The Reading: May Flowers

This weekend, Will once again contributed to my collection of quaint, odd books from the first half of the 20th century, this time with Garden Flowers in Color by G. A. Stevens (1933). This small hardback contains 310 color plates of the most common garden flowers and ornamental shrubs of the time with entertaining (if not very instructive) commentary. People who knew me in my former life as a Southern Lady will remember that I can be quite an avid gardener when provided with a proper yard, and Mr. Stevens waxes poetic over some of my favorites:


Forsythias, or Golden-Bells, are brilliant and yellow-flowering shrubs abloom in early spring. They rank among the most graceful and ornamental of all woody plants if allowed to grow naturally as the good Lord meant they should.


And,


Early Tulips are the maddest and gayest of spring garden flowers, coming when the whole world is hungry for bright color, which they provide in full and overflowing measure.


And,

Probably there is not a single person in the world who can look upon a Wisteria vine with its abundant purple blooms without experiencing a tug of longing for something far away and unattainable, for the beauty of the Wisteria is something too ethereal to be expressed in words of ordinary speech, and its appeal to the imagination is redolent of balconies and moonlit nights.




By contrast, he's strikingly reserved about roses (I've never been crazy about them myself):
The world has chosen the Rose as its favorite, and the Rose in response has assumed multitudinous forms.


You can go elsewhere for tips on soil, water, and propagation. Stevens gives you insight into the soul of a proper garden.

Ugh.

What a week. Office construction has displaced me and two troublesome authors reared their ugly heads to set me behind on all my other (10) projects. Manuscripts are littering my house and three workspaces at the office. I haven't had much time for anything other than fretting about work schedules. I have, however, been enjoying my daily runs through Prospect Park--cherry blossoms, tulips, dogwoods, and lilacs are all in bloom, and the park is always crowded with couples and families enjoying some fresh air after a long day. I also began listening to Bruce Springsteen's new CD of Pete Seeger covers--"We Shall Overcome" was hitting particularly close to home today. Tomorrow will bring my biweekly shift at MoMA and the final time I'll have to help lecturers negotiate the crowds at the Edvard Munch retrospective, then later the boys will take the stage at Arlene's Grocery for their last show in NYC until September. So I'll try to enjoy my hard-earned free time and not worry about anything else until Monday...

More Eating

I've noticed, in various perusals of my site stats, that a lot of strangers are coming to my blog through Google searches of Despana, the little food shop on Broome street that I wrote about several weeks back. There has been almost no coverage of this Soho gem, and it makes me happy to know that people are trying to seek it out on their own. So here's another reminder to visit them for all your cheese, ham, and cockle needs.

The Roundup

Been busy lately, but the past several days have brought me Eating, Watching, Listening, and Reading. So, briefly:

Eating: On Friday, we headed down Park Slope to get a bite to eat at Bonnie's Grill (Will's favorite burger place), but were turned off by the 30-minute wait. So we headed across the street to Aunt Suzie's, a red-sauce joint that seemed vaguely familiar to me. It turned out that I had eaten there more than two years ago, before I moved to New York. It's nothing like the haute trattorias (if I may mix my languages) that are taking over the Slope--just comforting Italian home cooking. I especially enjoyed the "special" appetizer of a stuffed artichoke, prepared like my family always had them at holidays: steamed, stuffed with butter and seasoned breadcrumbs, then baked. Our shared artichoke, huge plate of pasta with "Grandma's meat sauce," cannoli, and bottle of wine came to $38. We had the added bonus of being seated near borough president Marty Markowitz, who was remarkably short. Will hissed at him discreetly.

Watching: Saturday we went to see Friends with Money, the new Jennifer Aniston vehicle. Verdict? It was good, if a little implausible (really, how is it that an impoverished 30-something woman's three BFFs are ten years her senior and fabulously rich?). It was a nice ensemble piece, though, with good performances by Aniston, Frances McDormand, Katherine Keener, and Joan Cusack.

Listening: After the movie, we braved the downpour and headed farther east to see The Crevulators at Otto's Shrunken Head. We had some fun deconstructing the rockabilly/trailer trash/burlesque/moll clique that crowded the bar and then enjoyed a brief and very belated set by the band, whom we had first seen at Hank's Saloon in Brooklyn a few weeks earlier.

