Sybil Bruncheon's "Strange Stories From Suburbia"…

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… it had been a fairly mild Summer… well, until that final week of July and the beginning of August when the "weather gods" decided that it was time to get down to business. The air thickened and thickened day by day until even the nights were fog-bound, but with steam!!!… heavy rolling steam which clung to one's clothes and lungs like a suffocating blanket. Literally, it was hard to breathe, even if you tried to cool off with a midnight stroll by the water's edge at the ocean. There was no breeze, no air, no relief, no escape!!… well, unless you escaped inside your own mind…

Is that what Miss Polly Bernbundle did? Such a polite and responsible young lady…until the neighbors reported that in full view of little Stacy Plunkett's 8th birthday party, Polly decided to recite various passages from Edith Hamilton's famous Anthology of Greek & Roman Mythology. It wasn't just that she was reciting the stories, but that she was shrieking them at the top of her lungs as if she was the Oracle at Delphi… long, strident and stentorian tones bellowed out over the white picket fence through which all thirty-seven of the children and their stunned parents stared. And then, then the biggest shock of all! Miss Bernbundle decided that it would be most effective (and educational!) if she re-enacted each myth in full… beginning with the "Birth of Aphrodite"… and it only involved the garden hose and the small wading pool she had gotten for Mr. Rollo, her Jack Russell terrier who barked incessantly as she "rose from the waves"…

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Sybil Bruncheon's "WONDERFUL WORLD of TOMORROW!"..... Wonder #71 :

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Hello Friends! (...and I use that term loosely!) Did you know that scientists and engineers are working around the clock to improve YOUR lives in the future?.... and yet so many people don’t realize that wonderful breakthroughs in modern convenience and technology have actually been thought of much earlier by wiser heads than their own! Did you know that the concept of listening to your own music on personal headphones was actually invented by a Miss Katrina Guss of Crockers Corners, Colorado in 1902? At sixteen she had been the only female member of her high school science club, and had won the regional championship blue ribbon for the 4H Science Fair in Windsor, Wyoming for her “WHY NOT EAT BUGS?” anti-starvation project.

The idea for headphones came to her one evening when her mother and father (who were both extremely hard-of-hearing) were each listening to the gramophone and talking on the telephone. Katrina was in the kitchen working on her idea for bullet-proof pie tins to be used by chefs on the front-lines in battle, perhaps during bake-offs or cake sales. The racket of yelling parents and blaring music was too much for Katrina, and she covered her tormented ears with a pair of cake pans as she began humming “Nearer My God To Thee”… She claimed the inspiration was like a bolt of lightning! She began sketching her ideas and experimenting in her garage using her father’s power tools and her mother’s cooking utensils…

Sadly, her big breakthrough came the same week that the marching band at her old high school was involved in a catastrophic bus crash. The entire percussion section of the band was killed, and the school board divested itself of most of the instruments. Katrina went to the auction and picked up several of the more esoteric instruments including a floogle-horn, a piccolo, a triangle, a glockenspiel, a tenor persnikken, two shpettels (one in brass and the other in nickle-silver), and a pair of tambourines. Struggling with her limited knowledge of acoustical science and sparse supplies of copper wiring, plumber’s epoxy, and 13 paperclips, she finally created her first set of personal headphones. The good news was that a person could now block out all the loud and vexing noise of the modern world and listen to their own soothing music. The bad news?..... the head phones only played “tambourine”… 

[Tragically, only two years later, Katrina Guss was killed in a sudden and appalling accident in her laboratory when she finished a new set of headphones for the piccolo. She had finished the head gear and the ear-pieces, but when she flipped the electrical switch, the piccolo was driven into her left ear and blew her brains out… apparently she was about to listen to John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever”. On a happier note, she was awarded a posthumous patriotism ribbon and medal by the local Veterans of Foreign Wars Lodge…the one over on the corner of Chester Arthur Boulevard, and Grover Cleveland Avenue.]

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Tour-ette from the Terrain Nursery in Devon... is that a hint of Fall in the air?? 7/30/2021

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Sybil Bruncheon remembers... Arthur DeCaprio...

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Remembering my great friend and talented designer/jeweler Arthur DeCaprio who passed away a year ago. Arthur was the wonderful creator of so many of the accessories I wore to shows, fundraisers, and galas... always innovative and beautiful, even witty and funny pieces for the more humorous costumes too!

His taste and talent shine through in his smallest creations. He knew that I did pottery for years, and I asked him if he could design knobs for jar lids that I made, and here, in lapis lazuli, sterling silver, and Murano glass is one of them. He is missed by all the folks that knew and appreciated him, and who now honor him as the loving friend that he always was. It's true; a great light has gone out... but the art he left behind reminds and warms us... and shines on.

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Tour-ette with Mr. Boos-quee... and reminiscing about a former love! 7/22/2021

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Tour-ette on a sunny Saturday strolling through Cape May and around the park! 7/17/2021

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Tour-ette from the Exit Zero Diner in Cape May, NJ. TGIF & Key lime coladas! 7/16/2021

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Sybil Bruncheon's "My Merry Memoirs... Bastille Day!"...

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July 14th… BASTILLE DAY... I'm remembering (very fondly!) the Bastille Days I was honored to have hosted down in the "Meatpacking District" in Greenwich Village when Florent Morellet owned the iconic Restaurant Florent, an all night diner that attracted drag queens, movie stars, rock icons, artists, politicians, and millionaires. The place hopped, literally, 24 hours a day, and frankly was more animated in the middle of the night than it was during the somewhat sleepy midday lunchtimes with local businessmen… and maybe Keith Haring and a gaggle of his pals at table 11.

Florent asked me to host the "Marie Antoinette Contest" which came at the end of the 12 hour-long shows that featured brilliant downtown talent like Joey Arias, Raven O, Basil Twist, Ethel Eichelberger, and an endless array of ventriloquists, apache-dancers, accordionists, mimes, jugglers, knife-throwers, fire-eaters, mesmerists, fortune tellers, palm readers, phrenologists, daredevils, contortionists, and can-can girls.

And the next year, Florent had me emcee the entire day... a 13 hour marathon that will always remain one of my very favorite memories of my entire career. Thousands of people moved through that section of the Village as the show unfolded and the food and drink flowed at the tables both inside the restaurant and out in the open-air sidewalk cafe that was set up on the blocked off all of Gansevoort Street from Greenwich Street to Washington Street. (The steak au poivre et frites was the very best and my favorite!)

The entire staff of the restaurant was costumed accordingly and the cobblestone pavement was so perfectly evocative too with straw scattered everywhere and a guillotine set up for photo-ops! The place was a success from the day it opened in 1985 (long before the High Line was even imagined!) till it finally closed in 2008 when the Village truly became the yuppie, corporate-driven hangout of the junk-bonders, dot-com-ers, heiresses from Omaha, Carrie-Bradshaw-wanna-bes, and the rest of the 3 card monte, banking and Wall Street scam-herd. All the magic, eccentricity, creativity, and uniqueness has been replaced by Babbity, Gloria Upson pretentiousness that smells of brewskies, frat-boy aftershave, and the backseats of BMWs that have been wiped with Clorox Clean-ups... oh well. Thank you, Florent, and the entire staff of Restaurant Florent for the great food, friendship, laughter, and memories of a much more frisky, fantastical, and fabulous time!

(Sybil's gown by the Gefil Tefish Hefty Highness Hideaway)

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Tour-ette on an apparently busy Sunday afternoon in a neighbor's garden! 7/11/2021

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