Or at least it turns up the unexpected sometimes, which is almost always delightful.
Here are a couple of of shining moments from this morning's readings.
First, in Alison Lurie's Boys and Girls Forever: Children's classics from Cinderella to Harry Potter, there is a chapter about Iona Opie's The People in the Playground and Barrie Thorne's Gender Play. Both books are sociological treatments of playground culture. For those of you who are not familiar--Iona Opie is one half of the most famous child-ologist couple in the world (that totally is not a technical term, by the way). Peter and Iona Opie spent most of the 20th century studying and recording child-lore--playground games and rhymes, nursery rhymes, fairy tales, counting and alphabet games and so on--in Great Britain. Their body of work is incredible--and really useful for the kind of work that I do.
Anyway, as you can imagine, some of the stuff that they collected is really strange and wonderful and sort of embarrassing sometimes too. Lurie quotes the following from The People in the Playground which I think is amazing, and which I have not heard before. (Opie heard it on a North England playground in the 1970s.)
One banana, two banana, three banana, four,
Fifteen skinheads knocking at the door,
Five with machine guns, five with sticks,
Five with hand grenades handing from their---
la la la la la
Lurie uses this rhyme as "[proof] again that it is impossible to shield children from contemporary life." I should say so.
The second piece of show and tell for this morning comes from Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy. He's discussing the fact that "mass media" has been slow to change the habits of oral communication among the British working class (something I've always wondered about in terms of American slang/accents. Why doesn't everyone talk like they do on TV and in the movies? This is, maybe, a question that presents itself most naturally to a girl from the West coast like myself). As an offer of proof, Hoggart supplies several phrases overheard "from a bright, pastel-shade distempered and tubular furnished waiting-room of a children's clinic." Where, "[a] handful of drab and untidy mothers were waiting with their children, and the conversation dribbled on aimlessly but easily about their habits." Here is my favorite of the phrases, along with Hoggart's "translation" in parenthesis.
"Y' don't look at the mantelpiece when y' poke the fire" (a woman doesn't need to be pretty to make sexual intercourse with her enjoyable)
I'm totally going to be on the lookout for situations into which I can insert that gem. I invite you to do the same. Let's bring that one back, people.
29 April 2008
27 April 2008
As Promised, I Will Start Providing Images
Behold the Lady E, on her third birthday. I almost missed this, but then Frontier Airlines TOTALLY screwed up my flight back to Austin, so my mom came and picked me up so that I could go to Chuck E. Cheese with my brother, sister-in-law, E, her little brother (call him whatever you want, I prefer "Guy") and my parents.
If you have not had the pleasure of Chuck E. Cheese in the past 15 years, let me assure you that you DON'T really want it. It's actually pretty awful. The only cool thing about it is that they now have these automated ticket counters. You feed them into the machine and you get a receipt in return with the total number of tickets you've entered. It makes the whole choosing-prizes process much easier.
I personally spent the entire night playing skee ball. Since the skee ball machines don't give many tickets (and the ones that you DO get you get by actually being good at it), kids steer clear. Fine with me. I never had to wait for a lane. And I would much rather play 25 consecutive games of skee ball than run around trying to get as many tickets as possible, just to get a lame chuck e. cheese ruler.
25 April 2008
Renumeration
So-----I know that I already wrote today, and I'm starting a dangerous precedent by actually providing some sort of regular content, but I have had a delightful evening, and felt like writing about it.
After a week of temperatures and humidity that were too high, it is finally storming tonight--the air is cool and clean and there is rain (but not too much of it) and some truly amazing lightening, which, once I am done writing this I am going to watch out the skylight from my bed.
Tonight Jennifer and I dressed up and went out to dinner at the Eastside Cafe to celebrate the beginning of her writing successes (some contest wins for her first two novels and acceptance to the Tin House summer program) and to whatever small help I've been to her as her amateur creative editor and literary agent. (Seriously amateur. Since I have no chops whatsoever in either of these fields.) Still, she is on her way to being a serious literary talent, as far as I am concerned, and I'll be awfully happy to be able to say in the future that "I knew her when . . . " and "one time she took me out to dinner."*
We had a lovely meal, and too much wine (which I am sure shows not at all in this post) and we talked about mothers, geniuses, Steve Almond (one of her choices of people to workshop with at Tin House. How jealous am I about that.), the relationship between feminism and hetero sex (a topic about which I have a lot to say), new cars, 12 Angry Men and restaurants that serve Brie appetizers. We both had some costume malfunctions (I was wearing a dress that consistently needed readjustment so that I remained covered and she lost a shoe in a puddle on the way to the car) and her husband called to make sure that we were doing alright in the storm.
