how long are V.I.P lines in gothenburg?

TRICK QUESTION! according to the charming Jens Lekman, there are no V.I.P lines in Gothenburg. I like this whole tiny desk concert, but if you want to cut right to his introduction (starts around 8:15) of Waiting For Kirsten, you'll jump right into the setup for his Kirsten Dunst shaggy dog story.

Jens Lekman songs themselves are shaggy dog  NINJAS, jumping out of the bushes with lush proclamations of love or a broken heart or comic asides or astute observation or deadpan self-deprication -  one following the other until you end up somewhere you never would have predicted at the beginning of the song.

Here's a list from the beginning of the year with the "10 best" Jens Lekman songs if you want to hear more or some with full instrumentation.

purple light and tv

I love the bark on this tree - it looked especially pretty tonight as the sun was going down and the sky was turning purple.

Purple sky. 

And now, some random television! 

Did anyone watch Ringer tonight? This show is B A N A N A S. When you begin with an evil twin/ swapped life/ faked death premise, it's not going to start making sense any time soon. They burn through more plot in one episode than some shows do in a season. Oh, evil Siobhan, what villainy will you commit next? Bonus: Amber Benson was in this episode - it was like Buffy old home week! 

COMMUNITY: I love it. I was somewhat late to the show - started by watching Modern Warfare (the season 1 paintball episode) after the internet blew up about it. (I urge you to find it - it's a good standalone episode that demonstrates the lengths they're willing to go. It's also hilarious.)  I then caught up one disc at a time via netflix. They're on an unexpected hiatus right now, but I urge you to seek it out if you aren't watching it already -  it might not be your cup of tea (fair enough, I guess) but if it is, you don't want to wait any longer. 

The Sing-Off: This show and So You Think You Can Dance are the only competition style shows I watch. Oh, wait. I watched The Voice last year too, but I really prefer how they do The Sing Off. (Less gimmick, more singing.)  The contestants are all talented and the judges (Shawn Stockman, Sara Bareilles, Ben Folds) generally give considered, constructive criticisms.  The finale was on last night and Pentatonix - one of my favorites - won.  Nerves caused some strained performances in the live finale, but here's a song of theirs from a couple weeks ago that shows some of what they can do. (note: 3 of these kids are only 19! The rest of them aren't much older.) 

Bonus: Ben Folds kept a blog, and this post in particular is very interesting about Reality TV vs. Reality.

hello, color

It's raining and the sky is grey, not that it matters since it will be dark in ONE HOUR ANYWAY. Not that I'm counting down the days to the winter solstice and the return of the sun or anything...

Enough about the weather - isn't this fabric amazing? It's Pendleton wool, which they have on huge rolls like this at the Pendleton Woolen Mill store here in Portland. We (me, mom, sister) went yesterday just to look around. AMAZING, as always. The color and patterns never fail to cheer me up. I love that they've been weaving some of these patterns for over a hundred years, yet they look so modern.

I prefer the traditional pattern jacquard wool, which is a reversible, tight, flat, woven wool excellent for blankets or jackets or pillows or whatever. It just occurred to me that a few rolls of this stuff would make the most superior blanket fort in the history of blanket forts. 

I love the bold geometrics. The teal on the bottom is even better (greener, richer) in person. They have lots of other Pendleton fabrics at this store in addition to weirdo ends and scraps from the mill. The weirdo ends and scraps are my favorite! I didn't get any yesterday because it was holiday-weekend picked over, but I still have a huge bag from last time...

being sad

The wind is whipping and the rain is dumping down which is gross and terrible, but it suits my mood today which is gross and terrible. Our sweet orange boy Dash was hit by a car late Sunday/early Monday. Such a good cat! He was sweet and feisty, funny and weird, but most of all a beloved part of the family. He and Busby (other cat) got along so well - Busby's already figured out something is wrong and it breaks my heart to see him looking all over the house for Dash - it's exactly what I did before I went looking around the neighborhood and found him the way nobody wants to find a lost pet. He had a good life, but it wasn't long enough. He loved to sleep in the sun in the middle of the garden, he loved climbing trees and catching bugs, he loved sleeping on his back in front of the fireplace, he loved hanging out with Busby, he loved making biscuits and napping in cupboards.

