Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Vogue Hommes


Selected editorial pages from several different editions of Vogue Hommes, the Japanese version predominating.











Monday, January 30, 2012

Birthday Music

The birthday mix-CD was presented a little early this year, so I started early trying to figure out what music is on it. It annually amuses my daughter to see how many I will guess right or wrong.


1.
Renee & Jeremy
C'mon
from C'mon


2.
Gillian Welch
Silver Dagger
from The Harrow & The Harvest


3.
Muppet Quartet
Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit
from The Muppet Movie Soundtrack


4.
Train
Hey Soul Sister
from Save Me, San Francisco


5.
Beth Ditto
I Wrote the Book
from Beth Ditto EP


6.
Renee & Jeremy
It's a Big World
from It's a Big World


7.
Journey
Lights


8.
Peter Gabriel
Down to Earth
from Wall-e Soundtrack


9.
Jack White
Love Is Blindness
from U2's Achtung Baby Covered


10.
Renee & Jeremy
Miracle
from It's a Big World


11.
Low
When I Go Deaf
from The Great Destroyer


12.
She & Him
Home
from Volume Two


13.
Janelle Monae
Oh, Maker
from ArchAndroid


14.
Renee & Jeremy
It Makes You Feel Good
from C'mon


15.
Amazing Grace
a bluegrass singing duo, and I am not going to try to figure out who because the same thing happened last year, and I found out then that it is impossible to track down some unknown voice singing Amazing Grace because every person who ever sang into a microphone has recorded it


16.
Low
Try To Sleep
from C'mon (a different C'mon, please note, from the Renee & Jeremy C'mon)


17.
Renee & Jeremy
Rely
from C'mon


18.
Bonnie Raitt/John Prine
Angel From Montgomery


19.
Renee & Jeremy
Night Mantra
from It's a Big World

Cast in Concrete


One of a pair of ornamental planters. They flank the doorway of an apartment building near Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill in San Francisco, so I suppose they can be taken for a fair expression of upper-class taste in 21st century America. A big-headed doggie and a big-headed cat confront one another with friendly apprehensiveness. At some point in the past they were uniformly whitewashed, causing sculptural details effectively to be emphasized by airborne street grime. A semi-concealed arrangement of steel wires seemingly secures the object to the marble slab on which it rests, but exactly how this works is not easy for the potential vandal to make out.

Sunday, January 29, 2012

New to Valentines



The annual Valentine-making party. There was a greater stock of stickers than usual, with Mabel Watson Payne in mind. This was her first exposure to active Valentine-making, but she is of course fated to be indoctrinated in the family Valentine-making tradition long before she has any chance to question it. Overall, the duck stickers were her clear favorites this year, followed by the penguins, and then the dogs. She liked the big orange dots better than the big gold starbursts.













Saturday, January 28, 2012

Book-Reading Saturday


Mabel Watson Payne decorated her cuffs (above) with several of the duck stickers in general use today for Valentine construction.



Bur even though much organized activity was going on, there were still some ordinary serene times for reading stories with Daddy.