Tell me...

...is less actually more?

Lovely #2

La Dolce Vespa offers up an inspired essay on driving in LA. Her truest point: LA drivers get it done, and they do so by exhibiting a great deal of communal heart. This is the kind of thing I'd blog about if I had more than 7 minutes' worth of attention to give any one topic. Thank goodness other people do, or I wouldn't have any books to read and then where would we be?

Lovely #1

Things for sale at http://davidhorvitz.com/if/.

I was about to buy an apology letter, but I saw how many have already been purchased and am worried that at this point all the really juicy apologies have been given, so now I'm trying to decide between an MFA donation and a cookie give-away. I'm also really tempted to spend part of my rebate check to buy the PO box, though I'd like to go on record as being morally opposed to the rebate (doesn't mean I'm not going to cash it).

My newest gmail category: Awesome

Like trips to Utah, I've noticed that blog posts are best when both short and sweet. I've also noticed that, like trips to Utah, blog posts are more often than not prompted by life events (read: funerals) and familial demands (read: blind dates). Hoping to roll all this that I've learned into a more efficient system of yourbird blogging I bring you, dear reader, the new Awesome post. These posts will contain things I think are Awesome. They will offer little explanation in the hopes that you will follow the accompanying link to said Awesomeness. Before launch, a brief discussion of the word 'Awesome'...

I feel this is one of those words that has been phased out and made to be uncool, much like 'groovy' and 'tubular' and 'tight'. Kind readers who have chosen to forget this blogger's age might find themselves suddenly wondering why a hip and savvy urbanite is using such outmoded forms of expression (by the by--'hip' and 'savvy' are surely on this list as well). Why not 'hot' or 'heckof' or 'fierce' (from Christian's lips to Ugly Betty's first night back from the strike. Oy--for more on how I feel about this word, please read paragraph 2 here). Others of you will have expected a more refined and Empire-sounding adjective from a blog whose reading level is high school. But would 'scrumptious' or 'delightful' or 'spot on' really have ended up anywhere but on the same list? I think not. So I give you Awesome. Because that's the first word that comes to my mind when I see something I really like.

Scratch that. I just realized the first word that really comes to mind when I see something I really like is 'Lovely' and so said new posts will be called Lovely, followed by a numerical marking. I'm suddenly looking forward to the opportunity of referring to them in the plural as Lovelies. I was about to delete all that above, but then I thought, "Eh. Full disclosure. This is how I roll."

Participatory Art

Give that Play button a click to listen and vote for my favorite Larry's remix of Radiohead's Nude. Can I tell you how much I love the world wide webernet and online 2.0 creative community thinking for making projects like this so accessible to shmos like you and me?

Should there be a 'c' in 'shmo'? And maybe an 'e'?

Regardless, bless you Radiohead--in a world brimming with proprietary entitlement, you share your deep black well of grooving sadness freely with us all and even encourage us to participate. Let Bono fight poverty--you guys just keep breaking down the wall.

Earth Hour

Turn off the lights this Saturday, March 29th from 8-9pm...find out why here: Earth Hour. Things you can do with friends in the dark:

• make no-bake cookies from memory
• play murder in the dark
• tell scary stories
• get into the business of trading secrets
• play pin-the-tail-on-the-amigo
• sing songs in the cave
• take a night hike (this option makes me want to turn on my big TV and bag the whole thing)

What's more American than a big TV?

I've held out from buying a TV for a long time now, and yet I have only experienced a single period in my life without one, and even that lasted only about 3 weeks (one of the college roomies finally buckled and rented one for the semester... I know, who rents a TV, right?). For years my Dad has been begging to buy me a television just because he loves buying televisions and his home has maxed out at 3--including one so big they had to take the doors off the beautiful entertainment center it was intended for just so it would fit. I have firmly resisted his offers in the hopes that one magical day I would live in a TVfree home filled with productivity and reasonable bed times.

About two years ago I thought that Great Age of Recreational Reading was upon me when Outgoing Roommate packed up her TV before leaving to get married and Incoming Roommate had none coming with her. Hopes were dashed, dear reader, when I came home to find Outgoing Roommate had replaced her own TV with another one that seemed to have appeared out of thin air--we kept expecting her to come pick it up, but she never did. Was it meant as a gift? Outgoing Roommate--you never knew me at all.

Since then Alisa and I have lived on a strict diet of ultra-basic cable and netflix on this ten-inch screen, and we've done quite nicely, thank you very much, despite the inevitable "Hey, that's a big TV you've got there, yuk yuk," we get from 9 out of 10 male visitors to the apartment. Apparently one of our neighbors has shared their sentiment and taken pity on us...when I came home last night from a 10 minute burrito run, this is what I found:

Surely he must have seen us huddling our friends around the tiny screen on the right and found his conscience wouldn't allow it to happen again on his watch, by golly, so now that he's moving out he offered us this giant black box that, as you can see, hardly fits our rolling TV stand. Surely he meant it as a kindness, but I tell you no lie when I say I'm going to miss rolling the stand closer to the couch when I need to see the subtitles. Strangely, I think I'll also miss hauling Cameron's equally giant TV up and down his steps every year when he insists we borrow it for our Oscar party.

But now I'm wondering...what other things can I repeatedly refuse to buy that will eventually end up falling into my lap? Let it be known, dear reader: I refuse to buy this cool rolling planter. And an iPhone. And I especially, above all things, refuse to buy this spectacular jetpack: