Success!

Our stalwart red oak is now green for the season.

Thanksgiving Dessert

Thanksgiving fell on November 22 this year, inspiring me to make a cake resembling a turkey dinner resembling Dealey Plaza.

All the savory foods/structures are made from dessert items (the gravy roads are caramel syrup, the triple-underpass mashed potatoes are frosting, etc.).

I Love To Singa

Al Jolson and Cab Calloway, from a fantastic repository of jazz and big band video clips from the 1920s to present, redhotjazz.



The footage above is from the 1936 Warner Bros. film The Singing Kid, and the song was obviously used in the Merrie Melodies cartoon that came out later that same year (titled I Love to Singa), the plot of which was loosely based on Jolson's much more famous film from 1927, The Jazz Singer:

Watch the cartoon here.

Grungy Bruce

I contend this TV clip of a man performing on stage at the Apollo Theater earlier this year does not feature a homeless feel-good character, but instead Bruce Willis in disguise. No one in the mainstream media seems to have picked up on this. Most of my friends do not believe me.



Willis has convinced people that he is "real life homeless man, Brad Prowley, who makes a living singing classic R&B songs on the streets of major cities not just to get by, but out of a true, life-long passion for music."

I suspect this is some sort of gambit by Willis to demonstrate that he can "act," and that he is more than just an action star. I suppose it also gives him a chance to sing, like he used to, and to be appreciated (so to speak) on his vocal merits alone.

McBlare

The end of civilization is hereby officially heralded by the drone of robotic bagpipes.

Happy Bath Time!

Keeping the Faith at Arm's Length

Excellent NYT review of three new books on the faith of the founding fathers. (I meant to post this a month ago—NYT Select membership probably required by now.)

L.E.O.

VERY excited about this new super-collective channeling the spirit of E.L.O., founded by Bleu and featuring power-pop god Andy Sturmer (among others). CD "Alpacas Orgling" due out sometime this year. (Mrs. Lynne, the fruit of your labor gives us a savior.)

My All-TIme Favorite Scent

Finally given proper treatment. You better believe I'll be stocking up on this.

Sita Sings the Blues

One of the most outstanding project ideas I've seen in a long time. Innovative, beautiful, and fun. The Ramayana as retold by cartoonist/animator Nina Paley, to the songs of Annette Hanshaw.

My favorite segment is probably The Battle of Lanka. But I'm also mighty fond of the strutting moon in Hanuman Finds Sita.

Open Some Doors

Brother Mike points us to Fancy Pants Adventure. Fun game, groovy animation, addictive soundtrack.

My New Favorite Book

Maybe parenthood will have a positive side after all.

True American Idol

I pity anyone in my town who stayed home to watch a television show tonight, while Tony Bennett was downtown blowing the roof off the Meyerson. One of the best, most memorable musical performances I've ever seen, or ever will.



UPDATE: My super-brief "review" on FrontBurner.

Currently Intruiged By:

The work of Emma Kidd, on her site benconservato ("well preserved").

GE One Second Theater

Not sure how long this has been going on, but I noticed an episode flash by for the first time tonight. I can imagine this barely-liminal conduit being exploited in many ways.

Dream Last Night

I was in a windowless stateroom on a train car, with a definite, occasionally jostled sensation of forward motion. My clothes and other personal effects were more or less casually strewn around the room, as if I'd been there awhile. I was standing facing the direction of movement, when I suddenly became aware of a giant "hole" in the right wall of the train that I'd previously taken for a closet.

Looking through that hole I saw into another stateroom, on another train, parallel and immediately adjacent to the one I was on, and through that train into another one, and another one, and another, infinitely. I was essentially looking into an endless tunnel, the "walls" of which were the interiors of these successively pierced staterooms. All the trains were moving forward at the same rate, as if joined together, with no space between them. The trains were not "fused" together, however. If anything, they seemed "linked." There was an occasional jostling sensation that would ripple up and down the tunnel, as if one of the trains were occasionally hitting a bumpy section of track, etc.

I saw no people other than myself, and wasn't otherwise aware of any other people. The only sound was the sound of trains on tracks.

It occurred to me (in the dream) that if the trains stretched out infinitely in that direction, there was no room for a "world" out there--no grass or trees or mountains--just trains.

I never turned around, or looked over my shoulder, to see if trains stretched out similarly from the left side of my own train (or even to see if there was a hole there).

I stepped back from the hole and realized it was as high as the train itself, and very wide, and oddly shaped around its edge. The entire tunnel stretching off into the distance had this same irregular shape (i.e., every successive hole through every successive train wall had this same shape).

I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. I realized a train was coming toward me, through the tunnel, through the other trains, perpendicular to them. I realized that the outline edge of the holes (and thus the tunnel) was exactly "train shaped."

