Jen Bervin - Nets. Ugly Duckling Presse

Love the book. (Picked up a copy this weekend at the doo in the Can Factory.) Love the presse. Jen Bervin and her poetry art artists' books. Ugly Duckling Presse.

Statistics show how NYers cope with the recession

Crain's article, Statistics show how NYers cope with the recession, which includes factoidal background such as:

• New York workers are the most productive in the nation by a wide margin: 37% more productive than the average American worker, as measured by dollars produced in 2007...
  
  
• New Yorkers are judged to be the third most neurotic people in the nation...

...go together like horse and carriage. Who's ahead of us? I'll moidelize them!

performing one's civic duty...

jonny pea's pal Lee S. writes 'bout his jury duty adventures
in Superior Court, Oak-town, Ca.

good on ye, Lee, better thee than we...

I Saw Her Standing There - Natasha Romanova

Yowza. Just keeping Roger & Dave top of mind. I Saw Her Standing There. You know what I mean.

Is everybody happy?

Pew Research Center, Growing Old in America: Expectations vs. Reality. Lot's of good stuff.

Here is Where

Here is Where, Andrew Carroll, and today's NYT article about the same.

HERE IS WHERE is an all-volunteer initiative created by the Legacy Project to find and spotlight little known and unmarked historic sites throughout the United States.

I'd really love a personal Here is Where, but there's no one who can create it except me, and that's not happening, apparently. Most recently I've been wondering exactly where the Here is Where was that I stood with my Mom on the Grand Concourse while J.F. Kennedy's motorcade rolled by. My Mom has always said he waved to her personally.

goshdarnitall, who'd a'thunk it?

the staying power of Don't Stop Believing,
courtesy L.A. Times online.

btw, s'too late for ju ju,
he stopped believing on December 8, 1980...

we don' need no steenkin' kindle...
thanks to wily ol' fox Gordon C.

BBC: Giving up my iPod for a Walkman

Via almost everywhere. Article.

H Roselli Littlecook, pure love

Big ups to the good folks at einmaleins in Oly, WA, for carrying H Roselli knives on consignment I've seen the Littlecook the last couple of trips out west and kept wanting to wait to see if the got the bigboy in the shop, but on our trip out last week I just couldn't wait any longer and pulled the trigger. I love it. My bestest most favorite current knife in the kitchen. Yesterday it did a lovely job on the roast veg in Lota's pasta salad for the block party pot luck, and today it cut those shark fillets from Blue Moon like butta.

For four dollars and thirty two cents I can flush again

As I said to someone years ago when it was installed, I hate the low-flow in our downstairs WC off the kitchen: that you so often have to double-pump in order to get clear defeats the whole low-flow theory. Still, this is my private meditation chamber and I depend on it to clear my head and orient myself every morning while Lota is still in dreamland upstairs.

So when the tank started to empty all by itself shortly after each flush - leaving the system no-go unless you popped the top, jiggled float to refill the tank, and flushed quickly after it filled - I say, when this happened, I knew I needed to act quickly. In an exploratory operation on the mechanism (pop-topping, flushing, dipping, wiggling, etc.,) I decided that the flap was no longer sealing, even though I couldn't feel any rough edges or breaks. So this afternoon at Leopoldi's, for $4.32 (including tax) I bought a new one. It was red (sassy) rather than the black of the one I was replacing, and it was way supple, whereas the one I was replacing had become pretty stiff (and I imagine that's why it wasn't sealing reliably).

Voila. For $4.32, a couple of wet forearms, and a few minutes work, meditative equilibrium is returned to my life.

I know, that's sort of a big "So what?", except that I've been thinking a lot lately about money, about having it and not having it and about how you get it and how you spend it, about wasting it or using it, and the worth of things you spend it on. I've even (very, very unlike me) started a little black book tracking every penny I spend. I spend bazillions of them.

And, I can say very confidently, in this context, that today's $4.32 is the best spend I'm likely to see this month. (Current #2 was the $5 pulled pory from Lucky BBQ at the Smith Street street fair - with the Carolina style vinegar based sauce.)

waiting for the dust to settle somewhat...

before considering putting some words down regarding passing of cultural icons...

and hey, ya know what,
"hiking the Appalachian Trail" is going to mean something very different from here on out, no?

as the weekend approacheth, here's something from clusterflock (yea, again...) that might set ye thinking.

