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Originally uploaded by wordnerdy.

oh my god, you guys! maple view carrboro finally reopened!!!

i had a celebratory waffle cone of party peppermint (deliciously refreshing) on my way home from work.

there's nothing better than ice cream for lunch (unless it's ice cream for dinner?).

in other local food news, the federal-affiliated place in the old temple ball space seems to have opened--i saw a bunch of chairs and things for outdoor seating.

linguistics

i was pleased to hear danielle use the term "biter" on antm last week, as it's my own favorite term for a copycat, as per my childhood (there were plenty of biters to be found at an all-girls school). no idea where the idea of biting meaning copying came from (a quick internet search was inconclusive), but i love it.

here is another winning item from my childhood--one of those rhymes girls yell at camp (or maybe on the playground if boys actually attend their school), or possibly while jump-roping:

*throat clearing*

boys are rotten, made out of cotton!
girls are dandy, made out of candy!

boys go to jupiter, to get more stupider!
girls go to mars, to be SUPERSTARS!!!!!

[ed. note: i like how female empowerment trumps grammatical correctness in this rhyme. no, i'm just kidding, actually i don't.]

behold, my fantastic art skills!

i am already pining for north carolina, and i haven't even left yet!

thank you to everyone who came out for sushi (and to all my other going-away meals, so far). my last trip to waraji! *cries*

i move in one week.

progress report

packing: sucks!

veronica mars finale: what the fuck????

books: 3 started, none finished as of yet.

haircut: short.

driving mix cd!

i needed a new mix cd for my car and made this one last ngiht when i couldn't sleep (damn you, caffeine):

1. jimmy fucking jones--snap my fingers
2. portastatic--white waves
3. the smittens--my girl
4. the essex green--uniform
5. the galactic heroes--back in love
6. the beach boys--god only knows
7. regina hexaphone--the seahorse and the sand dune
8. neko case--the needle has landed
9. os mutantes--ando meio desligado
10. calexico--roka
11. felix--tigerstripes
12. ursula 1000--elektrik boogie
13. the rosebuds--blue bird
14. mates of state--beautiful dreamer
15. hotel lights--another year
16. belle and sebastian--funny little frog
17. jamie lidell--multiply
18. wilson simonal--nao vem que nao tem
19. club 8--sometimes i felt like a loser
20. heavenly--i'm not scared of you

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Originally uploaded by wordnerdy.

to take a break from cleaning and packing, i made red velvet cupcakes for a shindig i'll be attending tonight. well, i TRIED to make red velvet cupcakes. despite usinf twice as much food coloring as last time, they are still not the shade of red i was hoping for.

does anyone have a red velvet recipe that actually comes out red???

of course they still taste good, but really, there's no point without the color!

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Originally uploaded by wordnerdy.

look what i wore today!! pinky got me the hamster shirt from cute overload!!!! (it was a blast from the past with hamster-related presents.)

this picture doesn't do the shirt justice--it's a really nice shade of blue--but it was the only one where i got the hamster in focus and it's just so cuuuuute i had to use this one!

by the way, i had an amazing dinner at elaine's last night with pinky and robin--i especially recommend the strawberry shortcake and its accompanying wine, moscato d'asti (yum yum yum).

tonight: cinco de mayo festivities! tomorrow: lunch w/ sarah and georg! and, packing.

comics!

free comic book day is this saturday and there's a scott pilgrim story in one of 'em!

you all had better not grab it up before i get a chance to get to chapel hill comics!

master's paper

so a few weeks after turning it in, i am finally posting a link to my master's paper. you can open the pdf version from that page, which is worth it because the images are in color. not that i think any of you should read it (i am mostly posting it here so i can find the link again easily).

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Originally uploaded by wordnerdy.

to celebrate being done for the semester (and, i guess, forever!), i baked little cakes! i came across this recipe yesterday and realized that since i had all the ingredients in my kitchen already, i should totally make it. i didn't have the proper-sized cake pan (i don't actually have any cake pans) so i busted out the mini loaf pan. i love tiny cakes. food is so much better when it's cute.

i think these need more powdered sugar on top!

speaking of food, i want to publicly thank the loco pops lady, connie, for her comment on my entry raving about the white chocolate lemon peppermint flavor. she totally hooked a sister up and told me where to get the awesome peppermint sticks! that means soon i will be sitting in the sun with a yummy and refreshing snack. score!

2006 book 63

justin tussing's the best people in the world
yet another book whose first chapter appeared in the new yorker, this story involves a teenage boy who falls in love with his english teacher, and they run off together with the local hobo-type guy, and end up in a house in the middle of nowhere trying to get by. and there are some other weird characters, and it can be a little bleak (vermont winters and all), but it was a pretty good story.

2006 book 62/other stuff

kate decamillo's the tale of despereaux
this won the newbery award a few years ago, but i never really got into it. it had sort of a patronizing tone--i don't think i'd have liked it as a kid either. plus the illustrations were pretty terrible.

other stuff:
i just discovered i have honeysuckle growing in my yard! yum.

also, i just saw the x-men 3 trailer and it looks awesome. it opens after i've moved though--boo.

2006 book 61

elinor lipman's the inn at lake devine
taking place in the 1960s and 70s, the story revolves around a little (jewish) girl's semi-obsession with an inn in vermont that doesn't allow jewish guests. this is a lighter read than that makes it sound--definitely one for the airplane or for killing time reading in the sun (did you guess that those are the circumstances under whcih i read it?). side note for fellow amateur foodies: the main character grows up to be a chef so there are lots of nice scenes involving cooking.

local music news

hotel lights' song "follow through" played over the closing scenes on grey's anatomy just now! awesome! (the negative side of this was that i was too busy singing along to catch all of the dialogue. i was all, "shut up, burke, i'm trying to listen!!")

they have a new ep out, by the way.

bar mitzvah/2006 books 58, 59, 60

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Originally uploaded by wordnerdy.

i was in new york this past weekend for my youngest cousin's bar mitzvah (which was a comedy of errors, as things generally are when the extended family gets together and when my brother is driving on the highway, but which ended in tragedy as the bar mitzvah boy broke his collarbone at hockey tryouts right after the luncheon ended).

anyway, i took some pictures, but as you can see from this one, the bimah is totally backlit by some big-ass windows and they didn't really come out. this is a picture of my dad holding the torah, by the way. most of the other pictures are of relatives preparing for family photos, and of the males of the family playing pool in my cousin's playroom. also be sure and go through the flickr photos to see my sister's cat's abnormally fluffy tail. seriously, it's weird.

fun weekend, plus plane rides meant book-reading time.

maile meloy's liars and saints
it was sort of weird to read this after the other meloy book--definitely they should be read in order--but it was still very engrossing.

jeffrey ford's girl in the glass
historical thriller type thing, as a couple of con men in the 1930s posing as mystics/seers/speakers-to-the-dead get involved in a real-life mystery when one sees the image of a missing girl during one of their seances. an entertaining read, interesting side issues involving the repatriation of mexicans and the popularity of eugenics during those years.

camilla gibb's sweetness in the belly
a young girl's parents are murdered and she ends up being raised in a sufi mosque, never quite fitting into any world she ends up in, trying to make a place for herself, finding love, etc. a really nice read about immigration and the political situation in ethiopia in the 1970s and afterward.

