who said you shouldn't play with your food?

I found it necessary to document the fantastic food fro my strawberries were rockin'.

(A fro could not be fully appreciated unless my strawberries had faces...so....)

'cause music is all i got.

work, sleep, work, play, work. it's been busy. i pick my book up on a good, silent night...only for a few chapters. but music. music is what i've got every day. it happens no matter how busy i am. it provides the respites i look forward to during this insane time of the year. there will be fun ahead, time to play, but for now, it's just been my eyes, my pen, my computer, and my music. (hence the multiple posts on music and nothing else.)

some tunes for your turkey holiday travels. cheers!

Sunday Morning, Wednesday Night - Spoon

coffee complements.

#64.1 - Beirut - Nantes - Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

Kings of Convenience - I’d rather dance with you
Uploaded by NextBuzz. - Explore more music videos.

wild one.

These shots were taken while traveling in London. As you can see, this theater wasn't showing the 1961-Audrey-Hepburn version.

This past week, as mentioned in my previous post, I've been hit with one of the many "bugs" going around during this pre-holiday season. It's been tolerable, but annoying: I hate being sick, yet at the same time welcome being forced to rest, as I'm always on the go. With that said, I did some movie watching--this part of being sick I like. It gets better. Not too long ago it was discovered that, although the cable I have is the king of basic, an HD box gets you access to "On Demand" stations. What does this mean? Umm, it pretty much means I don't need to leave my abode to rent movies, I can just surf through a bunch of "Movies On Demand" channels and find something that fits my fancy. Brilliant! I went for the classics and Breakfast at Tiffany's is the little 115 minute gem I found. The past year or two I've been revisiting the classics, book and movies alike. So this was a fitting choice.

Depending on what era you found yourself in those oh-so-terrific high school drama days, you may very well be tempted to begin singing "And I said what about 'Breakfast at Tiffany's?' She said 'I think I remember the film, and as I recall, I think, we both kinda liked it. And I said 'Well, that's the one thing we've got." Don't be too ashamed if you do, but call yourself lucky if you don't. Regardless of the one-hit-wonder tune you may have playing inside your head, don't mix it with the splendor of this movie. It was pleasantly not so sweet and fluffy as I had thought it would be. To put it bluntly, Audrey "Holly Golightly," being one of her many names, is a sweet bitch. Yes. That's what I said, a "sweet bitch." There are moments when Hepburn's character does an engaging and amiable act, one that almost seems above her, only to then quickly tarnish said shining act while showcasing another side of herself, one that seems more fitting to the character that is her character: it's an incredibly unattractive side, despite her wide eyes, pink lips and petiteness. Of course after just saying that, I'll add that I found her character relatable. "Holly," has become something, someone who she thinks she knows, the person she thinks she wants to be, but with a little help from a friend, finally understands the person she really is: I'm a firm believer in that the people you surround yourself with, help create the person you become and bring the parts of you that are truly you to the surface.
If you haven't seen it, make a point to. And don't wait for a sicky day; however, a rainy day would work nicely ;)

I found the following song on...errrr...stereogum...maybe? I was looking at NYMag's 40 Songs That Define The Brooklyn Sound yesterday, so I can only assume that I found this song, most likely, by looking up one of the songs listed in this article. Regardless, it's a fun list, one worth taking a gander at. And this song would be the song I'd pair up today with the Breakfast at Tiffany's of yesterday.
Update: The song was from here: Indie Rocks! A Benefit Album For Malaria No More.



Warning: After watching the movie, you may be inclined to add "baby" after everyone's name.

tylenol mixed with a mix.

regardless of my not-so-well state, i ventured out to see metric begin their U.S. tour right here in my fine city, the city of b-lo. a london-based band, the band of skulls, began the night with some old school rock sounds. a classic trio: a bassist (who's a chic, which i love), a guitarist, and a drummer. as we entered the town ballroom i could hear "i know what i am," a song that i feel is completely jam worthy, barreling down the corridor.


Band of Skulls - I Know What I Am

Band of Skulls | MySpace Video≈

then emily haines and her boys took to the stage and rocked out some of my fav metric tunes...