Reading: Finally, last night I received Adventures in Editing, by Charles Hanson Towne, and what a read it is. After only brief, random dips into this book, I can already tell this is one for ongoing blogging. Towne was apparently quite the bon vivant and a central figure in the glamorous literary scene of pre-Depression New York (the book was published in 1926). The prose is hilariously flowery and the tone is sweetly gossipy (Towne was, after all, editor of The Smart Set). Excerpts to come.

The Listening: When Did Eno Turn into My Dad?

This photo gave me a bit of a giggle--Brian Eno, once upon a time the freakiest, sparkliest, and glammiest of glammy glam boys, somehow developed a striking resemblance to my father while I had my back turned.

Somewhat unexpectedly, this has been a Day of Eno for me, and I'm really loving it. I've had a vague and ill-informed appreciation of him since my teen years, yet never really sat down and gave him the listening time he so richly deserves. Eno went into rotation during bacon and eggs this morning, persisted through magazines and coffee, then came back up on iTunes as I was chopping veggies for my black bean chili. Mainly, I've been listening to Another Green World and Here Come the Warm Jets, with a little of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts thrown in for the funk. Finally, just as the sun came through the clouds and shone through my living room window, the sublime "On Some Faraway Beach" came on and I've had it on a continuous loop for the past half-hour. I love it when the perfect song for the given day comes up in the shuffle. Where on earth would many of today's most precious alterna-acts (yeah, I'm talking to you, Flaming Lips) be without this man's music?

The Reading: Come the revolution...

I hope these kids are the first to face the squad. Perhaps that's a little harsh, but this week's "Vows" column in the Times might be the most vomit-worthy yet. First date at Bungalow 8, falling in love over the summer at mummy and daddy's house in the Hamptons, bicoastal on-again/off-again drama, then the ceremony at the University Club? Ugh. I actually have a genuine fondness for Vows--yes, it almost invariably covers the most priveleged people, but there's usually some little twist in the story that makes it sweet or at least interesting. This story was just pure, smug entitlement.

How nice, then, to turn from that to the story in the April 17 issue of The New Yorker (talk about smug and entitled!) about good old Pete Seeger. At 86, he still earnestly practices what he preaches, chops his own firewood, and puts on little shows for the local school kids. It's really an uplifting and often amusing article (my favorite bit was when he related a botched attempt to interview Edna St. Vincent Millay when he was in high school); I can't find a link to it at the moment, but will try to get one up sometime this weekend.

The Lowbrow: OMG, Gossip!

My life has finally slowed down enough to allow me to read the latest issue of Star magazine, which Will was kind enough to give me last night (he hearts the gossip, too). In a sidebar to the weekly feature of Bradgelina's impending baby, Star's editors speculated on what Namibian name the couple will further cripple their poor child with (for those of you who live under rocks, Brad and Angie plan to poop out their kid in Namibia and give it a "native" name). Among Star's unusually clever picks:

1. Ndahepuluka ("I became richer")
2. Sihako ("Cool like a leaf")
3. Kaunadodo ("The world has no stairs")

Really, none of these are any worse than Inspektor Pilot, Moxie Crimefighter, or Audio Science, some of the more unfortunate celeb spawn names of late. I vote for #3. Anyone else?

Why I'm Proud to Live in a Wal*Mart-Free Zone

Brought to my attention by my colleague back in Athens:

Arrest: On April 12, security at Wal-Mart called deputies about an employee, June Elliott, 49, of Bethlehem, whom they discovered was allegedly ringing up items at the checkout for cheaper prices for her own benefit. Elliott told deputies that she was told when she took the job that she would be full time and would receive benefits. However, she did not get that job status and needed money to pay her doctor's bills, so she ran through items cheaper to save herself money. She was arrested for theft.

Good thing they're cracking down on employee "theft." How else are they going to be able to provide soccer moms with their bottles of Pantene at 50 cents below the price at the local drugstore (that's probably going out of business)?

