Necessarily Unashamed

Hey, That Looks Good, How Do You Make That? Can I Have A Piece?

2010-06-14T17:55:00.000-07:00

Other cooking tips:

Hey That Looks Good, How Do You Make That? Can I Have A Piece? E - Click here for this week’s top video clips

For frugal living

2010-06-13T17:48:00.000-07:00

I started to collect these in the tense weeks waiting to hear back from my first batch of interviews. You can clean just about anything with baking soda and vinegar, but there are products we use regularly that are sold in very small quantities (for marked-up prices) at bodegas. While we're on the subject of recipes:

Homemade toothpaste
6 tablespoons baking soda
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons glycerin
20 drops peppermint, spearmint or cinnamon essential oil

Combine and store in a small container.

Homemade dish soap
1 cup liquid Castile soap
3 tablespoons water
a few drops essential oil (if using unscented Castile soap)

Combine in a vessel of your choice, mix well, and use.

Homemade dishwasher detergent
1 part borax (see description of borax here)
1 part washing soda (see description of washing soda here)
distilled white vinegar

Homemade laundry detergent
1/3 bar Fels Naptha or other soap (link above includes specifics)
½ cup washing soda (baking soda is, sadly, not a sufficient substitute)
½ cup borax powder
A small bucket, about 2 gallon size

Grate the soap and put it in a sauce pan. Add 6 cups water and heat it until the soap melts. Add the washing soda and the borax and stir until it is dissolved. Remove from heat. Pour 4 cups hot water into the bucket. Now add your soap mixture and stir. Now add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and stir. Let the soap sit for about 24 hours and it will gel. You use ½ cup per load.

You can also make your own sunscreen, lotion, or bug spray.

Good luck constructing your Ikea furniture. Check out HousingWorks or the Brooklyn Flea for already-constructed furniture.

Recipes

2010-06-13T16:10:00.000-07:00

The Kitchn has been posting recipes for recent graduates all week.

Here are the recipes that have gotten me through since college. There's a farmers' market in my neighborhood, so each week I buy a tomato, an onion, garlic, eggs, a loaf of bread, and either some cheese or some nuts. A small basil plant, if you have an apartment with windows, can be an enormous asset. Most of the recipes are based on those ingredients. Cooking in the city is a treat & saves a lot of money at lunch hour.

Penne Frittata with Basil and Ricotta
This one's quick and leaves enough for lunch the next day. You can get fresh ricotta at Garden of Eden stores in the city. Ricotta is great just added to a little fresh pasta with marinara or vodka sauce, or used for stuffed shells.

Pasta al Pomodoro
Make sure to use red onion to get the sharp summery flavor.

Bruscetta
Chop tomato, onion, garlic, and basil. Slice a loaf of French bread (about half) into small pieces. Pour olive oil onto a plate; dip both sides of the bread into the olive oil. Spoon tomato/onion/garlic mixture on the top & bake until the edges of the bread are brown. Try variations on this theme. You can make crustini with just bread & olive oil, which is especially useful if the bread is a day old. If you mix olive oil with balsamic vinegar, a little fresh pepper, and basil if you have it, you can serve it as a dipping sauce with plain bread.

Potato Pizza
Totally delicious, and you can bake leftover potatoes in the oven with butter and rosemary. Or make homemade potato chips, or rosemary roast potatoes.

Pretty much anything with quinoa
I never made quinoa until after graduation--a box will make at least four meals, and it's versatile. Sometimes if there's no bread to pack a sandwich for lunch, I sautee red pepper, onion, and katamala olives in a little olive oil, then mix in quinoa and a little cumin. Takes ten minutes.

Stir fry
Most fruit markets in the city and in Brooklyn carry fresh tofu, which is an added bonus once you've gotten the hang of cooking with it. Serve with rice.

Risotto
If you have rice left over, cook rice with warm stock and white wine. Flavor with whatever is on hand.

Grilled Cheese
When our neighbors moved out, they donated a bottle of truffle oil to our cabinets. My roommate and I made many a grilled cheese with truffle oil. But you can do a lot with the basic recipe (check out the ten versions in the link above).

Omelettes, or eggs in general
Don't worry about perfecting Julia's style. Heat the pan with oil. Beat 3-4 eggs with a little milk, a dash of salt, and a splash of water (which makes them fluffy). If you have herbs d'Provence, add a sprinkling. Pour into the pan and cook over medium heat (err on the side of low). Run a knife over the edges when they start to brown. Add cheese (sharper cheese makes for a stronger flavor) and whatever toppings you have on hand, fresh basil if possible. Cook open-faced for a minute or two, then flip half the omelette over. Continue cooking on low heat until the cheese melts. Flip off the pan onto your plate & enjoy.

Here's how to open a bottle of wine without a corkscrew. (Friends of mine once Googled for this and wrapped the wine bottle in a rug, then broke the top of it against the wall. 1/3 of the wine remained in the bottle.) Happy cooking.

