To you.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Library arranged by color, plus a pug

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

1234567890

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

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

A particularly nice post by Every Person In New York.

Plimpton Prize and latex leggings

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

The greatest peeler in all of Union Square.

Please don't close, Terrace Bagels!

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.

Via this.

(Thanks, Elaine!)

I Lego NY

A little treat from the New York Times.

Get well soon, publishing world

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!

Via BoingBoing and BookFutures.

On the subject of football

This happened? For real?

Joe Meno

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

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

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

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

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

Lady in Red

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

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)