METRIC: Poster Of A Girl
by early21

and just a favorite...



what i learned at the show: tylenol with a rum and diet gives a surprising buzz (this combo was not created for said effect, it's just the facts), the band of skulls' guitarist has want-to-be-kurt-cobain hair, and emily haines is crazy and is down with flaunting back cleavage--probably because she has none to offer in the front (again, just the facts folks, besides who doesn't know these things about her?).

from one good time to another...cheers!

teeny tale: excuse me excuses

excuse me she said. oh, sorry, i didn't realize i was in your way. um. yes, you are. but you could easily just walk around me, he said. or are you just making me an excuse for why you can't move forward. well i'd have to squeeze my way around you, it's not that easy, she said. and i can't get over you. and asking to go under you is just silly. so i'm asking to move past you, and as nicely as i can. why are you making this difficult? well if you move past me that means you'll be behind me, too. and?, she asked. well, i'm hesitating because i didn't know i'd have to make that decision today, and so quickly, he said. please? she asked. and as he took a step back and to the side she looked down. she had won, but it didn't feel the way she had expected: it felt funny stepping forward. he looked just as nice from behind as he had from the front. now back to back, they headed in opposite directions. with no more excuses left in the way.

music coma...

i'm hearing songs. they sound familiar. i ask myself where did you hear this before? i come up with no answer. was it spinner, vimeo, npr, pitchfork? blllaaaaaah. does it really matter? no.

Pearl and the Beard

Listen to "Oh Death."
 (I really don't remember if it's the stereotype of British speaking folks or whether they really did use the word "bloody" while I was in London that makes me what to add a "bloody" in between "Oh" and "Death.")

Apparently these subway riders aren't amused by the live entertainment. For the record, I would have been...and I would have clapped at the end, too.

Listen to "Mostly A Friend" by Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez

orphaned thoughts...finally punctuated.

On November 23, 2008 I wrote my first blog post here.

An excerpt from that post:

Thoughts Punctuated will be my digital version of the little floral notepad with elastic closure I stow away in my shoulder bag until something unexpected and new brings me to pull it out and jot or draw something down. A documentation of a memory I hope to never forget. A new word that hasn't yet made it to my internal vocab. list. Or words to a song, that song, the song that keeps flashing itself at me without revealing who and what it really is. But with the lyrics scribbled haphazardly upon those little nude pages, I know a Google search of the lyrics will connect us...finally.

It’s neat to go back and read about what thoughts I had on this whole “blogging concept” and review what in fact has filled these electronic pages. And I’m pleasantly gratified knowing the ideas I had for this little experiment have fleshed out. With that said, I turn back to that floral notepad, still floating among the chaos that exists within my handbag. It’s soiled with coffee stains, worn on the edges and now contains some loose pieces of paper within it’s pages: folded yellow lined paper with a grocery list written on one side (Gum, Rice Cakes, Toothpaste, Mouthwash, Puffins, High Tech Floss, Kashi Trail Mix bars—had I recently gone to the dentist?) and “The National” (band name) written on the other side; ticket stubs (from the Zoo, City and Colour concert at Chop Suey, and a play at Shakespeare’s Globe); a business card for Hotel Chelsea in NYC; and a smaller, folded, lined white paper scrap with NYC restaurants and directions on it. What I’m realizing is that I’ve written things down, things to remember, things to look up and explore; however, I haven’t revisited the pages since said scribbles were created. If they go unread, what’s the point? This post's purpose is to make that point for these orphan thoughts. Maybe I’ll adopt them, maybe you will, either way, they’ll be given more of a life than they currently have sitting on the pages of my “Plate 5, ‘Poppy’” notepad.

Here we go…

• To do: Bread and Ink — It's a café in Portland, OR that I didn’t get a chance to go to but apparently should go when I return—I’ll have that opportunity to do so this coming June!
  
• “Funny how things sometimes take so long to click together, and how something like that sign can hang unnoticed right next to your head for so many years; yet you have to be beat across the knob with it before it starts to dawn just how much it was noticed, whether you knew it or not.” A passage from Ken Kessey’s “Sometimes a Great Notion” – A book I began but found difficult to get into. Maybe I wasn’t in the right state of mind. Maybe I should revisit those pages, too.
  
