Gummi Worms Not Better Than Summer

As the girls were getting their coats and boots on to go to school yesterday morning Celie suddenly offered this conversational gambit: “Daddy, I remember one time when we were only four and Jennifer [their teacher] brought gummi worms in.”  Iris added: “But she said we could only have two, not three, or it would [...]

James Franco discusses Carl Wilson’s Celine Dion book

Very weird… James Franco discusses Carl Wilson’s Celine Dion book on the Oscars red carpet — by way of making excuses for why he does not watch escapist/bad t.v. but intends to do so soon.  Here’s my earlier link to the book.

Franco is doing an MFA poetry program, so I knew he was probably more [...]

Ian Curtis/ Kurt Cobain

Watched the Anton Corbijn biopic of Ian Curtis (Joy Division’s singer who committed suicide in 1980 at age 23), Control.  Enjoyed it a lot.  The musical performances, all recorded by the actors, are pretty uncannily good and Sam Riley is a dead ringer for Curtis.  If they toured as the Unknown Pleasures, a Joy [...]

The Conjugal Unpleasantness

For Valentine’s Day, a bit of British marital advice:

Also see “Women, Keep Your Virtue” and “Women Know Your Limits“
(Thanks to Boing Boing)

Fatherhood in extremis: Laura Ingalls Wilder & Cormac McCarthy

I finally read The Road — almost the whole thing in one sitting in bed and then finished it off the next day.  It’s pretty harrowing.  I’ve been haunted by that recent article in The New Yorker, “The Dystopians,” about ““back-to-the-land types,” “peak oilers,”… all-around Cassandras, or doomers,” and others who believe the U.S. and [...]

Recycling the World of Interiors

Sarah was coveting Matt and Miranda’s subscription to The World of Interiors.  This is a high-end, expensive (at least $100 for the year’s subscription) British design/decoration/architecture magazine.  The photography is beautiful and they somehow seem to avoid the typical design-porn cliches — it’s not just a sequence of rich person after rich person’s predictable homes.
Some [...]

Reading Laura Ingalls Wilder

I’ve been reading C&I The Little House in the Big Woods.  The Laura Ingalls Wilder books were a big deal in my family.  My cousin Laura was named after her; I read the books at least as much/often as I did the Lord of the Rings saga, in a somewhat similar pattern, too: probably read [...]

Lux Interior R.I.P.

Lux Interior (born Erick Lee Purkhiser), who formed the “psychobilly” combo the Cramps with his wife Poison Ivy in 1973, is dead at age 62.
I didn’t know that he grew up on Akron, OH. Were the Cramps at all part of the whole 70s Akron scene (with Devo, the Bizarros, Rubber City Rebels), or [...]

Engorged Tick Puppets & Pretend Blood Drinks

I love kids’ science.  Moonraking reader Amrak Ecilop tipped me off to the excellently gruesome activities offered this week at Ithaca, NY’s Sciencenter:
Winter Break Fun!

Monday-Friday,
Feb. 16-20, 2 p.m.
Visit the Sciencenter for a special daily hands-on activity every weekday at 2 p.m. during the winter break:
Monday:  Tick Puppets
Create a marionette puppet of an engorged tick.
Friday:  Blood [...]

Neko Case “People Got a Lotta Nerve”

Neko Case is offering a free download of the first single, “People Got a Lotta Nerve,” from her new album (Middle Cyclone, due out March 3), and her record label is donating $5 to Best Friends Animal Society for every blog that re-posts it.  So, I am doing so: you can download the song [...]