2006 book 57

junot diaz's drown
this is sort of a book of short stories, and sort of a novel told in a collection of short stories--definitely the narrator/characters are the same for most of it, but it's not really clear if the other stories are the same narrator or someone else entirely. either way, they're very powerful, revolving around a young boy whose family emigrates from the dominican republic to new york. i keep seeing diaz mentioned on various book blogs, so maybe he has something else coming out soon . . . i certainly hope so.

on another note, i'm watching the antm clips show special right now, and dang! i cannot watch those girls in those crazy platform stilettos again! i had to run out of the room and write about this book instead.

2006 book 56

maile meloy's a family daughter
apparently this novel--in which a young woman grows up to write a novel that shakes up her family--is a companion to meloy's first novel (i believe the previous novel is the novel written in this one, if that makes any sense), which i haven't read yet, b/c it was checked out, but this one looked really good so i decided not to wait to read it, and i'm glad b/c i liked it a lot, and now it'll sort of be extra-interesting to go back and read the first one, which is sort of the centerpiece of this one. i really like when you read multiple books by an author and uncover other things about their fictional world and its inhabitants--i'm trying to think of examples of what i mean. david mitchell, i guess, and edward eager (some of his books feature the children of his earlier characters and some scenes are told from both perspectives in different books), but otherwise i can't think of any right now. anyway, i did enjoy this a lot and will be seeking out liars and saints.

2006 book 55

j.k. rowling's harry potter and the half-blood prince
sometimes you just have to obey your urge to reread harry potter books for the umpteenth time.

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Originally uploaded by wordnerdy.

yummy sunday breakfast! buttermilk scones (a recipe from this cookbook, which my brother and sister got me for my birthday), fresh from the oven, with strawberries, pumpkin butter, and a tall glass of oj.


now--anyone have any ideas on what to make with all my leftover buttermilk? :)

la maggie la loca

starting today, jaime hernandez is serializing a maggie story in the nytimes. but you don't actually have to buy a paper--it's online in a handy pdf form!

2006 books 53 and 54

ted thompson, ed. noisy outlaws, unfriendly blobs . . .
i read this mcsweeney's anthology aimed at kid/YA readers in bits and pieces, b/c most of the stories weren't that great. the kelly link one was pretty good, and the neil gaiman was ok (i kind of thought it was leading toward cannibalism, and was a little disappointed when it didn't get there), but the extremely long clement freud story sucked, and the rest were pretty mediocre.

mary gordon's pearl
this book was awesome, on the other hand. it starts with a woman, maria, receiving a call from ireland (where her daughter is studying abroad) informing her that her daughter has chained herself to a flagpole in front of the american embassy and is on a hunger strike. the characters of these two women, as well as a close family friend, are explored in great detail as the reader comes to understand how this story played out. meanwhile, the narrative voice--an omniscent unnamed first person type--is pretty great as well.

unrelated: "american dreamz" is really a funny movie. i still have the song in my head 6 hours after it ended. highlights are too numerous to list, but i will point out to the buffy-fans that the dude who played warren is in it, as a hasidic jew. good times!

radio!

after a brief hiatus, i will be back on the air this sunday afternoon from 3-5 pm. i think it will be my LAST SHOW EVER AT WXDU! so, listen, or whatever: 88.7fm or wxdu.org.

2006 book 52

daniel handler's adverbs
i really wanted to like this book. i absolutely adore handler's narrative voice in the lemony snicket books, and was psyched to read his latest novel for adults (not that i've read the other two). but, unfortunately, i really disliked the writing style here. the story itself was problematic for me as well, with characters drifting in and out of little vignette-y scenes (and i'd be all, which one was joe again? or muriel, or whoever), and there were a lot of weird recurring images, like magpies, and volcanoes under san francisco, and people kept saying the same lines of dialogue over and over . . . this has a big ol' "this book is awesome" blurb from dave eggers on the back, so i guess if you like dave eggers, or the extremely annoying and incredibly pretentious latest book by jonathan safran foer, you might like this too. however, i did not like it at all. by the time he started namedropping bands like the clientele (who, to clarify, i love, and felt that their appearance in this novel unfairly maligned them) in the final chapter, i was practically rolling my eyes (whcih made reading hard). *shakes fist at daniel handler*

props to the dan clowes cover though.

white chocolate lemon peppermint

is my new favorite flavor at locopops. it tastes just like when i was a kid and my school had carnivals and they would always have half-a-lemon with one of those soft peppermint sticks stuck into it and you'd suck the lemon juice up through the peppermint stick like a straw.

i tried to recreate this experience a couple years ago with some soft peppermint sticks i found at southern season, but they were too soft and sort of dissolved.

thank you, locopops, for encapsulating what may be my favorite taste sensation of all time in handy popsicle form. i have never used the term "sublime" to describe a popsicle before, but today, that changed.

2006 book 51

allegra goodman's intuition
this novel is a fair departure from goodman's earlier works (which, if i recall correctly--and i probably don't--focus on jews in the catskills, wacky families, etc). its major characters are the scientists and postdocs working in a cancer research facility in boston in the mid-80s (and, personal history note: as someone who at the tender age of 14-15 worked in such a lab, she has the culture down pretty well--not that any of the bigwigs or postdocs had much time for a high school freshman trying desperately not to butcher fruit-fly larvae). when one failing postdoc suddenly gets amazing, cancer-curing results, a colleague becomes suspicious of his claims. drama ensues! anyway, i liked this book a lot, and goodman's characters are all very well-written, even the more minor ones. i was especially fond of the three daughters of one of the lab-running bigwigs.

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Originally uploaded by wordnerdy.

in one month, i will be living in a cute little yellow house!

a few more pictures are at flickr--check out the awesome magenta walls of one room! they are not that bright in real life but it didn't seem like a good time to be messin' around with flash settings.