Flip-book-like animation

2010-01-10T16:44:00.000-08:00

parkour motion reel from saggyarmpit on Vimeo.

Via Looking Up.

"Going West" passage animated

2009-12-01T17:34:00.000-08:00

Via EW.

Lively leaves

2009-11-18T20:26:00.000-08:00

Biodiversity by Christoph Niemann for the NYT blog.

Book dissections

2009-11-10T17:35:00.000-08:00

Brian Dettmer blows my mind! He does great stuff with cassette tapes, too (thanks, Gene!).

Smell of Books

2009-08-14T12:43:00.000-07:00

Now you can finally enjoy reading e-books without giving up the smell you love so much. With Smell of Books™ you can have the best of both worlds, the convenience of an e-book and the smell of your favorite paper book.

Smell of Books™ is compatible with a wide range of e-reading devices and e-book formats and is 100% DRM-compatible. Whether you read your e-books on a Kindle or an iPhone using Stanza, Smell of Books™ will bring back that real book smell you miss so much. (Thanks, Kat.)

In B Flat

2009-05-20T20:40:00.000-07:00

In the mood for a little music In B Flat?

Colm Toibin

2009-05-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

Colm Toibin has the best interviews of anyone I've read of late. The comment about getting no pleasure from writing was incredible, and this bit about being bald as well as gay was a nice zinger.

"The world is peopled by ghosts."

2009-05-13T09:14:00.001-07:00

"The Office Girl," a short story by Joe Meno.

Delicious words

2009-05-13T07:25:00.001-07:00

The Language Log article mentions the word "kumquat," which makes me think of this little girl's face.

PERPENDICULAR!

2009-05-13T06:48:00.000-07:00

The Language Log on word attraction.

Happy Mother's Day!

2009-05-10T08:39:00.000-07:00

Image via MNArtists.

In celebration, may I present Postcards From Yo Momma.

May 7

2009-05-08T11:11:00.000-07:00

By Embloggery.

I've been working for years to get the job offer I got yesterday.

Letter by Strange Letter

2009-05-07T11:48:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned I finally fulfilled my dream of starting a blog of alphabets?

Just alphabets.

Sometimes blogs are better when they're simple.

Flying Dreams

2009-05-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

My boss tipped me off to this series by Tabitha Vevers, titled "Flying Dreams." She painted all sorts of people's dreams about flying - simple but delicious, isn't it?

Kindle is bigger, not better

2009-05-06T08:01:00.001-07:00

I get it, Amazon. You hired Toni Morrison and Steven King to advertise for you. But a bigger screen doesn't add the color photos or interactive elements a handheld reading device could offer. Let me know when the price drops lower than $500 and the design is a little more attractive. The pink doesn't help much of anything, even if it makes Steven King smile.

Before the notebook computer there was:

2009-04-27T06:53:00.000-07:00

Noteboek from Evelien Lohbeck on Vimeo.

Brilliant little video with a high-tech little black notebook. (via BookFutures)

James Wood finger drums

2009-04-26T18:44:00.000-07:00

James Wood's finger drumming, analyzed by Alex Rose for Opium Magazine.

I had the pleasure of seeing Wood lecture at Columbia in a very crowded seminar room just a few weeks ago. Everyone held her breath while he talked. If only they'd seen him drum!

Lunch numbers

2009-04-24T14:29:00.000-07:00

Maira Kalman meets Ruth Bader Ginsberg at the Supreme Court, sees cherry blossoms.

It's almost summertime

2009-04-23T07:16:00.000-07:00

If a stop-motion video of Morocco doesn't make you ready for summer vacation, try Stuart Gibson's photos of the ocean. (via NotCom)

Peter Kaplan

2009-04-23T06:56:00.000-07:00

Sorry to hear that Peter Kaplan is stepping down from The New York Observer. I liked him enormously when he lectured last summer at the CPC. Hope the paper will survive without his guidance.

On keeping things separate

2009-04-21T21:01:00.000-07:00

Image via ThomasMoronic.

I had with me a copy of Le Rouge et le noir. He riffled the pages. Do you like this?

Yes. I read it first in Arabic. Now I'm rereading it in French. And I added: Julien's family life is like my own in some ways. One thing in particular is almost identical: Monsieur Sorel bound out his son Julien to the mayor of the town for three hundred francs a year, and my father rented me for thirty pesetas a month to a hashish-smoker who ran a cafe in the quarter of Ain Khabbaz where we lived in Tetuan.

I see your trouble. And you're not the only one. You'll never find beauty in literature that way. You shouldn't read with that sort of thing in mind, with the idea that the life of one or another protagonist has something to do with your own life. You have to keep things separate. Your life is nobody else's life.

-Jean Genet in Tangier by Mohamed Choukri, translated by Paul Bowles (page 7)

Collective Yawn

2009-04-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

Peter Funch takes photos on New York street corners and pastes them into single photographs. (via Kottke)

Exercise

2009-04-21T09:08:00.000-07:00

by ReadingWritingLiving.

Advice for surviving your 20s from Catherine Bohne

2009-04-14T07:32:00.000-07:00

WHY did I start working in the bookstore? When I discovered the bookstore, in my early 20's, it was the sole (it seems to me now) haven from the terrors of trying to figure out how to live and be a grownup—life was hard and scary, expensive and confusing, and I seemed to find myself in one situation after another that I'd thought I wanted but didn't really suit me at all…the bookstore was simply the one place that felt calm and sane, peaceful and welcoming. I applied for the weekend job on a whim, got it, and just never left. Whenever other opportunities would come up I'd find that if I was honest, I'd really rather live in the world of the bookstore, and so although it sometimes seemed irresponsible (or at least quixotic) I just stayed and stayed—moving into positions of increasing authority seemed to happen naturally. And now I own it!

Interview on Bookslut with the owner of the Park Slope Community Bookstore (one of my favorite bookstores in the world), Catherine Bohne. (via Three Percent)

You know how I feel about alphabets

2009-04-09T07:30:00.000-07:00

Tangled Alphabets at the MOMA. (via Silliman's blog)

Holi!

2009-04-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

It's Holi, the festival of color!

L.A. Weekly on golden anniversary of Raymond Chandler's death

2009-04-02T10:15:00.000-07:00

Judith Freeman on the 50th anniversary of Raymond Chandler's death:

Chandler understood how loneliness would become our new modern disease, the condition of a whole culture. It’s the source of much of the controlled, half-poetical emotion that lies at the heart of Marlowe and of every Chandler story.

Thanks, Kaelin

2009-04-01T13:37:00.000-07:00

Obama depressed, distant since 'Battlestar Galactica' series finale.

Latin-1

2009-03-31T12:32:00.001-07:00

Thank god for this chart.

Homemade fonts

2009-03-31T12:30:00.001-07:00

Totally into these homemade fonts.

Choire Sicha is writing a book!

2009-03-24T07:28:00.000-07:00

Thank you, publishing world, for this gift. I told you you'd have my money the day you found a way for me to give back to Choire Sicha. Now I have something to daydream about during my night job.

"It used to be, you came to New York and you got a job as an assistant, and sooner or later you got to have part of your boss’s job and you moved up," Mr. Sicha said. "There was sort of a continuum. There was a thing called a career in New York."

Not anymore.

If it sticks to the walls, it's done

2009-03-20T14:25:00.000-07:00

Dying to see this exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum - it's made out of tape!

More 20 x 200 love

2009-03-20T14:24:00.001-07:00

Secret Language 3 by Valerie Roybal.

Just look

2009-03-15T21:44:00.000-07:00

Via FFFFOUND.

Pi Day and a weekend of baking

2009-03-15T21:27:00.000-07:00

They are sold out of buttermilk in my section of Brooklyn, so that meant no soda bread baking today. Instead of buttermilk scones (another thought), I tried cream scones, which are lackluster but taste very nice with strawberry rhubarb jam.

I've now made three chocolate bourbon truffle-turtle tortes in approximately two days. I don't recommend the recipe unless you own a candy thermometer. It's clearly an excellent pie, it's just difficult to get the caramel to the right consistency when you're unsure of its temperature. (A friend also told me that you're not supposed to stir it at all, which is not what this recipe says.) I tried cooking it for some hours on Friday night, but it never held together. Tonight it again took an hour, but it was much closer to real caramel. I think it is only supposed to boil for about eight minutes, but the recipe is not specific. I tried a new baker's chocolate for the top layer tonight and it didn't turn out so smoothly as chocolate chips did on Friday.

I also tried the Darn Good Chocolate Cake recipe from the Cake Doctor, which seems to have come out well. I suspect I would trust this cookbook to care for my firstborn, had I a firstborn. So darn good.

Beard alphabet

2009-03-08T01:20:00.000-08:00

Hooray, I made you a beard!

Check it out

2009-03-08T01:15:00.000-08:00

30 emerging photographers selected by PDN. (via Kottke)

One in 8 Million

2009-03-05T10:41:00.001-08:00

Screenshot via Swissmiss.

One in 8 Million, brief oral histories with New Yorkers, including slideshows of black-and-white photographs. Pure magic. Thank you, New York Times online.

On the subject of Atlas

2009-03-05T07:11:00.001-08:00

Atlas Shrugged sales are up. BookNinja suggests it's because of the economy. I think it is probably because of Bioshock.

Stop using Twitter for advertising and make your books into video games. This will generate real revenue, publishing industry, and will allow your authors/readers/players to delve further into the worlds you create.

Can be used to write a phone number or e-mail, wipe your nose, place your gum in, make mini-footballs, write secret messages...

2009-03-04T16:30:00.001-08:00

Via At Home At Home.

Orphaned books

2009-03-04T16:15:00.000-08:00

Image credit goes to Loxosceles on Flickr.

Brewster Kahle responds to the Google news. If all goes well for Google, it could have exclusive digital rights to out-of-print books. (Thanks, Dan.)

Colm Toibin

2009-03-04T09:09:00.001-08:00

Image via The New York Times.