Upside: Chez Stumpy dead center. Downside: Brooklyn BIG

View Stumpy's Pizza Lust in a larger map... but if Juju makes the scene in his sister city, we'll make the tour. Zoom way out.

best pizza in NYC seems to be in Brooklyn...

and we has to ask Esteban, jess how far away from chez stumpy are dese joints...

via Village Voice online, Ten Best Pizzas.

9200 uncatalogued pathogens found at US lab

You really have to love Ewan Callaway's lead-in:

Who hasn't found a long-lost roller skate or tennis racquet after reorganising a closet or garage?

Of course, these roller skates are filled with ebola and plague. New Scientist via Homeland Security News Wire. Because it's so much fun to be scared.

hiya hiya...

summer is fully afoot now.
lovely 'round these parts presently, hope it be nice wherever ye be.

couple of things to share from the online greylady, altho' first we toot el chango tonto's horn (during a non-permalinking period) when he mentioned a bit about his dislike of a particular person by the name of rumsfeld (hie thyselves to the dm page of May '06 and seek out the 5.5 post, and now bring ye up to the present and review of recently published book on D. Rumsfeld. Oh, and don't we wish there was some authority that would bring miscreants like Rumsfeld and Cheney to task for...
nevermind, don't get ju ju started on this.
okay, now this one for those of us given to indulging our various appetites (in this case speaking of those food related lesser impulses)via The Well @NYTimes.com, How the Food Makers Captured our Brains.

ok, almos forgot, back here to pass along film recommendation from the esteemed G. Coale. the embedded vid included below discovered and supplied by Dante O. hisowndarnedself...

Uh, Clem

Juju back-channeled this link. Lots of dizzying number counters, but to my eye the graphic is what's really enlightening. Yelp! And, Why shouldn't prices keep falling toward the historic norm? Historical Home Prices at US Debt Clock.

Zeigler's Welding & Hitch Shop, Oly WA

Really, it's a reason to have your own business and building. So you can have a really fun sign out front.

Delta flight 735, 2 hours still at the gate, because...

... of a broken bathroom door. I kid you not. Really.
Sent via thingy.

It was a swell party, and thank you all

It's been just about a week since our annual new wine / puttanesca bash. By finger count maestro Guido fed 90 adults (and a gaggle of children) the world's best puttanesca, and we went through about 10 gallons of our 2006 Zin and our 2007 Sangiovese (bottled the morning of the party) and a smidgen of 2007 Barbera, older bottles from B's stash, a semi-smidge of the 2008 Cab S., and some store-bought white, all before Juju Pongo's Love Balm (lemon and sage) made the scene with another concoction or two. We had a nice tent on the grass, but the patio was exposed and when the rains came for real P saved the day with some tarps snagged from Bar Toto and rigged by guests on the roof, hanging from windows, and monkeying off the arbor (like McGyver, niece T said).

Dave R brought a piano. He kept saying, "I brought a piano," and I, being me, really assumed he had brought either a little kiddie wooden tinkly piano or maybe something to put on his lap, but, No, he schlepped a big honkin keyboard with him that came out with some guitars after the rain and into the dark.

Book arts (and Booklab) master Craig Jensen was our super duper surprise guest - coincidentally at the Brooklyn Museum that afternoon (links when I get off the plane and to a computer), direct from I'll 'old Texas. (Juju, if we didn't have your love balm, we would have missed you more than we could bear.)

We've gotten some nice notes from folks who were there. My favorite was from a musician who's work I've loved for years. He wrote Lori to say thanks, and Lori showed me the note, and all I could say was, M was at our party? Really? No one introduced me to him!

Thanks, all. Let's do it again!
Sent via thingy.

Bob Bogle has departed this vale of tears...

and yah, we know many of ye youngsters will be saying "Huh? Who be Bob Bogle when he at home, eh?". Mineowndamnedself has many fond memories of the Ventures (Mosrite guitars!), and surf music in general, and when yourstruly was a young lad, one of the first things he learned to play on his electric guitar was Walk, Don't Run.
(oh! and Miserlou by Dick Dale was another...)

big sigh.
all things must pass...

late update: one of ju ju's fave guitar ensembles,
the California Guitar Trio, performing Walk, Don't Run, & btw,
we sure JP gonna make mention of this at el chango tonto later...

recommendation for ukulele fans...

via the local fishwrap's web presence, we present Tippy Canoe,
her facebook page linked via that page as well, but jessferdahalibut, ye can find it here, too...

The Master of Low Expectations: 666 Reasons...

Sentient Citizens are Still Celebrating the Long Overdue Departure of George W. Bush, courtesy Kotori Magazine...

viva la ukulele !

FLASH: "ukulele might not make things better forever..."

