Friday 31 July 2009: A New Materialism

Thursday 30 July 2009: Recycle LACMA

I just posted about this over at marquandblog.com, but it’s such a cool project I want to post on Weatherspoon as well. There’s an artist from Los Angeles called Robert Fontenot. After hearing that LACMA was deaccessioning more than 100 costume and textile collection items he bought up about half of them and is wonderfully re-imagining the objects. From Turkish textile to wastebasket, coat to kite, and skirt to dog bed, he’s about half-way through the project. You can follow along on Fontenot’s blog, here.

By the way, I have little desire to live in LA, except that I’m pretty sure that everything LACMA does is brilliant. Their ask a curator series, blog, and Twitter page are all addictive. My company just produced a book for a LACMA show up now called Your Bright Future profiling contemporary Korean artists, and the whole exhibit looks so interactive and interesting that I’m tempted to pop on Virgin Air this weekend and fly to LA just to go to the museum.

Wednesday 29 July 2009: Want to go to a movie?

It’s the hottest 29 July ever recorded in Seattle–reached 102 degrees a while ago. Can’t believe I’m pregnant.

	Sea-Tac	Everett	Olympia	Bremerton
7 a.m.	75	79	68	79
8 a.m.	82	83	75	81
9 a.m.	88	86	81	84
10 a.m.	93	89	83	90
11 a.m.	90	93	86	91
12 noon	93	95	90	93
1 p.m.	96	96	95	97
2 p.m.	99	98	98	99
3 p.m.	101*	98	101	100
4 p.m.	102	98	104	100
Source: National Weather Service
* Sea-Tac recorded 102 degrees between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.

Tuesday 28 July 2009: We may be in a heatwave, but I’m still hungry

I’m ignoring the heatwave in Seattle, even though I’m pretty sure my swollen feet and snotty nose aren’t. To cope, I’m listening to a lot more radio stories this week.

I’m usually uninspired by Bob Mondello’s film reviews, but I loved today’s piece on All Things Considered called Food On Film: The Famished And The Fabulous. I think I’ve seen all of the movies he mentions at least once. Have a listen.

Wednesday 22 July 2009: Handshake with Herb

My parents were a day away from buying a house on Quail Canyon Drive. This was northern Indiana. No quails or canyons naturally existed for hundreds of miles, mind you. The house is lassoed in blue below.

A few years later, when I was a senior in high school we almost bought this other place on Sweet Blossom Court. My dad had an official handshake with Herb, the subdivision’s builder, as an unwritten expression of the deal. When my parents pulled the offer later, dad got a very tart letter explaining that the arrangement was legally banished. Including the handshake with Herb. This other place is in yellow below.

I found these almost-homes on Google maps, even though I had no good reason to go looking for them and I’m glad we never ended up in either place. My real street had a real name that had to do with trees, which we really had.

Except that it’s still new to me–seeing the tip tops of places I’ve been inside of, known the smell of–whenever I want.

Friday July 17 2009: Indiscreet Discretions

Wednesday 1 July 2009: Three Dudes Named Carlos Save the Day

We just bought a car from a guy named Carlos. He has a son named Nacho and owns a taco truck. His brother Carlos was there, too. He owns a hotdog stand. And their dad Carlos Sr. was in the car. We met to take a test drive of their Toyota yesterday in the parking lot of Dick’s burgers on Broadway.

I hopped in and saw a half-eaten hot dog on top of a newspaper in the back seat. Which I actually found refreshing. I know that sounds crazy, but I’m bone dry from a weekend of haggling with used car dealers in sad white show rooms. So this, this meeting of the Carlos men and Nacho was genius. Real material.

The car must sound horrible when you read about it, so greasy, all of this imaginary carnival food caked inside. But the embarrassing part is that the car is actually a lot cleaner than our old car. I’ve promptly scheduled a full interior soaping of the Carlos car for Friday in case.

By the way, I’ve been listening to Ani DiFranco on a co-worker’s playlist, all nostalgia. I still can’t get over her line, “Some crazy f-er just carved a sculpture out of butter and propped it up in the middle of the bonanza breakfast bar.” Very fitting for tonight, when we’re picking our new car up at Carlos’ place before dinner.

Thursday 4 June 2009: Tampa to Phoenix to Seattle

In Seattle you need a fan to sleep well for less than a week a year, so the past two stuffy nights are making me wonder if we’re in for a hot summer or maybe just a false start. But for whatever grand reason I wore a tank top and jeans out the door at 8 last night and walked with D to the new custard place on 13th and Pike. Everybody was in the park, kids in the fountain. I mean the place was really alive. Basketball, baseball, soccer and kickball and kung fu all at once.

I got a cherry sundae, D got a rootbeer float, and we sat in the bleachers and watched a bunch of guys with beer bellies play kickball. The sky was pink, what we could see of downtown was pink, Mount Rainier was pink. It was so Tampa, so Phoenix.

The park was a watermelon, a slip-and-slide, a popsicle, sidewalk chalk–all the best reasons for summer to exist. And the fact that the sun can leave so fast around here made my ice cream, which really tasted the same as Dairy Queen, like frozen manna or something.

Wednesday 3 June 2009: Doing the Unstuck

I piled every movie I’ve ever watched that was a waste of time in a grain silo in southern Oregon, near the California border. The stack reached the very top. Then, as another exercise, I put all of the books I’ve ever read in a neat pile next to the movies and hung my head. The book stack wasn’t even half as high.

I’ve decided to organize a work party this weekend. All of my friends and family are invited. I’m going to buy a very tall ladder and unstack Beverly Hills Cop, Kindergarten Cop, all of the Police Academies, and so on. I’ll pass each movie down, hand by hand.

And we’re building a huge arch with the cases, unrolling all the tape on the VHS spools and making a giant pool, a figure 8. Then we’re all going swimming.

Tuesday 2 June 2009: Summer Reads

Just posted summer reading picks from my co-workers at Marquand Books. There’s so many good food/cookbook and travel/non-fiction picks I have to share the list:

Food:
Sara: Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine, Bryant Terry (Da Capo)
Keryn: Simply Delicioso: A Collection of Everyday Recipes with a Latin Twist, Ingrid Hoffmann (Clarkson Potter)
Marissa: Under the Table: Saucy Tales from Culinary School, Katherine Darling (Atria)
Keryn: A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines, Anthony Bourdain (Harper Perennial)
Zach: Well-Preserved: Recipes and Techniques for Putting Up Small Batches of Seasonal Foods, Eugenia Bone (Random House)

Non-Fiction/Travel:
Jeff: New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City, Andrei Codrescu (Algonquin Books)
Zach: Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings, James Elkins (Routledge)
Jeremy: Emergency, This Book Will Save Your Life, Neil Strauss (Harper)
Keryn: Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure, Sarah Macdonald (Broadway)
Marissa: 90 Classic Books for People in a Hurry, Henrik Lange (Nicotext)
Adrian: Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It, Geoff Dyer (Vintage)
Keryn: My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who’s Been Everywhere, Susan Orlean (Random House)
John: Pictures from Here, Sunil Gupta (Chris Boot)

Monday June 1 2009: What I got out of it

My friend Michelle took this photo Sunday evening. She was in town from LA for SIFF, where a short she produced called Short Term 12 got the grand jury prize late Sunday night, best in show. D and I tagged along to the awards ceremony and ate sweet potato lasagna at midnight to celebrate her victory. Check out the trailer here.