Wednesday, September 16

Sweet Art


Ice cream. Two words which when they come together easily bring a smile. As summer draws to a close, we'll be less likely to indulge in this frozen treat so Apartment Therapy has provided a collection of ice cream art for us to enjoy. Some New York moms, however, may want no visible reminder of this most glorious of sugary treats.

Thursday, September 10

Pass the Strawberry Yogurt, Please

In the spirit of K’Barbic’s last post, I would like to share a story. One day on the Internet, I found this picture and tweeted it. What is it of, you ask? A capybara crossing sign. (For those who don’t know, the capybara is a true Rodent Of Unusual Size—in fact, the largest species of rodent in the world.) If you do not know what a ROUS is, then it's time for you to watch The Princess Bride and learn about this most joyous acronym. (But do not worry, capybaras are much cuter and tamer than the bloodthirsty ROUS in The Princess Bride.) They also look wise, like Barack Obama in front of a teleprompter.

A few hours after I tweeted the picture, several people—no one I knew or followed—decided to re-tweet me. One went by the name “CaplinROUS.” I visited this person’s page only to find that it was not a person’s, but a capybara’s—a pet capybara’s. Who would welcome and pamper a massive rodent? A warm family in Austin, Texas, apparently. They keep this blog and tweet for him several times a day, often in response to other rodents. Some examples:
Strawberry yogurt for breakfast then my usual soak in the tub. Big day today. Book reading/capybara encounter at Kyle Library at 3 pm!

@MuffinGuineaPig Yes, I got treats after toenail trimming but it still wasn't worth it. I get treats all the time anyway.
I wonder what Aesop would think of this talking animal. ...

A Penny for Your Tweets

Texting can be an ill wind that brings no good. If you give some effort to texting in its various forms (IM, Twitter, Gchat, etc.), however, it can become a true art, or at least poetic verse. Several months ago, I opened a Twitter account upon the suggestion of Keastland. I take great enjoyment in crafting my Gchat status messages, and she, therefore, proclaimed it to be the perfect medium for my "stream of consciousness."

I opened an account. Began following and being followed. I tweeted a grand total of six times, and haven't let out a tweet since. You may assume by this pattern that I developed some sense of literary conscience believing tweeting to be somehow beneath me. On the contrary, I liken my response to a kind of stage fright. When placed upon the Twitter stage, I immediately felt a weight upon my creativity. It seemed that every 140-character (or less) post must contain an impressive measure of wit, and I did not possess the perseverance to express my thoughts to the world 140 characters at a time.

Returning to the original question NPR poses in considering new technology as a forum for poetry, "If Shakespeare were alive today, would'st he not Tweet?" Looking for the answer, I turned to Twitter in search of "William Shakespeare". (To revisit Twitter did require the wracking of my brain to remember the password to my neglected account.) While there were two screens-worth of William Shakespeares (fewer though from Stratford-Upon-Avon), I chose to follow the crowd and look at the profiles of the most popular. As you might expect, there were ample re-creations of famous lines from well-known plays, applying Shakespearean wit and wisdom to events and news stories. Perhaps, I did not search enough, but I failed to find any newly inspired creations in the meter of the Bard. With the number of William Shakespeares on Twitter today, the better question might be, If Shakespeare were alive and tweeting, would we be able to tell him apart from his impersonators?

Saturday, September 5

What Chicken and World War II Share

In the past few months I've been watching a lot of movies from the '40s, several of them pertaining to World War II, whose outbreak occurred precisely 70 years ago this Sept 1. If you haven't already, do read Auden's famous poem on the topic, "September 1, 1939." The pic to the left is of him reciting it on the air waves.

The most recent movie to make its entrance into the WWII fold is Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. I'm yet to see it, but Terry Teachout has a fine WSJ article on it and the enduring appeal of movies set in that war. He writes, "The Second World War is to filmmakers what chicken is to chefs, a canvas on which every imaginable kind of picture can be painted."

More poignantly, he cooks up this idea:
America has become a more contentious country in recent years, and I can't think of any postwar historical event, not even 9/11, about which most of us now share a true consensus view. ... Most Americans, no matter how they feel about waterboarding, gay marriage or health-care reform, pine in their secret hearts for a lost world in which everyone can agree on at least one thing: Nazis are no damn good.
A film he doesn't lace into his article, for the obvious reasons that it really isn't about the nitty gritty of war and it really wasn't all that popular when released in 1946, is A Matter of Life and Death, or as it was known in the U.S. Stairway to Heaven. It's one of the best from The Archers, the British team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who co-wrote, co-produced, and co-directed their films. Granted, AMOLAD isn't everyone's fare, but if you have a soft spot for whimsy and love in the time of war, add it to your Netflix queue. The opening of the movie to tease you is here.

Friday, September 4

Look at My Book!

Why not embellish your life by using books as accessories?

Here I am posing with an amusing book (which takes itself a bit too seriously) by James Lipton—yes that Lipton, the one who hosted Inside the Actor’s Studio. It’s titled An Exhaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition, More Than 1,000 Terms. Lipton considers it his “letter to the world.” Read it to learn what to call groups of various things, from aardvarks to yuppies. (There are no entries under “z.”) And yes, some of the collective nouns are real while others are fashioned by Lipton.

Now that I'm in the know, I suppose I'll have to call my mug decorated with a parade of eight identical partridges my “covey of partridges.” Or not.

Super Gunn

A comic book hero TBATC can get behind. Not only is Project Runway finally back featuring one of our favorite reality show hosts, but now Tim Gunn is being immortalized as a fashion super hero. "With great power comes great responsibility"; therefore, we fully support Tim and his quest to rid the world of Crocs.

Thursday, September 3

Our Lady of the Peafowl

I haven’t yet made a pilgrimage to Flannery O’Connor’s home Andalusia, but now I’m tempted more than ever to use my frequent flier miles on a plane straight to Savannah. Why? Because the peafowl have returned. Not Flannery’s flock, the last of which died in the late '80s, but three new ones. They even have a posh aviary to keep them safe from predators. Read the whole story here.

O’Connor famously raised her peafowl with swans, chickens, pheasants, quail, turkeys, geese, mallards, and Japanese and Polish bantams at Andalusia starting in 1952. In short, she liked winged things. But, as she wrote in the September 1961 issue of Holiday, she “felt a lack” until bringing peafowl into her fold. She says she has “no short or reasonable answer” for her fascination with them. “My frenzy said: I want so many of them that every time I go out the door I’ll run into one.”

Peafowl turn up in her letters and stories frequently. In one letter she notes a peacock who snatched visitors’ cigarettes and chewed them up. Apparently, it should have lived on a tobacco plantation. And in her story “The Displaced Person,” the priest, looking upon a peacock’s spread tail, utters, “Christ will come like that.” And in “King of the Birds,” she writes:
When it suits him, the peacock will face you. Then you will see in a green-bronze arch around him a galaxy of gazing haloed suns. This is the moment when most people are silent. … I have never known a strutting peacock to budge a fraction of an inch for a truck or tractor or automobile. It is up to the vehicle to get out of the way.
In fact, O’Connor had a peacock named “Limpy.” It had only one foot, the left, for the right had been lobbed off by a mowing machine.

To Helvetica with It All

The Guardian's Simon Garfield reminds us why font matters, "Used well, type design defines mood, and how we think about everything we see."