SB Wednesday: Val Edition

Oh hi there, Benicio del Toro -- will you be my Secret Valentine?














How thoughtful of you to get dressed up for our special holiday together. I really like your shirt.












Oh no, I don't mind if you smoke.






All in red! Why how thematically appropriate!

Happy V-Day to all you dudes, both secret and real.

Zine-y

Ain't nothin' better than a Color Cover party 'cause a Color Cover party don't stop!

You should probably buy this. Or come over and read mine.

Makes sense...

"Practical experience proves that there are many advantages in Co- education. It utilizes the restraints that each sex has over the other, checking rowdyism among the boys and affectation and silliness among the girls. It gives to girls a broader course than is usually offered in separate schools and to boys the opportunity to study Music, Oratory and Art or at least to be under their refining influence. We have separate study halls and societies and give careful oversight." [From a 1905/1906 catalog for Daniel Baker College in Brownwood, Texas]

[Photo from the Library of Congress, DIGITAL ID:(b&w film copy neg.) cph 3c00288 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c00288]

There's No Place Like Home

A long long time ago, I read a bunch of the L. Frank Baum "Oz" books, but I don't think I ever read all of them. Lucky for me, Josh's mom got me a giant book for Christmas that has all 15 Oz books in it. Yay! Instead of blasting through them all at once and risking getting so involved in the Oz universe that I have little time for anything else, I'm reading them one at a time in between other books.

The first book in the series is the most familiar, since it is the one that the movie is based on: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). Baum was already an established children's author when he wrote his first Oz book. In fact, he had thought so much about children's literature that he came up with some very good reasons for why the Oz books should be written:

[From the Introduction]

"Folklore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal. The winged fairies of Grimm and Andersen have brought more happiness to childish hearts than all other human creations.

Yet the old time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as 'historical' in the children's library; for the time has come for a series of newer 'wonder tales' in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.

Having this thought in mind, the story of 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out."

Which is funny because there are a lot of rather nightmarish incidents in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and more than a little morality.

Even though this follows the well-known journey of Dorothy and Toto, along with the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion, many scenes in the book naturally got left out of the movie in order (probably) to be more filmable and make more time for Judy Garland to sing. My favorite bits in the book that aren't in the movie are the back story of those flying monkeys that freaked the shit out of me as a youngster. I could tell you about it, but maybe you should just read the book. You could easily do it in a couple of hours, so just apply yourself already.

[Okay, one more quote -- this one is for Joel:

(from Chapter four)

"'Tell me something about yourself and the country you came from,' said the Scarecrow, when she had finished her dinner. So she told him all about Kansas, and how gray everything was there, and how the cyclone had carried her to this queer Land of Oz.

The Scarecrow listened carefully, and said, 'I cannot understand why you should wish to leave this beautiful country and go back to the dry, gray place you call Kansas.'

'That is because you have no brains' answered the girl. 'No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.'

The Scarecrow sighed.

'Of course I cannot understand it,' he said. 'If your heads were stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in the beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all. It is fortunate for Kansas that you have brains.'"]

Fricano's Deli

fricano's deli
Originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Have you eaten at Fricano's Deli yet? Because you totally should. After we first tried this place out, we ended up going there three weeks in a row. The sandwiches are amazing. In addition it is right by campus, and it is open until ten at night (so night shifters, you should go eat there right now. No joke.) I've had the Caprice (twice) and the Reuben. Both wonderful. Also, they are nice, they have interesting art on the walls, and the speedway market next door sells beer, so you can pick that up while you are over there.

Perfect.

SB Weduffalo

Behold: the secrety boyfriendness of Mark Ruffalo.













I've liked this guy ever since he appeared in You Can Count On Me with Laura Linney (which is, incidentally, also a great movie).









He was also great in Jane Campion's often problematic, but still likable In the Cut. I'm not really a fan of Meg Ryan (except, of course, in Joe Vs. The Volcano), but her and Ruffalo in this movie were hot. And the moustache really works in a non-gay way on Ruffalo. Not a lot of guys can pull off the stache, and I think he does it well.





Let's all just take a nice long nap and reflect upon the cuteness that is this week's Secret Boyfriend: Mr. Mark Ruffalo.