Interview with Colm Toibin (call-um toe-BEEN) in the Manchester Review. Definitely a fun one - starts with Vonnegut's rules of writing and some praise for Flannery O'Connor, then evolves into a nice (though mildly grumpy) interview.

Grammar noir

2009-03-04T07:04:00.001-08:00

Language Log celebrates National Grammar Day. (Image via LafterHall.)

What's black and white and read all over?

2009-03-04T06:26:00.000-08:00

Image via Ranting and Raving.

Google has a $7 million ad campaign running in newspapers, among them the New York Times Review of Books and the Poetry Review in Britain. The idea is to reach out to the readers out there who are wary of the terms of GoogleBooks. Newspapers reporting this story sound gleeful.

The Darkest Hour Is Just Before Dawn

2009-03-03T12:52:00.000-08:00

By Owen Murphy and Joelle Dietrick. (Image via The Coleman Center)

Snow ice cream

2009-03-02T12:35:00.000-08:00

This is kinda gross in New York, but in Kansas, it sounds great. The Kitchn suggests to serve it with dulche de leche, which I always boiled for three hours, but I guess you can make in just one. It's sweetened condensed milk boiled in a can. Might melt the snow ice cream really fast, but it's probably worth it. Mmm.

Chickens walking backward

2009-03-02T08:13:00.000-08:00

Flannery. A profile and sort-of book review from The New York Times.

Changing the world

2009-02-27T11:21:00.001-08:00

Here's a list of books that "changed the world." (via Kottke)

In love with A. Lincoln: new post on the Pursuit of Happiness blog

2009-02-27T09:52:00.000-08:00

I may post every time Maira Kalman posts just to make sure you don't miss a single moment of her blog. I suggest you read her newest post while listening to Best Friends Forever.

On the future of digital reading and writing

2009-02-26T11:43:00.000-08:00

One of my recent columnist crushes is Roy Blount Jr., who wrote a piece about the Kindle for the NYT that states bluntly the same concern every writer has: how is the digital world going to screw us? His answer, for now, is that the rights for audio books need some sort of protection. At the present time, there is no court ruling on how digital devices may use audio rights.

A sort of poem about Born Digital projects by Stephanie Strickland. (via Silliman's blog)

ShortReads launches today. It's like GoodReads, but designed for mobile devices. The idea of using one program on any device is a good one, but I will admit that I think there are better ways to do such a thing. For example, buying directly from a publisher would put you in contact with the community that makes the books you like happen. There are ways to nurture this relationship to work to both parties' advantages. And having a distributor between the two can have disadvantages (cuts the amount the publisher and writer are making, for instance) as well as advantages (I've posted before that we don't have The Perfect book-sharing social network).

A year ago, I would have loved this. Since I tried to enter the industry, it makes me nervous. I don't want a program like this to be successful until it incorporates all of the elements it has the potential to use, because consumers will resist it and it will be even harder to win back their trust. Already the word "e-book" makes people think of the ugly first model of the Kindle, and if Authors' Guilds and writers become convinced that they're losing business to technology, the digital world will lose its most valuable readers and its most creative writers. If we're going to do this, we need to do it well. We need to sort out rights before we lose writers, and we need to add multimedia elements that enhance the reading experience, instead of reading glorified (and expensive) PDFs. Where's the excitement in that?

The Diggers

2009-02-26T10:33:00.000-08:00

20 papayas planted in the ground for public nurturing and consumption. A piece by Gaye Chan and Nandita Sharma, deconstructed very intelligently In The Conversation.

Finally!

2009-02-26T07:43:00.000-08:00

YES YES YES! Congrats to Joseph O'Neill, winner of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award! A well-deserved victory.

Re: LIVE LIKE YOU'RE IN FORBES MAGAZINE!!!

2009-02-25T21:28:00.000-08:00

Soon the artists will all have to move to the Financial District because rent on apartments in Brooklyn is the only rent that isn't plummeting in this economy.

Since we're on the subject of eating

2009-02-25T12:33:00.000-08:00

Unearthed an interview with Anurdha Mittal published in The Sun a few years ago. She speaks simply about why world hunger is not caused by a shortage of food. I can't believe I haven't read this sooner.

Things worth making

2009-02-23T23:00:00.000-08:00

Image via Omnomicon.

Cooking crushes from FoodGawker:

King Cake
Chocolate chip cookies
Hot pretzels
Cannoli ice cream
Homemade butter

Good timing

2009-02-22T00:50:00.001-08:00

People at work.

When he was 8 years old

2009-02-21T23:45:00.001-08:00

I'm terribly sorry to be That Picky Grammarian, but here is a sentence from today's Gothamist:

Zolezzi's father committed suicide when he was 8-years-old by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.

This is a textbook case - no, it is almost precisely the sentence my ninth-grade English teacher used to show us the meaning of a subject of a sentence.

Some of the branches of this tree produce lemons, others oranges

2009-02-19T11:35:00.000-08:00

Image via Old Roads.

