Ms. Prolix

Twenty-eight artsists, two saints, and an awesome cover.

2009-06-09T22:46:00.003-05:00

I went to the Seminary Co-op's annual members' sale this weekend, as I endeavor to do every year. I've come to the point where I've accepted that Hyde Park is my spiritual hometown within this big city of little neighborhoods, and the Co-op and sister store 57th Street Books are the places I love the most.

This year, I picked up three collections of essays from the Literary Criticism section and Cheever's short stories. Perhaps my retreat to short works is a reaction to my continued inability to finish 2666; maybe it's for other reasons. Maybe I'll write about those reasons later, but right now, I just want to gush a little bit about a great book cover.

Isn't it just the best? Acocella is the dance critic for the New Yorker, as well as a book critic; the flying pose evokes her specialty, even though most of the essays deal with artists of a writerly sort. Still, the cover manages to capture the spirit of high-minded wit that pervades Acocella's writing. She's a critic who likes to like things, and while she'll deride works that aren't up to snuff (and actually does so in the first essay, which covers a biography of James Joyce's daughter), she does it with a gentle tone, as though she's just explaining how the work could have been better.

Or, to be brief: this cover makes me happy.

Mothering Invention: Cast Cozy

2009-06-03T00:02:00.002-05:00

So, I had reconstructive ankle surgery surgery on May 15th. Until last Thursday, I was on 23 hours of bedrest a day; since then, I've been on "as much bedrest as I need to keep the pain away", which has been working out to quite a lot. I'm doing well, though, and loads of friends have been visiting me, and I'm going back to work next week, but it's still going to be a bit of a slog until I will be able to walk again. As of Thursday, I was put in a cast, which I should have for two weeks. Despite going to the University of Chicago Hospitals, it is Northwestern purple. The nerve!

I actually scheduled my surgery, and chose mid-May for a few reasons. It was relatively quickly after learning I'd need surgery, and it coincided with one of the quieter times at work. I also picked May because I remembered how miserably cold my toes were hanging out of my cast after my last surgery, which was done in November 1999. By May, surely Chicago would be warm enough that I wouldn't have such a concern!

And... cut to overnight lows in the mid-40's, and the window one of my roommates left open all night. Should it really be 60 degrees inside my apartment in June? It shouldn't, but it was. And how did my toes feel?

They felt sad. Also, if you're wondering how much bedrest it takes before you start drawing faces on your toenails with eyeliner, for me, it was about 2.5 weeks.

I decided to knit up a toe warmer/half-sock/foot-hat/cast cozy, since I have no big men's socks to shove over my toes, and I wasn't about to stretch out any of my nice handknit socks. I had a half-ball of Louet Gems Worsted Wool in a dark grey that was knit into half a (long-discarded) hat, so I decided to use that.

My cast was almost exactly 12" around the lower foot portion, and I'd been getting 5 st/in using US7 needles, so I switched down to US5 needles and cast on 65 stitches (though I probably could've done 60). After experimenting with a few different ribs, looking for a really stretchy, sproingy one, I settled on the slip-stitch rib as described in the first Barbara Walker collection, translated to knitting in the round:

Row 1: *K3, P2
Row 2: *K1, sl1 wyib, K1, P2

I went until I felt pretty comfortable that my toes would be covered and the toe warmer would stay put (about 5", but I'm overly cautious like that). I just made up the decreases, but they worked out pretty well:

Row1: *K3, P2tog
Row2: *K1, sl1 wyib, K1, P1
Rows 3 & 4: *K3, P1
Row 5: *(Pass two knit stitches like you're doing a K2tog, K1, pass 2 slipped stitches over), P1
Rows 6 & 7: *K1, P1
Row 8: *K2tog

I then broke the yarn, leaving a short tail, threaded the yarn on a needle, and drew it through the remaining stitches to close it. Weave in ends, and ta-da, a foot warmer.

Sure, I'll only be using it for another week, since once I'm in a cam boot, I'll be wearing socks. But it's just snug enough that I could, in theory, wear it over a sock if I need a little more warmth. And even a couple of days is too long for me to go around with cold toes.

Pictures:

I've also been working on a lot of other knitting, but I'll save that for another post.

Odds and ends and Customer Service Raves

2009-04-09T20:29:00.003-05:00

I have finished knitting something, but it's a gift, so no pictures yet. But it's cute!

In related news, I am running off to California for the weekend. It'll be a fairly chilled weekend, but with some foodie stuff I'm excited about-running around the badass supermarket Berkeley Bowl, going to Bourbon & Branch, and a ton of brunching, I'm sure. I'll be back Tuesday, at which point I will schedule my surgery.

Anyhow, I just want to give some credit where credit is due. I've been eating Milk & Honey Granola for years. It's very yummy. I live near the cafe, so I usually pick up a bag every couple of weeks. Last month, I was eating some out of a cup at work one Friday, and I bit into something woody. Upon examination, it was a 1/2" long fibrous little twig, which I figured was a stem from the dried cherries in the Original Cafe Mix. I sent off an email to Milk & Honey, just as an FYI, and forgot about it until Monday, when I received a very apologetic call from one of the managers at Milk & Honey. We talked about it, and she assured me it hadn't happened before, but they would be taking steps with their cherry provider in Michigan to make sure it didn't happen again. She also asked if I'd like some free granola. Since I've had dozens of bags of the stuff, and found one cherry stem in one bag, I said yes.

Cut to Wednesday.

What a nice letter!

Yummy.

Speaking of a dozen bags of granola... that's what I got. Good lord, that's an ample stash of granola. Anyone want a bag?

So yeah, yay local businesses with awesome customer service. This stands in high contrast to a certain British clothing website whose wares have been shipped to me twice (allegedly) after I ordered them over a month ago, and who's been difficult to deal with. Yes, BODEN, I'm looking at you.

Reorganizing and restructuring

2009-03-24T18:21:00.004-05:00

So, it turns out I'm going to have to have another ankle surgery. For anyone keeping track, this is the third, all to deal with the triple fracture I sustained falling off a three-inch ramp back in March of 1999. It'll probably happen in mid-May, though that won't be set until I see my surgeon to review my CT scan in the middle of April.

I'm a little cranky about it; I'll be out of work for two weeks, off the leg for a month or two, and on crutches for possibly as long as three months. Still, this will apparently fix a bunch of issues I've been having for awhile--flexibility, stability, and a slowly-increasing pain level. And as crappy as it is to be on crutches during the summer, I know from experience that this is better than winter crutching. And hey! I have a month or two to get ready for this, which is better than either of my other surgeries.

I'm also dropping some activities; classes at iO are off the table for now, and I've dropped go-go because I shouldn't be doing anything so percussive with that ankle. I'm sticking with trapeze until my four week session is done, since it's mostly hanging from the apparatus by my hands or my knees. And hey--if anyone has an awesome exercise regimen for people who can't walk, I'd love to hear it. I'd rather not put back all the weight I lost recently because of this. If I could come out of this thing with better arms and abs, that'd be terrific.

Other than that, I should clean my room and sew myself a fanny pack (a really cute one! really!) at some point before the surgery. But if it seems like I'm being quieter than usual between April and... Pitchfork or Lolla (damn!), this is probably why. Though if anyone wants to meet up in the next month or so, I want to get some drinking done before I go on opiates. Those things make me even more of a lightweight.

Photos: Maestro Subgum reunion

2009-03-08T21:08:00.004-05:00

I love Chicago. It's a great place to live if you like Weird America. It's big enough to have a thriving arts scene, affordable enough that people can live here and create more easily than they could on the coasts, and draws people from all over, including a bunch of small-town oddballs.

But my babbling about New Weird America... that's for another post. It's only a bit related, and is due to my lingering elation about the circus I saw last night. Let's just put up some Maestro Subgum pictures right now, why don't we?

More pictures can be found at Ye Olde Flickr Photostream.

Incidentally, the band kept having us chant "Maestro in May", so if you missed out... they might be back soon.

Podcasts and Barthelme and books, oh my.

2009-02-25T22:35:00.002-06:00

Often at work, when I tire of spending my time listening to The Current at a volume so low that I cannot figure out what song is being played, I take to spoken-word podcasts. My standard rotation includes a great deal of NPR, but I've recently become a fan of several New Yorker podcasts, especially The New Yorker Out Loud, which features one of the week's contributors chatting about his or her article. This week's podcast is a fun little chat with Ariel Levy about political social-utopianist lesbians of the 1970s.

However, since I'm a book nerd and all, the previous week's podcast featuring Louis Menand talking about Donald Barthelme is what has me all in a tizzy right now, in part because it introduced me to The New Yorker Fiction podcast.

Barthelme is one of my favorite short story writers; even though I only own the Sixty Stories and Forty Stories collections, I often dip into one of the volumes to find a refreshing, beautiful, absurd little piece of writing that makes me feel better, especially if I'm in the middle of a long-haul of a book (hello, 2666, how're you? Yes, I'm talking about you). "The Balloon" is certainly one of my top ten favorite short stories; through the silly "what-if" setup of a balloon being inflated over much of lower Manhattan, Barthelme touches on the public's interaction with art and its complete separation from the creator's content. It is also poignant and wickedly funny.

Speaking of wickedly funny, Barthelme's "I Bought at Little City", read by novelist David Antrim in a perfectly droll fashion, is one of the stories featured on the New Yorker Fiction podcast. This podcast is my new work-drug. Brilliant short stories read by the authors of other great short stories! Mary Gaitskill reads Nabokov! Aleksander Hemon on Bernard Malamud! Oh, the wonder of it all.

I recently had a chat about books with someone who emphatically stated that he liked "big" books (in both scope and volume), and was dismissive of anything less. I consider this argument equivalent to someone deciding to exercise, but only doing strength training with the heaviest possible weights you can lift. That's part of it, but you need cardio, you need light work, you need a variety of exercises to keep yourself in balance. Brilliant short stories like Barthelme's help keep me quick, and the craft that goes into short works often has to be better than that of "big" novels, because the impact must be made with less material.

Okay, I think I'll stop now, because otherwise this is going to segue into a discussion about Twitter, and I'd rather save that for another time.

Maestro Subgum & the Whole (or, I Am Still a Youngster in This City)

2009-02-18T23:13:00.012-06:00

You think you know someone, and you realize you have no clue. Take Miki, for example. I met Miki at the Old Town School of Folk Music not long after I started volunteering in there 2004. He was the café manager, so I'd swing by to get my free volunteer drink whenever I worked a show. Sometimes, I would work as the café volunteer; it can be a very busy gig, but Miki would encourage me to drink the new beers he got in, and we'd chat about our lives. Miki doesn't work many concert nights anymore, but I still stop by and chat with him when he's at the school; I know all about his kids, he knows all about my ex-boyfriends. He'd mentioned making music, but so does everyone who works for the school. In a building full of sweeties, he's at the top of that list, but I didn't know much about what he'd done before he started working there.

So it was a pleasant shock to run across a picture of Miki Greenberg in the Reader a few weeks ago. Apparently he'd been a member of the "legendary band Maestro Subgum & the Whole"! I can't say that I've known anybody else who's been in a legendary band. There was no real description of the band, or when they were active, or why they were legendary. Why, why had I never heard of them? I made a mental note to investigate further next time I talked to him.

Serendipitously, Miki saw me sitting in a coffee shop recently and came inside for a chat. After talking to him about Maestro, I'm really excited to see them play next Sunday, March 1st, at the Viaduct Theatre.

Details about this fabulous band after the cut.

There's not a ton of net-data available on Maestro Subgum & the Whole (notable exception below), because they were at the height of their popularity before the internet had really taken off, starting in the late 1980s and ending when they disbanded in 1994 or 1995. They had one big blow-out reunion concert in 2001 at the Old Town School, where Miki was by that point working; the show sold out, it was apparently a riot and their best show ever, and they've not performed since then.

Their instrumental palate consists of vocals, horns, and piano, which might make you think of Weimar-era cabaret, but there's a very rocking, yelling, ranting, zany energy that moves beyond the impeccably mannered expression of Kurt Weill. That is to say: at least from the clips I've heard, it is crazy and weird, and has a dusty 1930s feel crossed with a bit of a ranty early 1980s punk vibe, and I think I like it.

Maestro Subgum's members & alumni have done quite nicely for themselves. Beau O'Reilly and Jenny Magnus founded the Curious Theatre Branch (the group curates Chicago's annual Rhino Fest; Maestro Subgum & the Whole's show will be the closing act of that festival); other members have also been involved with Redmoon Theatre and Mucca Pazza. They also have a Tony-winning alum, since former trombonist Mark Hollman wrote the music and co-wrote the lyrics for Urinetown.

The best interview I can find with Maestro Subgum & the Whole is a 2001 interview with Ira Glass on WBEZ (scroll down to January 19th, grumble about it being a Real Media file, react strangely to numerous mentions of "President-Elect Bush" from just before his inauguration, fast-forward to about 1:00:38). A couple of song clips are included, which should give you a taste of what you might get to experience if you go to see them live. Do you really want to wait another 8 years?

Maestro Subgum plays as part of the 20th Annual Rhino Fest
Sunday, March 1st, 3pm, at the Viaduct Theatre, 3111 N Western Ave.
Tickets are $12, or pay what you can.
Box office: (773) 296-6024

On caffeine, coffee houses, and coffee.

2009-02-17T19:23:00.006-06:00

So there's some drama going on right now in the Chicago blogosphere about the renovations to the three local Intelligentsias, and the subsequent revamp of their price structure. (In order: Original GB:DT post, Chicagoist responds, GB author Mike Doyle quits GB because of this, and The TOC Blog summarizes the whole mess.

Setting aside the drama, I do think there was a basic reporting error, as there will be under-$3.00 coffee. A Clover of the Day will be offered, with S-L prices ranging from $2.00 to $2.65. I'm also a regular at Mill Park, and all the baristas who told me about the change immediately mentioned the Clover of the Day; I find it hard to imagine that Mr. Doyle asked any barista "Will there be coffee under $3?" and received an incorrect answer.

All the passioante talk about the changes at Intelligentsia did get me thinking about what people expect when they go to a coffee shop. I think part of the discontent with Intelligentsia right now could be traced to a disconnect between what some current customers want them to be, and what Intelligentsia wants to become.

More on that later. Now on to my GRAND THESIS. It involves taxonomy! Don't you love a good taxonomical grouping?

Here it is: people who buy coffee from coffee shops do it for (at least) three different reasons: for the caffeine, because of the coffee house, or for the coffee. There's going to be a lot of overlap in these three categories; I'd put myself in all three, depending on my circumstances. And people could go to Intelligentsia for any of the three reasons above (though I suspect most fall into the latter two categories, given the price and availability of the stuff. But let's get to the grand generalizations!

For the caffeine: These folks drink coffee like it's medicine. It is a necessary input for adequate daily output. They want coffee now, and they'd probably prefer it cheap, as long as it's drinkable. An alternate grouping wants their caffeine, and they want a socially-acceptable milkshake.

I'm this person: whenever I can't get to Intelligentsia in the morning, either because I'm starting work at 6 am or because I really need those extra 30 minutes of sleep. This happens more frequently than I like. I'm lucky enough to have a Keurig machine at work that dispenses adequately non-nasty caffeinated hot brown water; let's not talk about taste, because there is nothing to talk about. Before the Keurig, I respected the Dunkin Donuts stuff; SBUX drip coffee has always tasted like burning tar to me, so I never drink the stuff. However, while their drip is wretched, SBUX does make some delightful caffeinated milkshakes. I may have enjoyed one or two in the past.

Likely targets: DD, the tiny SBUX/Caribous with no seating, gas stations, every kitchenette in every office everywhere.

Because of the coffee house: The coffee house environment, hearkening back to the Ottoman Empire (or if you prefer, Vienna in the 1700s)! The history of intellectual progress props you up as you putter along on your laptop or meet up with your friends!

Getting slightly more serious-planting yourself down in a coffee shop for awhile is great. You can go alone ot get away from the distractions of home for less money than if you went to a restaurant (and without any of the social stigma). Groups can hang out, chat, study, knit, or whatever. I've seen small business owners interview employees in Hyde Park Starbucks, and I've seen Russian professors emeriti gather together for mid-morning tea and "conversation" (aka lots of gesticulation and loud Russian) at Unicorn in Evanston. I love them both. The atmosphere of these places varies greatly, as does the quality of the coffee, but it's probably the atmosphere that keeps people coming back.

I'm this person: On Wednesday nights at Julius Meinl (Southport/Addison) when I meet up with the Kelly Girls, my knitting group. When I tutor a friend in math at Noble Tree Coffee (2444 N Clark... it's Lincoln Park and it's fabulous). Back in the day at Filter. At numerous spots around my neighborhood, like Mercury, Atomix, and Alliance. Very frequently at the Mill Park Intelligentsia (if you show up at 6:30 am, it's pretty easy to get a seat).

Likely targets: Anywhere listed above, plus tons of other places. SBUX and Caribous with seating can even count. Apart from those corporate places, the Loop was pretty bereft of coffee houses until Intelligentsia opened two shops. However it seems that Intelligentsia is bnow aiming more for people who will come there...

