Brrr

Fire up "My October Symphony" 'cause it's October tomorrow. Frost warning for tonight even! Going after work to gather all the last tomatoes and herbs worth a scavenge. Aww.

So, anyway, it being cold, time to think back to all things Russian. I got that one book of propaganda posters, but there is a new, fatter better one I need:

Also, that Capote The Muses Are Heard thing from the 50's where the cast of Porgy and Bess goes to Leningrad? That Google Life magazine feature has some really kick-ass shots from the trip - but man, does it look cold:

Um, what?

For the crotchety luddite in your life

Facebook is more than just a less-declasse Classmates.com: it is the Croc shoes for this brace of years, a more socially prevalent and invasive version of that shit late 90's period of zoot suits and shit, but a fad nonetheless. Right, got it. In a year or so, when some jagoff comes out with a device that transmits your thoughts directly to text or something*, Facebook will be as obsolete as the dodo and the film strip.

So, hurry, print this and affix to your "ride" whilst still relevant:

(*and, lawdy, do I ever dread this! The spelling!)

Did I design this LP cover when I worked at the Yellow Pages in 1989?

Well, did I?

The single is very good, though.

"Plus-threes"

I found this John O'Hara book - where? Library sale or the Free Book Truck, I forget which. Anyway, it hella sucked. In his intro, O'Hara says "These three stories are novellas because I chose them to be...they could have each been full novels." Thanks G-d for small favors. His dialogue is good, but otherwise one can feel him looking at his watch while he writes, almost. Dig on the Harold Robbins-y cover, though.

Anyway, he describes a character as wearing "plus-threes [italics mine]." What is this? A shorter plus-four? Does Andre 3000 know about this?

Save the hot ones!

OMG! My college I attended (was there 4.5 years - am still a sophomore!) is apparently on the front lines of the swine flu battle!

It would make a good movie - tiny town full of hot kids fending off microbes...sort of "'a Red Dawn for the Twitter generation.' - Variety." The town could be sealed off, the kids fighting over the last twelve of Red Dog (do they still make this? I saw a pickup truck the other day with a huge Red Dog logo obscuring the driver's rear window...) and killing for "cheese fries." Then there could be a sort of Trash Can Man figure, going house to house, picking up selected Abercrombie pieces she/he'd always coveted of his/her friends'..."Man, lost my ID so pub's out. Plus all my profs are dead!"

I shouldn't scoff - I just coughed about five minutes ago and my vision is starting to blur...but that could be just the onset of the day's laziness.

More on my precious Noisettes (baguette not shown)

Hey! Noisettes in the Times yesterday! Not that it will make Americans less stupid, but, in a sane world, their new album would be #1, so any little bit helps these kids up the ladder to eminence.

This fried my mind:

Once when she was bodysurfing, Ms. Shoniwa [the singer/bass player] lost
her bass pick. "Someone handed me a stale baguette and I carried on playing with
that."

Who brings a stale baguette to a rock show? Granted, it may have been from the deli tray. Still, that sort of plucky resourcefulness - who you see that in some American tripe like, I dunno, the Used?

Overkill

Why was Colin Hay serving here at our local Oktoberfest (apparently)?

It's YOUR weekend - make the most of it!

Cookie/Coco = just fine

Got one of those forwarded emails saying "We're moving and can't take our two labs who are siblings and they've never been out of one another's sight and they are adorable and OMG, please HELP!" but did not know just how forwarded it had been.

Anyway, Snopes says they are fine. So if you started worrying at the top of this post as soon as you started reading that the dogs were turned loose, or put down or made to go see that Bruce Willis robot movie - FRET NOT!

That pang you felt SHOULD adjure you to go get a kitten, however. Yes, today!

Pray for him

Yes, the one of these boys who's in the closet, yet must go around in his buddy's truck all the time, listening to Rascal Flatts, chewing Snus and looking for "fagits" to beat beat up.

Go west, whichever of you!

Come back, Buddy Lee

I was dating a girl in 1998 who, in trying to create a precis of your Humble Blogger for the elucidation of a friend, said "Hmm. Well, he likes rock and he likes Buddy Lee."

The one where he got scooped up by the tornado was especially fine.

Good cover

The record's not the best - guy's voice is sort of hiccup-y and the whole thing reminds me of Gallon Drunk, but the cover is good:









Oh, it's Fed by Plush.

Must move!

The Bride and I are thinking about houses...I'm pretty old to be considering my first house, but Cheever was fifty, so...

Driving around the neighborhood called South Park the other night, which has some quite nice old houses (I mean, like, built in 1915) and some crackheads. Adventure!

What really got my atrophied heart pumping, though, was the fact that...you know in Star Wars Phantom Menace when Samuel Jackson is talking to someone in their Space Office about some important matter (maybe I misremember all this, but bear with me) and super-mega CGI was brand new, so Lucas can't help himself so the view out of the space picture-window is filled with every possible flying ship and loose gewgaw "beyond imagining," so as to convey a sense of "traffic" at this busy cosmic Port Authority? Well, DO YOU?

This neighborhood was like that - but with CATS. There are cats on the sidewalk...cats in trees...cats passing one another like Cunard liners going back and forth across the side streets.

Whether I am murdered for 11 dollars in my wallet or not - WHO CARES? I could walk right outside of my proposed homestead and coat myself in feral four-leggers!

Also, have started the naming process: "Have you seen Thistle?"

or

"I saw Clark throw up by the [closed] Rite Aid..."

"Yes, take this little flower!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0jZRkFtksI

There is nothing worse of the face of the earth than...

(wait for it!)...that "gonna play some funky Dixieland/pretty mama [somethin somethin] take me by the hand" song. I still don't even know who this is...Doobie Brothers, probably?

Nothing. In fact, this just may be where it all went irrevocable ker-flooey for the human race.

"Scooby Driver"

Popped a five-year old mix CD I found in the laptop at home to see what was on it and the first song was "Scooby Driver," by Belle and Sebastian, which had completely slipped off my radar. The best non Pollard-related song under 1:10, ever? Possibly! Very possibly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjdkiYJkGHE

(if link doesn't work, go to youtube and type it in...someday, when we're all older, I will find out why the links aren't live on here now. Or possible embedding! But not today, buddy. Not today)

Right on, Snoopy

That new Flaming Lips video

It made me coin a phrase:

DOVCHARNEYTASTIC!

Song is ace as well, which shocked me shitless.

Those dumb make-your-own CNN headline shirts they offer

Yesterday was an epic day for same!



Check it and imagine the novelty-tee possibilities. All from one CNN front-page!:

Drowning mom: "Please, come help me!"

Clinic to couple: You got the wrong embryos

Sanjay Gupta: I caught H1N1

Joy Behar: Let Elton John and partner adopt

Probe: Anna Nicole received risky drugs

And this one would be a good T-shirt AND a good title for a twee-pop record:

18 things to teach your sons about women

Had to look twice...

I saw this pic out of the corner of my eye and thought for a nanosecond it was The Bride and Picci!:

Plus ca change!

Saw a sign by some construction that eschewed the various "MEN WORKING" tropes for the more proletariat

WORKERS

which is all well and good, but some indie band will come up called "Workers" and then those signs will disappear onto dorm room walls. As will signs after that reading "LABORERS," "BE MINDFUL OF THE SUNBURNT MEN" and "HARDSCRABBLE AHEAD."

Also curious about whether high schools still have "announcements" in the morning, or whether a Star Wars-style Leia hologram of the principal just appears to say there will be an early dismissal Thursday and whether kids still write the names of bands and the like on the coverings of their textbooks...wouldn't this be passe? But then, would girls write "I (HEART) TOBY" on their laptops, iPhones and what not?

So old and tired.

Meg

I can't see Megan Fox without remembering a day in 1996 when a friend was over at out house and PJ Harvey was on the cover of SPIN showing her modest wares in a dingy bra and said friend said "Oh, sick."

I wasn't a huge Peej fan, but liked her and was a bit indignant.

This led to a discussion which concluded with me saying I'd rather "do" her than Pam Anderson, who, at the time, was the fantasy inamorata of most generic ballcap-wearing "dudes." Said friend shook his head and looked at me like I was a real KooKoo. Then, later the same day, he ate a pickled habanero from our fridge which we all advised him not to do and he nearly died: his skin turned approximately aubergine as he gasped on the floor [not the healthiest individual, this kid smoked like a chimney and would put mayonnaise on pizza - no joke. Still alive the last I heard!] and we debated about whether he should go to the hospital.

Anyway - Megan Fox has a tattoo of Marilyn Monroe on her forearm and that is fucking gross.

Oh, and in the course of another post that I may not post, I found this so check out how cute Felix Mendellsohn's wife was:

Cecile!

.rice

There are all the various - what, I guess they are domains? .com, .net, .gov, .tv...whatever those are called. Not domains...anyway, those are all well and good, but I think there should be a whole 'nother one called .rice with all the space and room an internet suffix provides, but all the sites would be devoted exclusively to mankind's one intractably insoluble problem: how best to reheat white rice from leftover carryout without it being impalatable. Oh, sure, maybe there solutions out there on existing web pages in the world..."helpful hint"-type sights or that EVOO girl. But, when faced with how to reinvigorate a day-old fridge-exsiccated blob, wouldn't it be ten times easier (and, by extension, more comforting) to be able to type .rice at the end of absolutely anything into a browser and be assured that the output would be some of the best-informed rice-revivifying data out there?

I mean, wouldn't it?

Various farming thoughts

The Bride and I had a garden all summer, so the next obvious thing to do is become full-on farmers. "I'm thinking we can put in sorghum..."

Here are a few thoughts:

1. There are at least four knock-offs of The Old Farmer's Almanac...the shit versions come out first but I think they still make this one:

I jumped the gun and bought some piece-o-shit version and it was pretty crappy. Patience.

2. I had never seen how the loathesome brussel sprout actually grew until this last Saturday at the farmers' market...I thought they maybe grew like cabbages up from the ground, maybe. But no, they grow, triffid-like, on weird stalks [not sure if triffids were on stalks, but there you are]:

3. Next year - twice as many green zebras, for one thing. And more herbs: double the thyme, some friggin' chives...sage...I'm sure when seed catalogs start arriving in January I will go berserk and want to plant fenugreek or some such...

IT HAPPENED!

A friend from the South (they exist!) said "Sure, Nick Eddy, Ah can have my parents bring you up some Cheerwine."

It was, of course, EPIC! Having some at lunch, even. And I still can't describe it - somewhere between Cherry 7-Up and Dr Pepper with a light hint of wild cherry bubble-gum flavor...Jeebus!

THEN (and this is where the story shift into overdrive), Tall Frank said "Oh, yeah - you know they sell that at Charlie's Imports over on Troy St?"

WHERE I HAPPEN TO PASS PROBABLY EVERY TWO WEEKS!

So, "blessed are those who expect nothing, for they are not disappointed," and all that.

Have a mega weekend!

I have/had so much more to yammer about but it simply must wait. So, have a nice one, a la this chavtastic twosome!

While I'm on this train of thought,

Here is a clip 'n' save Ralph head I found funny - you can make, I dunno, a magnet or just use it for something surely:

Also, someone needs to have a band called The Prep School Murders, while V Weekend style preppy buffoonery is au courant...

Also, I hope someone thinks to get me this [Zazzle!]:

Whilst I'm lashing out -

I have looked all over and how come no one is making a wool crewneck sweater this year in this shade of green?:

It's ANNOYING. None at Ralph, J Crew, LL Bean, Brooks, J Press...for god's sake. ENOUGH!

Oh, Ian

Trying to decide whether Ian Brown now looks more like Gollum or Wrightson-era Swamp Thing:

Also, and fairly unrelatedly, made insane yesterday by this quote from Stewart Copeland:

In most bands that I know, and certainly my own band, you have a real bond
with your band members. Love them or hate them, there's a bond. We in the Police
found and slayed a lot of dragons [???]. We really put a lot of misconceptions
about each other and ourselves to rest. We conquered the world together, same
as Talking Heads. They have a big part in each other's lives and wouldn't it be
great if they all got long. It's like burying the hatchet.



He then went on to discuss the Smiths: "I don't know anything about the
Smiths, but yes, [they should reform]. It isn't any act of courage to not do it.
What quality does it take to say no to something like that?

What about the Libertines, Stew? Or wait - you must be annoyed that Pavement [whom you also have no idea about] are reuniting - I'm sure the Malk could lay some lengthy shit-leads on some to-be-unheard-by-anyone-ever "trad jazz" piece of fuck you are working on, when not tending your ponies.

Ace

While you sink into the solicitous waves of anticipation surrounding the new, only-at-Walmart KISS album, spare a thought for Ace Frehley, also set to release this sure-to-be-steaming pile:

It even feature a song called "Space Bear!"

Message to Malkmus

Fewer nine-minute guitar-wank songs and more hits and you wouldn't have to get together with those other guys again. Unless you're being charitable and are helping out because the others spent all their Pavement Bucks on horse tranquillizers or some such. If so, still - fewer nine-minute guitar-wank songs and more hits would be nice.

Weird day

Now I'm listening to a Lee Perry record. Weird!

Matt and Kim

No one has ever heard anything by them. Sorry.

Well played, Girls

This Pitchfork-touted upcoming LP by Girls has this cover:

Where have we seen this before? It may be well obvs to all, but I thought it pretty sweet:

Nice one!

A lad's progress

Remember this pic of Blinky, the kitten G Gard and I scooped off the hard streets of D_____?

Well, it's nearly a year later, and just look at him!

He's going through his teen years and, in an effort to be more 'street', he likes being called "Branky."

Some other fun facts include

LIKES:

Water

Having windows open

Juneau the kitten

DISLIKES:

dad gone

Muse

no water

Three cheers for Squire Blinkinham!

More progress!!

Inside!

Thyme, thyme, thyme/see what's become of me...*

And when did thyme supplant (heh) all comers as my favorite herb? I've been putting it on tomatoes, making tomato sauce with it...it's amazing! It's also so good-smelling, rubbing some between your fingers, the aroma released has a weight to it, like history or something. No, it makes one feel like Mike Corleone walking around Sicily, maybe...

Maybe I'm just trash because we didn't use it much/at all when I was growing up? Definitely not fresh, anyway...maybe from the Spice Islands rack ca. 1986 on the edge of a beef roast, but even then the bottle of dried leaves was prob'ly purchased in 1974. And no one in my family would have the same day bought a copy of Diamond Dogs, either.

I'm TRASH! Argh!

* c and p 1967 Col-gems or whoever...

Grape Crush in the workplace???!?!1?!!

How long has there been Grape Crush in my office soda machine?? There's Orange Crush, too. This is new and startling news!

Didn't expect it

...but Huevos by Meat Puppets just handed me my ass. Forgot how great this was...

Awful!

(click to enlarge - from WSJ)