All in all, it was a perfectly lovely evening. I don't write much about sort of everyday happenings, but sometimes you have a night that you know that you are going to remember for a long time and that you are going to think back on nostalgically, and this was one of those nights. I think that it is sometimes nice to acknowledge those things when they happen.
I hope that you all had equally lovely Friday nights.
*By the way, if any of you are looking for an amateur (although rather talented) literary agent/creative editor, I do work for cheap. Wine and dine me and I'll make things happen. Just ask Jen. Or Dr. Awesome.
After a week of temperatures and humidity that were too high, it is finally storming tonight--the air is cool and clean and there is rain (but not too much of it) and some truly amazing lightening, which, once I am done writing this I am going to watch out the skylight from my bed.
Tonight Jennifer and I dressed up and went out to dinner at the Eastside Cafe to celebrate the beginning of her writing successes (some contest wins for her first two novels and acceptance to the Tin House summer program) and to whatever small help I've been to her as her amateur creative editor and literary agent. (Seriously amateur. Since I have no chops whatsoever in either of these fields.) Still, she is on her way to being a serious literary talent, as far as I am concerned, and I'll be awfully happy to be able to say in the future that "I knew her when . . . " and "one time she took me out to dinner."*
We had a lovely meal, and too much wine (which I am sure shows not at all in this post) and we talked about mothers, geniuses, Steve Almond (one of her choices of people to workshop with at Tin House. How jealous am I about that.), the relationship between feminism and hetero sex (a topic about which I have a lot to say), new cars, 12 Angry Men and restaurants that serve Brie appetizers. We both had some costume malfunctions (I was wearing a dress that consistently needed readjustment so that I remained covered and she lost a shoe in a puddle on the way to the car) and her husband called to make sure that we were doing alright in the storm.
All in all, it was a perfectly lovely evening. I don't write much about sort of everyday happenings, but sometimes you have a night that you know that you are going to remember for a long time and that you are going to think back on nostalgically, and this was one of those nights. I think that it is sometimes nice to acknowledge those things when they happen.
I hope that you all had equally lovely Friday nights.
*By the way, if any of you are looking for an amateur (although rather talented) literary agent/creative editor, I do work for cheap. Wine and dine me and I'll make things happen. Just ask Jen. Or Dr. Awesome.
Smell Ya Later
I am on day four of a cold that has left my nose without function (other than to take up room between my eyes and lips on my face. And hold up my glasses). I can't breathe at all, so I only sleep for a couple of hours at a time--which makes it pretty hard to beat the cold, since I can't sleep it off. Last night I put some vicks under my nose in an attempt to 1) soothe the redness and 2) open up some sort of small air passage. I don't think that it helped. And in one way it actually hurt. Because once I put it on I realized that I couldn't smell its menthol loveliness. Not at all. I could feel the tingle, but I couldn't smell it. And then I realized that I actually haven't been able to smell anything all week. And then I started to worry that I was going to end up like Trusty the dog from Lady and the Tramp, dreaming about the days when I used to be able to track animals while out hunting with my master.
Or something like that.
But I did, at three o'clock in the morning, sleep and oxygen deprived, begin to think about my favorite things to smell, and how much I'd miss them if I never could smell them again.
Here is my list:
1) vicks.
2) Playdough. I make Gus play Playdough with me all the time so that I can get that smell on my hands. This usually entails me making very detailed houses and Gus destroying them with tornadoes. Sometimes we play Food Network, which I like better because he does his Emeril impression and I get to be Rachael Ray.
3) Vanilla Amber Musk. This is my favorite thing to wear. Because it smells intoxicating. From Escentials, the shop on Hawthorne. (http://www.escential.net) And it is only $7.00 per 1/4 oz. And it stays good almost forever because their products are mostly vegetable oil based. (This is too heavy, I find, for most of the year in Texas, so I wear it a lot less often here.)
4) A can of freshly opened racquetballs. Reminds me of my childhood. And Bruce. And who doesn't like to be reminded of Bruce?
5) Baking brownies. Mmmm. Warm chocolate.
6) Rosemary. Which is also my favorite herb. For those of you who are taking note.
7) Mr. Sketch markers. But not grape. Artificial grape scent/flavor is disgusting.
8) Morning-after bar. I know it is foul, but I love waking up the morning after having spent a long evening in a bar (you know, a real bar where people actually can smoke inside?) and smelling the aroma of my own transgressions. (Which usually aren't all that transgressive.) Unlike regret, you can wash this smell off of you, which is part of the allure.
9) Coffee. This is, perhaps, the greatest single olfactory joy of all. Freshly roasted, freshly ground coffee. Walking into Stumptown (oh, Stumpdawg!) on a weekend morning and the smell is so pervasive that it sticks to you for the rest of the day. Part of my being-home ritual is that I always go to Stumptown on my last day in town and buy coffee to bring back to Texas with me. It is partially because I hate drinking anything else. And it is partially because I feel less far away when, on the other end of the journey, I open my bags and they are filled with that smell. It's like, for a moment, I get to cheat my senses.
My best scent memory is of some lipgloss I had as a kid. It was orange flavored and colored and it came in a plastic orange slice that was attached to some string for wearing around the neck. I remember keeping the orange slice long after the gloss was gone because I could still open it and smell the smell of it. I can't describe its actual bouquet, but it was something beyond fake orange---something warm, almost baked. It was delightful. I'd kill to find something that smelled like that again . . .
Or something like that.
But I did, at three o'clock in the morning, sleep and oxygen deprived, begin to think about my favorite things to smell, and how much I'd miss them if I never could smell them again.
Here is my list:
1) vicks.
2) Playdough. I make Gus play Playdough with me all the time so that I can get that smell on my hands. This usually entails me making very detailed houses and Gus destroying them with tornadoes. Sometimes we play Food Network, which I like better because he does his Emeril impression and I get to be Rachael Ray.
3) Vanilla Amber Musk. This is my favorite thing to wear. Because it smells intoxicating. From Escentials, the shop on Hawthorne. (http://www.escential.net) And it is only $7.00 per 1/4 oz. And it stays good almost forever because their products are mostly vegetable oil based. (This is too heavy, I find, for most of the year in Texas, so I wear it a lot less often here.)
4) A can of freshly opened racquetballs. Reminds me of my childhood. And Bruce. And who doesn't like to be reminded of Bruce?
5) Baking brownies. Mmmm. Warm chocolate.
6) Rosemary. Which is also my favorite herb. For those of you who are taking note.
7) Mr. Sketch markers. But not grape. Artificial grape scent/flavor is disgusting.
8) Morning-after bar. I know it is foul, but I love waking up the morning after having spent a long evening in a bar (you know, a real bar where people actually can smoke inside?) and smelling the aroma of my own transgressions. (Which usually aren't all that transgressive.) Unlike regret, you can wash this smell off of you, which is part of the allure.
9) Coffee. This is, perhaps, the greatest single olfactory joy of all. Freshly roasted, freshly ground coffee. Walking into Stumptown (oh, Stumpdawg!) on a weekend morning and the smell is so pervasive that it sticks to you for the rest of the day. Part of my being-home ritual is that I always go to Stumptown on my last day in town and buy coffee to bring back to Texas with me. It is partially because I hate drinking anything else. And it is partially because I feel less far away when, on the other end of the journey, I open my bags and they are filled with that smell. It's like, for a moment, I get to cheat my senses.
My best scent memory is of some lipgloss I had as a kid. It was orange flavored and colored and it came in a plastic orange slice that was attached to some string for wearing around the neck. I remember keeping the orange slice long after the gloss was gone because I could still open it and smell the smell of it. I can't describe its actual bouquet, but it was something beyond fake orange---something warm, almost baked. It was delightful. I'd kill to find something that smelled like that again . . .
24 April 2008
Eat the Words
Ok, so I have this little inferiority complex when it comes to Carrie Brownstein. Because she is awesome. And because she gets to do things that I wish I could do (did she play on Henry Rollins's show? Yes she did. Rollinssssss). And because Mikey J thinks she is so cool. And if all that were not enough, she has a blog where she shows off the fact that she is smart and funny and down-to-earth, and where she reminds me over and over that she gets to live in PDX and I don't.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monitormix/
The point is, I've been thinking about doing this ever since I read her blog about her favorite Replacements lyrics. And while their probably are some "artists" (I always feel like a tool using that phrase with regard to pop music) who I could mine for a list of top 10 favorite lyrics (Billy Bragg, Frank Black, Stephin Merritt) I thought it would be fun to come up with 10 favorite from different "artists." This is a working list. I am probably totally forgetting others that I love, but these are the ones I've been able to come up with over the last couple of weeks. And I'm writing a little commentary too--some of them might require justification. But all of these are lyrics that I find positively yummy, usually because they express some idea or image that I find yummy. You know, yummy to the brain?