For the coffee: They're members of coffeegeek.com. They wen to Intelligentsia's Coffee Geekfest weekend before last. They can talk coherently about the proper control of coffee through the wet milling and drying process, and use the term "commodity coffee" as a pejorative. They have strongly-held opinions about Chemexes, Clovers, and what varietals may taste better using a particular brewing method.

I'm this person: Because I can say "yes" to some of the above. Because when Intelligentsia higher-ups talk about how baristas should be as regarded as sommeliers, how they do much much more than just push a button at this level, I agree. Because when I went to San Francisco, I dragged my friend along to Ritual Roasters and Bluebottle Coffee Co. (where I asked so many questions that they asked me if I worked in coffee). Because this is geeky, and I am a geek.

Go to: Intelligentsia. Metropolis and The Coffee Studio probably also count, but I don't know them nearly as well and suspect that they aren't quite so geeked-out as Intelligentsia is at this point.

So... the Intelligentsia change. I'm sure the higher prices for coffee will drive away some caffeinators and coffee house folks. I bet it will even drive some coffee fanatics to brew at home (with their own roasts, or maybe Intelly's). But the price increase isn't because of Clover machines, it's because this coffee is the 1983 colheita to a jug of Gallo that DD serves, and it's because the well-trained baristas deserve to be paid a premium for their skill. Intelligentsia (along with a few other companies across the country) has worked to create an educated, interested, coffee-loving group of consumers. Now it's time for a test of how far this group will follow them, and of whether the group is large enough. Despite the economy, I'm guessing yes; I'm guessing that in a few years, the thought of ordering pre-brewed urn coffee at Intelligentsia will seem as strange as ordering a round of Slippery Nipples at the Violet Hour would be now.

But we'll see, won't we?

Glossing over and moving on

2009-01-24T13:32:00.004-06:00

People, 2008 got busy. Crazy busy. 2009 looks to be similar, but in an attempt to stay connected to my far-flung friends, I'm going to try to blog more.

I'm also trying to make this more than just the knitblog it's become in recent years. You know, write about books, movies, my life, music, coffee, go-go dancing, and all that other stuff I enjoy during the frequent times I'm not knitting.

Yeah, I'll get around to that. Just not right now. For now, look at the adorable fingerless gloves I made!

(I took this pic today. It was 8 degrees outside. The things I'll do for decent light.)

Pattern: Transition Gloves by Kerin Dimeler (Ravel it!)
Yarn: ShibuiKnits Sock yarn, colors Midnight and Ink
Needles: As called for in the pattern
Finished: Sometime in December?

I purchased the yarn to do these gloves with dark blue Ink and much lighter-blue Sky, but the contrast was so great that Ink looked black and the combination looked weird. I like the gradual fade from deep blue into dark, dark blue this combination produced. The originals are done with red and gold, which made for a fun contrast, but I like mine this way.

Eight months since my last post, and it's going to be political

2008-10-29T20:39:00.002-05:00

Inappropriate, I know, but I am rather cranky. Cross posted from my far *mumble*livejournal*scuff floor with foot*

I hadn't previously realized I'm anti-Israel
Please don't tell Israel, as I'd like to go back to Haifa someday.

So, there's now a flap about Obama and Rashid Khalidi, stemming from his going-away party when he left UChicago for Columbia. Apparently Rashid Khalidi, previously a highly-esteemed UChicago prof and current head of the Middle East Institute at Columbia, is like a neo-Nazi, at least according to John McCain. He is a dangerous man who hates Israel. Please don't ask McCain why he gave Khalidi's organization money in the 80s, thanks. Also, this means that Barack is a terrorist and hates Israel.

It just got personal for me, people.

Not many people know this, I didn't settle on math as a major until the summer after my first year of college. (Side story: I was walking home drunk from a party by myself, and all of a sudden I yelled out, "Oh fuck. I really like math!"; I had tried to avoid it after burning out in high school.) During my first year, I seriously contemplated an international studies major, and Rashid Khalidi is a major reason for that. I took his class on modern Middle Eastern history, along with a friend of mine who's now in the CIA, and it was the best class I took that quarter. I do recall he really liked Edward Said; I also remember that he took an entire class session to explain all the issues surrounging the Israeli prime ministerial election of 1999. It wasn't some biased rant about Israel; he explained the history of their political parties and the events that led to the election. He's an incredible teacher, and in class, at least, he was perfectly able to separate his personal beliefs and the opinions espoused in his scholarship from the teaching of history. I presume he is also capable of being friendly with people who might not share his beliefs on Palestine. I remember him being one of the most urbane, genteel professors I had. He actually encouraged me to apply for a Georgetown program that would have sent me to Turkey for a year; I was accepted, but eventually decided not to go because I was only going to receive a year of language credit for the entire program. I also would've landed the day of the Ankara earthquake, so perhaps it was for the best.

To summarize: Rashid Khalidi, he's not some scary radical. Despite what my dormmate Karen (direct quote: "Palestinians are exactly like dogs") and John McCain believe, people who have differing opinions on Israel and Palestine can interact. It doesn't make Barack Obama any more of a terrorist than I am. The fact that he was friends with such a wonderful guy makes me think more of him.

Also, Khalidi saying he's going to lay low until this "idiot wind" passes only makes me like him more.

Remember how I used to knit?

2008-01-31T09:53:00.004-06:00

And then post about it? I swear, I've still been doing the former, while neglecting the latter.

First, a 2007 FO for my cousin Annie:

Kusha Kusha scarf from Habu. I bought a kit at Nina. Part of it is knit with cobweb-weight merino knit together with silk-wrapped steel; the rest with just the silk stainless steel. Need to mail this alleged-Christmas present off.

Also, I am very close to finishing 3 sweaters: the Green, the Blue, and the Red. How close?

Well, here's Green:

Blocking as we speak.

Here's Blue:

To be done: blocking, sewing, and knitting about 8 feet of i-cord. Shudder. I can't block it right now, as it is from the same magazine as red, which has been 50% done since early December. No pic on that one, since it's at Mr. Z's right now. Will you accept a picture of my Venezia with fully 3 more rows done since the last pic in December? I hope so.

So that's the knitting. I'm being very slow on finishing my first book of the year (Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise), in part because I've been studying a great deal. In other news, I have a job now, and am about to have a very nice new job. No clue how much time I'll have for knitting once I start, so I'm trying to crank some projects out.

For my Masterpiece Complete Austen-watching friends

2008-01-24T23:04:00.000-06:00

I know a few folks here have watched the first two entries in the Masterpiece Complete Jane Austen series. Please, tell me:

-Was Northanger Abbey just far and away better than Persuasion? I mean, the guy who wrote the screenplay for the really good Pride and Prejudice also worked on NA, so my instincts say yes. However, I might be biased, because...

-Was the guy who played Henry Tilney really rather attractive? Not quite Colin Firth in P&P levels of attractive, but higher than Hugh Grant in S&S?

"Both" or "Neither" are also acceptable answers. Please, tell me.

A quick way to break your brain

2007-12-31T17:39:00.000-06:00

From the three books I finished in the last 12 hours:

"That relevance is instantiated both in terms of Sonic Youth's trajectory as a band and in light of Daydream Nation's permanent impact on the development of contemporary independent, avant-garde, and noise rock."

"Gluten is a viscoelastic network of proteins that becomes elongated by pulling and then partially reverts to its initial form when the tension is relaxed."

"You don't know what an egotistical control freak your taste can be until you try to turn traitor, as witness the slapstick contortions I've had to resort to just to get myself to listen to Céline Dion."

Altogether, I think these three books--about violent experimental rock music, the chemistry of cooking, and taste and its relation to pop culture--make a uniquely fitting prelude to an evening that will be spent watching Sweeney Todd and eating a luxe meal with friends.

So happy New Year, everyone, and see you on the other side.

Recently observed...

2007-12-25T21:29:00.001-06:00

If I complete four more 33 1/3 books and one more non-33 1/3 book before year's end, then 33 1/3 books will have comprised 33 1/3% of my books read this year.

Yes, I'm a nerd. (See also: my love of this shirt.) I hope you hadn't missed that previously.

Merry Christmas, everyone! Coming soon, pictures of presents, including a Kusha Kusha scarf.

A query to the knitters

2007-12-03T13:52:00.000-06:00

Let's say you were going to go to some sort of marathon event, one that would involve your being awake for upwards of 36 hours, much of which would be spent in the dark.

Say, like this event, which is happening tomorrow.

Now, I have a few holiday presents to work on during the wait to get inside. They're all either cables or lace, so once it gets dark, I'll need to put them away. I learned the hard way last year at a 24-hour B-movie fest: lace and darkness are not bestest friends. I sat outside for most of Krull picking out my mistakes. (This turned out to be lucky, as that movie was soul-suckingly bad, but this is beside the point.)

And yes, I do want to knit for most of the night, if I can--keeping my hands active keeps me awake and alert.

Here are my options:
-Union Square Market Pullover (it's the cover pattern). I have finished the bottom hem of this, and it's a circular pattern. There are increases and decreases, but nothing too hideous.

Apart... from the fact that I'm knitting this in a sport-weight yarn instead of a fingering-weight yarn, so my gauge is off and I'm converting everything. I'd need to finish the calculations before I go legally insane during my extended wakefulness.

-Greek Pullover (same link as above, first pattern listed): Still has shaping, but I'm on gauge for this project.

-Sorrel: Again, a yarn I have swatched. I want to do slightly different things with the hems, though. Things involving lace, so I'd need to finish that before 7 pm tomorrow. Also, I'd be converting the pattern to circular until it splits for the arms.

-Another pair of Campfire Socks. I'm slightly afraid the heel gussets would kill me, though.

So... should I just develop severe startitis and start all of these until they prove difficult? Just the Union Square Market Pullover? Should I be reasonable and not knit all night?

A bookish update

2007-11-25T15:57:00.002-06:00

I'd love to post about knitting, but (1) I haven't finished much of anything, and (2) I can't post about anything I'm working on, since I'm mostly working on gifts.

But I have been reading a great deal! Multiple two-hour flight delays really help one run through the books. I am now up to eight 33 1/3 books read this year (almost 1/3 of the total books I've read), the most recent being Scott Plagenhoef's about Belle & Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister. If you like Belle & Sebastian, this is worth picking up, even if you've read This is Just a Modern Rock Story (which I have); it's more a history of being a fan of Belle & Sebastian back in the early days, and how finding out about them is different than how people find out about bands these days. For an editor at Pitchfork, Plagenhoef's awfully down on the cycle of discovering music online.

I read David Lodge's The Art of Literature and Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer concurrently, switching to a few sections of Lodge after finishing a chapter of Prose's book. They're both guides on writing that favor examining passages of famous works, with Prose a little more focused on close reading (chapters focus on words, sentences, and paragraphs, while Lodge's sections break into things like "irony" and "aporia"). I'm not yearning to become an author, but I love reading well-written how-to books, and books about how to write are more likely to be well-written than, say, books about transformations of random variables. Though if you know of a well-written book about those, I'd appreciate it if you could let me know.

Tuscany!

2007-10-30T13:50:00.000-05:00

...plus some thematically-similar food.

So, finished blocking the Tuscany shawl today.

Details:
Amy Singer's Tuscany Shawl, from No Sheep For You.
Made with a 150 skein of Sea Silk, in the Nova Scotia colorway, purchased from The Loopy Ewe.
Mods: I moved down to size 5 needles for the slightly lighter-weight yarn. This wasn't necessary, just a personal choice.

It's pretty, but... I'm not sure I'd ever wear it. (Insert "something something 'process knitter' something something" here.) So, maybe this will be grandma's Christmas gift. What do you think?

In other news, the party last weekend went well. I made focaccia, something roughly akin to Mario Batali's recipe from Molto Italy.

In other news, I'm heading off to SF for a long weekend soon. There will be much coffee, a trip to the pirate store, and maybe some yarn shopping. I'll see you after that.

Apartment tour with a little YPF

2007-10-19T23:44:00.000-05:00

Man, isn't it like this is a real knitting blog now? I'm sure all my non-knitting friends are thrilled. I promise I'll write about books, music, or the CTA soon.

First off: I met a knitting fellow at Intelligentsia yesterday, named the Fiddlin' Fool. He and his wife (whom I actually know from volunteering at the Old Town School! Chicago's a small town city) have a joint knitting blog, and he's written a charming account of how we started talking (it involves Knitpicks) here. Also, they work on KnitML, which was just mentioned on the Brenda Dayne podcast. Wonderful the folks you can meet when you knit in public, isn't it? (Also, my Ravelry name is bluetangle, if anyone wants to find me. Same as my knittyboard name.)

So I'm having a party tomorrow, which means this is the first time the apartment has been clean since we moved in back in August. As I've mentioned before, I'm in this apartment on an extremely part-time basis, spending most of my time over at Mr. Z's. Because of this, I agreed to take the smallest bedroom (less than half the size of the other two).

The condition on which I took the wee bedroom was that I got my own desk/craft space in the dining room. As of today, it is now somewhat organized, which is as organized as it'll ever be. Here's some pictures:

My desk. A bin full of knitting needles is below the sewing machine. Here's the YPF:

Yarn on hooks! I know I picked this up from another blog I've read (where it was on pegs), but I can't find it now.

Also important:

These were part of a Knittyboard SP package from Froggy Dear. Thanks again!

So yeah. There are more pics over on Flickr, if you want to see my knitting area, but I'm glad it's all set up. Now, time for 35 people to come in and hang out there tomorrow!

Actual WIP Wendesday post

2007-10-17T18:16:00.001-05:00

Okay, so I showed off Salina yesterday, but here's what I've been neglecting while I work on her.

Tuscany: Only sewing in ends and blocking remains.

I think I'm still a little disappointed that the colors are so contrast-y. I wanted semisolid, which this certainly is not.

Poor Venezia: Size 5s seem so large compared to 2.5s! But a little has been done:

I'm up to the waist, about to start doing increases. Here's a glimpse at the backside:

Pretty in its own right, I think.

Fall Greens

2007-10-16T17:31:00.000-05:00

One of the advantages of being a pale redhead is that I can pull off some really noxious shades of green. I am, for example, currently wearing a bright, almost-neon green V-neck from J. Crew.

Here's another example:

It's the hem detail on Salina, from the Rowan Vintage Knits book. It's the cover pattern in the version of the book I have, and it's made in the same yarn, same color. I think it'll suit me, though.

Look what I'm using, despite the fact that I almost never use wooden needles with wool anymore:

They're nice; they've only come loose once, and that was after they were jostling around in my bag for several days.

Speaking of my bag (yes, I'm going to be camera-crazy for awhile, since I just got my shiny new camera), Mr. Z got it for me while he was in Luxembourg, though the company is Swiss:

It's a huge bag. You could seriously fit a toddler in there. Not that I recommend that. I can carry two books, my knitting, my pattern book, my iPod and the massive headphones shown in the picture (a gift from my mum), several lip balms and lotions that fall to the bottom, and my wallet and keys (when I remember them) and still have room for sundry other things.

So yeah... WIP Tuesday for you all.

So much and so little...

2007-10-14T18:22:00.000-05:00

Ah yes, the blog. This thing still exists, doesn't it?

Sorry about the lack of posting, but I have a few reasons:
-I am not at my old job anymore. This is a good thing, but I'm shuffling about, getting things in order. Speaking of which...
-I am about to officially, finally graduate. To those of you who might've thought I already graduated: oops! I gloss that over. Essentially, there's been a rules change that will allow me to graduate in March with no additional tests/classes. Love those rules changes!
-I have finished very little knitting. That's not quite true. The knitting portion of my Tuscanny shawl is done, but not blocked. I whipped out a Raspberry Beret for a Prince-themed party yesterday. But there's been very little going on with Venezia (what can I say? It was 90 a week ago. Who wants to knit Fair Isle when it's 90?). And finally:
-It was my birthday! Yay being old. It's not out until tomorrow, but I'm getting one of these for my birthday. Actual good knitting pics to follow!

Font nerdery.

2007-09-28T13:06:00.000-05:00

Please insert the requisite "OMG, so long since my last post" comment here. Moving on.

I went to go see a movie about Helvetica yesterday. Yes, the font. It was good.

After a brief history of the genesis of the Helvetica font, the movie was more of an exploration of typeface design (and design in general) over the last 50 years, as filtered through the lens of Helvetica.

In brief: before Helvetica, things were ugly! Then there was Helvetica. It was great! Every company in the world used Helvetica! So Helvetica became the corporate typeface (and, as one designer stated, "the font of the Vietnam war")! So people started hating on Helvetica! Boo, Helvetica! Yay, weird fonts! Hooray, ugliness! Then the youngsters decided they could make Helvetica new again!

Also, there are a lot of designers with interesting eyeglass frames and gorgeous studio spaces. The soundtrack is also nifty (Sam Prekop and Battles were the two I could easily identify).

Fun times: after the movie, the woman in front of me stood up and said "So who here's a designer?". Everyone else raised their hands, and someone asked if there were any non-designers who would watch this. In a sotto voice, I said, "I thought it looked cool."

I've already prepurchased this on DVD. Helvetica party?

So yeah... if you get a chance to see the film, do so.

Works in Progress... Saturday?

