The Velvet Underground-What Goes On

Posted on September 26, 2006
Filed Under Song of the Day, music | 2 Comments


After Los Angeles…

Posted on September 22, 2006
Filed Under Blather, music, photography | 2 Comments

It doesn’t feel like obnoxious self-promotion to tell you that my Andrew Bird photos are being used in the banner at the andrewbird.org fansite. A selection of the photos from that show is also posted in the pictures section on the site. Anybody wanna buy me a nice f/1.4 lens?

Recent Reads and New Picks for the Overflowing Bookshelf

Posted on September 21, 2006
Filed Under Blather, the written word, wide world of vacation | Leave a Comment

I recently finished Francine Prose’s Blue Angel. I enjoyed it, though my feelings about the ending are a bit mixed. I can’t disagree with how she skewers the academic system and all of its politics, but I can’t help feeling that somehow she lets the protagonist off too easy (despite what happens to him). No one really comes out smelling too good.

I’m currently reading I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Inteviews: 1962-1987 and I’m really loving it. I’ve read a few of them before, but some have been pulled from unpublished goodies at the Warhol museum, and they’re all pretty well presented so far. Beyond just getting more Andy, I think it’s really interesting to look at the interview process and the struggle between Andy and the interviewer as he often tries to subvert–or invert–the whole thing. Good stuff, especially if you have a little background to begin with.

And even though I have so many books to read that I’ll never get through them all, I picked up a few others that I couldn’t resist, as is my wont. At Skylight Books in Los Angeles, home of a pleasant orange cat who put up with my rubbing and petting for a good five minutes, I found a copy of Olive Higgins Prouty’s Now, Voyager. Those of you who have read my blog consistently (all 3 of you!) will recall how much I love the movie. So I’m going sort of backwards on that one… movie to book instead of the other way around. Last night Ez and I were talking about another movie to book journey I’d like to take–with Jim Thompson’s The Grifters. But I digress.

At City Lights in San Fran, I was lured in by The Last Masquerade. Nice book cover, I thought, and then I read the back cover and the first few pages, and the book was mine.

Vacation

Posted on September 20, 2006
Filed Under Blather, photography, the pusses, wide world of vacation | 1 Comment

As most of you know, I have been on vacation, hence my recent silence. I must apologize to my many California friends that we didn’t see this time out. I was so busy leading up to the trip, our time in LA was short, and I was basically unplugged (no internet, sometimes no cell service) most of the time–which in many ways I enjoyed immensely. If you are in the LA area, we may get another chance–we plan to return sometime next year for a friend’s wedding. No doubt that will be a busy trip, too, but we have lots of time to plan ahead!

Ezra has written a smattering about our trip on his swell blog, and I have pictures to share. I’m in major catch-up mode with work, but I’ll probably write more trip-thoughts soon.

Suki and Edie seem thrilled to have us back. It’s nice to be loved.

Weddings

Posted on September 3, 2006
Filed Under Blather, friends | 4 Comments

After a year of no weddings, I’m very pleased to report that Ezra and I have three coming up, and on the eve of our own 5th anniversary, we attended Rebecca Lord and Francois Gauvin’s beautiful wedding last night. It was very sweet, and lots of little things reminded us in all kinds of good ways of our own wedding–right down to the color scheme (burgundy bridesmaid dresses), the flowers (deep burgundy dahlias), and the size of the wedding, which I think was just slightly smaller than ours. If you were at our wedding, you remember my sister’s toast (so special to me that I can’t think of an adequate word to describe it). Rebecca’s maid of honor made a similarly touching toast. Love!

Thought of the night: Just as being very unhappy drives people to do things they would never do otherwise, being extaordinarily happy makes people do things (sometimes great things) that they maybe wouldn’t normally do.

Something that has always bugged me

Posted on September 1, 2006
Filed Under Blather, me and my brain, rant, the written word | Leave a Comment

The idea of “reverse discrimination” has always annoyed me. Now hear me out. Discrimination is discrimination. “Reverse discrimination” is in itself a sort of discriminatory term. It assumes that one or more groups, generally minorities, are discriminated against. They might be, or they might not be–but that’s not the point. If you want to treat everyone as being on a truly even plane, just call it all discrimination, independent of its target–no special term needed. One is not more or less nasty than the other.

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