Pretty in Pink

Pink Size 8 Jelly Shoes at Target: $2.50


Re-living the summer I was eight years old: priceless

More about the inexplicable resurgence of 80's fashions soon. Probably. I'm hoping I can find some embarrassing (and fashionable!) photos of myself from that era.

Park-itecture

World-renowned architect Frank Gehry will be designing a new playground in lower Manhattan. Wow! That kind of makes my local playground seem primitive and crappy. But wait, it just got a fresh coating of woodchips!

Seriously, I think this is going to be really fabulous and I can't wait to see photos of the completed project. As I recall, when Frank Gehry designed the Springfield cultural center, he couldn't keep the skateboarders away, so he seems like a logical choice for playground design (incidentally, Gehry played himself in that episode).


I imagine the slide will look something like this:

(The Experience Music Project in Seattle)

Or possibly this:


(Fish Dance in Kobe, Japan)

Vindicated!

The internet is a magical, magical thing.

As a young, impressionable child in the 80's, I used to watch a show called The Great Space Coaster. I remember it with great fondness, but I've never been able to find another living soul who has heard of this program or will admit to having watched it. When I try to describe the show, people generally roll their eyes and accuse me of dreaming or otherwise hallucinating it. Granted, an amazing (an vaguely psychedelic) space roller coaster and a talking gnu do seem a little far-fetched.

I got sick of being called crazy though, so one day, I decided to Google it. Miracle of miracles, you can actual watch the (fabulous) intro in its entirety here. But be warned, that song will be stuck in your head for years.

My favorite character from The Great Space Coaster was a newscaster (or should I say gnuscaster?) named Gary Gnu, whose tagline was "no gnus is good gnus". I don't know exactly what a gnu is (Wiki does!), but they seem to wear a lot of eye makeup. Watch Gary in action here.

Take that, nay-sayers! Even hit show Family Guy has grabbed a piece of the space coasting action. Who's crazy now?

Love is a mix tape

First, the title of this post doesn't come from my own clever brain, rather, it is the title of an actual book by Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield. I haven't read it yet, but it comes highly recommended and I'm hoping to pick it up soon. The artwork at left comes from this book.

With the slow demise of cassettes, I have been contemplating the phenomenon of the mix tape in my own life and in our culture. I still remember the first mix tape I made for my husband, back in 1996. He was on vacation in Maryland, I was preparing to leave on a (separate) trip to Florida, and his birthday was approaching. We hadn't been dating long enough for me to send anything too expensive or too romantic, but I wanted him to know I was thinking of him. The perfect solution? A mix tape, of course! Between packing my suitcase and the arduous process of casette-to-casette recording, I stayed up all night making that tape. I mailed it the next morning, and I suppose the rest is history. He did marry me, after all.

While CD's and other new-fangled technologies make it easier than ever to create a personalized music mix for yourself or your friends, I can't help feeling that we're missing out somehow. Back in the day, a mix tape was the perfect gift, because the recipient understood the amount of thought and effort that went into its creation. Today, you spend a few minutes plugging the songs into your computer, hit the "burn" button, and you're done.

I guess what I'm really pondering here is nature of gifts. As children, we start out by making things with our own hands and anything we can stick glitter onto. As we get older and wealthier, we can afford to buy more elaborate and expensive gifts for our loved ones. But I can't help wondering if those pricy gifts, which take just minutes to select and purchase, are really a better representation of our affection than the time and energy invested in the creation of a mix tape, or even a macaroni necklace.

A picture is worth 1000 words, etc.

Just for fun, I have mapped out my "VisualDNA" at imagini.net. I'm not sure if if's a dating site or what (no, I'm not looking for dates) but I found the image-based personality test more interesting than some of the other wacky quizzes and things you can find online.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Click on the "Get your own VisualDNA" link above to try it (it's free and you don't have to create a profile or anything).

Where am I going and why am I in this handbasket?