So Very True

It's comforting to know someone out there is as cranky and impatient as I am. Could we please add to the list parents who allow their children to put their filthy little feet all over the subway seats? Or men of any age or size who sit with their legs so far apart that they make it impossible to sit on either side of them?

Grr.

Well, it turns out my only personal drama of the past few days is that of my dead fridge. It looks like new, but the compressor expired some time on Thursday night, which I discovered when I came home on Friday with several bags of groceries that had to go straight into the garbage. My super asked the requisite dumb-ass questions (is it on? did you check the breaker box? is it plugged in?) and continues to ask every time he sees me if it's working yet. Also, I discovered he's functionally illiterate when he asked me to read the owner's manual to him. I don't want to be one of those "if you come to our country, you must immediately conform in every way" people, but you should at least be able to read the materials directly related to your job. Like the manuals for major household appliances. But my super is a sweet, sweet man who has been nothing but polite and as helpful as he's able, so I'll try to be patient with him.

So at this hour, it looks like I'll be facing a fifth day without refrigeration, and I'm officially on a hobo diet of bananas and canned soup, with the occasional bite of Easter candy. I doubt there'll be much posting until I can have perishable food in my house again, as malnutrition makes me peevish and dull-witted. Maybe my vacationing partner can pitch in this week.

The Highbrow: Doubt

Finally, some more highbrow! This weekend brought us the delightful treat of comp tickets to see Doubt, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for best drama in 2005.

The script, by Bronx native John Patrick Shanley, is tense and humorous in equal parts. The action centers on a Catholic school in the Bronx during the mid-1960s, in which the principal, Sister Aloysius (Eileen Atkins) sets out to remove a teacher, Father Flynn (Ron Eldard), whom she suspects of molesting the school's first and only black student. Caught between these two is another young teacher, Sister James (Jena Malone), who can't reconcile her loyalty toward Sr. Aloysius with her instinctive trust and admiration for Father Flynn. This 90-minute drama addresses a lot of complex issues--racial tension, gender equality, and religious-secular conflict--and manages to be neutral yet thought-provoking.

Atkins does an amazing job with the complex character of Sr. Aloysius; the nun is fiercely dedicated to the traditions and rituals of the Catholic church and is deeply suspicious of anything that might threaten the old order (i.e., the young Father Flynn), yet she chafes against the male-dominated hierarchy. Atkins subtlely portrays this inner conflict as the character's psyche slowly unravels over the course of her baseless suspicions against the priest. Eldard's Flynn is less nuanced, but he engages the audience in his frustration as he realizes there is no way to clear his name with his colleagues at the school and parish. Poor Jena Malone, unfortunately, is terribly miscast as the guileless Sister James. I like her film work and was rooting for her to succeed here, but her pale face, weak voice, and restrained body language are ill-suited for the stage and no match for her more seasoned costars, and she was unable to develop her character. Still, the production was excellent overall and, despite its being set in 1964, persistently examines many questions that still trouble us today.

Happy Eastover...

Posting will be suspended until Sunday night, but the weekend will provide plenty of drama (stage and family) for me to write about at that time. Stay tuned.

The Reading: It's a Slow Day for News

New Yorkers are famously indifferent toward their fellow citizens, yet they are surprisingly sentimental about animals, as one can see by the amount of ink dedicated to such beasts as Pale Male and Lola (the red-tailed hawks who poop on the rich folks of the Upper East Side), the recently deceased Central Park coyote, a feral chicken that used to run around the Lower East Side, and so on. Now it seems that news outlets around the world have taken up the drama of Millie the deli cat, who has been trapped in the walls of some West Village brownstone for the past two weeks. I'm pretty soft about cats, as anyone who has met my own pets can attest, but the energy being expended on this one is just a bit excessive (from today's NYT):

On Thursday, volunteers brought in a box of mewing kittens, hoping to draw Millie out by triggering her maternal instincts. That did not work either. They also brought in a cat therapist, who tried to coax her out with soothing words.

"I hear you, sweetheart," the therapist, Carole Wilbourn, cooed. "Come on, Millie, you can do it. Everybody wants you to come out. Nobody's going to hurt you."

