1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 and 10

Okay! I am officially obsessed with Feist. (I feel like I'm getting my music nerdiness back. It feels good.)

This is no mp3 blog so I will just direct you for musak itself to the Hype Machine. Or better yet, why not treat yourself to a few videos?



The above song is appropriately titled 1 2 3 4, and it's what first got me into her, just because I had the song stuck in my head for days. But I just now discovered this one:



Which I love. It's such a sweet song (check out the lyrics).

Enjoy!

It's ok, Hugh. I still love you.

(I think that sheepish, Edward-Farrars look in the old mug shot is HILARIOUS!)

More fantasy movies...

How excited are YOU for the newest Harry Potter? I hated book 5 so much for its rambling and loose ends and disintegration of plot, but I'm hoping the movie will condense it enough to make it good. It certainly looks good. Is it wrong that Harry and Cho kissing looks kind of hot?

Man with a gun

More gossip about The Golden Compass movie. I really don't want this to be overhyped. I also don't want it to be ruined. I am really devastated that Tom Stoppard isn't writing it anymore... his play adaptation was so good.

The daemon is an idea borrowed from Socrates, who believed he had a divine presence within himself. He called it a "daimon" and it would warn him if he was about to do something bad.

For Pullman, the daemon was also a great literary device. As he told the Oxford audience: "The moment I thought of daemons was on the 16th draft of the first chapter. Before that I had to tell the reader what Lyra was thinking. I realised then I didn't have to explain so much. You don't need exposition. Exposition kills the flow of the narrative.

"The best advice ever given to a writer was by Raymond Chandler, who said, 'When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun.' This works. If you're stuck with the story, it moves it on like nothing else."

Lyra's daemon, Pantalaimon, "was my man coming through the door with a gun. It was a wonderful moment when I realised that."

...And Pullman is working on a new Lyra book, The Book of Dust, which will be published in a couple of years or whenever he gets a long spell away from the autograph table.

By the way, his own daemon, Pullman said, is a raven.

What do you think your daemon is?

What I did this weekend...

I had a GREAT weekend. I won't bore you with the details of how much I drank and where, and with whom (there are a lot of details!), but there were a few awesome places I visited that are actually worth sharing. I am so kicking myself for not having a camera. I'm going to have to go back to all of them, just to properly document. Consider this a mini-tour of San Francisco.

Friday night, 7:30pm:
21st Amendment, for a pint of 21A IPA

Saturday morning, 11:30am:
Limn
For all those chrome piggy banks, fuzzy-like-hair carpets, and $6,500 ottomans that you reallly, really need. Plus, outdoor rooftop gardens and art gallery with paintings made of staples.

Saturday, 1:30pm
South Park
A leetle slice of a London park square in the middle of SOMA

Saturday, 2:15pm
21st Amendment, again, for a pint of watermelon wheat on the patio

Saturday, 3pm
826 Valencia
Why else? For pirate supplies and back issues of the Believer, and Karl, the blowfish (#2) in his own viewing room

(photo from unsure shot)

I love the curvy curiosity cabinets/drawers at 826 - I wish I could put these in my house and store things like paperclips and dishtowels.


(photo from mary jane watson on flickr)

Saturday, 3:30pm
Paxton Gate
The COOLEST random discovery. It's like a crazy taxidermist/gardener/curiosity shoppe, with string of pearls plants, butterflies under glass, fox penis bones (not kidding), loose leaf teas, deer heads, taxidermy mouse art, and so on. I really am obsessed with it. It's literally next door to 826 Valencia and the two of them together make up this great collection of curiosities and weirdnesses. I loved it.

(photo from The Mitzikin Revolution)

(photo from diavolerie)

(photo from pixability)

Saturday, 4pm
some thrift store on Valencia
for a truly awesome dress that reminds me of something Mare Winningham would wear in St. Elmo's fire. It's 80s-tastic. It is an 80s virgin dress. I will post pics.

Saturday, 4:30pm
The Apartment
I wanted to go there because I read on a blog that it was The Place to go for mid-century furniture. Can I afford, and do I need, furniture? No. But I needed to go. We stayed for about 3 minutes.

brief detour to Japantown, then, 5:30pm
Suppenkuche!
For beer! In boots!

