October 2009
2 posts
My new favorite joke
What’s a honeymoon salad?
Lettuce alone! Ha!
July 2009
1 post
musings on the kindness of strangers
I’ve been feeling a little low and unattractive as of late, and knew a new haircut was just the thing. What I didn’t expect was for two bookish gentlemen and Vito Acconci would pull me out of a slump first.
Because my hair stylist is always running behind, I stepped into Spoonbill on a drizzly Wednesday night. I wandered around until I saw Acconci’s name on a thick tome hiding...
June 2009
4 posts
Some memories
First grade. Art class. Becky Resser and I draw pictures of a Michael Jackson concert. She has a crush on him, so I follow suit. He’s my first crush, followed swiftly by Kevin Bacon in Footloose and Steven Simoni. My picture is a black oval with a red jacket in a sea of faces and stick arms.
Second grade. The guidance counselor visits our class bi-weekly. She spends most of the time...
The problem with being a voracious reader and...
is that everyone else is one, too.
In the New Yorker this week (the summer fiction issue!) there’s a great article about the legend of a Polish author, Bruno Schulz. Schulz isn’t widely read here, so it’s no surprise that there’s only one copy of his collected fiction in the New York Public Library. What is surprising is 25 people before me have already requested this...
wowdemoblog:
This song is called “Making Love,”...
May 2009
8 posts
brooklynbased:
Introducing @GreeneIceCream cart at The General Greene! Homemade flavors incl. burnt honey vanilla+coffee banana chip. M-Th3-11pm F-Su12-12
We totally have to add this to our Hobo Summer food cart tour.
“Everyone bought real estate; and everyone was ‘a real estate man’ either in name...”
– No, this isn’t commentary from a Planet Money podcast or the New Yorker about the real estate fever that led to our current depression. Thomas Wolfe wrote these words in his 1934 classic You Can’t Go Home Again. The above paragraph describes a small North Carolina town in late...
Wolfram|Alpha →
WolframAlpha is not so much a search engine as it is an aggregator of information. It won’t tell you where you should eat tonight, but it will tell you the nutritional information of what you ate this morning. It won’t tell you the history of your home town, but it will tell you the temperature of that town right now. It won’t tell you much about Johannes Kepler, but it will...
“The thing is enormous and all-pervading, evolving and ongoing, history altering...”
– -Nick Paumgarten from “The Death of Kings” in this week’s New Yorker.
I listened to the grim reports on NPR and I saw friends lose their jobs, but I felt safe. I work for a tanking company sure, but we’re a small but essential department in an international monster.
Then,...
Pet Peeve #27
I hate it when Wikipedia is cited as a source. Unless you’re doing research on Legends of the Hidden Temple (and only Legends of the Hidden Temple), Wikipedia is a not a valid source! See those lists of links at the end of a Wikipedia entry? Those are sources! Stop being a lazy researcher! Don’t make a quoteblock and write Source:Wikipedia. Don’t write, “according to...
Space: the endless frontier
Everyone is excited about Star Trek, right? The cast is young and pretty and there’s lots of space battles and Starfleet Academy scenes and Harold is playing Sulu and oh, is that a construction crew building the Enterprise???? I’m more of a TNG fan than an OG fan myself, but still. Excited.
But knowing this is a J.J. Abrams’ joint, I have been avoiding reviews at all costs....
What not to read during the Swine Flu outbreak
2009 is the year of the hefty tome for me. I welcomed the year by finishing Bolano’s breathtakingly messy 2666, spent the winter snuggling up to Tolstoy’s masterpiece, War and Peace, and cleansed my palate with Yu Hua’s raunchy epic Brothers. This past week, I devoured Stephen King’s The Stand.
I read The Stand because my obsession with Lost demanded it. The writers of...
April 2009
10 posts
“I don’t mind being called [the angriest man in television]. I just...”
– David Simon, from this Bill Moyers’ interview, which is worth listening to, if only for the numerous Frank Sobotka references.
