What do you get when you cross bossanova, the 80's, and Godard?

I've been listening to this song all day...

Nouvelle Vague - Dance With Me

Don't mess with mess

I'm messy.* I'm also pretty unapologetic about it if I'm left to my own devices. My closet is a disaster, my clothes and books can be found in about 40% of the open space in the apartment, and my college student brother can spend about three minutes in my room before he starts to compulsively organize my things.

So I'm totally loving this NY Times article, "Saying Yes to Mess" (added emphasis is mine):

An anti-anticlutter movement is afoot, one that says yes to mess and urges you to embrace your disorder. Studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat “office landscapes”) and that messy closet owners are probably better parents and nicer and cooler than their tidier counterparts. It’s a movement that confirms what you have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands.

The article also goes on to slam people who have overbooked, highly structured schedules, a diagnosis which, as a product manager and a big believer in having your priorities and process straight, I don't entirely agree with. But other than that, right on!

*Note: Though I'm comfortable with clutter, I am clean. For example, I'm pretty good about keeping tabs on our refrigerator, especially after the rapidly decomposing fiasco that was once our market basket, and I try not to tempt the ants and critters that no doubt see our first-floor apartment as a safe haven in these sub-freezing temperatures.

The Improbable Skier

I dragged Sheena to Kirkwood on Sunday, and after a series of ups and downs, she actually made significant progress in becoming a skier. I taught her how to sidestep up small hills without drifting away into the nearby creek, and to snowplow down the same small hills while staring said creek down with steely-eyed confidence. After she was on a roll with these exercises, I managed to get her on a chairlift. When the lift got 20 feet up her confidence quickly disappeared, but she was somehow able to make it down her first real trail in about 20 minutes while only falling twice. I knew I would get something in return for watching Ever After with her three years ago, and this is it.

I was in LA briefly yesterday for a few meetings, and the sky was so clear that you could see the snow-capped San Gabriel mountains in the distance. This was my second time in LA, and it seemed like a completely different place from the hazy, overcast city I visited in April. It clearly isn't always so amazing, though, since this photo made the front page of the LA Times today.

It must have been love, but it's over now

I stopped drinking Diet Coke and all diet soda. I love Diet Coke, but it's not good for your bones.

We had some good times, DC. You were bubbly, sweet, and suppressed my appetite like no other, but being hunchbacked in my old age is not really what I had in mind when we first met.

What am I drinking these days, you ask? Hot water with lemon. Kind of the Steffi Graf to my Brooke Shields but I think I'm better for it.

!!!

Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod. Heroes is the best show ever.

Also, I almost fainted in yoga today. Everywhere is excitement!

Reading Log: November

This was a yawn of a reading month. Maybe these were just the wrong books at the wrong time...

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer
Grade: B. Quirky, touching, and very human... but I really need to stop reading books narrated by eccentric/misunderstood kids.

No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy
Grade: B+. Like watching a really thoughtfully directed, masterfully acted, gorgeously shot... action movie. Ooh--or having a glass of really fancy scotch on the rocks. I know it's special and worthy of acclaim... but I didn't enjoy reading it very much. It's not like Cormac wrote this book for a girly girl like me anyway.

On Beauty, by Zadie Smith
Grade: B. An entertaining read once you get past all the inaccurately rendered American slang. I'm not the hugest fan of Zadie Smith's writing style, but this made for a pretty interesting story, if not the groundbreaking look at intersections of race and class that I was hoping to get.

The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating, edited by James Watson and Melissa Caldwell
Grade: B. With all the novels this month, I was ready to go back to non-fiction. Full-blown academic writing, however, felt a bit taxing. Still, lots of cool stuff in this volume--fast food in developing countries, the marketing of coffee in the US, the politics of artisanal chocolates in France... sadly, nothing on Thanksgiving.

This was kind of a sad roundup... I've got my fingers crossed for December. :)

Reload

I thought I'd share some recent finds that I've been checking obsessively:

* Kircher Society is about the bizarre and the curious. Like did you know there was a brain disorder that makes you suddenly speak in a foreign accent? Or that someone who was really, really scared of being buried alive by mistake created something called the "security coffin"?

* Lobstersquad is technically a food blog, but it's written by an illustrator in Spain who includes stylish, whimsical drawings with every entry. The drawings are my favorite part.

* gabba features user-submitted electronic music (NOT gabber, thankfully), some well-known, some independent, and has an innovative voting/incentive system to legislate good taste.

And these two art blogs:
* Art MoCo (its parent "modern contemporary design" blog is great too)
* neverhappened

Enjoy!