Holy crap!

Norman updated his blog!

Shuffle off to...

I've been tagged by Lucy to put my MP3 player on shuffle and list the first ten tracks that play. Since I have fewer than 200 songs on my player, the risk of humiliation is high: Will that Ace of Base song appear? What about those sappy cuts from the Shrek and Bridget Jones' Diary soundtracks? Fortunately, fate is smiling on me and I have nothing to be ashamed of:

Mother - Kasey Chambers
This Conversation - The Submarines
West Point - Jonatha Brooke
This Is Me - Girlyman
Lazy Eye - Hem
Monsters and Angels - Voice of the Beehive
Baltimore Fire - Kate & Anna McGarrigle
Swallow - The Wailin' Jennys
Everybody Move It - Teddy Thompson
Kick in the Ass - Moxy Fruvous

Pretty typical of my taste -- folky, singer/songwriter, lots of pretty harmonies. Speaking of pretty harmonies, here is one of my favorite musical performances ever.

Lucy has already tagged Norman to play along. In a slight breach of etiquette, I'm going to triple dog dare him to put that Nano on shuffle and see what pops up.

Book-of-the-week

History, recipes, and -- best of all -- step-by-step instructions for buildin' yer own backyard still! Mmmmm, homemade Monkey Rum...

Butterball of fire

Here it is: the veggiemobile. Sean has traded his old Mazda 626 for a 1980 Mercedes 240 diesel that has been converted to run on filtered or pure vegetable oil, as well as biodiesel. I went with him to pick it up last night. During the course of the half-hour instructional talk the seller gave us, I managed to ask several questions that left no doubt as to my complete lack of knowledge of the inner workings of automobiles.

I like the idea of running on filtered oil -- you know, cook up a bunch o' pommes frites, deep-fry a turkey, then re-use the leftover oil in your gas tank. It's ecological! And mmmmm, smells like french fries. I thought Sean should get a vanity plate that says FRYDADY but -- who woulda thunk it? -- it's already taken.

Even though the car will run on 100% vegetable oil, I learned that it's a good idea to make sure there's always a tiny bit of diesel or biodiesel in the tank, since it's ILLEGAL to drive on state-funded roads with fuel that hasn't been taxed at least in part. Jeez, taxes really are one of the few certainties in life, aren't they?

It's pretty. It's the color of butter.

Gray lady

It was my birthday the other day, and I celebrated by going out to dinner with family and friends. As I was walking into the restaurant, I heard my friends Curtis and Norman talking behind me; they were saying something about the "gray lady."

"Oh, she doesn't look so gray. In fact, she's looking pretty good for her age," I heard one of them say. I turned around and mock-glared at them.

"I'm right here, you know," I said. "I can hear you!"

They claimed they were talking about the New York Times, but I'm not so sure.

Smokin'

Tragedy struck yesterday when an entire pan of thick-cut bacon was burned to a crisp due to the inattention of the chef, who was chopping onions and humming Neko Case tunes to herself. Only the blaring of the smoke alarm caused her to look up and ask the all-important question: "Huh? Whassat?" Fortunately, total disaster was later averted when the same chef managed to spill half a baking sheet of roasted potatoes onto the floor, thus restoring the proper bacon-to-tuber ratio in the potato salad she was preparing.

He's a rebel and he'll never, ever be any good

Sweet! This is Curtis' new motorcycle. When Sean and I got home Friday afternoon, there it was. I, being your stereotypical motorcycle novice, have already burned my leg on the exhaust pipe.

It was quite a day for vehicular purchases at The Shambles on Friday, as Sean bought a used car that afternoon as well. But I'll have more on that later.

Asked and (finally) answered

Dear Mrs. Feral,

Please don't fail me because I'm late with my writing assignment! The writing assignment I asked for, I should add. Time just got away from me this past week...

What is the best book that no one's reading right now?
Easy: The Every Boy by Dana Adam Shapiro. I couldn't give it away in hardback, and now that it's in paper, no one will even look at it. Of course, the publisher hasn't done a good job packaging it either time. Pity -- it's a wonderfully funny, sad, odd story, full of moments that made me think of my own teen mishaps (especially in the true love department). Plus it's written by the guy who directed the documentary Murderball!

What are three random things that crack you up?
1. My husband. Sean is always saying offbeat things that catch me off guard and give me giggle fits. Can I give an example? That's hard; I think it's often his timing rather than what he says that makes it funny. There are many, many reasons I married the man, but his sense of humor is one of the biggest.
2. A couple of years ago Sean and Curtis made a short film called Significant Others that makes me laugh every time I watch it. My best pal Norman has a role in it, and he's really funny.
3. Caddyshack

Los Angeles - great city, or the greatest city?
I'll have to say "great city," because I don't think there is a greatest city. Los Angeles really is pretty terrific, often because of its proximity to other things -- mountains, desert, beaches, amusement parks -- rather than for what it contains. But L.A. contains an amazing assortment of things for someone like me, who requires a high level of stimulation, things like great movie revival houses (as well as plenty of art house theatres showing little films that people in small towns may never get to see on the big screen), interesting restaurants (check out this excellent little place in Eagle Rock I discovered a few days ago), great independent bookstores (including my employer), museums, sports arenas, a variety of venues for live music (whoo-hoo! Girlyman at McCabe's on the 22nd! Rufus Wainwright at the Hollywood Bowl in September!), farmers' markets, craft supply stores... The list goes on and on. Sure, parts of L.A. feel crowded, but my suburban neighborhood is pleasantly quiet and gives me lots of elbow room. The summer heat gets to me, but as folks constantly point out, "At least it's dry heat." The one thing I really don't like about Los Angeles is the smog, which can get bad in late summer and early fall -- but then the Santa Anas will come and blow all the brown stuff away into some other unlucky Southern California valley and all is well again.

Do you believe in ghosts?
No, and yet I still fear them; the same can be said of the devil.

What do you dream about?
Oh, man, I used to have such good dreams. Dreams in which I was the hero, saving my family and friends, vanquishing the monsters, flying away from would-be attackers, able to breathe underwater and rescue kittens from certain doom. That was when I was a kid. Now I dream about stuff like... working, making dinner, driving somewhere in the car, ironing shirts. A recurring theme in my dreams is my inability to work steadily towards a goal: I'm always setting out to do something, then being sidetracked by another task, and then another one, until there's six degrees of separation between me and what I originally wanted to do. Around the holidays, I often have nightmares about coming into work and discovering that the entire store has been rearranged and the shelves are too high to see over and there are so many people crowding the aisles that I can't move, and horror of horrors! someone asks me for a specific book, and not only can I not find the section where it's supposed to be, I can't figure out how to look it up on the computer. During stressful times of my life I occasionally used to dream that I moved back in with my parents, but I don't have those dreams anymore since they died. Recently, though, more and more of my dreams are set in my childhood home, with my parents and all my siblings as supporting characters. But still I'm doing mundane stuff like chatting, setting the dinner table, watching TV. Of course, there was that one recent dream when I found myself in a liplock with -- awww, you don't wanna hear about that.