2007-08-25T19:25:00.000-05:00

Reasons I never manage to do WIP Wednesday:
-I am very forgetful.
-I stay at my apartment two nights a week, max, and for the last month, it's been two nights total. Half of my projects are at my place, half at my boyfriend's place. This is especially a problem right now, since...
-My digital camera is broken, so I'm currently using the camera on my darling MacBook Pro. Hey, it's better than my cameraphone by a long shot.

That being said...

This is a v-neck, sleeveless lace pullover from the summer Vogue Knitting, in Blue Sky Alpaca Silk. It's really quite a fast knit, but cumbersome to carry around. For travel knitting, it's currently either the Socktopia mystery sock (at Mr. Z's; also, get well soon, Momma Monkey!) or this little number:

Toe-up Jaywalkers, with contrast toes and heels.

Here's my current challenge project:

Venezia Pullover from Interweave Winter '06. Oh, fair isle. We don't want to talk about how long it's taken me to do these few rows.

More Secret Pal goodness

2007-08-21T22:36:00.000-05:00

More SP goodness:

Left to rightish, there's a mug with "I've got knitting needles and I'm not afraid to use them" (my new motto), which contains one of three skeins of Frog Tree Alpaca lace and fruity on-the-go antibacterial hand cleanser; stitch markers (in the baggy, hard to see, I swear, I'm getting a digital camera for my birthday in October and all the pics will be nicer), yummy chocolate, another type of hand cleanser, and yummy Duet Sock Yarn. I may have some guesses as to the identity of my SP, but I'll keep those to myself for now...

I took half a day off work today, because I had a nasty throatache. Much tea was consumed, much Seinfeld was watched, and much knitting was done (in particular, the Socktopia mystery sock and the oversized lace pullover from Vogue Spring/Summer). This evening, I also watched the first chapter of Ingmar Bergman's Scenes From a Marriage, a six-part miniseries about the breakdown of a couple. I'm amazingly undepressed for having watched an Bergman work. Maybe if I keep it to one hour a day, my soul won't be filled with despair.

I also keep staring at the furniture in the miniseries and marveling over how cute 70s Swedish design is. This is a slight problem, since I've missed some subtitles and had to go back.

But look at this couch!

(Sorry it's so tiny--it's the only pic I could find.)

Another FO and some owls.

2007-08-15T21:22:00.001-05:00

One more thing finished!

Campfire Socks. Got the yarn in an exchange from Kelly Girls. Thanks, Jodi!

In other news, I love owls. Let's consult Etsy on this, okay?

That which I already own:

Owl spiral journal from Seamripper. I actually bought this at the new Renegade Handmade shop, which you should go to, if you live near Chicago. They like owls possibly more than I do.

That which I will have purchased by the time you read this:

Two varieties of owl greeting cards from Blackbird Letterpress. I adore a lot of this store's stuff; I'll certainly be getting some personalized pink and brown cards, and I'm giving a gift of thank you cards to a friend. (Does this mean she'll have to send me one of the thank you cards?)

That which I will buy at some point, once I figure out my apartment decorations:

Owl wall decal by Holly. I may actually get this in the faux wood finish. I will also probably be getting the "Knitting Geek" decal, too.

Ms. L is: The Finisher.

2007-08-12T19:47:00.001-05:00

(Please say the title of this post in that deep movie voiceover-guy voice that says "In a world gone mad..." and things like that)

Ravelry has made me aware that I have ELEVENTY BILLION unfinished knitting projects out there, so I've decided to knock some out. Final finishing on all of these happened today. Yes, all of them today. From the top:

-Ene's Scarf: I started this on August 1st. I worked on it for many hours a day. It is ready in time for Mr. Z to give it to his grandma on his trip to Poland (which is coming up soon). I'm getting the yarn for this (plus Victorian Lace Today) as a thanks for making this.
-Montego Bay Scarf: Mmmm, Sea Silk. Since Ene was knit from Voile de la Mer, I'm knitting with seacell a lot these days.
-Espresso Shawlette: It's the Clementine Shawlette from IK Spring '07, but in brown.
-Sahara: This is my gratuitous chest shot for the post. Enjoy!

Now... do I finish another project, or start something new?

In other knitting news, man, is Rowan 42 ugly. So many drop-shoulder sweaters. So similar to Rowan 20. I'm unhappy with this.

SP9 goodness!

2007-08-07T19:04:00.000-05:00

I got this package two weeks ago, but because of the move, I'm just putting up pics now. Sorry, my wonderful SP!

So yeah: DK sock yarn from Fearless (in a colorway I seriously was looking at the day before), tofutsies sock yarn, DPNs, a sock project bag, supercute knitting cards with my name on them (!!!), a sock project bag, and chocolate, which is not terribly visible in the picture. Thanks again!

In other news, I found out via Ravelry about the massive colorfastness issues of MCY yarn. Has anyone else bought this stuff on Etsy? I rinsed out a green skein I had several times over, and there was massive yarn bleeding every time. I have done this at least seven times. Every time, the water is dark green. And I have such a pretty blue skein of the stuff awaiting a good project. GRRR.

I'm glad I didn't bring my hemp yarn

2007-08-07T09:13:00.001-05:00

I already posted this at the Knittyboard, but I thought I'd share here, too.

I brought my knitting to Lolla this weekend, because (1) I'm just that dorky, (2) I have a project that needs to be finished ASAP, and (3) there was gonna be some sitting-around downtime, so why not utilize it?

So, this is the yarn I brought in. I had two skeins, unwound, and a partially-knit shawl, all in a baggie. In retrospect, this yarn does kinda look like pot.

When I was at the gate on Friday, I opened my bag to let the security guard check what was in there. I was slightly concerned that the knitting needles wouldn't make it through, somehow.

SECURITY GUARD : Damn, gir- (suddenly stops)
MS. L : It's yarn.
SG : Oh man, I thought it was something else for a second. I was like, damn, girl! You can't be bringing that in here!
MS. L : Oh my god! You thought I was bringing in weed!
SG : Yeah!
MS. L: Dude, that'd be a LOT of weed. What, do you think I hang with the Roots or something?

The next day, I became more proactive.

MS. L : It's not pot, it's yarn!
Security Guard 2 : Yeah, when I saw that it was sort of furry, I knew it wasn't pot.

Later, with Mr. Z...

MS. L : You know, I wanted to respond, "Man, you must not have had the good stuff, because the good stuff IS furry," but I thought that would've just caused more problems than it was worth.
MR. Z : That was probably wise. Also, that yarn isn't that furry.
MS. L : I know!

Lolla!

2007-08-03T14:50:00.000-05:00

I've been bad about posting recently, in part because I've been busy packing/unpacking/hauling out bags of trash/cursing my materialistic nature. The standard moving drill. I'm also busy knitting a last-minute gift for another relative of Mr. Z (more pics of that later). But enough of that artsy-craftsy stuff for now. This weekend, it is time to rock. Again. Yes, it's Lolla time.

It is a fundamental law of nature that, in a given summer, either Lollapalooza or Pitchfork Fest will be hotter than a radiator in the warmest part of hell. Since Pitchfork was incredibly temperate and pleasant this year, Lolla is the scorcher. I'm a delicate flower, used to the lower humidity and higher concentration of air conditioning in Oklahoma, so there will be lots of breaks this year. Here's what I plan to see, as long as I don't get heatstroke:

Friday
-M.I.A.: Because I have to work today, I'm missing the Polyphonic Spree This is partially remedied by seeing I'm From Barcelona tomorrow (see below), so I'll start here. I love the first album. Loved the mixtape. Am intrigued by the hostile interview on Pitchfork this week. We'll see.
-Silversun Pickups: This guy likes them. I've heard a few songs and I like them. That's good enough for me.
-LCD Soundsystem, followed by Daft Punk: I'm more excited for LCD Soundsystem than anything else this weekend. Any excitement I feel regarding Daft Punk may entirely be due to LCD Soundsystem's "Daft Punk is Playing at my House".

Saturday
-I'm From Barcelona: They're from Sweden, actually. My regret about missing Polyphonic Spree is greatly mitigated by the fact that I'm seeing these guys, who are what PS would be if they were Swedish, more of a glee club than a cult, and wanted to be Belle & Sebastian instead of The Flaming Lips.

After four hours where I may see some stuff, but may go hang out at a coffeeshop...

-Hold Steady!: HOLD STEADY! Love these guys. I hope they play new stuff, since I've seen them tour on the current record twice, but I still love these guys.
-Yeah Yeah Yeahs: They're fun live, even if their new album is eh.
-Patti Smith v. Spoon: I'm torn on this. In Patti Smith's favor, she' PATTI SMITH. In Spoon's favor, their new album is great, and Patti Smith's covers album is really weak.

Sunday
-The 1900s: I've not seen them yet, and I've been meaning to, since their debut was on the label I used to work for. However, it is high noon. If I don't see them, I will likely roll into Lolla around 5pm, skipping Dios, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and Lupe Fiasco v. Amy Winehouse.
-Yo La Tengo v. Peter Bjorn and John: Again, highly ambivalent. I know I'll love Yo La Tengo, and it'd be nice to possibly see some old songs (unlike their show at Pitchfork last year). I do love poppy Swedes, though.
-My Morning Jacket vs. Modest Mouse: I can't bring myself to care. MMJ is nearer to the TVOTR stage, so I may decide in their favor.
-TV on the Radio: They're sometimes great in concert, but I've heard their festival gigs aren't so terrific. I could go see Cafe Tacuba, but I'm not going to want to walk the mile between those stages just to do it again for...
-Pearl Jam: Oh, why not?

So yeah. That's my low-key, aware of my boundaries Lolla schedule. I'll be the girl with four different suncreens.

Another FO...

2007-07-30T14:57:00.000-05:00

Hey! I finished something.

Pattern: Tamarah from Knitty
Yarn: Tilli Tomas Pure & Simple (Burnt Orange, 1 1/2 skeins), purchased at kpixie and Habu Textiles Silk Mohair A-32D (205/red, 1 1/4 oz.) purchased from Habu directly
Needles: Size 7 Inox & Addi circs
Modifications: None really, apart from the yarn changes.

The pattern is modular and lace, but once you figure out the progression of the pattern, it goes pretty quickly. I had to do a lot of math at first, and there was great furrowing of brow, but by the end, it was mainly mindless knitting. This pattern doesn't seem to have been knit very frequently, but it's super-cute! Why isn't this at least half as popular as Clapotis?

I like this a great deal; I may make one for myself soon, in something not-orange (this is for Mr. Z's mom--this orange is lovely, but I can't wear it).

In other news, I got my invite for Ravelry. Ravelry has made me aware of my ten active projects. I should work on them/work on getting photos of them... after I finish that entire moving thing.

Stash honesty.

2007-07-22T19:53:00.000-05:00

So. Not including yarn I'm using in a project, or yarn at Mr. Z's, or yarn that I have hidden from myself in a mysterious place...
I showed this to my roommate. He said, "Oh my GOD." I said, "Really? Because this was much less than I anticipated."

I mean, it doesn't even fill my queen-size bed! I am an amateur. Right?

Knitting related...

2007-07-17T19:16:00.000-05:00

Here are some things I received from my Knitty SP last Friday:

Scharffenberger nibby bars (my favorite chocolate bar) plus a 16-pack of minis. Thank you so!

I've been completely derelict in posting works in progress. Here's something I've been laboring over for awhile:

All of the darker blue bits? Beads. The yarn? Rowan 4-ply cotton. The needles used? US 1, 1.5, and 2.5. Egads, that took awhile. And I still have the front and the sleeves!

Pitchfork was great in parts, annoying in others. More on that later. Off to pub trivia now.

Cinematic Pretentiousness and Musical Awesomeness.

2007-07-12T14:51:00.000-05:00

If we are to trust Mr. Z on these matters, the proper 18th month anniversary gift seems to be Criterion Colleciton DVDs. I am fine with this, especially since I now own the following, thanks to his largesse:

The 400 Blows
Alphaville
L'Avventurea
Band of Outsiders
Jules and Jim
Masculin Feminin
Sullivan's Travels

Now that I own the last of these, I have three Criterion Collection editions Preston Sturges movies (the others are The Lady Eve and Unfaithfully Yours; I should also pick up The Palm Beach Story at some point)--movie night, anyone? It'd be more lighthearted than a screening of the 8-hour version of Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage.
----------
I went to the Metro to see Os Mutantes last night. The last time I saw them (nearly a year ago at Pitchfork), the crowd starting getting unruly due to the lack of an encore, so it was great to see a full show. The only bummer was that, for most of the show, I had to watch it through the gyrations of four hipsters on a double-date. I kept checking my (non-existent) watch to see if we'd turned back the clock to the late 90s, because these people acted like they were on E. Just trust me, it involved a lot of frottage and dancing of questionable merit.

Speaking of Pitchfork Fest... this year's iteration is happening again this weekend. Not a ton of my friends are going, and I'll spend more of this year chilling in the shade (thanks, 826 Chicago booth!), and I may actually arrive after the first band starts on Sunday (not something I've done before)... but it's still a great lineup. I'll be the one with at least four different kinds of sunscreen and red hair styled like Chan Marshall's.

Speaking of Chan Marshall... doesn't Sporty Spice look alarmingly like her these days? Am I alone on this?

A very retro weekend.

2007-07-02T08:41:00.000-05:00

This weekend, I watched four episodes of Melrose Place, and listened to Slint's Spiderland, De La Soul's 3 Feet High & Rising, and a mess of Feelies albums. I was listening to Slint and De La Soul in part to prepare for Pitchfork in a couple of weeks; I listened to the Feelies because I finally downloaded their albums and am hating myself for not doing it sooner, because they are awesomeness squared.

Also awesomeness-squared: Melrose Place. As the astute folk at TWOP have stated, you have to love a show where a woman runs down her fiancé, then frames the guy's second wife by making it look like the second wife framed his first wife.

(And the first and second wives are SISTERS. And the second wife blackmailed him into marrying her because they both thought he killed his fiancée! Who then came back and made him kick out the second wife, who was, by the way, a hooker! And a madame! And then, after a fall from grace, a stripper! Until her estranged husband saw her on stage!)

I should get the DVDs.

In other news, I'm almost done with Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Unfortunately, it is too large a book for me to fit in my bag without causing shoulder strain, so I can't read it on my way to work. Also, I worked on Bonita and Basalt this weekend, and am over halfway done with the former. Pics to come on Wednesday, I think.

"Someday I'll change his life, I'll be his weiner-wife."

2007-06-26T08:54:00.000-05:00

Puzzle of the day: Was I the only person who was made to sing "Hot Dog, I Love that Weiner Man" as a young child? Repeatedly? With such stunning lyrics as the one quoted in the title? We sang that all the time in Camp Fire when I was young. It involved singing the word "weiner" dozens of times between quicker and quicker iterations of the one verse. Anybody else?

In somewhat related news, I yearn to go to Hot Doug's. If you're not from Chicago, or just don't know about Hot Doug's, check out the menu. Even more important, check out the specials.

I don't even eat regular hot dogs (thanks, high school lit class in which we discussed "The Jungle" coming directly before hot dog day in the cafeteria!), but I love Hot Doug's. I had an elk sausage with mustard seed cheddar (hold the blood orange mayo) last time I was there. If you're ever in Chicago and you can, you should go.

Again with the non-knitting!

2007-06-21T13:51:00.000-05:00

I've finished a sweater--more on that later; it will be a little ranty. When I have pics, we'll talk.

Other than that, things that are bringing me great joy:
-Moving! Because we're insane, Kevin and I are moving! Across the backyard! With a new roommate (Phil, former roommate of Kevin's)! I am getting an incredibly tiny room, with an attendant incredibly tiny rent. While I avoided asking friends to help me move last year, I'm not going to hire professionals to carry boxes down a flight of stairs, across the lawn, and up a flight of stairs.

I may well be making my own loft bed, or at least finding people to help me do it. Yeah, I know it's insane, but I'm not willing to pay too much for a bed that I'll likely only use for a year.

Oh, and we're moving in on August 1st. Oh, holy crap. I gotta get moving.

-Pride Weekend! With attendant Pride Parade. I believe I will be staking out a parade spot for my group of friends, starting around 9 on Sunday. Much sunscreen will be used. Following that, Kevin is (and, to a lesser extent, I am) having an afterparty. Unlike the last Pride Party I threw, this one won't involve me dumping my boyfriend in the middle of the party. No word yet on whether this one will also involve bare-assed spanking going on in my bathroom (you can't predict these things), but unlike the last party, my boyfriend will not be involved. He's in Vegas, so I can say this with confidence.

My only food contribution: fancy lemonades and limeades. I'm not going to stress too much about it.

-Sewing! My mother FINALLY shipped me my sewing machine. Only 18 months late!

-Internet Radio, while it's still around. I especially like the program Pandora-FM, which allows me to listen to Pandora radio and have the songs post to my last.fm account. The only disadvantage: Pandora sometimes freaks out on me (why Hilary Duff on my Indie Pop radio station? Why?!), and if I'm away from my desk, the world will think I listen to Hilary Duff. Despite the fact that nobody looks at my last.fm userpage, the thought that anyone might think I listen to Hilary Duff is alarming.

