kerplink, kerplank, kerplunk

skipping town

At last at last at last. Bags & boxes are packed, laundry is clean, papers are in order. I'm off to the land of maple on Tuesday, my dears! When next I write, I'm sure I'll be, um, exactly the same, actually. I'm not even changing time zones. But maybe I'll have some insights into being a foreign student. I keep having to remind myself that I am one. I'm sure it'll be great. Once I get through immigration.
Monday, September 4, 2000 03:57 p.m.

TMBG Official Site
This is uniformly charming & amusing. The animation is strongly reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's opening credits for the first few seasons of Monty Python, even though it features FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, & Abraham Lincoln.

If you click on the TMBG News section, you can listen to the song they recorded for the second Austin Powers movie, "Dr. Evil". This site is packed with handy information, and you can sign up for free mp3s here, too!
Monday, September 4, 2000 03:54 p.m.

TMBG on This American Life
I love and adore This American Life. Sometimes it's a little precious, but more often than not, Ira Glass & Co. dig up the most interesting stories I'm likely to hear all week. I also like that their little documentaries are radio-based. I love TV and all, but I enjoy the old format being used in new & creative ways. And now you can listen to this fine radio show on your computer. No, the irony isn't lost on me.

Where was I? Oh, They Might Be Giants. John Flansburgh & John Linnell have been running their Dial-A-Song (718.387.6962) -- motto: "Free When You Call From Work" -- service since the early 1980s. For the price of a regular call to Brooklyn, you get to hear new TMBG material, which is then changed around and frequently ends up on their LPs & live shows. I really like the democratic, power to the people, right-on nature of Dial-A-Song, and on more than one occasion, brightened my otherwise cheerless workday by calling in for a little auditory pick-me-up.
Monday, September 4, 2000 03:37 p.m.

I Only Have Eyes For You Recap at MBTV
You knew I wasn't going to finish a flamingo-themed set of entries without making reference to one of the classic Buffy episodes, right? See, the classic doo-wop group the Flamingos sing the classic song "I Only Have Eyes For You". (It's all very classic.) In fact, I'm listening to that song on repeat right now, swooning over all the shoo-wop shoo-wops. Mmmm.
Saturday, September 2, 2000 02:02 p.m.

Pink Flamingos
I blame John Waters. The Usual Gang of Ne'er Do Wells & I went to see his latest opus, Cecil B. DeMented last night, and now I've got Waters on the Brain. Thank you very much folks, I'll be here all week! Two sets every night!

Ahem.

The John Waters classic of bad taste (it's the one where Divine eats dog poo) was restored and re-released for its 25 anniversary in 1997.
Saturday, September 2, 2000 01:58 p.m.

The Classic Pair from Archie McPhee
No lawn is complete without these, especially after the full yard treatment featured in the link below. Once you've gone flamingo, you don't go back.
Saturday, September 2, 2000 01:57 p.m.

Flamingos By The Yard
It's flamingo day here at kerplink, for reasons that will be explained later. The folks at the Eastern Onion proclaim that "in the middle of the night our sneaky staff will fill the victim's yard with up to fifty plastic pink flamingos and a six foot banner stating the occasion." If anyone wanted to play that prank on me, say for a birthday, or something, I wouldn't get upset. I might even invite the pranksters over for cake & frosty beverages & drunken photo-taking amongst the pink birds. Not that anyone's dropping hints 10 months in advance, or anything.
Saturday, September 2, 2000 01:54 p.m.

postponed!

Moving, that is. I totally flaked on the packing thing, and so I'm going on Tuesday. Just as well, really. This will give me some good time to explore Toronto before orientation & classes, but not so much that I'll get bored and/or freak out. I'll try to make up for the slackjob of updating from this week by updating this weekend.
Friday, September 1, 2000 04:20 p.m.

Maddona & Guy May Wed
I can't say that Ciccone-Ritchie nuptials would surprise me: it's clear that Madonna intends to stick with Guy for a while. She gave their son his surname (Lourdes' is Ciccone), and it's a very eligible match for them both. His star is rising, and can only be brightened by his association with the most famous woman in the world. And he's young (and, one assumes, inexperienced) enough not to be a threat to Madonna's colossal ego. Don't get me wrong - I love Madonna as much as the next pop cult addict, but there's no denying that she could never be described as humble. Which is, of course, part of her immense charm. Anyway, while the cynic in me whispers that they regard one another as reciprocal retirement packages, the romantic within thinks it's lovely.
Friday, September 1, 2000 04:05 p.m.

Loobylu Shopper
My mad design crush on loobylu continues. I want to hire her to be my personal shopper. So many cute things, so few dollars. Sigh.
Friday, September 1, 2000 04:02 p.m.