Borrowy

Even though I have ninety-hundred-million books to read, sometimes I also borrow books. This time, I traded book-loans with the lovely Choo, who lent me Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge (2006). Although there were some problematic elements of this book, I really enjoyed it. I just love "not-so-distant-future" science fiction, and if a major component of the story involves a library, I'm in.

In this case, the library-element of the plot is the evilish project in which a big company is basically shredding all the books in the Geisel Library at UC San Diego as part of a fast-track digitization scheme. See, by shredding the books and comparing the scanned and shredded bits with other shredded copies, computers put together all the pieces into a totally searchable, integrated, digital product. The only problem is that the books are totally destroyed. They are saving the shreds, though, in case future researchers want to take a look at them. Shredding the books is obviously evil, but because of the super integrated web technology (that you "wear" and access constantly), non-digital books are not even part of the universe of anyone under the age of 30. All the bits about the library, the shredding project, the ways people search and find information, and the virtual skins that individuals and groups are able to lay over the library-using experience were super fun.

The characters were generally interesting, although I was disappointed at the end in which the identity of Rabbit, this character who is involved with a whole series of spy plots and international intrigue (which I don't think I could summarize if I had to), is never revealed.

In reading some reviews online, the general consensus seems to be that this is not one of Vinge's best books, but that it has a lot of good aspects. I will totally seek out more Vinge in the future. Maybe even in the not-so-distant-future...

Molly Ivins

I'm sad that Molly Ivins died, too.

I never had a chance to meet her, but one of my early projects as a volunteer while I was in library school was to do an appraisal of the Molly Ivins Papers, which had (at that time) not yet been processed.

Most of the boxes were overflowing with mail from readers. The letters were pretty evenly divided between gushing letters from fans and bone-chillingly personal and threatening hate-mail. I was amazed at the amount of gigantic unsolicited manuscripts people felt that they should send to her for her opinion. Her writing also seemed to call people to send her funny figurines, joke mugs, t-shirts, and other humorous memorabilia.

Reading Molly Ivins has always made me wish I knew more about politics and had more energy for dealing with the bad news that usually comes along with it. We need more writers like her...

SB Wednesday: Anonymous Edition

Who on earth doesn't just love John Doe? He has earned his spot in the pantheon of Secret Boyfriends. On this Secret Boyfriend Wednesday, we shall let the John Doe Flag fly.










[On a related note, doing an image search for "John Doe" will bring up a lot of non-SB items. I had to use my information professional skills to separate the SB-wheat from the non-SB-chaff.]


As you can see, John Doe has mastered the SB-enhancing trait of aging gracefully.









In addition, he knows how to rock.















Look at him rock!










He also rocks fictionally, with the likes of Dennis Quaid (have you seen Great Balls of Fire lately? It is a work of genius.) He has also acted in about ninety-billion things.

Hats off to you, John Doe. Whoever you really are...

Egg Art

I had a sudden urge for hard-boiled eggs when I got home from work today, so I boiled up a couple. Unfortunately I was a little aggressive when putting the eggs in the pan, and one got a teeny crack in it. I boiled it anyway, and it resulted in this crazy yolk leak. From now on I will slightly crack all eggs before boiling and document the yolk patterns. This will become my life's work.

And the egg tasted just fine.

Flat

A link to this page came up on the border of my Gmail account the other day, due to some unknown combination of keywords in the emails I was reading. While I can appreciate that military families, especially those with little kids, really miss their deployed family members, and have to do something to keep everyone's spirits up, I find the whole idea of a life-sized cutout of the soldier serving overseas as, actually, really really creepy. And kind of sad.

That being said, I'm having a "Flat Kristy" created as we speak. I think it will be a big hit at parties.

Cultural Overload

Yesterday I went to a five minute play, saw a three hour movie, and read 110 pages of a novel. I think it was a good use of my time.