• Point State Park – Pittsburgh 2010 bike trail: Pitt. To D. C. – WHAT? A Google search revealed this: Bicycle over the rivers and through the sites along the Heritage Trail. I remember this now and thank myself for writing it down: it's something I def. want to do. (Love when this happens.)
  
• “Nell” Yering Station Chardonnay 2006 – Apparently I enjoyed that one.
  
• A Post-It note with “Don DeLillo PS3554.E4425 F36” – One of the DeLillo books I’ve taken out from the library, but which one? Possibly “The Body Artist”? (I did a Google search and found that it was "Falling Man," and also that I know NOTHING about call numbers: I found multiple libraries that held the same call number for this book; I had always assumed they (the call numbers) were somehow unique to each library. Oy. It’s just something I always took for face value, never questioned why, and as a result never cared to learn more about. Now I do. And did. And so can you.
  
• Charrette: The intense effort to complete an academic architectural problem within a specified time (or the intense effort to finish a design project). – One of the many vocab. words scrawled across the pages.
  
• Movie: Clockwatchers (1997) – I have no idea where this rec. came from, but I have it and suppose I should find out if the rec. I was given is in fact good.
  
• William Blake. Paradise Lost. Water Colors. John Milton. Avant-garde Poet. Blake’s concept of the marriage of heaven and hell: "Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell." – I had visited the Tang, Skidmore College’s art gallery in March 2009, where they had the works of Blake and Milton on display. This was part of Blake’s “Proverb of Hell.” I found it insightful. I wrote it down.
  
• Les Bookinistes, Left Bank (cauliflower soup) – A restaurant and dish recommendation from the owner of a French Restaurant in Saratoga Springs, NY to me and my partner when we mentioned our plans for traveling abroad. (We never went there. Next time.)
  
• “Plane of three rows. Blankets. Pillows. Earphones. Flight attendants dressed in apple red complete with a cherry top hat, which sat at a playful angle. Languages of the world crossed and meshed in the semi-stale air. Cool air rushing in from above. The people are more put together: they dress well, are nicely groomed, they are handsome (men and women)…and they read.” – The quick notes I took to remember flying to London.
  
• “Believe in Make-believe.” “Eyelash Wishes Do Come True.” “Keep Your Eyes Open. Catch the Good Parts.” “Sprinkle Your Life with Happiness.” (Include an image of ice cream with sprinkles.) “Letters Make Words. Words Create Meaning.” – Ideas for my letterpress workshop that went unused; however, I'd like to do something with them still.
  
• The Sartorialist, Scott Schuman – A photographer who captures street fashion in New York, Paris and Milan. A friend rec. this blog.
  

So there you have it, a sampling of my scribbles. It was an enjoyable little exercise, one I'll have to remember to repeat at a later date. I say, if nothing else, adopt the wine orphan: it involves little thought; requires nothing that resembles commitment, as one night (one hour at that) will take care of it; and you each will gain comfort – a warm, fuzzy feeling in your chest and head for you, and a new home inside your belly for it.

what do you miss most?

is it the seasonal fruit, the freedom to cruise the steets on two wheels, the alfresco meals, or the trading in of bare legs for cover? the time has come again for that seasonal shift most of us endure. from summer to fall and fall to winter, there are things i miss, but at the same time, what's given up is replaced by something gained.
i welcome layers. i prefer boots. i enjoy being cozy warm on bone-chilling days. i can do without fresh strawberries. i can make picnics inside and i can cruise the streets on my own two feet--or with my two cc skis and pair of poles when called for. but the one thing, the lone pleasure that the warm weather offers, the something that i let go of hesitantly and wish to hold on to, is something so basic, so simple, but so contentful: hanging my laundry on the clothesline to dry. one rope. multiple wooden pins. i like my clothes dried with a kiss of sun. i like the smell of the outdoors mingled within their threads. i enjoy enjoying the little things.
what is it for you?

for your sunday morning.

get your dance party on. get your sat. night on.

give a kick.

listen. release. find fun. it's friday for cryin' out loud!

post-it playlist 11/09

11380

"This evening, I sat by an open window and read till the light was gone 
and the book was no more than a part of the darkness.


 I could easily have switched on a lamp, 
but I wanted to ride this day down into night, 


to sit alone and smooth the unreadable page 
with the pale gray ghost of my hand."



Ted Kooser