JK Rowling speaks

SPOILERS. Don't read this if you haven't finished Harry Potter 7.

But otherwise, do. And then we can discuss at length.

It begins?

The revelation at the end of Half-Blood Prince [very vague spoiler!] about the multiple remaining horcruxes struck me as the kind of thing most fantasy writers would use as the basis for a whole new offshoot of books, Robert Jordan style. I mean, it took J.R.R. Tolkien three whole books just to cover the destruction of one powerful magical item, and Rowling plans to locate and dispense with four of them, plus Voldemort himself, in just one volume?

Couldn't agree more.

But that's mostly just because I WANT an offshoot, on some deep level.

Dammit.

11 hours to go.

Pitchfork roundup (possibly part 1 of 2)

Pitchfork was pretty much amazing. It wasn't exactly that we listened to the music that much and there were definitely some kinks that could have been worked out on that front (putting people like Girl Talk and the Klaxons on the stage crammed between the tennis courts and the street was not so much a great idea) but it was all around a ridiculous good time. We documented well via Twitter but it is arguably completely incomprehensible to anyone who was not Orges, Cristina, Dan or me this weekend, so I figured I'd do a little documentation blogstyle. Trust me, I'm not including everything. We are inappropriate.

Cristina is excited about something, possibly just her outfit. We needed to blend in with the hipsters, so she wore formal shorts, layered tanks, and a vest, plus the bangles (on Day 1). I wore a tube top with a lacey shirt worn as a jacket and formal shorts as well. I think Cristina wins the hipster competition.

Orges wore a Miller shirt with a bass on the front (why? Not sure) and he latched on to this hat that Cristina had bought which was very much a girl's hat.

The headliner on Day 1 was Yoko Ono. She was crazy and awesome at the same time. What a throwback. The whole first 10 minutes of her show was dedicated to this art film project crazy thing she made showing people how to say "I love you" to the world and the universe (not kidding) with a flashlight. I recommend. The above picture shows how we reacted to Yoko. Also we reacted by finding flashlights (which had been handed out to people sometime during the day) on the ground and flashing them at each other for the rest of the weekend, plus by telling people "1, 2, 3" or "i. ii. iii." which means, you guessed it, "I love you." Oh Yoko.

The view from Orges' window, if you strategically take a picture without the giant building in it.

My artsy photo of the weekend, this was taken where we had brunch with Dan's parents on Sunday. I love the china. It is inspiring me to build a collection of dishes purely from thrift stores. Ooh, project!


I'm a little in love with the El. So cool looking. And so functional!


Again. I feel like I'm in another era.


Back to reality, or at least, our "weekend of hedonism and play and irresponsibility" brand of reality (which, as I was saying to Dan yesterday, is both a reality check and the complete opposite of one - it's totally not how I live my daily life, but it's a reminder that it could be, and that this is what you should strive for) - Dan and Cristina pose in their Day 2 outfits alterna-prom style, and Orges takes a sideways picture, which I love because of the way the El looks in the background.


Waiting for our train. I like the rusting paint under this awning.


A study in patterns - lots of stripes and shadows and ripplings of light. I love that I took this picture.


This guy's outfit was so awesome to me that I took a covert picture of him on the train. I love how he managed to perfectly match his shirt with his jacket. And make it look actually cool, somehow. This weekend was sartorially inspiring really.


The license plate was from Kentucky. I think they roadtripped.

There were about 5 sunsets on Sunday because the clouds kept covering the sun. This was one of them, during Of Montreal. And those are Dan's glasses.

Of Montreal. I think. And the banners and the lighting. I love this picture. It was right around this time that Dan & I got on one of our rhapsodic "Our lives are too awesome, our apartment is going to be too awesome, gardening hey" things and our Twitters started to make no sense.

Here we are, waiting for the Klaxons to go on.

Final tally...
Bands we actually watched: Yoko, Clipse, Mastodon (Orges' idea, clearly), a few songs from New Pornographers, the Cool Kids, Of Montreal, Jamie Lidell (omg), Junior Boys (pretty damn good live actually), De La Soul, and like 3 songs of the Klaxons.