He was also a cat of many names - here are the ones I can think of:

biscuits
itty bits
hobo joe
egyptian red
orange busby
orange cooney
dr. lady baby
the neck nurse
ned nickerson
foxy bananas
poncho maccardle
flashheart
nuu-nuu (but only in the summer when he'd shed his coat)
chester cheeto
sunbeam pete (any cat chasing the sun to nap in gets called this)

He was the most CAT cat I've ever lived with- full of adventure and affection and a particular cat-like joie de vivre. (I'm not saying I loved it when he brought bird after bird into the house, but he did it with such pride and enthusiasm.) I will miss his oven-like warmth, his sweet face, his insistent meow, his soft thick fur, the clatter of his kibble on the plastic tray underneath his bowl (he was a messy eater), but most of all the simple pleasure of his company. I miss him so much and wish that he was spending this wretched day stretched out in front of the fire or curled up in his favorite cardboard box.

uniforms, caps, fezzes, regalia

REGALIA???? I am perhaps most intrigued by this aspect of the Nudelman Bros. insignia. It's probably for the Queen of the Elks or the Regal Rotarian or King B.P.O.E. or H.R.H, Empress of the Masons or whatever. BUT STILL. Maybe they were turning out capes for the minor royalty of Europe, maybe "regalia" means the gold tassel on a fez. I don't know, but I sure like wondering about it.

These patches are in a nursing cape that belonged to my grandfather's third wife. I didn't know her very well, but she was funny, tart, tall and strapping and I can totally imagine her striding around in her blue wool nurses cape fixing things with bandages or a pointed look.

three incompatible things I have to do today

1) APPLY FOR JOB - the job closes tomorrow, there will be thousands of applicants and I don't have any expectation that my application will go anywhere, but I have to do it or I will be plagued with guilt and shame for not even trying. What kind of weirdo doesn't even try, Jen? I would really like this job - I think I could be very good at it, but I'm sure the other 4000 people applying feel the same. Particular challenge: summing up my specific rad-ness and constitutional suitability for the position in 150 words or less without using the word RAD.

2) PAINTING THE ROOM - the room where the fabric and other craft supplies have been stacked in squalor for far too long. This is way overdue and already halfway done, but it requires paint clothes and getting dirty and wah wah wah. I can knock most of this out today (all but the floor), but it will take a lot of advanced do this then that planning - which is FINE as long as the paint dries as fast as I think it should. (note: it almost never does.) 

3) CATCHING UP ON NANO - I am participating in Nanowrimo this year! (I like writing it without all the in the middle Capital Letters because then it reminds me of Nanaimo, which is a very nice place.) This has been a very good thing so far and I have more to say about it, but right now I'm behind. I'm right on the precipice between being able to catch up with a little extra effort, and being too far behind to do anything but type for 2 weeks straight. I don't have time to do that second thing!  I need to do some work today if I'm going to stay on the right side of this, but it's incompatible with being painty! I will figure it out.

The photo above was taken out of the window by my desk yesterday - it looks almost exactly like this today, except there is a lot more fog and leaves on the ground. I am so jealous of this slide! In the summer the neighbor kids put an inflatable pool at the bottom and fix a hose at the top for a pretty sweet slip and slide situation. 

november!

This is what it looked like when I was walking into work this morning. The figure up ahead is the youth librarian, returning from her lunch. [EDIT: it was 2PM! where is my head?]

What are you reading? I have a bunch of things lined up, and have read a bunch of really fun things just recently (more on those in future), but right this very moment I am reading two things:

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: I'm almost half way through and have to read the rest of this tomorrow or, you know, pay late fees (which I will do). This was a slow start for me, but it's probably because I didn't sit down and read 50 pages at once to get right into it.  The book is like a YA picture book with creepy photos, which is FUN, but I'm having some trouble with the voice of the narrator  -  it's supposed to be 1st person 16 y.o. boy, but there's a lot of description and that description is very evocative, but...writerly. Although I think I may have just figured out a way to read further without going "I doubt very much he would have described the light as 'gauzy'!" Maybe this story is being told in retrospect by a former 16 year old who is now a writer and therefore prone to describing things as gauzy or "leaving a trail of parenthetical scars on the floor." I'll let you know!

A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from my Kitchen Table: This is for my non-fiction book group  - it's a series of essays about food and family followed by a recipe. Every single recipe has made me hungry and the writing is really lovely.

directional indicators

I finally uploaded my photos from the fancy car exhibit I went to this summer. It was so cool! I think this might have been on the Bentley - I love the texture of the light on the left, and of course the ALT on the right. I will be posting more pictures from the exhibit - I'm not a capital CAR car person, but there's no denying the graceful and beautiful design in some of these Automobiles of Yore. They're so far removed from the mass produced cars of today they might as well be cars from another planet.