2006 books 46, 47, 48, 49, 50

i read five and a half books in under 40 hours this weekend (i also slept, valiantly tried to find passover-kosher food in a strange city on easter, drove around in circles, and found a place to live), which is definitely some sort of personal best. at least i think so.

brief summaries:

irene nemirovsky's suite francaise
the stupid bull's head bookstore files this under judaica instead of under fiction, even thoguh none of the characters are jewish and the subject matter doesn't really relate to anything jewish. this is a whole new level of ghetto-ization of authors. anyway, since the author has actually gotten more press than the story, here is the deal: nemirovsky, a ukrainian-born jew who spent most of her life in france as a well-known author, died in a concentration camp in 1942. her daughters, in hiding, had a suitcase of her writings, but never had the heart to read what they presumed were her diaries. it turns out she had planned a five-part novel about WWII, and had managed to write the first two parts before being arrested. of course it was shipped off to a publisher, became a bestseller, was translated, etc.

so, the story? actually, pretty amazing--especially considering that she was writing a novel of occupied france during the occupation. the last parts take place in 1940-1, and she was arrested in summer 1942. the story revolves around a good-sized cast of characters who all sort of connect to each other in different ways as france loses its battles and german soldiers move in. intriguingly, the publishers have chosen to add several appendices, one of which contains nemirovsky's notes/plans for the suite of novels, and another of which prints letters her husband wrote trying to find her after her arrest (before he, too, was taken away). very moving on the whole, but the novel would stand on its own without all the background.

anyway, if you're in chapel hill adn want to buy this, don't bother looking in the, you know, fiction and literature section.

dean bakapoulos' please don't come back from the moon
in a suburb of detroit, all the husband and fathers suddenly leave and their families are left to deal with the aftermath. this has a profound effect on their sons, who grow up with the same shadows over them. um, i'm tired and don't feel like summarizing the whole plot right now. this was a good book.

ellen raskin's the westing game
one of my all-time favorite books has recently been reissued as part of the puffin modern classics series. yay!!!! actually i think this is the only raskin book that is still in print (such a frickin' shame), but whatever, it has a nice new cover and compact size now. man, i loooove this book (thoguh as always found some of the writing at the end a little awkward). anyway, what happens when an eccentric old rich guy brings 16 disparate folks together in a weird game to inherit his estate? good times, that's what. personal history time: my 6th grade english class read this and we had to design book covers as an assignment, and i remember being livid that several unimaginative little girls gave away the lynchpin of the plot in their designs. the fools!! the jerks!! (um. anyway.)

johanna sinisalo's troll: a love story
translated from the finnish, this story involves a young photographer who brings home a sick and weak troll cub. gradually his obsession with the troll causes mad problems, yo. it's told through several perspectives and through (presumably fake) book excerpts. a dark, but enjoyable, story.

miriam toews' a boy of good breeding
i like a book that deals with small town canada. in this case, the mayor of the town is obsessed with being the smallest town in canada. meanwhile you have your whole small town family stuff going on, centering on a young woman named knute (with the equally improbably-named daughter summer feelin') who returns to the town to help care for her ailing father. highly recommended. (confidential to minty: one minor character bears your name!)

2006 book 45

david mitchell's black swan green
so, david mitchell is like this amazing author who was totally robbed when that alan hollinghurst book won the booker a couple years back. and this is his new book! it doesn't go for the slightly surreal stories and complicated structure of his last book--it's the story of a thirteen-year-old british kid (and there is lots of wacky british slang) growing up and stuff in 1982. one of the things i like best about mitchell is that, through all of his books, he seems to be developing his own world--there are lots of connections between each of his novels, and this one is no different (some of the main characters in cloud atlas are mentioned here, briefly). ok, so i love mitchell and it's no surprise that i loved this book. however, there are a few things that rang false, like the main character thinking that no one will ever forget the falklands war! i mean, hell, i only know that war happened b/c i have a bunch of old doonesbury books, and i'm not sure i knew argentina played a part at all. and through the whole thing i was sort of like, "what happened to this plotline??" but the end made pretty much everything ok for me.

plus, neko case is tonight, whcih makes everything extra-ok!

WOOHOOOOOOO

guess who just submitted her master's paper? that's right, ME!!!! (and lots of my classmates.)

celebrations will include: going out to lunch, reading more david mitchell, and making a tzimmes for the seder tongiht. possibly i will also watch netflixed dvds whilst peeling two pounds of sweet potatoes.

anyway, happy passover. :)

april 11th!!!

sometime today, these two books will be in my hot little hands!

FINALLY!!!!!

ham on the street

i just want to give some props to this food network show, b/c it's hilarious! earlier this weekend i caught a bit where the host dude was making people guess what type of meat their hot dogs were made out of (if they guessed wrong, they had to do a shot of the hot dog water--gross!) and tongiht he's focusing on guilty pleasures and deep frying a variety of food items. i mean, you have your more traditional deep-friend oreos, but this guy deep fried cheesecake, a hot dog in a bun, some macaroni and cheese . . . and then convinced a dinerful of patrons to taste-test (unsurprisingly, things are awesome when deep-fried).

he also hung out in a mall eating a tube of cookie dough, and now he's making tiramisu out of a twinkie--my kind of show. :)

note that more food/baking posts will be appearing eventually--my sibs got me some AWESOME cookbooks for my birthday!--once the school stress lessens a bit.

2006 book 44

angela davis-gardner's plum wine
here is the brief version: a young woman from raleigh (the author is a professor at nc state) ends up in japan as an english professor. a colleague and friend dies suddenly, leaving the north carolinian a chest of homemade plum wine, each bottle wrapped in papers revealed to be diary entries. enlisting the help of a local potter and friend of the deceased, who like her was a survivor of hiroshima, the american begins translating these entries. blah blah self-discovery, love affair, blah. i was really into it for like the first half, and then it got a little too sentimental or something, and the end was kind of really trite.

cnn is weird

birthday part 2!

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Originally uploaded by wordnerdy.

well, that was a pretty sweet birthday. thanks to everyone for coming out for drinks at lantern, and thanks especially to pinky for giving me a tiara to wear (which unfortunately doesn't show up in this picture--do my alcohol-flushed cheeks make up for it?).

sadly, lantern stopped serving food before we got a chance to get dessert, but since i got to gawk at merge folks and superchunk and dinosaur jr. over dinner with kate and chris, i guess it's ok. celebrities make birthdays more fun! especially when i am telling them it's my birthday and i have a tiara on!

there are a few other pictures at flickr--mostly i forgot to take pictures today though, so there aren't many. i think this one pretty much says it all! i am shocked to be 27.

birthday!!

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Originally uploaded by wordnerdy.

today this little cowgirl is twenty-freaking-seven years old! holy crap!

me and some friends will be at lantern at nine for drinks and desserts, if you want to help me celebrate my oldness. :) (then it's right back to master's-paper-writing for me!)

unrelated: hooray for gray horses getting a feature in salon! i love hope larson. (one note: although she lives in canada with her husband, bryan lee o'malley [of scott pilgrim fame], larson is actually from north carolina.)

what a great day!!


