Friday, November 24, 2006

thanksgiving and miscellaneous news and or books

thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. mostly because of the food. i love to cook everything that has anything to do with turkey day. this was the 5th annual misfits thanksgiving - hard to believe 5 years have passed - and friends who have no family, no family close by, or can't stand their family all attended. we had turkey and stuffing and sweet potato pie (i had to make 3 this year!) and honey carrots and garlic smashed potatoes and homemade (thanks michele) cookies and my pumpkin pie. the dog was much better this year. my poor little living room was bursting at the seams - especially with the prancing puppy about. it was a nice evening. i'm glad i have today off as well. i need some time to re-group and also to eat some leftovers!
i hope those of you that do the thanksgiving thing enjoyed yourselves as much as i did.

Los Amigos Invisibiles are playing at S.O.B.'s on Friday Dec 1 - go see them!


here's some news:
there was a hurricane on Saturn's south pole that measures 5000 miles in diameter.

the most visible leader of the leftist movement Oaxaca People's Assembly, Flavio Sosa, faces arrest warrants on riot and conspiracy charges in Oaxaca. the movement had been trying to oust state Gov. Ulises Ruiz. the assembly accuses Ruiz of rigging the 2004 election to win office and sending gangs of gun-toting thugs against his opponents.


After 54 years making door-to-door deliveries of bread and pastries to people in southeast Los Angeles County, Herman Langley is retiring.

Scientists in Geelong have created something talent-lean wannabe rock gods everywhere need: an air-guitar shirt that allows its wearer to
actually play!

and some books:

1) Carry Me Like Water by Benjamin Alire Saenz
2) We Are All Fine Here by Mary Guterson
3) The Areas of my Expertise: an almanac of complete world knowledge compiled with instructive annotation and arranged in useful order by John Hodgman
4) 109 East Palace : Robert Oppenheimer and the secret city of Los Alamos by Jennet Conant
5) Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures : a true story from Hell on Earth by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thomson
6) How the Universe got its Spots: diary of a finite time in a finite space by Janna Levin

let me just say that i enjoyed Carry Me Like Water so much that i've ordered a copy from amazon (used, of course!) the characters, their interaction, and the dialogue just flowed together so beautifully that by the time i finished the book i felt as if i knew them all personally and i was sad beyond belief to say goodbye to them.
and in Mary Guterson's We are all Fine Here, i didn't like the main character until the very end - though the story was good enough to keep me reading it.

that's it for now. i'm gonna go have some leftovers...

Friday, November 17, 2006

tom waits on his new album Orphans:

"When I was small I always thought that songwriters sat alone at upright pianos in cramped smoky little rooms with a bottle and an ashtray and everything came in the window blew through them and came out of the piano as a song…and in a weird way that is exactly what happens.
What’s "Orphans"? I don’t know. "Orphans" is a dead end kid driving a coffin with big tires across the Ohio River wearing welding goggles and a wife beater with a lit firecracker in his ear.
At the center of this record is my voice. I try my best to chug, stomp, weep, whisper, moan, wheeze, scat, blurt, rage, whine, and seduce. With my voice, I can sound like a girl, the boogieman, a Theremin, a cherry bomb, a clown, a doctor, a murderer…I can be tribal. Ironic. Or disturbed. My voice is really my instrument.
Kathleen and I wanted the record to be like emptying our pockets on the table after an evening of gambling, burglary, and cow tipping. We enjoy strange couplings, that’s how we got together. We wanted Orphans to be like a shortwave radio show where the past is sequenced with the future, consisting of things you find on the ground, in this world and no world, or maybe the next world. Whatever you imagine that to be..."

man, i wish i could write like that!

Thursday, November 9, 2006

feeling crummy today, but here i am

your Life-Gem memorial will offer comfort and support when and where you need it, and provide a lasting memory that endures just as a diamond does. forever. totally creepy.

Violent dowry harassment is an increasingly visible phenomenon in India. just crazy.

spoon-face schumacher's new island (literally) get-a-way.

fantasy congress game - online. i wonder who'll have more fun playing now...

F1 theme park. enough said. i think.

President Vilsack? has a certain...ring to it, no? NO. no one will vote for a Vilsack for president. wrong? perhaps. so what.

*************************************************************************************

BOOK LIST:

1) A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines by Janna Levin
2) An Iliad by Alessandro Baricco
3) Last Evening's on Earth by Roberto Bolaño
4) The City is a Rising Tide by Rebecca Lee
5) State of Denial by Bob Woodward
6) Iñes of my Soul by Isabel Allende
7) They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace Vietnam and America October 1967
8) The Story of Salt by Mark Kurlansky

mostly a good bunch of books this time around. the new Isabel Allende was worth the library waiting list. whenever she writes about her native Chile, i know it's going to be excellent. last evening's on earth was very good as well. i got so worked up reading bob woodward's book that i (nearly) threw it across the room. and the thing is, i agreed with almost everything in it. it just irks me that he can be such a fair weather friend. you know, when bush was popular (still don't know why) he wrote a flattering book or 2 and now that the tides have turned, well...
the Baricco book about the Iliad was GREAT. i wanted so much to like Rebecca Lee's book, but i was not quite able to. it's a small book that promised - at least on the cover flaps - a big story. it even used the word suspense, i think. none of that. it was however, written beautifully. sounds contradictory, right? well, not in my head.
and i want to say something about Jed Rubenfeld's book (from the last list) called The Interpretation of Murder. GET IT! i forgot to mention it last time. it's got suspense, murder (duh!, hence the title) and Freud and Jung coming to America in 1909. much was based on actual fact with a grand story woven throughout.

¡Ya Basta!
go read - actually, go read outdoors. it's beautiful out.
even though i feel crummy, that's where i'm headed.