re that Blogger makes it Bigtime story involving...

movie called Julie and Julia or somesuch...
SO...
some young blogger gets bright idea to do all of Julia's recipes and blogs about it, gets bigtime book then movie deal (or sumptin' like dat), ennyway, now we have film about to hit the theatres featuring Ms. M. Streep as Julia alongside the lovely (and how!) Amy "Yum Yum Yum" Adams as the young blogger Julie.

Okay, so me a WEE tiny bit resentful (HAH!), nobody wants to make movie of aging silverback ape fella anyway, no matter his sexual peculiarities, but, jessferdahalibut, and as tribute to SNL of old, here's a great bit from back in the day featuring Danny Ackroyd as Julia...

Health Care Now - Planet Stories

Original Planet Stories image here.

Freaked out beetle on my 28th floor office window

Sent via thingy.

Working Families Party endorses Bill De Blasio and Brad Lander

... and I'm darned glad, here in the 39th where Brad will hopefully win Bill's seat on the City Council, and Bill will become the next Public Advocate of New York City.

Hey, Nyawkers, remember, there really is a meaningful Democratic primary on September 15. Turn out. Can you do better than vote the WFP line?

perhaps the book my dear parental units ought...

to have written,via the marvel that is Boing Boing,
Toto and I, A Gorilla in the Family;
and whilst here, will not miss mention (courtesy the New Yorker online)
of singular published work by a certain Malcolm Lowry, on the centenary of his birth, & certainly worthy of your studied perusal,
Under The Volcano.
While at it, ju ju will make mention that a pretty damned good film adaptation of said novel, directed by John Huston and starring Albert Finney, is available.

Ultimately, we hope customers will feel an enhanced sense of community and a deeper connection to our coffee heritage

Oi. Starbucks. Thanks, jp. At the Consumerist, via huffpost.

iPoop?

Yes. OK? I play wordmole on the crapper.

something for everybuddy...

and then again,
maybe not...
esteemed amigo Esteban sent link our way yesterday, knowing yourstruly likes puddin' like a mofo alongside serious bent for pulchritudinous female form, and hey, isn't this why we have such great respect for our Nipponese brethren anyway?
here be the linky goodness.

(full disclosure- NOT the same linky bit that Esteban sent ju ju, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa - BUT ya getz da idee, no?)

next up, whilst visiting some o' our bloggos favoritos & dropping in on Roo370 aka R. Dog the Phantasm, we came across this, ahhhhhhh...
well, better you see for yourowndarnedself...

OOOOH, late arriving linky bit, via the NYT,
on yummy stuff & one's relation to same...

Ya Ya Twist!

OK, I know I've left the C´est Noir video out there in the corner for too long, but I was waiting on getting it together to head down to the cellar and dig out the little lovely below - Johnny Hallyday singing Ya Ya Twist. Blow me away.
We have some old 45's as a sideline to our 78 collecting - and, my oh my, we have a lot more than I realized. Haven't looked at them in maybe 10 years. Of course, the Hallyday isn't my favorite old French 45 in our closet. That would have to be Jeanne Moreau chante "Le Tourbillon" du film Jules et Jim. No?

Oh, hell, while I'm digging around and have the scanner plugged in, not French, but WOW!.

I wish it was easier to download Nicholson Baker's article to my Kindle so I could read it on the subway

A new page. One of my favorite cranks. Coinkydink we broke one of our kindles this past weekend - something about unexpected thirds in our two-seater, seats rolling forward and backwards, and hard soled shoes. And, if the cost is high to replace the screen, will we do it?

TETSUO!!!!

Yow! via gmtPlus9.



"A young man (Tomorowo Taguchi) slowly transforms into a metallic monster after he comes into contact with a bizarre man with metal objects protruding from his body." @ Nippon Cinema.

Dan Hicks' Tangled Tales

That NPR story this morning made me run out and buy Dan Hicks' latest CD, Tangled Tales. Been a long time.

Go North, Object Image, fond good byes.

This summer two galleries we really liked visiting have said good bye. First, Object Image on 5th Ave in the Slope. Bob Weiss' place. (Hey, Bob, you stopped updating the site in 2007?) We bought a number of pieces there over the years, and became particularly fond of Thomas Hagen's work. And now, this is the last weekend for the Go North gallery in Beacon, NY. We drove up there yesterday to say bye. We chatted with Karlos Carcamo there, who said to keep checking the site for happenings. We will.

Thank you, all.

I wear my socks up to my knees...

Getting stoked about seeing Seasick Steve at Southpaw (bklyn) on Aug. 8. You? Wiki. Myspace. Youtube. Official.

Brokeneck airline

Macinwi, danka. this is why I travel with a uke & not a guitar.