-According to my Google calendar: So much volunteering! Maybe a weekend trip to Michigan? John Sellers (whose book I read awhile back) book reading/signing! Os Mutantes at the Metro! A wedding! Pitchfork and Lollapalooza! These are the reasons why I'll be hauling my belongings across the backyard in garbage bags.

*Did the spanking incident lead to the dumping of my then-boyfriend at the last Pride party, you probably aren't asking yourself? Answer: Not as much as you might think. It's a long story.

And your winners are... (drumroll)

2007-06-14T06:40:00.000-05:00

Socks-y: Megan @ Woolly Interlude! I swear I didn't rig this.

Spinny: Kelly @ Lime Street Knits!

Sheepless: Pixieriot!

Since all three of you are Knittyboarders, I'll be pm'ing you about mailing this off.

Congrats, all! Proof of knitting to come soon.

Socks-y, Spinny, or Sheepless: the prizes.

2007-06-12T18:13:00.000-05:00

Hey, the knitblog contest ends tomorrow night. Want to see the prizes?

Socks-y: There's one bonus for this winner: she gets a choice! So, will it be...

The lovely dark brown variegated Fleece Artist Merino Sock I've lost the ball band for, but which came from Loopy last month? Or will it be...

Lorna's Laces Superwash Sock in Pin Stripe?

Spinny: It's all Fleece Artist for you.

Specifically, you get Wensleydale Teeswater in dark blue and green and Merino in light aqua and blue!

Sheepless: Speaking of aqua and blue, I really do like those colors.

These are SWTC Bamboo, in a medium aqua color, from the discountyarn sale. This would be enough to make a tank top, I believe.

The contest is open through tomorrow night, and results will be announced on Thursday; if you want to enter, comment at this post. Good luck!

Friday music: the beauty of the shuffle setting on my iPod

2007-06-08T18:12:00.000-05:00

Usually, when I'm listening to music on my iPod, I'm either listening to an album in full, or listening to my workout playlist (whether or not I'm working out).

Every once in awhile, I put it on shuffle, and remember that I have tons of music I don't listen to all that frequently. In particular, I remember I own a ton of compilations. Nuggets I and II; Living in Oblivion Vols. 1, 3, and 4; The American Anthology of Folk Music (the three main volumes, plus the semi-official fourth); some huge comp of Woody Guthrie; several Brazilian comps; and a box set of turn of the century gospel music featuring an entire CD of sermons only. I haven't listened to most of this stuff all the way through, so a trip through my iPod on shuffle often reveals gems I didn't even know I own. Like this, from Nuggets II:

The Marmalade - I See the Rain (mp4)

And sometimes my iPod reminds me I've downloaded a bunch of great stuff I've not listened to yet. Like Lifter Puller, a precursor to The Hold Steady:

Lifter Puller - Mission Viejo

For a limited time only... non-knitting content.

2007-06-06T11:18:00.001-05:00

Hey, remember when I used to talk about things other than knitting? Me neither.

Music.
Massive bummer of last week: Missing the Dino Jr. show at the Abbey on Thursday. I was just way too busy and exhausted, and spent all afternoon walking around buying books when I should've been taking a damned nap. Although I heard Lou was cranky as hell and it wasn't that great of a show, I wish I'd been up for it.

Exciting concert I'll be napping for this week: The National. They're always great in concert, and now they're all famous and shit.

Concert I should buy tix for soon, once I get my shit together: Os Mutantes at the Metro in July. It's gonna be great. The replacement singer for Rita Lee is hot, their set at Pitchfork fest last year was really energetic and tight for not having performed in many years, and maybe they'll stop singing the English-lyrics versions of their songs.

Song I'm obsessed with: Caetano Veloso's cover of Joni Mitchell's Dreamland. Still. It's a terrific song. Honorable mention: The Raincoats' cover of Lola.

Movies.
Hot Fuzz: I saw it the week it came out in a downtown theater, a few weeks later at the "Art Theatre" in Ann Arbor, and last weekend at the $3.00 second-run place. I will probably be seeing it at the Brew and View, too. I like it more than Shaun of the Dead, maybe because I know more about cop movies than zombie movies.
Knocked Up: My love for Judd Apatow and crush on Seth Rogen make me rather unobjective on this movie, so just go see it. It's hilarious. It has wise things to say and innovative bong formations, so there's something for everyone.

Books.
Books I've finished: 33 1/3 books on Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA and Joni Mitchell's Court & Spark. I slightly prefer the former, maybe because I like the former album better. Both of these books were slightly critical of their subjects--Springsteen could've made an even better album if he'd picked different tracks, and his humorous songs were better than he thought; Mitchell put out an awesome string of albums, but then got hateful toward her dwindling audience after C&S. The criticism was a nice change of pace from some of the "how cool is this album? here's all the recording details of this album!" style of some of the books. Not that I mind that all the time...

Disconcerting book fuckup of last week: Speaking of the worshipful recording details-style book, I was chugging along through the 33 1/3 book on Exile on Main St, only to find that every other pair of pages between 74 and 110 were completely blank. What the hell? The publisher was nice enough to send me a replacement, though.

Proof that I read books that aren't from the 33 1/3 series: I'm finishing up on Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Yes, I know I'm four years late in reading it.

Trivia.
We managed to beat two pub trivia teams featuring people who've been on our team before (including Scott, the Web editor of Time Out Chicago--read him here and here) despite knowing nothing about Bobby Kennedy vs. Billy Carter. It's all Cranky Uncle Greg, people.

See, I'm posting again already!

2007-06-05T18:14:00.001-05:00

...However, I should've posted about this on Saturday, as I got my Secret Pal package on Friday from lovely Froggy_dear. Let's see what I got, as pictured on my dreadful phone-camera:

From the top left, going clockwise: Mad Libs, a citrus-caramel-dark chocolate candy bar, MONKEY LIGHTS!, small pots with basil and tomato seeds, a small wooden box (great size for stitch markers) witha finger puppet, Ghirardelli squares in Dark and mint-filled chocolate, a lovely tomato plate, a very nice Art Nouveau style card, and two skeins of SWTC bamboo. The pic doesn't do the color justice--it's a lovely electric blue.

So thank you again, Ms. Froggy_dear! Now I have to figure out if I'll be participating in Secret Pal 9...

Inertia, followed by a knitblog contest.

2007-06-05T09:19:00.000-05:00

I am not blogging about knitting because I am apparently incapable of finishing anything. Currently active:

-Sahara: I must knit on the sleeves to this. Cap sleeves! That is all, apart from a small amount of finishing. And yet, because I didn't finish it in time to wear it to the rehearsal dinner... it is not done.
-Blue Sky Cropped Cardigan: I'm close to done, but I've been dispirited about this project since I finished it, wore it, decided it was too floppy, and ripped it entirely out to restart it.
-Rosa: I'm working on this one a fair amount, but it's a shirt, with beads, on US 2.5 needles, aka SLOOOOOOWWW.
-Supersecret project: It's pretty, and in a color I'd never wear, but I'm working at it exclusively at Mr. Z's place, which makes it slow going.

I have managed to stop buying yarn, as it was slowly overgrowing my apartment, and was clearly forming designs to suffocate my poor roommate. And I've realized that I won't be starting up spinning anytime soon, at least until I manage to knit down my stash.

Therefore: contest! Inspired by Megan at Woolly Interlude, I'm gonna have a knitblog contest! Announcing... Socks-y, Spinny, Sheepless or Silly.

Rules:
1. Leave a comment to this post by Wednesday, June 13th at midnight Central time. Include some sort of way for me to contact you, in case you win. I'd like it if you also left your blog info, if you have one (so I can read you later) and something about yourself, but I'm not too picky about that. (New Rule! Tell me if you read about this on another blog, as that blogster will get another entry for everyone that sees her post and enters.)
2. Also, tell me if you want a socks-y prize (I'm thinking... Fearless Fibers), a spinny prize (Fleece Artist fiber), a sheepless prize (this will probably be bamboo from the discount sale), or a silly prize (magically fugtastic Rowan Mag from the early '00s).
3. I will pick two or three winners early on June 14th (depending on the response), and start sending out prizes!

So yeah... post a comment, possibly get free yarn! Not the worst deal in the world.

Hey, look at that month that's gone by since my last post.

2007-05-25T08:34:00.000-05:00

To be fair, I usually post here when I finish reading or knitting something, and I have finished no knitting (though at least one book, the Bruce Springsteen Born in the U.S.A. 33 1/3, which was terrific). I have completely frogged and almost finished re-knitting a few things, but I need to settle down at my apartment and do some finishing, which I've not been able to do for the past month.

In great news, though, part of the reason I was so busy is that I was a friend's maid of honor, so I'm fine with my lack of knitting and reading.

Anyhow, I saw a link for a pre-summer knitting contest at Skeins Her Way, where you can the yarn and pattern for Ali's Blue Sky Cotton tank, while reading my former SP Megan's blog. The contest involves listing your summer knitting goals, so here we go:

-Finish Sahara (so close!)
-Rosa from Rowan 35
-Bonita from Rowan 41
-Amy Singer's scarf from the newest IK
-The cover pattern from the Spring '07 IK (back is already completed)
-The Blue Sky cropped cardigan (I have almost the entire body done, and the sleeves; I finished this once and decided to knit it tighter)
-A pair of socks

I could add more, but I will try to keep within reason. I'm an overambitious knitter, thus the bins and bins of yarn at home. And at Jan's. And balls of yarn as "decoration" all around my apartment.

So yeah... you should participate, too, if you want. Just be sure to mention you heard about the contest here... as I get an extra entry in the drawing.

Music time!

2007-04-28T15:30:00.000-05:00

So, I ~~downloaded~~ somehow attained a copy of the new Tribute to Joni Mitchell CD. I've only listened to a few of the tracks (I cannot yet bring myself to listen to some of the soft rock artists on the album, so I've not heard the KD Lang or James Taylor tracks), but I'm enjoying some of them. Especially the Dreamland cover by Caetano Veloso. Yes, I do have an obsession with Brazilian Tropicalia musicians. Yes, his place on this compilation is "token world music guy", and he redoes Dreamland to sound more South American. But it's still good!

Dreamland - Caetano Veloso (mp3)

I was disappointed by Sufjan Stevens' Free Man in Paris. It's just... so... Sufjan. The overdone trumpets kill the original melodic progression, which was a little choppy in the original, so it totally falls apart.

Free Man in Paris - Sufjan Stevens (mp3)

Anyhow, back to cleaning my bathroom.

Book It! 2007

2007-04-25T10:10:00.000-05:00

Book 8, finally: The Thirty Years' War by C.V. Wedgewood.

This is a really good book. This is a really long book. This is a big, long, depressing book about a war that didn't really solve the problems that started it, despite killing loads of people, causing immense suffering, and dragging on for so long. Maybe that's why it took me so long to finish it. But again, a good book. C.V. Wedgewood (of the china Wedgewoods) was one of the most prominent women historians of the early part of the 1900s, and I'd love to find some of her other books.

So... back to reading about rock music. Or maybe some Calvino.

In belated celebration of Shakespeare's birthday...

2007-04-24T11:39:00.000-05:00

Hamlet. Stick Figure Hamlet, to be precise.

This is drawn by a friend of mine, and I actually got him the domain as a gift last year. So, again, Hamlet... with pictures!

FO: SKB

2007-04-22T17:16:00.000-05:00

Pattern: Simple Knitted Bodice by Stitch Diva/Stefanie Japel
Yarn: Eternal Diva Soie De La Mer (Sea Cell/Silk blend) from kpixie.com
Needles: Addi Turbo US#7
Modifications: So very many. Changed the arm circumference, took out some of the midsection purl rows, changed the number of repeats of the lace motifs.

I probably started the waist shaping too early, but other than that, I love this sweater. I also love this yarn--it's softer than just plain silk. I know this to be true, because I've been making a mystery project with Tilli Tomas's plain silk at the same time as this top.

Further notes on the CTA Leave Early/Leave Late/Alternate tests

2007-04-04T13:25:00.000-05:00

I will not be posting on this every day, as you may have noticed from the lack of blogging recently. Is this because I’m waiting until I have a crappy El day? Nope, it’s because I’m lucky enough to have a boyfriend who lives very close to where I work. When I stay with him, I walk to work and avoid the CTA altogether.

The default train-based route to work is Brown line to Belmont, transfer at Belmont to Red line, Red line to Grand. An alternate train-only option would be Brown line to Merch Mart, and walk over. It might take longer, but I would be almost guaranteed a seat, since I board so early in the Brown line run. Also, Jamba Juice right next to the station. Mmm, Jamba. But still: the main trade-off would be avoiding the wait at Belmont but dealing with the extra stops south of there on the Brown, as well as the increased walk to work.

Bus or bus-and train alternatives:

The 148 Bus.
Pros: Stops three blocks away. No transfer. Express from Irving Park to Michigan/Delaware. Drops me off closer to work (by one block) than the Red line. According to the CTA’s website, 7:05 bus will drop me off at 7:45 where I need to be at 8:00.
Cons: Completely dependant on traffic situation on LSD, unlike partial-rail routes. According to experience, 7:05 bus will get me to where I need to be sometime between 8:10 and 8:45, depending on traffic issues. But perhaps an earlier bus will avoid the traffic bottlenecks onto and off of LSD.

Montrose Bus to Red line.
Pros: Shortest trip to a bus stop/train station. No Belmont transfer wait. More likely to get a Red line seat if I get on north of Belmont.
Cons: Flax suggested this route, so I’ll try it, but it wasn’t one I initially considered to be a great idea. I’ve had bad experiences using a bus-to-Red method on the north and south sides (Belmont and Garfield Ave). One of the delay factors on the Brown line-Red line route is waiting for the Red to show up at Belmont, especially when a northbound Brown cuts off the southbound Red. Taking the Red from Montrose won’t make the train run faster, though I will avoid waiting around outside for the connection. Because the official three-line slow zone is on the Red line track between Addison and Armitage, this route maximizes my time in the slow zone.

Damen bus to Chicago bus.
Pros: Won’t have to worry about highway traffic. Very short walk to bus stop. If I leave early, I can check out some of the new cafes in West Town. No relying on red or brown line.
Cons: Ass out of the way. I mean, really ass out of my way. Bit of a walk from Chicago Ave to work (though not as long as it is from the Merch Mart to work). I have no clue how regular the Chicago bus is. Based on how packed I've seen it on the weekeneds, I suspect Chicago Avenue can be a hot mess in the morning.

But hey, I initially didn't believe that heading into the heart of the city and using two buses to get from Lakeview to Hyde Park would be quicker than the Red and the 55 bus, and you know what? The 146 to the 2 or 6, connecting at Lake and State were WAY faster than the Red and the 55. So I'm hoping for a surprise here.

Notes on a list, and a new project.

2007-03-29T08:21:00.000-05:00

So I contributed to my friend's column this week (and next week) at DeadOn (it's a group of Deadspin commenters writing about pop culture) about music made by women in the 90s (thus the thoughts about it earlier in this blog).

Thoughts:
-Part I of the list was mostly compiled by the time I got involved. My main input on this part of the list was insisting that he mention Elastica stole their song from Wire and suggesting that including Veruca Salt without the Breeders was kinda insane, since Veruca Salt lifted the Breeder's deal wholesale.
-I do like "Connection" and some Veruca Salt well enough, though.
-My suggestions for Part II (and maybe III?) of the list included Liz Phair, P.J. Harvey, Throwing Muses, Cibo Matto, Bjork, Luscious Jackson, and a number of other folks I've now forgotten. I know a song from one of these will be in Part II, because I wrote the blurb for it.

Now onto far less exciting matters: Mass Transit! In case you don't live in Chicago: the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority, though I usually replace the first word with "Clusterf***") will be drastically reducing capacity on one of the most-navigated portions of its track for the next few years, with the intent of making the several stations along this corridor shiny, new, and capable of carrying more people around. This starts next week; the CTA has been using the slogan "Leave Early, Leave Late, Alternate" to encourage people to avoid peak transit times or take the bus. Nobody in Chicago thinks this is going to work.

So I will be running a series of tests of this slogan. It will be hard for me to leave late, since I have to be at work at 8, but I can do the other two.

Clusterf*** Transit Authority Experiment
Hypothesis: The CTA is completely screwed, and it's going to take forever to get anywhere no matter what you do.

Trial 1, "Leave Early".
Notes:
According to the CTA's own maps, transit from my apartment (nearest to the currently-closed Montrose Brown line stop; three blocks from Damen Brown line stop) should take about 30 minutes. I decide to leave my apartment around 5:55 am, figuring that if I do manage to make it downtown in 30 minutes, I can just go to the gym.

The construction that is supposed to substantially increase travel times has not yet begun; this is just an intial trial before the whole mess starts on 4/2/07.

According to the CTA's travel planner, I should get on the 6:12 am Brown line train, transfer at Belmont to the 6:22 am Red line train, and arrive at Grand and State at 6:36 am. Plenty of time for cardio!

Results:
6:05: I see what may be the 6:04 southbound Brown line pass as I enter the station. Note that I should try to catch this train in the future.
6:28: Next southbound Brown line arrives at Damen. Two northbound trains had arrived in the interim.
6:35: Brown line arrives at Belmont, which is faster than estimated by CTA trip planner. Two stations between Damen and Belmont are currently closed, with another closing soon; this could explain the accelerated time.
6:55: Southbound Red line train finally arrives. Multiple trains from almost all the other lines pass by during this time.
7:15: I arrive at Grand and State (20 minutes instead of CTA's predicted 16 on the Red; brief delay at Chicago stop). Just enough time to do 10 minutes of pilates and then go to work.

So far, not so great. I figure 6:05 is earlier than rush, right?

My indie-rock book title: "All Downhill from Here"

2007-03-26T13:07:00.000-05:00

Problem: I am not reading many books lately.
Cause: Recent magazine obsession (Real Simple! Interweave! Rowan! Vogue Knitting! Back issues of the Believer! Gourmet! Good Mag!); incessant, crazed knitting; loss of book weight that allowed me to read while knitting; desire to walk around while weather is nice.
Solution: Read more books, I suppose.

Problem: Those books that I am reading are all about rock music.
Cause: Rock is awesome. Books about rock music are quite frequently also awesome.
Solution: Back to reading C.V. Wedgewood’s The Thirty Years War, which is awesome in its own way.

Problem: C. V. Wedgewood’s The Thirty Years War is wonderful, well-researched, well-written, and interesting, but is not optimal travel reading. I was on an airplane or in an airport for massive amounts of time this weekend.
Cause: It’s dense! It’s heavy! I doesn’t stay open on my lap! Half the people are named the same thing, and there are a bazillion people in the book!
Solution: Back to reading about rock music.

I saw John Sellers’ Perfect From Now On (woo, Built to Spill reference!) in the window of a bookstore in Harvard Square early Saturday afternoon, and I finished it as our plane landed in Chicago on Sunday. It is quite entertaining if you’re the sort that listened to crappy music in early adolescence and eventually moved up to indie. It is also especially entertaining if you like GBV, as it covers the last few months of that band’s existence. Summary review: think Chuck Klosterman, only with even better taste in music (these days, at least) and less bitterness about past girlfriends.

Rocking While Knitting: Camera Obscura

2007-03-20T19:09:00.000-05:00

Angora sweater: Done! Done! Sweet fancy Moses, done!

Here's some detail on the tasseled midsection, which I am not entirely thrilled about (it's the only shaping for the waist), but is cute in and of itself:

Details:
Pattern: Tiffany from Louisa Harding Winter Muse Collection
Yarn: Louisa Harding Kimono Angora, bought at Nina
Needles: Size 6 Addi Turbos, with some work done on Crystal Palace size 3 bamboos
Adjustments to pattern: None. May have made it one size too large, but it's comfy.

Now for the rocking. Something about this sweater kept reminding me of Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura (and Camera Obscura in general) for some reason. I listened to a good deal of Camera Obscura while making it. If you don't know them--think a little Belle & Sebastian (their songwriter produced CO's first album), and a lot of female spunkiness. And therefore, I offer you two songs to go with my sweater pics, both from the latest CO album (good for the next 7 days):

Lloyd, I'm Ready to be Heartbroken
Let's Get Out of This Country

This month in knitting.

2007-03-13T23:35:00.000-05:00

I have been knitting. Really! Here's the evidence:

FO: Mini-Clapotis

Pattern: Clapotis, of course!
Yarn: Tilli Thomas Disco Lights, 1 skein
Needles: size 7 Inox
Mods: Only two increase/decrease rows; I knit the straight rows until I ran out of yarn.

Clapotis is the famous Kate Gilbert pattern. I only had one skein of this yarn (which is lovely, but not cheap), so I only did 2 pattern width repeats and made it very, very short. Still, the recipient likes it, so I'm happy. I enjoyed getting the chance to work with the yarn, without the guilt of keeping the result.

Works in Progress:
Angora sweater

I also have a sleeve for this sweater floating around. I'm halfway through the second sleeve, which means I should be done... just in time for it to be seasonally-inappropriate!

Bamboo Jacket:
I have a ton of bamboo to work with, so I'm double-stranding it and making the cover design from Spring '07 Interweave Knits.

So yeah, that's about it for now. Coming soon, though... My review of the Colourmart sample kit! Look at all the goodies I got for $5:

Oh yes, it's cashmere.

Lots of stuff to play with.

Organization, Music

2007-03-13T11:19:00.000-05:00

I'm almost done with the soon-to-be-seasonally inappropriate angora sweater. That's all I'm gonna say about knitting for now.

Random act of memory: Susan is owed a 33 1/3 book from the M*****F***ing contest. Susan, which do you want?

Moving on: I have a new computer! I can load music onto my iPod again! I'm in the process of putting my stacks and stacks of CDs onto my iPod, and it's just in time for spring, when a girl's thoughts return to when she used to be a malfeasant pre-teen (if the girl is me). Perhaps it's because I can finally listen to it while walking around, but I'm beginning to suspect that The Hold Steady's Boys and Girls in America is just as much a spring album as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a winter one.

As for other music I'm listening to: for reasons I won't divulge right now, I have been listening to a lot of music that is (1) 10ish years old and (2) made by women. I'm gonna link these to YSI files tonight, but for right now, descriptions:

Know Your Chicken and Sugar Water by Cibo Matto. I think KYC was more popular, but I like Sugar Water better, and it has a great Michel Gondry video. Everything sounded like Cibo Matto a couple years after this album; possibly because M. Hatori worked on a lot of records, including the first Gorillaz album.

Bright Yellow Gun by Throwing Muses. This was their biggest single when I was listening to college radio in the mid-90s. I had previously been a big fan of a lot of antiseptic, asexual folkie-type lady-music (hello, 10,000 Maniacs); this was all nice and good, but as a teenage girl realizing just how much trouble I could make, it was also quite revelatory to hear K. Hersh's amazing, dangerous-sounding voice. Also, they named an album The Real Ramona. Mad props for that.

(Aside--Tanya Donnelly left/got kicked out of Throwing Muses and Breeders before each of their biggest commercial successes. Poor thing. Belly did fairly well, though, and hers was one of the two Seventeen interviews I remember finding interesting during my grandmotherly-imposed subscription to that magazine. The other was Jon Stewart, back when he had a talk show on MTV.)

PJ Harvey--just in general. I love the production on To Bring You My Love (am I right in believing Down by the Water was her biggest single in the 90s?); I guess the term differentiating it from Rid of Me and Dry would be not-scary. But the two earlier albums are great, too.

So yeah... talk to me about your spring-celebration music, or music made by women ten years ago, or whatever.

More for my reference than anyone else's...

2007-02-27T13:11:00.000-06:00

Here's the list of sweaters I would like to make for the Sweater-a-Month KAL. I am, of course, already behind schedule.

Jan: Hourglass (done)
Feb: Men’s Raglan (nearly done)
Mar: Tiffany Angora (partway done)
Apr: Glade (yarn on the way)
May: Serrano (yarn in stash)
June: Bamboo project (yarn here)
July: Basalt (1/7th done)
Aug: TBD (Picovoli? If so, have yarn)
Sept: Lichen (yarn here)
Oct: Sorrel (yarn here)
Nov: Cabled pullover for Stepmom (have the yarn)
Dec: TBD (but if I make it out of Black Andean silk or Silk Garden, I have the yarn already, sigh)

So yeah... I have a lot of yarn. This doesn't count any yarn not currently allotted to a project or yarn in quantities smaller than sweater-level. Therefore, I am going to make the following non-binding stash-controlling vow: I shall not buy more yarn until the Knitting Workshop summer sale.

Unless it's a really good deal.

Or I really want it.

Bold, I know. But I will try. Unless Loopy gets that sock knitting circle going. And... umm... roving's not yarn. Yeah.

Oscar Party 2007: The Food

2007-02-26T13:10:00.000-06:00

(At least the food I made. Everyone else made fabulous stuff, too.)

So, on the theory that I should make at least as much food as my friend Susan, who was coming from many miles away on public transit, I made candied bacon (from Gourmet last month; meant as a garnish, but I used it as a nibble), bacon ganache truffles (have to do something with all that bacon fat), and lavender-vanilla cupcakes with meyer lemon buttercream.

Candied Bacon:
I tripled the recipe, which meant a lot of standing in front of the stove mid-day on Sunday. However, I got to break in my new cast iron skillet. Hooray, cast iron skillet! I may be getting a cast iron dutch oven soon.

Main hassle: Pouring the fat out of the skillet one-handed. That's a test of forearm strength.

Bacon Ganache Truffles:
Really easy, and shamelessly stolen from Schwa, a restaurant Mr. Z and I went to last month. Basically, make a 1-to-1 ratio ganache, but replace 2/3 of the cream with bacon fat. These truffles are more solid than my usual ones, because bacon fat is solid at a cool room temperature. I rolled them in demarara sugar and paprika. Smoky and yum.

Lavender-Vanilla Cupcakes:
Used Donna Hays' cupcake recipe, doubled, which is basically "throw everything in electric mixer, walk away for four minutes". I used vanilla sugar, doubled the vanilla, and tossed in 2 tsps of food-grade lavendar buds.

Meyer Lemon Buttercream:
I used Jacques Torres' Basic Buttercream (cut in half), with some revisions: I added the cold butter in smaller batches, and at the end I added a ton of Meyer lemon rind, a little juice, and a dash of lemon extract.

Frosted the cupcakes, sprinkled more lavender buds on top. Ta-da!

Reading, drinking, knitting

2007-02-22T12:41:00.000-06:00

Finished the 33 1/3 books on Loveless and Neil Young's Harvest.

Loveless: Maybe it's best/to get a little rest/and not drug up while making your album.
Harvest: Neil Young sure is crazy/and Harvest may be lazy/but it sure has some mighty fine tunes.

Moving on, time to introduce:

Not that there are many details right now (look for the topic on the Knittyboard if you want to join in), but isn't the pic nice? My lovely roommate rigged it up in no time flat. Isn't he talented? He's also a lawyer! But nice! I know!

Knitting update!

2007-02-11T22:56:00.000-06:00

FOs:
I finally wrapped up my first sweater of the year, Hourglass from Last Minute Knitted Gifts in Rowan Kid Classic. As I mentioned, major surgery was needed. Here's a before pic:

As we can see, HUGE neckline. What you can't see in the photo is that the sleeves are beyond wrist-length, and have moved right into the realm where they skim the second knuckle of my middle finger.

So, I ripped out the hem on top, reduced a lot more, bound off regularly. Ripped out the sleeves to 3/4 length, crochet cast-off. Just for kicks, I also took the hem out of the bottom and bound it off regularly, because I don't mind the rolling and wanted it to match the top. And so...

There! First finished sweater of the year.

Also, I finished my first pair of socks.

Pattern: Anastasia Socks
Yarn: Nova Socks by Fleece Artist
Needles: Well, I meant them to be US 2's, but the LYS didn't tell me Addi US 2's are actually 3.00 mm, so... 3mm dpns
This was a nice, easy toe-up pattern. I recommend it for beginners. I switched to Figure 8 cast-on and just built the toe up from there instead of doing the provisional cast-on with short rows. I also took 4 stitches out (one between each eyelet repeat, two from the bottom) when I realized I was knitting with bigger needles than I should've been. Bad local yarn store! You are there to give me information!

I also learned to spin this weekend. My first batch was really bad, but the silk I spun (thanks, secret pal, for the roving!) was much better. I also bought some yummy Fleece Artist roving at Loopy, but I'm going to save that until I'm better at spinning. I'll be getting a nicer spindle and some undyed training fiber on payday, I think.

2007-01-30T15:00:00.000-06:00

First off: Almost done with the 33 1/3 book on Loveless. Halfway through City of Glass by Paul Auster. Waiting for Jan to finish the nifty-looking NYRB Press book about the Thirty Years' War.

But back to knitting.

It is rather difficult to do yarnovers and decreases in the blind dark, while sleep deprived, but I managed to do it. I have a full hexagon done on the Basalt tank, all of which was completed at B-Fest. I also have several more inches on the monotonous but cute angora sweater, although I coat myself in fuzz every time I knit on that. I have two socks above the heel flap; they aren't from the same pair, but hey, two socks, right?

Right now, though, my main focus is de-Flashdancing the Hourglass Sweater. Taken in 5.5" from each sleeve: Check. Crochet cast-off sleeves: Check. Pulled hem line from bottom hem: Check. Now, I have to cast off the bottom in a regular fashion, then pull out the top hem, knit it up higher, and crochet cast-off up top, too. Nice and tight, that crochet cast-off.

Sweater/Knitting Update.

2007-01-26T10:14:00.000-06:00

Not much progress on the sweaters this week. Well, I’m still working on the interminable yoke for the Men’s Sweater, and have allegedly hemmed the top of the Hourglass. Problems with further progress on these two:

Both of them are so large now that they are burdensome to carry around and knit in public.
It is hard to knit a sweater for a person you don’t want to see the sweater when you’re always around the person.
Stupid, stupid me! I must always remember to Google “(pattern name) problems” before I start into knitting it. I should’ve especially known better about the Hourglass from Last Minute Knitted Gifts, since I knew there was a problem with the Men’s Raglan Zip-Up pattern as written. But noooo, so I got all the way to hemming the top and learned of the “Flashdance Problem”. That is, the neckline is difficult to keep on both shoulders. Sure, the 80s are back, but I’d like my wool/mohair sweaters to keep me covered. Cranky Uncle Greg actually laughed at me when I tried this sweater on over my shirt at Pub Trivia. This is becaus CUG is a DICK.

And so... I’m ripping it out, back to the turning row for the hem at least, and will knit in a ribbed neckline of some sort. I now have to decide whether I should match the ribbing on the lower hem and cuffs, too. I’m glad I did a provisional cast-on with both of those, so this choice won’t involve ripping out my cast-on.

Also, I discovered socks this week. Bad.

I’m going to a 24-hour B movie marathon from tonight to tomorrow night. I have a bag full of knitting projects to work on, with a range of difficulties so I can move to a 2x2 rib scarf by the time I can no longer function fully. This bag includes the Tiffany angora sweater and the Basalt tank, so I’ll get some sweater work done.

2007-01-25T10:03:00.000-06:00

2007.4: Highway 61 Revisited (33 1/3) by Mark Polizzotti

A good book about my favorite Dylan album. This is one of those basic 33 1/3 books, with lots of background stuff about the recording sessions, and gossip about the likely subjects of many of the songs. It makes me want to delve further into the Dylan Encyclopedia I received at Christmas.

Sweater a Month/Knit Update

2007-01-19T12:56:00.000-06:00

I have no pictures right now because my computer's busted and JZ took his camera with him out of town, so it's a text-only update.

Hourglass Sweater from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts: I have precious little to go on this one, actual-knitting-wise. A couple more rows on the yoke, the turning row for the hem, a few more rows there, and then it's on to the finishing, which mainly entails hemming everything.

Man's Raglan Zip-Up: I'm on the 2nd sleeve, after which it's the yoke. And... I also need to get around to buying the zipper to sew into it, but I'm waiting to block it out before I do that.

Angora pullover: Stopped working on this to focus on the first two, so still about 4" into the first side.

Many, many other projects: Pretty much same as I was (aka, did nothing on them this week).

I'll be going to a movie marathon tomorrow, and will then be going to a BIG movie marathon the weekend after that, so I'm going to try to crank out some easy projects while there.

2007-01-15T12:03:00.000-06:00

2007.3: Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace

Well, I really like DFW's essay work, so I really liked this. I was amazed that the essay about lobsters, which featured many paroxysms of conscience about eating animals, actually ran in Gourmet. Also, the John McCain story, while entertaining, is still incredibly long and hard to get through, even the second time around. Randomly enough, a company briefly mentioned in his article on talk radio (Arbitron, a Nielsen-style radio ratings system) just called the office this morning, thinking this was a private line.

Are you bored with reading what I'm reading? Would reading the same kind of list, only by a famous dude with a killer Jewfro, be more fun for you? If so: What Art Garfunkel has been reading, 1968-present (found on Bookslut).

2007-01-11T08:43:00.000-06:00

Reasons Consider the Lobster was not the first book I read in 2007:

Holy (insert expletive of choice here) . The John McCain article is this long? I already read an abridged version of this monster in Rolling Stone seven years ago, and it was super-long then.
I left it at my apartment and instead read other things before I went back there.
The airline tickets I’m redeeming for AAdvantage miles are my bookmark, and I can’t redeem them online until next week.

Anyhow, moving on:

2007.1: The Female Thing by Laura Kipnis. It was fun, it was bitchy, it was smart. I like her work and don’t quite understand the people who complain that she offers no answers. She does offer an answer, it’s just that her answer seems to be the adoption of a Marxist-Socialist regime.

2007.2: 69 Love Songs: A Field Guide (33 1/3) by LD Beghtol. It’s written by one of the vocalists on the album. It includes a crossword puzzle and features two references to Nancy Mitford. I don’t understand how Susan hasn’t read this yet.

