it is too early to make good decisions! the anti-abortion extremists who harass patients outside the far-flung clinic to which i am en route would never yell something like that and i'm not about to suggest it, but–they wouldn't be incorrect? i nearly grabbed the wrong train just now as i was congratulating myself for waking up without my alarm for this morning's escorting shift. of course, i'll never rise naturally because birdsong summons and the sun warms my bones or whatever; worry is the only thing that gets me up without assistance. i don't mind that so much, as it sort of means that the worst moments of my day are inevitably the very first ones. once i know i won't sleep late i can pose for the river with the cats and contemplate late-stage capitalism with my microwaved day-old coffee. we are staying put for the holidays as we usually do, and it's even lower-impact than in previous years: we'll go out to a movie on christmas eve but aren't doing one of the fancy dinners i invariably hate. i still haven't figured out how to strike a balance between joe's interest in complicated-food-and-drink-related celebration and mine in comparative frugality (in that context, at least) and temperance, but i hope we're getting better at meeting each other halfway.
i didn't think i was going to have much free time here at the end of the year, but work is mostly done? i have to turn in a revised draft of my MUSHROOMS IN SPACE! essay back in over the first week of january, but it feels like the tweaks my editor and i talked about aren't going to break my head. i'm hemming and hawing over what my next passion projects (or at least the ones that i pitch instead of just accepting) will be and...meh? it was humbling to eat it with my first new yorker humor submission, though my dad made a valiant attempt to console me with the repeated story of how some friend of his has submitted hundreds of thousands of cartoons to them and is still waiting for a nod. i appreciate his point, but i am a very special girl and this is totally different.
speaking of special girls, my favorite former staffer from the bird hospital, a woman i haven't seen in person since well before the pandemic, popped up in my instagram feed as a full-fledged (heh) urban ranger in central park. i have absolutely nothing to do with that, but hot damn did it activate my proud-auntie parasympathetic system! one day you're swooning at the smell of crow blood in front of a gal and the next she's in your phone delivering a totally polished minilecture about weird duck season. i'm very curious to know if she's blown the whistle on mouse park, i.e. the spot where we'd sneak behind some trees and release the mice we'd caught nibbling on bird seed in the hospital's basement treatment room, but my feeling is that i should let sleeping liberated rodents lie. god i'm happy for her.
Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts
12.27.16
will it ever feel too late to talk about the end of 2016? i began december with more assignments than i've ever had in a single month, then decided to blog every day and run at least 100 miles; i've been at ye olde charity bookstore and the bird hospital almost every week. that isn't all that much, but these weeks are taffy, stretching out and sagging, is what i mean; tasks, gatherings, weird news keep on coming. i'm still waiting for christmas, somehow. my sister and her husband aren't coming to new york for the first winter in a decade or so, which makes sense, given that they have a five-month-old son (just hospitalized with a nasty respiratory bug, as it happens, along with his dad, who gave up his appendix for the holidays). we'll still see them—we're headed to northern california for new year's and to celebrate my mom's halloween elopement(!)—but it's new and strange and long, the last of 2016. we saw my dad and most of my stepfamily on boxing day. we've got a pint of organic eggnog in the back of the refrigerator. i haven't used my little crock pot for anything, but i don't want to put it away. i tracked a missing gift down the phone lines to ups, the usps, and kansas; "thank you for your spirit," kansas said when i didn't yell. who wants to end the year yelling at a stranger?
carrie fisher starred in it's christmas, carol! (2012), a hallmark channel movie about a heartless publishing executive visited by the ghost of her former boss, eve. only one cautioning spirit; budget cutbacks, &c.
carrie fisher starred in it's christmas, carol! (2012), a hallmark channel movie about a heartless publishing executive visited by the ghost of her former boss, eve. only one cautioning spirit; budget cutbacks, &c.
carol: it's christmas eve, and you've come to warn me about if i don't change my ways. oh, what's the name of that story?i always hated it's a wonderful life.
eve: miracle on 34th street?
carol: no.
eve: it's a wonderful life?
carol: no.
eve: it's not star wars, is it?
12.26.13
girl bear-hugging a dusty cello as "greensleeves" echoes down the subway tunnel like whalesong, i salute you.
12.23.12
season's greetings, all; i hope your toes are precisely as warm as you would like them to be.
12.19.12
someday i'll write a terrifically long poem about manhattan christmas tree "lots." i know already that it will be terrible, but it will vibrate with feeling.
the cat has been arranging himself beneath our tree (which is still but half-adorned, for the weather hasn't been conducive to drying things out on the porch). "i am nearly finished," i tell him. "pracky," he replies, eyeing my little ceramic cherubs' tinfoil hats.
12.21.11
my traditional what-eccentric-thing-would-you-do-if-you-were-ludicrously-wealthy-and-had-already-saved-all-of-the-suffering-animals-and-people? response is that i would bronze my underwear, but i hadn't really thought it through very carefully. i don't like looking at underwear all that much, for one thing, and i think i was assuming that i'd be able to wear the underwear once it was bronzed, which just doesn't make sense. what i would actually do if i had a substantial sum of money that i felt comfortable spending in an utterly self-indulgent way is this: i would rent a u-haul, wait until the end of the night on christmas eve, drive out to the neighborhood tree lots, and buy all of their orphans. i would take them home and make a forest in my apartment, tree after tree after tree. i'd bring out some blankets and a lantern, curl up on the floor and tuck into a book, and pretend i'd created a new dimension.
we have only one tree; fortunately it's not an especially tall one, for i don't have a u-haul, it couldn't be delivered, and i had to carry it a mile in the rain. i festooned it with skulls (rounded up from where i'd hidden them around the apartment in october; one was in joe's shoe, i found another in our refrigerator's cheese drawer, and a third was behind the shampoo in our shower), feathers (recycled from the office) and, okay, a few bats (rolled up and coaxed into a few of the extra glass ornaments). welcome home, tree.
my traditional what-eccentric-thing-would-you-do-if-you-were-ludicrously-wealthy-and-had-already-saved-all-of-the-suffering-animals-and-people? response is that i would bronze my underwear, but i hadn't really thought it through very carefully. i don't like looking at underwear all that much, for one thing, and i think i was assuming that i'd be able to wear the underwear once it was bronzed, which just doesn't make sense. what i would actually do if i had a substantial sum of money that i felt comfortable spending in an utterly self-indulgent way is this: i would rent a u-haul, wait until the end of the night on christmas eve, drive out to the neighborhood tree lots, and buy all of their orphans. i would take them home and make a forest in my apartment, tree after tree after tree. i'd bring out some blankets and a lantern, curl up on the floor and tuck into a book, and pretend i'd created a new dimension.
we have only one tree; fortunately it's not an especially tall one, for i don't have a u-haul, it couldn't be delivered, and i had to carry it a mile in the rain. i festooned it with skulls (rounded up from where i'd hidden them around the apartment in october; one was in joe's shoe, i found another in our refrigerator's cheese drawer, and a third was behind the shampoo in our shower), feathers (recycled from the office) and, okay, a few bats (rolled up and coaxed into a few of the extra glass ornaments). welcome home, tree.
01.02.11: the dirty dozen {concocted for the holidays}
01 blood orange sorbet
02 candied blood orange peels
03 rosemary bread, fluffy
04 whole wheat bread, flat
05 chocolate chip / chocolate bar / pecan / almond cookies
06 vanilla ice cream
07 spiced glazed nuts and pretzel mix
08 roasted tomato salsa
09 spinach and artichoke dip
10 boxing day margaritas
11 sugar cookie dough
12 so many hobo names
01 blood orange sorbet
02 candied blood orange peels
03 rosemary bread, fluffy
04 whole wheat bread, flat
05 chocolate chip / chocolate bar / pecan / almond cookies
06 vanilla ice cream
07 spiced glazed nuts and pretzel mix
08 roasted tomato salsa
09 spinach and artichoke dip
10 boxing day margaritas
11 sugar cookie dough
12 so many hobo names
12.28.10
the boxing day blizzard has been called many things, most of them impolite. i call it snoomsday, as one should say snoo whenever one can, and the saying of snoo distracts one from the lack of one's sister (whose overnight flight from los angeles was chucked from the american airlines timetable like excess picnicking supplies from a sinking hot air balloon). hurry here, sister! we wait, tipple,* prepare even more food, and marvel at the hulk steve's become since we last had a snowstorm.
{02.10.10}
{12.27.10}
the boxing day blizzard has been called many things, most of them impolite. i call it snoomsday, as one should say snoo whenever one can, and the saying of snoo distracts one from the lack of one's sister (whose overnight flight from los angeles was chucked from the american airlines timetable like excess picnicking supplies from a sinking hot air balloon). hurry here, sister! we wait, tipple,* prepare even more food, and marvel at the hulk steve's become since we last had a snowstorm.
{02.10.10}
{12.27.10}
*boxing day margarita: begin with a handful of ice in a stemless wine glass; add about an ounce and a half of mezcal (we used sombra, which is nice and smoky) and the juice of half a ruby red grapefruit, then fill rest of glass with fresca. top with a splash of angostura bitters and a pinch of ghost pepper salt. add an extra pinch or two if you're feeling festive.
12.20.10: sparkle motion (the pinata tree post)
i was wandering around the time warner center in search of cheap mittens and came across a window full of fancy, fancy party decorations, so i texted a picture to someone special.
LMO: [img] Confetti system at jcrew, cookies.
ESB: well, they already did urban. so...
LMO: Unsame!
ESB: yeah. fuck j crew.*
there were no cheap mittens for me, but i did come home with a theme for this year's christmas tree, thanks to the texting and the coincidentally fancy princess manicure i'd acquired at the office. i decided i'd pay tribute to the deep vein of tinsel that seems to be running through this holiday season and make tiny, confetti-system-inspired tree-pinatas.
this is a square trapezohedron i made out of paper and covered with patchwork foil, beat-up-old-spaceship-like.
i was wandering around the time warner center in search of cheap mittens and came across a window full of fancy, fancy party decorations, so i texted a picture to someone special.
LMO: [img] Confetti system at jcrew, cookies.
ESB: well, they already did urban. so...
LMO: Unsame!
ESB: yeah. fuck j crew.*
there were no cheap mittens for me, but i did come home with a theme for this year's christmas tree, thanks to the texting and the coincidentally fancy princess manicure i'd acquired at the office. i decided i'd pay tribute to the deep vein of tinsel that seems to be running through this holiday season and make tiny, confetti-system-inspired tree-pinatas.
this is a square trapezohedron i made out of paper and covered with patchwork foil, beat-up-old-spaceship-like.
and this, internet, is a truncated pyramid covered with hand-cut foil fringe. these photos aren't my best work, but i'm terribly proud of them anyhow; after spending an hour on each of the (three) square trapezohedrons and another two on each of the (three) truncated pyramids, i had the fine motor skills of an old eggnog addict. that they're mostly in focus is enough for me.
the pinatalings are sharing space with a handful of porcelain jonathan adler ornaments and some of last year's princemas doves; on an 8' tree with purple lights, the effect is singular if nothing else. a funky yet gentlemanly fiesta? a hopeful butch unicorn party? dandy alien window dressing? i think i'm pleased - and my fingers are nearly mobile enough to text again. a season of wonders, internet.
*i've been known to shop at both j.crew and urban outfitters, as it happens; i still think confetti system's collaboration with the former is a bit more like finding out my mum and i have the same pair of candy cane underpants. mom, tell me i'm alone.
01.05.10
small confession: it really is a bit different to host for the holidays in a place that's yours. joe and i have already had every sort of holiday at our place; i remember a particularly improvisational san francisco party at which we floated sliced red onions in a vase. being married for the past few years didn't affect things much, either: when you've been with your partner since college, you don't exactly have to merge when-i-grow-ups, bank accounts, pet populations, and so on. we and our little hell's kitchen apartment were more or less the same. having our family over this time around, at a place we sweated, cried, and bled over for the better part of a year? i won't lie. there were frissons. good ones, happily: once we knew for sure that the dining table we ordered (thanks again, by the by, for weighing in on that) would arrive on time, we got excited about making things to plop atop it. christmas eve dinner with joe's parents went something like this:
i dug out spare candlesticks from the questionable cupcake stand project of '08, split a mixed bouquet into minisettings for our four thousand random vessels, and got out of the way; joe made wild arugula, poached egg, and some-sort-of-foofy-pork* salad, and artichoke and crab quiches for his mother's handmade crusts. had our sectional** arrived in time for christmas (alas), we'd certainly have formed a (drowsy, contented) human levee on it.
dinner on new year's day was a slightly more aerodynamic variation on that theme: we used our wedding dishes again, but we swapped the neighbors' stemmed wine glasses out for my beloved etched glass skull and thrifted don ho tumblers, i brought out a few more fabric roses, and we broke in the boss placemats my sister made and brought for christmas. joe made artichoke marinara over fresh pasta, which...i am not going to describe in detail, for there's a bit left in tupperware and i don't want to remind him that it's up for grabs.
speaking of sistercraft, in addition to jo's placemats, the marvelous gingerbread beings jo and em made in california for me, and the friendship bracelets i made for them when i had pneumonia,*** you guys:
wedding quilt! it's a galaga ship, handmade by my sister jo (with hand quilting backup from mom). "you didn't seem like the wedding ring types," said jo. to say that it was worth the wait would be a gross understatement.
a thrifty, bougie-tablescaping, crafty-like-ice-is-cold new year to you and yours, my people.
small confession: it really is a bit different to host for the holidays in a place that's yours. joe and i have already had every sort of holiday at our place; i remember a particularly improvisational san francisco party at which we floated sliced red onions in a vase. being married for the past few years didn't affect things much, either: when you've been with your partner since college, you don't exactly have to merge when-i-grow-ups, bank accounts, pet populations, and so on. we and our little hell's kitchen apartment were more or less the same. having our family over this time around, at a place we sweated, cried, and bled over for the better part of a year? i won't lie. there were frissons. good ones, happily: once we knew for sure that the dining table we ordered (thanks again, by the by, for weighing in on that) would arrive on time, we got excited about making things to plop atop it. christmas eve dinner with joe's parents went something like this:
i dug out spare candlesticks from the questionable cupcake stand project of '08, split a mixed bouquet into minisettings for our four thousand random vessels, and got out of the way; joe made wild arugula, poached egg, and some-sort-of-foofy-pork* salad, and artichoke and crab quiches for his mother's handmade crusts. had our sectional** arrived in time for christmas (alas), we'd certainly have formed a (drowsy, contented) human levee on it.
dinner on new year's day was a slightly more aerodynamic variation on that theme: we used our wedding dishes again, but we swapped the neighbors' stemmed wine glasses out for my beloved etched glass skull and thrifted don ho tumblers, i brought out a few more fabric roses, and we broke in the boss placemats my sister made and brought for christmas. joe made artichoke marinara over fresh pasta, which...i am not going to describe in detail, for there's a bit left in tupperware and i don't want to remind him that it's up for grabs.
speaking of sistercraft, in addition to jo's placemats, the marvelous gingerbread beings jo and em made in california for me, and the friendship bracelets i made for them when i had pneumonia,*** you guys:
wedding quilt! it's a galaga ship, handmade by my sister jo (with hand quilting backup from mom). "you didn't seem like the wedding ring types," said jo. to say that it was worth the wait would be a gross understatement.
a thrifty, bougie-tablescaping, crafty-like-ice-is-cold new year to you and yours, my people.
*i would be a terrible food writer. "and then there was a meat, i don't know, it smelled greasy."
**we address it apostrophically, to the confusion of those about us. GET HERE NOW, YOU COUCH!
***good excuse for errors, no? there were errors. i haven't made friendship bracelets in (cough).
01.04.10
what ho, internets! our first contingent of holiday visitors arrived on monday the twenty-first, and our last departed yesterday evening; the holiday fortnight was festive, to say the least.
{on our way home from a sripraphai feast with joe's parents}
{sake in the east village with my sister and her fiancé*}
{new year's eve in brooklyn}
{bowling with a live band}
{wee hour drinks on the lower east side}
i'm not one to resolve things - not on specific occasions, anyway - but i did vow that i won't brunch in 2010. i'll also try to wear the boots i inherited from joe's dad (hey, having big feet paid off for once!) at least once a week.
what ho, internets! our first contingent of holiday visitors arrived on monday the twenty-first, and our last departed yesterday evening; the holiday fortnight was festive, to say the least.
{on our way home from a sripraphai feast with joe's parents}
{sake in the east village with my sister and her fiancé*}
{new year's eve in brooklyn}
{bowling with a live band}
{wee hour drinks on the lower east side}
i'm not one to resolve things - not on specific occasions, anyway - but i did vow that i won't brunch in 2010. i'll also try to wear the boots i inherited from joe's dad (hey, having big feet paid off for once!) at least once a week.
*so cal wedding types, i apologize in advance for bombarding you with questions related to their OC shindig next year. per sis, they need a deejay who can mix kanye west with "dance magic."
12.21.09: crafty MF (the princemas tree post)
i realized a few weeks ago, for reasons that are difficult to explain but nevertheless terribly logical, that our first christmas tree in our new digs needed to be a prince-themed tree. beyond purple lights (acquired posthaste from the purple store, where folks were predictably enthusiastic about my project), i didn't really know what i'd be using; in an early draft of ornament plans, for instance, i was going to buy little peach glass orbs and wrap them in yellow lace as a tribute to the assless pants of '91. in another, i thought about raspberry berets made of acorn caps (i did end up finding my old hoard of acorn caps, but the idea was still unforgivably twee). i didn't end up using lace at all, which would invalidate the whole tree in some circles - but the wall of lace at mood didn't inspire me, and i ultimately decided to work with something like a 1:9 lauren:prince ratio. this is how the music craft tends to go down; judge me if you must.
ornament project #1: fragrant little cinnamon symbols. i printed out an image of prince's O(+>, turned it into a stencil, and then made my mom's handy-dandy cinnamon garland dough (ground cinnamon mixed with applesauce). i spent most of sunday afternoon a few weeks ago cutting symbols out of the dough and, most likely, laying the groundwork for a serious dowager's hump (we didn't have our kitchen table yet, so i sort of hunched over the counter). cut out by hand, internet. i was going to make seven because, well, duh, but i wanted to account for breakage, so: twelve.
i then baked them for a few hours and left them out to harden up for a week; the apartment's been all spicy-smelling and fancy as a result. i highly recommend this project, especially if you've already got cookie cutters in your desired shape.
ornament project #2: felt doves. these fellows were trickier to figure out than the symbols had been; in their first incarnation, executed with a glitter pen, they sort of looked like jailhouse tattoos (going for photorealism with something other than decoupage was a terrible, terrible idea). i then went more mod and ended up with a compromise.
these fellows are backed with tweed outdoor fabric, which gives them golden backsides. a nod to '91? i made twelve of them as well.
i toyed with the idea of a star that looked like the kid's studded purple coat from purple rain, but that was a bit too literal. i compromised with tree scarves instead of a tree skirt.
put 'em together, and...
merry princemas 2 all, and 2 all a good night.
i realized a few weeks ago, for reasons that are difficult to explain but nevertheless terribly logical, that our first christmas tree in our new digs needed to be a prince-themed tree. beyond purple lights (acquired posthaste from the purple store, where folks were predictably enthusiastic about my project), i didn't really know what i'd be using; in an early draft of ornament plans, for instance, i was going to buy little peach glass orbs and wrap them in yellow lace as a tribute to the assless pants of '91. in another, i thought about raspberry berets made of acorn caps (i did end up finding my old hoard of acorn caps, but the idea was still unforgivably twee). i didn't end up using lace at all, which would invalidate the whole tree in some circles - but the wall of lace at mood didn't inspire me, and i ultimately decided to work with something like a 1:9 lauren:prince ratio. this is how the music craft tends to go down; judge me if you must.
ornament project #1: fragrant little cinnamon symbols. i printed out an image of prince's O(+>, turned it into a stencil, and then made my mom's handy-dandy cinnamon garland dough (ground cinnamon mixed with applesauce). i spent most of sunday afternoon a few weeks ago cutting symbols out of the dough and, most likely, laying the groundwork for a serious dowager's hump (we didn't have our kitchen table yet, so i sort of hunched over the counter). cut out by hand, internet. i was going to make seven because, well, duh, but i wanted to account for breakage, so: twelve.
i then baked them for a few hours and left them out to harden up for a week; the apartment's been all spicy-smelling and fancy as a result. i highly recommend this project, especially if you've already got cookie cutters in your desired shape.
ornament project #2: felt doves. these fellows were trickier to figure out than the symbols had been; in their first incarnation, executed with a glitter pen, they sort of looked like jailhouse tattoos (going for photorealism with something other than decoupage was a terrible, terrible idea). i then went more mod and ended up with a compromise.
these fellows are backed with tweed outdoor fabric, which gives them golden backsides. a nod to '91? i made twelve of them as well.
i toyed with the idea of a star that looked like the kid's studded purple coat from purple rain, but that was a bit too literal. i compromised with tree scarves instead of a tree skirt.
put 'em together, and...
merry princemas 2 all, and 2 all a good night.
12.18.09
we've reached that magical faster-than-a-speeding-bullet time of the year in which i turn, briefly and dramatically, into an efficient person. as an average jane i'm mellow and rather flaky, but my mutant form is a handy one: most stressors make me stealthy and handy. it's also hard to take holiday madness seriously after how the rest of '09 has been: after bed bugs, losing our little cat, the kafkaesque process of buying our first apartment, and getting pneumonia, am i really supposed to care about closing an issue of the magazine with a vacation-hobbled office and a few TKs on my gift list? most of my errands involve quality time at the art store, and those are the very best kind of errand. bring on the nog-related difficulties, i say. not actually nog-related, though, if you please; nog is a little gross.
the projects can get questionable as they pile up, though. transported as i've been by the process of assembling a prince-themed tree, i decided it'd be a good idea to make little raspberry berets out of acorn caps. alas, the ones i'd collected for halloween were pitched to make room for homemade salad dressing (long story). after consulting with the lovely local acorn cap expert, i decided to let central park guide me; if i happened upon suitable materials, clearly the universe wanted me to craft them up.
dommage. the locals have gone warped and grotty, as plant materials in extreme conditions are wont to do. proof that the beret idea was irreparably silly. in happier news, we're bringing a tree home tonight, and i'll be inflicting the rest of the craft nonsense on you soon. go go craft!
we've reached that magical faster-than-a-speeding-bullet time of the year in which i turn, briefly and dramatically, into an efficient person. as an average jane i'm mellow and rather flaky, but my mutant form is a handy one: most stressors make me stealthy and handy. it's also hard to take holiday madness seriously after how the rest of '09 has been: after bed bugs, losing our little cat, the kafkaesque process of buying our first apartment, and getting pneumonia, am i really supposed to care about closing an issue of the magazine with a vacation-hobbled office and a few TKs on my gift list? most of my errands involve quality time at the art store, and those are the very best kind of errand. bring on the nog-related difficulties, i say. not actually nog-related, though, if you please; nog is a little gross.
the projects can get questionable as they pile up, though. transported as i've been by the process of assembling a prince-themed tree, i decided it'd be a good idea to make little raspberry berets out of acorn caps. alas, the ones i'd collected for halloween were pitched to make room for homemade salad dressing (long story). after consulting with the lovely local acorn cap expert, i decided to let central park guide me; if i happened upon suitable materials, clearly the universe wanted me to craft them up.
dommage. the locals have gone warped and grotty, as plant materials in extreme conditions are wont to do. proof that the beret idea was irreparably silly. in happier news, we're bringing a tree home tonight, and i'll be inflicting the rest of the craft nonsense on you soon. go go craft!
12.04.09
the dirty dozen, part II {twelve seasonal things}
pneumonia, she is an adventure in self-discovery. in the past few days, i've learned that my disdain for hypochondriacs has made me the worst sort of stoic: i ignore serious shit (like, you know, coughing blood*) in service of this weird lady-machismo*** that impresses no one. it's the same sort of impulse that led me to eat a handful of semi-raw habaneros on my honeymoon in london: just weird, and i suffered for it. per doctor's orders, i'm stuck at home until tuesday and on three kinds of antibiotics (and a self-prescribed bowie-on-vinyl cure; predictably, low is the best soundtrack for being in a room you can't leave). no stoicism in 2010!
05 on bowie, i read a rather entertaining take on his life (marc spitz's bowie) a few months ago. it's imperfect (though spitz mentions blade runner a few times, he doesn't mention that the note bowie sent with flowers to his brother's funeral is a quote from the movie), but it's full of excellent anecdotes, including the following, from when bowie and brian eno were recording low at a château in france:
06 i have a weakness for themed christmas trees (see: the war on christmas, harrison ford in the cupboard), and i realized as i was falling asleep the other night that the new apartment might need a princemas tree this year. decoration research led me to the purple store ("for people who love purple and those who shop for them,") and i'm going to go ahead and declare their 6.5 foot, pre-lit purple palm tree the acme of western civilization. that might be the azithromycin talking, but can you be sure?
07 i also finally got around to reading black postcards, better known as That Memoir in Which Dean Wareham Shits on Everyone. i like dean wareham the musician (both galaxie 500 and luna were fine bands) very much, but i went back and forth on whether or not i wanted to support his snark; happily, used copies of black postcards are cheap these days. the book isn't as vitriolic as i'd expected it to be (wareham's biggest enemy is a bad hotel), but it did yield a few amusements.
that last one was a bit of a cop-out, but the pestilence tires me, internets. forgive.
so, princemas tree: yea or nay?
pneumonia, she is an adventure in self-discovery. in the past few days, i've learned that my disdain for hypochondriacs has made me the worst sort of stoic: i ignore serious shit (like, you know, coughing blood*) in service of this weird lady-machismo*** that impresses no one. it's the same sort of impulse that led me to eat a handful of semi-raw habaneros on my honeymoon in london: just weird, and i suffered for it. per doctor's orders, i'm stuck at home until tuesday and on three kinds of antibiotics (and a self-prescribed bowie-on-vinyl cure; predictably, low is the best soundtrack for being in a room you can't leave). no stoicism in 2010!
05 on bowie, i read a rather entertaining take on his life (marc spitz's bowie) a few months ago. it's imperfect (though spitz mentions blade runner a few times, he doesn't mention that the note bowie sent with flowers to his brother's funeral is a quote from the movie), but it's full of excellent anecdotes, including the following, from when bowie and brian eno were recording low at a château in france:
The château was wired with an elaborate and clunky bank of synthesizers collected by Bowie and [producer Tony] Visconti. Eno would saunter into the main room, pick up a small keyboard, and begin pressing buttons. Occasionally he'd ask Visconti what these instruments were meant to do. One, the Event Harmonizer, he was told, "fucks with the fabric of time." Eno grinned and loudly declared that they must use it as much as possible.
06 i have a weakness for themed christmas trees (see: the war on christmas, harrison ford in the cupboard), and i realized as i was falling asleep the other night that the new apartment might need a princemas tree this year. decoration research led me to the purple store ("for people who love purple and those who shop for them,") and i'm going to go ahead and declare their 6.5 foot, pre-lit purple palm tree the acme of western civilization. that might be the azithromycin talking, but can you be sure?
07 i also finally got around to reading black postcards, better known as That Memoir in Which Dean Wareham Shits on Everyone. i like dean wareham the musician (both galaxie 500 and luna were fine bands) very much, but i went back and forth on whether or not i wanted to support his snark; happily, used copies of black postcards are cheap these days. the book isn't as vitriolic as i'd expected it to be (wareham's biggest enemy is a bad hotel), but it did yield a few amusements.
Every French interviewer asked us about the Pixies. They figured that since we were from Boston, we must love the Pixies. Nonsense. We had no love for the Pixies.08
Sometimes Galaxie 500 got lumped in with this whole shoegaze movement (we were later dubbed protoshoegaze), but we had nothing to do with it. We didn't listen to Ride, Chapterhouse, Lush, Slowdive, Moose, or even the Jesus and Mary Chain (who were derisively known as the Jesus and Money Chain back home in our world).
All the bands hung out in this amazing backstage area, enjoying the barbecue and the sun and the scenery. All except the Ramones, who stayed in their trailer and had pizza sent up from town. This was very punk rock of them.
And what about the Edge? What was he, ten years old, calling himself the Edge?
What if I decided I wanted to be called Cool Breeze?
"The Edge is cool," said Sean [Eden].
"The Edge is not cool," I said. I don't think U2 is cool. Remember that awful video from Red Rocks, where Bono prances around with a big flag, singing, "All I have is this guitar, three chords, and the truth"? I have not forgotten.
I have a theory: If you put four monkeys in the studio for a year with [Daniel] Lanois and Eno and [Steve] Lillywhite, they would make a pretty good record, too.
that last one was a bit of a cop-out, but the pestilence tires me, internets. forgive.
so, princemas tree: yea or nay?
*which, incidentally: way less attractive than baz luhrmann would have you believe it is.** i have never looked less like nicole kidman in my life.
**i really hated moulin rouge!.
***not marianismo, mind you; that sounds lame.
12.23.08: harrison ford in the cupboard*
joe took great interest in the tree we brought home on sunday (which makes sense, i suppose, since i made him carry it). i thought sister emily and i did a fine (if slightly haphazard) job of draping it with white twinkle lights; they can be rearranged so very easily once the tree is established in the window, and all. instant perfection, she isn't a must. he started grumbling as strand after strand clumped together near the bottom of the tree, though, and thought we should pull everything out and start over, and when we refused, he staged a twinkle light coup and insisted on redoing the whole thing. i made fun of him for being so fussy, but he did in fact do a much snazzier job.
the original plan to use the wee army men i turned into ornaments two years ago foundered when they went AWOL in the hall closet (such a small space, yet so voracious with the stuff-eating; i wouldn't be surprised to learn the moth colony in there has developed a taste for plastic human flesh), so i repurposed the wee rubber cowboys and indians i'd ordered at the same time. they...are kind of politically incorrect when mixed together (which is not to say i haven't placed fake cowboys in sniper positions on the tree above fake braves, and vice versa), but hey. i haven't made any smallpox blanket jokes, and that's what matters.
joe took great interest in the tree we brought home on sunday (which makes sense, i suppose, since i made him carry it). i thought sister emily and i did a fine (if slightly haphazard) job of draping it with white twinkle lights; they can be rearranged so very easily once the tree is established in the window, and all. instant perfection, she isn't a must. he started grumbling as strand after strand clumped together near the bottom of the tree, though, and thought we should pull everything out and start over, and when we refused, he staged a twinkle light coup and insisted on redoing the whole thing. i made fun of him for being so fussy, but he did in fact do a much snazzier job.
the original plan to use the wee army men i turned into ornaments two years ago foundered when they went AWOL in the hall closet (such a small space, yet so voracious with the stuff-eating; i wouldn't be surprised to learn the moth colony in there has developed a taste for plastic human flesh), so i repurposed the wee rubber cowboys and indians i'd ordered at the same time. they...are kind of politically incorrect when mixed together (which is not to say i haven't placed fake cowboys in sniper positions on the tree above fake braves, and vice versa), but hey. i haven't made any smallpox blanket jokes, and that's what matters.
*anyone else remember the indian in the cupboard books (about a little boy whose plastic toys come to life)? i have a feeling i'd find them wildly offensive these days, but the first few were pretty exciting when i was seven.
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