I’m going to New York in a couple of weeks! My friend R. and I have plans to see Beckett’s Happy Days at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, starring the magnificent Fiona Shaw. I haven’t been to New York in way too long. Very excited. Will post a review afterwards.
I’ve just started using Twitter. Check out the "Twitter updates" widget on the right-hand side of this page — and, if you’re using it too, feel free to tweet at me!
Does anyone else picture Paul Klee’s Twittering Machine every time they contemplate Twitter?
Hey, those of you who went to MLA this year, a query:
Did any of you go to
the "Literary Geospaces" panel? How was it? And who was it who was
talking about "memory mapping," as the Chronicle bloggers report?
I do rather wish I’d been there for the various Association
for Computing in the Humanities sessions, but I can’t say I deeply
regret spending my winter break seeing
most of my family and catching up on much-needed sleep. Maybe next year, when I haven’t just spent a month
working on library school projects. Right now I’m just glad my brain
got a rest and I didn’t have to use the word
"problematize." (Although my friend T. and I, catching up over the break, did start talking about "Notes on ‘Camp’" in
relation to the increasing ironization of certain parts of Baltimore.
Old habits die hard.)
But if any of you have entertaining MLA stories to share, spill!
Last week I brought home a
prodigiously large butternut squash from the Fair Food Farmstand. I
had in mind a recipe for squash in a spicy yogurt sauce from Bharti
Kirchner’s The Healthy Cuisine of India. So earlier this week I
de-skinned, de-seeded, and cubed the squash; I needed four cups of it
for the recipe, which turned out beautifully. (It’s quite simple: you
fry up some Bengali five-spice in a bit of oil with grated ginger, hot
pepper, and turmeric, throw in the squash, add some water and a little
salt, cover it and let it simmer for half an hour or so until it’s soft
but not too mushy; then you stir in plain yogurt and garam masala to
make the sauce. Great winter comfort food.) But I still had just over
half of the original Monster Squash. Into the refrigerator it went
while I considered what else to do.
More of the squash found its way into a pot of chicken with
root vegetables I was planning to make on New Year’s Day, but ended up
making yesterday night because all the stores were closed on New Year’s and I
couldn’t go get a bottle of white wine. The squash went very nicely
with the carrots and parsnips and garlic, and added an agreeable note
of sweetness. But most of the leftovers were still left over.
So I think there’s only one thing to do now: roast the
remainder of the Monster Squash until it’s soft and make a pie out of it. Anybody got a recipe?
Dear tourists,
I’m glad you’ve decided to come to Philadelphia. Really. I think it’s cool that you’re here instead of some of the more obviously touristy cities. And kudos to you for leaving the precincts of Independence Mall and the Liberty Bell to explore Reading Terminal Market; I’m quite fond of it, so I’m glad you decided to visit. And if I were you, I’d no doubt have a camera too.
However. You might want to bear in mind two things: one, that Reading Terminal Market, especially on a Saturday afternoon, is usually jammed with locals looking for dinner ingredients or a bite to eat; and, two, that smack in the middle of a crowded aisle is really not the best place for a photo op. Nor is it the best place to come to a dead stop and just stand there gazing about, oblivious to the less-enthralled people trying to squeeze past you. (Oh, and the same applies, with only slightly less urgency, to busy sidewalks.)
Thank you, enjoy your visit, and have a nice day.
[All right, I feel better now. In other news, I plan on ringing in the new year by making a favorite recipe (chicken braised in a pot with root vegetables and lots and lots of garlic), assuming I can fight my way through the crowds at the market — and by watching the Mummers’ Parade, assuming I can drag my lazy self down to Center City before 9 in the morning. If not, I might be watching it on TV while cleaning the apartment instead.
Happy New Year, everyone!]