Tayeb Salih, author of Season of Migration to the North, has passed away. His prose is elegantly translated into English by Denys Johnson-Davies, and is an absolute treat. You can read Season of Migration in just an hour or two - I highly recommend it. More on Salih is available at Laila Lalami.

It's a long story, but I won't tell you everything. Some details won't be of great interest to you, but others...

Willing ourselves out of February

2009-02-18T21:48:00.000-08:00

Diego Stocco - Music From Sand from Diego Stocco on Vimeo.

Via SwissMiss.

Bringing complete sentences back to the White House

2009-02-17T22:47:00.000-08:00

Obama's sentence is declared "grammatically sound." I think it's worth pointing out grammar when it's admirable, and not just incorrect. It's just so hard to resist the latter. (On a side note, I heard someone yesterday say her husband was going to "talk his arm off." Isn't that lovely?)

'Tis the season

2009-02-17T22:20:00.000-08:00

Anna Wintour is losing two of her three assistants. Think you're up to the job?

In other news, 20-somethings need health insurance

2009-02-17T22:07:00.001-08:00

Image via Lawsome.
We're all very nervous about being hit by cabs right now. Especially because our entry-level jobs have been cut since the economy crashed. And we don't have savings to fall back upon.

“There was no way that I could pay my rent, buy insurance and eat.”

Blogs are nice sometimes

2009-02-17T21:41:00.000-08:00

Image via Art Review.

and how did all those books start? in the kitchen of the murray house, and then somehow charles wallace and meg always goes for a walk to the star-watching rock. thats how they start. one foot in front of the other. and you know, like 3 immortal beings and a unicorn or a seraphim thrown in there. (and someone in the murray family is always making someone else hot cocoa. swear to god). they become about love and time travel and getting back to something like trust and grace with things that are familiar, and so readily problematic to the larger society. like dirty gay bathroom sex, for example. that the relativity of connection has no underlying foundation, there's no ethics to breathing so why can't that be so for love.

To you.

2009-02-13T23:25:00.001-08:00

Happy Valentine's Day.

Library arranged by color, plus a pug

2009-02-12T21:48:00.000-08:00

This is the stuff dreams are made of. Of which dreams are made.

1234567890

2009-02-12T21:33:00.000-08:00

As for the image: My apologies to Laughing Squid, but no Youtube clip or Google image search could beat XKCD on this occasion.

Laughing Squid has alerted me that Friday the 13th is upon us, and you know what that means? It's time to celebrate 1234567890 Day, the anniversary of Unix Time (which has been going up every second since 1970).

Dentist Fear Girl

2009-02-11T08:20:00.000-08:00

Picture via Families.com.

Dentist fear girl
starved to death

Check out the headline from Language Hat, and the story in Sky News. (Thanks, Hilary.)

Subway knitting

2009-02-10T22:44:00.000-08:00

A particularly nice post by Every Person In New York.

Plimpton Prize and latex leggings

2009-02-10T22:16:00.000-08:00

Factory photo via Bouncing Red Ball.

Peter Matthiesson loves you, Alistair Morgan.

It's cute that you can write a whole article about letter-writing making a comeback without any evidence to support it. (via The Elegant Variation)

In old news, everyone seems mystified by The Way We'll All Make Billions On the Internet.

MIA might be an apologist for the Tamil Tigers, but she is indubitably pregnant.

Two great links from BoingBoing: photographs of factories in Japan, and of a broken-down hospital in Maryland.

Oh! And one more! I've been meaning to post recipes for making your own toothpaste, laundry detergent, etc., but BoingBoing links to How To Make Your Own Latex Leggings, which seem to be a New York essential these days. You're welcome.

RIP Joe Ades

2009-02-08T02:14:00.000-08:00

The greatest peeler in all of Union Square.

Please don't close, Terrace Bagels!

2009-02-06T08:23:00.000-08:00

Photo via Yelp.

Word on the street is Terrace Bagels is closed "for a while."

This is the most important restaurant in all of Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Rocks coffee is delicious, and there's nothing like a fresh (boiled!) bagel just out of the oven. Send them happy thoughts, please.

2009-02-05T21:59:00.001-08:00

Via this.

(Thanks, Elaine!)

I Lego NY

2009-02-04T22:00:00.001-08:00

A little treat from the New York Times.

Get well soon, publishing world

2009-02-02T14:58:00.000-08:00

Image via UCL Institute of Child Health.

How did Houghton get in this mess? Not, it seems, because of bad publishing.

Read the news online? Great idea, 1981!

2009-01-31T22:21:00.000-08:00

Via BoingBoing and BookFutures.

On the subject of football

2009-01-31T21:26:00.000-08:00

This happened? For real?

Joe Meno

2009-01-31T19:32:00.000-08:00

Can we please talk about Joe Meno for a few minutes?

