The next most exciting thing...

Photo courtesy of Upstart Entertainment, by Sascha

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=5601853&id=652256572
It's been an exciting year costume-wise, not to mention the other activities which have made it so I have not sat down for two months.  If you don't know what those are, just use your imagination.  So on the subject of sitting and the subject of making costumes, the next most exciting thing I did this year  after dressing the girls in the chandelier costumes was to make underwear for a singer/actress in the Café Brel show with "I heart NY" on the bum.  So when Mariann Böhler lifts up her skirt while she's singing the Bourgeouis with Nina Meier-Bradlin and Lena Tamini, she gets a laugh from the audience.  Oh!  did I forget to mention the words to the song are pretty good, too. 
Directed by Krista Jacquet and also starring Dany Demuth, Andrew Fernandes and Norman Koeth, they are accompanied by Christine Archer on the piano as they sing their way through the fantastic compositions of Brel, serve you drinks and basically make you feel like it was well worth getting off your seat and out of the house and into the theater again.  So it's too bad that the show is only happening for two more nights, and most likely already sold out.  No, actually it's wonderful that so many people can see my creations and are ready for a real night out but keep tabs on the upstart entertainment site http://www.upstart-entertainment.ch/.
They are good.
Yours with I love NY underwear on,
Mrs Crocodile

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The mating habits of the Abalone

I am not a scientist, unless they do a lot with scissors, then I have missed my calling. But this is the background to the continuation of the story I started sometime earlier about the boxes and it fits into this animal's mating habits.  When I was a child, my parents came home with lots of abalone, and after beating them with a mallet that's only other use must be for beating dead horses, and since these poor crustaceans are almost extinct, I feel responsible.  So don't eat abalone.  The poor things, the male abalone sits on a reef and spews out his stuff in hopes that a female of mating age and fertility may be somewhere in the vicinity.  Tough luck if she's just out of spewing reach.  And I really think writing in those little boxes on Facebook or sending a tweet is something similar: you spew it out over the reef and you hope a female might be waiting.  If you go to Facebook now, you'll see that the story is taking shape in my little boxes there.  It's wildly fun to think of one sentence a day, maybe by the time I'm 60 it will be a book!  But what I'm also sure was wildly fun was my brother taking this picture of an abalone off of Catalina Island.  Can you see it?  They also marvelously blend into their surroundings so you almost don't notice them, except for the feelers wiggling around.
Thanks for this picture, brother!  Don't eat it!
Mrs Crocodile

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The shoe does fit, but you can't wear it out the house...

Here's another collage for you. Please don't ask me when I have time to make collages, I force my kids to make them. The real story is this: I wanted to get some work done in the office and had the kids with me, so in order to work un-interrupted on the computer for a few moments, I opened my file with all the really good cut outs I was saving for myself and gave them very reluctantly, with some glue, to the kids. They came up with this one.


I like the extremely high heel, could you really even walk out the door in that? Or stand at all? And then on top of the pedestal? Never mind, who needs to leave the house with that reverse snowman chubby tummy look. "Is it about to melt?" I asked. Moving on up from there, it's the mouth which is a woman's mouth but decorated with a moustach on it. And instead of hair, she (or is it a he?) has an enormous eye-lash. I wondered if the whole scalp could bat an eyelash.

I wish I could fit all of life onto this wall and all my musings and cuttings up but I daresay, I censor myself too much, but also there's a whole lot of TMI around here. The nice thing about this collage is although it looks quite precarious, it is not really about to fall. And I daresay that is sometimes the nice thing about life, too. Even wearing flat shoes, you can walk on the edge, but don't fall.


Yours,
Mrs Crocodile

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The shoe does not fit: and other stories: moving...

The sunset from the new place

My most devoted blog readers are composed of my mom, her friend, my grandmother, one friend who lives in Qatar and the mystery follower, who happens to be following my blog from India, so this post is for you devotees.  Anyone I forgot to mention, feel free to carry on reading.  Actually, I started this whole blogging thing to understand what a blog is, and in the name of it's-great-to-have-a-place-to-express-yourself and more because, if I need to have an online presence, I find that little box on facebook where it says: "What's on your mind?", just exceedingly small.  I have also tried tweets on twitter.  In the beginning I thought, "Great!" It's not friends like facebook, it's followers!  I'll be famous!  But I got to the point where my only followers were my mom and my ex-husband (feel free to laugh out loud here, because I was feeling really famous).  So naturally slightly taken aback, my creative juices were stumped.  I posted a couple of exceedingly short utterances in a box on twitter, and I was done.
But I'm not giving up.  Today I posted a sentence in my little box on facebook which is totally taken out of context.  I intend to think outside the box and use many boxes to make a story. Maybe you'll be my follower and make me feel famous, but it's not that really.  It's about moving.  Most of my worldly possessions are packed in boxes now and waiting to be opened in a newly revised country, a new place.  My box!
Yours, from the packing front,
Mrs Crocodile