Yeah, yeah, I'll start posting again soon. Until then, please enjoy my favorite Hemingway quote, re-imagined as a church sign:

(to make your own, click here)

The Cruelest Month

All right T.S. Eliot, you win. April is the cruelest month. Thank goodness that's over! The last few weeks have been among the worst in my life, with unlucky events happening one after the other. I was beginning to feel like the title character in Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, except that it was all month long, and I didn't have the option of moving to Australia.

Fortunately, April is behind us now. I received some very good news today, and I feel like May's going to be a better month for me. But I'd like to have a quick moment of silence for my car, which was recently totaled in a very unfortunate traffic accident. Farewell, stealth car. We had a good run.


(The only photo I could find was of the car covered in ice, but you get the idea.)

Bookmobile

I'm working on a more serious, more lengthy post, but until I get that together here's a quick book recommendation: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. I read a glowing review of this book on a Harry Potter forum, of all places, and decided to check it out. I think it's the best new book I've read this year. On the surface, it's a book about a 15-year old autistic boy who is trying to figure out who killed his neighbor's dog. Of course, like all good books, there is much more to it than this. It's a quick and thought-provoking read: subtly funny, poignant, and devastating all at once. If you have a good head for math and numbers you'll enjoy it even more, as the book is packed with impossible math puzzles (but you don't have to understand them to read the book). As for me, I am becoming increasingly interested in the way human language develops (with a talkative two-year-old in the house, it's hard not to be) and this book brings up many interesting questions about the ways we learn to communicate with each other and the assumptions that we make.

Fidelity

Apropos of nothing, I really like the song Fidelity by Regina Spektor. It's kind of pop-y, and I hear it on the radio five times an hour, but I love it anyway. She has a sensational voice, but I think it's the pizzicato violin (or what sounds to me like pizzicato violin; I'm no expert) that sucks me in. The video is fantastic too, starting out in black-and-white and ending with handfuls of colored pixie dust (watch it here). Plus, I dig her black-and-white heels.

Oddly, even now, years after the New Kids on the Block debacle, I still feel somehow embarassed when I find myself liking a song that gets heavy radio play. Am I secretly a music snob? Why do I feel like I should have to work harder to find music I like?

Hey! You got your curry in my chocolate!

I recently watched a profile on Food Network about Vosges Haut-Chocolat in Chicago. Owner Katrina Markoff utilizes unusual and unexpected spices and flavorings to create exotic truffles, chocolate bars, and even ice cream. I was intrigued by the idea of combining things like olives, wasabi, or pink Himalayan salt with chocolate, but never expected to actually taste any of these crazy concoctions. Imagine my surpise when I stumbled upon a display of Vosges chocolate bars at my local Whole Foods. My first reaction was sticker shock. $7 for a chocolate bar? Inconceivable! But as I continued shopping I kept thinking about the chocolate, rationalizing that they were large-sized bars, and made with expensive ingredients, and surely I could afford just one?

So I went back to the display. The first bar that caught my eye was the Red Fire, made with chili peppers and cinnamon. However, I have already tasted similar flavors from both Moonstruck and Dagoba, so I decided to go with my second choice: the Naga bar, combining sweet Indian curry powder with tiny coconut flakes. I was alternately skeptical and fascinated when I finally got home and opened the bar. Inside, the chocolate was smooth and shiny with cute images of a girl with a shopping bag stamped onto the squares. I browsed the detailed "instructions" on the back of the box (which recommed savoring the chocolate using all five senses), closed my eyes, and took a bite.

Wow! I know it's a cliche to talk about having a party in my mouth, but the flavor was incredible. Sweet, salty, savory, and creamy all at once. I was impressed! I've tasted a lot of unusually flavored chocolates, (particularly in London, where all the sweets seemed to be made out of flowers) but this curry bar was the first one to really knock my socks off. If you get a chance you really must try this chocolate (and if you don't like it, send me the leftovers). I'm going to have to try the Black Pearl (that's the wasabi one) next.