Gwenda

Field Trip

2 Comments / Nattering / By /

Dscf0065We took advantage of some unbelievably lovely weather and a pending homework assignment (on C’s part) today to visit Blue Licks State Park and the fabulous Pioneer Museum. Christopher has a scene-setting post. I have to tell you that the museum is A Land That Time Forgot and full of really weird things*. I took pictures of most of them.

Go see in the Ye Olde Museum Day photo album.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to snap the little old lady who was staffing the place — who gave us some extremely cursory facts about the place and was very concerned that we might miss the basement — napping peacefully in a chair in the gift shop. (Full disclosure: Yes, there was a moment when I thought she might be dead. But I swear I didn’t even think of taking a photo until I heard her breathing.) She woke up with some chagrin, spouting something about Daniel Boone at Christopher.

Oh, and if you’re into giant sloths, there’s something special for you.

*Not said lightly.

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You Mean It’s Not Reality?

TV Goodness / By /

The NYT examines the real world of modeling in light of the fantasy version on the completely addictive ANTM:

There are a few good, simple reasons why the competitors on "America’s Next Top Model" will not become America’s next top model, insiders say. For starters they are generally too old to succeed in a field where much of the talent, like the current teenage Australian star Gemma Ward, is recruited out of middle school, explained Cathy Gould, the director of Elite models. And even though, by ordinary standards, the bodies of cast members on the reality show are unobjectionable, they are too plump to succeed in a business where eating disorders are no hindrance to success. In an ironic way, though, the most serious strike against the women may be, like their beauty itself, an unalterable accident of birth. They are American. "You just can’t sell an American model right now because editors completely don’t appreciate them," explained James Scully, a casting agent responsible for discovering many of the quirky, provocative sexpots who helped mold the image of Gucci during the stellar Tom Ford years. "Americans are just not in."

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I Loved It

Uncategorized / By /

Charles Taylor on Mr. and Mrs. Smith in the NYT:

It’s amusing to hear people claim Ms. Jolie has a limited range or bemoan her choice of projects when the sheer, breathtaking, abundant fact of her is the embodiment of everything that draws us to movies in the first place. To announce that you prefer Joan Allen or Laura Linney is to reveal that in your fantasy life, you’re Ashley Wilkes.

(Stolen entirely from the wiley Cinetrix.)

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NaDruWriNi No. 5, or Night Night

1 Comment / NaDruWriNi / By /

Yeah, so I’m entirely too tired to persevere. Instead, I think I’ll read The Queen of Cool (yay!). One minor mystery solved though. In rewatching the third ep of Veronica Mars from this season, the one with the bizarre "Love Hurts" interlude, I realized the answer to exactly who the singer was would no doubt be on the interweb. The Mars Investigations glossary yielded the following answer:

Karaoke singer who bears an uncanny resemblance to the lead singer of the Dandy Warhols. He rains on Lars’s parade and alludes to Veronica’s romantic woes by reminding the patrons of the Hut that "LoVe Love Hurts." His appearance is not short and sweet to the soul in 2.03 Cheatty Cheatty Bang Bang. Played by Courtney Taylor.

So, there you go. Night, night.

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NaDruWriNi No. 4, or Ballads

12 Comments / NaDruWriNi / By /

In my possession is a book I love, plucked from the Discard Pile (in fact, DISCARD is written in bold black along the edge of the pages and in the front and back covers): Ballads of Old New York by Arthur Guiterman (also author of The Mirthful Lyre). It’s full of all sorts of good stuff, but I offer you something from the Revolutionary War period. Behind the cut.

…

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NuDruWriNi No. 2, or I’m Not That Lame

1 Comment / NaDruWriNi / By /

HersheydarksmallGrowing up in the middle of nowheresville, dark chocolate was a nonexistent entity — except for Halloween. My grandmother always bought at least one bag of the mini Hershey’s bars to pass out and those, of course, included the Special Dark. I’m pretty sure that most people thought there was something wrong with them. I certainly never had any competition  for them. Even with no point of reference, I knew that the bitter, (slightly) more complex taste was somehow better than that milky stuff. I never ever saw a Special Dark bar not in the mini-size and kind of hope not to.

Candy is so important when you’re a kid. The best reward, the unfailing sugar high, part of its own complex bartering system for good behavior and favors from siblings.

Anyway, this year for Halloween, we picked up a bag of the Hershey’s. I’ve been successfully picking out most of the Special Darks (Christopher has the same taste for them, it seems)  — and, no, they aren’t great as chocolate, but they are wonderful as nostalgia. They completely live up to the memory. The taste is still complicated, but not very. If this were a secret agent, it’d be a standard Mr. Grey, not a glamorous Valerie Plame.

Consider this an ode.

See also: Everything you always wanted to know about Special Dark.

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NaDruWriNi No. 1, or Where Am I?

7 Comments / NaDruWriNi / By /

AdvmapSo, we had some early dinner guests and figured out how to hook up one of those Atari joysticks with seven or eight games from the 2600 era. That’s right: I’ve been playing Adventure. (Which contains the first ever Easter Egg. Not to mention the Bat. And the best duck-like dragons ever.)

NaDruWriNi will officially begin just as soon as we’re sick of playing. Luckily, Ed, Pinky and apparently many other participants are on the West Coast. But I’m having a glass of wine in preparation.

UPDATE:

Nadruwrini2_2I must confess that I may actually end up laming up the place this year. I’m tired, have a little bit of a head cold and had planned to just work on the revision. I suppose I could stick up the first chapter of the novel, but instead I may just malaize (it’s my word!) on the couch commenting on the efforts of others and such. We’ll see. Adventure!

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Saturday Hangovers

1 Comment / Hangovers / By /
  • An article in the WaPo examines the path of Lewis and Clark: The bicentennial of Clark’s famous journal entry is also an occasion to see what has changed along the route of the Corps of Discovery — and what has hardly changed at all. More than anything else, the great rivers of the West — the Missouri and the Columbia, the primary highways of the Lewis & Clark Expedition — have been fundamentally remade. The rivers, as the explorers knew them, were put to death by federal dams and resurrected as plumbing. 
  • Sam at Golden Rule Jones points to a Wall Street Journal Story (subs only) about the drinking habits of James Bond in text vs. on the screen: Fleming knew that in drink no less than food, it pays to play to an establishment’s strength. When Bond grabs a roadhouse lunch with Felix Leiter in "Diamonds Are Forever," he doesn’t waste time elucidating the comparative virtues of shaking vs. stirring; he just orders a beer (a Miller High Life, at that). When in Jamaica, 007 favors gin-and-tonics extra heavy on juice from the island’s fresh limes. When Bond trails Auric Goldfinger to Geneva, he relaxes with a tot of Enzian, "the firewater distilled from gentian," the root of an Alpine wildflower. In the Athens airport he knocks back Ouzo; in Turkey it’s Raki. At Saratoga racetrack, he drinks Old-Fashioneds and "Bourbon and branch" (i.e., water). And when Bond goes out to lunch in London, he orders one of the most distinctively British of drinks, a Black Velvet. Equal parts champagne and Guinness stout, a Black Velvet might sound awful, but proves to be startlingly good in the drinking — I find it tastes curiously and deliciously like hard cider.
  • Both Sarah and Carrie have made excellent posts recently about just how hard it is to finish a decent first novel (or rewrite the first draft into one). It’s nice to know you have fellow travelers…
  • The fabulous Lauren McLaughlin points to a wonderful article about the real story of Rosa Parks.
  • Ghost Word has an excellent write-up of a recent event where Dave Eggers interviewed Joan Didion. Eggers focused in on Didion’s relationship with the recently(ish) deceased John Gregory Dunne: “We were absolutely each others first readers on everything. First, and certainly in my case, first and last.” For a writer, that kind of support is remarkable, and may help explain the sheer volume and quality of Didion’s writing. The couple spent their days next to one another – or at least in nearby rooms – and could rely on an astute, yet sympathetic critic to look at their work.
  • Mr. McLaren writes up an imaginary WFC based on this year’s program, what it woulda been like. I’d go to that one.
  • Emma Garman, doing one of her MaudNewton.com Fridays, reports that Tracy Emin’s memoir Strangeland doesn’t look like it’s going to be available stateside.
  • A handy reference page for later. (Via Ed.)

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The Mad Ones Are Best

Books / By /

Stacy Schiff reviews the new biography Jean-Jacques Rousseau: An Unruly Mind by Leo Damrosch in the NYTBR:

He did manage to indulge one of his greater talents, that of falling out with those who meant him well. Rousseau set such high standards for friendship that he was better off alone; by his 50’s the hypersensitivity bordered on mania. "Persecution has elevated my soul," he explained, courting it again and again. He quarreled with David Hume, the Scottish philosopher who had offered him asylum, and with whom he was never reconciled. In the delusional aftermath (Rousseau admitted later that he had succumbed to "an attack of madness"), he set about composing one of the earliest self-analyses in the history of literature.

The paradox was perfectly consistent with the life. "Confessions" was published only posthumously; it was some time before Rousseau’s ideas seeped into the drinking water. In his own day he was provocative but also outlandish. As Damrosch puts it, Rousseau was after all understood to be "describing a state of nature that never existed, a political system that never could exist and an educational scheme that never should exist." Social inequality, the will of the people, inalienable rights were meaningless concepts when Rousseau began ranting about them. Imagination was out of fashion; he was tiptoeing around the as-yet-undiscovered unconscious. He advocated idleness in the age of Adam Smith. If he suffered for being so much out of step with his own century, he can too easily be overlooked in ours. Without founding a school – it would have been inappropriate – Rousseau stands squarely if unsystematically at the root of democracy, autobiography, Romanticism, child-centered education, even psychoanalysis.

I have to admit a soft spot for Rousseau and this biography sounds like a great deal of fun.

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