Friday Unrelated Information

1. I didn’t mean to sound as if I was complaining about the ride on a private jet yesterday; the booties just struck me as funny. (To be clear, I was complaining about Unprofessional Dude.) Maybe it was a “the rich aren’t different from you and me” moment.

2. Another baby at the alpaca ranch:

3. That’s all I have. I’m dragging today.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Why is Dick Cheney still talking? Why are there news articles about how he’s still talking? Please stop talking now, Dick.

2. The Writer’s Almanac tells me it’s the birthday of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who hated writing Sherlock Holmes stories:
“To get out of writing Holmes tales, he asked Strandfor higher and higher prices for his stories, ridiculously high, hoping they would turn him down. But they went ahead and paid him anything he asked.”

3. Finally, Lego sets that adults can leave out without feeling silly: Frank Lloyd Wright models! Read more here.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. How cool are these Blue Note album covers from the 60’s? Even the names of the albums are cool:


You can see a lot more here on what looks to be a Japanese site.

2. Seriously, I can’t take the coolness. If anyone browsing in a thrift store finds any old jazz albums, I plan to buy a turntable someday. Hint.

3. I stumbled across an essay on perfume that does as good a job as anything can describing a smell, in the purplest prose imaginable. Which is a good thing, because it gives us paragraphs like this:
“The best way to describe Bigarade is to say, first, that it is a vast smell. And second, that it smells like a human being in the summer in a complex weather system; whoever this person is, we can smell them, they’re showered but they have a smell all the same, and the lovely, intricate smells of summer are all around and clinging to their skin, and also it seems to have just rained because there’s the scent of rainwater on pavement and perhaps a bit of ozone, plus some flower petals and grass that got washed into the puddle they’re stepping in. “

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Happy May Day to everyone enjoying an eight-hour work day today. International Workers Day “is the commemoration of the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago in 1886, when Chicago police fired on workers during a general strike for the eight hour day” (although someone did throw a bomb at the police first, apparently. But still.).

2. If I were ever going to knit anything for my brother, this would be it:
I actually think these are machine-knit anyway, but check them out on the collector’s Flickr page of “promotional knit beer sweaters from the 70s and 80s.”

3. And more music to finish the week–this is a blast from my past that I suddenly wanted to listen to, and then I was 15 again and riding around with my friend in the summer, going to malls.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. This article in the NY Times made me smile: A 67-year-old trying to set a new land speed record essentially bought a JET and put wheels on it. He’ll be the driver when they try to set the record–800 mph.

2. Did you know Audrey Tatou (of Amelie) is starring as Coco Chanel in a new French movie? I will have to see that. For now, you can see the trailer here–with subtitles provided by a high-school student of French. (The official English trailer isn’t out yet.)

3. Here is Toby in a bag. Just because.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. I’ve been checking out Nerd Boyfriend, “a shopping guide and style blog for the fashionably nerdy male.” I mostly like it for the old pictures. And I also like nerds. And Fasuto Coppi’s sweater on today’s post.

2. Here’s an essay on the case for memorizing poems, which included this quote: “If one is delayed in a bus terminal, or sitting in a foxhole, it’s wonderful to have an inner anthology to say over, yet again, in one’s mind.” Except I don’t think the foxhole argument will mean anything to the youth of today–not really making a case there, author.

3. It’s the birthday of Isak Dineson, aka Karen Blixen, who wrote Out of Africa, the opening of which is the best opening of any book ever, in my opinion.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Sorry I didn’t post yesterday–the internet was down at the apartment and I was busy at work (!), talking to clients (!!) and being creative (!!!). (Seriously, I would have liked this job just for the paycheck. But it’s actually really fun!)

2. Kottke.org linked to the origin of “steal my thunder” this week:
In 1704, playright John Dennis invented a new method of producing the sound of thunder during a play. Dennis’ play was unsuccessful, but his thunder technique was soon borrowed by another production, leading Dennis to exclaim:

Damn them! They will not let my play run, but they steal my thunder.

3. Look, it’s the alpaca Easter bunny!
My Easter plans include listening to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion tonight. I have a friend who always listens to Parsifal on Good Friday for the “Good Friday Music” in it, but it’s Bach for me.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Did you know that you can watch all of the Carl Sagan Cosmos series online for free? I discovered it on Hulu while searching for episodes of The A-Team (also available online).

2. Did you know the actor who played the leader of the A-Team, “Hannibal” Smith, was George Peppard, aka the male lead in Breakfast at Tiffany’s? I missed these things in 1985.

3. Behold, via Married to the Sea: