We have a winner from yesterday! Ms. Nola-Bolt got the correct answer and will receive $5 off her Rising Tide VI registration fee, straight from my hand to hers. Well done.

I've had glassworking on the brain lately, especially the story at the tail end of this post. I can say that there ain't much sadder than someone who still has her hot glass tools and pipes, even though the last time she got near a bench to do any glassblowing was February 14, 2004. In my sicker moments, I long for a mean trick like that exploding Price Rupert drop in Maya Lin's unsuspecting hand. Glass had a hold on me for a number of years, and it hasn't quite let me go. I found myself reminiscing about the things I'd seen to my husband's naturalized-Hawaiian cousin recently when I was on Oahu, but I think about getting back into it, and it's hard. My duties are different now, my body is unused to the extra heat from furnaces and glory holes, my hands are no longer calloused from turning turning turning steel pipes, and my arms are not tenderized by burns from hot waxed jack blades gained from looking at a vessel on the end of a punty rod and forgetting the tools that were just in contact with molten glass were still in my hand. The dough it takes just to build the equipment and keep the air-gas mixes and the molten glass flowing, not to mention the electricity, is enough to make me think very, very seriously about a new beginning, and about the ups and downs of operating my own business. The fact that I keep thinking about it is a torment in itself. One of these days, a reckoning is in the cards for me, I know. Until then, I will see news items such as the following and struggle a little with this internal crap each time:

...Jeremy Piven will follow the imminent end of HBO’s Entourage by producing a new reality show on the art of glass blowing, practically daring someone to make a “from sucking to blowing” joke, so there it is. Indeed the whole story reads like an open provocation, what with the series’ title, Blow, evoking a certain drug that Piven is often scurrilously rumored to be fond of, and the name of Piven’s production company, Luscious Mayhem, being the sort of phrase that triggers involuntary violent responses and/or nausea and blackouts. 

Anyway, for what it’s worth, Piven’s involvement is entirely behind the scenes, as Blow is really just your standard American Chopper/Cake Boss-style reality show about New Orleans glassblower Josh Cohen and his “band of misfits” squabbling as they attempt to please their “demanding clientele,” all of whom demand that their glass be blown in a very exacting way indeed.

It's making lemonade out of lemons time....Get ready for your next $5 off your Rising Tide registration question. Check the rules again. Get your registration/donation in. Here goes:

What else is the central subject of Piven's new show known for?

Leave your answer in the comments.