shrubs! strawberry on the left, blueberry/raspberry on the right.
artichokes, go fuck yourselves.
— curtis eaton
i had a plan, an idea: every saturday from january to the end of march invite three people over to my house, five to seven every saturday. they bring the snacks, i make the manhattans and at the end each participant has their portrait taken with my dog, leonard.
i take an odd pride in what i consider our family’s legacy: retail and social entertainment. long story short, i would never have been here if it were not for strawbridge and clothier. my day jobs leading up to full time freelance work were always retail involved and nowadays i cooperatively run a diy gift store in downtown providence rhode island.
retail: done and done.
i consider myself a social hermit. i’m a homebody with a wandering eye. bringing people to me seemed like a natural step and a good way to feed the cocktail party loving side of me from the comfort of my own home. also, not so secretly, i’d love to be a bartender and what better way to hone some skills than to practice on my own turf?
‘jen corace! make me a manhattan!’ was born out of the arbitrary new year feeling of ‘anything is possible!’ and wanting to make more intimate the interactions of social networking. i have a good amount of friends on facebook … some people who i am dear friends with, some passing friends, acquaintances, folks i know around town, folks i want to know better, folks i suppose i don’t care for but how can you know until you spend time with them thusly making them human vs. “them” … and it wasn’t enough anymore to have these hilarious, wry friendships not based on real experience. given any larger social situation where we might all be thrown together…a show, a potluck… more often than not i (and i am assuming most people) would stick with the familiar … friends i usually hang around with, in comfort, while nodding across the room to people i knew but didn’t know.
i also felt like i knew enough people from different circles that maybe either knew each other in passing or maybe not at all but might benefit from knowing one another. so there is a bit of social experimentation in there as well.
the invite i sent out explained it this way:
why?:
because this town is small and i want to make it smaller, because i am a social hermit, because it will help balance out my in all day working to staying human to people ratios, because it’s winter and everyone needs to be shaken up a bit, because leonard loves people, because i love leonard, because maybe we are both on this site and don’t know each other very well, because i said so, because you like free booze, because i like free food, because you are a busy body and want to sneak around my house, because maybe maybe i won’t feel like talking that day and i will find it funny to make you feel uncomfortable, because because because.
what’s the worse that can happen?
so firstly i will post photos of previous ‘jen corace! make me a manhattan!’ followed by tonight’s episode of ‘jen corace! make me a manhattan!’
another excellent cuke. cheesetiger
waffle house, little rock, august 2009. cheesetiger
the first official post is going to be a doozy…but we all won’t really know that until late tomorrow night. until then, enjoy these shapely cucumbers from an article about black fleck face. don’t ask me…i wasn’t even aware that it was a problem.
