Family big pimpin'

Bean is a guest-blogger today on a cute kids' craft blog. She and the kids made a fabulous organizer out of recyclables, thereby rendering unnecessary some similar thing from Wal-Mart made by Chinese children.

Plus, I gave Buddy those Sharpies, so I'm totally a part of it in spirit, if rarely a part of such things in body. Sigh.

Hillary wears white ankle pants in Puerto Rico, loses the vote of the gays

This bounty hunter is my kind of scum

I stumbled on Return of the Jedi on Spike tonight. I haven't seen it in ages, and not since getting addicted to Battlestar, at any rate, and in general it's as delightful as I remembered, in that terrible corny way that seems to be Lucas's trademark. I don't actually think it's faulty on its own, it's just . . . there's not a lot of . . . nuance, is there?

Take the Emperor and Lord Vader, for example: they are all business, all the time, and speak in tyrannical absolutes. Always. Like how in each of the three earlier movies, they have some underling with an indeterminate British or Continental accent who can't complete some mission on time. You know, even if you haven't seen it 100 times, that they are going to end up choked or whatever magic Vader can do that drops you dead right there in the control room and the next dude in line just whisks your body away. And it's because Vader says something like, "The emperor is very disappointed in your progress. You have to go faster." And the underling is like, "But Lord Vader, we are working at full capacity." And, splat. Next!

And how did a big giant blob worm, basically, with no legs and useless shorty arms become someone who people, er, droids, things with tentacles for hair, and a room full of muppets call "Your worship?" It makes no sense. At least Vader and the Emperor have the force. And they can walk. Jabba actually drools and gets some kind of green slime on you if he touches you.

And seriously, is anything worse than when Leia releases Han (or Han like pan, says Lando from the Canada planet) Solo from the carbon whatever, and he says, "Who's there?" and she says, "Someone who loves you." These are the subtleties of the script.

And my absolute favorite thing is how when the Death Star is three-fourths finished, there are still all these little tiny holes in it, like someone was working on a section and got distracted. I guess you can't expect too much fine finishing work from storm troopers. I guess it's refreshing that all construction projects have trouble with the last 10%. And finally, nothing in the world is cornier than the oversize Vader hats that some random flunkies wear on the Death Star. They're like the mullet version.

Which is not to say that I can't appreciate the whole lot of it by its own standard of goodness. It's the same way I can appreciate the new Indiana Jones movie with the exception of the very end, which makes absolutely no sense, even in terms of itself. But the corny car switching, the killer ants, all of it can be pretty delightful if you can give in. There's a lot to love.

And I'll say this: if we lived in a world (or galaxy, I guess) with as many different terrifying, slobbering, monster enemies as these guys have to deal with - yikes. And PS I always freak out a little when Yoda disappears and his blanket falls all slow.

Don't forget the droid!

(PS Leia, aren't you kind of grossed out by that one time you kissed your brother on the lips to make Han jealous?)

Sister Cinnamon

That is what some cute children call my friend DanaLee, who hates cinnamon to a degree that it makes me think she should maybe be tested for something. Girl can taste and smell it in things like french toast, where there might be 1/4 teaspoon or something. My other friend Dr. Street, who is at least 9 times smarter than me, no exaggeration, currently doing super-important research about . . . cells . . . and possibly things related to exercise in cells . . . at a little community college called Harvard University, says that DL is what we call a supertaster. There is apparently a thing where for $4.95 you could know if you are afflicted similarly. Seems like you might already know, unless you are a white American child living in Bunn Level, NC and you are a supertaster for star anise. In which case, drop that $4.95.

I was blogstalking earlier and this girl mentioned she was currently eating chocolate-covered cinnamon bears, which are found in the acreage of the bulk food aisle at Macey's (not the department store) and at the BYU Bookstore, and not, I am sorry to say, at Food Lion. Or the Teeter. If bulk candy is sold at either of those stores, I would be hard-pressed to tell you where it is. And now I really want one. Or twenty, even though it's that horrible/fabulous super cheap chocolate that's 1% cacao, 92% sugar, and 7% wax.

I'd settle for a regular cinnamon bear, extra-hot like my mama taught me. She happens to be a cinnamon bear expert. She is quite choosy; no lightweight cinnamon flavor for her. She could probably tell you what brands are the best - in fact, I think she has told us before, because we used to give her packages or bulk foods bags full of them. She bites their heads off and chews a minute like a sommelier and can tell you if the cinnamon-to-heaven-knows-what-else ratio is worth her time. I do know the 59 cents for 1, $1 for 2 bags at the gas station aren't even worth the buck, and I think she is wary of the cinnamon lips at Valentine's. In North Carolina, the gas station might be your only option. It's a sad world. We're probably all going to get Alzheimer's from the Red 40, but it might be worth it.