___
(me and my brother, halloween 1982)

2006 book 43

paul auster's brooklyn follies
i read this entire novel tongiht by flashlight--there's not much else to do when the power goes out and you just can't get past that one fortress in super mario 3 on your gameboy (seriously, i have lost at least 70 lives failing to defeat that one koopa). anyway, this book was ok. it starts off sort of meh, with an aging dude in remission from lung cancer who moves to brooklyn, ostensibly to die (this never ever becomes relevant to the plot again, by the way). things pick up a little as the cast of characters suddenly explodes with zany relatives and/or new yorkers, but the story takes a nosedive down as it approaches the end, which takes place just before 9/11 and which is super lame for that and a variety of other reasons. this story was definitely not worth the crick in my neck from propping a flashlight on my shoulder, and it isn't worth all the dead flashlight batteries either.

at least my power just came back on, after 5 hours! woo!

2006 book 42

teru miyamoto's kinshu: autumn brocade
recently translated from the japanese, this novel is written entirely in letters between a couple who divorced ten years before the current story after the husband has an affair that ended tragically. they encounter one another on a train in the middle of nowhere and a correspondence ensues, during whihc their past and present stories are told. i really liked this book--it's sort of quiet and beautiful (or maybe that's just the cover i'm thinking of, as i glance down at it--either way, i'd recommend it).

dude

oh man, i just got a telemarketing call form the durham-chapel hill jewish federation, and i have never gotten such a contemptible call in my life. they are pimping out twelve year olds to do their fundraising calls. that just sucks! i mean, it's jsut mean to have a cute little kid call and ask for support. if the cute little kid hadn't started off asking for a hundred bucks, i may have been tempted, but instead i just laughed.

low blow, durham-chapel hill jewish federation.

i am glad i am moving to another state, where hopefully the local jewish groups don't play so dirtily.

in other jewish news, the kroger over in that shopping center on 15-501 where the dsw is has a pretty awesome passover selection. i got all sorts of snacks and goodies, althoguh i decided against the passover pizza mix (powdered pizza sauce seemed freaky).

geekery

the fact that i've missed both destroyer and the rosebuds this week to stay home and try to write is ALMOST made up for by the fact that i get to read astonishing x-men for my paper.

2006 book 41

dara horn's the world to come
i devoured the majority of this book yesterday over lunch and between classes. it's a great novel, very informed by yiddish folklore and mythology. the plot centers on a young man who attends an exhibition of marc chagall paintings and ends up stealing one that had once belonged to his family. the story weaves back and forth in time as the young man's family's story--and the story of the painting--is told. cameos by chagall and yiddish author der nister are not to be missed. anyway, i really really liked this--i had some mixed feelings about the ending, but can recommend this book without hesitation.

springtime mix

good driving weather calls for new mix cds! here is the latest product of my frenzied mind:

1. essex green--sin city
2. hotel lights--let me be the one
3. eric bachmann--every word means no
4. bertrand burgalat--gris metal
5. britta phillips & dean wareham--night nurse
6. ohio express--chewy, chewy
7. mates of state--like u crazy
8. bangkok impact--the pianist & the reporter
9. ryuichi sakamoto--desafinado
10. st. etienne--dream lover
11. travis biggs--tibetan serenity
12. delroy wilson--funky broadway
13. the showmen--action
14. belle & sebastian--song for sunshine
15. the temptations and diana ross & the supremes--the weight
16. bjorn olsson--juli
17. irving fields trio--mazeltov merengue
18. ursula 1000--got cha
19. herb alpert & the tijuana brass and ozomatli--whipped cream (anthony marinelli remix)
20. blockhead--you've got maelstrom


for a procrastinator, i'm pretty productive!

annual plea to the locals

passover is coming up soon--if you happen to spot the passover cake mix with the pudding in it (it's "extra moist"!) at your supermarket, please let me know! i am willing to drive far distances for the actually edible kind of cake. :)

it's carrboro

local bloggers/orange politics readers have no doubt seen this already, but i have to put a link to billy sugarfix's and brian risk's awesome, hilarious, and truly accurate song it's carrboro (primarily b/c my own street gets a shoutout!).

comsumer lust

sarah dyer mentioned these on her blog several months ago, and i've been obsessed with them ever since. i can't quite justify spending 20-40 dollars on adorable tiny food minatures, but my inner nostalgic child really wishes i'd known about these when i was eight or ten and the best thing ever was my three-story dollhouse with working electricity. i could never find good food things to put on their tiny kitchen table. but those were its glory days, before our now-ancient cat discovered she could squeeze into the house through the window that was always coming off and made it one of her favorite hiding spots. it was like some crazy-ass horror movie, you know--just picture a giant kitten menacing all the little dollhouse people and their little china plates. it wasn't pretty.

sometimes i think about restoring that dollhouse--although the little bit of me that's at all realistic and common-sensical knows that it probably will live in my childhood bedroom forever, b/c how would you transport a behemoth dollhouse like that?

anyway, tiny food minatures are cool.

(confidential to my parents: i bet that awesome cute store in shadyside has the perfect little doodads to toss into a birthday package . . . haha, don't worry about it. i also accept kitchen gadgets. no, seriously, i'm just being silly, don't worry about it.)

2006 book 40

tahar ben jelloun's this blinding absence of light
based on a true story, this novel is narrated by salim, who survived 20 years in an underground prison. he is imprisoned along with several other soldiers after a failed attempt at a coup against king hassan II of morocco. the prisoners are barely given enough food to be kept alive and the appalling conditions lead to death and madness for most of them. obviously, this is an extremely dark story, but ben jelloun, winner of numerous literary prizes in france and north africa, tells it compassionately and powerfully.

pop culture round-up

hooray for mates of state! this was my 4th or 5th time seeing them and they always put on a fun show--they are awesome at busting out the old hits. they didn't play anything off their first album (to keith's and my disappointment) but i'm not sure the leggings-clad, pompadoured kids in the audience would have recognized those anyway.
openers were ben davis (we missed most of that set, such a shame) and maria taylor from azure ray (totally boring--kate a. and i said lots of hilariously bitchy things during the performance, but i am not ready to be quite such a bitch in this public forum).

on an unrelated note: out of curiosity, are there any movies that you awlays get sucked into and have to watch when you encounter them on cable? for me, these movies are the princess bride and the sandlot, both have which have been on tv a fair amount lately. (i always cry at the end of the sandlot, don't ask me why.)

also, why did they make a sequel to the sandlot? i saw one scene of this cinematic masterpiece and it was almost line-for-line a scene from the original. good job, abc family. your sequels suck!! (don't even get me started on "the cutting edge 2".)

also, why does adult swim change their schedule every three weeks? i liked being able to watch venture brothers at 11 pm instead of falling asleep before it airs at 12:30. venture brothers is totally the best cartoon they have, so they should keep it in the cushy early slots.

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slightly rainy saturdays are the perfect time to bake bread (freshly-aked bread makes being stuck at home writing more bearable too!).

this is sephardic pumpkin challah--it's not like pumpkin bread, it's challah with a hint of pumpkiny goodness. and i can vouch for the pumpkiny goodness--as you can see, i had a little slice from the loaf on the right (this came out of the oven a couple hours ago, but my camera battery was dead and i had to wait for it to recharge). i'm looking forward to a dinner of fresh challah, apples, and yummy farmer's market cheese. brain food!!

now, back to six feet under on dvd! i mean, writing more of my master's paper. *looks around guiltily*

friday

oh my gosh, no new content in three days? i apologize profusely, my three readers, for forsaking you. however, i've been busy master's-papering and working and trying to figure out where to live in florida, whcih hasn't left much time for reading or baking or pondering how soon i turn 27 or whatever it is i usually post about. i was going to make the 33 1/3 book on abba gold the music library book of the week, but i discovered two stupid grammatical errors in one paragraph of the introduction, and didn't think i could wholly endorse it.

so, here, read all about michael berube's experiences in the triangle while he does a stint at the national humanities center. his blog is definitely something i can wholly endorse, and it may even be more entertaining than abba.

2006 book 39

savyon liebrecht's a good place for the night
liebrecht is one of my favorite israeli authors, so i was quite pleased to discover a new book of her short stories in translation. i actually hesitate a little about calling them short stories--most of them are around 50 pages, which is just the perfect length. each story is named for a location and each takes place in a different city, except for the final, titular story, which is a post-apocalyptic nightmare of sorts. for me, the last two stories in the collection--also the most experimental--were the weakest, but the first five had me enthralled. they deal mainly with love and loss and home and place and are all quite lovely.

spring

i love when lush goes seasonal!

i am glad to know that i will probably never grow out of my love of bunnies.

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i got another haircut (and color) recently, so in the interests of posterity and narcissism, here is a picture. excuse the attire--it was yoga day!

tongiht i'm heading to 506 to see schooner and camera obscura (and to see if the merge kids have recovered from sxsw!)--should be an awesome time.

2006 book 38

james morrow's the last witchfinder
i was challenged by my college friend and fellow morrow fan andy to make this last a whole day, but c'mon! it's morrow's first book in SEVEN YEARS. i had to read it all in one go! (and considering how vividly i remember going with andy's college roommate joe to get morrow's last book at svoboda's [which closed down in 2000, when i was studying abroad] the day he was doing a signing--well, i feel old now.) anyway, for those of you who are unfamiliar with morrow (he has a large fan base at penn state, since he lives in state college, but no one i've met here has heard of him), he's probably best known for his towing jehovah trilogy, which centers on what happens when god dies and his 5-mile-long body falls to earth. my favorite book of his, though, was only begotten daughter, which is about god having a daughter. so obviously morrow has a bent toward religious themes which i have always found fascinating.

his most recent work takes place in the good ol' witchhunting days and spans the globe from england to massachusetts to various other places. now, i will warn prospective readers that there are a few conceits you have to be willing to swallow, not least the fact that the narrator of the novel is a book. also, there's some loose characterizations of historical figures (ben franklin and abigail williams figure most prominently, but there are actual historical personages throughout). still, this story, which revolves around a girl, the daughter of a witchhunter, who witnesses her beloved aunt burned at the stake and vows to get the witchcraft act repealed, is an engrossing one. she has a very eventful life along the way--which sometimes required more than a little suspension of disbelief--but the story itself is a great one and well worth reading. i'm not the only one who thinks so; the book received starred reviews from both publishers' weekly and booklist.

in other news: i DON'T recommend the french movie cache.

2006 book 37

yuyun li's a thousand years of good prayers
this book of short stories was excellent. it leads off with one that appeared in the new yorker a few years ago, which was a pleasure to reread, and ends with the title story, whcih was probably my favorite, and the stories in between take place in china and/or america and feature vivid characters and poignant narratives. i definitely recommend this.

tattling

sometimes there are hazards to being a wordnerd. in this case, it was fielding a late-night phone call (it was not "like 11, you should be awake!" it was midnight) from an inebriated relative wanting to know the author of dr jekyll and mr hyde. in my groggy, still asleep state, i mumbled "robert louis stevenson? who is this?" thinking maybe it was some sort of insane prank call (it wasn't, it was just my brother). after the being-woken-up-by-the-phone adrenaline wore off, i lay in bed wondering if i was right about the author, and maybe i should just get up to check on amazon . . . so it took a little while to fall back to sleep.

i am pleased to note that, upon a first-thing-in-the-morning glance, i was right! i don't know how i pulled that one out of my sleep-soaked brain, but there you go. phil, i hope it helped with whatever you were doing--and at midnight, shouldn't you have been in bed? :)

purim

sorry, folks, it turns out i just don't have time to make/distribute hamentashen/mashloach manot this year . . . i hope you all have a happy purim anyway! have a drink for me, please. :)

japanese junk food taste test!

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those of you have have been in chapel hill comics lately (or who read their blog) already know that they now stock japanese snack food treat things. i was thrilled at the wide selection when i went to pick up some comics and decided to try these three things.

the ice cream things seriously taste just like ice cream, if ice cream was dry. it's like magic. i'm not really into the strawberry flavor (i don't like strawberry ice cream either), but the vanilla and chocolate are awesome. weird, but awesome.

the pucca goldfishy things are YUMMMMMY. they're pretezely and chocolatey and basically my ideal snack food.

the koala things are similar to the goldfish, but instead of having a pretzely exterior, they have a somewhat bland cookie. however, those cookies are decorated with a variety of cute koala pictures (just like on the box) which does award them bonus points. my favorite is the koala dressed like a pharoah. i love cute food! these also come with a strawberry filling, but i just got the chocolate b/c i'm sort of a purist.

verdict: the fishies win, but all are edible!

2006 book 36

kate dicamillo's the miraculous journey of edward tulane
i debated whether or not to count this as a book--it's a kid's book, with illustrations and all--but since it hits page 195 (tecnhically), i figure it's long enough to count. i would have written about it even if it was shorter though, b/c i loooved it! not just b/c the main character is a toy rabbit (made out of fancy china) and i was a kid who was surrounded by toy rabbits (the titular edward reminded me of my own beloved colonel buttons), but b/c it seriously made me bawl. more than once. i am going to venture to say that it's the best kid's book i've read since sharon creech's love that dog, which also makes me bawl. anyway, the story isn't wholly spectacular--it's about this snotty toy rabbit who ends up going overboard and has lots of life experiences (or whatever) and learns to love, and the ending is inevitable--but still, there i was bawling. the illustrations are really nice too, by the way, if you care about that sort of thing.

