Tuesday, July 27

Mad orange fools and a new giveaway.

This is a bit embarrassing, but I have to say that I set my little contest up poorly and it imploded rather quickly. What I should have done was just have a random drawing of all the participants because I guess in this day and age, it's far too easy to find answers on the internet!

So now I am going to close that contest and declare a winner and start over with a giveaway! All you have to do is leave a comment by midnight on Saturday, July 31st and you will be entered to win the same set of 3 tiny felted bowls. (Well not the same exact set, but the same size and colors!) I hope that you will play along and not be too annoyed with my inexperience at this whole giveaway thing!



As for the little contest, all three answers I got are on the right track, but Garret got the two main details which are Jack Kerouac and Desolation Angels.

When I was in my teens and twenties, I was pretty heavily into all things Beat Generation. I read a good bit of Kerouac but especially loved reading biographies of the beats. There are also so many great photographs of that time and scene, one of the best being Allen Ginsberg Photographs. (It's still one of my favorite photography books.)

Anyway, I first read Desolation Angels in 1989 when I was attending NYU. It became one of my favorites of his books and I re-read it a few times over the years. So in 2000 when I was searching for a fitting domain name, I picked up the book and started flipping through it. And I found:

Meanwhile the sunsets are mad orange fools raging in the gloom, whilst far in the south in the direction of my intended loving arms of senoritas, snowpink piles wait at the foot of the world, in general silver ray cities--the lake is a hard pan, gray, blue, waiting at the mist bottoms for while I ride her in Phil's boat--Jack Mountain as always receives his meed of little cloud at highbrow base, his thousand football fields of snow all raveled and pink, that one unimaginable abominable snowman still squatted petrified on the ridge--Golden Horn far off is yet golden in a gray southeast--Sourdough's monster hump overlooks the lake-- Surly clouds blacken to make fire rims at that forge where the night's being hammered, crazed mountains march to the sunset like drunken cavaliers in Messina when Ursula was fair...

The paragraph continues, but you get the idea. He was a firelook out on Desolation Peak and in complete solitude in the first part of the book. I read that paragraph and "mad orange fools" jumped out at me for some reason and I decided that was as good as domain name as any. At the time I was in Pittsburgh and I think the whole description just made me think of my roots in New Mexico as well.

So that's the story. Again, I am sorry that my contest sort of went haywire, but hey, now we get to start all over. Leave a comment on this post and you could be a winner!

7 comments:

  1. I didn't want to enter the last one because I had an unfair advantage ;) but I can totally participate in a random drawing!
    those bowls are super cute. xoxo

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  2. Anonymous10:12 AM

    Random drawings rock! So do little felted bowls!

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  3. Anonymous10:39 AM

    It seems there are also several "Mad Orange Fools" bands out there...

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  4. I want the bowls!!!!!!!!

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  5. Anonymous4:20 PM

    Sunset are mad orange fools.... I completely agree!

    Also, congratulations on your blog birthday! Hurray!

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  6. Hey Jules! Love these little felted bowls, and your general craftiness/rockingness. They'd look great in our very fire-colored living room. I'd put keys in one, guitar picks in another, and maybe matches in the third. Not that you need to know that. Anyway, hi and love them!

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  7. hi, juli.

    i have always had a "thing" for vessels, and oh, those little felted bowls are just so sweet! : )

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