OMG it just gets better and better

in the ep The Box, P says one of the things that could make things better between him and W is "a couple hands of Uno" THEY ARE JUST LIKE US!!

An NPR playlist

Call it eclectic. The Best New Songs of 2010, according to NPR. And you can get all of the songs for free on itunes.

Geek delight

Happy New Years You Guys!

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

...I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.


-Neil Gaiman

A slightly severe case of FRINGE addiction!

What have I done since I got back to LA? Why watch more Fringe of course! Its not the same as watching with you guys cause that really was the best...its less fun shouting about Pacey by one's self after all. But i am indebted to you both for forcing me to watch the awesomeness that is this show. Miss you guys.

Despite my earlier inexplicable hesitation

I am loving Freedom (as you could undoubtedly tell my constant chortling and insistence on reading bits aloud. Sorry, Charles.) His anthropologic descriptions of white liberals.... I am enjoying every sentence. Thanks, Charles. Es, you should read it, too.

I also apparently like Sia

Even though I thought I would hate her. (Goodness knows why)



Have been listening to this on repeat....

Newest addition to my ipod -- Bishop Allen

Rather like the Harvard version of Vampire Weekend. "Click, click, click, click" sounds like a song that would be on a Wes Anderson soundtrack.




And I love this song, too. There isn't an official music video, but this video is kinda cool.

Es, our evil plan is working!

See Charles. We knew you would love Fringe!



From The Plan: "Many of us are about to spend a significant amount of time stuck with our families, with nothing to talk about. So why not talk about one of television's best family-oriented shows, whose main plot stems from a father's love for his son? Plus if you're looking for last-minute gifts for the people in your life, box sets of the show's second season go for just $23 on Amazon right now. Fill those endless hours of family time by showing your loved ones episodes like "Peter" and "Jacksonville," and they'll soon be hooked."

Remember how I was sooo excited for a white Christmas?

I might regret that feeling.

Ho Ho Ho....

39 Degrees North: Christmas Card 2010 from 39 Degrees North on Vimeo.

Christmas cheer from Neil Gaiman

White Christmas!

So happy it will be a white Christmas this year!



More fun snowmen here!

Mary's Christmas

Happy Birthday Esmee!

Charles, I think RL was writing about you in this piece.

From his post, "What Your Favorite Christmas Movie Says About You."

"Love Actually: What It's About: A series of interconnected love stories dances across London in the days and weeks leading up to Christmas. Love is found, love is lost, Denise Richards shows up at one point, soaring music soars.
Who Loves It: Are you the one cousin who isn't bringing a date to Christmas Eve at Auntie Joanne's? (Besides Cousin Barry, obviously...) Does the song "All I Want for Christmas Is You" make you happy but also strangely a little sad? Is your bookshelf littered with Jane Austen novels and other Anglophile paraphernalia? Then Love Actually is almost certainly your favorite Christmas movie."

Don Draper Undone

This is some marvelous editing with extra dramatic music. And lots of Pete Campbell. (Being more stern and less bitchy. Think this definitively proves that he is waaay better than JT. Can't wait to see NOW.) Also the title reminds me of John Donne. Ann Donne. Undone. Loves it.

Mummies!

I have so totally found my new boyfriend

And he is from Newton! So I was reading the NYT travel section and saw that the new frugal traveler columnist had written about the Boston suburbs!!! From the opening of his piece:

"When I was growing up in the Boston suburbs, we never gave the city much thought. It was good for a Red Sox game, the occasional school field trip to Paul Revere’s house, and, in high school, the liquor stores that didn’t card. (Wait, did I say that out loud?)"

He continues to be slyly amusing. "From there it was on to Concord and Minute Man National Historic Park, where we visited the North Bridge, the site of the 1775 “shot heard round the world,” as the move by the colonists to engage the redcoats in the first battle of the American Revolution is called. We got there just as the sun was setting behind the bare-limbed trees – a sunset that, had the revolution never happened, I’d have to refer to as colourful." And refreshingly honest. "Despite many places to picnic right in town, like the picturesque and historic Battle Green, we ate in the car. It was freezing."

I had to find out more about him. He has a truly swoon-worthy bio. A degree in African government from Yale (I suppose I could forgive for being a Yalie), a stint as a bilingual teacher in the Bronx as part of TFA, an MPP from the K school in immigration and education, followed by work in CPS, and he is now a globe-trotting freelance journalist. (You know my feelings on journalists...) Le sigh. Right, and he is funny. Just check out the links he listed as websites that are more interesting than his bio and he ends his bio with, "I speak Spanish and Portuguese, and have ten years of French study buried deep in the back of my brain, though it would take a neurosurgeon to extract it. Quelle dommage. Hmm, not sure what that means." We could discuss child development, African politics and the Red Sox.

Let's go to Sweden!

Inspired by watching Wallander, (don't you love it, Charles!) I think we should go visit Sweden. We could stay at this awesome eco-lodge, Urnatur.

I also want this mossy cradle for my future little ones.