Book Count 2007

2007-01-01T09:37:00.000-06:00

2007.1: The Female Thing by Laura Kipnis
2007.2: 69 Love Songs: A Field Guide (33 1/3) by LD Beghtol
2007.3: Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace
2007.4: Neil Young's Harvest (33 1/3) by Sam Inglis
2007.5: My Bloody Valentine's Loveless (33 1/3) by Mike McGonigal
2007.6: All Downhill From Here by John Sellers
2007.7: Exile on Main Street (33 1/3) by Bill Janovitz
2007.8: The Thirty Years' War by C.V. Wedgewood
2007.9: Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA (33 1/3) by Geoffrey Himes
2007.10: Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark (33 1/3) by Sean Nelson
2007.11: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clark
2007.12: Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling
2007.13: Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling
2007.14: Chuck Klosterman IV
2007.15: Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang
2007.16: Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
2007.17: The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
2007.18: Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures (33 1/3) by Chris Ott
2007.19: The Wizard of Oz by Salman Rushdie
2007.20: Therapy by David Lodge
2007.21: The Sun King by Nancy Mitford
2007.22: Belle & Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister (33 1/3) by Scott Plagenhoef
2007.23: The Commitment by Dan Savage
2007.24: The Art of Fiction by David Lodge
2007.25: Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose
2007.26: The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
2007.27: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
2007.28: City of Glass by Paul Auster
2007.29: Ghosts by Paul Auster
2007.30: Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
2007.31: Thinks... by David Lodge
2007.32: The Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime (33 1/3) by Michael T. Fournier
2007.33: The Byrds' The Notorious Byrd Brothers (33 1/3) by Ric Menck
2007.34: Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation (33 1/3) by Matthew Stearns
2007.35: Molecular Gastronomy by Herve This
2007.36: Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love (33 1/3) by Carl Wilson

Damn, skippy...

2006-12-29T10:45:00.000-06:00

It's been awhile since I last posted. Now, in that time I've lost a computer and a loved one and gained a new job, but I should still try to keep this thing up to date. Also, I should be getting a new computer soon.

Resolved for 2007: Try to keep that book count updated, and don't feel all embarassed when the knitting keeps me from reading for months on end.

My likely first book finished in 2007: Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace, unless I really run through it today, tomorrow, and the next day. Which is possible, but I can always just knit instead of read some more.

Fall music

2006-10-09T10:51:00.000-05:00

I believe it has been established (on this very blog) that I am a big fan of Autumn.. October especially. The leaves turn, I get to start wearing sweaters again, the Booker prize gets awarded (again this year on my birthday!), and I get PRESENTS.

It has also been established that I like the music. So now, now I will contemplate the music I listen to at the start of fall:

The Velvet Underground, all albums: Not sure why. I think I got the Best of VU in the fall when I was 12, so maybe it's just a coding thing. But also, the mellow songs have a pretty melancholy that work well with the Indian Summer.

Van Morrison, Moondance: Well, it references October. And how October is romantic. I adore Van Morrison, and Astral Weeks is all about the spring, so this is more appropriate.

Early Harry Nilsson: I don't know why, I just do.

Wilco, Being There: Again, I code some Wilco albums by season (Summerteeth is Summer, YHF is winter), and this is certainly the autumn listening album for me.

Belle and Sebastian, If You're Feeling Sinister: It just reminds me of emotionally stunted smart kids, which TOTALLY reminds me of the start of the college school year.

Vince Guaraldi, A Charlie Brown Christmas: It is never too early to start listening to "Linus and Lucy".

So... what do you listen to in the autumn?

New tournament!

2006-09-22T10:28:00.000-05:00

Greg and I are running a tournament based off of the Pitchfork Top 200 Songs of the 1960s list. You can find it at the same old place as the last tournament. This time, though, I'm offering all the music up as mp3 downloads. Better get a head start on that, as I'm moving out of my apartment with stolen internet this weekend. So... vote! First round of voting ends on Sunday.

Pitchfork, Day Two

2006-07-31T11:27:00.000-05:00

I am sunburned (because sunscreen just melts off your face in 100 degree heat). My face is puffy. I am tired, probably slightly dehydrated, and I just realized during a meeting at work that my right ear is still ringing slightly.

It was AWESOME.

But please remind me to pick up my earplugs from my apartment before Lolla next weekend.

Acts I completely missed: Liars (one of the few band I felt completely unrepentant about missing for a tamale run); Aesop Rock/Mr. Lif (waiting at the other stage for Mission of Burma); Devendra Banhart (waiting at other stage for Yo La Tengo); Spoon (waiting at other stage for Os Mutantes, drowned out by Diplo’s thumping bass).

Obligatory recommendation: Tapes ‘n’ Tapes were good! Scary promoter guy for Tapes ‘n’ Tapes threatened to kill my pet/harm my weakest family member if I didn’t say that. In a really scary way. Twice!

Swedish bragging: Somehow it was charming how Jens Lekman’s entire band was composed of attractive blondes dressed in white. It’s like Jens was saying, “You know, there are so many pretty women in Sweden that they have to do something else to get noticed. Some of them become talented musicians. There are so many that I can take six of them out of the country and it’s okay.”

Ongoing inquiry: What is the proper pronunciation of Jens Lekman’s first name?

The point at which all concepts of American vs. international and pop v. indie imploded: Sub Pop-signed Cansei Ser Sexy, who are from Sao Paulo and named themselves after a Beyonce quote, played in the Biz 3 tent. Before unleashing some noisy, noisy music on us, the lead singer yelled “Are you ready for this jelly?!” many times over.

Reason my ear are still ringing: Mission of Burma. So loud. So good. So very loud. Not that Yo La Tengo were quiet, either.

Ongoing inquiry: What happened to Roger Miller’s tinnitus? Could it come back?

Best thing I brought along (apart from water): Peppermint wet naps. They burn, but then they cool.

Number of songs YLT played off of previous albums: One that I could recognize, maybe two. And one of the songs I thought I knew from a previous album was actually the advance single released from I Am Not Afraid of You. I do wish they’d played something from Nothing or before. But I did get a setlist.

Amusing bit of continuity from yesterday: A woman was taping onstage before Os Mutantes’ set. At some point, I saw her looking confused as she held a few feathers that were still up there from Man Man’s set on Saturday.

Annoyance: If somebody stays at a stage for five hours to get to the front row for the last two acts of the day, they're not going to step aside for your extremely short daughter/girlfriend/female of indeterminate relationship to you, regarless of being taller than them. Do not call these people rude. It will not make them move. Instead, show up earlier. Or hang out in back! It's easier to see!

Os Mutantes: Awesome. That’s really all I have to say. The Brazilians up front were going insane. It was a little odd that they played the Americanized versions of a lot of their songs (nothing new, all these dated back to Technicolor), but still great. And I want to be their new lead singer (Zella) when I grow up, for she is awesome, and also in better shape than I am now.

Heartwarming Moment: Devendra Banhart, who publicly cites Os Mutantes as one of his biggest influences, got to come up onstage and sing backup on Bat Macumba. Awww.

Pitchfork, Day One

2006-07-30T09:44:00.000-05:00

Hot. Hot hot hot. Sweat laced with sunscreen that isn't going to absorb dripping down my into my cleavage, wet shirt, hot.

And that was at 12:30, a half hour before any of the bands started playing. It pretty much stayed that way until the next-to-the-last band played.

And they only had one Ben & Jerry's truck. What the hell? Intonation had two or three, and Intonation was smart to do that. I'm buying through the fence from the biking helado vendor today. There's no line for him.

But the music was good.

Stage I didn't see today: Biz 3. I'm going to try to at least see CSS today.

Presumed Chicago City Ordinance: All music festivals in Chicago must begin with garage rock, apparently.

Bands I didn't see, and could only kinda hear: Band of Horses (waiting at front of other stage for The Mountain Goats), Destroyer (could hear enough to ID songs, but waiting at front of other stage for Art Brut), Ted Leo (THANK YOU, interminable Ben and Jerry's line).

If the Boredoms were pirates from Philly: They'd be Man Man. Two items of note about Man Man--the A stage was covered with feathers all day because of their shenanigans, and their drummer was sporting some short shorts. In white!

The act you had to be right up front to enjoy: Mountain Goats. I thought the set was amazing (he started out with "Jenny"! He played "Cubs in 5"!), but the further out my friends were from the stage, the lower opinion dipped (from halfway back in the park, it was apparently flat and disappointing). Incidentally, Mountain Goats had the biggest crowd lingering about before the set until later in the day (I'd say not until Futureheads). The crowd in front of Art Brut was wee compared to the MG people.

Act that rocked the park: Art Brut. Hands down, seemed to get the most people moving.

Cutest moment that reinforced my love of John Darnielle: him dancing around at the back of the stage during Art Brut. When lead singer Eddie Argos was walking off stage, John hugged him. Eddie then said something that looked like "I feel like I'm about to die", and John handed him his water bottle.

Proof that I'm blind, as well as deaf: I couldn't distinguish that the Walkmen were using a totally different-looking drummer (actually the old drummer from Walkmen precursors the Recoys), because regular drummer Matt Barrick's wife is having a baby right now.

New genre of music: Jan commented that, having seen them both on the same day, he now saw some similarities between Dan Bejar and David Berman. I said, "What? Hirsute, literate, intelligent rockers of Jewish descent? Are we calling this Talmud Rock now?". If anyone can think of a third person who could be lumped in this group, I'm officially calling it a movement.

Personal highlights: John Darnielle looking at me while singing "I hope we die/I hope we both die" during "No Children"; Jan getting a picture with Eddie Argos and the drummer of Art Brut.

Before the music: Pitchfork

2006-07-28T12:29:00.000-05:00

Acts I know I’ve seen before: Chicago Underground Duo, Mountain Goats, Destroyer (twice), Ted Leo + Pharmacists (2 or 3 times), Walkmen (5 billion times), Glenn Kotche (maybe twice), Diplo (briefly last year), The National.

Band I should have seen by now, but didn’t: Yo La Tengo.

Good idea in theory: Biz 3 Stage. I vaguely want to see a lot of these acts, but most of what I want to see here is at odds with mainstage shows. Notable exceptions exist on Sunday, because of…

The semi-hidden Sunday theme: Brazil! Well, Os Mutantes makes it obvious at the end, but early on the Biz 3 stage there are two contemporary Brazilian acts, Bonde do Role and CSS. Also, Diplo is closing out the Biz 3 Stage, and that boy likes the baile funk.

Strategic quandary, minor: I’ll likely buy a poster or two at Flatstock. I need to figure out to enjoy the rest of the day after I buy it and still leave with the poster unharmed.

Strategic quandary, major: If I want to be at the front of the stage for Os Mutantes, I will have to miss Diplo’s set, which I’d otherwise be inclined to check out, since Spoon was apparently lackluster at Lolla last year. You’d think Texans could deal with performing in the heat.

Things I wish would go away: My dry, nagging cough; the ungodly heat.

Thins I wish would stay: battery power in my cell phone, clothes on my fellow concertgoers.

European folk-pop battle going on in my mind: Jose Gonzales at Intonation vs. Jens Lekman here.

Marked improvement over Intonation: Beverage sponsorship. Fuze is sponsoring, instead of Sparx, which I believe was battery acid cut with corn syrup, caffeine, and elephant testosterone.

Also: Magazine sponsorship. Readymade isn’t my favorite mag ever, but I’d rather see Martha Stewart Monthly sponsor than Vice.

Continued excellence from Intonation: The food. It looks like many of the same tents will be there, which means I can get tamales from Goose Island and corn muffins from Wishbone.

Also: Union Park. It’s really a great setup for festivals like this.

Adjacent acts that make amusing-sounding cage matches:
Chin Up Chin Up vs. Man Man
Band of Horses vs. Mountain Goats
Destroyer vs. Art Brut
(Incidentally, these are 6 consecutive bands from the Saturday main stages)

Acts I’m most looking forward to seeing: Os Mutantes, Yo La Tengo, Silver Jews, Jens Lekman, Mission of Burma

2006-07-28T10:03:00.000-05:00

Books! I am so behind! I will be very brief.

10 Word Book Reviews

33 1/3 books:
Love’s Forever Changes: Gnosticism and Love? The author’s high. Ignores the amazing music.

The Pixies’ Doolittle: Riding in cars with Frank Black. No Kim Deal input.

Bowie’s Low: Brian Eno!Drugs! Iggy Pop! Drugs! Berlin! Drugs! Transvestites! Drugs!

Other books:

Angela Carter, Wise Children: Twins and Shakespeare. Bawdy and fun. I always enjoy Carter.

Joe Meno, The Boy Detective Fails: I saw the play; I read the book. Each is worth doing.

Nelson Algren, Man With the Golden Arm: Old, dirty Chicago. Junkies and drunks suffer intensely, then die.

Nancy Mitford, Madame de Pompadour: French king’s mistress charms, helps start Seven Years War, dies.

The motherfucking results!

2006-06-21T20:05:00.000-05:00

I'm not at work now, so I can use the entire word.

There were many great entries, in many (or three) great languages. Except Spanish. Fuck you, Spanish.

Anyhow!

It was pointed out by Cranky Uncle Greg last night that the winner is not actually a movie, but a miniseries. Well, I watched in all in one sitting, and I want to count it, so I'm counting it. Also, there's apparently a 1937 movie of the name, so nyah, it does count. Drumroll, please, the winner is:

I, Motherfucking Claudius.

See Claudius (Samuel L. Jackson) put the smack down on Nero that bad mother Agrippina! Also, the original includes the line "Is there any man in Rome who has NOT slept with my daughter?", so it pretty much fits already.

Congrats, Susan! Pick the 33 1/3 book of your choice.

Contest on my M.F.'ing blog!

2006-06-07T10:29:00.000-05:00

In honor of this summer’s only true summer blockbuster, Snakes on a Plane, I have been contemplating the following deep, burning question:

What film titles could be most improved by imagining Samuel L. Jackson barking out their title with an interjectory “m.f.’ing” thrown in?

(Sorry about the actual lack of expletives, I’m at work. I work for a church organization. I feel slightly strange typing out expletives multiple times while here.)

My best so far:
Sleepless in M.F.’ing Seattle
Women on the Verge of a M.F.’ing Nervous Breakdown
Four Weddings and a M.F.’ing Funeral

But I think others could do much better than this. Therefore, a contest:

1. Come up with the movie title that could be most improved by imagining Samuel L. Jackson barking out their title with an interjectory “m.f.’ing” thrown in. Actually, come up with as many as you want. If appropriate, any other verb form of the aforementioned curse can be used, also.

2. Post them in my comments! Before, let’s say… 5pm, Friday June 16th. Yeah, that’s after my next paycheck.

3. I will pick my favorite one then, and will award this person the 33 1/3 series book of his or her choice, provided that one can find said book on Amazon.

So yeah, get to it. Tell your friends, tell your enemies, possibly win a book.

Richard Swift and my unwarranted Google dominance

2006-06-07T08:39:00.000-05:00

So I'm apparently the top Google hit for the phrase "I am New York/Tired and Weak/Try to write a book each time I speak". This is a quote from a Richard Swift song, and my dominance seems unwarranted.

To recap my Swiftian adventures: many moons ago, I asked someone who worked at the label with me to pick some new music for me. He picked The Novelist, a very-limited-edition album by someone he vaguely knew through Starflyer 59. The album was very good, I really liked it (think gentler-saner-Rain Dogs-era Waits), tried to talk people into buying it, and heard nothing about Mr. Swift for awhile.

Then, Secretly Canadian re-released that album with another one, he started popping up on PopMatters.com, and he's now touring nationwide.

So yeah, I should not be the top Google hit for the title song from his first album.

Further research:
Richard Swift - The Novelist (MP3)
Richard Swift - Looking Back, I Should Have Been Home More (MP3)

And, randomly, because the domain was my birthday gift to my friend Dan... drumroll please... Stickfigure Hamlet. It is, if possible, more awesome than it sounds.

Bookstores and Unpleasant French Folk

2006-06-06T16:33:00.000-05:00

I had a social old time at the Seminary Co-op this weekend, running into a friend from high school, another volunteer at OTS, and Alice, the GB librarian. Alice reminded me that one of the books I was holding, The Man With the Golden Arm, was the July GB Book Club selection, which may explain why I’ve been vaguely looking for it for several months.

Anyhow, I’ve just started reading it, but while flitting around Wikipedia trying to learn more about Algren, I came across this article by Louis Menand. Man, they were cold! Also, legally adopting your conquests: perhaps not the best idea. It’ll be interesting to see what comes out once the current custodians of their estates, and maybe the ones after that, pass on, and more gets released.

Dear Leslie Feist,

2006-06-05T14:29:00.000-05:00

I recently pilfered your album Let It Die from a friend of mine. I find it pleasant, and look forward to listening to it while doing data analysis, as it will not distract me with interesting melodies or lyrics, and will probably not annoy any of my new co-workers. Thus, it will be played more at the office more than any, say, Fiery Furnaces album ever will. But before you get all high and mighty, I want to set a few things straight:

I think you are the white indie Sade. Which is not as good as being the original Sade, though it does make me want to hear you belt out Sweetest Taboo.

Well, on the other hand, you could just be the result of an experiment where they force-fed the Portishead lady Paxil until she got happy. That’s another option.

Your solo project goes by your last name, which I find a little too “early 70s post-hippie folk-rockers in L.A. doing lots of opiates” for my tastes. I feel you will somehow precipitate the coming of the indie-rock Fleetwood Mac, which I feel is imminent.

Speaking of indie, or not being so, your biggest hit to date is about REAL ESTATE. And WANTING BABIES. And you know what? Living on the second floor without a yard isn’t all that difficult, unless you live in a bad neighborhood and every time you come out of the stairwell you risk being mugged. I’m guessing you don’t.

I saw some video of yours. It was a corny 80s ripoff, or a ripoff of Le Tigre ripping off corny 80s videos. Whichever it was, your version was the weakest.

Your last name is Feist, but you aren’t very feisty.

I don’t think I’d actually pay for your album.

In short, Laura Feist, you seem to have the most successful solo project of any of the BSS/Stars collective folks. I suspect you must be romantically involved with the indie equivalent of Tommy Mattola (Gerald Cosloy?), because Emily Haines should be much, much more successful than you are.

Smoochies,
Ms. L

Edit: Thank you to pretend Leslie Feist for error-checking my blog.

Jenniferian update

2006-06-02T17:20:00.000-05:00

I am still thinking about a potential 27 Jennifers mix. No sequencing yet, but these are the songs that would absolutely be on it:

27 Jennifers – Mike Doughty
Photo Jenny – Belle and Sebastian
Rock ‘N’ Roll – The Velvet Underground
Jenny and the S-Dog – Stephen Malkmus
Jennifer’s Body – Hole
Jennifer Juniper – Donovan
Jenny – Sleater-Kinney
Jenny – Minders
Jenny – Mountain Goats
Jenny from the Block - J. Lo
Jennifer Johnson and Me - Conway Twitty/Bobby Bare/Robert Earl Keen (some version)
Jennifer Save Me - Golden Smog
Jennifer Jupiter - Donovan
Melanie and Jennifer and Melanie – Destroyer
Jenifa Taught Me (Derwin's Revenge) - De La Soul.
Jenny Was a Friend of Mine - Killers
Debra – Beck

Maybes:
Jenny, You're Barely Alive--Rilo Kiley
Jenny--Janis Ian
Poor Jenny--The Everly Brothers
Saga of Jenny orPirate Jenny
Jenny Wren--Paul McCartney
Jennifer Lost the War--the Offspring
Jennifer – Eurythmics
Jennifer Eccles - Hollies
Jen Jen Jenny – Fambooey
"Back o' the Moon" by 10,000 Maniacs
Jennifer – Stella*starr
867-5309 (Jenny) – Tommy Tutone (I'd really rather not)
Baby's Got A Brand New Hairdo - Elvis Costello
Mack The Knife - Frank Sinatra
Jennie Lee – Sam & Dean (Shuggie Otis version exists)
Jenny – Mark Eitzel
Jenny, Jenny – Little Richard
Jennifer She Said – Lloyd Cole

Any thoughts?

Letter meme

2006-05-09T11:25:00.000-05:00

I'm guessing everyone who sees this knows what's up, and has probably already done it. Comment if you want me to give you a letter.

Greg gave me M. I’m only gonna repeat one of his, and it’s the first one. Here we go:

Michigan – Oh, the friends. Oh, the enemies. (And all of those who’ve switched back and forth.) Oh, the asthma attacks. Oh, the free spiced mochas and trash team entries stemming thereof. Oh, the crazy guy jumping me on a bridge. For a state I’ve never inhabited, Michigan and its residents feature prominently in a lot of my stories.

Mother of Pearl – The song I listened to over and over again this morning on the way to work. It was featured on How I Met Your Mother last night, and I impulse-downloaded it. I love early-to-mid Roxy Music. And it references Thus Spake Zarathustra! Does Franz Ferdinand make such references in their poppy dance songs, I ask you? No!

Matador Records – Probably my favorite record label, if somebody made me pick one. I’m not a fan of everything, but they release tons of my favorite bands’ records. In junior high and high school, it was Pavement, Liz Phair, and Yo La Tengo. Now, it’s Belle & Sebastian, New Ps, and… Yo La Tengo.

Maid of Honor – What I’ll be about 54 weeks from now.

MG, aka “The Historian” – Awful boyfriend, great breakup story.

Michael Drew – My only full sibling. We’ve grown a lot closer than we were in the days when he tried to beat my door down with a golf club. Also, due to his arrest record and the fact that he still lives at home, he makes it extremely easy to be the good child.

Mike Mills (bassist for R.E.M., not the photographer) – An early crush. Demonstrated that my weakness for boys with glasses would overcome any aversion I felt about bad teeth.

Mould, Bob (alternately, could be “Minneapolis-St. Paul rock scene”) – I found the only college rock station in my part of Oklahoma by recognizing the lyrics to a Sugar song I’d never actually heard. Also, much of my early alt/indie education came from a friend of my dad who’d grown up in Minneapolis, who taped off large portions of his music collection for me.

Manhattan – The first Woody Allen film I remember watching. It was on late at night on TNT. I was… eleven, twelve? I loved the intro, and then fell asleep.

Mars, Veronica – The titular protagonist of the only TV show I’m really, really, REALLY into right now. Now that pub trivia has been cancelled, I'm seriously debating skipping out on socializing with lovely GB folks to watch the finale live.

I haven't been to a bar that cool since puberty.

2006-04-28T14:43:00.000-05:00

There was a big uproar about some local hipster watering hole on Chicagoist yesterday. It got me to thinking… thinking about how the biker bar I used to go to in Enid, Oklahoma when I was little is way cooler than almost every bar in Chicago. Think… Delilah’s plus Hideout plus bikers minus Bloodshoot Records and actual good booze.

Further evidence:

It was named the Pressure Cooker, but everyone just called it “The Cooker”.

Bikers! And Hogs! Well, mostly Yamahas. But there weren’t enough bikers in Enid to have different bike gangs or anything, so all the bikers hung out, except during the occasional brawl. But I wasn’t ever there in the evenings, which was when the brawls would occur.

My mom dated one of the bikers (nickname: Fish), and he totally blew-dry his hair and used styling product and sang the praises of the courtesy flush with his roommate-brother. In 1988! (Sidenote: this led to a great story about my mom and Fish yelling out a conversation several years later, when Mom and I were on the county green, and Fish was in the county prison.)

ADDAMS FAMILY PINBALL. Accept no substitutes.

Afternoon pool tournaments twice a week, which is why I was there. What, you think I was hanging out at a biker bar by myself at age 8?

It was clearly a pro-kids sort of biker bar. More on that later.

The bartender, who was the son of the owner, always gave me peanuts or chips when I sat at the bar to do my homework.

The bikers always let me retrieve their horseshoes from the pit when I was playing outside.

There was a crank-operated water spigot outside near the horseshoe pit, for when the place got so smoky that it burned my eyes slightly.

On the jukebox: 776 – Where the Streets Have No Name. 777 – All My Exes Live in Texas (That’s Why I Hang My Hat in Tennessee) by George Strait. And the 7 stuck. I once played that song 4 times in a row trying to get U2.

When my DARE instructor talked about how rough the Cooker was in 6th grade, I realized DARE was a load of junk.

Some regular, or some relative of a regular, had a farm nearby. There was a Cooker Cookout there every year. At one of those cookouts, they printed up a bunch of white-with-red-ringer tees with the phrase “Cooker Kid” for the children of all the regulars. I am going to recreate this t-shirt at Strange Cargo or the T-shirt Deli sometime soon.

Catchup!

2006-04-25T16:32:00.000-05:00

I was going to give each book I read a post, but I’m now five books behind, so forget that. Here we go:

The Velvet Underground and Nico by Joe Harvard
Once I got past the truly terrible chemistry metaphor (that seemed to indicate that water could easily be created it from its constituent elements), this was a good read. The best parts were focused on the recording process more than on the band (probably a good bet when the top guy in the band turned into an insufferable jerk). My favorite anecdote is Nico sobbing “I vant to seeng like Bob Deeeeeeee-lahn!”

The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society by Andy Miller
Not quite as good as Fusilli’s Pet Sounds book, but in the same vein (though Pet Sounds focused more on the artist, TKATVGPS more on the recording): really brilliant guy writes really brilliant album that tanks commercially, but is eventually seen as his masterpiece. Unfortunately, this entire process makes guy go really nuts.

What I also enjoyed was the discussion of b-sides and non-album tracks around the time. The Kinks had a ton of these, which is why all the recent re-releases almost double the album size with bonus tracks. This book came out right before the re-releases, so it’s strange to read Miller describing how rare, say, “Wonderboy” is, when I now have it on my iPod.

Candyfreak by Steve Almond
CANDY! CANDY CANDY CANDY CANDY CANDY! I like Candy. I’ve been eating lots of Lake Champlain chocolate since reading this book. Almond does a good job of staying on the right side of the Klosterman line, where his muddled social life comes up, but doesn’t overwhelm the ostensible subject of the book.

Freakonomics by Steves Levitt and Dubner
If you don’t know the basics of this book, you’re probably not reading this. It was fun finally getting to read the entire thing, though.

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
It was a compelling read, and I finished it quickly, but… sigh. It was very well-written and tightly-plotted. I just don’t care about morally suspect upper-middle class (or above) middle-aged British men caught up in very artificially constructed moral conundra. It was so spare. It makes me long for a good fabulist or magical realist book, with all attendant messiness. No more British novels for a little while, at least.

Fiction!

2006-04-12T07:08:00.000-05:00

Book #13: The Bell by Iris Murdoch

Man, could those women with ill-defined moral codes stop it with the troublemaking?

Other than that, Murdoch is great at describing the internal ditherings of indecisive, flawed folks. I like the two books I've read by her, but they both seem to march on in a somewhat grim, predetermined fashion. It somehow does manage to be wickedly funny, though.

Proof that I read books that aren't about music.

2006-04-11T11:21:00.000-05:00

Book #12: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

I almost feel bad writing a SURLY about this. This book covers a year that included multiple hospitalizations for Didion's daughter (Quintana Roo died around the time the book was published); during the first hospitalization, her husband passed away while they were getting ready for dinner.

That being said... you gotta know that a writer whose work is as bleak as Didion's is going to write amazingly on one of the most unrelentingly bleak of topics. And she does, in her way.

Incidentally, if you don't like Didion that much, here's a crazy mean essay about her.

Frankie say read this book.

2006-04-07T17:17:00.000-05:00

Have I mentioned that I’m co-running an Indie Rock Tournament, with the willing/capable/gullible Greg? Because I am.

Next up, bookwise: Simon Reynolds’s Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 It’s really good. Even though it’s a cycle of “band is interesting, signs to label, oh, look at their decline”, it’s good. Even though it ends with Frankie Goes to Hollywood, it’s good. If you have any interest in the music of this era, I'd strongly suggest you check it out.

My one small complaint: he uses the exact same phrasing (roughly “Unlike some punk bands who claimed not to be proficient but who were actually skilled players, really had no clue how to play.”) for two bands, the Slits and the Raincoats. Who… happen to be the most prominent all-female groups in the book. And… Cinderella’s Big Score refuted that (well, at least for the Slits) before this book came out. I’d not mind so much, but there was a weird undercurrent of masculine/hard/phsyical/good and feminine/soft/intellectual/bad that went on in his book on electronic music, Generation Ecstacy And he co-wrote a book about gender and rock and roll! Shouldn’t he notice what he’s doing?

But apart from my gender squabbles… a fine book.

Hermanueticize!

2006-04-06T23:44:00.001-05:00

So, I'm again about 4 books back on keeping up with this thing. In fact, I completed Murmur by J. Niimi before the last couple of bookson this list. What to say about this book... it is a book about the R.E.M. album written by a University of Chicago student. I could emphasize this with a lot of "No, really. REALLY"'s after some of those nouns, but it'd probably be easier to just quote a paragraph from the book (incidentally, about a Wire song) to make the point:

The second half of each chorus ("Squared to it/ Faced to it/ It was not there") seems to imply that the true nature of the thing to which the song continually alludes was eventually uncovered, but that its uncovering was stillborn for the fact that it could still be only communicated through the Leviathan of psuedo-bureau-speak. "It" was never to be revealed, the triumph of its discovery evaporated into clouds of lingua franca, a mutual conspiracy necessary for each party's continued sustenance. Wire turns the expected climax of the chorus into a meditative anticlimax.

So if you'd like to read an entire book like that (and I'm not coming down on either side, just noting that the entire book rolls this way), then get to it.

The Jennifer Project.

2006-03-22T11:22:00.000-06:00

Mike Doughty played “27 Jennifers” during his Old Town show this weekend, and it got me to thinking about the songs that feature Jennifers, Jenny/i/ie/eys, and Jen(n)s. Were there 27 such songs good enough to put on a mixtape? Well, we’re getting there, and you should feel free to help. The ground rules are: song must feature a Jen(nifer) in its title, or such a character must play a prominent role in the song itself. Thus far, we have:

27 Jennifers – Mike Doughty
Photo Jenny – Belle and Sebastian
Rock ‘N’ Roll – The Velvet Underground
Jenny and the S-Dog – Stephen Malkmus
Pop Goes the World – Men Without Hats
Jennifer’s Body – Hole
Jennifer Juniper – Donovan
Jennifer – Stella*starr
Jenny – Sleater-Kinney
867-5309 (Jenny) – Tommy Tutone (sigh)

…and I know I’m forgetting several. So, do you know any?

Long-delayed, and not much substance.

2006-03-08T11:30:00.000-06:00

I have fallen sorely behind in my SURLY-writing. I’ve also fallen behind on reading (thanks, knitting!); so much so that I have only finished 3 books since last posting.

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Kim Cooper (33 1/3 Series)

I didn’t know too much about the background of the album, or the start of Elephant 6, so this was a fine book to read. Isn’t Elephant 6 perhaps deserving of a book just about the collective, though? C’mon, there’s a book about Emo.

Cinderella’s Big Score: Women of the Punk and Indie Underground By Maria Raha.

Lots of fun information, and the introductions to each time period were great overviews of music and feminist issues that were important at each epoch. However, the actual meat of the book, the analyses of lots and lots of bands, were a bit lacking because they were all so short. “Here’s this band! A little history! Why they were important as feminists.”. I realize that a more expansive analysis would have made this quite the tome, but I may have cut out the chapter about Peaches to hear more about Patti Smith.

Underground by Haruki Murakami
Very good. Haunting. Not the best book to read on the El.

I Will Dare

2006-01-25T10:37:00.000-06:00

Book 6: Let it Be (Replacements) by Colin Meloy (33 1/3 Series)

First off, this is not really about the ‘Mats Let It Be. At least not about the making of it. The sooner you let go of that notion, the happier you’ll be with what the book actually is, which is the memories of someone who came to love “college rock” slowly, his tastes shaped by the whims of distant cool friends and relatives, and built by perusing magazines and record stores, looking for the bands he vaguely remembered someone mentioning. The album is a focal point of this process, and a jumping-off point for ruminations on becoming a music fan. Change all the pronouns from masculine to feminine, and you pretty much have my early years, so I adore this book for completely selfish reasons that may not translate well to anyone else. Its portrait of the indie fan as a young man is absolutely dead-on, right down to the embarrassing music he loved before. Oh, and the author is in a pretty good band, too.

There is a small continuity error in the book, but I pointed it out to the editors, who are fixing it in the reprint and now mailing me a free book from the series, so we should forgive them for that.

It's not terrific, but it's competent.

2006-01-20T10:11:00.000-06:00

Book 5: Belle and Sebastian: This is Just a Modern Rock Story by Paul Whitelaw

Things I learned from this book:
-People in bands together should not date.
-The band, their manager, and generally everyone in the book agrees with me that Sinister and Waitress are currently the strongest albums Belle and Sebastian have made.
-Arab Strap was a wee bit peeved about that album title.
-Stuart is a connoisseur of abnormal pants.
-Isobel is the reason Arab Strap and Peasant falter, because Stuart indulged her too much. (See first point.)

Even though the author takes pains to say that maybe Isobel was unfairly blamed for tension within the band, he then goes on to make her sound like a silly twit afraid of travel, sex, adulthood, big crowds, and rock music (oh, and she’s incapable of sustaining an entire solo album). With her memorable quotes including “back when Chris used to bring cakes to practice, that’s when I liked being in the band” and “when you’re on the road, you’re always bent over, rummaging in your suitcase, it can hurt your back”, either Whitelaw is very cruelly sending her up, or she’s an utter twee twit. And speaking of twee, the italicized intros and outros to each chapter are god-awfully precious. Must we keep referring to Stuart Murdoch as “the curious boy”?

Apart from that, though, it provides interesting background on a band that shunned publicity for a long time, and shows the importance of the welfare system for artists in Scotland in the early to mid-90s. Seriously. Everyone was on the dole.

The count-up continues...

2006-01-18T10:24:00.000-06:00

Book 4: Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem

Lethem is very, very clever. Lethem wants to show you how he can combine Raymond Chandler and Philip K. Dick. Lethem will not really explain why animals can talk, or what babyheads are. Lethem will make you smirk about everyone being addicted to their own specialized drug mixes. Lethem will let you tie that to today’s use of psychotropics and will let you feel smart and superior with minimal effort. But Lethem can’t quite make you believe that, over the course of a six year lapse that happens in this book, wallets and trashcans and guns (see the title!) start making their own music.