But one of Mr. Pastore's assistants, wearing a surgical mask, came out of the dusty cellar and asked Ms. Wilbourn to stop. "I think you're stressing her out," the assistant said.

Points, though, for smacking down the pet therapist.

Vindicated!

The old snark goes that those who can't do, teach, and those who can't write, edit (the punctuation on this irritates my editorial eye, but you catch my drift). That may be so, but the good folks over at Money magazine have deemed editing a "better" profession than writing. In a list of the top 50 jobs, editors even cracked the top 20. So there.

Update
Um, where did Money's editors (har har) get their information? According to their research, an editor's average compensation is $78,242. Where the hell do these editors work? And are there any openings at that office?

For the parent who...

...has no desire to interact with his/her child and said child is tired of all the other overpriced electronic babysitters that have been thrown its way: the toddler mp3 player. Actually, they should hand those out in the subways and Park Slope coffee shops. I don't want to interact with your children, either.

The Reading: New Vocab Word

I'm up to my ears in past-due work, but I need to share another tidbit from Mr. Bryson, this time on words that have fallen out of use or were never used much in the first place. I have now fallen in love with velleity, which Mr. B decribes thus:

[...] a mild desire, a wish or urge too slight to lead to action.

What a perfect word! It could almost be the title of a novel. I kind of want to write it myself, but...you know...

Interesting...

I love Sitemeter. It gives me a lot of information about the people who visit this blog; until today, I could pretty much figure out who was reading it, because it's known only to a handful of friends and family. That all changed after I linked to the rules of landing investment banker boyfriends. Apparently, that's quite a popular blog, and it created an automatic trackback to my blog when I linked to it. That means that people who went to read that post were also given the address to my blog. Lots of people were directed to my site from that one, and most of them were at work. Here's a partial breakdown of companies represented, classified by hunter and prey (partial list; all visitors from this list were shown to have come from Things That Make You Go Hmmm):

Hunters (acc'ding to list, you must work in publishing, PR, arts, or nonprofit to meet rich men--I have worked in all of these fields and have only ended up with starving artists, but whatever):
Scholastic
McGraw-Hill
Bulldog Communications
United Nations
Covad Communications
Cox Communications

Prey:
Goldman Sachs
Citicorp
Bank of America
Salomon
Banque Paribas
MIT (banker in training)
Columbia University (ditto)
Lehman Brothers
Chase Manhattan
Bank of New York
Morgan Stanley

The Reading: Mother Tongue

While visiting the Gs over the weekend, I nicked Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue, a book I've been wanting to read for some time, from their shelves. I only started reading it late yesterday afternoon, but I'm already bursting with nerd-tastic trivia about the evolution of language. My favorite bit so far: What makes humans uniquely able to talk is also what makes us uniquely able to choke on food. His explanation:

[T]he slight evolutionary change that pushed [Cro-Magnon] man's larynx deeper into his throat, and thus made choking a possibility, also brought with it the possibility of sophisticated, well-articulated speech.

I'm sure there's all kinds of ironies to be found in this, but I'm tired and busy right now...

The Lowbrow: How to Bag a Banker

Hang on to your wallets, guys! The girls have a game plan. Now you can spot the gold diggers before they blind you with their sequined tube tops.

Update 5/9: For those of you still being directed to this post, check out the other side of the fence.

The Reading: Words for Nerds

The first gift I ever received from the mister was the 1944 edition of H. W. Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. This is an incredibly fun reference work that offers definitions, etymology, grammar, and Fowler's personal opinions about general usage. He's a curmudgeon, but his love of words is endearing, and we've spent a good deal of time chuckling over various random passages in the book. Here's Fowler's take on jargon (spacing and punctuation preserved from the original):

Jargon is talk that is considered both ugly-sounding & hard to understand : applied especially to (1) the sectional vocabulary of a science, art, sect, class, trade, or profession, full of technical terms (cf. cant, slang) ; (2) hybrid speech of different languages ; (3) the use of long words, circumlocution, & other clumsiness. (1926/1944, p. 307)

Coming soon will be excerpts from the sections on hackneyed phrases, pedantic humour, and ill-advised italics (all actual subject headings).