Bob Ewell fell on his knife

I don't do a lot of walking around the ranch, it must be said - I'm trying to remedy that, kind of, except now it's going to be summer and hot and ticks . . . nonetheless, tonight I had this problem of car key being in barn and car being here and I needed to be at the other side of the compound, so I walked. It's not far or difficult in any way, except that later, it was going to be night and I'm not going to lie that while I am scared of ticks in the day, freaky animal noises echoing over the river in the dark are a strong deterrent.

But instead of being scaredy-cat girl, I instead imagined I was Scout taking "[my] longest journey together" with Jem through the patch of woods behind the schoolyard, past the Radley place. You know what happens next - Bob Ewell's knife rakes along the chicken wire in her ham costume and Jem's arm gets broken and it's all in pitch-black night with no moon even. Tonight the moon was somewhere else, and though there was a bit of ambient light from the barn, it was pretty dark and coyotes and dogs were barking somewhere, and the cats were doing their darnedest to scare me half to death by jumping out of bushes directly in my path, but I made it all the way to the gravel path through the woods to the gatehouse before turning on the flashlight. Because: spiders. But more than spiders: walking face-first into their webs strung between trees.

I love the whole novel, especially Miss Maudie and "His food doesn't stick going down, does it?" but that scene, too, because it's wonderfully visceral. I've read it at least 30 times and I still try to map it out in my head: how far is it from the school? They can see when the janitor turns off the lights, but in the blackness, they were the brightest thing, so they could have been far in the distance, and at what angle, exactly, does Boo Radley's house face the Finches, and how much woods are we talking here? Scout is barefoot, which adds an important layer - cold earth and stumbling over tree roots. And mostly, I love that the scene ends with Heck Tate, who is, after many readings, right up there with Miss Maudie in terms of my deepest love and affection. I am always glad he is the endcap to that night's story - if he had been waiting up here in my apartment tonight, I daresay I might have walked through the woods without the flashlight.

You get mistaken for strangers by your own friends

That right there is Mr. Delicious Baritone Matt Berninger of The National, my favorite band of the moment. I can't stop listening to their most recent disc, "Boxer." They are one of those indie bands whose later discs I love much more than the first ones. It might be because the sound is more muddy and reverb-y than their previous songs, but the main reason is this: The National really knows how to write a bridge. For me, songs live and die by the bridge, and the songs distinguish themselves from each other and all possess a very intoxicating bridge. They have great melodic sensibility, effortless harmony, and perfectly obscure and sometimes kind of poetic lyrics. It doesn't hurt that there's almost always a running beat, which is kind of like my crack.

Being addicted to AI this year has forced me to sit through some of the most boring and annoying songs ever written (uh, QUEEN) and I was thinking about how many songs in the world I really do not love. Donnie & I were driving to and from Sanford today listening to the XM station I think called Hiltlist or something like that, which plays songs, like I told Donnie, that I would always skip if I owned the disc. I'm not going to say they're bad songs, per se, but not aesthetically pleasing to my ear. You know the type: "Bad to the Bone," "Maneater," "Jesse's Girl," anything by Billy Idol (except the freaky and nonsensical and awesome "Eyes Without a Face"). It's happy radio hits, basically, and I'm not some goth who hates happy, but give me minor and melancholy at least some of the time. I definitely wouldn't choose "Glory Days" when there's "I'm On Fire" available, I'm saying. And p.s. Donnie has this crazy secret talent of knowing every word to most of the Hitlist songs. I don't know if there's an XM station out there where I could compete. Maybe if there was a Mormon Hymns one. I do know most of them.

She grubbed this earth with her own hands*

(image from AT; where else?)

When I moved to North Carolina almost 8 years ago (!), I had to leave behind a passel of plants Steph and I had cultivated in our Wellington II apartment. I wanted to bring them all, but settled on two ivies that I had gotten as cuttings from Grandma T, the greenest of the green thumbs. There was a teeny heart ivy, which was precious and grew like one inch a decade, and the one pictured above - Grandma T called it oak ivy, though that might not be its real name. I saw that photo on AT today and it took my breath away for a minute. 

I'm sad to say that though the oak ivy made the cross-country four-day drive swimmingly in my '96 Honda Accord, it didn't survive the significant lack of light of my second apartment in Chapel Hill. I loved the place, despite that it was hot as blazes and had exactly one ooooold Sears air conditioner, oddly-placed much too far away from the bedroom. And the bedroom ceiling fan had a squeak, so I slept in a super inferno.  (And my neighbors were self-described vampires, like, blood around the neck and a black Mazda Miata with a VAMPYRE vanity plate. One night they said, "Did you hear anything last night?" And they grinned a little creepy.  I said no.  Um, thank goodness.)

But all my plants died there, which was devastating.  My official policy now is to not get attached to plants, and make sure to only purchase them at Ikea or Lowe's, so as to not imbue them with any sentimental value.  So that photo made me feel sad and miss Grandma T for a few minutes.  Her plants thrived, even the ones in the basement.  My plants, then and now, just . . . live.  And not always that.  They don't tend to actually grow leaves, and I am known for inciting root rot.  I wish Gram T. could send some posthumous plant care my direction.  Heaven knows I could use it.

* William Carlos Williams, "Dedication for a Plot of Ground"

Round bales, Crawford Dairy Road, sunset

America is broken

If you don't know why by looking at this photo, you are dead to me.

Dancing on the Ceiling

Hee hee. What are the chances Lionel thought of the joke himself and it wasn't Rachel Zoe's doing?

Help us all, this woman is in charge of fashion

"We've all got to wear something, I suppose."

But what about the gnome side table?

This is old news, but I remembered it again this week when I was trying to figure out why there are so many ugly designer shoes. Phillippe Starck, designer, made this pronouncement to the German weekly newspaper Die Ziet: "Everything I have created is absolutely unnecessary." The interviewer, it would appear, expected to hear what famous people most often have to say about what they produce, something along the lines of false modesty and pseudo-pontificating. It is never very honest, and Starck here gives a pretty good idea of how to at least be frank about a current crisis, rather than publicly dissecting it prettily to Vanity Fair a few years after it's passed.

If we can trust this translation, the interviewer starts out with a "clever" desert-island type question (I'm paraphrasing): What do humans really need?

Starck: Nothing. Love. Ethics. Maybe a pillow.

The interviewer: You can't be serious.

Starck: Oh, but I am. "Design, structurally seen, is absolutely void of usefulness." My career was in vain.

I don't exactly know how to take this, um, kind of dramatic analysis. His career has been a combination of designing interiors for high-end clients (the president of France, swanky hotels) and for Target shoppers. From a "Design for All" perspective (thank you, Target . . . I think) that is exactly the right kind of career. If you are in the business of producing goods that you are presumably proud of offering to the world, that have some kind of new, innovative, or aesthetically pleasing aspect, then it is reasonable to me to expect that some objects will be designed for design's sake (for art's sake, you might argue) and some will be designed for people to use or enjoy.

Given the option of two toothbrush holders mass-produced in China both being offered at The Container Store, say, I would choose one with Starck's modern aesthetic vs. one with gold-embossed roses. That would not be true for my friend Mary, and if Starck became a designer to put clean, modern objects into the world, then I thank him for giving me another option.

I will leave true analysis of art's place in the universe to the experts, but my other response to Starck's crisis is that it's kind of insulting to people who have appreciated his work. There is a strong argument to be made for his contributions to design for art's sake by the addition of aesthetically appealing things into the world, even if they feel, suddenly to him, pointless. To me, the aesthetic of designed objects is subjective in the way that abstract art has the reputation of being (to use Starck's phrase) absolutely devoid of usefulness. Does that devalue its very existence?

A few years ago NPR replayed an old interview in which Barnett Newman explained what he wanted people to feel through his abstract canvases. This one is called "Yellow Painting," and certainly many people have questioned its justification as art, which gives it not only monetary value but cachet such that it hangs in The National Gallery. Newman said this: "I hope that my paintings give someone who looks at it a sense of place, so he sees and feels himself; the feeling is that you're here and out there is chaos, so that what you have is a sense of yourself. The feeling is instantaneous, complete, and you can't ever wipe it out of your mind. If I succeed in doing that I feel that I have moved in relation to the true feeling of what it is to be alive."

For me, that is among the best explanatory reason for any art to have existence: to be appreciated by people of varying tastes and experiences. The personal sense of self Newman wishes for us may be achieved through sitting in Starck's Ghost Chair (below) or by staring at the original "Yellow Painting."

Putting aside the million dilemmas, economic and ethical, about the actual, physical production of mass-produced goods, wouldn't one of those experiences justify the existence of those objects, at least from a purely aesthetic standpoint? I think I would argue that they do.