First, the play: it was part of 365 Days - 365 Plays, a series of plays written by Suzan-Lori Parks. She wrote one play a day for a year in 2002/2003 and the plays are now being produced, one a day for a year, in ten different cities. Going to this play made me really want to see more live theatre. I used to go to plays a lot in Lincoln, but this is only the second live performance I've seen in Austin. Amy S. and the rest of the gang did some very interesting things with the very short script by Parks. It really felt like a collaborative effort where each person's ideas added to the whole and made the piece into much more than it was on paper. It was also fun to be all sleepy with wet hair and a cup of coffee in a classroom in the drama building on campus on a Saturday morning (well, noon) with a bunch of other friends and acquaintances.

Next, the movie: David Lynch's Inland Empire. I'm overwhelmed with feelings and ideas about this movie, so I don't think I'll say much about it (so you should also check out what Dr. M has to say). If you are in Austin, you should take three hours of your time and go up to the Alamo Village to see it. I was amazed that there were only maybe twenty people in the audience when we saw it yesterday afternoon. Lynch is distributing this himself, and so far it has only been shown in New York, LA, Chicago, Washington DC, Seattle, and Austin. It was wonderful. Laura Dern is the best in it that she has ever been, and she is pretty consistently great. So go see it, and then we can talk about it together, because its more of a movie to have a conversation about than one to sit alone and write theories about.

Finally, the book! Middle Passage by Charles Johnson (1990). This is our latest book club book, and a National Book Award winner. I'd never heard of this book or this author until Tina suggested it for book club, and I'm really glad she did. His language is very rich and interesting. He has the kind of vocabulary that makes you want to look up every word you don't know so that you can use it in conversation later. The plot is engaging and exciting, and the characters are uniquely drawn. In fact, it was so engaging that I read the whole thing in two days, after ordering a copy on Amazon that never came, and then checking it out from the library (which I probably should have done in the first place). Go read this book. And if you read it before our book club meets, come meet with us and talk about it.

On top of all that, I also watched one episode of COPS, one episode of Kids in the Hall, and two episodes of Tales from the Darkside.

Today I'm just going to drink coffee, read magazines, drink beer, and watch TV. I'm not culturally adventurous every day for heaven's sake.

The Gospel of Chipotle

I know you love to eat hamburgers. We all do. But sometimes hamburgers can get a little boring. Do you want to make the best hamburger you have ever had? Do you want it to take only 5 minutes longer than making a regular bore-burger? Try this:

Finely chop up half an onion. The finer the better, although it also works if you just sort of half-ass this step, like me, because I have no patience for chopping finely.

Get a can of chipotles in adobo and chop up at least one big pepper.

Use your hands to mix together the onion, the pepper, and a big spoonful of the adobo sauce with a pound of ground chuck. Add more adobo if you need super adobo-power.

Form a couple of patties.

Grill them up (I used my George Foreman grill, but I'm sure they would be even better -- if that is possible -- if you grilled them on an actual grill).

Put them on a good bun, and top with mustard, pickles, swiss cheese, and anything else your heart desires.

Eat them up. Yum!

Secret Boyfriend Wednesday: The Obvious Edition

I would imagine that George Clooney is the secret boyfriend of nine out of ten people, regardless of whether or not you think you even have secret boyfriends. He is such an obvious choice, that he almost gets forgotten due to his high level of SB inertia. Today, I'm giving him his due. Kid, you've got the goods.

Looks good in a suit.







Looks great with a beard.















Looks very nice in the water. (But does his have any tattoos?)












And he is even an SB from my youth, since I've been ogling him since his days on Roseanne. I have never seen a single second of a single episode of ER, though, so I guess I missed that whole section of his SB development.

Looking good, George.

The Young and the Restless

My latest random book-reading adventure took me to Josh's copy of Shakey: Neil Young's Biography by Jimmy McDonough (2002). I've always liked Neil Young, but I didn't know much about him beyond his music, and even my knowledge of that was based on just a few albums. Since he is potentially Josh's favorite musician of all time, I figured it wouldn't hurt for me to read a bit about him.

This biography is really an interesting read, and not just because Young has led a very interesting life. McDonough sets himself up with the task of writing a biography of a notoriously private man who, as we see through the course of the book, is very spontaneous and changeable in his enthusiasm for projects and people. Young's willingness to cooperate with the biography ebbs and flows over the decade that McDonough was at work on the book. Although there are extensive interviews with Young, the clearer picture of the man comes through those who are close to him, and the author spends time with seemingly every technician, musician, producer, roadie, and relative of Young's that would give him some time.

