crooked house

Laura Veirs' July Flame Animated Paper Video

The song's good but the animated paper video is even better. Via Black Eiffel.

Happy Valentine's Day. Or Not.

An extremely short break-up letter from Jacqueline Susann to her then (and again later) husband Irving:

Irving, when we were at the Essex House and I had room service and I could buy all my Florence Lustig dresses, I found that I loved you very much, but now that you’re in the army and getting fifty-six dollars a month, I feel that my love has waned.

You've got to wonder why Irving ever agreed to get back together with her. I don't have a copy of the book this letter was collected in, Hell Hath No Fury: Women's Letters from the End of the Affair -- I heard it read aloud on the radio this afternoon -- but I'm tempted. The book was edited by Jezebel's editor-in-chief Anna Holmes. There are a couple more break-up letters from the book, including one written by Rebecca West, quoted here.

Then they played I Don't Want to Get Over You by The Magnetic Fields on the radio and, as I drove past, this huge lanky man in blue jeans and a black leather jacket half-staggered, half-swaggered down the hill in the pale winter sunlight in perfect time to this song. That's one of my favourite things:  I love when random people on the street seem to be walking in time to the song that's playing inside my car and it's even better when the person seems to suit the song. It's so "brown paper packages tied up with string," don't you agree?

Luke the Lyricist

Luke has taken to tinkling away at the piano keys, making up spur-of-the-moment songs. Two recent lyrical masterpieces, sung to hauntingly mournful (if somewhat droning) melodies:

"When I grow up, I will be a worker at the grocery store, when I come home, I will have a drink, then I will go back, then I will come home, then I will go back, then I will come home, then I will go back, then I will come home..."

"I love you, I hope you don't die... If you are killed by a bad guy, a giant robot will take him to jail, but then the bad guy will break out of jail and kill everybody except the giant robot because robots can't die..."

What We Found When We Went Looking for Wild Things

Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez perform his hit song.

Luke and his dad saw the movie on Sunday. They loved it. We finished the book (wow, check out that price) last night. We loved it. Now we're in search of more, more, more. I'm really excited about the fact we were able to read a novel together at bedtime -- and open to suggestions for the next one we should try.

Luke has added a Wild Things stuffed animal to his Christmas list. He wants Alexander, the goat boy creature. Unfortunately, I don't think that there is such a thing. The child is very persistent in these matters, insisting that, if I would just agree to telephone Santa and ask nicely, surely he would direct his elves to make one.

In a Very Good Mood

Yay! The Kindle is now available in Canada! I've been annoyed with Amazon ever since the e-reader came out because it wasn't available here. And now it is. Jeff Bezos may think he invented this thing but I thought it up in the late 90s. And on Christmas day I expect to finally hold it in my hot little hands. Come to me, my preciousssssss.

 

Also just in time for Christmas, a cardboard fireplace. Via swiss miss.

 

This poster (via BB-Blog) puts me right back in the family car with my mom and younger brother, all of us belting out John Denver songs. I do an especially dramatic rendition of the one that goes "I am the EAGLE, I live in high country... I am the HAWK and there's BLOOD on my feathers but time is still turning, they soon will be dry-y-y!" If you're lucky, maybe I'll do a video and post it. (And by "lucky" I mean "unfortunate.")

My Parents Were Awesome, a site featuring photos of people's parents when they were younger, looks like fun. I have some good pictures around here I could submit. Although my parents are still awesome. (Hi Mom!)

And the obligatory photo of one of my kids:

 

Sylvie likes to eat.

Take A Look: Roman and London Are Burning, Horrible Histories, Enchanted Hunters, Bird Music, Phantom Towns and More.

Alas, these firescreens featuring Rome and London burning are only prototypes, not yet for sale. Via BB-blog.

Speaking of Rome burning, I ordered a bunch of Horrible Histories, ostensibly for Luke and Sylvie for Christmas. Really, until they're old enough, they're for me. I was inspired by When We Were Romans, one of the library books I picked up a few days ago. I can't recommend When We Were Romans enough -- written from the point of view of a nine-year-old boy, it belongs on my list of the best books that evoke childhood for adults.

Maria Tatar's Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood sounds excellent. Can't wait to get my hands on a copy. And look! She has a blog. Now if only Harvard would follow Yale's example and offer her children's literature course online. (Must remember to tell David about this new Yale offering: Craig White's Listening to Music.)

I have my eye on Mike Sacks's And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on their Craft, too. It's reviewed favourably here.