Bands we heard from a distance: Cat Power (a bit), Grizzly Bear, Voxtrot (better on CD I think), Battles, Iron & Wine (barely heard him though)

Bands we attempted to hear but failed to hear because of the crappy Balance Stage or whatever it was called: Fujiya & Miyagi, Klaxons, Girl Talk

Food and drink consumed: lots of cheap ($4!!!!) Goose Island IPA, delicious pulled pork sangwiches with coleslaw (inspiring all of us to learn how to make pulled pork sandwiches), vegan ice cream, fried cheese curds (only one, Orges and Cristina finished them before they could get to me and Dan), my first authentic (or semi-authentic) sweet tea, a slice of apple pie from the farmer's market that Cristina brought from Ann Arbor, disgusting pizza, and something that I didn't eat but the others did called cevapcici or something like that... etc. I said hedonism, didn't I?

Twitter messages: Oh, thousands. (Maybe not, but I felt like quoting Bridget Jones when she's keeping track of "alcohol units.")

For you to check out, since for me Jamie Lidell was my "discovery" of the weekend:

He looks all soulful and normal here, but he's actually crazy. He wore a crazy hat made of streamers and half the time his soul singing is layered over crazy beats and stuff. I am minorly obsessed.

Score!

Dear Emily,

Thank you for your order with Keplers.com. Your “Gringott’s Bank Promissory Note”, good for admittance to Kepler’s legendary Midnight Magic and Wizardry party the night of July 20th will be held at Register One under your last name as indicated on your order. You may pick it up at any time during regular business hours.

Please note that you will need your “Gringott’s Bank Promissory Note” to exchange for one copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows after midnight July 20th, or any day thereafter.

The party starts at 9pm and we look forward to seeing you there.

I love the Internet because it enables things like PostSecret, Passive-Aggressive Notes, and the latest, Deleted Images. Another brilliant, collaborative/user-generated, this time artsy website. Made up of the photos that you would normally delete off your digital camera, just because they're blurry or bad or whatever. (Pretty much every photo taken during my little sister's 21st birthday extravaganza falls into this category.) But put together they end up being kind of beautiful and quieting.

I also have to add, since I'm on the subject of beautiful and quieting, that if you do not read 3191 you are a bad person. It's absolutely gorgeous, looking at it is like doing a one minute meditation. It's a reason to get a feed reader. This one is my favorite recently, although this one the other day was pretty amazing as well.

(Deleted Images via Notcot.org)

The Office.

I might die.

It's just... I can't express. I really, really cannot express how I feel right now about that finale. It was honestly, just, too perfect. I spent the last three minutes of the show STARING at my computer (oh btw, I watched half of it last night when I got home from pub night, and then I bought it on iTunes because I had to see it and there was no other way to see it before Sunday, and I watched the last 20 minutes at work. Don't tell anyone).

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I feel the way you feel before a first date.

I am doomed. I just added the RSS feed of recent updates/reviews from my friends on goodreads.com to my Google Reader. Which is already excessive. And the fact that Casey manages to review like 438492 books a day, with COMMENTS, and GOOD MEMORIES of them, does not help this situation. Not to mention every time I sign in there I feel panicked about all the great books I will never have time to read. How do you do it, Case?

I will say, for the record though, that Mom is a good reads stud. She writes good comments. I feel very related to her on there. (I mean, obviously I am, but sometimes it's magnified a bit more.) The fact that it's her and me and Casey on there going nutso for online book reviews-in-brief makes so much sense it kills me.

Also, I bought five more books yesterday with a gift certificate I had left from my birthday last fall. I don't know why I felt compelled to use it all now. I have like 80 books to read as it is. The scary thing is, most of those are sitting in my room right now. I don't have enough space for anything and I'm starting to develop stacks. Ack! English major nerd!

What I've been up to...

I've been busy! What follows is a brief photo essay of my last few weeks:

Zeitgeist!








Berkeley for Brunch, Playgrounds, and Wiffle Ball with Kevin









Wine with Amelia, Renee, and Laurel for Amelia's birthday







San Francisco with the Google admins to bike across the Golden Gate Bridge









Dolores Park for barbecuing on Saturday



I love spring.

P.S.

The Office season finale is next week. This week, I guess. I might die.