(These are in no particular order.)
1. "Now that you've made me want to die/you tell me that you're unboyfriendable/and I could make you pay and pay/but I could never make you say."
--"All my Little Words" The Magnetic Fields
First of all, this is the best song I know of that expresses heartbreak as simultaneously sad, wistful and angry. Secondly, it includes the single best word in a song pretty much ever.
2. "You know you're semi-good lookin'/out on the streets again./Oh yeah, you think you're really cookin' baby/you better find yourself a friend."
--"Ain't Talkin' About Love" Van Halen
I've talked about this song (and this particular lyric) at length elsewhere. But really, who but Diamond Dave could pull off calling a chick "semi-good lookin'"? It's the best un-compliment ever.
3. "Shirley, your sexual politics have left me all of a muddle/Shirley, we are joined in the ideological cuddle/I'm celebrating my love for you/With a pint of beer and a new tattoo."
--"Shirley" Billy Bragg
Many of you who know me well probably already know that I think this is one of the most romantic songs ever. Which reveals way too much about me. But I love this lyric because 1) I think I would enjoy an ideological cuddle. Or even ideological cuddling. 2) Bragg captures the whole blue-collar, working-class romance thing. Which I am, in fact, very romantic about. I could sigh over a guy who would celebrate his love for me with a tattoo and some beer. (Or even just the beer, actually.)
4. "'O lonely urchin!' the widow cried,/'I've not been swept since the day my husband died.'/Her cheeks a blushing, her legs laid bare/And shipwrecked there I'll shake you from your sleep."
--"The Chimbley Sweep" The Decemberists
This is a super vague, but super hot lyric in the middle of an Eighteenth-century inspired narrative song by a band from Portland. C'mon. What is there for me to NOT love about that?!
5. "It's a beautiful day/No, it's a horrible day/You can see here by my grin I don't give a fuck/It's a beautiful day/No, it's a horrible day/For the first time in my life I don't need the luck."
--"Horrible Day" Frank Black
Next time you are having a bad day, download it and sing along at the top of your lungs. You'll get it.
6. "Now on the bus/Nearly touching this dirty retreat/Falling out 6th and Powell, a dead sweat in my teeth/Gonna walk walk walk/Four more blocks, plus the one in my brain/Down downstairs to the man, he's gonna make it all okay"
--"Needle in the Hay" Elliott Smith
This song makes me cry pretty much every time I hear it. Damn you Elliott Smith. Damn you Wes Anderson. It also instantly conjures up a picture of the Ross Island Bridge. And that makes me want to cry too.
7. "We would shout/And swim about/the coral that lies beneath the waves./Oh what joy/for every girl and boy knowing they're happy and they're safe."
--"Octopus's Garden" The Beatles
Screw all y'all. I love this song. It's the first Beatles song I fell in love with, and the reason that I started listening to Abbey Road, which is the one album I'd take with me if I were stranded on a desert island. And, really, I would like to live under the sea. (Remember--Gus says I'm a mermaid . . . ) Seriously. Screw all y'all. I can have a whimsical side if I want to.
8. " I've known a lot of girls before/What's the harm in knowing one more?/Maybe we could even get together/Maybe you could break my heart next summer /Why bother? It's gonna hurt me/It's gonna kill when you desert me/This happened to me twice before/Won't happen to me anymore
--"Why Bother?" Weezer
I love songs about low self-esteem. And about not having high expectations. Rivers Cuomo, you make the world much less lonely for sad bastards everywhere.
Not everything needs explanation though:
9. "The most tender place in my heart is for strangers/I know it's unkind, but my own blood is much too dangerous."
--"Hold On, Hold On" Neko Case
10. "Like the naked leads the blind/I know I'm selfish, I'm unkind./Sucker love I always find,/Someone to bruise and leave behind."
--"Every Me Every You" Placebo
You can play too---
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monitormix/
The point is, I've been thinking about doing this ever since I read her blog about her favorite Replacements lyrics. And while their probably are some "artists" (I always feel like a tool using that phrase with regard to pop music) who I could mine for a list of top 10 favorite lyrics (Billy Bragg, Frank Black, Stephin Merritt) I thought it would be fun to come up with 10 favorite from different "artists." This is a working list. I am probably totally forgetting others that I love, but these are the ones I've been able to come up with over the last couple of weeks. And I'm writing a little commentary too--some of them might require justification. But all of these are lyrics that I find positively yummy, usually because they express some idea or image that I find yummy. You know, yummy to the brain?
(These are in no particular order.)
1. "Now that you've made me want to die/you tell me that you're unboyfriendable/and I could make you pay and pay/but I could never make you say."
--"All my Little Words" The Magnetic Fields
First of all, this is the best song I know of that expresses heartbreak as simultaneously sad, wistful and angry. Secondly, it includes the single best word in a song pretty much ever.
2. "You know you're semi-good lookin'/out on the streets again./Oh yeah, you think you're really cookin' baby/you better find yourself a friend."
--"Ain't Talkin' About Love" Van Halen
I've talked about this song (and this particular lyric) at length elsewhere. But really, who but Diamond Dave could pull off calling a chick "semi-good lookin'"? It's the best un-compliment ever.
3. "Shirley, your sexual politics have left me all of a muddle/Shirley, we are joined in the ideological cuddle/I'm celebrating my love for you/With a pint of beer and a new tattoo."
--"Shirley" Billy Bragg
Many of you who know me well probably already know that I think this is one of the most romantic songs ever. Which reveals way too much about me. But I love this lyric because 1) I think I would enjoy an ideological cuddle. Or even ideological cuddling. 2) Bragg captures the whole blue-collar, working-class romance thing. Which I am, in fact, very romantic about. I could sigh over a guy who would celebrate his love for me with a tattoo and some beer. (Or even just the beer, actually.)
4. "'O lonely urchin!' the widow cried,/'I've not been swept since the day my husband died.'/Her cheeks a blushing, her legs laid bare/And shipwrecked there I'll shake you from your sleep."
--"The Chimbley Sweep" The Decemberists
This is a super vague, but super hot lyric in the middle of an Eighteenth-century inspired narrative song by a band from Portland. C'mon. What is there for me to NOT love about that?!
5. "It's a beautiful day/No, it's a horrible day/You can see here by my grin I don't give a fuck/It's a beautiful day/No, it's a horrible day/For the first time in my life I don't need the luck."
--"Horrible Day" Frank Black
Next time you are having a bad day, download it and sing along at the top of your lungs. You'll get it.
6. "Now on the bus/Nearly touching this dirty retreat/Falling out 6th and Powell, a dead sweat in my teeth/Gonna walk walk walk/Four more blocks, plus the one in my brain/Down downstairs to the man, he's gonna make it all okay"
--"Needle in the Hay" Elliott Smith
This song makes me cry pretty much every time I hear it. Damn you Elliott Smith. Damn you Wes Anderson. It also instantly conjures up a picture of the Ross Island Bridge. And that makes me want to cry too.
7. "We would shout/And swim about/the coral that lies beneath the waves./Oh what joy/for every girl and boy knowing they're happy and they're safe."
--"Octopus's Garden" The Beatles
Screw all y'all. I love this song. It's the first Beatles song I fell in love with, and the reason that I started listening to Abbey Road, which is the one album I'd take with me if I were stranded on a desert island. And, really, I would like to live under the sea. (Remember--Gus says I'm a mermaid . . . ) Seriously. Screw all y'all. I can have a whimsical side if I want to.
8. " I've known a lot of girls before/What's the harm in knowing one more?/Maybe we could even get together/Maybe you could break my heart next summer /Why bother? It's gonna hurt me/It's gonna kill when you desert me/This happened to me twice before/Won't happen to me anymore
--"Why Bother?" Weezer
I love songs about low self-esteem. And about not having high expectations. Rivers Cuomo, you make the world much less lonely for sad bastards everywhere.
***
Not everything needs explanation though:
9. "The most tender place in my heart is for strangers/I know it's unkind, but my own blood is much too dangerous."
--"Hold On, Hold On" Neko Case
10. "Like the naked leads the blind/I know I'm selfish, I'm unkind./Sucker love I always find,/Someone to bruise and leave behind."
--"Every Me Every You" Placebo
***
You can play too---
21 April 2008
Important Correction
The Make-Ready is not a place for misrepresentation. I got the following in an email from Mikey J today, and felt it necessary to set the record straight.
"I didn't think Walk Hard was all that good. I liked Tim Meadows andI should have known that he had better taste . . . My apologies.
little else. I wouldn't recommend the movie if not for him."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)