kerplink, kerplank, kerplunk

Chen.Totally.Loves.Pitas.
Funnest find of the week, and the roundabout source of Shag link, below. Mary Chen's larger, non-bloggy site is also quite charming.
Friday, August 11, 2000 04:40 p.m.

Shag Art
Oh, get your mind out of the gutter, you! Shag is the artsy name of Josh Agle, painter extraordinaire. I am totally ga-ga over his work. Imagine putting the Jetsons in a painterly blender with Raoul Dufy and Edward Gorey. You'd get something like Shag.
Friday, August 11, 2000 04:38 p.m.

Friday Afternoon Brainwave

I was just reading Jejune and her reference to the inevitable breakup of Macaulay Culkin & Rachel Miner's marriage got me thinking: kerplink needs a break-up pool. Other folks have dead pools, but I think this has more potential for morbid conjecture and pure bitchiness.

Who's in? Submit your lists of celebrity couples you think are going to go bust through the end of 2000. I'll figure out something for keeping track of it here.
Friday, August 11, 2000 03:30 p.m.

Online Conversions
Gazillions of conversion calculators! Get the square footage of your apartment in microinches and nanometers! Figure out that metric recipe in pecks! Calculate the local outdoor temperature in Celsius & Kelvin! Go on, get out of here and convert things. The link thieving continues with thanks to Librariness.
Friday, August 11, 2000 10:39 a.m.

Gimme Shelter
I've never seen this movie about the Rolling Stones' 1969 tour. It sounds pretty horrifying, but well worth seeing. Between this article and CMJ's feature this month on the 15 Best Rock Movies You've Never Seen, I'm all fired up to see music documentaries.
Friday, August 11, 2000 10:28 a.m.

Glamour Central
The glama's back! Fun vintagey, retro-y glamour for the sexy dame in all of us. Thanks to Pop Culture Junk Mail.
Friday, August 11, 2000 10:26 a.m.

The Three Terrors Annotated Set Lists
I would love, love, love to see The Three Terrors perform. Yet another side project from Stephin Merritt, featuring himself, Dudley Klute, and ld beghtol singing "the saddest songs they know". They appear to do shows only in NYC, which is a bummer for those of us moving to Toronto. Thanks to Fred for the link.
Friday, August 11, 2000 10:16 a.m.

The Surrealist Compliment Generator
I know I should be over these Generators, but I'm not. This one is particularly funny. Courtesy of Fresh Hell.
Thursday, August 10, 2000 11:19 a.m.

Film Folk Who Share A Birthday With My Dad
Happy Birthday, Dad! Let's see, who've we got here? Oh, look, Kurtis Blow. Who knew he made movies? And someone named John "Hot Rod" Williams. And P.L. Travers, author of the Mary Poppins books. Cool. Not so cool: Melanie Griffith. Ew.

I think that one of my Dad's favorite historical birthday events must have been the resignation & departure from office of former President Richard Nixon. In the grand scheme of things, I know it can't compare with something like the US' bombing & destruction of Nagasaki, (which also occured on this date in 1945) but I'm trying to focus on happy things today.
Wednesday, August 9, 2000 08:56 p.m.

The Wierdest Conversation of the Last Several Years

Date: Last Thursday evening, 8:30ish
Location: My parents' living room

[telephone rings]
Me: Hello?
Weird Conversant: Hello, is [your father] there?
M: No, may I take a message?
WC: Is [your mother] there?
M: No, I'm afraid they're both out of town, is there something I can help you with?
WC: Yes, this is Weird Conversant. Please let me give you my phone number.
M: All right.
WC: Here is my telephone number [gives me a local number]. This is the telephone number of my residence. I live there, and so do my parents. If he dials this number, one of us will answer, or the telephone answering machine will answer. This is a device, which I own, that will answer the telephone in our absence. He will hear a message from me, and then can leave a message of his own after the beep.
M: [silent giggles of disbelief that a grown man is explaining the concept of an answering machine to me.]
WC: Here is the second telephone number [gives me next local number]. At this telephone number, none but a human shall answer.
M: [now trying desperately not to snarf my own saliva from laughing so hard] Ok, then, Mr. Weird Conversant, I'll give him the message that you called and your two phone numbers, and I'm sure he'll call you back when he returns.

I hang up. I howl with laughter, take several minutes to catch my breath, and tell my sisters what Mr. Weird Conversant told me. "None but a human shall answer" has become my personal catchphrase in the last week. I want to get it printed up on a t-shirt. I thought that way of speaking died out with, oh, the 19th century.

Wednesday, August 9, 2000 08:50 p.m.

New Project from Wes Anderson & Owen Wilson
Yay! The writers & director of the fantastic Rushmore and Bottle Rocket are re-teaming to make a new movie, called The Royal Tannenbaums. Sounds promising. Then again, if Anderson & Wilson were to write and direct a movie about the life of a mayfly, I'd be there opening night. Side note: Is it just me, or does Owen look really scary in that photo? Just as well, really, as I don't want any of you folks in the market for a Secret Celebrity Boyfriend to start thinking thoughts about him, 'cause he's taken, baby.
Wednesday, August 9, 2000 12:38 p.m.