(this pic is from when we went to Suppenkuche in March)

brief detour to Niketown (what's with all the towns?) and the Levi Store where Dan and I both purchased ridiculous pairs of jeans, then, 9pm
Tunnel Top
For a dirty martini for me, and caipirinhas and mojitos for the boyz, plus a sort of karmic payback for the time I was supposed to go there and didn't

10pm
Laurel's apartment, for, among other things, forties, a cop mustache, excessive conversation, Colbert ice cream and debate over the best mix cds of all time (playlist to come, or TK as they say in publishing, which means To Come which is silly because everyone knows publishers can spell)

Sunday, 11:30am
Home
for make-your-own bloody marys, proving the point that you (if you were a restaurant) don't need much to become awesome and packed during brunch time

Sunday, 3pm
The DeYoung
Self explanatory. I especially like the apples in the sculpture garden.


(foe-toe from Pengrin)

Sunday, 9pm
TORONADO!
For - Warriors fans, excellent beer, and a lame jukebox. And companionship. Obvi.

(photo from gadgetgeek)

A truly hilarious list from McSweeney's. Really makes me want the Mountain Man Dance Moves book.

Aiee! This is the best thing ever.

Originally uploaded by k7lim.

Apparently my friend Kevin is a god damn genius. Last Halloween he went as a yip yip! You know, these yip yips. He is the pink one. HOW FREAKING AWESOME IS THIS COSTUME!?! I think it's the best Halloween costume I've ever seen.

And as if that wasn't enough...

This is awesome!! Free museums in May with a BofA card.

Those damn abortion doctors

Reason I hate George W. Bush, or at least his politics, number 4389240382490320:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking in the courtroom for the dissenters, called the ruling "an alarming decision" that refuses "to take seriously" the Court's 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey reaffirming most of Roe v. Wade and its 2000 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart striking down a state partial-birth abortion law.

Ginsburg, in a lengthy statement, said "the Court's opinion tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. For the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception protecting a woman's health." She said the federal ban "and the Court's defense of it cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this Court -- and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives. A decision of the character the Court makes today should not have staying power."

In the course of her dissenting opinion, Ginsburg accused the majority of offering "flimsy and transparent justifications" for upholding the ban. She also denounced the Kennedy opinion for its use of "abortion doctor" to describe specialists who perform gynecological services, "unborn child" and "baby" to describe a fetus, and "preferences" based on "mere convenience" to describe the medical judgments of trained doctors. She also commented: "Ultimately, the Court admits that 'moral concerns' are at work, concerns that could yield prohibitions on any abortion."

I read this summary of the situation on Salon and it's very good and scary. The Ginsberg quotes are from here. Via Feministing.

So, when I was a kid I was kind of afraid to eat strawberries because of the seeds.

Now, it occurs to me that the weirdest part about them isn't the seeds, but the little strawberry hairs on the outside of them:

Totally weird, right?

Oh well, they are still delicious.

I wish I had an excuse to buy these.


All of them.

Will Ferrell and buds started a website called funnyordie.com and this is their sort of premiere video: The Landlord.

I am jumping on an internet bandwagon by posting it, but Pearl, who plays Will Ferrel's landlord, is hilarious AND adorable. Just watch.

In related news, not only did "Blades of Glory" not suck, but it was actually pretty funny (despite under-usage of Will Arnett).

UPDATE: Entertainment Weekly talks about Pearl, who I really am entirely obsessed with.

This is the pub where Sean and I went for New Year's Eve dinner (delicious, and great beer, but they had a bit of an issue with credit card payments and made us miss the fireworks above the London Eye).

Anyway, apparently since then they have more of an issue with "40 thugs carrying knives, baseball bats, wooden clubs embedded with nails and hockey sticks."

Classy.

Check out pictures from The Golden Compass movie!!

I think Lyra looks pretty good. Sort of half-feral. I wonder how they will do the daemons.

It's funny. I read this book right when it came out in paperback (recommended by the lovely Casey) and liked it well enough. It wasn't the best book ever but it was good. But ever since then I've had this urge to reread it, that's sort of itching all the time. Unfortunately I loaned it to someone so I don't have my copy anymore, and besides, I don't really have time to reread anything because I'm too busy reading things the first time. But maybe I will, in time for the movie. I like Rachel McAdams for some reason, despite The Notebook. Maybe it's the pink hair.

P.S. On a related note, this is one of those books that gets lauded in fiction (and, I know now, non fiction) writing classes. Why? I mean, why in particular? I have no idea.