Catskills Comeback
The many summer resorts of the Catskills in upstate-ish New York are famous for being the prime summer vacation destinations of East Coast Jews from the 1940s through the 1960s. They're frequently derided among Jews in my generation (and even my parents') as a non-stop cheesefest of cliched jokes and ground zero for gossipy yentas. To be sure, that schmaltzy stereotype exists for a reason, but the Catskills are also a repository of collective memory for several generations of Jews, as part of the process of assimilation into American culture.

And now there seems to be a groundswell of interest in studying the literature and films of the Catskills from an academic perspective. This New York Times article is all about that, and includes a great reading & movie-watching list, if this kind of thing floats your boat.
Thursday, August 31, 2000 03:17 p.m.

Popcorn's Scoop on Snatch
Is the American constitution so weak (or conversely, are our minds placed so firmly in the gutter) that a film title has to be changed to Snatch'd so that we don't automatically assume it's a porno, or a naughty gynecological how-to movie? Yeesh.

Anyway, Popcorn has a big Guy Ritchie extravaganza up this week, including an interview w/the man himself, a review, and a bunch of other goodies for your movie-anticipating pleasure.
Thursday, August 31, 2000 03:15 p.m.

Mystery Movie: Neat & Tidy
Ok. Cast your minds back to 1988 or so. Fox broadcast an Australian movie called Neat and Tidy, featuring a pair of lovers named Nick Neat and Tina Tidy. They had to traverse lots of desert, and wackiness ensued. Does anyone at all remember seeing this movie, either in theaters or on video?

IMDB has an entry under Neat and Tidy, but it's some movie with an alternate title of Adventures Beyond Belief, which sounds promising, until I see that one of the lead actors in it is Edie Adams, who starred in in It's a Mad Mad Mad World AND one of the Happy Hooker franchises. And, inexplicably, played "himself" in the Biography episode on Ernie Kovacs. And somehow, I don't remember Gomez Addams being in this movie, and yet IMDB says he was.

Am I thinking of a completely different movie? Readers, you're knowledgeable folks. Please help me with this one. It's dogged me for years, and will continue to do so until this mysterious bit of trivia is resolved.
Thursday, August 31, 2000 03:10 p.m.

Eloise!
How much do I love Eloise? If I could combine the perfect etiquette of Miss Manners with the wild antics of Eloise (not to be confused with Heloise), I would probably drive everyone around me completely mad, but it would be great fun.

This site is very well organized, and is a font of information about Kay Thompson, the author of the Eloise books (be sure to check out the archived articles, dating from the 1950s through the 1990s on Miss Thompson - she was quite a lady, too), and Hilary Knight, their illustrator.

The photos from the Pink and Black Ball, thrown in 1999 by Simon and Schuster, are priceless, as is the shot of the wonderful and highly coveted (by me, anyway) hatbox of party favors from that evening's festivities.
Tuesday, August 29, 2000 10:35 a.m.

Miss Manners
Though my behavior is all too often very incorrect, I try to glean some usable rules of etiquette from Miss Manners' twice-weekly column in The Washington Post. They're sure to come in handy in the customs lines at the airport.
Tuesday, August 29, 2000 10:29 a.m.

Eleanor of Aquitaine
I'm doing an all heroes set of entries today. I plan to draw strength from them as I pack and try not to let my pre-move angst get the better of me.

First up, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Queen of France & England, Duchess in her own right, mother of two Kings of England, founder of hospitals, raiser of hell. What a dame. My first exposure to Eleanor was through a fantastic book by E.L. Konigsberg, A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver, and that's a great place to begin if you like to start learning history through kid's books. If you're feeling more scholarly, try this annotated bibliography.
Tuesday, August 29, 2000 10:24 a.m.

Fantastic Weekend & Total Frenzy of Packing

As expected, my weekend with the marvelous Hellsbelle and her charming consort, BF, was a couple of days extremely well spent. I was introduced to the grand tradition of waffle parties and Mr. Bartley's (home of the greatest burgers, ever). We saw Bring it On, which is my new favorite movie of the summer. My regression into all things girly is now complete.

We also watched Heavy Metal Parking Lot and a car wreck of a video compilation featuring outtakes and behavioral oddities captured for posterity at Long Island Bar & Bat Mitzvahs and Weddings. I want to market the weddings section of this video as a primer on why elopement is a very good idea.

And now for the sad [well, for me anyway] news: I am getting ready to move to Toronto on Friday and I haven't packed a thing yet. To put it mildly, I'm in something of a tizzy. All of which is to say that updates will be sporadic at best for the next week or so. The good news is that once I'm ensconced in my swanky graduate housing, I'll be able to update more often than you'd probably like, at least until classes start on the 11th.

I'll try to get something nifty up here later in the day.
Monday, August 28, 2000 11:34 a.m.