10.24.11



back from san francisco and little sis's nuptials; stay tuned for additional reports of kilts and vuvuzelas, of feats of strength and sororal piety. i spied this at the post-wedding get-together at zeitgeist, one of our old haunts down by the spca. i do, sticker, and i will.

i finished the magicians on the plane ride out to california and have been taking notes for ye olde post-halloween book chat (do stop by!). i'm thinking, to quote sis's wedding invite, black tie optional, party pants mandatory.

10.10.11

101 in 1001 {II}: 061 make a terrarium [completed 10.01.11]



my apologies for the grimy photo; this is how lifestyle photography which follows one's morning run and precedes one's morning coffee goes down. terrarium-crafting, i have discovered, is extremely challenging; chopstick-assisted plant- and robot-sentry-placement is fine, but layering gravel and charcoal and dirt without approximating disco-era dry-lentil-and-pasta-sculpture is no mean feat. i found the borosilicate canister online, the little succulents under a tent at the union square greenmarket, and the blue fellow in a packet of robots and chocolate and licorice from amanda, who is good to me.

10.06.11: culture blotter {portishead @ hammerstein}



rocktober rolled on yesterday evening with a portishead show at hammerstein ballroom, site of a memorable david bowie spotting at a pixies concert a few years ago.* i expected a fairly sexy show, as dummy was considered one of the greatest hookup albums of its day (but for "roads," a song which makes one want to cover one's genitals with duct tape). what i experienced was more of a violation: hammerstein's ultra-motivated security team took searches to a new level of weird (i saw the bag-searcher ahead of me checking a gal's prescription pill bottle against her driver's license), the woo!-drunk guy next to me kept lurching over and then clutching whichever part of me he'd just jostled as he turned to apologize, with 80-proof plosives, for doing so, and the audience decided en masse to numb themselves prior to "roads" by smoking all of the pot in the world (it is all gone now! all of it, smoked at hammerstein) during the encore. that said, beth gibbons is still an icicle in your ear: her voice was crystalline and wondrous for numbers like "wandering star" and "glory box," and it humanized newer, kerwhompity sternum-rattlers like "machine gun." rocktober's kinky secret: its violations aren't universally unpleasant.

*torn between staying for the encore and ducking out to follow bowie when he dematerialized from the mezzanine, i decided to stay put; i then ended up with tickets for another pixies show on a subsequent evening, and they played the same damn encore. takeaway: always follow bowie.

10.05.11: culture blotter {the psychedelic furs @ irving plaza}



you know you have the right husband when he relieves you of "pretty-in-pink"-recording duties so you can molly ringwald all over the concert hall in a manner you've been dreaming of since you were eight. richard butler sounds as amazing now as he did when i was in third grade; it's for the best that we didn't have the camera out when the band launched into "heartbreak beat," for i lost my shit. welcome back, rocktober.

10.3.11: texts

1 {5:58pm 9/30/11):



2 {7:16pm 9/30/11}: uh
2 {5:40pm 10/2/11}: you and the halloween tchotchke type paraphernalia, there's unexplored issues here