I figured I'd better clear away my clothes and other items from the path of the train that was about to pass through my stateroom. I began to gather things up here and there, but I wasn't fast enough. An old-fashioned black locomotive barreled into the room.

That was the end.

I keep wondering if there was a hole in the left side of my stateroom, for that train to continue through.

The Future of Books

Great piece from Kevin Kelly in yesterday's NYT Magazine.


I note that the article illustration (above, Abelardo Morell / Bonni Benrubi Gallery for the NY Times), previously appeared on the 1997 paperback cover of Nicholson Baker's excellent essay collection, The Size of Thoughts. Are there really so few good pictures of books available?

Conan Versus Bear

Gloriously self-explanatory.

Final Episode Cameo

Pretty sure that was Sorkin at the inauguration.

Cafe Istanbul

If you haven't tried it, try it. Excellent food, excellent atmosphere. I remain consistently fond of the Doner Durum (No. 11 on the menu). Super babaganush. Dine outside on the quietly breezy, awninged sidewalk patio, or watch the bellydancer inside (Friday and Saturday nights) for a more lively time. Right around the corner from the Inwood Theater. Great strolling destination after a film.

The Costanza

Finally, the perfect desk for my office at work.

Amanita Design

If you've ever wandered around the Polyphonic Spree site, you may have already seen a cousin of the Samorost flash games. Interactive art that promotes context-awareness and intuition-driven problem solving. Beautifully satisfying and soothing. Play them.

Check out the Amanita animation clips, too. (Sorry, no direct URLs.)

Worthy of Guarded Optimism?

Sports Night, West Wing, Studio 60.

Visit to Another Planet

Had occasion to visit a $28M home tonight. No, I wasn’t bartending. Less than 2 miles from my front door, but it might as well have been Versailles—or Venus. Truly staggering opulence.

The annual property taxes for the place are comparable to the market value of my house.

It was easily the most expensive current, full-time residence I’ve ever been inside—the only two exceptions I can think of being the White House and Blenheim Palace.

The pool house alone was a Fitzgerald or Cheever story brought to life.

Earlier in the day, I’d been haggling over a $100 line item with my contractor. Imagine how silly I felt about it, strolling around that jaw-dropping castle. A C-note probably wouldn’t get me a switchplate in that joint.

Murder Richard Benjamin?

Never even knew she had a sister.

True Landmark

Got a rare chance this afternoon to tour the inside of the Masonic Temple on Harwood, currently up for sale. Wish I had the $3.6M to buy the amazing structure myself. It's like a granite fortress—and talk about the history of Dallas dripping from the walls. Surely someone could snatch the building up and turn it into a combination cinema/restaurant/lounge-type space, right in the heart of the city's neo-natal downtown renaissance.

Nine-O-Nine, Again

Wow—someone posted their own encounter with the Nine-O-Nine on Boing Boing—and used a photo almost identical to the one I posted below, 15 days ago.

I Got The Original Grenadier

Walking among the stalls at the Main Street Arts Festival in Fort Worth this afternoon, I turned to my wife and said, "One of these days, I'll find Mark Driscoll at one of these things again." I'd bought two of the El-Paso-based, occasional New-York-Times-Book-Review illustrator's paintings at a street fair in Austin in the early '90s, but despite diligent online searching, had never been able to track him down again. After more than a decade of looking, I'd begun to think maybe he'd given up art altogether.

A few minutes later, I was shaking his hand, and buying some more of his work. Turns out he had an image in the Book Review as recently as this past Febuary that I'd managed to overlook.

He also has a brand new website you should check out.

Powder Room Remodel Completed

Before:










After:

Minor Development

Nine-O-Nine

Sneaked away from work for an hour or so this morning to fulfill a long-held fantasy: crawling around inside a B-17.

Walking out of the dry cleaners before work, I heard an unfamiliar mechanical rumbling in the sky, looked up, and there it was, propellers chopping eastward, more or less along Mockingbird Lane. An older guy walking into the cleaners noticed me standing there slack-jawed, then turned his own gaze upward. "I'm sure that's a B-17," I said. He said he had no idea.

Got to work, logged on, and checked local news. Sure enough:


Today was the last day. Tomorrow would be too late. So I figured an early lunch-hour wouldn't hurt anybody.

Spent an amazing hour or so at Love Field admiring and photographing the restored "Nine-O-Nine" (although it's not the original plane of that name), and I actually got to crawl up inside and through the incredibly cramped interior. I'll never forget it.


At 5:42 p.m., heading away from work down Preston Road, I saw it in the sky again—this time heading west, back toward Love Field. (They were taking people on rides for $425 a head.)

