Sarcastic Fringehead

Well, hello there! Thanks for stopping by. Things are fairly embryonic at the moment, but I'm working on it; big thanks are due to the lovely Jodi for helping me out with Movable Type.

It's hard to believe I haven't been doing this for ages, given my affinity for such things as bragging about my child, spending way too much time on the Internet, and writing in general; also, I generally hop on new tech-related trends well before the New York Times completely misunderstands them, and in the case of parenting blogs (some of my favorite people are "mommy bloggers," but that doesn't mean I'm required to use the term nonironically - does it?) I'm at least a year late. Hi. I had a baby. I may never be cutting-edge again. I'm OK with that.

Anyway, if you're interested in learning what I'm planning to do here, the rest of this entry will explain.

We had another hitting incident at the Remo drum circle yesterday. This one mystified me, as usually W's victims have at least looked at him funny. This kid was just standing there when W. hit him in the arm with his drumstick.

"Why did you hit that kid, anyway?" I asked him (after reading him the riot act).

"I was using dat widdle boy as a cwash cymbal."

Oh. Great.

I mean, it's not like we haven't had to give the people-are-not-drums talk a few times, but never before for such a specific reason.

Sorry it's been quiet 'round here... we've had company in our wee little room and that doesn't leave much time or space for writing. Quick update: Everyone's reasonably healthy, I've got a bunch of potential employment situations in the works, and... well, that's about it in a nutshell. Fascinating minutiae to come.

To the five people who read here even though I haven't really told people about this yet:

Hi!

I've been gone for a while because (a) my computer died, but as they didn't recognize that fact for some time at the repair shop, I was without a computer for three weeks; (b) even when I am with computer, I am also with useless hotel internet connection, so my online time is let's just say abridged; (c) I lost all my bookmarks, including the one that allowed me to post to this blog; (d) oh yeah, and I've been slowly working my way through the 1700 unfiltered emails that accumulated in my absence.

But now I have a nifty new MacBook thanks to my mommy, and a week from now we will be living in an apartment and not having to deal with hotel anything. Yes, we finally got a place - it's in Altadena, which I'm kind of excited about. It's kind of cool historically, and it's just a crazy mix of people and stuff - for example, one street features a punching-bag store and a pastrami restaurant facing each other. If we didn't have to take things like commutes into consideration, we'd definitely want to live more toward LA proper, but this place could be fun.

Anyway, I have a lot more to tell you, but I need to work on moving for the next few days. I'll probably be back next week. Maybe I'll even have time to work on the layout here - I swear I never intended to have two duplicate columns down the right and the left for more than a day or two!

Yeah, that whole we're-moving-to-Altadena thing? Did not so much happen. We're in Alhambra instead - bright side, it's a much nicer (read cleaner) apartment, and it's got some groovy midcentury fixtures I'm quite fond of. It shares a lot of the qualities that had me so smitten with Altadena (many of which I believe are completely attributable to both towns' Route-66-adjacent location), and it's closer to the 10 than the 210, which puts us closer to many of our favorite people and places. Hey, that's a lot of bright side - what's my problem? Oh. Right. We don't know if we'll get any of our first month's rent back on the other place.

Anyway, we are not even remotely unpacked, and I've had some rather surprising/time-consuming events in my usually low-key part-time web design gig, and W. went through an extremely unpleasant phase that I blame on his being almost 3 in general, his making some major developmental leaps, and then that whole moving for the second time in six months issue. But today he was back to his charming self, and even allowed several boxes to be unpacked without ugly incident, lovely child.

I realize this is the least entertaining entry ever, and I do apologize - this one's just for the people who check in for the facts. More soon!

Are you familiar with jazz vocalist Carol Sloane? She's quite delightful. Today, while researching jazz weblogs for work (nice work if you can get it), I discovered that she has a blog, and my lord, is it fabulous. She's not the first blogger I've read who uses language in a wonderfully precise manner, nor the first who's laugh-out-loud funny, but I believe she is the first who can use those qualities to relate stories about, for instance, opening for Lenny Bruce.

I got the new CD by Nerissa and Katryna Nields, Sister Holler the other day. I put it on in the car last night and - well, I should tell you I have a rule. On the first listen to a new album, I don't allow myself to hit either the Repeat or the Skip buttons. With Repeat, on a good album, I usually have to restrain myself once or twice. On a great album, it can go as high as five or six. Sister Holler? ELEVEN. I am almost certain this has never happened before; well, probably on 69 Love Songs, but that's hardly a reasonable comparison. (For the uninitiated: It actually contains 69 love songs.) Sister Holler consists of new songs based on existing songs, in the folk tradition - some gospel, some traditional, some pop, some classical, that sort of thing. I will almost certainly post more insightfully about the music later, but I need to completely geek out and research the original songs first. Oh yes, I'm going to full-on obsess about this album. For instance, the cover photo shows Nerissa with her face completely obscured by her hair; I may be able to find evidence that she died in 1964 and was replaced by Paul McCartney.

My, that would be geeky, wouldn't it?

You may think you don't want to read a blog entry about a lost teddy bear. You'd be wrong in this case; this is the single best piece of writing I've read in recent memory.

And finally, Julie from A Little Pregnant details a common medical procedure using props and Play-Doh. Inspired. Or maybe deranged.

Tell me you don't want to read the rest of the article that opens with this paragraph:

An ice-cream truck rolls up to the south entrance of Plummer Park on Saturday, its hi-fi speakers blasting an ethereal, toy-piano version of Beck’s “Loser.” It’s 100 degrees, but out pops a woman in a geometric, fiberglass squirrel suit. She skips over to a picnic table and joins a group of Russian men playing cards. One of the men turns and asks gruffly, in heavily accented English, “Who is this squirrel?"

(Hint: You really do.)

***

You've probably already seen this picture of a monkey and a pigeon. You won't mind looking at it again, will you?

***

We went to see Joe Henry at Largo the other night, and it was utterly transcendent. I wanted to find a video that would convey the amazingness of this exact evening, this brilliant songwriter backed by a flawless band playing his new songs, some of which were so stunning you (read: I) couldn't breathe for a minute. I didn't find that. I did find this on YouTube, though: Henry with Billy Bragg, performing Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, and that is not too shabby either.

You should really go buy Civilians right now.

***

I usually keep my politics inside my own head, but Nerissa Nields's long essay on the politics of food really struck a chord with me, particularly:

As I am writing this, I have the same strange mixture of anger, shame and hope that I always have when I write about the places where my desire to be a good citizen of the planet collides with my desire to be accepted as one among many fallen humans, normal people who just want to live a good life, who want to enjoy the occasional chicken McNugget and not have that moment ruined for them by a Climate Change Cassandra campaigning against junk food.

I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone sum up so neatly what it is that often keeps me from fully taking sides on issues I actually feel rather strongly about. So I thought I'd pass it along just in case it gives anyone else a lightning-bolt moment.