Watch this NBC "preview" to catch up and prepare. Oh Jim, do the right thing! I don't even want to start making predictions, but I have a feeling it just might blow my mind.

I really admire the determination that this girl has... She is reading all 160 or so Babysitters' Club books over again. (Or some for the first time I imagine.) On one hand I'm like... you've been doing this since 2005! You have read nothing else for two and a half years! On the other hand, I'm like... you are AWESOME and I want to be friends with you. The excerpts she pulls out describing the "cool" outfits that Stacy and Claudia wear are pretty much to die for:

• Stacey dresses up to pick Laine up at the airport train station [Oops. Thanks for the correction...I think I've been in the Midwest too long]: "a purple shirtwaist top over flowered leggings, my cowboy boots...a purple hair ornament made from shoelaces, and long dangly silver earrings." [Sounds like the outfit on the cover of Mary Anne's Makeover. Wild!]


• But Laine out-fashions her: "She was hard to miss, considering she was wearing a jean coat with a fur collar (I sincerely hoped the fur was fake), black capri pants edged with lace, very chic black ankle boots, and on her head, a brilliant red oversized beret." [There are a lot of outfits in this book! Fuckin' sweet!]

One of the most tragic days of recent memory was when I went to the library to reread some old BSC books and found that they were gone. I'm sure Patty, the children's librarian at the Whittwood Branch Library, couldn't wait until that series was finished and she could sneak them out into the dumpster, but I really, really wanted to re-read book #4 where Mary Anne ends up babysitting the girl who gets a crazy fever, and she has to be independent and grow into herself.

(Side note: I feel about Mary Anne cutting her hair in later books the way the rest of America felt about Felicity. It just wasn't the same anymore for me once she had that awful bowl cut look.)

(Second side note: I actually REMEMBERED accurately without checking Amazon that my favorite book was #4. I shit you not.)

The Baby-sitters Club was truly awful. Each book started with a full on chapter describing each character in massive detail in the worst tell-not-show way. But it has such a firm place in every woman's memory if they are under the age of like 28. (See also: The Baby-sitters' Little Sister, Sweet Valley Twins - NOT High, that was for sluts - and Sweet Valley Kids.) When I was in the Columbia Publishing Course we met Ann M. Martin's editor and as soon as we found out she was responsible for the series, we pounced on her and all told her who was our favorite and how we remembered X and Y about the books. My clearest memory is when Janine, Claudia's bossy smart older sister, comes up to their room and critiques their spelling/punctuation of Baby-sitters. She debates whether or not they need an apostrophe at the end of "Baby-sitters." At another point she criticizes someone for saying "Hopefully" instead of "It is to be hoped." These are, swear to God, my clearest memories of the books apart from Book #4 and vague memories of a haunted house involving Dawn (the hippie blonde California vegetarian girl) and the one where Mary Anne gets a boyfriend (Logan, he was a hottie).

I think I've got a problem. I really, really want to re-read or at least buy some of these books. For posterity, you know?

Apollonius!!

This is excellent. My daemon is a fox. Named Apollonius.

Take the test!

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!

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...

3191

On the subject of breakfast, this is a really cool photo blog that these two women, Stephanie and Mav, share. Every day (mostly) there is a juxtaposition of two photos of their mornings. It makes me want to wake up early, read, do some morning blogging, etc. Possibly with a side of avocado toast. Really soothing, lovely, thoughtful and quieting.

Mmm

I have been obsessed with this picture of breakfast for several weeks now since I saw it on simply photo. Never would I have thought of this unlikely pairing - crusty brown bread, avocado, laughing cow? But seriously, I've been obsessed. Yesterday my obsession took hold and after work I stopped at Piazza's, this ridiculously overpriced grocery store that is also the only grocery store directly on my way home, where I paid $2.99 for a single avocado and grabbed some of that laughing cow cheese, and then today after work, despite dinner plans in an hour, I toasted me some Acme Whole Wheat Walnut bread and spread it with some cheese and realllly creamy perfect avocado and am eating it and damned if it doesn't taste as good at it looks - in fact, it might even taste better. Seriously, I recommend that you do whatever necessary to eat this meal asap, and tomorrow I really am going to add the Earl Gray and hard-boiled egg to the mix. Deliciousness.