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check it out, i made actual challah!

obviously my braiding technique still needs work, but it smells AMAZING so i won't complain too much about appearances. :)

(this was made from a recipe i adapted from this book, which has lots of other recipes i'm psyched to try!)

radio

i'm on the air tomorrow from 3-5 pm! 88.7fm/wxdu.org!

2006 book 35

samantha hunt's the seas
this book has a fairly melancholy air--it's about a young girl in a tiny northern town by the ocean whose father disappeared when she was eight, and she believes she's a mermaid, and she is crazy in love with an older man who may or may not reciprocate her feelings. it's pretty bleak for the first part but the second delves into a little bit of magic and fairy tale, which balances out the bleakness nicely. i really liked this book and will recommend it with the caveat that if you are feeling lonely, you should save this book for another day b/c much of it will make you feel lonelier.

2006 book 34

jeffrey moore's the memory artists
this extremely engaging novel tells the story of noel, a synaesthete who is struggling to care for his alzheimer's-stricken mother. also involved in the story is a medley of lovingly drawn characters noel encounters through a neurologist's office. i found the (somewhat bittersweet) ending to be a little pat, but i liked it despite that, b/c i was so drawn to these characters. really, i read this entire book today, between classes and over lunch--that's how sucked into it i was! i definitely recommend it.

a public space

issue one of a public space came in the mail yesterday, and let me tell you all about how awesome it is. it has some great essays from literary luminaries like marilynne robinson (on the importance of fiction), less-great essays from literary luminaries like rick moody (on the whole james frey/jt leroy thing--it never ends!--but from the POV of someone who's written a memoir, which is actually annoying b/c he's all "when i exaggerated one thing for effect i felt guilty and took it out"), lots of great fiction (the kelly link story about superheroes was a highlight, but they were all excellent), and a "focus on japan" featuring some newly-translated short stories as well as interviews with japanese translators of american fiction (including haruku murakami, whose new book of short stories is finally coming out this year, apparently). there's also some art essay about mining and some poems, but i mostly skipped over that stuff.

so anyway, you all should subscribe or at least borrow my copy.

moving

although i've known for a few days--and several of you have known as well--i figured i'd announce it here, since it will be official in less than an hour:

i'm moving to florida!!! b/c i got a job!!!

i am superexcited about this and am busy thinking of all the things i need to do (like buying furniture--i need a new dresser, since mine broke again and i don't want it to try and kill me anymore) and all the fun things in my future (like puppies! and an income!), and i am trying not to think of all the amazing people and place and everything i will be leaving behind.

i mean, i'm not moving for a couple months or anything, but i thought i'd share.

2006 book 33

camilla gibb's mouthing the words
i'm going to start by noting that i thought this book was really good--it was really well-written and the characters were quite realistically drawn. however, i think it's weird that none of the reviews i read or the book jacket mentions that the narrator's problems are all caused by sexual abuse. i mean, that's not giving anything away--it's mentioned pretty early on in the book--and it can be hard to read. i just found it odd that no one seemed to be able to say anything about that. certainly it's not described at length, but it is the emotional lynchpin of the story.

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i know, i know--none of you care about my bread-baking. but i like having fresh bread around the apartment (and in my lunchbox!) and i also like having a place to keep track of my baking. this is some great-smelling herb-garlic bread--i finally got to use some of the basil i've been growing on my windowsill. look how shiny and golden it is! yum!

2006 book 32

lois lowry's the messenger
this is the third book in lowry's post-apocalyptic fantasy world set of books (after the giver and gathering blue), and it's also the weakest. it resolves the ambiguous ending of the giver, which i didn't really see as a good thing, and it's also less fleshed out than the other two. its characters don't feel as solid and its plot is pretty transparent. i mean, i know it's a YA book, but i expect a lot from lowry. her book autumn street gave me terrible nightmares when i was a kid, and yet i kept rereading it anyway. this book doesn't have anywhere near that kind of power.

2006 book 31

mary gaitskill's veronica
i kept reading good things about this book, but whenever i picked it up it just didn't seem that interesting. it turns out you should stick to your first impressions, b/c it turned out to actually not be interesting. it's about a woman who was once a model who was friends with a woman with AIDS. that's about it. i expected something a little more thrilling from the woman who wrote the story secretary is based on, but oh well.

2006 book 30

noel streatfeild's ballet shoes
my nostalgia kick continues with ballet shoes, streatfeild's first--and arguably best--children's book (not that the rest aren't good, just some of them seem formulaic after this one). anyway, this story, originally published in 1936, revolves around three adopted sisters. when their family falls into a financial decline, the girls are enrolled in a performing arts academy, so they can earn money as child actors and dancers. the eldest, pauline, is a fine actress, and little posy was born to dance, but the middle girl, petrova, longs to be a pilot but feels obliged to perform to earn money for the family. such drama! actually, i love these characters--petrova was always my favorite, probably b/c i hated ballet classes too--and their story is a sweet and heartwarming one. great reading for those chilly days when it's better to be curled up on the couch underneath a hand-knitted afghan.

*swoon*

i want to be ira glass when i grow up!! (actually, i think my biggest regret is that i'm too old to be ira glass when i grow up.)

anyway, he is an amazing speaker. props to whoever at memorial hall arranged that show, and i hope you guys recorded it, b/c selling it would be very lucrative for you! i know i'd buy it.

i wish this is what elections were based on

(actual cnn poll, right now)

radio radio

i'm back on the air (after two weeks off!) this sunday, 3-5 pm, 88.7fm/wxdu.org. so listen, y'all!

in other music news, i just love my ipod. like passionately love it. i would marry it if i could, after the awesome selection it played for me this morning. <3<3

in other news entirely, this is my favorite thing of the day. it tastes good AND tells my fortune!

2006 book 29

scott simon's pretty birds
i haven't been reading much over the past week--i thought it was b/c i was sick, and not in the mood for books, but it turned out that i just hadn't found a good book to read. and let me tell you, guys, this book is good. simon--npr's weekend edition's scott simon, by the way, writing his first novel--tells an extremely moving story of sarajevo in 1992. now, b/c i was just a middle-schooler in 1992, i never really understood what was happening in sarajevo, but this story makes the tragic, harrowing situation of ethnic cleansing very clear. the novel revolves around a teenaged girl, formerly a basketball star, and currently a sniper for the muslim side. i don't want to say too much more than that, b/c i'm recommending this book to everyone and think you should let the story unfold for yourself. but as a note to myself, i'm going to say that this is an early front-runner for one of my top ten books of the year.

ps: unrelated, but i meant to say this a couple days ago. i'm really enjoying the early start of daffodil season! such an unexpected bright spot on those cold rainy days.

animus

i picked up this beautiful little pop-up book at chapel hill comics today--it had been on my amazon wishlist and i was thrilled to come across it on the way home--and i cannot recommend it enough. seriously. it's beautiful.

adventures in foodstuffs

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i made bread again! i actually wanted to try making challah, but the recipe i had (from temple sinai's "incredible edibles" cookbook, circa 1988) just kept being too sticky, no matter how much flour i added! it came out ok as a big loaf and a mini-me loaf, and my apartment smells SO GOOD OH MY GOD.

in other awesome food news, i finally ran across some girl scouts today and stocked up on cookies, so now my coworkers and library patrons won't have to listen to my "where are the girl scouts?!???? i need some cookies!!! i can't believe i went home sick the day they were on campus" rant again (at least until next year).

congrats!!!!!

huge congrats to everyone who was involved in thon* this year!!!! i'm hearing reports that you guys raised a whopping and record-breaking $4,214,749.18!! AMAZING. i am so proud of all of you!!!

(i can't find any official news stories yet, so will update this later with links.)

ETA: AWESOME!


__
*penn state's dance marathon, a no-sitting, no-sleeping, 48-hour dance marathon held every February, also the largest (and oldest?) student-run philanthropy in the world, which raises money for the four diamonds fund, and every year i get totally pissed off when dance marathons at other schools (like unc) don't give psu credit for creating thon, and for generally being amazing.

2006 book 28

rick moody's the diviners
i was kind of disappointed in this book. the first bit, which consists of several pages of pretension about the light shining on various places, should really have tipped me off, but the main chunk of the story--about a small production company that gets involved in trying to make this crazy epic miniseries, and the zillion other people who come into it--was actually pretty interesting, despite the fact that it never really seemed to be going anywhere. but the end was just dumb. DUMB. screw you, rick moody, for making me read this whole long stupid book!

don't mind me--i have a terrible cold and am about to crawl back into bed.

all-of-a-kind family

here's a lovely article on the all-of-a-kind family by the author of girl sleuth (that book about nancy drew). i looooved those books when i was a kid (and still do).

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there are lots of birthdays coming up so that means it was cupcake time! christina and i are the cupcake queens. here, she is icing the banana cupcakes with the awesome squeezing-a-plastic-bag technique.

thumbs

two thumbs up for driving around on a warm sunny afternoon with the windows down, the music blasting, and a lemon curd loco pop in one hand (don't worry, i can drive one-handed).

two thumbs down for books that are much longer than they look! that new rick moody book is over 600 pages--it really didn't look that long when i grabbed it off the shelf, but i got to around page 200 and wondered why the story didn't really seem to have started yet and then checked the page count. it totally merited a "d'oh!"

2006 book 27

the airport and airplane time yielded surprisingly little reading this time--at least of books. i was in a magazine mood, i guess! anyway, briefly, 'cause i'm tired:

kathryn davis' the thin place
this novel is a little disorienting if you, say, put it down and don't read it for a couple days 'cause you're saving the rest for the airplane. there is a large cast of characters and sometimes you sort of have to go, "oh yeah, andrea murdock, she's the bookbinder" and remind yourself. but it's ok, b/c it's a good story--it's about one summer in a town that's sort of on a thin place so sometimes weird things happen, like a little girl who has the power to resurrect the dead. my favorite bits were the ones with the dogs, who were delightfully doggy. there's a lot of really interesting things going on sort of subtly in the story, and i'm sorry if that doesn't make sense but i'm sleepy so forget it.

metropolis symphony

dude. i just discovered the existence of the metropolis symphony (the score of the part entitled "lex" came across my desk this morning). here are the composer's notes on the pieces.

i can't believe no one ever told me it existed! apparently the composer also has works dealing with barbie and jackie o (which i believe is an opera, in fact). i wholeheartedly approve of pop culture infiltrating the so-called high arts!

2006 book 26

dai sijie's balzac and the little chinese seamstress
this story is about two teenaged boys sent to the mountains of china for reeducation after their parents--doctors--are denounced. they end up with a translation of a novel by balzac, and with their newsfound obsession with western literature--along with one's relationship with the daughter of the local tailor (the titular seamstress)--trouble seems inevitable. a fast and entertaining read.

2006 books 18-25

maud hart lovelace's betsy-tacy series
[there are actually ten books in the series, but since the first few are shorter, i'm only counting it as eight books.]

for some reason, most of my favorite books when i was a kid were written decades before i was born--we're talking books by edward eager, noel streatfeild, l.m. montgomery, whoever wrote mrs. mike, and, of course, maud hart lovelace, author of the betsy-tacy books. written in the 1940s-50s, this series takes place in rural minnesota in the early 1900s, and follows the irrepressible betsy--who longs to be an author--and her best friend tacy, along with many other assorted characters. when i was a kid, i only owned the first three volumes of the series, because the rest were out of print. i distinctly remember checking the rest out from the carnegie library in squirrel hill--every week i'd get a new one and i knew exactly where they were on the shelf [the same was true for other books that struck my fancy later--like up the down staircase and the girls of huntington house).

i remember being perhaps a little inconsolable when i finished the final book (betsy's wedding) and there were no more adventures to follow. i've reread the first three more than a few times over the years and was pretty gleeful when i rcently discovered that the whole series had come back into print. being the obsessive sort of girl that i am, i promptly bought the seven i was missing and devoured all ten in more-or-less one go. the first three were just as i remembered, and the fourth followed suit (these first four are also all illustrated by lois lenski, a great author in her own right). however, i hit a snag with the fifth (heaven to betsy), which follows betsy and her older sister in their quest to convert to episcopalianism (??), and which was a little off-putting, being so, well, christian-y. luckily by the sixth and seventh things picked up again (betsy is occasionally a prig in those, but in a very realistic teenage way) and when i couldn't not read the eighth immediately upon finishing the seventh, i knew i was as hooked as i'd ever been.

hallmarks of the series, for me, include the characters' early stirrings of feminism, the accurate reflections of teen life (these books are very autobiographical, apparently), betsy's constant worries about her hair, the loyalty to friendships throughout all the books, and--of course--the intellectual, self-made hunk based on lovelace's husband. i think joe willard was the first fictional male i ever had a crush on (definitely before gilbert blythe, and probably also before dickon from the secret garden).

now if only the complete works of streatfield would come back into print!

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i know you guys love the endless photos of my frequent haircuts, so here's the latest. :)

romance!

click here!

love and rockets

salon has a nice article on the new collection of jaime hernandez's stuff from love and rockets. i own all the issues already but i'm always tempted to pick up the books anywya, b/c they just look so pretty.

woohoo!!!

YEAH STEELERS!!!! big ben, the bus, the long-haired guy, and the rest of the gang--congrats!!!

of course, i'm not really surprised--i didn't even know seattle HAD a team until this superbowl, so they can't have been that exciting. ;)

highlight of the game, for me: my betting-happy friends taking bets on everything from coin tosses to fumbles to sacks to the color of mick jagger's shirt to what kind of mike he would have. good times.

oh, and my parents report that pittsburgh-area schools have a two-hour delay tomorrow! i think that should extend even to pittsburghers currently living out of state. :)

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i made bread from scratch today!!

i know these loaves aren't terribly attractive, but they taste pretty good so i guess it all worked out ok. there actually is a third mini-loaf, but it wasn't very photogenic after i cut some slices for a taste-test. :)

one of these days i'm going to try for some challah!

2006 book 17

joe pernice's meat is murder
i picked up a couple of the 33 1/3 books at ala for five bucks apiece--mad props to the girls running the continuum booth, who let me take them on sunday since i was leaving first thing monday morning! anyway, we've gotten some of the series at the music library, but i guess joe pernice's novel didn't really qualify for the stacks. i think writing a novel that nicely encapsulates the high school experience of falling in love with an album, crushing out on someone, etc is an interesting approach--and frankly, it's more interesting than some of the other books in the series (don't get me wrong--most of them are awesome. but a couple that i've seen are sort of unreadable unless you're a diehard fan of whichever album is being discussed). maxing out at 102 pages of teenage smiths love (anything over 100 pages counts!), this was a quick and fun read.

oh yeah

i'm djing this sunday, 3-5 pm, 88.7/wxdu.org. you should listen, 'cause what else are you doing the afternoon of superbowl sunday, besides assembling 7-layer dip or whatever?

go steelers!

2005 book 16

anthony bourdain's kitchen confidential
i swear i remember liking this the last time i read it, and i was in the mood to read about food a couple of weeks ago when i started this, but then i discovered that it's not really about food. i think this is the sort of book where, to really get it, you have to either have worked in a restaurant and/or be familiar with new york food culture. unfortunately neither applies to me, and i really had to force myself to finish it.

marvel romance redux

i've been giggling over this comic book for like the last hour. seriously though, it's really funny.

my life is complete

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HELLO KITTY WAFFLE MAKER!!!!!

also, chocolate chip waffles! yum!

some comments

on tv and movies.

a) yay! amy adams got nominated for the best supporting actress oscar! she had better not get robbed again. i'm also gunning for wallace and gromit to win best animated feautre (sorry, myazaki).

b) ok. confession time: i am not loving this season of veronica mars as much as i expected. it actually wasn't the main plot last week that bugged me so much (though there were some serious holes), but the whole wallace thing! as he was explaining why he came back to neptune, i kept waiting for him to say, "sike! that's the plot of 'i know what you did last summer'" and bust out laughing. i mean, wallace wouldn't say "sike" but you get the point. is a hook-handed man going to show up in later episodes? sheesh. don't teenagers on tv and in the movies have anything better to do than drink beers and run over old homeless men?

at least britt daniel is on tomorrow ngiht's episode, which should be entertaining.

c) i'm still loving this season of project runway--i didn't think anything could be better than last season, but i'm totally sucked in again!

2006 book 15

kate atkinson's human croquet
seriously, who writes the copy for the back of books? what's written on the back of my paperback copy of this novel bears absolutely no relation to the story (which is excellent, by the way). i think atkinson is intrigued by family secrets--here, sixteen year old isobel, growing up in england in 1960, wonders what happened to her long-gone mother as everyone around her--including herself--seems to be going a little bit mad. i only got it this afternoon and basically devoured it, so obviously i enjoyed it. :)

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i decided to finally make red velvet cupcakes today, but it turns out you need more than half a bottle of red food coloring to really make them red! now i know and can make REALLY red velvet cupcakes another day.

they're tasty, at least, and have pretty pink frosting!

music

great show last night--we stopped in briefly at ocsc for shots of sunshine juice in bob pollard's honor, then headed to the cradle so as not to miss portastatic (work clothes had been slated to open, but somewhat ironically couldn't get off work). mac played a solo acoustic show--i love full-band portastatic, but i have to say that mac is one of the few dudes who can put on a mesmerizing show with just him and a guitar. there was a brief intermission (with a looney tunes cartoon) and then uncle bob himself came out, backed by tommy keene, jon wurster, et al. by the fourth song he was basically speaking gibberish, thanks to the sunshine juice--man, that guy can really rock out for someone my parents' age. in fact, he can rock out harder than i can, b/c the sleepies took me over and i didn't stay for too long (he was scheduled for a 2+ hour set and i knew i'd never last).

speaking of music, i finished making two mix cds yesterday. one had a theme, but i kept coming across other songs i wanted to put on a mix that didn't fit at all, so i just decided to go for a two-parter. here is the track list for the (extremely random) second one:

1. destroyer, european oils
2. the long winters, delicate hands
3. east river pipe, what does ts eliot know about you?
4. ursula 1000, tigerbeat
5. treva whateva, music's made of memories
6. kissing tigers, i died in a mall
7. work clothes, south bronx
8. saint etienne, action
9. paris combo, calendar
10. neko case, star witness
11. true love always, for you alone
12. the four tops, reach out, i'll be there (extended stereo mix)
13. blockhead, quiet storm
14. one self, hollow human beings
15. pizzicato five, concerto
16. galaxie 500, submission
17. kingsbury manx, zero g
18. bjorn olsson, juli
19. yuka honda, some things should be kept under wraps

jamie and me

jamieandme
Originally uploaded by wordnerdy.

happy birthday, little sister!

i think 1986 was the last time you had to reach up high to put your arm around me. :)

announcements!

1) starting this sunday, i'm back on wxdu from 3-5 pm, every other weekend, right before the local music show. woohoo!

2) it's my baby sister's 23rd birthday today! i meant to scan a cute baby picture of her to post, but it's hard to sustain a train of thought before 7 am, so it'll have to wait till tonight.

2006 book 14

kristen allio's garner
some book blog or another recommended this, and the library actually had it, so i checked it out. and it started off strong--1925, new hampshire (the titular small town), the local postman discovers a young local girl's body in a pond in the woods. and then it sort of weaves in and out, focusing briefly on random characters in the town, and you think that as more is revealed the mystery will become clear, but it doesn't! i mean, the killer is revealed, but there are a lot of things left hanging. plus there are random paragraphs in parentheses, which greatly annoyed me. i absolutely hated the writing style, which was really dull--i think allio was trying to imitate 19th century writing, but didn't quite make it. i have another book recommended by whatever blog it was, but now i'm not sure i'll bother reading it.