Health care - I'm relaying a message from the Working Families Party

Hi -

Six Democratic Members of Congress from New York are putting the brakes on President Obama’s historic campaign to reform our broken healthcare system.

Healthcare legislation that would expand healthcare coverage for millions of Americans is gaining steam in Congress. But Reps. Michael Arcuri, Scott Murphy, Nita Lowey, Mike McMahon, Eric Massa, and Dan Maffei are stalling the bill because it pays for reform with a modest tax on the rich. Sign the petition here: http://action.workingfamiliesparty.org/t/3865/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=631

This is our best chance for healthcare reform in a generation, but now these five Democratic members of Congress are putting real reform on hold - even though less than 1% of all New Yorkers would be affected by the tax.

We can fight back – but we have to ask fast. I just signed the Working Families Party’s petition calling on the 6 Representatives to put healthcare reform above protecting the wealthy. Will you join me?

http://action.workingfamiliesparty.org/t/3865/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=631

Bill de Blasio for Public Advocate

Went to fund raiser for Bill de Blasio a couple of nights ago. Bill is our City Councilman (district 39) and now he's running for Public Advocate. Marty Markowitz gave a nice intro, and Bill gave a good talk about just what it is that the Public Advocate office is meant to be, and the particular importance of that role when there is a very strong mayor.

Bill also pointed out that most New Yorkers don't realize there is an election on September 15 - the NYC Democratic Primary - and that the Democratic nominee for P.A. will almost certainly be elected next November.

So, hey, the six of you New Yorkers who might see this, talk to me. Public Advocate is one of only three city-wide elected positions (Mayor, Comptroller, Public Advocate). It's important.

Eclipse

via /.
Oh, hey, same pics bigger & better @ Big Picture.

About my little jaunt to the Bronx today...

I had great fun with 40,000 of my closest friends, about 10 blocks from where I was a wee bairn. Before I went up, I thought I'd do some googling of the old block. I knew it might not be good - it went through some hard in-between times - but I didn't have a sense of what was going on there now.

The photo on the left - yeah, I know, snow, xmas lights, tugs at the heartstrings - was taken from one of the windows of our apartment. Gee! look at all the old cars!

Now, take a look at the current views. Go into street view. Swizzle around. The intervening decades have not been beautifying to Nelson Ave. between 168th and 169th.

I drink your milkshake!

hmmphf, indeed...
more like "i drink your cold, draft beer,
(or, better yet, tall & icy bloody mary)
and then the next one,
and then the next one and then..."
you get the idea?

then, this would certainly come in handy.

Baron Ambrosia

I've been invited to the Bronx for a little doo this afternoon - unfortunately not by Baron Ambrosia, who, coinkydinky, the NY Times has a nice article about this morning.

Big knife smackdown

For years I've looked in junk shops and antique shops and flea markets for old kitchen knives that struck my fancy, pretty much without finding anything I liked. But now in the last six months or so I've bought three knives, and I think I'm done. (Except maybe in the small knife, paring knife end of things.) Any way, this past weekend at the Brooklyn Flea I purchased big Bertha up above - 8 inches of very heavy blade. Note the flattened area above the eyelet - clearly had been hammer-whacked regularly. Bone bustin'. Can't quite make out the maker's name, but...

Space station toilet breaks down

Given that I've had to repair both toilets in our house in the last couple of weeks, I'm extra sensitive to news like this right now.

The main toilet has broken down on the International Space Station (ISS), currently home to a record 13 astronauts, Nasa said....

If repairs fail, Apollo-era urine collection bags are on hand, Nasa said.

Back on the bike

After some nice late spring riding there was that month of rain, and I just didn't get it back together again until this morning. Big snakes of bikes at every intersection. And, lookee, a sea of chairs and tables outside Boro Hall. Summah! Coffee and lemon iced scone. Just gonna eat half the scone and save the rest for later. Nah!

Sent via thingy.

Ice pops

Aloft on my ever towering spiral of self sophistication, I've decided to make ice pops. Bought some molds yesterday. I just now blended up a couple of peaches, some honey and a dash of milk, filled to molds, stuck the little stick-tops on, put it all into the freezer, and can hardly wait till this evening.

Oh, lookee here. And here. And here. And here. Oh, and definitely here.

ain't dat da trute, Rhute...

the rich get richer, and the poor...
well,
ye know as well as yourstruly does, eh?
courtesy the New Yorker online

that same topic on a more serious note, P. Krugman,
via the NYT, The Joy of Sachs

sorry, this is really just NOT funny...

Hambone Dante in the stars

The base image is from a box of J.P. Alley's Hambone sweets 5 cent cigars. I've had this kicking around a long time, and used it back in environy or cabinet. Not sure if it came from LOC or a Dover collection. The stars, they're from the UK working group on evolved stars. Thanks, jp, for the backchannel stars image that got me going. And the finished image, she is here.