I've posted before about his novel Demons in the Spring. I once recommended The Boy Detective Fails to a stranger at the Brooklyn Book Fair, and he loved it so much he wrote to me to say thank you. I dragged my roommate to see Meno read at the KGB on his Spring book tour, and she loved his reading so much she bought the whole book even though it was $27 in hardcover. An extremely thoughtful person I am lucky enough to know bought me a copy of Tender as Hellfire for Christmas and I recently finished it in an airport after my flight was canceled.

Here is what Meno always gets right: the complex and unusual way that characters think. There is a level of detail that he strikes that few authors can match. He never underestimates his readers. However, Meno's first novel is messy and unedited. It's a testament to his talent that his characters endure this, that they are as resonant as they are; that Val, the diner waitress whom Dough worships, can appear beautiful, disgusting, and tragic all at once.

Meno really hits his stride in The Boy Detective Fails, a book that combines the traditional with the modern. This book makes me think of The Royal Tenenbaums - it's equally dark and funny. Meno uses the traditional format of a children's mystery book, and practically opens with an unsatisfactory ending. He asks, what happens next? What does a famous detective do when he's past his prime? What happens when the source of your fame and identity unravels, and you feel it's all your fault? Meno weaves in a secret code on the bottom of each page, using ROT-13 (the geek term for A = 13, used in primitive computer coding). Not to mention the stories in Demons in the Spring, which are simultaneously heartbreaking and hysterical. The illustrations in this volume are the icing on the cake, making the book a valuable art object as well as a polished work of fiction.

You can read an interview with him on Bookslut, or listen to an interview with him on NPR.

He's also an excellent reader, and an amiable person. I believe firmly that he's got the right balance of traditional story-writing and the DavidFosterWallace/DaveEggers generation quirkiness to endure the weight of the recession.

I cannot tell you how excited I am to read his upcoming novel from W. W. Norton, titled The Great Perhaps.

His short story "An Apple Could Make You Laugh" was published in Ninth Letter, and you can listen to it read aloud on Ninth Letter's website. I would like to record this story aloud. I would like to read you, Dear Reader, a short story each week. I will think about this idea when I am back in New York with my (former boss's) Mac.

Honestly, he's worth it. Look into Demons in the Spring or The Boy Detective Fails when you next reach a bookstore. I'll let you know how Hairstyles of the Damned is when I've finished it - hooray!

Bad news for grammarians

2009-01-30T20:44:00.001-08:00

This delicious image is brought to you by I Love Typography.

For fear of misplacing an apostrophe, Birmingham has decided to forbid using apostrophes on road signs at all.

The article is calling it a "safety" issue. Because signs are in danger of being wrong a certain percentage of times, Birmingham has decided to rule that they will be wrong 100% of the time. This is "safe" because it's consistent? Ick. (Thanks, Becky.)

Inauguration art

2009-01-30T09:20:00.000-08:00

Nothing like Maira Kalman to make you feel happier about the state of the union. And red-eyebrowed museum guards and plastic flowers in the Walt Whitman rest stop. (Thanks, Katie.)

On the subject of hopelessness

2009-01-26T22:16:00.001-08:00

PW laid off Sara Nelson!?

Is there no good left in this world? She is one of the biggest publishing rock stars I've had the luck to see in the flesh, albeit from a sizable distance. She's responsible for adding Lucky-esque circles to the weekly list of bestselling books. Why, publishing moguls, why?

How Books Are Made

2009-01-19T21:10:00.001-08:00

Everything in this video is true. Via Andrew Sullivan. (Thanks, Mom.)

Lady in Red

2009-01-18T21:16:00.000-08:00

Photo via Photo Flash.

Saw Hedda Gabler on Friday at the Roundabout Theatre. The show has excellent costume and set design, and strong leads. It is, purposely, a little anti-climactic, and it was hard for theatregoers to respond as they exited the theatre. The first thing that came to me was this: Ana Reeder did an especially nice job of weeping half the show without defining herself as That Woman Who Cries All The Time; I was impressed she could show so much variety within a restricting role like that of Mrs. Thea Elvstead. She is also (arguably) the only innocent character in the show, and the one your heart goes out to in the end. This is unusual for a tragedy - one would expect the worst things to happen to good people; in Ibsen, though, the worst people get the most stage time. (You can read about the cast here.)

I was least fond of Paul Sparks as Ejlert Lovberg - his character was so built up before he was introduced, I wish he had lived up to the hype. His presence was not commanding enough to demand more attention than the other characters.

Mary Louise Parker is aloof and rather excellent. I initially thought her choice to present Hedda as so far gone - so reprehensible - from the beginning of the show that it took away from the ending. However, after reading today's review in The New York Times, I think it was Ibsen's choice, not hers. Hedda is a twisted and difficult woman, though she comes from certain circumstances that might have been sympathetic (she chooses a "safe" marriage over an exciting one, she feels trapped in her relationship, etc.) but our impression of her in the opening scene is that she's entirely materialistic and heartless. Helen Carey comes in as Miss Juliane Tesman, all bubbly and warm, and Hedda criticizes her hat, criticizes the house Miss Tesman paid for (though it is quite a financial stretch for the old lady), and manages to make Miss Tesman feel unwelcome in the new home.

