A. and I spent at least ten minutes in the cereal aisle at Albertsons last night trying to decide what to get. In the end we had to choose our own, because we couldn’t agree. What is it about cereal shopping that turns us back into five-year-olds? Not cranky squabbling five-year-olds, but having been taken ...
One of those moments of weird cultural dislocation, or maybe co-location. We have a copy of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun in our bathroom — don’t ask, it’s just there. Flicking through it idly while, well, while contemplating a bowel movement, I read the following line in his own preface: And, ...
So much to write about. Kerry Conran’s (and by gum is it his) Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is the best fun you’re likely to have at the movies (and by gum is it ‘at the movies’) this year, if you go into it with the right expectations. It’s not great art, but ...
I think I’ve worked out what Los Angeles is for. What it does. It struck me the other day as I was driving to work from Santa Monica to East LA. Forget the motion picture capital stuff. That’s just a front. On Lincoln, in Santa Monica, I watched a girl test drive a new Vespa ...
It was probably nothing, she’s probably just fine, but she couldn’t have looked any more lost than she did while I was watching her wander up and down the street on Lincoln. The window at the diner booth I was sitting at might as well have been only one way, so clearly could I see ...
Found this card in a toilet cubicle at the Westside Pavilion. I think this one goes under ‘kink’, but who knows. It could be the estate of Roger Hargreaves is planning a Mr. Tickle film franchise.
The Two Cultures are both alive and well, thank you very much, as is the yawning chasm that exists between them for some people, most aptly illustrated by their pathetic attempts to reach across it. This piece by Philip Pullman (of His Dark Materials fame) in the Guardian is so lazy, clumsy, and, well, undergraduate, ...
A few years ago I was sitting by the pool at a friend’s house — actually her sister’s house, but that’s by the by. It was a hot, clear deserty day — a photo I took that day shows A. and the friend in the foreground, with a large cactus in the background. As we ...
Currently playing on iTunes is the new-ish Mull Historical Society album ‘This is Hope’. It’s every bit as baroque as ‘Loss’ and ‘Us’, every bit as giddily catchy in places and perversely dissonant in others. Colin Macintyre is one of those people who’s way too talented to ...
Once upon a time, and scarily not-so-long ago, I was lucky enough to work somewhere that also happened to be a big Internet hub in Britain, and which — because of that — was one of the first places to get the Mosaic web-browser. World-changing stuff, but it just seemed curious at first. Quirky and ...