it was called the

SNAKE SHAPE HOTEL


One of the most popular snake party ideas I recommend, and I’ve seen hundreds of versions of it over the years, is the snake cake (See the pic above). Basically it’s just a matter of making more than one cake (which gives you the option of making more than one flavor for your guests to choose from) in circular “bundt” style pans. Cut the resulting circles in halves or thirds, turn them opposite each other, and viola! Snake shape!

Use creative frosting ideas to resemble an existing snake, or go for a fanciful “cartoon” design instead. For a realistic snake, consider making a rounded “head” mold out of heavy aluminum foil, and a tapering “tail” mold for the other end. Just make sure the end of each mold matches the size and shape of the cake where the two meet. For the “cartoon” version, it’s actually very cute to have the head and the tail be the sharp cutoff that results when you cut the cakes, so you don’t have to make the extra molds. A gummy worm split at one end makes a great tongue.

If you can find a circle mold that doesn’t have the “humps” that bundt pans do, so much the better. Snakes don’t come in segmented shapes. If I find a good example I’ll post a link to buy it with and/or tell you what stores carry it on my party page. Some types of ring molds will work, as will (I’m told) a large round pan with a much smaller one in the middle of it (the space between creating the ring) but I’ve never tried this idea myself.

Of course, you’ll probably want to decorate around your theme, and my party page will soon include links to purchase snake pattern paper, safari and jungle theme party goods (the closest thing currently available) Taiwanese Vinyl snakes, wooden snakes (also available as craft kits - fun!) and great gifts with a snake theme - like remote controlled plastic snakes and Egyptian snake armbands. Generally, most hosts opt for safari or jungle theme items, which it seems to me would also mean that crude natural wooden plates, cups and utensils would make a cute variation on this idea.

Two additional things to consider. The first is to do craft projects, either done by you beforehand or by your guests during the party if you have enough time budgeted for it, that make snakes out of common things. A favorite that you’ll find in one pic is white clay that hardens either in the over or better yet the air, paintable in colors and patters of real snakes (the usual theme is coral snakes vs coral snake mimics - different color sequences of red, yellow and black - be sure to use water based paints that wash out and/or provide old shirts to paint in if your guests are doing it.) Another you may have seen is paper plates, cut in a spiral and hung by the “head” end with string or clear fishing line, decorated with washable markers. Add a paper clip to the tail to resemble a rattle and help the finished snake hang more realistically.

My favorite had to be old neckties inserted with coat hanger or craft wire to stand up like hooding cobras, with little craft work eyes glued in place and red felt forked tongues - adorable.

Small Gem: Kunio Kato

Sank you, berry, berry much
said the gifted animator
upon receiving a little golden statue.
Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto,
he added.

And the sweater gospel crowd,
impatient for virtue, applauded.
Sank you family, Sank you academy,
he said; unlikely Japan in enlivened America.
Nothing is impossible.

Coypond

We let our moats be filled
with all sorts of animalistic Koi,
orange-and-white-and-
fuck-me-right-there


like sex-whispers exposed as colorful fish
practically milking the moment
enjoy the fountain, mind the sunset
they say, listening: this is a moment shared

with the sun-setters underwater
secretly ruling their own palatial world
which we see only as a rice paddy
or a conveniently picturesque pond.

Josh converses w/ nurse

...in the thumb-sprain hotel
every camera is a Quaalude.
& so I dine at dusk on mudskin;
There are no splints to call my own.

If it were not for the drugs
everybody here would be in worse pain.
That's why medicine is legal,
she told me: to help
people. To make them happier
when they were lonely, cold, dying, pained,
bloated, infected, bleeding. There are potions
for more than the heart concocts.

There are maladies for which there
is no cure--True, it seems. But the
opposite is also valid; That's what they
call a paradox.

Beginning of Match speech

He burned brightly.
That much we can say.
If this moment cannot be here dedicated
to trammeling up our dearest fire
than, dear friends, we are lost.

There was a match who got lit:
the rest is history.

Glowing ( I )

Behold the glowing poetry
for which you did not arrive, currently,
but accept in any case

Like an eighteen-year-old girl
crying after sex;
we've arrived unexpectedly
in a place not sad, but more melancholy
than we imagined it to be.

