A BUSY Sunday

"Royal Lace" butter dish in crystal, by Hazel-Atlas Glass Co, circa 1934-1941 - this one is in a bit better shape than mine

Russ, John, and Patrick wanted to go up to Barnyard today, and although I really wanted to go, I really didn't have time. Of course, I went anyway. We had a great time, and they bought a bunch of stuff. I found a treasure as well. A "Royal Lace" butter dish, with cover. Usually the butter dishes are the hardest pieces to find, especially in good condition, because they had to be ordered or purchased as part of a "completer set" for most patterns of depression glass. Usually plates and cups and things like that were given away as premiums, or sold very cheaply, so many people didn't buy the completer sets, therefore there are a lot less of the butter dishes out there. Royal Lace is a very pretty pattern, and is really beautiful in the blue, but for some reason, most of the pieces I find in it are crystal (clear), so that's what I have of that pattern. This butter dish is clear also. I first thought the bottom of it might be a cereal bowl, but after checking with Justin, I found out that is just the way the butter bottom looks in this pattern. It would not have been the first time a seller got "creative" with pieces. There was a woman who used to sell reproduction butter dishes, glued on top of matching candlesticks as "compotes" down in Anderson. That always made me laugh. They were very clumsily done, and the glue was all messy. According to Gene Florence, during the 70's, one enterprising dealer took plates and drilled holes in them to assmble tid-bits (multi-level servers) out of some patterns. These are now apparently purchased as oddities by some collectors.

Anyway, my butter dish is not in perfect condition. There are a few chips on the bottom, and a little mold roughness (or fleabite chips) on the top, but it is priced online at anywhere from $80-100, so I think it is well worth the $20 I paid for it. I saw a top advertised for $48 by itself. But Gene says you don't buy things like this for the value, you buy them because you love them; and I couldn't leave this piece where it was. Unusually for this pattern, there is a shortage of bottoms, and more tops avaialble. With most patterns, it is just to opposite (as Billy told me it is in the gay world; oddly, Greenville, SC apparently has the highest concentration of top men in the country, just my $%#@&&*#! luck). When I got it home, I saw the bottom had some sickness on it where some idiot had run it through the dishwasher, but it is light, and I think it will come off when I get that stuff that Justin found online. I really need to order some of that.

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After lunch at Ruby Tuesdays, I had to head home to get ready for the Rick and James's Academy Awards party. They have it every year, and were trying to start early this year, since there is a movie trivia tournament beforehand, and Rick likes to have that over before the awards start. My team did the worst - act surprised. A lot of it is names of movies or of people in them, and of course I am terrible with names. I also don't know as much about movies as a lot of them do. Kimbley's knowledge is encyclopedic.

The best team from the trivia game has a playoff against each other for the trophy. The playoff this year was HARD, but they said not as hard as last year. I wasn't there last year. The playoff is done like the gameshow "Jeopardy". Three of the five categories in the first round were about sports movies (football, baseball, and basketball movies). Good thing I wasn't in the playoffs - all I would have been able to do was just sit there. Donnie was in the playoffs, and was flummoxed, and even Kimbley wasn't as brilliant as usual. But Matt, a gay guy won. He was just a machine. He was so far ahead that it really wasn't much of a contest. Well good for him.

The show this year was pretty bad. John Stewart seemed not to be able to find his feet. I guess the hasty assembly after the writers came off strike had something to do with that. But the main problem was there just weren't that many movies I cared about. "Ratatouille" of course took best Animated Feature, although honestly I thought that "Persepolis" frankly seemed more deserving, from what I know about it. Still, I was glad to see R. win. I was rooting for "Juno" for best picture, but after Ellen Page lost best actress, I saw the handwriting on the wall and went on home. It had been a long day. I do want to see "La Vie En Rose" now though.

Still, it was good to see the gang, although there were less people there than usual. Rick was very sweet, and went out of his way to make me feel welcome, and let me know they were glad I was there. It wasn't as wild a party as usual either. There were a lot less "hanger on" type people over there than there used to be. I wondered a bit about that. But James has transformed the "guy paradise" hangout into a Martha Stewart-esque game room, and I guess that didn't sit well with some of the guys. You can't even smoke in the pool room over there now. I thought that was kind of the point of having a separate pool room, was so the house didn't get smoked up. But then it's none of my business, and the pool room is very nice now.