Bad dream

It started with a lady doctor telling a teenage girl patient about a disease she, the patient, did not yet have but was about to have. It got weirder until it was involving dremmel cutting tools and the girl (and the dreamer) finally realize that the doctor is creating the disease in the patient. Wella, wella, wella, I woke up pretty darn quick. Dozed again and came face to face with a monstrous glob of humanity saying it had surgery for anything & everything! Love surgery! It grabbed an appendagy thing hanging from one of it's cheeks and pulled & twisted and - it blew up. Exploded. Smithereens of flesh. Alas, poor dreamer, no more sleep for the next two hours.

Lota also had trouble sleeping last night. Where I suspect my problem was a sharp psychological (or maybe pharmacological) vertigo, she thinks hers was because the room was too warm.

Well, you can bet I trudged right down to the cellar, pulled an AC unit out of mothballs, and installed it this morning. Tonight I'm gonna turn it down way chill, just in case I was only too warm last night, and not just crazy.

quickie post on a wednesday morning...

inspired by the vid o' the moment there alongside, recalling working in the NoNo HQ bookstore and listening to NPR's The World, story about the retirement of bigtime rockstar of the French persuasion, Johnny Hallyday. As our personal homage to the French Elvis, we want to point you to film where we became a little better acquainted with the legend that is J. Hallyday, Man on the Train, and, as an aside, really be happy to recommend anything you might pick up directed by Patrice Leconte. Thanks for the vid, Esteban!

in response to that very recent and timely like a...

mo-fo post from El Stupendo Stumperino, via the New Yorker online, Hendrik Hertzberg's The Glorious Third.

ju ju and asst'd amigo/amigas spent some time in movie theatres this weekend, catching up with some recent releases. Saw Moon, liked it, sort of low key sci-fi non-actioner; Girl from Monaco, which puzzled us to some degree, as there was often some humourous stuff going on, leading us to think "oh, wee lightweight French comedy, and oh-so-very-French" but then events at end of film having us re-evaluate and go "Hmmmm, now what was THAT really about?". Best of three viewed was Kathryn Bigelow's new film, The Hurt Locker, of which we cannot say enough good things about. Meant a trip to the city where we caught early matinee at the Embarcadero theatre which was nearly a full house, as it is the only game in town as far as this release goes presently, and yourstruly not patient enough to wait until the 27th when it opens in the local Berkeley environs. We will try to shake that lazy sluggard Juicy Pernil out of his self-imposed slothfulness so he can tell ya more about what's been happening here in this wee tiny part of the leftest coast. OH!
almos forgot, some trailers that caught ju ju's eyes and have us looking forward to release of these films: In the Loop, and for electric guitar fans especially, It Might Get Loud (and we'll wager it does, too)...

oh, and 'fore we forget-
!!!iroL ot yad-B yppaH

My fellow Alaskamericans

Hoggworks Studios. Via Fake Steve.

Great Family Wine & Bottling Company

I've had the image on the left for quite a while - picked it up one day while browsing at Library of Congress, thinking I might use it on a wine label. This morning I was looking through files, saw it again, and focused for the first time on the address. Well, there must be a Union Street in every town. Or anyway, every town in the old industrial North. Still, I wondered: could it be Union Street in Brooklyn? My Union street?

Wella, wella, wella, plugged in '"Great Family Wine" & Bottling' to the goog, and where did it take me to but the fine library at Duke, where they have both the front and back of the card. Brought a tear to my eye. Been to the spot many a time. Happens, too, to be only a few doors from the childhood home of the mighty mighty Jimmy G., who cooks the world's best puttanesca for our yearly new-wine party (and where Jimmy G's own dad made his own home made wine.)

Push

I have a small push reel mower that I picked up a number of years back at Leopoldi's. I've stored out back in a shed of sorts that I cobbled together from fence sections - not water-tight, the door only sort-of closes, and it's a dirt floor. Not surprising, the mower's in poor shape, most especially the rollers, which have completely seized up so that any attempt to roll the mower backwards cause it to skid and buck up, and forward motion is balky at best. Bad, bad, bad.

So, yesterday I took it apart. With effort, vice grips, and judicious banging, I was able to remove the rollers and spacers (they're plastic). I filed all the rust and hard cake from the metal rod they mount on (there was plenty of it), cleaned everything, greased all the parts, and re-assembled. Woo-ey! That mower zips around like a demon now. Also cleaned up the reel and filed goo way from all the blades and the cutter bar. Can't wait for the grass to grow some more so I can give it a whirl. Even thinking of trying to adjust the cutter bar. Life is good here in the heart of the heart of the country.

Pussy cat, pussy cat, what did you play on your ukulele?