Oak Valve?

all her children
claimed exemptions
for their mudskin. like prizes carefully
arranged along a string of copper mines.
drape this out; make me mind.
<>
you've got me by the twills, no cotton.
<>
all her children were recalcitrant
retreating into mushroom rooms
with heads spun on and nighttime
kush-heads spinning grease ware...

that was the night i met her vagina
like a mandrake emptying a valve:
hello, functional part! let me sip thy
smooth chocolate romance

oh! on a boat of two waxed thumbs &
candy melodrama, these balls are our
hands holding a hand holding us back.
a hand is holding us back.
<>
nightly orphans. getting lit. these matches
us--they become our little group.

getting lit, ah yes... Foster's for Australian
wives. fucking Sheilas and getting pussy.
skulling beers and dropping acid. lecturing
groups of schoolchildren about Penicillin
and oak caskets: don't fuck sloppy; do not
die young. unless your coat slips. remind
me of my government. where do our faults
lie. beneath the ground she sighs. necro-
anything becomes a gross light like termites.
insects crawling into what was once termed
"hot." now just the literal heat and a sense of,
"what have i done?" clitoral rings and dings and
ding-dongs and bongs. our country becoming
ashes of American flags. Michael Phelps not
quilting but guilty of wrongs: marijuana orchard,
Mary Jane's ocher orchid of strong
men. Find one if you can and flee.

Green Start

you must get lit;
busted shit. musted over
blustery white pits
(fruitful;
full of learned doctors
...this is no longer a joke)

this is Germany, this is
Polanksy, this is the money
your rupees fathered. Farther
afield is a field of plenty. it grows
greener and shows:
life abounds.

N-i-j-i-n-s-k-y

In December 1917, Vaslav Nijinsky, at that time the most celebrated male dancer in the Western world, moved into a villa in St. Moritz with his wife, Romola, and their three-year-old daughter. His relations with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, the company in which he had made his name, were now severed, and with a war on, it was impossible for him to seek other engagements. So he and Romola had decided to retreat to neutral Switzerland and wait for peace. By the time of the armistice, however, Nijinsky had begun to go insane. His famous diary, written in six and a half weeks, from January 19 to March 4, 1919, was the record of his thoughts as that was happening. To my knowledge, it is the only sustained, on-the-spot (not retrospective) written account, by a major artist, of the experience of entering psychosis. Other important artists have gone mad—Hölderlin, Schumann, Nietzsche, Van Gogh, Artaud—but none of them left us a record like this, first published in 1936.

Turn on your love light;

Turn your lights down low. A light
bulb over your head in real life?

Torch, the British Flashlight, dines
at dusk on mudskin roads and 'opes.

You don't really know when you will
come back again; make back your

forth, and you're the practical orphan.
The law of matches: you must get lit.

Robot Boy Silence

I am robot grasped in plaster
but I do not move. Donuts in
the morning and the smell of
coffee & cold feet. It does not
bother me; I'm a statue
of robotic solitude. Frame by
frame::::does not matter:::stay
the same. Day after day. Strange.

This is More

grass Snake than Habitat; creative spelling
spells rabit traps. I'm robot grasped in plaster,
plastic please but I gotta get that paper paper.

Doug Main is more than Asia; sordid girls
we did, fruitstars paella. This is sort of
birth, which begs the again question:

your born-on date. I dreamed of date
showers, straight licking syrup for hours.
The things you and her devoured.

This---Is---War

We shall not now concern ourselves with the
grass snake, who lingers such,
above whose duckweed
we are remiss. Instead,

I delivered papers at daybreak
on summer weekends way::::back:::::when.

Red Radio Flyer
wagon down Green Street, not a car in sight.
Okay, she said, (meaning: my animus)
I'll admit to morning's stiff sacrament;

I am, after all, not a person above
inventing bangled lecticorns &
stealing ex-girlfriend's Harvard sweatshirts.

Can you imagine? No such brine shrimp
knows any such heaven
as blowjobs in the maintenance closet,
brackish wine just fine,
switching shirts like the time
is ripe for some kind of encoding:

this---is---war
not what we want it to be, necessarily
but more wonder than
one deer,
and I dare say: it strikes me the same.
It is more than enough.

A polite letter to Kurt Warner

Dear Kurt,
where is tonight's owl?
dwelling in a hollow tree

somewhere
a word who can stretch out forever
like a litter of puppies expanding
puffing up their chests at threats:
other dogs, cats or merely the breeze...

Love,
Drew Brees

Superbowl Expectations

Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger dies at the end of the first quarter after being shot by Houston defensive end Mario Williams (who sneaks on to the field in Cardinals jersey). His motives are murky and are never resolved, although it's rumored to have something to do with Big Ben's huge rod and Williams' jealousy thereof.

A nation is wrapped in dim, briny tears... but the game must go on. Kurt Warner completes eight TDs to Larry Fitzgerald in the first half and Steeler nation is left hopeless. At halftime, however, Bruce Springstein's voice brings Big #7 back to life; Roethlisberger then completes TDs to Hines Ward, Willie Parker, Willie Mays, and runs it in five times in the final five minutes to seal the game for the Steelers, 75-74.