At 6:32, after running a couple of errands, I was walking across my yard from the car to the front door and I heard the rumbling again. I looked straight up and it was there again, heading east, so close I could have touched the belly turret. I swear, the Nine-O-Nine flew directly over my house.

Stopped by my grandmother's house on the way to a meeting at City Hall, and there it was again, flying directly over her back yard, heading west this time, at 6:49. I could scarcely believe I'd been inside that old flying machine just a few hours earler.

Walked the rest of the way to my appointment, and as I turned the corner at Golf and Haynie at 6:58 I thought I'd stepped back in time. Heading right for me, rising up from behind City Hall, was the B-25 (one of the other three planes in the group).

During the meeting I heard one of the planes go back overhead one last time, at 7:23. Probably the B-25 heading back to Love Field for the night. Not sure anyone else noticed.

Fore-Edge Painting

Images hidden on the page edges of a book.

Rocket Pig

I can't explain why, but this series of photos had me laughing so hard I thought I'd have a heart attack. I think it was the pig's expression in the penultimate shot that did me in.

The Wheel Has Been Reinvented

Seriously. And it looks like this. (Watch the video clips of the three vehicles.)

Inefficient Packaging

Amazon sent me a 13" x 19" x 4.5" box today. Contents? Four chopsticks.

My Own Rodin

Had a discussion the other day about the nature of cast art; for example, whether Le Penseur at the Musée Rodin in Paris is any more "genuine" than the one at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco (or any of the other 20-odd museum installations of the work). I'm beginning to think not. In fact, it turns out that for ten grand, I can put one in my own back yard, full size, complete with Rodin's signature.

3.6 Billion? With a B?

I have a hard time believing this.

Introverts' Rights Revolution

As was true of his 2003 essay referenced within, anyone curious about what it's like to be an introvert in an world dominated by extroverts should read every word of this brief interview with writer Jonathan Rauch.

Tillman/Rollins

When they do "The Pat Tillman Story" for TV (and they will), they should consider going back in time to get a younger Henry Rollins for the title role.

Rabbit Vehicles?

Came across these two images within a span of 24 hours, during two wholly unrelated searches.

Double Jefferson

Handed a cashier a twenty and a five this afternoon, for what turned out to be a $20.45 purchase. I instantly regretted not having handed her a twenty and a single instead (that's a clue to my psyche, I suppose). But imagine my surprise when my reward was some silver and two twos. I hadn't seen any in years.

What I want for my birthday:

When I was 11 years old, I wrote a letter to Paramount Studios asking for the original of this. I figured it might be sitting around, unused. Never heard back from them.

UPDATE: Some lucky kid got it for a mere $18K.

Hamburger Patch

Trippy first appearance of McDonaldland on TV.

Big Ruckus

A friend and neighbor was kind enough to leave me his Big Ruckus for a couple of weeks, while he's off adventuring in northern India. I just got back from taking a few laps around the neighborhood. Sure, it's technically just a scooter—and sort of a homely one at that—but for the next fortnight I'll be doing my best to relive law-school days astride my red Yamaha Radian (which looked exactly like the one below).

All-Beatles FM Station: $150

The latest release from Apple (how's that for poetic justice?), combined with a handy product from DLO, has made possible an idea I had a year or so ago: my very own Beatles radio station, right in my car.

Some of you may recall the short-lived, much-missed, all-Beatles station in Pilot Point in the mid-1990s, as well as the season-long all-Beatles treat we got from a local station last year. I mourned those sources when they disappeared. They were the only radio stations I listened to in my car other than NPR. Tuning in at any given moment was a guarantee of a great song, picked at random, from my favorite band.

Now, the 1GB (240-song) iPod Shuffle from Apple resurrects the concept, on my own terms. The upgraded capacity of 240 songs is enough room for the complete Beatles canon, plus a few extra favorites. Plug the iPod Shuffle into the DLO TransPod, and plug the DLO TransPod into a 12V socket in your car. Choose a frequency, press play, and you're done.

The TransPod powers (and charges) the iPod Shuffle, and also transmits its output to the vacant FM frequency of your choice on your dashboard radio. Once configured, it can be left alone. In my Ford Explorer, for example, this set-up can be left on perpetually, isn't disturbed when the car itself is turned off or started, any doesn't impose any significant tax on the car's battery overnight (although it's conceivable that the electrical systems in other cars may behave differently in some or all of these respects). I've installed mine in an out-of-the way-12V socket, so as not to unnecessarily clutter my dashboard area—because once it's running, there's no need for it to be within arm's reach.

The interface is seamless. When I press the in-dash radio pre-set button assigned to the frequency I chose for the iPod, it's just as though I'm pressing a button for a normal radio station—my own "iPod station" is there broadcasting for me, playing a randomly-selected Beatles song. I've been running this system for over a week now with no issues.