new things I love/hate

Love

Goodreads
Trader Joe's Reduced Fat Chinese Chicken Salad
Pej Vahdat (the episode of Bones where he comes clean about his background was great)


Hate

the Leeds mattress and FOX/Adam West commercials (obnoxious? you betcha)
the City of LA (when I pay you what I owe you on time, how about you not F up my credit score?)

smile now, mama

every time...

I "follow" someone on Twitter, I get that song from Sister Act stuck in my head. Blogging is, as such, a safer "art" form.

Lately, in part as a form of procrastinating not working on things I should be working on, I've been outlining and writing a "children's" novel, which, at the end of the day, may be more or less YA. Or not at all. But there are volcanoes and garbage collectors and astronomy programs gone to hell, so it's a fun time.

I'm in the middle of two short story collections written by women, and they're fantastic. I'm not, generally, a serious fan of short stories, but these are quite good, though in entirely different ways.

I know people hate Amazon for a lot of excellent reasons, but buying music from them is a pleasure and, by and large, far cheaper than buying music from the iTunes store. That 30 cents means something to me, okay?

I don't care if raw cookie dough will kill me. I'm eating it anyway.

geeky Friday night in Hollywood

So finally went to Umami Burger in Hollywood tonight with my roommate. Had the truffle burger, Mexican coke, and a Cake Monkey cakewich (and shared fries). All delish, though I don't feel a driving need to ever go back.

Then we went to the All Space Considered lecture at the Griffith Observatory. Totally fascinating and informative. The main speaker was Dr. Don Lincoln, an expert on the LHC, who just wrote a book about it called The Quantum Frontier--very articulate and just as patient with the physics lunkheads in the crowd as with the know-it-all douches sitting next to me. The lecture curators were also really well-spoken and talked us through a recent ARES test launch and the "ribbon" at the edge of the solar system. Also, there was an almost painfully cute baby in the crowd.

And now I leave you with this amazing rap video about everything going on at CERN. As the French would say, incroyable.

CERN Rap from Will Barras on Vimeo.

my celebrity playlist

When I'm famous, this may be what I put on iTunes.

Fiona Apple's Across the Universe
The Temptations' Ain't Too Proud to Beg
Nancy Sinatra's Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)
Peter Gabriel's The Book of Love
Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto's Desafinado
The Beach Boys' Wouldn't It Be Nice
My Morning Jacket's Rocket Man
Alice Russell's Hurry on Now
Echo and the Bunnymen's The Killing Moon
The Psychedelic Furs' Love My Way
Remy Zero's Over the Rails & Hollywood High
The Pipettes' Pull Shapes
Duke Ellington's Ocht O'Clock Rock
Magnetic Fields' Strange Powers
Harry Nilsson's Without You
The Pretenders' 2000 Miles
K-OS's The Rain

I know, a lot of covers.

'sup?

Poor little, neglected blog. I wish I had something to write on you, but I have nothing to share except that I joined a gym last night. Peer pressure, I salute you.

Oh, and my sister came, and I went to Universal Studios for the first time, and we ate at Ketchup, which is easily the best place I've dined at since coming to LA, and Nickelodeon put the fear of God in me but also gave me a yo-yo, and it got crazy windy a few days ago, and so on and so forth.

So, now I'm gonna go do some errands instead of running the Hollywood Bowl, WHICH I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL MAKE MYSELF DO THIS YEAR, PROBABLY.

Three Rivers review, and a new idea

I'm pretty easy on Three Rivers, mindful that it might be just the thing for people not of my generation.

So I have a brilliant idea. I am going to attempt to work my way through the Booker winners. I've read a handful of the more recent winners, though I never finished Possession, but I haven't read anything before then. First up, 1969's PH Newby's Something to Answer For. It might be interesting to do it by year--stack up the Booker winner v. the National Book Award or Pulitzer Prize winner from the U.S. Any thoughts? 1969 had House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (Pulitzer) and Steps by Jerry Kosinski.

I am almost immediately daunted.