Neko Case And Will Sheff In Concert : NPR Music →
Friday cataloging soundtrack
to make: the best bloody mary EVER
rarrmi:
testtheyum:
Yes, this seems like a ridiculous thought, but we’ll make (and drink) as many Bloody Marys as possible to achieve the goal. We’re thinking that the first step might be to start off with the ultimate vodka. Maybe something pepper infused?
Epicurean has a great article on how to do this. Just like making flavored butter, it’s all about mashing two things that taste yummy...
WatchIt’s Wednesday, and I still can’t get over Jon Bovi.
One bookshelf down, two to go...
The only time I regret being a bibliophile is when it comes time to pack up and move again.
Years upon years of books are now stacked in irregular brown boxes in my bedroom. But they’re more than just books now, aren’t they?
A boy I was falling for at the end of a Spring semester traded book lists with me to read over that summer. I tried, but I just couldn’t get even halfway...
wowdemoblog:
From the same superstar as...
March 2009
12 posts
Best mass email ever?
Hello workmates… This may be one of the odder emails you receive today, but here goes… I’m wondering if anyone’s seen my french fries puppet (see attached photo for reference). He’s gone missing. Last I remember seeing him was around the time of the xmas party. I thought he’d eventually just find his way home, but sadly that’s not the case. If anyone knows of his whereabouts (or has a...
“When we hold each other, in the darkness, it doesn’t make the darkness go...”
– Neil Gaiman, from Hellblazer #27, “Hold Me.”
Fair Hike?
The MTA voted this morning to increase fares and cut service. This fare hike will raise the monthly metro card from $81 to $103. A one way ride will now cost you $2.50. Get ready to start paying more on May 31st unless those jerks in Albany can do something about it. A fare increase this large will crush the already suffering working class. There are alternatives to avoiding these cuts and hikes...
SXSW 2009: The Decemberists : NPR Music →
The Decemberists debuted their (for lack of a better word) rock opera, The Hazards of Love, at SXSW last night, and NPR recorded it for you. It’s equal parts tender and vengeful, and all parts stunning in its ambition and execution. Good listening for a dreary day like today.
Idris Elba: From Street Boss To 'Office' Politics... →
It may be slightly disorienting to watch Stringer Bell boss Michael Scott around next week. It’s definitely disorienting to hear him bust out Guys and Dolls show tunes in this Terry Gross interview.
Reason why I love Terry Gross #157: When Elba confesses he has only seen less than a handful of the episodes of The Wire, Gross is genuinely shocked and slightly appalled. Later in the...
“Bliss—a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive,...”
– David Foster Wallace, from his notes for his unfinished novel, The Pale King, as quoted in last week’s New Yorker profile on DFW
A lot of people have been musing on DFW since this profile was published, about his genius and how genius can drive some people to the unstable side of their mental...
“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to...”
– Susan B. Anthony
Good Vs. Bad or talking to a 4-year-old about...
My nephew, like all 4-year-olds, has some major obsessions. His include sharks and messy potties, Spiderman and Peter Pan, and bad guys and good guys.
Captain Hook is a bad guy, my nephew tells me. I say maybe there was a good guy inside Captain Hook once. Maybe he just got fed up with consistently getting clowned by Peter Pan. I ask him if he knows about moral ambiguity. Well, yes, he says.
...
February 2009
7 posts
Exclusive First Listen: Neko Case : NPR Music →
Neko Case’s quirky and lovely songs are the perfect winding down agent for a waning Tuesday. I love that NPR is doing a lot of these first listens lately.
Happy Fasnacht Day!
New Orleans has Fat Tuesday. Brazil has Carnaval. Pennsylvania (more specifically, Pennsylvania Dutch country) has Fastnacht Day. Fastnachts = fried slabs of dough = doughnuts. So who really wins? On Lent’s eve, you may get crazy drunk, ride floats, and wear thongs but everyone close enough to Lancaster County has a day dedicated to eating doughnuts!
M. Ward And John Wesley Harding In Concert : NPR... →
“All men live enveloped in the whale-lines. All are born with halters round their...”
– Herman Melville, Moby Dick