nevermind that we're nearly the same age

My baby came home on Saturday, April 18, 2009. 

She is 29.5 inches tall and weighs—um, I have no idea, but she's light and speedy! 

[click to enlarge]

Isn't she a beauty?

clearly, i do not really know portuguese

I just like to pretend that I do.

Today it was brought to my attention that in my advertising a talk about a Brazilian film, I have been spelling the film's title in two different languages. It starts out in Portuguese just fine—Tropa de—but abruptly switches to French—Élite. 

Oops.

Incidentally, the title of the talk does mention Foucault. So maybe I was just channeling him.

For the record, I don't really know French, either. As with Portuguese, though, that doesn't always stop me from pretending that I do. 

And now that I'm talking about French, I just want to add: isn't Saint-Saëns such a perfect name for a French composer? It just sounds so French (this from the girl who only pretends that she speaks French), and with just a bit of imagination, the Saëns sounds something like song. Plus, he wrote good stuff. So whenever I see or hear the name Saint-Saëns and I proceed to hear in my head that jaunty, guttural French laugh (I don't know how to spell it, but maybe Vanessa does? You know what I mean, right? Think Ha-ha-ha, only rhyming with Saëns), it is a gesture of endearment, mon ami, and not of mocking.

fellowshipping in the 21st century, or, why i still don't go to relief society

In my inbox this morning:

Okay, okay, so I took a little itsy bit of photoshopetic license. But seriously, a form letter email? Yeah, that really makes me want to go next week.

It's too bad they bcc'd us on this. I'd like to know who the other apostates are so that we could get together for some remedial sunday school.

maybe pomegranate is passé by now

But this still caught my eye:

Pretty, eh? (Besides the resolution. Sorry. Cameraphone.)

It's really too bad I didn't decide to splurge on a bottle, because when I got to the checkout line the store's computers were down, and though I thought we were just going to wait a few minutes until they were back up, shortly thereafter the clerks started bagging groceries and sending us off, "whole paycheck" intact.

Of course, this happened on the day I got totally boring stuff like onions and potatoes and cheap generic cereal, the only day I didn't have a single excessive item in my basket. Not that I'm complaining. Just observing.

 

cello + macbook = awesome

You know how I obsess over podcasts?

Right. Well, lately I've become infatuated with Radiolab. I really don't want to kill its magic with an inferior description, so I will only say that it is acoustically self-conscious (in a good way) and always fascinating.

My purpose here is not so much to tout the wonders of Radiolab, though; rather, I mention it because it's where I heard this stunning music by Zoë Keating. She calls it "layered cello." Listen to the show here (sorry, I tried to embed the Flash player, but Blogger wouldn't have it).

And here's a cool video of the artist doing her thing:

Learn more about Zoë Keating and her music at her website.

when negative space is poetic

Sharpie-wielding cartoonist, writer, designer, and poetry revelator Austin Kleon has been on my radar for several months now. His style is to me one of raw vibrance, at times venturing into tidy chaos. His work conveys a sense of immediacy and of calm nonchalance, which together suggest that making art for this artist is as natural and essential as breathing. It reminds me that we are all artists with the capacity to create; sometimes it just takes a bit of extra effort to discover what one's inner artist wants to create, and what language it will use.

Look past the illusion of empty simplicity in Austin Kleon's drawings, and then among what appears to be clutter—but turns out to be mostly pure energy—you'll see that he's included exactly the right number of details. 

Take, for instance, this sketch of Andrew Bird's stage setup at an Austin City Limits taping last month. 

by Austin Kleon (Licensed under Creative Commons. image source)

Black lines on off-white paper. Stage rim. Speakers, amps, microphones. Drumset. Keyboard. Lighting equipment and a twirly-swirly backdrop. Yet amid the typical items, the merely structural and the exuberantly expressive penstrokes, you'll see two important things: the iconic tape-looping double-phonograph turntable (I don't really know what to call that thing but it screams Andrew Bird) and what's that? yes, the sock monkey tour companion. How can you not love that?

As a side project, the Austin-based artist (yes, that's right. kind of like if I lived in Davis) started carving poems from newspaper articles with a black Sharpie marker. His Newspaper Blackout Poems caught the eye of the press (there's something charmingly meta about that) and took off. I won't rattle off the list of media mentions here, but suffice it to say that they're big. Oh, and HarperCollins is publishing a book of them, slated for release early next year. 

You may know that April is National Poetry Month.

What you may not know is that April is also International Newspaper Blackout Poetry Month.

I finally got around to trying my hand at it. I foresee more experimenting (and maybe posting) in the future; for now, here are a couple of the initial results. They don't really make sense, and my Sharpie gave up the ghost halfway through the second blackout, so it ended up as a mixed media piece. Anyway, I hope that they inspire you, in the way that they make you say, 'Hey, I could do better than that.' And then you do.

If you want to see good Newspaper Blackout Poems, check out Austin Kleon's blog. He's posting a poem every day for the entire month of April. 

And don't be afraid to unleash a black marker on a page from your local paper. If you live near a certain private university at the foot of a certain mountain range in a certain western state that on a map appears to be about to chow down on the unsuspecting state immediately to the northeast, please, get a copy of the school paper and go to it. I don't know how you can pass up that potential on the page of Letters to the Editor. 

some really awesome things also have great parody potential...

...and vice versa.

Case in point:

all-natural watercolors

in progress:

drying:

ta-da:

colors:

Cruz de Malta yerba mate

Mighty Leaf organic Spring Jasmine green tea

black bean juice (water used for cooking them)