Out-of-Context Quote of the Day

"We sometimes hear that a child explodes for no apparent reason."

From another of the brilliant books I'm working on. It's been a long week.

The Reading: Oh, the Jargon (Part 2)

From the final chapter of the book I was whining about last week:

"In the former case, there is a sense that the channels and architectures of neoliberal governance are distorting and corrosive of capacities for effective social change; in the latter, even particularistic struggles infused with a counterhegemonic imaginary are seen to be potentially generative of regime transformation."

Translation (my own--the copyeditor had long since given up at this point):

In the former case, it seems like the structure of neoliberalism distorts or undermines the capacity for social change; in the latter, one can see that even localized struggles have the potential to transform the status quo.

See? The concept is pretty simple--here it looks sort of hopeless, but there it looks like change is possible. But because there's nothing actually wrong in the original, nobody questions it.

Now you know why I like to read about hedgehogs when I get home at night.

The Highbrow: Taken Down a Notch or Two...

There are some red cheeks over at the New York Times this week. An article in The Slate today pointed out how a naughty word, one that is on the Times' verboten list, snuck into Monday's crossword. Many of us ordinary folk (and puzzle editor Will Shortz!) didn't realize quite how grossly insulting the word in question is, but I can tell you I'll be tossing it around a lot more now that I know better.

The Lowbrow: 'Hog Blog

Hedgehogs, that is. I ran across this during a fit of random click-throughs. The devotion to one's pet is kind of scary, but damned if he doesn't have a cute face. I wonder what my cats would make of this little beast. More pictures here.

The Playing: Fundamental Bass

In case any of you think I've abandoned the guitar self-teaching project, don't worry. I'm still making a grudging effort, but my progress is slow and boring. I will brag loudly about any breakthroughs, but right now I stink and I only know three chords. And my fingers hurt. But tonight, I decided to spice up my diet of three chords with the fundamental bass line. So now I can do that corny fireside 3/4 time strumming of one stroke on the bass note and two on the chord. It's not much, but it's the first thing I've done so far that has at least started to have some structure.

Lord Love a Meme

I admit it. I love memes and will participate even when not specifically tagged. I came across the following on Mrs. Brown's blog and my eyes lit up. Lists! Feel free to post your own in the comments or spread it around on your own blog:

Top 5 Movies
It's a Wonderful Life
Unbearable Lightness of Being
Down by Law
Holiday
Vernon, Florida

Top 5 Comedies
The Philadelphia Story
Muriel's Wedding
His Girl Friday
Tampopo
Zoolander

Top 5 Sports Movies
When We Were Kings
Hoop Dreams
Rocky
Breaking Away
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

Top 5 Patrick Swayze Movies
Oh, come on. I agree with Hillary, Donnie Darko was pretty great, but only because he turned out to be a kiddie-porn freak. I don't think I could even name 5 Swayze movies.

Top 5 Scenes
David Thewlis discussing the apocolypse with that security guard in Naked.

When Jimmy Stewart drives up to Cary Grant's house in The Philadelphia Story and shouts "Oh, Mister C. K. Dexter Haaaaaaven!" over and over.

Tom Waits sitting on the sidewalk singing "It's a sad and beautiful world" in Down by Law.

The "Waterloo" lip-synch scene in Muriel's Wedding.

The "Therefore" sermon in Vernon, Florida.

The Family/The Eating: A very adult chocolate cake

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, and as my readers may have gathered from various contributions to the comments section, my dad's two great joys in life are cooking and Springsteen. I often benefit from both of these interests, and have most recently from the cooking. My dad cooks to "relax" (anyone who has seen him in action will understand the quotes) but, as an empty nester, seldom has enough people around to consume all he produces. So, when the baking bug bites, he freezes and FedExes the latest creation to my office, where I barely manage to take a sample or two for myself before my coworkers set upon the rest of it like a pack of wolves. The benefit, of course, is that my popularity grows, but not my waistline.