I had this link sitting in my Mozilla tabs for days (I have a tab problem). I was about to delete it and then I thought, no, I'm going to read it after all. Boy do I not regret that! This is full of such juicy retardedness about our favorite idiotic "celebrity" couple... yes, Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag. I haven't even really been watching the Hills for a while (i missed the end of the season), but I don't really care. I may even become a conscientious objector to bullshit reality tv and the celebrities that spring from it, but really, for now, this is too hilarious. Some special moments with Heidi and Spencer, excerpted:

Spencer: My new plan to keep everything secret like a ninja. Too many ideas are taken from me. I wouldn’t even know where to start with that one. My hustle is just too crazy. I’m trying to take over the world.

...

MTV Reality World: What’s in the future for you guys?

Heidi: I’m never letting this one go!

Spencer: The bottom line about me wanting to move in with her is that I haven’t left this girl’s side since I met her. I’m obsessed with her. Everyone says* I can’t get into the clubs anymore, but the truth is I don’t go to clubs anymore because I like to cuddle up in bed with my girlfriend with some DVDs.

Heidi: I wouldn’t want to go to clubs anymore. I have so much more fun watching DVDs with Spencer and cuddling.

MTV Reality World: I understand you have some blogs coming out. What can we look forward to seeing there?

Spencer: Well, I want to start to have our side of the story come out. I want to get a blog so people can know what’s going on with Spencer on the daily. Lauren narrates The Hills. Spencer is going to narrate his blog. Imagine if Spencer narrated The Hills… It’s how you skew it. If I’m the narrator, wait to see how much people love Spencer.

*by everyone, clearly he means my friend Rachel...

And, scene. Cannot wait for Spencer's blog.

More and more I think to myself that Paul Rudd and I should be friends.



From BestWeekEver

Things They Should Invent

Ok, so perhaps not all of this website is genius, but parts of it are, namely:

GCat
Ice-9 (sad, good tribute)
Jordan Catalano Flavored Gum

Perhaps even more than that, the tags on the site alone read like some weird post-modern poetry:

this is all about

• 13 pumpkin avenue (1)
• 420 (2)
• axis of teavil (1)
• babies (1)
• backup plans (1)
• bad apples (1)
• bad cats (1)
• beauty (1)
• being yourself (1)
• birthday cake (1)
• black to the future (1)
• blogpsot (1)
• boom for breakfast (1)
• boxing (1)
• breakfast or brunch (1)
• bus map (1)
• butts (1)

Don't you agree?

All here, thanks to someone I don't remember.

A few awesome animal videos for your enjoyment. This first one is a classic claymation by the guys who did Wallace and Gromit and I used to love it! I love the koala's glasses and the lion (who wouldn't?).



Then there's this one, which I sort of object to on principle since it's a video of someone's hamster and I think people are weird who are obsessed with their hamsters (see: at least 50% of cuteoverload.com's audience). Even weirder are people who make videos of their hamsters. But gosh darn it this hamster is cute! And even cuter are its feet when it waves them around. It's truly worth watching.



And, finally... If you thought otters were cute before...



Thanks for the last video to Ravi, and for the hamster video to one of the Google chatlists.

You say a lecture isn't romantic? I say but of course it is

Ha! Got this one thanks to Pablo, my most intellectual of friends, or at least, my friend with the most incomprehensible academic vocabulary.

"Let's face it, there really is nothing more sensual than caressing someone's mind," said Paul Holdengräber, who launched the library's live lecture series that is now a staple of New York's "intellidating" scene.

Amen. (Hey, another trend piece!)

Kurt is up in heaven now.

I am really going to miss him.

I haven't read anything he's written since Timequake, but the fact that he's not out there anymore, this great, little figure with a sharp wit and a kind heart, makes me really sad.

Luckily he himself came up with ample ways to mourn his death, or at least quotes to employ. Besides "So it goes," there's "unstuck in time," and there's my personal favorite:

I spoke at a Humanist Association memorial service for Dr. Asimov a few years back. I said, “Isaac is up in Heaven now.” That was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. . . . When I myself am dead, God forbid, I hope some wag will say about me, “He’s up in Heaven now.”

And then there's the thing I think a little bit about what he must have been thinking recently, not just about himself but sort of about everything:

Here was what Kilgore Trout cried out to me in my father's voice: "Make me young, make me young, make me young!"

I could go on, but I can't... There are so many things he has written that I would like to repeat here because they are so good (in the moral sense as well as the quality sense), but I think it's better, more fitting, to leave that to him.

Gah. I wish I could say something better. I'll leave you with some quotes.

No, wait:

"Why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. Why don't you take a flying fuck at the moooooooooon!"

(It's not all sadly sentimental.)