Mick Harvey stuff
I wish my French were better; I could listen to Serge Gainsbourg in the original and hope to understand maybe half of his naughty brilliance. Thank goodness, then, for Mick Harvey and his two excellent albums -- Intoxicated Man and Pink Elephants -- of Gainsbourg songs translated into English. They rule. The above link is to an interview Harvey did around the time of Pink Elephants's release. He seems pretty annoyed by most of the questions, but it's interesting. Far more enlightening are these liner notes Harvey wrote himself for the release of Intoxicated Man.
Wednesday, August 9, 2000 12:34 p.m.

REM recording in Ireland
The boys from Athens are set to record a new album. I hope it's better than Up. I didn't love it much.
Wednesday, August 9, 2000 12:33 p.m.

The Buffy Cross and Stake
A must-have resource for any Buffy-phile. This is where Beth gets many of her weekly spoilers. And ever since I spent a good part of last weekend snuggled up on my cousins' couch watching the entire second half of this season's Buffy and Angel episodes, it's where I've been spending quite a bit of webtime.
Wednesday, August 9, 2000 12:30 p.m.

Brilliant Careers: John Waters
"His movies are far, far cries from cinematic works of art, but the best of them have as much kick as a Rogers and Astaire double feature. It's been a long, nauseating haul, but Waters, in true pioneer spirit, has made it as an American icon." Once you've read that, take the quiz.
Tuesday, August 8, 2000 01:05 p.m.

Hardboiled Fiction Slang Dictionary
I was looking for a dictionary of really old-fashioned slang, like the kind my grandmother uses (Oh, my stars and garters! Heavens to Murgatroyd!), but this will do for now. Plus, it could come in handy for any Chinatown or LA Confidential-themed parties I may want to throw.
Tuesday, August 8, 2000 01:04 p.m.

Wine Info
My pal the Saucy Folklorist & I went out for a delicious dinner last night and ordered wine. We lucked out with something that complimented our food perfectly, but realized that we knew jack about anything to do with wine, other than if it tastes good, we'll guzzle it down. So for all you self-educators out there, About.com's wine homepage is a good place to begin.
Tuesday, August 8, 2000 10:29 a.m.

Track Listing for new 6ths Album
Hyacinths and Thistles, the new album from the 6ths, will be out on September 5. Fred's got the lowdown on all the tracks and the vocalists. You know I'm counting down the days. Katherine Whalen (of Squirrel Nut Zippers fame)! Saint Etienne's Sarah Cracknell! Bob Mould!? Yay!
Tuesday, August 8, 2000 10:25 a.m.

Help! My Head's Expanding!
So Tom has dubbed me a Cultural Flaneur (yeah, I had to look it up, too) and Jackie has bestowed upon me the title of "girl for whom Secret Celebrity Boyfriends were invented." My head's getting a little heavy with all these laurels heaped on it. Can world recognition of my creative use of free time be far behind? (cue maniacal, self-effacing laughter)
Monday, August 7, 2000 04:32 p.m.

tiara presents joan collins
Who knew Joan Collins was such an interesting person? I'm hoping that if I link to her, Alice will update again soon.
Monday, August 7, 2000 04:30 p.m.

Oh Messy Furniture
I don't think I could love Andy Pressman any more than I do right now. I've thought that several times over the last year or so, but I think I've finally reached a plateau of anonymous crushdom now.
Monday, August 7, 2000 04:29 p.m.

Conversation with Francesca Lia Block
No discussion of LA is complete without a reference to Francesca Lia Block. Back in high school, when I was reading novels by South American magical realists that were, frankly, way over my head, I should have been reading Block's contributions to that genre: Weetzie Bat, Witch Baby, Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys, among others. I finally read them last year, and though I fell in love with Block's vision of family and love and art and music, I enjoy them far more in small doses. Something tells me I would have been a die-hard fan for life if I'd read them at 15. I'm always doing these things backwards.
Monday, August 7, 2000 11:10 a.m.

Googie Architecture
Mmmm, Googie. Swooping curves and sherbety colors. How is it that a style popularized in the early 1950s, primarily in California, is still the look of the future half a century later? I'm not complaining; just curious.
Monday, August 7, 2000 11:06 a.m.

Archive of Work
The folks at word.com have published a book of interviews about the work that all kind of people do. Several of these interviews have led to extended profiles on This American Life, and even the most mundane ones are fascinating.
Monday, August 7, 2000 11:05 a.m.

NME Poison concert review
I enjoy quite a bit of serious guilty pleasure-type music, but hair-metal has never been very exciting for me. So I guess I'm a bit surprised at Poison's rather successful reunion touring. I saw C.C. DeVille on a re-run of Rock N Roll Jeopardy! this weekend, and he was really frightening. Kind of de-fanged and muppetlike. It was very disturbing.
Monday, August 7, 2000 11:04 a.m.