popplers

Friday quickies!

• Brief update from the Boston Globe on Mentos and Diet Coke performance artists Stephen Voltz and pal Fritz Grobe… (yay, EepyBird.com!)
• NYT on yummy, super-creamy, low-fat ice cream. What's the catch? It contains genetically modified "ice structuring" proteins that are "cloned from the blood of an eel-like Arctic Ocean fish, the ocean pout". I'm sure that the Japanese will love it (ref: Japanese Ice Creams, The Wackier World of Japanese Ice Cream).
• For your listening pleasure: Jane's Addiction's Been Caught Stealin' like you've never heard it before. (I heard this on The Infinite Mind on North Country Public Radio a few weeks ago and almost did a spit-take. I just learned today that it's Lea DeLaria singing!)
• It's a Yule tide!
• Jack Kerouac's original version of On the Road soon to be published in its entirety. "The version of "On the Road" that Kerouac wrote [on a 119-foot paper scroll] will be published next year in book form for the first time, said John Sampas of Lowell, the executor of the writer's literary estate and the brother of his third wife, Stella. It will include some sections that had been cut from the novel because of references to sex or drugs."

July Book Club

Most recently read:

• Erik Larson: The Devil in the White City. I read this while up at Twin Trees. I enjoyed it (apparently far more than Poz did), and it has so many elements that I love: Gilded Age! Serial killer! High society! Incredible feats of engineering! Phenomenal meals! World's Fair! This Pittsburgh Post-Gazette review picks [up] on some of the elements that I suspect Poz found irritating. Excerpts are available at randomhouse.com and amazon.com.
  
• Alison Bechdel: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Excellent memoir in graphic novel form from the creator of Dykes to Watch Out For. If you don't mind [mostly minor] spoilers, check out the Powells.com review and the NYT review.
  
• Wendy McClure: I'm Not the New Me. This is the first novel/ memoir from the author of The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan. This would have been a good beach read— entertaining, snarky, and low in calories. The Powells.com review is fairly generic, but the SF Chronicle reviewer really liked it.

Still in the queue:

• Christopher Priest: The Prestige. So far, I've brought this to Philadelphia (business trip), Twin Trees, and the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. I have yet to actually start reading it. But I'd better get cracking— it's being made into a movie with Christopher Nolan (Memento) directing. They've got quite the cast, including David Bowie as Nikolai Tesla (and Andy Serkis as his assistant).
  
• Erik Larson: Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History. Because I love all that Into Thin Air/ Perfect Storm/ disaster shit. Currently on order from Minuteman Library Network.

Tuesday quickies

• Via Poz (a Scrabble ninja in his own right): Rules to Live By.
• I love Mimi Smartypants; I've often thought that children are from some other planet. (Nora is apparently an Irken living among us.)
• Great video (and I like the URL too): wherethehellismatt.com.

It's not the heat, it's the stupidity

It's been a while since I last read Overheard in New York. I'm happy that I finished my iced coffee beforehand.

1. Math is hard.
   
2. You can't get there from here.
   
3. Harsh. Just harsh.

The blackflies, the little blackflies…

Via Boing Boing: the National Film Board of Canada web site offers 50 animated shorts for your viewing pleasure. You can search the selections by title, director, or year of production. These are 3 of my all-time favorites:

• Christopher Hinton: Blackfly
  
• Cordell Barker: The Cat Came Back
  
• Richard Condie: The Big Snit

Tuesday quickies!

• Microcars!
• Wisconsin "weather": hatch of mayflies so thick that it showed up on radar. (I expect that you would have seen similar patterns in the Adirondacks last week due to massive clouds of no-see-ums and angry blackflies. I have a blackfly bite on my ankle and it still itches.)
• Nifty "3-D" crop circle found in Oxfordshire, England.
• This week's On Language column in the NYT explores parts of speech and "functional shifting"— the nouning of verbs, the verbing of nouns, etc. Bonus fifty-cent word: anthimeria. Quoth the inimitable Madeleine Page: "Hang your burnished head in shame, you language slaughterer, you egregious verbifier of stout nouns. Stoppage of such linguistic mauling is required forthwith. Reformationing, in short, is demandfully requiremented."

Gravity is a harsh mistress.

I am overjoyed to note that the original animated series, The Tick, will finally be released on DVD in August! The Tick vs. Season One is supposed to contain 12 of the first 13 episodes (The Tick vs. The Mole Men is missing due to "creative considerations"). I would prefer to see a nice boxed set containing the entire run, but at this point I'll take whatever crumbs Disney is willing to throw to us. Sigh.

Forthwith, some of my favorite Tick-isms:

"And, isn't sanity really just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh, oooh, the sky is the limit."

"I don't know the meaning of the word "surrender". I mean, I know it, I'm not dumb… just not in this context."

"I'm sure millions of viewers out there are just wondering what it's like to wear the tights of justice. Well, it's tingly and it's uncomfortable, but it gets the job done and, oh, the job of it."

"So once again, we find that evil of the past seeps into the present like salad dressing through cheap wax paper, mixing memory and desire."

"Well, once again, my friend, we find that science is a two-headed beast. One head is nice, it gives us aspirin and other modern conveniences… But the other head of science is bad. Oh, beware the other head of science, Arthur. It bites."