Also via BB-blog, check this out:

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Jarbas Agnelli saw a newspaper photograph of birds on wires and decided to compose music based on the birds' position. Lovely and haunting. I also enjoy Agnelli's short films about his baby daughter, The Mini Adventures of Nina 1, 2, and 3.

This is neat: apparently phantom places, mostly streets but in this case a whole town, sometimes appear on maps. The town of Argleton in Lancashire appears only on Google maps. I can relate to the guy who felt compelled to walk to where it's supposed to be. That's exactly what I'd do:

"I started to weave this amazing fantasy about the place, an alternative universe, a Narnia-like world. I was really fascinated by the appearance of a non-existent place that the internet had the power to make real and give a semi-existence."

When Mr Bayfield reached Argleton – which appears on Google Maps between Aughton and Aughton Park – he found just acres of green, empty fields.

Via Gwenda on twitter.

Also on the topic of maps, take a look at these amazing map cut-outs of New York and Paris.

All The Money I Had Is Gone

Sylvie will be eleven weeks old on Monday and I have to admit that things are going well.  Due to his prematurity and his GERD, Luke's first six months or so were hellishly difficult -- after experiencing that,  I was extremely unwilling to go through it all again. Happily, we haven't had to. Now I know why the human race continues to reproduce. When Luke was Sylvie's age I couldn't understand why all newborns weren't simply left by the side of the road. Yes, a healthy, full-term newborn is difficult. But not impossibly so.

Sylvie's only quirk right now is that during the day she refuses to be put down to sleep. If Sylvie were a first baby, this one quirk wouldn't be a problem at all -- I'd be quite happy to spend hours rocking her and reading. But there's Luke, too, and he's got needs. He needs to be fed, for instance, and on a relatively regular schedule. Our amazing babysitter, Renee, who has been with us almost full-time since Sylvie was born, has been a big help with both kids. Unfortunately, she goes back to university next Wednesday. So, after a summer of her most excellent help, I recently blew what little money we had left on a good infant swing and another glider for downstairs. Now all the money I had is gone. Hence the song.

Listening to Waters of March in the Snows of January

Thanks CAAF. (And I vote for Jonathan Livingston Seagull.) I've always loved that melody but had no idea what the words meant. I can't say I know now, exactly, but still. I've been feeling very "stick, stone, end of the road" and "stuck car" lately not to mention the fact that I've been, much too often, "a body in bed." Or on the couch. Luke has taken to reminding me not to fall asleep when I go to the grocery store.

He Keeps His Eyes Wide Open

Luke and Steph are in the car. The radio is on.

Luke: Mommy?
Steph: Yes, Luke?
Luke: Mommy, that man keeps his eyes wide open all the time.
Steph: ...
Luke: He never closes them, Mommy.
Steph: What man, honey?
Luke: He keeps his eyes wide open ALL the TIME. That's yucky. He keeps them OPEN all NIGHT.
Steph (realizing they have just heard Johnny Cash's "I Walk The Line"): Oh! That would be hard, wouldn't it?
Luke: He does it. He keeps his eyes wide open ALL the TIME.

Quick Links

Nell Casey writes about how, in their respective memoirs, both Obama and McCain focus more on their fathers than their mothers.

Roald Dahl was a sex-crazed spy. Via Maud. Also via Maud (for the two of  you who don't read her yourselves), here are the scrapbooks of Lewis Carroll. I've only just begun browsing them and haven't found anything too exciting yet. Let me know if you do.

I only managed to catch this CBC radio show devoted to unusual and/or really terrific covers of songs twice this summer but thanks to the Under the Covers archive, I can listen to them all online while I'm on the treadmill. They don't have Sunday's show up just yet but it was stellar -- it featured Jeff Buckley singing Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," Rufus Wainwright doing John Lennon's "Across the Universe," and K.D. Lang covering Jane Siberry's "Love Is Everything." And a bunch of other people I didn't recognize doing a kick ass job of singing songs I did, but I can't remember any of them now. Just keep checking the site. And enjoy the older episodes in the meantime. While I was listening I started to wonder which song has been covered the most -- "Imagine" maybe? And I also seem to remember that there's a documentary film out there devoted to the most covered song ever but I can't find it so maybe I'm making that up.

On the excellent Writers and Company, also from CBC radio, Eleanor Wachtel talks about Simone de Beauvoir with documentary filmmaker Madeleine Gobeil, Hazel Rowley (author of Tête-à-Tête: The Tumultous Lives & Loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre), Nancy K. Miller (author of But Enough About Me: Why We Read Other People's Lives, Bequest and Betrayal, and Getting Personal), and Toril Moi (author of Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman).