Thursday, December 31, 2009

Endings

and Emily

The Nonce Things Fall Apart mp3
Quincy Jones
End Title mp3 (from The Hot Rock ost)
AA Bondy
How Will You Meet Your End mp3

Fiery Furnaces
The End Is Near mp3

The English Beat
End of the Party mp3

Vivian Girls
The End mp3

Sons & Daughters
Start to End mp3

The Sundays
Here's Where the Story Ends mp3

Steve Fisk & Ben Gibbard
About A Son End Credits mp3

The Beginning of the End
Sleep On Dream On mp3

Your Weekly Mr. Littlejeans

Jeans loves the holidays because there are always a lot of new empty boxes around the house.

Brilliance, Beauty, Vision

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One of my Christmas presents this year from Strath was Antonioni's The Passenger on DVD. I'm so excited to watch it again - it is such a beautiful film. We saw it on the big screen at BAM in 2006, right before we went to southern Spain. It was the perfect prelude to our own getaway. (Also: Maria Schneider – so chic!)

Image of the Day

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[Between Pullman WA and Moscow ID]

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Image of the Day

. The road back from Idaho yesterday – forcing the panorama function on my new camera to do stuff it doesn't know how to do. (Photo by Emily)

Do You Remember

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NPR has a great interactive feature on their website right now remembering musicians who died this year including, among others, Estelle Bennett (pictured above at far right) of the Ronettes, and Joe Cuba, the king of Latin Boogaloo, pictured below.

I also really enjoyed a story I heard on NPR in the car yesterday, driving back from Idaho, about a man in Monroe GA who has been clipping obituaries from the newspaper and pasting them into scrapbooks for over 50 years. They haven't posted the audio yet but you can click here for the story and hopefully they'll post it soon.

Friday, December 25, 2009

Image of the Day

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Photography by Kyle Johnson, from a new series of portraits of residents at the Morrison Hotel in Pioneer Square, Seattle. Click here for more images and info.

Your Weekly Mr. Littlejeans

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Inez: "What the hell is Christmas?!"
Jeans: "More food for everyone, I says."

Records I Own Only For the Cover

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Christmas edition, what. I love the color circles over the black and white photo, and the type is kind of festive too. The music is played solo by the "bell master of Princeton University." Could use some drums or mushrooms.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Image of the Day

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Noted without comment

Switch It On

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When he's off duty, Santa is a freaky moog weirdo freak. Don't look into his eyes.
Sy Mann Tijuana Christmas mp3
Sy Mann Jingle Bells mp3

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Move over, Bacon - Here Comes Something Leaner

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This past summer, my parents were adopted by a kitten, Gus. (Her name is short for Augusta, which references the month she made her appearance – my mom is one for clever names.) Gus just showed up out of nowhere at the cabin one day when my parents were having a beer on the porch, all beat up like she'd been in scrape with some other animal (cat? dog? coyote?). She's all healed up now and has become the Cabin Cat.



Gus clearly knows how to earn her keep: in her first couple of weeks she killed one mouse and a chipmunk (eating all of the latter and leaving only the tail behind to demonstrate her prowess to ol' Art and Toni). She's as cute in person as in the photos – super sweet and affectionate (as long as you're not a rodent, that is), and with a little meow that sounds more like a squeak or a chirp than something a cat should say. She likes to be scratched on the belly and suffers attention in just about every form.



Anyway, my parents attempted to find Gus's original owner with no success, and so I expect that catching up with her will become an enjoyable part of our future visits to Idaho. (Don't worry, Jeans, you're still top cat here at Pacific Standard...but we all have to put up with a little ribbing from time to time, don't we?)
...

Related – A few photos from the rest of the September trip to Idaho (it feels like a lifetime ago):


The weather was beautiful, as it often is there in the early fall.




Some deer came to enjoy the apples that had fallen from the tree 
near the cabin. You can't really see it, 
but one of them was starting to get antlers.


A few fall colors were starting to appear...



...mostly, though, everything was muted by that early fall haze. 
There is something really peaceful to me about 
the washed-out colors that time of year.


Looking toward the pond from the living room...


...and looking back.


The view out the back bedroom window toward the Old Forest.


The old farmhouse looks like a very small part of the new. 





Some of the fall harvest: tomatoes, onions, and apples.
 


Headed west toward home.