Happy Birthday Kym

42_hosmer kym c. 1980s
Originally uploaded by Red Peonies

Have a great year. See you in a few weeks!

RIP Dominick Dunne

In my brief side career as a tech person, I set up Dominick Dunne's computer system. He was extremely charming and sweet to me, concerned that the coffee he had just gone out and bought for me had the exact right amount of milk. It's ironic he died on the same day as Ted Kennedy. His obit in the Times.

Mad Menning Oswego

If your Facebook friends are anything like mine, you have seen a lot of Mad Med avatars in the last few days. My avatar's resemblence to Florence made me want to go back and look at some pictures of her and I came across this one. They would fit right into the Mad Med world.

Multitaskers bad at Multitasking

Oh-oh, I think I'm in trouble.

Read about it on Slashdot or the original article in Stanford University News.

I couldn't stop myself--I made another Mad Men avatar. This one looks more like me, though it still also looks like Florence as well.

Times Square

Song Dong at MoMA

I went to MoMA with Kathy to see a show by Belgian painter James Ensor. Ensor's work was weirder and more beautiful than I expected. While we were there we saw an installation Waste Not by Chinese artist Song Dong. It is the entire contents of his mother's house, neatly arranged in a grid-like fashion with other objects sorted by color and function. I really loved this piece. Then I went home and looked at my piles of stuff- do you think they would look better in a grid?


MoMa


my house

My Mad Men Avatar

Here's my Mad Men avatar. Notice the lack of other people, I seem to want to avoid all co-workers. I wish I could change the color of the hat, it would match better in brown.

Happy Birthday, Anders!

For the full party experience, click here!

Mad Mad Avatar

At the AMC website, you can make your Mad Men avatar. Mine ended up looking a lot like Mary or maybe Florence, don't you think?

Roman Naval Battle at Queens Museum

I have to admit, I really wish I had been at this event. Artist Duke Riley and many others created a Roman naval battle- building all the boats, props, you name it, that ended in the boats going up in flames. Boats represented the different boroughs. Kathy was there, wearing a toga (you had to or you couldn't go). Here is a video from Wired.

I did not agree . . .

with the outcome of the Project Runway Superstar challenge. Did anyone else watch? I won't spoil it, but I thought the winner should have been in the bottom 4 and one person in the bottom 4 would have been a reasonable choice for the winner.

Breaking Baby News

For those who don't know, soon Sonja and Kristoffer will be in the same "baby room" at daycare. Isn't that cool?

Project Runway on the front page of the NY Times?

Much as I like this show, I think it is a little weird that there is a picture of the contestants in the new season of Project Runway on the front page of the Times- well at least online.

Don't forget to set your DVR! Lifetime network tomorrow night!

For those not on Flickr

Goal!
Originally uploaded by trish.culkin

See what you are missing by not joining the Flickr fun--Anders in action!

Happy Birthday Anders!

Happy Birthday Anders. I hope you have a great day. I am sure it will include some cake. And wish Homar a happy birthday for me as well.

Smart Borders Blog

I just finished interviewing the blogger behind the Smart Borders Blog for my dissertation. It was a great interview, both helpful, and for a change, hopeful. As most of you know, the news is not always good concerning the border wall. Construction continues and Congress seems intent on continuing to fund it. So far the Obama administration has not lived up to the hopes of immigration activists and in general the news has been bleak. It can be hard not to get discouraged. But Matthew Paul Webster is a voice in the darkness and someone I am happy to have fighting on the side of immigrants and border communities. He remains ever hopeful that people are inherently good and inherently teachable, that these issues can eventually be solved through education and the fostering of human relationships. Check out his blog. You won't be sorry.

Happy 19th Ammendment!

Babies are smart

I thought this article about how smart babies are and how they learn was really interesting and I liked the author's conclusion that babies just be allowed to play. And yet it also seems like it shouldn't be that surprising if you have ever paid any attention to babies.

Coney Island (again)

There can never be too many pictures of Coney Island on any blog. Calvin and I went there on his vacation last week- like Kate and Neilson, we ate tacos and drank beer. It is one of my favorite places to go, even on a day that kept threatening to rain.

Parks Climate Challenge

Watch a video of Parks Climate Challenge, the project that Jane participated in this summer in the Pacific Northwest. The high school students in the project recorded the photos and audio in the piece and they are interviewed as well. Jane is, as always, articulate and fabulous. Go Jane! Watching this video makes you feel better about the state of the world.

Celebration

Today is Otis' second birthday. He got the party started a little early by playing with a beer bottle over the weekend.





Don't worry--no beer was actually consumed by a toddler in the taking of these pictures.

Great Fun or a Nightmare

On Sunday, AMC is going to broadcast the premiere of Mad Men in Times Square, to an audience of people who are dressed in period clothing. (There is a contest). I am tempted to go, as it sounds potentially fun. But it also sounds potentially nightmarish, and I might be better off watching it from the comfort of my own home.

The Hurt Locker

Calvin is on vacation this week, so we have celebrated by going to see some movies. He had missed Up, which I was happy to see again, particularly since I bought comics from the story supervisor, Ronnie del Carmen at Comic-con.

Last night we went to see The Hurt Locker, a movie about a bomb squad in the Iraq war in 2004. This movie was exhausting and difficult to watch, but great. Terrific performances by Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie, I assume we're going to see a lot more of these guys. Kathryn Bigelow of Point Blank and Blue Steel fame directed. She flaunts her well-honed action movie skills here, but it doesn't feel like flaunting.

What is happening at The University of Tennessee?

This article on the crazy machinations of denying a female anthropologist tenure at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville is long but worth a quick perusal. It sounds more like a conspiracy story than real-life should, with FBI and Homeland Security investigations, reports to the local police about a "hysterical woman," accusations of uncollegiatlity because she brought sexual harrassment of another employee to the attention of the administration, unidentifiable and uncollaborated student complaints that she might be building a bomb because she had them read about bombs and terrorism in classes about war and the impact of nuclear weapons on societies. Makes me look forward to finishing up this dissertation so I can go out and fight these battles myself.

I'm a little sad . . .

about John Hughes. I was actually in high school when most of his high-school movies came about and they were really great to see at the time. And I think Pretty in Pink, at least, really holds up.

Wilder Women

The article this week on Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose in the New Yorker is illuminating, if a little depressing.

Fans of Kate's Butter . . .

(and I know there are some here) may enjoy this post on Serious Eats.

Soul Power

On Saturday, Neilson and I saw Soul Power, a documentary about the 3-day concert in Zaire in 1974, planned around the Ali/Foreman fight which is the subject of When We Were Kings. The narrative doesn't make that much sense, but my only real complaint is that it isn't long enough. The great performances by James Brown, Ceila Cruz, and Bill Withers, among others, leave you wanting more. It also includes great clips of Ali. I'm putting When We Were Kings on my Netflix queue right now--I saw it when it came out, but now I can't wait to see it again.