Although it covers a long period of time and a gazillion interviews in its 738 pages, the book reads very smoothly and never seems choppy or unfocused. Kind of like Young himself, who tries on different styles, technologies, and personas, and seems to constantly forge and break friendships, but always manages to remain himself.

Plus did you know that Neil Young owned a large interest in the Lionel Train Company and personally worked on the design of a new sound system for model trains, which he proceeded to demonstrate himself at major train convetions and corporate meetings? I love that.

Reading this book has inspired me to go through and listen to the Neil Young albums that Josh has on CD (because I'm not going to try to dig through the giant cassette crate of mystery, and I can't figure out the turntable). So far I've gotten through both Buffalo Springfield albums, Neil Young, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Neil Young and Crazy Horse Live at the Fillmore East, After The Gold Rush, Tonight's The Night, On The Beach, Zuma, American Stars & Bars, Comes A Time, Rust Never Sleeps, Hawks And Doves, Re-ac-tor, Trans, and Everybody'sRockin'. So I've gotten through 1983, and there are still twelve CDs on the shelf.

[Now if only my book club book would arrive from Amazon I could start reading it -- I don't want to start something else until it gets here, and I don't want to be behind my book club friends! Why, Amazon seller, why can't you send me this book. I paid for expedited shipping, after all.]

Button it

I bought a pair of button-fly jeans for the first time in maybe 15 years. They are strangely satisfying. Who knew it would be so fun to button instead of zip?

Surchargey

I just stopped at Kinkos to drop off some files for an exhibit I'm doing at work (they need to be printed and mounted on foam core) -- and the jerks wanted to charge me $2.50 per file to convert my perfectly acceptable .jpeg and .doc files into PDFs. Obviously they can print my original files if they can open them up and convert them. And obviously it does not take $2.50 of work to convert a .jpeg into a PDF. I got kind of huffy, but not too bad. I'll just convert the files my damn self at work on Monday and go to Kinko's again. Luckily it only takes 24 hours to turn around the order and I don't really need it until a week from today.

All this after I even typed up very nice and organized instructions on what to do with each file. At least the guy at the counter was impressed with my instruction sheet.

Stupid Finkos.

What's with all the hoopla?

This is why I love Kids in the Hall:

Secret Boyfriend Bomb!

I have no idea why World Wrestling Entertainment Smackdown superstar and World Heavyweight Champion Batista is one of my SBs. He is way too muscley. He almost never smiles (unlike formerly featured Wrestler/SB The Rock). He has really stupid facial hair.








He does have nice tattoos, though. And he is a Good Guy. He is The Animal, for gods sake, and he has an awesome signature move called The Batista Bomb that never fails to hurt his opponents. Oddly enough, the Batista Bomb involves lifting the other dudes up and kind of putting their head in his crotch like a lever, and then flipping them up so that their crotch is in his face, and then bashing them down. It's kind of weird (and, thanks to YouTube, demonstrated below).

My favorite thing about Batista, however, is his entrance on Friday Night Smackdown (which, by the way, is shown for a couple hours every Friday night on the WB starting around 7:00. You should watch it.) The entrance involves a lot of pyrotechnics and a machine gun pantomime. I do this move around the apartment a lot. I like to use it as my entrance from the kitchen into the living room.

And do any of my other SBs have their own video game and their own action figure?

For your entertainment, here is a Batista montage video (with really dumb music, just turn your volume down) showing his entrance and a never-ending stream of Batista Bombs.

Smarter Than Who?

Would you like to be a part of the next meeting of the Smarter Than You Book Club? If so, get started on Middle Passage by Charles Johnson. I just ordered a used copy yesterday, because even though I love libraries, I also really like to own a copy of all the books that I read. And lord knows my book pile isn't big enough already.

Although no date has been set, I'm guessing that we will probably meet up more than a month from now but less than two months from now. All your friends will be attending. Virtual comments will be accepted and read into the record at the official book club meeting. Oh yeah, we also have a tendency to drink a bunch and also talk about non-book things.