It may have just been Friday's performance, but I wish she'd made more of her last line in the show. There are these great doors she gets to close, and she is in an absolutely beautiful dress (pictured above) that makes you want her to stand with her back to the audience the whole second act so you can look at it. But she does a nice job of blending a classical mood with an approachable, more modern tone - I enjoyed her performance.

The Times touched on two funny contemporary things that came to my mind as well: Sex and the City and Anne Hathaway. Michael Cervaris plays Jorgen Tesman, a modern Harry from Sex and the City. He is the kind, understanding, slightly goofy husband who dotes on his beautiful wife. They're both even bald. This is the perfect husband for a woman so selfish as Hedda - it's just a shame we have to watch him caught with such an awful woman (Charlotte is at least a little more sympathetic). The reason I thought of Anne Hathaway is that a role like Hedda would be marvelous for her career; this part is designed for beautiful women who always have to play the likeable leading lady. What a marvelous opportunity for Mary Louise Parker!

Though I would have liked to see a bit more of a character arc from Hedda, it was a polished production. Again, the tall windows, the long red dress with the V in the back, the revolvers, the "sunrise" - all of the visual elements were gorgeous. If you get the opportunity, it's worth your time.

The falcon cannot hear the falconer

2009-01-16T23:24:00.000-08:00

Surely you heard about the plane that went down in Hudson River this week. Apparently there are ways to keep birds out of planes (insert Superman joke here).

Here's a bad-ass video of falcons patrolling JFK. (via Gothamist)

Sometimes "your" is possessive,

2009-01-15T21:44:00.000-08:00

but other times it means "you are."

(Thanks, Laura.)

Brooklyn Morning

2009-01-13T01:54:00.000-08:00

I can't remember whether I've posted about it, but I've been completely in love with Youngna Park's work for about half a year now. I finally purchased a piece called Brooklyn Morning (above) from Jen Beckman's gallery. It not only captures the mood of my neighborhood, but some of the magic that's leftover here in early daylight.

Younga Park has an incredible archive that makes me wish I could thank the internet for granting me access to such beautiful, high-res photos.

Check out her sense of light and geometry:

Her sense of space, color, and mood:

The way she uses simple props to construct a narrative:

And her unusual use of focus:

All photos courtesy of her archive. If you too want to wake up to a street full of confetti, check her stuff out.

Books I Read in 2008

2009-01-13T01:12:00.000-08:00

I am missing a book list, but here are the ones I have been able to think of:

Gone Tomorrow by P.F. Kluge
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Magic For Beginners by Kelly Link
Demons In Spring by Joe Meno
The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno
Astroturf by M.G. Lord
Haroun and Other Stories by Salman Rushdie
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
Bottomless Bellybutton by Dash Shaw
Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman
Animal Crackers by Hannah Tinti
The Last Life by Claire Messud
The 13 Clocks by James Thurber
The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff
The Goldbeater's Skin by G.C. Waldrep
The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
Don't Bump the Glump by Shel Silverstein
The Pick-Up by Nadine Gordimer
The Implacable Order of Things by Jose Luis Peixoto
A Simple Heart by Gustav Flaubert
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Oroonoko by Aphra Behn
The Wanderer, The Seafarer
Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
Paradise Lost by John Milton
The Collected Poems of John Milton
The Collected Poems of John Donne
The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
Sula by Toni Morrison
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot
The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
As You Like It by Shakespeare
Hamlet by Shakespeare
In Defense of Posey by Philip Sidney
Opened Ground by Seamus Heaney
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
Max Makes Millions by Maira Kalman
Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso
The Maytrees by Annie Dillard
The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright
Big Machine by Victor LaValle
Last Night At The Lobster by Stewart O'Nan
How To Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen
My Antonia by Willa Cather
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
Tooth and Claw by T.C. Boyle
The Human Fly and Other Stories by T.C. Boyle
New Sudden Fiction edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas
Flash Fiction Forward edited by James Thomas and Robert Shapard (their names are listed in different orders - perhaps to make things even?)

Books I am still only halfway through, but have not abandoned (in fact, some I only treat myself to on special occasions):
The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor
Timbuktu by Paul Auster
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
The Portable Dorothy Parker
Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
Demonology by Rick Moody
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
Alma Mater by P.F. Kluge
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

This week I am working through Not-Knowing by Donald Barthelme. More on this soon.

Yes Pecan!

2009-01-06T11:36:00.000-08:00

It is better if you pronounce it PE-can for the sake of this ice cream.

Ambient Intimacy

2009-01-06T11:21:00.000-08:00

A nice post by Leisa Reichelt about ambient intimacy, her term for those people you know on the internet more than anywhere else.

Urban Boyscout Badge #3

2009-01-06T09:18:00.000-08:00

Image via Chancre Photo.

My computer was out of ink (it printed precisely five liney pages before both $40 cartridges died all together) and I had an interview yesterday morning. One problem with being laid off is you have to revise your resume, thus making the twenty copies you made on nice paper rather worthless.