Well, I wanted to spend some time learning some new songs on the uke, but there was too much other stuff a'doing to do much playing. But the sheets I brought with me were: Always on My Mind, My Little Grass Shack in Kealakekua, Hawaii, Groovin', Yes Sir, That's My Baby, Sunny Side of the Street (2nd half), Bye Bye Blackbird, I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Will You Love Me Tomorrow (bet you can't watch the whole thing - Ritchie Blackmoor was a god), Two of Us. There were a couple of others. It all seemed so much less random at the time.

Pussy cat, pussy cat, what did you read

Danny Kapilian (yes, Danny really looks like that, and there is always a swirling field of colored light surrounding him) and Judy Lieff (watch the trailer) gave us two books last month, Rick Perlstein's Nixonland and Joseph O'Neill's Netherland.

I started with Nixonland, which made me constantly angry, and was maybe 150 pages into it when S. Palin announced her resignation. Being immersed in what I was, I couldn't think of that move as anything other than the kick-off of her presidential campaign. Later that morning I tried reading more of Nixonland, flopped on the sand and mud by one of the Orient backwaters, and I just couldn't do it: just too much nastiness for too beautiful a place. More later.

And so I picked up Netherland, which I'll finish later this morning. Not funny. Fits on the same bookshelf as DeLillo's Falling Man. I'm at a point in the book where Hans has returned to London and is speaking about the differences in the London / English and the New York / American perception of September, 2001 and, more generally, life. Maybe those differences are mirrored by the NYT review of Netherland, above, and this Guardian review. Or maybe O'Neill's opinions are what the Guardian bloke all snarky.

Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been

Well, thank goodness Juicy Pernil has been on the table while I've been doddering elsewhere away, or there'd have been nothing to eat at all!

Been back in the big city since Tuesday evening but haven't been able to muster the concentration to say a thing about our little time away. Stayed mostly at, and can't say enough nice things about, the North Fork Table and Inn, in Southold. The people and the place, both, fabu. We chatted each morning with Claudia Fleming and gorged ourselves on her scones. We poked around Southold, Greenport and Orient, and our last full day mostly lazing and swimming at Crescent Beach on Shelter Island. Most amazing were the backroad ponds and marshes out at Orient. I'm ready to sell the house, buy a shack, and suck on clams and oysters, watch ospreys fish and out-still the herons. Aldo's was open (hallelujah) and we drank his espresso every time we passed through downtown Greenport. On the trip home we visited our friends at Channing Daughters, and in the few days before then we also stopped in at Old Field, Shinn, Wollfer, and the Tasting Room - we dwank widdle bit, and bought more. We saw the fireworks over the fireman's carnival, and listened to Big Suga playing on the waterfront to the local crowd. We ate the tasting menu at NoFoTI, and three dinners at Frisky Oyster's two places. (It's true: God Bless the Frisky Oyster.) Ate 'em raw, and ate 'em friskafella'd. Begorrah!

Our last meal out there was a breakfast at Pat & Steve's on SI. I had the omelet special: shrimp. It was late for breakfast at P&S (though probably before anyone had breakfast yet at Sunset Beach). Cook came out, apologized for interrupting us, and asked how the omelet was. Great, I said. She told me I was the only person to order it, that her Dad mad it up that day - he likes to make things up - and she'd let him know. I told her it's become my policy to never pass up a shrimp omelet. Complements to Dad.

Oh, it was a lovely, lovely time away. (!05 denrut iroL, hhhss, dnA)

this be good advice for Ju Ju...

Dieting Monkeys Offer Hope for Living Longer.

but me gets SO hungry...

yea, verily...

ju ju has oftentimes found hissowndamnedself wonderin'
why the imp in his brain (or what's left of it) gets out...

God bless the frisky oyster

Greenport, LI, NY. Amen.
Sent via thingy.

And, hey, Aldo had his place open. Someone's done a cartoon drawing of him and it's in the shop window. The caption is, Closed is the new open.

happi holidaze!

some of us still be working on this Friday before the 4th, no biggie as ju ju works with great crew of people doing good work in this world, but he be looking forward to weekend with pals of many years duration as on Saddidey he heading up to D & M's aerie in the Berkeley hills to dine and watch fireworks (if our summertime fog doesn't materialize) and then come Sunnyday he planning get-together with Janey & Phil with plans to grill up some meaty goodness, play guitar and make a joyful noise (more like caterwauling) all afternoon.

Wishing alla ye an enjoyable weekend whatever it is you be up to, and here's a lovely little linky thing sent my way from Bruddah K,
R. McGuinn solo, Turn, Turn, Turn

Just doodling...

Uh, that would be down, Bob

Wow. Great, frightening chart. Percentage job losses in post WWII recessions. We have 1948 firmly in our sites. From the June economic forecast at Calculated Risk. Via Daily Dish. Long & deep.

Bike lane projector

@ H2Ovissions, via /.