I actually liked this book, although I found the world Lethem constructed a little too busy (at least by the point of the singing trashcans... why?). Also, due to the lack of description of the “babyheads” (a class of people messed up by genetic engineering), I kept picturing them all as large-scale baby Stueys. Still, it’s a fun, smart read; I could see this being made into a very intelligent first-person mystery video game quite easily.

I'm now reading a lot of books on music, so expect it to get less respectable around here. I'm almost done with the Belle and Sebastian bio, y'all!

Books and Surliness

2006-01-09T11:04:00.000-06:00

I have no clue how much I read throughout the course of a given year. Sure, I’m usually reading something, but I go through periods when I’m reading magazines/websites/cookbooks/craft books, when I can’t find a book to fit my mood and thus thumb through the first 20 pages of every book in the house before I start trolling the used bookstores, and when I get so busy with various other things in my life that my reading rate slows waaaaay down.

Therefore, I’ve decided to count the books I read this calendar year. This is in part inspired by the 50 Book Challenge on LJ (and VCB’s book blog), but I’m not really looking to hit a certain number, just see what number I hit.

Of course, if the number is looking low, this public documentation may compel me to read more to make myself look better. Can’t measure position without affecting momentum, you know.

With this count, I also introduce a new feature: I will write a Short, Unenlightening Review of Literature for this Year (SURLY) for each book I read. I’ve finished three books far, so let’s get started.

Book 1: Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
I admit, I read this almost entirely because there’s a Decemberists song about the author. It’s sweet, though a little slight, and I liked the earlier part of the book, focusing on the oppression of knowing you’re a mediocre child around smart people better than the latter part of the book, where the emotional distance of the family and each person’s escape into mysticism to fill the void was rather relentlessly expounded upon. Also, although I’ve not seen the movie, I kept picturing the parents as Juliette Binoche and Richard Gere. Way too attractive to be these people.

Book 2: The Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’ by Jim Fusilli
This book is like crack to me, as I mentioned in an earlier post. Fusilli covers all of the songs on Pet Sounds, and somehow manages to link Brian Wilson’s sadness to his use of complex harmonies without it sounding like bullshit. It’s a pretty good primer of the Beach Boys up to the recording of Pet Sounds, though it doesn’t get to the part where PAUL MCCARTNEY IS EVIL.

Book 3: After the Quake by Haruki Murakami (partial re-read)

Hey, it’s Haruki Murakami. Hey, it’s emotionally alienated people in weird situations. But this time… there’s a naturally occurring reason! I love Murakami’s short stories (Elephant Vanishes is one of my favorite works of his), and I’ve been meaning to finish this slim volume since I saw the Steppenwolf adaptation of the last two stories. All these stories occur after the Kobe earthquakes, but before the subway attacks later in 1995 (a time during which Murakami lived in America, teaching at Princeton). I’m going to have to pick up his nonfiction work about the latter tragedy, Underground, because his work here is lovely.

"Behind the Music" + books + good music = love

2006-01-05T13:52:00.000-06:00

Oh dear. I’ve just found another cultural product on which I can (and probably will) spend much time and money. I’ve known about it for some time, but I didn’t get addicted until my grandma hooked me up. I’m not even done with the first voyage, but I want to take another trip soon.

Yes, folks, I’ve finally started reading the 33 1/3 series.

I suppose my ardor is pretty predictable. I love books, these are books. I like critically acclaimed music, most of these books are about highly regarded albums and are often written by esteemed music critics or indie musicians. And I love the VH1-style “Behind the Making of the 50 Greatest Albums that Rocked the 90s” shows. (My love for the show on the making of Back In Black by AC/DC exceeds the love I’ve felt for many actual people.) And now, I have books that read like smarter versions of these shows, largely about music I actually really adore. Sweet.

Right now, I’m working through Jim Fusilli’s take on Pet Sounds. It’s a pretty straight-ahead work; a little preface on the author’s tough times and how his life was saved by rock and roll, then right into Brian Wilson’s emotional problems and studio habits. I know other books in the series take different approaches (at least one of the books is a novella), but this was a good starter (not least of all because I adore this album). As smart as she is, though, I suspect my grandmother opted to pick this one over my other recommendations of The Replacements’ Let It Be and Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea because she knows who the Beach Boys are.

Now I just have to stay away from that “Purchase all books in this series!” button on Amazon…

The Adventures of Reading The Adventures of Augie March

2005-11-15T11:51:00.000-06:00

So, I managed to finally buy I’m Not the New Me yesterday, though I should’ve bought it ages ago. I even managed to read the whole 300 pages in about two and a half hours (I forget how quickly I can down lucidly written straight narrative prose, since I don’t tend to read it that much). I greatly enjoyed it, and was looking forward to discussing it with the author (whom I last saw dressed as a character from a V.C. Andrews novel). I then managed to get on the last Purple Line express train instead of a Brown Line, and thus missed the book club anyhow. Oof.

So, the next Gaper’s Block Book Club won’t meet until January 10th, when we’ll be discussing… The Adventures of Augie March. I have attempted to read this book at least four times. Each of these times, because someone I know and whose tastes in literature I greatly respect has declared it to be a favorite book, and a book worth reading. Each of those four times, I stopped short of 100 pages, and then picked up Dom DeLillo, Salman Rushdie, Italo Calvino, and Angela Carter, respectively. My last attempt was awhile ago, but I’m going to finish this time.

I have: 56 days until the next GB Book Club meeting.

My copy of AM is 592 pages long, according to Amazon (I don’t have it with me).

That’s an average of 10.5 pages a day. I am promised that it picks up after a page 45 to page 100ish slump. This seems vaguely doable.

With a support group.

Halloweaning

2005-10-28T12:34:00.000-05:00

As you’ve probably heard me babble about if you know me at all (or have read the back-entries of this blog), I used to work at a costume shop. Two years out from my last Halloween there, I’m starting to not hate the holiday any more. To commemorate this, I give you:

My Top Ten Halloween Season Memories.

10. De-thonging the costumes, and inserting a sheet explaining that thongs can be picked up after purchase, and that these costumes were not returnable.

9. Hey! Let’s let people try on packaged costumes with 17 accessories, which they will then dump on the dressing room floor and leave there. Also, who leaves an empty, half-crushed Diet Coke can hanging from one of the pegs that hold striped tights?

8. Do we have pint blood? Gallon blood? Little blood packets? Gel blood? Thick blood? Blood in medical-style bags? How about the 17 varieties of vampire teeth, ranging in price from $.49 to $49.99?

7. My desk was overlooked by a 12’ tall animatronic monkey (with a huge Santa hat for the holidays), and I knew where the actual human skeleton was in the store. And also, how to knock down the pirate section to escape the basement in the case of a fire.

6. Sometimes, my boss would just drop by my desk to stick a nail up his nose and say hi.

5. I am fine with transvestites. I am significantly less fine with crazy chatty people who happen to be transvestites, and I am really rather not cool at all with crazy chatty people who happen to be transvestites and corner me in the fake breast section of the store for twenty minutes about who hit on them at what bar and when they want to get their surgery, until a coworker notices I’m trapped and pages me over the intercom to the front desk. This person is also the reason I can utter the inquiry, “Have I told you the prosthetic vagina story?” and be serious.

4. Having an office on the second floor directly above the women’s dressing room, and thus being able to yell “THREE COSTUME LIMIT” in my deity voice at the sorority girls who tried to bring in half the store.

3. CAKE MACHETE. (Okay, not Halloween, but I don’t care. CAKE MACHETE.)

2. Ordering from this catalog. Also, locking this catalog in my desk because, while Heather and I were the only people who put together orders from Leg Ave, it was shockingly popular with the menfolk.

1. It’s November 1st. Time to order Santa suits, guys.

In which Ms. P beats up on John Updike.

2005-10-25T16:18:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Bookslut, I recently read an interview with John Updike from the Sun-Times in which he said:

"I also read Salman Rushdie's new book. He's an interesting writer. Not quite a master yet, but he's getting there."

Michael Schaub commented that he'd thought Rushdie was a master since about 20 years ago. I'm inclined to agree. Also, while I like some Updike (the Early Stories collection is wonderful and intimidating in its accomplishment), I also find a great deal of his work painfully dull and indulgent, especially compared to the similarly verbose but far more delightful Rushdie. Also, Rushdie is all of 15 years younger than Updike, so I see no reason for him to play the condescending avuncular role.

Because of this, and because I am a mean person who loves meaningless comparisons, I decided to do a side-by-side comparison of books Updike and Rushdie published around the same time. I realize that Updike began publishing significantly earlier, and I think his earlier works are better, and yeah, it's under 10 novels versus, gee, about five hundred by this point, but you see, I don't really care.

1975: Grimus and A Month of Sundays
Ah, the only matchup where I haven't at least read part of either of the books, I'll admit. I have heard that Grimus is so bad that Rushdie tried to keep it out of print and is embarassed when he sees people reading it, so I'll go ahead and give the nod to Updike here.

1980/81: Midnight's Children and Rabbit is Rich
Right on to the one where I've read both books at least twice. Excellent. This one is also a pretty loaded one--winner of the Super-Booker vs. a Pulitzer prize winner. I suppose I could declare it a tie, but I prefer the grand, sprawling, historical-mythological dazzle to the the minutely-detailed account of a man, his midlife crisis, and his private parts.

1983/84: Shame and Withces of Eastwick
I always found Witches disappointing; despite the three heroines being differentiated, they're all such stereotypes that it just hammers home that Updike can't really write a fully sketched, complex woman. Even the movie, with the Ballsy One, the Uptight One, the Shy One, and the Devil, shows a bit more nuance (and doesn't show the women as ravenous man-eaters to quite the same degree). Shame isn't lacking in violent women (including three furies), but it's also a complex allegory of Pakistan, instead of a thin allegory about the dangers of desire.

1988: The Satanic Verses and S.
I find SV difficult and not one of Rushdie's best works, but I once read 30 pages of S. because someone told me I would hate it. I do. Again, a female protagonist. Again, she is a flaky flake-flake, and is driven to do what she does because the men in her life control her. Sigh.

1990: Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Rabbit at Rest
Okay, there's really only one way this could go. It won the Pulitzer. It was good, though Rabbit Remembered later kinda wrecked it for me. Haroun, like Woody Allen's musical, is one of those slight things that I like but realize is not the greatest thing ever.

1995/96: The Moor's Last Sigh and In the Beauty of the Lilies
Well, at least Updike isn't trying to write a woman protagonist anymore. But up against one of Rushdie's best female characters, the religious fable is a little pale.

1999/2000: The Ground Beneath Her Feet and Gertrude and Claudius
Oh, hey! Look! It's Aurora from Moor's Last Sigh! Only... she's a rock star now? Okay, sure. Not as strong as other Rusdie works, but man, G & C knocked me out better than Ambien whenever I attempted to get through it.

I haven't read either's new works yet, so I won't speak to them. But it's still looking 5-2 Rushdie to me. I think he's gotten there.

Evil (Baking) Genius

2005-10-24T16:57:00.000-05:00

So, the key to getting your friends to watch 5 episodes of Veronica Mars in one Sunday seems to include a couple rounds of yummy warm beverages, followed by increasingly elaborate presentations of Ghirardelli double-chocolate brownies. And apparently people really appreciate a cocoa-rimmed martini glass full of hot chocolate. I need to get some Godiva liqueur, because the only way this would work better is to get them intoxicated. Now that my apartment is clean (…ish), I enjoy having company, especially on rainy Sundays.

In other news, hey, we won F.O.G.H.A.T. I was the second-highest scorer on our team with a whopping 13.33 ppg. Thanks, Craig! Now I just need to ritualistically burn the Desperate Housewives: Dirty Laundry board game I won. I initially stuck Geoff with this, but his exceedingly evident discomfort with this actually spurred some inkling of compassion in me, and I swapped the Law and Order game to him.

Booker!

2005-10-10T17:56:00.000-05:00

You know, I should've prognosticated about the Booker, because I'd seem pretty smart right now. When I heard The Sea had made it to the shortlist, I immediately thought "if a book this obscure got to the shortlist, it's gonna win the prize in an upset". And hey look, it did.

Sucks for Julian Barnes, but Arthur and George isn't his greatest work. They'd be giving it to him to apologize for not giving it to him in the past.

So, time to go pick up a copy of the winner, soon to be emblazoned with a "Winner of the Man Booker Prize" sticker.

The Octoberist

2005-10-07T11:40:00.000-05:00

Greg semi-recently posted about this time of the year being his favorite. I am inclined to agree, though not because it's the start of curling season. So here, in no particular order, is a list of reasons I adore October:

-Seasonally appropriate to sing "Moondance" by Van Morrison!
-Leaves changing colors!
-Uptick in squash/pumpkin ravioli with sage butter served at local restaurants!
-Sweaters! Cute fuzzy SWEATERS!
-My mom's birthday! We speak pleasantly!
-My birthday! My mom and I speak pleasantly and I get presents!
-Chicago International Film Festival!
-Cubs fans stop urinating publicly in my neighborhood!
-Because I'm a knowledge loving nerd... memories of school starting!
-School starting always meant new boys! With whom I could flirt! (New-boy giddiness is right up there with new-car smell for top ephemeral joys.)
-New boys... in sweaters!
-Stupid hat/scarf/mittens combo sets! Preferably with poofballs!
-Opals! (Hey, does your birthstone cause bad luck if someone not born in your month wears it? My birthstone is badass.)
-Seeing your breath mist up for the first time! (This gets old by February, but is really exciting after the summer.)
-Halloween! (I'm finally getting a little excited about this again, after the fun was killed off during two years at a costume shop. I'm still not going to dress up, but I no longer shudder at the thought of the holiday.)

Oh, October. If it weren't for the compulsory pantyhose-wearing at work, you'd be perfect.

Birthday plans.

2005-10-04T23:47:00.000-05:00

Aw, man. The first season of Veronica Mars would come out the day after my birthday. Guess this means no all-night marathon at casa de Geoff after the concert Saturday night. Bummer.

Speaking of the birthday... does anything want to do something around that time? I'm actually going to a book club the night of my birthday (yeah, yeah, shut up), but a late dinner/drink/running around yelling "wooooo, my age is once again divisible by 2" would be fun.

Musical musings

2005-10-04T08:57:00.000-05:00

Now that I've spent a few years plumbing the depths of obscure music, I'm beginning to see a few bands I knew when they were unknown start to get some bigger exposure. Strangely enough, what really hammered this home was the season premiere of The O.C.. (Yes, you can shut up. Thanks for asking!)

Now, I was delighted enough last season when I heard an A.C. Newman song start up, but imagine my surprise when, in the first scene after the credits, Beretta by Manishevitz started playing. Now, this is a really great song, and sounds like a Psychedelic Furs b-side from around the time Pretty in Pink came out; it worked wonderfully in the show. But I know this song because it appears on the Hideout Worker's Comp, which, true to its name, is a compilation of songs by bands whose members work at the eponymous bar. Half the bands on that comp weren't signed; the most famous person on there was the bassist for Wilco, who did a track with his sister. Hearing a track I've been putting on my mixtapes for two years blaring on Fox was a little strange.

Speaking of tracks I've been putting on mixtapes for two years, I believe I've been crowing about Richard Swift's The Novelist for about that long. Roy from Parasol (who may have known Swift through a band they'd both worked with) told me to buy this when it was out in a 600-disc printing from a tiny, tiny label. Fast-forward two years and one vinyl-only single later. All of a sudden, Swift is on Secretly Canadian, is showing up on Salon, Stereogum, PopMatters, and Pitchfork, and goes on his first nationwide tour. He's not exactly showing up on The O.C. yet, but he's a bit of a belated overnight success, in a very independent label sort of way.

Bizarre.

On a similar theme, I have a list of songs for the tournament. They are being vetted by my obscurist friends, and I'll need to find some mainstream friends to go through and point out the bands they've never even heard of before. (Volunteers?) Seeding after that. With any luck, should be up and running by the weekend.

Yet another blog-based music tournament.

2005-09-27T09:51:00.000-05:00

You know what? I’ll say it. I’m lonely, lonely, lonely and bored without the dissing and the petty arguments provided by the Craig-curated, Flaxman-officiated Rolling Stone best songs tournament. It also looks like Flax is going to take a (deserved) break after a (really very well-run, despite my whining) tournament before starting up his next one. And it’s time people get to yell at me for a change. So… Susan suggested, perhaps, a best alterna- or indie-rock songs contest. This sounds lovely to me. How do we feel about this? Nominate songs by emailing me at jleahwill gmail com. Since I am arbitrary ruler in this cold, cruel universe, I will say that we shall not take noms earlier than… the existence of the Velvet Underground. Unless you make a compelling case, and I’m feeling nice. Go with what you consider “indie” or “alterna”; I will certainly allow up to and including U2 and R.E.M., even if the ~~latter~~ former irks Susan. Current idea is a 192 or so tournament, ties possibly broken by me or the majority decision of me, Susan, and Greg. But let’s just nominate now. Rank if you’d like. Unlimited number. Go for it, kids.

ETA: I meant that Susan hates U2, though I suspect that at least four songs in a field of 192 would be from them (something early, something Joshua Tree, something Achtung, All I Want Is You, maybe?).