Belle and Sebastian Holiday Spectacular

Listen here.

President signs repeal of DADT

"We are not a nation that says 'don't ask, don't tell,' " Obama declares. "We are a nation that says 'out of many, we are one.' "

Finally some good news for a change.

What could be more festive than spending a night locked in an art gallery with a dozen reindeer and a fridge full of psychedelic drugs?

Taking installation art to the next level. "Soma, Carsten Höller's current installation in a former railway station in Berlin, purports to be offering exactly that. A pen running the length of the Hamburger Bahnhof, now the city's contemparary art museum, contains 12 reindeer, 24 canaries, eight mice and two flies. Giant toadstool sculptures are planted on a mushroom clock that the reindeer can turn with their antlers, and at the centre is a mushroom-shaped "floating hotel" – a bed on a platform complete with minibar"

For Es, who missed out earlier

When I looked up the Rickedy Snickety movie as per Charles' request and I found this



Am confused.

I still have to go see this

More Black Swan posters here. (please let's not go see Narnia).

Welcome home for Christmas, Charles!

The Pit of Despair is kinda like this house, filled with plants and spiders and mice.

Random awesomeness.

You know you want to click this.

Which Jane Austen character are you?

I'm Elinor Dashwood. I think we could have predicted that. Take the quiz here!



No one has more self-control than Elinor Dashwood. She keeps her love for Edward Ferrars under wraps while she knows he is not free to be hers. Though reserved in her emotions, Elinor has absolute confidence in her own instincts: she know he loves her and in that knowledge she finds contentment. Elinor possesses a singularly logical mind; she has analyzed Edward and his situation, and acts accordingly, not only to protect her reputation, but her heart as well. She is also very nurturing, doing her best to guide a hopelessly romantic sister through the pitfalls of love.

Best matched with a man who will appreciate her maturity of mind and steady heart, and who is looking for that epitome of domestic bliss, like Edward Ferrars or Henry Tilney.

I think this one is my favorite

Thanks for telling us about the free holiday music, Charles! (Also I heart Guster! So many high school memories...)

I didn't know this song had a music video!

Hearing this always reminds me of being in the OR in the middle of the night and listening to the Donnie Darko soundtrack.

And I thought the original was creepy

More spoof holiday posters here.

How excited are you for The Borgias?

To fill the emptiness left by the departing Tudors. Though sadly it does not involve But-I-Don't-Love-You-Stephen....

I think Stephen Fry might actually be a wizard

But that still would not explain the fez.

The ethereal works of Adam Fuss

He makes daguerreotypes! Amazing, captivating images. When I found his work, I felt it looked familiar and then realized I had seen it at the Oxford Bookstore back in Kolkata. He's also been at the MFA and the LACMA so maybe I saw it there. More of his work can been seen here. I especially like the peacock and the Taj.

It has been one of those days...

I had them make this show just for you Dodie!

And for you Es, I had them cast our girl from Wonderfalls. Um, it is a pity that D won't be able to actually watch the show since she will be off saving lives in Africa, but we'll just assume this show is EXACTLY like what your life will be like. Right?

Are the Brits holding him in a darkroom?

Like a photography darkroom? Does he emit an evil red glow?

Maybe I will just watch this again to get my answers.



Cleveland inter-neh-shunul airport. I love it.

I'm pretty sure Russell Brand is not a real person...

His improvised back-story for his character in The Tempest:

Dodie, this is amazing

This also makes me want to cry, but in a good way

Kids! Tori Amos! Christmas! I love it! (I have such a crush on the PS22 music teacher...le sigh.)

I don't know if I want to vomit or cry

Yeah, that is Sarah Palin getting her hair done at a cholera treatment center in Haiti. Describes Haitians as "full of joy" or some such neo-colonialist, paternalistic, "aren't the poor people so happy and simple" kind of way. Also, wearing a t-shirt that read Skinny Raven Sports, maybe not so tactful in a country of hungry Afro-Caribbean people. Why won't she go away already?

For Charles. And Buddy.

How To Pet A Kitty

Some Nathan Fillion Randomness for Dodie...

He sings!

So I am officially in love with

Nathan Fillion. I have even started watching old episodes of Firefly. And now I get the joke.

I really should read Freedom

I haven't yet because sometimes I get irritated when the media is all abuzz about how some book is so frickin' brilliant it will blow your mind because I am convinced that if all those people like it, there must be something wrong with it. That's how I feel about Freedom. But I have been wrong before. Case in point: Harry Potter. I remember listening to NPR every day in the Comparative Zoology lab that one summer and they would go on and on about how they all loved Harry Potter. It turned me against the books. "But she stole that idea from Gilbert and Sullivan and that idea from LOTR and that idea from The Once and Future King!" I would rage in my lab as I extracted DNA from the large and loathsome cactus beetles. They also gushed over White Teeth, which I loved, and so I gave HP a try and, well, you know the rest. JKR, so brilliant.

Anyways, to the subject of Freedom. I liked The Corrections, well, up until the end, where I felt things got out of control and became ludicrous. I do remember feeling as if Franzen must have secretly observed les parents because of the detailed descriptions of the crazy behaviors of Enid and Alfred that seemed to have been taken exactly from our lives. I knew that JF's parents must have been crazy and not in the "Oh my mom is so crazy she always cooks my favorite meals when I go home for Christmas" kind of way but in a tight smile and sudden dread kind of way when people ask,"Aren't you excited to be going home for the holidays?"

I was reminded of all this by the article "What To Buy Your Favorite Drunk" (thanks Charles for the link!) and their quotation of a passage from The Corrections.

"Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections contains an early scene where the character Chip Lambert, a depressive alcoholic professor of "textual artifacts" who has recently been fired for having an affair with an entitled undergraduate, spends Christmas alone at a Dunkin Donuts. He then goes back to his faculty housing flat — he's being evicted — and decides to get drunk and open the Christmas presents that his parents and siblings have sent him. By kicking each package up the stairs.

'When he punted the box from Gary it exploded in a cloud of white Styrofoam saucers. A bubble-wrapped bottle fell out and rolled down the stairs. It was a bottle of vintage California port. Chip carried it to his bed and worked out a rhythm whereby he swallowed one large mouthful of port for each gift that he succeeded in unwrapping. From his mother, who was under the impression that he still hung a stocking by his fireplace, he'd received a box marked Stocking Stuffers containing small individually wrapped items: a package of cough drops, a miniature second-grade school photo of himself in a tarnished brass frame, plastic bottles of shampoo and conditioner and hand lotion from a Hong Kong hotel where Enid and Alfred had stayed en route to China eleven years earlier, and two carved wooden elves with sentimentally exaggerated smiles and loops of silver string that penetrated their little craniums so they could be hung from a tree. For placement under this presumptive tree, Enid had sent a second box of larger gifts wrapped in Santa-faced red paper: an asparagus steamer, three pairs of white Jockey underwear, a jumbo candy cane, and two calico throw pillows. From Gary and his wife, in addition to the Port, Chip received a clever vacuum-pump system for preserving leftover wine from oxidation, as if leftover wine were a problem Chip had ever had."

I think we get the exact same items in our "stockings". The cough drops! The old hotel shampoos! It is just too real. Which brings me back to my original statement; I should really read Freedom. (And as an aside, because the book involves birding. Can I just say that I actually thought to myself earlier this fall that I should take up birding now that I have more free time. Birding, really. Most single girls my age take up book clubs, yoga, and dating, not birding. Please save me from myself.)

You know you're at a community hospital...

When you are able to spend the entire evening knitting and gossiping with the nurses because you don't have any patients to see. (I was able to get 3/4 of a scarf done tonight!)

Happy Hipster Christmas

Time for some Christmas Spirit!

With Coldplay


The Killers (PS. Am WAY excited to go see It's A Wonderful Life this weekend at the Brattle)


And Sufjan (thanks Es for introducing me to his Christmas album!)

From your alma mater, Charles....

Watch for the Quidditch team.

You should hire the DP from this. Amazing continuous shot.

Sigh

Need to send someone a card?

then just use the best greeting card site ever. no really, its amazing

Hoping for Little Women II: Jo's Revenge?

I mean it was actually called Little Men or Life at Plumfield with Jo's Boys, but CB seems like he would bring more action to the flick, maybe engage in a tussle over Jo with MW playing the newly stacked and not so boringly boring Professor Bhaer?

Whatever It Takes

Am just blown away by Geoffrey Canada and his dedication to include ALL kids, not just those with motivated parents, in his programs. Was rather surprised that le pere had a book on the Harlem Children's Zone, but glad he lent it to me. If you guys want to read it next, let me know.

I can't believe he missed the black capped chickadee!

Who knew Jonathan Franzen was such an avid birder? I guess I missed his articles in the New Yorker on the subject.

Poetry faceoff

Colonel Brandon, I mean Alan Rickman, reciting Shakespeare makes me weak in the knees.

You Must Also See This!

Dodie you HAVE to see this movie! its so good!!!

All Together Now

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. We have to see it.

Must go see this

It looks Pi good -- twisted and dark. We should see if it is playing at Kendall, Es. Still don't understand how this and The Wrestler were once one movie in Darren Aronofsky's head and he then broke it into two films, but he's mad brilliant.

She laughs at tragedy and charms her fish

Lady Lamb and the Beekeeper

I actually like this song better....

True Individuals

Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, by David Hockney.

I want her dress!

It is just too cute for words. Adorable. I love all things polka dotted... and with cap sleeves.

These are all over LA...

I know you're excited Dodie...

Have you seen this Dodie?

Dude, now that I'll be home we can totally watch together. Are you all caught up?

Kitties in the snow

Big kitties. They seem surprisingly unbothered by the cold.

St. Joan

She is just so rad in every possible way

Quite Possibly the Best Cast Ever

Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy (yeah, yeah I know Charles. You told me so), Mark Strong, Colin Firth and my new favorite Benedict Cumberbatch