Cute (nerd) boys alert!

My nerd boyfriend introduced me to the blog nerdboyfriend.com. One can peruse photos of cute boy celebrities wearing looks from all different eras and then follow the links to the contemporary clothes and accessories that would let you recreate their looks. I like Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill hanging out at what looks to be their grandmom's house. 

Pardon me, but could you happen to tell me how to get to Scarborough Fair?

Don't all these monsters look like they're asking for directions? My friend Dylan clued me in to this great artist. Very Edward Gorey in the fine ink detailing (and creepy/comic subject matter).

BORN IN DENMARK 1978. I WRITE AND DIRECT TELEVISION SHOWS FOR KIDS. I HAVE A SET OF TWINS AND NOT MUCH TIME FOR ANYTHING. BUT WHEN I HAVE TIME I DRAW MONSTERDRAWINGS ON POST-IT NOTES...IT IS A LITTLE WINDOW INTO A DIFFERENT WORLD, MADE ON OFFICE SUPPLIES.

(from the amazing mind/imagination/blog of John Kenn )

Delightful Voluptuousness

Looove this cookbook! Sophie Dahl is just adorable first of all. She was beautiful when she was big and voluptuous and she's beautiful skinny (and uh, still voluptuous).

Does she still model? I'm not sure, but I think she's found a new calling. Here's a soup that's cooking on my stove right now. The cookbook has great recipes and, as a bonus, some great storytelling by Miss Dahl (yep, she's also a writer taking after her grandpa, Roald Dahl).
Spinach barley soup
Recipe by Sophie Dahl from Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights
Serves 4-6
-3 tablespoons of olive oil
-1 onion, chopped
-2 large fresh sage leaves, chopped
-6 1/2 cups of vegetable stock
-6 cups of spinach, washed and chopped
-3/4 cup of pearl barley
-Salt and pepper
-1/2 cup of grated Parmesan

Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed pan, put in the onion and sage leaves and cook n a low heat for about 5 minutes. While that's cooking, heat the stock in another pan. Stir the spinach into the onion mixture and cook for another few minutes. Pour in the hot stock and cook, covered, on a low heat for 10 minutes. Add the barley and leave it cooking for another half an hour or until the barley is soft. Season to taste. When it is ready, ladle into bowls and sprinkle the Parmesan on top.

Vertical Swiping

I want him to wrap me up in that moustache. The end.

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

I was sort of mixed on the film The Brothers Bloom, but I really loved Rinko Kikuchi's stylish and quirky character, Bang Bang. 

Bang Bang is a demolition expert and all-around cool girl. She even looks good in goggles.

A little trivia for you--in the movie, Rinko speaks only three words (aside from when she

sings in Japanese at the end). But this was not the first non-speaking role for Rinko. 

Previously, she played a heartbreaking deaf-mute teenage girl in the film Babel. And for her performance, she became the first Japanese actress to be nominated for an Oscar in 50 years!

Confessions of an American Blog Writer/Reader

Looks like I've found more fodder for my voyeuristic tendencies at

http://www.dailyroutines.typepad.com/

You too can experience the quotidian quirks of your favorite writers and artists! Maybe you will find a kindred spirit who shares in your neuroses.

Mr Campbell, for one, (see below) sounds like a man after my own heart. I generally admit this to only a chosen few, but when I have alone time on the weekends I like to divide my day into a series of "units" (as Will refers to in About A Boy). Fifteen minutes of reading, 15 minutes of yoga, 15 minutes of movie trailers, whatever. It's totally neurotic and totally pleasant to me because it makes the day feel stretched out so long!

Joseph Campbell

So during the years of the Depression I had arranged a schedule for myself. When you don’t have a job or anyone to tell you what to do, you’ve got to fix one for yourself. I divided the day into four four-hour periods, of which I would be reading in three of the four-hour periods, and free one of them.

By getting up at eight o’clock in the morning, by nine I could sit down to read. That meant I used the first hour to prepare my own breakfast and take care of the house and put things together in whatever shack I happened to be living in at the time. Then three hours of that first four-hour period went to reading.

Then came an hour break for lunch and another three-hour unit. And then comes the optional next section. It should normally be three hours of reading and then an hour out for dinner and then three hours free and an hour getting to bed so I’m in bed by twelve.

On the other hand, if I were invited out for cocktails or something like that, then I would put the work hour in the evening and the play hour in the afternoon.
It worked very well. I would get nine hours of sheer reading done a day. And this went on for five years straight.

The Brides Have Hit Glass

Title of this blog entry is the title of a GBV song and I can't help but think Bob Pollard had Marcel Duchamp's piece "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors" in mind when he wrote it. I dunno, maybe I'm wrong about that. But who knows? Bob might surprise you sometimes. 

Speaking of Duchamp, if you ever want to read a great autobiography, pick up Duchamp: A Biography by Calvin Tomkins. It is a really, really interesting recounting of his life and the modern art movement.

Ten decisions shape your life, you'll be aware of five about...

Is there anyone cuter than Elle Fanning? I'm pretty excited for Sofia Coppola's Somewhere starring Elle and Stephen Dorff (yes, Stephen the Dorff, Dorff) who plays Elle's sad-eyed, sleazy and breezy moviestar dad. Elle's character is reunited with her dad after her mom deposits her on his doorstep and they proceed to spend some time doing what looks like some awfully adorable father-daughter bonding.

I think she's such a great foil to Stephen Dorff. She exudes this fresh-faced innocent optimism and he just looks so haggard and beaten by Hollywood, but also sort of kind and wiser.

Sofia sure has a knack for discovering the nubile, lithe, porcelein beauties. Dear lord, is Elle missing a tooth in one of these photos? Could she be that young? She'd definitely be the cause of Humbert Humbert's undoing.

Mamika the Great!

This is pretty awesome.

My friend recently posted about an artist whom, after hearing his 91-year-old grandma was feeling depressed, decided to create for her a superhero alter-ego by posing her costumed in a series of spectacular photo portraits. The artist is Sacha Goldberger and his grandmother Frederika was a superhero in her own right who hid 10 Jewish friends from the Nazis during the war.

Frederika's alter-ego is named Mamika, but it sounds to me like she's not so much an "alter"ego, but the distilled essence of a brave, cool woman. Apparently, her grandson's plan worked because he said she's not shown signs of depression since the four years the project has been running. She even has her own myspace page http://www.myspace.com/frederikagoldberger!

Tossed salad and scrambled eggs? None for me, thanks.

My stomach is behaving badly. Wretchedly in fact. I've been holed up on the couch watching Parks and Recreation, which is quite funny and addictive, on my new ROKU player, which is serious and addictive. I should say, seriously addictive.

But, I needed a break so I started perusing the fashion photos I had saved to my desktop. Nothing like a nice cup of ginger tea and some lovely looks captured by The Sartorialist. These particular ladies have me drooling over their slouchy style and killer bags.

On an unrelated note, huddled on my couch I hear the frenzied yipping of my neighbor's three Westie Terriers. They are named...wait for it...Niles, Daphne and Frazier. On her door, it says her last name (forget what it is off the top of my head) and "Crane residence". It's as if the dogs were born with the last name Crane to begin with, so she couldn't very well name them anything else. Except they weren't, and she could have. Hm...

Why hello again!

If Gabe were a dog, I think he'd look like this little fellow. He is my dream dog (perhaps because he too has a little beard). 

So, hello! I'm going to try and start blogging again now that there's a chill in the air (more opportunities for mind wanderings while hibernating). Speaking of mind wanderings, I've been reading Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, the ultimate documentation of a wandering mind! (That guy sure did love his momma, huh?)