In a little over six months, cross fingers and knock on wood, I’ll be finished library school and have another master’s degree to my name. And, since the average job search takes about six months, I’m kicking off my post-MSLIS job search in earnest with the new year. I’ve put together an online portfolio, I’ll be asking for resume advice and doing a bit of networking at ALA Midwinter (good thing it’s in Philly this year; no travel or hotel reservations required), and I’m armed with an ever-growing list of areas where I have library work experience. So far I’m cautiously optimistic, as far as I can be without triggering superstitious fears of jinxing the process.
Wherever I end up for my next job, I want it to be somewhere where I can stay for a while. Ever since I decided on librarianship as my career path, I’ve been planning out my life in one- or two-year increments: a year at UVa that became two years, then a year at Swarthmore that became two. It’s been a very good three and a half years in terms of gaining experience and meeting people and getting to know my new profession from the inside. But it’s also meant that I haven’t felt like making any long-range plans that would require my being in the same place for longer than a year or two. Which is an odd disconnected feeling, and I sometimes worry it’s becoming a habit.
So my New Year’s resolution (or one of them, anyway) is to start breaking out of the habit of thinking "but I won’t be around long enough for that," and to start thinking of ways I’d like to settle, once the future becomes a little clearer.
…And who are we to deny it in here?
Or, in other words, Sweeney Todd was fantastic. I had my doubts about the casting of Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett, but the waifish quality she brings to the role really works, even though I had Angela Lansbury in my head as the ur-Mrs. Lovett. Alan Rickman is so deliciously evil as Judge Turpin that I almost didn’t want him to get killed off. And Johnny Depp somehow made me not care that he can’t really sing, which takes some doing, as you can probably imagine.
Also, I keep wanting to start singing "These are probably the WORST pies… in LONdon…" at random intervals. Actually, I’d forgotten how many of the songs have high earworm potential — be forewarned. But don’t miss it — unless you’re squeamish about cinematic gore and/or cannibalism, in which case you might want to avoid the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
My winter break starts tomorrow. W00t! I’m looking forward to leisure reading, sleeping late, making headway on my sweater-in-progress, prodding tentatively at the poetry-and-spatiality project, and getting in all the moviegoing I missed out on during this insanely busy fall. In particular:
- Sweeney Todd, because I’d want to see it no matter who was in it, and there’s something weirdly fascinating about the thought of Johnny Depp as the Demon Barber of Fleet Street*
- There Will Be Blood, because Paul Thomas Anderson is on my Directors to Watch No Matter What list, and I heard such an ecstatic review of it on the radio that my expectations are now all built up
- I Am Legend, because "The World Without Us with zombies" is a premise I can’t resist
- and I may try to catch I’m Not There, because I have a feeling I won’t want to miss Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan
Alas, I’ve heard so many distressing things about The Golden Compass, mostly from people who know and love the books, that I’ll probably give it a miss. This would be a good time to reread the books instead.
What are you going to see over the holidays, Reader?
* Best line from Anthony Lane’s review in the New Yorker, in reference to Johnny Depp’s white-streaked shock of hair: "If you had sat Susan Sontag down and broken the news that not everyone in New York reads Hegel, you would have got the same effect."
Final project status: Four down, none to go. Fall quarter at Drexel is officially done. Yay!
A weekend of hosting, cooking, shopping for relatives, and general decompression awaits. Catch you all later.
I’ve blogged before about Sandow Birk’s modernized graphic-novelesque version of Dante’s Inferno. Now (via if:book) I’ve just discovered that it’s become a movie — an animated movie, with the animation done by moving hand-drawn paper puppets around in front of a camera. If that sounds like a low-budget nightmare, just watch the trailer. I can’t wait to see it, if it ever reaches the theaters or comes to DVD.
That same if:book post also points to Sandow Birk’s web site, where you can view a gallery of his work, much of which riffs on various Baroque, 18th-, and 19th-century artists but transfers the poses and lighting to a violence-plagued L.A.: The Apprehension of Rodney King after Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith, a Caravaggio-inspired painting of a freeway collapse, a Hogarthian Rake’s Progress series. Suddenly I want to go back and read Mieke Bal’s Quoting Caravaggio.
