties are valued 75 years after the game was created. Monopoly was one of my favorite games growing up (right up there with Mall Madness and Pretty Pretty Princess), probably because there were so many colorful pieces. When I would visit my grandparents in Texas as a kid, I would always fuss if anyone else bought Pennsylvania Ave. or Pennsylvania RR.

Oh, but back to the story. Monopoly was based on properties in a boiled-down 1930s Atlantic City. Back then Boardwalk was the most expensive property, Mediterranean Ave. was the cheapest, there were no casinos, four rail roads and lots of free parking. Today? Boardwalk, despite shoreline erosion, is still the most valuable area, you can actually stay in one of the vacant lots on Mediterranean Ave. for free, casinos are the main reason any one comes to Atlantic City, none of the railroads represented in the game exist any more and free parking? what’s that. In between, the yellows and greens and blues are all doing the tango around the board. Watch this video to get an idea of the changes. But me and my urban planning mind would love to diagram the changes using aerial photos from 1935 and 2010 and a box of multi-colored sharpies…

2 days down, 4 to go

This week a motley group of current students, under-employed or unemployed artists, architects, and photographers (no wonder when I mentioned that I was applying to graduate school for urban planning half of the room started talking about what schools had better historic preservation programs or studio space) converged on the Quad at PENN with the guys from DesignYorDorm.com and a crew of security guards. I decided to join them… you know just for kicks.

What are we doing, you ask? We are taking ever-so-detailed measurements of the 750+ different floor plans in the 1100+ room Quad buildings. What for, you ask? So that DYD.com can build 3-D models of each room. Why would they want to do that, you ask? OK, OK, I’ll stop playing games. The company gets schools to join and they create models of each room so that incoming students can visualize their rooms before they get there. Therefore, they know exactly what will fit, where the outlets are, how high the ceilings are, flooring type, how big their closet it, what dressers come with, etc. On the website, the students can also pick out dorm stuff and see how it will fit in the 3-D model of their room before they actually purchase. Wow, kids these days are so spoiled. What will think of next? A box in your car that tells you when to turn left?

It’s important to remember that most of the buildings in the Quad were built in the late 19^th century. You’ve got to think outside of the box here… some of our rooms have 12 walls (18 if you count those “pillars”), bay windows, cathedral ceilings, wood floors, all that fun stuff. Plus, we didn’t trust our “laser measuring thingamagig” after it told us a 17-foot wall was only 13-feet, so we measured almost every wall by tape measure! Stay tuned for reports from the next ridiculous job that Marley finds on craigslist.

I’m a professional artist now

Actually, I don’t know if I’ve sold anything yet, but I’ve joined an artist’s co-op/gallery/market in the Fishtown section of Philly. A lot of the artists there use retro graphics or repurpose things like vinyl records into bowls or bottle caps into earrings (oh wait, that’s me).

Be sure to check out my new artist’s webpage: http://piranhabettys.com/marleybice.html and come to Piranha Betty’s Christmas Eve Eve party Wednesday. You can also find me at some of the Sunday afternoon arts and crafts group meetings and free tarot card readings.

Remember, upcycle, recycle, and support your local artists!

Cross Country Chronicles: Part III

Now for the most boring section of my trip.

Day 5: Independence, MO to Dayton, OH
Another night of falling asleep infront of the TV and a crappy continental breakfast and we're on the road again. We got to St. Louis faster than I had expected but unfortunately it was bucketing rain on us, so we just drove around the arch and took pictures.

We then headed across the murky Mississippi and were momentarily on Old Route 66. I think I slept through most of Illinois and Indiana thanks to a yummy lunch at the St. Louis Bread Co. (actually it is a Panera but with a different name... weird) and a new road surface made of old rubber tires. Smooth sailing...

Welcome to Dayton, Ohio, home of weird-smelling hotel rooms and over-priced pizza (but their Wal-Mart did have a good plastic doggy gumball machine).

Day 6: Dayton, OH to Philadelphia, PA
So, guess who woke me up at 4 am to get on the road and beat the beastly traffic on the Pennsylvania Turnpike? That's right. The one and only. But it was my idea that she lie to her husband all day to make him think that we were stuck in traffic in western Pennsyvlania when we were actually already home. Typical shenanagins. "But, honey, I'm looking at the Google traffic map right now and it is all green." "Well, they're not here are they? Maybe I should call and tell them they are wrong." She is such a good liar. Scary.

See there's really not much to tell about the mid-west, but boy were we glad to be back in Philly!

The Cross Country Chronicles: Part II

Day 3: Brigham City, UT to Denver, CO
We woke up to find that the motel we had arrived at in the dark of night, was actually right in the shadow of a huge reddish rock outcrop - a pleasant surprise. After breakfast at a lovely truck stop, we headed south towards the shimmering Great Salt Lake on the horizon. We watched the looming Wassatch Range to the east warily but our highway ended up winding through a low point in the Range. And you know what else was in the low point? A wind farm. We were looking across at enormous wind turbines as we followed Interstate 70 towards Colorado. I couldn't help but feel like Don Quixote as I was hypnotized by the seemingly slow-moving blades.

The distance between the Wassatch Range and Colorado was relatively bare but we were excited (yet dissappointed that we couldn't visit them all) when we saw signs for Moab, UT; the home and/or gateway to the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, and Arches and Canyonlands National Parks.


As we were reminiscing on past Four Corners vacations, we recognized an upcoming town on the Colorado map; a little town called Fruita. My mom thought she could remember a sandwich shop there that we had eaten at a decade ago (although she couldn't remember if it was any good) - so we took that exit. We think we did find the elusive cafe in a building with a painted cut-out dinosaur welcoming us, although it was closed on Sundays. But other highlights of Fruita include a giant T-Rex eating the Grinch and a giant bicycle.



From there we continued on towards the snow-topped Rockies - a trek my little 110-horsepower hybrid was not too happy about - and she didn't keep her unhappiness quiet either. Despite my worries about never having heard my car work that hard before, she got us safely over the monoliths of Western North America and landed us safely in a sprawling Denver suburb for the night.

We headed out on the town for German food and ended up seeing many more bunny rabbits roaming the streets than we had seen anywhere else in recent memory - go figure.

Day 4: Denver, CO to Independence, MO
Now, you may think this would be the most boring stretch of the entire trip, but I'm pretty sure it was the second most boring. There were two things in particular that made eastern Colorado and Kansas interesting: wind turbines and hawks! We saw a massive wind farm in central Kansas and did an analysis of hawk density per linear mile of I-70. We came up with an average of 2.0 hawks per mile and a maximum of 3.6 hawks per mile. Oh, and the tumble weeds. Counting the number of tumble weeds that hit us (one) or that we hit (two) also kept us from going crazy.

Chronicles to be continued...