UNRELATED LINKS: Stratford on Hellmouth: fun! Spoilery if you haven't seen the end of certain Joss Whedon shows like Buffy. (this warning is mostly for Leslie!)

Kickstarter for Portland's Dill Pickle Club - this looks so cool! It's to build a social history/take your own downtown tour app. What I especially love about it: they want to make the app free to users AND it's an open source project so other cities could build something similar. One of the things I love best about this country is how uniquely weird each part of it is - what a great way to share that knowledge.

all hallow's eve, eve

Ha!  I love this idea.

I haven't even carved a jack o'lantern yet. I'm gonna before it gets dark tomorrow, I swear! It doesn't take a long time because I'm a jack o'lantern traditionalist: I like triangle eyes, a triangle nose, and a wide gappy smile. That's it! No fancy headless horseman/ Ron Swanson/ Yoda or whatever - straight up JACK O'LANTERN for me. I genuinely admire the fancy pumpkins of others, but it is not my way.

looks good to me

I saw this trailer for the movie The Artist this morning and I wish I could watch the whole thing right now. It looks to be mostly silent (w/music) and also French. But since there's no apparent dialogue, I won't have to read subtitles! Anyway - I love the look of it.



In other news, I just remembered that I'm working today! I'd better go get myself together.

starring Tommy

I love this poster - I saw it on a telephone pole near the park sometime in August -  I'm assuming it's a homeschool theater department situation.  Was this play ever mounted? I don't know! But I really dig the red sharpie/pencil poster and that it was put up with heavy duty upholstery staples.

yellow

I just uploaded some photos from July (!) -  I thought these two had a kind of fall color cast to them, so here they are. The top picture is of echinacea (coneflower) and the bottom is of echinacea and yarrow. So pretty! These aren't from my garden, but I just got an echinacea called 'harvest moon' this summer. Pretty, pretty.


It's sunny and windy here today. I'm trying to get some stuff planted (that should have been planted AGES ago) before we get our first freeze. Hopefully I'm enough weeks ahead (or even one week ahead!) so the plants can establish themselves a little.

Wordstock 2011: ring ring

This year I attended Wordstock on Saturday only - usually I go all day, both days but 2011 provided a combo of a stinking cold plus a visit from my California uncle. (Ha ha! That sounds like some kind of euphemism. “Oh, I’d love to go but I’ve got a visit from my California Uncle if you know what I mean.” I don’t know what it would mean, but in this instance it was truly my mother’s brother who lives in Fresno, visiting.) Anyway - it was a great day, but I spent most of it trying not to cough. Between cough drops and my water bottle, I think I did pretty well.

Everything was great. Every single thing! Oh, wait - there were some un-great things, but those were mostly noise related. It’s tough when you’ve got three stages going in the same hall, and one of those stages is singing, you know? Everything I attended was top quality, content-wise. On the shopping side, it seemed like there were fewer exhibitors, but that could be just how they had the thing laid out - I didn’t have as much time to peruse since I only had one free hour the whole day. The website and the booklet were FINALLY written so it was easy to cross-reference authors, so that’s another plus. 

ALMOND & MOUNTFORD 

11:00 - Peter Mountford and Steve Almond, Wordstock Community Stage: awesome. We were a little bit late since I was sure that they were reading at one of the big stages in the main area. They were across the way in one of the lecture rooms, but these are actually better because it’s not so crazy noisy. Peter Mountford had pneumonia, which certainly put my own cold into perspective. If he could sit there and read long passages from his novel without passing out, surely I could sit and pay attention for the whole time with minimal cough drop wrapper rustling. I like to think I succeeded. Mountford read first, from his recently published novel A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism - it’s his first, but the writing sounded very assured to my ears. I was intrigued by the premise (high finance and La Paz, Bolivia) and quite liked the section he read - will definitely read this book. You should read it too, then we can talk about it.

Steve Almond read from his new story collection (God Bless America: Stories) next - I’ve seen him read several times now and he was engaging as always. This time he was especially good - the new collection isn’t memoir-based essays(as his last one was), but short stores - the example I heard was strong all on its own, not bolstered by how likable Steve Almond is, if that makes any sense. The piece he read from was about poker, psychiatry, psychology, and the decor of suburban casinos. (Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched.) While he was reading, someone’s cell phone rang. Not just a little beep or blip, but a full on rumba. This understandably threw Almond off. As seems to always be the case with disruptive rings, it kept ringing - like the phone owner had accidentally put it behind a bunch of zippers or locks that had to be dealt with before it could be turned off. All eyes scanned the room, Almond said in the classes he teaches, he tells the person with the ringing phone that he will give them an F if they don’t take the call and pretend that nothing weird is going on. Ha ha! Awesome. He resumes reading. The phone rings again in a few minutes - obviously the same one due to the distinctive ring. The crowd is so totally against this phone person now - it sweeps through the room like unspoken mob intelligence. But Almond is classy and shows compassion, saying ‘hey, we don’t know. Maybe somebody is pregnant or sick.” (My sister and I discussed this afterward and agreed that this is what phones in your pocket set on vibrate are for.) He resumes reading. The phone owner slips out. 

I don’t have a lot of notes from the Q & A, which started with them asking each other questions. I did note that each seemed to genuinely enjoy the others’ work, which charmed me - a nicely supportive yet funny and self-depricating environment. Almond predicted that there would be an awkward silence before the Q&A started, but I think people only generated the awkward silence because we didn’t want to disappoint him. The questions from the crowd were mostly about writing process, as they always are at every reading I’ve ever attended. When asked about his process Almond said it’s a lot of humiliating badness, then figuring out his diurnal schedule (do you write better in the morning or the night? Write then.) and getting to work when he finally tires of the bullshit. Mountford talked about having a broad pool of trusted early readers - he said he does it this way because you can tap out a resource (“they don’t return my emails”) and it’s good to get a spectrum of opinion (but not too early). They said a lot of smart things that I didn’t write down.  (sorry! I was sick.)

Almond & Mountford, Mountford & Almond - the names together sound like a 70s songwriting team or maybe a specialized detective agency. As far as I know they don’t do these things, but they DO write very well. If you get the chance to see them read together or apart, you should take it.


More Wordstock to follow! 

caption technology v. the forest

These pictures have been fighting with me for 20 minutes. I can't manage to write anything BESIDE them, so I'm going to have an epic caption instead. Take that, pictures! I wonder if there's a limit on caption length? Anyway - this is THE WOODS right off of a lovely paved path at the Starvation Creek park.  I was sick as a dog (a dog with a head cold), but my uncle was visiting and since I'd spent the day before at Wordstock, I felt like I should go along with the rest of the gang. It worked out! As far as I know, no one else has the dog's head cold and I got to take these (and many other) pictures.

you have got to be kidding me! Now the picture wants to be on the side. I swear ... oh wait. it's moving over as I type. This is bizarre, but I realize not exactly interesting. As I was saying - Starvation Creek. Here's the waterfall -  I think it's lovely as waterfalls generally are. (can you think of an ugly one? I can't.)  I could have hopped over the creek itself to take a picture without these trees, but that was not going to happen because I was sick and didn't want to be riding around in a car for hours with wet shoes.

It's very peaceful in these woods even though they're just off the freeway, even though the water is rushing relentlessly  over rocks and fallen trees.  Maybe that's why - the cars sound like water, but the water doesn't sound like cars. The train just sounds like the train, though. 

Oh, hey! Check it out - I escaped from the captions. They keep changing things on blogger which is great because a lot of them needed changing, but it sometimes takes a little while to figure out what's going on.  Anyway - this was a tiny portion of the lovely things I saw on Sunday. I hope I'll have some Wordstock stuff up this afternoon. 

what I think will happen

Today is Wordstock day! Normally, I like to go for all day, both days but I'm not sure if that's going to work this time or not. I have ANOTHER stupid cold and my uncle is visiting from California, both of which curb my natural Wordstock inclinations. We'll see how it shakes out by the end of today.

Speaking of which, here's my tentative schedule:

11:00 Steve Almond
12:00 Julia Glass & Diana Abu-Jaber
1:00 Jennifer Egan (!!!!!!!!! one thousand !!!!!!!!!s)
2:00 lunch OR Michael Ondaatje OR Vera Brosgol & Jonathan Hill (you should read VB's Anya's Ghost if you haven't already - it's fantastic.)
3:00 Craig Thompson, probably
4:00 panel: Pushing the Limits of Form in Fiction (feat. Jennifer Egan)
5:00 Carson Ellis & Colin Meloy

Looks good, right? A few of those things happen at the same time as other things I'm interested, so it's open to change.