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Cuba in Basel: EG Lounge

Ella and Uncle Thierry

I like the kind of destination that transports me to another place without really leaving where I am and without doing too many drugs... So when the kids took me to their uncle's bar, suddenly I felt like we were in a lovely little hacienda, enjoying a break in the beach life in a Latin American country.  It's really all down to Thierry Dunkel and Philippe Kiefer's hospitality and the need to feel like the summer really is not ending, but the EG Lounge, a souped up courtyard between Parterre and the Reithalle is wall to wall sand, has lovely lounge chairs and the bartenders will serve you up some mean drinks, so that, buzz-wise you can convince yourself you are on the other side of the Rio Grande.  Take your shoes off and don't forget to bring some sand toys.  Obviously, it opens so late that it's not really for kids, but they might get jealous if they find out you've been there without them.  There is a rain cover and heating so never mind that you have to wear a winter coat to get there.  Check it out, here's the link:http://www.parterre.net/?navid=Z776NG
Or just go to the Kaserne in Kleinbasel and ask around.  They open in the evenings.
Yours,
Mrs Crocodile

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Alexanderfest at the Augusta Raurica

The most exciting thing I'm doing right now is working backstage as a dresser at the Alexanderfest at the Augusta Raurica, the Roman theater in Augst.  The production is being put on by the Theater Basel and is billed as a mix of Opera and Oratorium by Handel.  If you remember to take a blanket and a thermos flask and pray for no rain, you'll stay warm enough till you can go back home with stars in your eyes and the warm feeling of having participated in something wonderful.  But in the back is where I'd really rather be.  These two extras: Bettina Kestenholz and Noelle Blind have the hard but exhilarating job of being cinched into a corset, then stepping into a ten-kilo skirt (that's a 22-pounder to you) which is made of plastic crystals and ribbing.  This costume is nothing less than brilliant and in fact the highlight is when they flick on a switch and the skirts light up.  It's something between Christmas tree and chandelier, but it's really one of those take-your-breath-away moments when fantasy becomes reality.  This time, I assure you folks, the reality is better than the fantasy.  Okay, okay, it's on the stage, so who knows if it's really reality?  So if you can't make it to see it in the flesh, visualize the designs by erte which were too heavy ever to be built, or the elaborate costume drawings Dali made, add a whole team of very skilled seamstresses and tailors, the best of what Basel has to offer and BANG!  The light comes on!  You're wearing it!  The designer of this creation is the costume designer Marie-Thérèse Jossen.
Oh! I almost forgot!  It is of course all about the music so when you go you'll bask in the best voices of Basel and be treated to wonderful special effects, but for me these extras should get all the glory, the team of skilled seamstresses behind them and of course the lighting people who have to check the chargers every night.
So to see this skirt in all of its crystal glory, and to experience the cast of about 70 in the open air, get tickets on the Theater Basel web-page: http://www.theater-basel.ch/
There you'll also be able to read all about the story and the people behind this production.  I like the web-cam, too, where you can see what's going on there right now: http://camserver.z-online.ch/showpics_01.asp?KundenID=&S=1&OwnPic=1&cam=a11r
Yours,
Mrs Crocodile

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Somewhere in the middle, feeling as big as a soufflé

My 'horror'-scope said I should do something creative today.  Oh shreck!  As if everything I had done up till reading those words had been un-creative.  And to be fair, the cutting up of life is a little like un-doing something.  Well, here is a collage that should set the mood:  Her body is a soufflé.  She's feeling just a tad bloated and could fall at any moment.  Her arms are big fluffy purple fur for pushing people out of the way.  She put on two different pairs of shoes before she left the house.  Her legs are sweet, just some wrappers from chocolates.  Her hat is a chandelier.  So here you have it: some days are just like this: You wake up, find yourself bloated, two different shoes on and a chandelier on your head with sweet legs you don't know are going to hold you up.  Oh!  I almost forgot!  You're walking up stairs ten times your size.
My dear readers, don't worry, the weather is awful, but the day is not so bad, I'm just pondering the un-creation of things, so I can un-do things and re-do them.  
"It's a step backwards, " you say.  No, actually, it's forwards but it's a little like the song with the king's soldiers, when you're up, you're up and when you're down, you're down and when you're only half-way up, you're neither up nor down. I leave you with that today and now I must excuse myself because I'm off to (un)create something else.
Yours, with two different shoes on,
Mrs Crocodile

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