The interview was in Midtown, so I stopped in the lobby of a fancy hotel and used their office space. This is really not a bad idea. It takes five minutes and costs much less than those fancy Kinkos stores. Also you can spend five minutes pretending this is the lobby of YOUR fancy hotel, where you regularly stay on business trips because you run your own company and give yourself a generous salary with all sorts of perks. And you live in a place with much lower taxes than New York, so you can spend money seeing plays or eating in fancy tourist restaurants and pretending you live in the city instead of actually trying to live here.

Word problems for your 20s

2009-01-04T20:18:00.000-08:00

Image via Culinary in the Desert.

1) When your wireless internet goes out in the middle of the night right before a job interview (and you have crucial information regarding this interview in your inbox), and your neighbors' wireless won't work for you, and their neighbors' won't work for you, and nowhere in your section of Brooklyn that is open has wireless internet available, where do you go and what do you have to pay for it? Please list all possible solutions. Extra credit if you don't have to leave your building.

2) If 35% of your income goes to taxes, is your income for your part-time hostessing job less than or equal to the amount you could get for unemployment in the state of New York?

3) If your significant other's car is broken into while you're visiting a city many miles away, and you had pretzels from Sheetz in the car at the time of said break-in, is it safe to eat these pretzels, or do you suppose they will coat your throat with shards of glass?

Time for cheer

2008-12-23T22:43:00.000-08:00

Via I Am Bored.

If California and New York State were businesses, they'd be going bankrupt. If you're among the nearly 20 percent of Americans who live or work in these two states, the fiscal crisis is coming home for the holidays. And the worst is still on its way.
-First paragraph of John Avlon's "What if New York goes bust?"

I am not keen on the "forget about the auto industry, journalists have the real trouble" argument, but I wish we could still afford to make heroin jokes this year.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Paris Is Burning

2008-12-22T09:47:00.000-08:00

Image via The New York Times.

The Times recently published a tribute to Ball culture at Club Remix. This was especially a tribute to Willi Ninja, who made voguing look so good even Madonna was in. (Watch his SHOULDERS in this video. The man is incredible.)

We watched Paris is Burning, the documentary of the Ball scene. This was my parents' New York: the mid-eighties, gay culture influencing everything trendy and exciting and getting remarkably little credit for it.

Now Willi Ninja's successor Benny Ninja is featured on America's Next Top Model, training girls like Isis to strike a pose.

It's not a perfect world - certainly the documentary hits issues that are alarmingly resonant in 2008, and the ending is deeply sad. But the fact that the people who were playing dream roles in underground clubs are on television strutting their stuff - well, TV isn't the be-all, end-all, but it's publicly viewed and accepted. And modern choreographers, dancers, actors, etc. are more likely to be open about their sexuality, without fear of ruining their careers (I hope). It's not as much progress as I wish we'd had in the twenty years since this documentary was released (the homeless man on my subway tonight still used the words "the virus" to describe his condition), but it's something.

Just try to catch him

2008-12-21T20:41:00.000-08:00

Image via Mahalo.

Best place to watch the Giants online:
http://static.nfl.com/static/snf/WOW.html

So thrilled about that game. Derrick Ward had 215 yards on 15 carries! And Jacobs was back.

Now in 3D

2008-12-19T09:09:00.000-08:00

Image via Lifehacker and Gizmodo.

Check out the new intensely detailed images of New York on Google Earth.

Netbooks aren't new

2008-12-19T08:46:00.000-08:00

...but they're catching on.

Drawing from 1972.

Gruber links to Dave Winer, both responding to the question, "Are netbooks something new?"

I would say no. Netbooks are just a new word for an old concept. As my boss pointed out a couple of weeks ago, Alan Kay invented the concept of a dynabook in 1968. This is, on a very basic level, a small computer that is quick enough to run what you want it to run. The laptop must have been a response to this concept, and those little Mac Powerbooks, and the PC tablet. The iPhone is perhaps the most advanced of any of these, but we won't count it since it is pocket-sized and there is no keyboard (other than the touch screen). Something that is small, light, has decent memory (if you can find that - Gruber makes a fair point against Vista on such a small machine), and costs $400 to $600, you might have something marketable.

Is this "the first Dynabook-like computer good enough to criticize?" No, but it'll take some heat anyway.

Ordinary polar bears

2008-12-19T07:46:00.000-08:00

"My life is pretty ordinary," said Tracy Day, 47, wearing a bikini and clutching a Thermos of peppermint schnapps. "I've worked for the Social Security Administration for 26 years. I ride the bus five days a week. I come home and watch TV."

Then the Green Lake resident saw the polar poetry event on Craigslist. "I said, 'It's time to create.' "

The Seattle Times covers the Polar Bear Poetry Club. (via Silliman's blog)

Two things I almost forgot to show you

2008-12-18T17:24:00.000-08:00

Wallpaper made from New York Times headlines (photo via WallpaperLab, and link via The Gothamist).

The Guggenheim says coffee is an art.