Archive for June, 2008

The dilemma

Fresh out of college, you take a job as a nanny in a foreign country, so you can learn the language while making a little money. You’re living with an American family at the U.S. embassy, taking care of their one-year-old daughter. You spend your free time roaming the streets of the exotic capital city […]

The other shoe to drop

This should be a good time. Hillary finally conceded and Our Guy could be seven months away from his inauguration. And yet. And yet. I am filled with an impending sense of dread and doom. Darth Vader music is playing in my head each time I think of what’s coming. It’s not the idea of […]

Pure magnetic fun

On the continued theme of wholesome fun from the past, I’m postponing murderous fun to focus on the power of magnetism, before I have to pack these games away for several weeks. Long ago, there were people who could have come up with a Nintendo Wii or a Sony X Box, if only the technology […]

Thursday playlist: Palm Springs Record Camp

Thanks to Bryan “Johnny Recordseed” Waterman, who led the West Coasters down the Record Club path two summers ago and taught us the importance of strict rules, the LA Record Club is still going strong. As Jen noted yesterday, the club met in Palm Springs this past weekend, supposedly for some hard-core listening. Everyone brought […]

Once Upon A Time There Was Light In My Life…

West Coast record camp began with a trip down a desert road to a beautiful house with a pool. We swam We ate and ate we dj’d We played Crack Dice We discussed turntablism, record club policy and canine hegemony Things can get kinda rulesy at record camp. Biffy flew in from the cape and […]

Announcing the first Great Whatsit book club

When I was a kid, I got the greatest pleasure from doing what other people expected of me. Still, there were glitches. My friend L—‘s dad taught our Deacon’s Quorum class in church (Sunday School for 12 and 13-year-old boys) a few times and seemed to be annoyed with me when I didn’t like his […]

Crack House Diaries: Part 1

The first nights in the crack house were the worst. It was late August, still pressing ninety degrees at eleven o’clock, the kind of late temperature where even a thin bed sheet would stifle. More oppressive than the heat were the panic attacks, adrenaline pumping fits induced by slight sounds; a honking horn or a […]

Teeth and sky

I went on a river tour this weekend in Chicago. I listened to the names of the architects, learned the differences between art deco, post modern, neoclassical, buildings referential to their surroundings and those not, anecdotes of moguls who wanted to sit higher and see farther than their competition. Yet in the end, all that […]

Thursday Playlist: Sydney Pollack RIP

A.O. Scott wrote a great piece on the director Sydney Pollack who died last week, of cancer, at the age of 73. He noted how Pollack had been involved in a type of film known as “the A picture.” “In both capacities he worked, comfortably and with conviction, within the parameters of the Hollywood ‘A […]

The long goodbye?

Analysts at Goldman Sachs recently projected that oil will likely reach $200.00 a barrel within the next year. GM announced today that it was closing four SUV manufacturing plants, and rumors are buzzing around that they will also discontinue the civilian-use line of Hummers. Are we on the cusp of real change? What does a […]