The most recent box contained a lovely Mississippi mud cake adapted from the pages of the classic Moosewood Cookbook. It was moist and rich enough to stick to the roof of my mouth and elicited the usual sighs of pleasure from the cubicle dwellers (alas, I could barely taste it, as I was in the middle of a sinus infection, but I'm sure it was wonderful as usual). Dad kindly scanned the recipe; click through for a printable version.

The Playing: At least they weren't throwing acorns

On Sunday Ms. Squirrel and I were a little early for the Sunday at Sunny's reading series, a great event hosted by the very gracious Gabriel Cohen the first Sunday of every month at Sunny's Bar in Red Hook. To kill time we could have lollygagged around those beautiful cobblestone streets, or we could have bought some Key-lime limeade over at Steve's, where I like to play with the dogs and fantasize about converting their Airstream into a mobile studio. Instead we decided to plunk down on a bench at Waterfront Museum Park to get this gig-of-the-week show on the road.

The picnicking audience consisted of about a dozen handsomely tattooed young parents and their toddling offspring. A few older folks in Members Only jackets and fannypacks studded the benches right by the water. I thought this might just be my demographic wheelhouse. Alas, total haul: $0.00 again. Thunderegg is nothing if not uncommercial.

Set list:

1. If You Were Paper (a)
2. If You Knew Me So Well
3. If I Went on a Diet (b)
4. Supergirlfriend (c)
5. It's Not You, It's Not Me (It's Her)
6. Glass of Water (d)
7. Puffins (e)

(a) I started a little sheepishly. I was afraid of the hipster parents. I can't really play and sing this song at the same time, either. Maybe I deserved $0.00.
(b) When I started playing this tune, I actually thought to myself, Time to bust out the big gun.
(c) First song that didn't start with "If," historically an important word for Thunderegg.
(d) One hipster mom, the one who was smoking, danced a little on this one. Or else she was adjusting the straps on her Baby Bjorn.
(e) Like last week, was approached by a toddler during this song. And also like last week, I got flustered by the attention and blew the chorus. Puffins wander on the sea, not the "street." Duh.

The Playing: On the Waterfront

Will is planning a more detailed post, but here's a shot from today's gig on the waterfront in Red Hook, Brooklyn. It was a beautiful day...

The Watching: "Go, you restless soul..."

Last night we went to see The Devil and Daniel Johnston, a documentary film about the storied singer/songwriter from West Virginia. Johnston has cast a long shadow over alternative and independent music in the 20 years since his stint as a hired hand in a carnival landed him in the middle of Austin's thriving college music scene in 1985. Many musicians and industry executives have hailed him as the greatest living songwriter, and Johnston's mystique as a mentally ill recluse has led to comparisons with Brian Wilson and Syd Barrett.

I consider myself a fan of Daniel Johnston but, considering the cult that has grown up around him, I was a little worried that this film might overly romanticize his contributions to music. I love his self-taught, lo-fi sound and I think he has written many haunting and beautiful songs, but he's not the greatest living songwriter by a very, very long shot. Luckily, director Jeff Feuerzeig makes very good use of Johnston's vast archive of super-8 films and audiocasettes with which he has been documenting his own life since he was in his early teens. The result is a nuanced portrait of a talented but highly troubled artist. Present-day interviews with his parents, with whom he still lives, are unexpectedly poignant. They are fundamentalist Christians who show a sincere respect for their son's art and a deep desire to see him become a whole and normally functioning man. The film chronicles Johnston's violent psychotic episodes and subsesquent hospitalizations in what I thought was a very fair way. A statement by Austin Chronicle editor Louis Black summed up the conflict that many people close to Johnston felt and still feel: that you want to be the one who "understands" the tortured genius, but you end up being forced to separate yourself from that person for your own (and their) protection.

Johnston's manic depression (which in my armchair psychoanalysis seems more like psychosis or borderline personality disorder) is evident in his tortured lyrics, surreal drawings, and sometimes incoherent and delusional rantings, but underneath it you can see a gentle and intelligent man who can only find relief from his (to him, very real) demons through his creative output. The film could have benefited from a firmer editorial hand that would have trimmed an extra 20 minutes or so, but overall it's a worthwhile glimpse at both the man and the unique and exciting era in rock music during which he rose to fame.