Bull. They will too!

From Lota, at NPR: Even in bleak times, the ukulele thrives.
Doh, the Uke abides.

he say he makin' no promises...

and that is likely a good thing, as he ain't very good at keepin' 'em...
Mine doppelganger jehosaphat prayer appears to be resurrecting that odiferous, dust laden and cobwebbed old corpus of el chango tonto out here on the left coast, will wonders never cease. He make mention there of the work of a certain Clayton Call, Famous Rock and Roll Photographer (that few people have ever heard of...) and ju ju got to agree, katz und kitteez, check that site out...

Goran Bregovic, he make me smile, no?

Site. Myspace. Youtube. Tonight!

Word Mole, I am your baitch

OK. I admit it. I am totally addicted to playing Word Mole on my Blackberry.

And here's what happened over the last week.

One of the guys gave be a hard, rubberized plastic shield to put my BB in, the better to protect it from the fairly frequent drops I give it. So, I put that sucker on, but the cross-bar of the shield on the front of the BB, just above the track ball and below the screen, limits sharp upward full-thumb rolls of the ball. And suddenly, my Word Mole scores were dropping. Never saw the winter season. Hardly saw a tomato. Total, season, and points per minute scores all plummeted.

So, today, I popped the shield. Free wheeling, again. Word Mole, all my base are yours.
Sent via thingy.

What wordnik says about farrago

Mr TheUncle, looks like the farrago heydays were all in the 19th century, except for a big bump in the late 1940's early 1950's. Now I know. Wordnik. Do it.

What would you ask the candidates (for mayor of NYC)

Working Families wants to know - and will carry the water.

A giant awakes in Nantes / and that other puppet, P

A big yo yo yo to any Jules Vernes fans out there. (I am not one, myself, but...) Great pics at Socyberty, via almost everywhere. Check out the various Royale De Luxe vidi at youtube. Wiki.

And, speaking of wooden heads, yesterday I started reading Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio, in a new translation by Geoffrey Brock. Totally whacked. That is one unruly kid, and the relationship to Disney is razor thin. ADD /ADHD for sure. Older translations online here. I'm hoping someone I know reads it real soon, so I have someone to talk to about this.

Dante and Jane visit Bridlington

Dante and his old friend, Jane Thane of Ohio, visit Bridlington , in East Riding of Yorkshire, in this version of the MNIDOAILY banner. Source image from a Dover PD collection.

Safety in numbers

TransAlt

Talkin' bout home made mayo

A friend I haven't seen in a bunch of years is in NY today from the Twin Cities, interviewing for a job that will move him back here. We got together for lunch at Mary's Fish Camp in the village, and who did we see there but Laura Comerford, Urban Home Free Range doyenne, who I hadn't seen in two or three years. Laura and her UHFR partner are working on a book. And here's one of her videos - chosen mos' specially because of the ukulele outro (and it's the first one on the site).

Does anyone have a better name than Eugenia Bone?

Thinking about dinner & browsing Bitten, clicked through Q&A on Pickling and Preserving.

Composition of (2) Political Parties by Racial, Ethnic, and Ideological Groups

But you knew that. Via Daily Dish.

Sharecropper

Sharecropper. Via Brooklyn Based. Plant something.

Yet her article is a farrago

I have loved the word farrago since 1976 or so. Can't get enough of it. You just don't see or hear it around all that often.

Julian Sanchez uses it in an article, Perils of pop philosophy, the first section of which I understand almost none of. He even explains why I don't understand it:

Someone reading about an important finding in biology or physics understands full well that what they’re getting is the upshot of a complicated process of math-laden theorizing and experiment someone else has done. Summarizing a philosophical argument, by contrast, basically looks like doing philosophy.

Right on. And the rest of the article is a pretty good description of the cloud I live under that keeps me from posting anything that makes believe it's factual, other than what I had for dinner, where, and what I drank that made me pooku-pooki.

via /.

Random catch-up

Our lovely house-guests have headed back to Atlanta, and it's time to hit the groove again. Many wonderful things that won't be posted. But, randomly: a neighbor's construction project - Silverback Perch (Juju is not the only senior gorilla in the crowd); a new cousin's legal project - peer to patent; local photographer we met in a bar - Alex Bershaw.

(The Bike Thang at JJ Byrne was fun, and there was an orange and green fixie that Lori and I both ogled. Coinky dink, walking in lower Manhattan later that afternoon, I saw what had to be the same bike. I stopped the rider & asked. Yup, and a really big grin on his face.)

(Photo by Alex Bershaw)