Esprit de L'Escalier

Daydreams and thoughts

PART ONE: Daydreams (via email last week)
Email to friend: I want to go to Paris and run into Wes Anderson dressed all nattily. And then make him realize we were meant to be. (Which is I'm sure what the Sartorialist did.)

Her response: Umm - yay! It kind of makes me want to MOVE to Paris and spend my days doing something kind of pointless and yet employable. Publishing? Floral consultant? Then I could spend my days being modestly fabulous and rubbing elbows with the man. How much do you love the little horse lapel pin? And the stars tie? I truly truly love him...

My response: Yes, I have to love anyone that is thoughtful about the little details of their life. Let's move to Paris. You can arrange flowers. I'll push croissants in the bakery next door. We can meet beautifully dressed ex-pats from elsewhere, marry, have little babies with French accents and multiple passports.

PART TWO: Thoughts on the weekend

My weekend was full of friends from different eras/spheres of my life, though they all overlap, even if they don't know each other well. Thursday I got to spend some quality time with my friend Kristen. We hiked around Lake Griffey, and we paused often to admire the brown trees and the silence, and to discuss the finer points of movies and books we liked and disliked. We spent the evening eating pizza, watching Northern Exposure and with me reading her BtVS comics. (I'm totally hooked - damn you Joss Whedon!)

The rest of the weekend was mostly spent with a group of six to seven other girls (the number fluctuated slightly), in celebration of our friend's impending wedding in Ireland. I felt a little out of step, which makes sense since of the girls I do know, I had only seen/kept in good contact with the bride and I hadn't really seen the rest since we graduated college five years ago. In some ways it was easy, as it is with old friends. In others it was hard, since most of the party was coming from NYC and knew each other on a more regular (if not daily/weekly) basis. Plus I was the only one of the group that did not have some major long term relationship. All of this coupled with nostalgia, heavy drinking and poor sleep has left me a little depressed.

I did duck out of the estrogen fest to visit with my friend Anthony, whom I've grown to admire more and more. We shared easy conversation over lunch. Instead of driving me straight back to the Union, where I was staying, we buzzed over to his place to show me the color samples for the walls of his new/old house, because he knows I'm a dork when it comes to thoughts of home decorating. I'm jealous of his squeaky wood floors and his killer vintage stove.

PART THREE: Random thoughts on music
According to iTune's email today, the new Death Cab album out in May is supposed to be good. I don't know how much I believe an ad that doesn't cite its sources, but I'm looking forward to it nonetheless. I heard the tail end of its single this evening on the radio. Really, though, "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" has been in my head for days. Maybe that's because of my demographic. According to AllMusic's review of the album on which that song appears, "Thematically, Plans is the Death Cab for Cutie suitable for graduate students, world-weary and wiser from their experiences, realizing they can no longer be love-starved 20-somethings without a clue yet hopelessly cursed to face the same issues." Yep, that nicely rounds out how I'm feeling. Watch the video below.

Randomness and some etsy love

Today we had some sun throughout the day, which was glorious. I had forgotten how gray central Ohio was (according to this website we have 190 cloudy days on average per year in Columbus). But there was a visible sunrise and full sun at lunch, so I went to restaurant with large windows and sat in one, soaking up the vitamin d with my soup and salad and Fast Company.

I've been humming songs from Anything Goes all day. My Dad found our old tape of the 1962 recording - it was always a big hit on family car trips. I was a little wound up Sunday night and gave a little interpretive dance show for the family. I'm really happy my brother didn't think to tape it. I really don't want to end up on youtube that way. I'd rather have my lunacy kept in the family.

When I moved from Chicago, my fabulous roommate Natasha traded up with her new flatmate. She's living with a great girl named Jean, who's a painter. I seriously covet many of her pieces that hang throughout their apartment - lovely snippets of everyday life and Chicago. Well, Jean just opened an Etsy store where she has some cards for sale and this awesome calendar of places around Chicago. (You can find Natasha posing around Graceland Cemetery in October.) Check Jean's shop out.

Commute B

Another great sky this morning. It was so much pinker in person. This is on Commute B, which is preferable to Commute A because it is shorter and mostly rural, plus since it's shorter, I can start it later and enjoy the sunrise. Commute A takes me to school and I can see the sun rise in my rearview while I drive on I-70, which is depressing. I've got some new tunes from a friend, though, which has been helping. (And I just listened to One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson. It was great - darkly funny with interweaving storylines. I love her.)

I am currently soliciting for mixed cds, album tips and/or books on disc. :)

This morning I woke a little sad, so the pink sky was good to see. Several lovely, favorite people are going to see Josh Ritter play tonight in Chicago. I really wanted to go, but it would have been ridiculous to fly there for one night. Plus now I've got a job (which is good - and involves Commute B), but still. I'm young enough to want to do something entirely stupid like that. I missed him play in Cleveland on Thursday, because that was my first day of said job. Sigh. I'm going to try and convince someone (anyone!) here to drive to Kentucky in a couple of weeks with me to see him there. I just don't think I have the face time in with friends here where I can convince them of a spontaneous road trip for a singer they don't know. Hell, I know I'd go.

Here's the shot I took of the shed I stopped in front of when I took the sky photo. It's a little soft and fuzzy, due to the lack of light, but I loved how tinged with pink it was.

Commute B is so lovely. I get to watch the leaves change in a way that was missing from my urban life. My parents' house is on a hill and surrounded by trees. It's nice to be ensconced by nature. Commute B takes me past horse farms and cornfields.

There is this one intersection that has been tugging at my curiosity. I go straight through it, but if you turn left, there is a deep hill. This evening I turned. The hills were magnificent - dramatically deep and some nice curves. Plus, once it flattened out I found this abandoned barn that's falling apart.

The day turned out alright after all. Love to my friends in other places. I miss you all today.

My stomach is growling

I can hear it as well as feel it. I just rummaged through the fridge and ate a leftover hamburger, but I'm still hungry. What I want is brunch. Today is a free day, and I've got to head into town in a bit to go to the library to research a paper. What I want is some eggs, sausage and hash browns and for me not to have to make it. If I was in Chicago, I'd have a number of places to go.

(cue daydreaming music, stars and a slight whooshing)

My top choice would be Glenn's Diner near the brown line Montrose stop. Its look is a little retro and the food is marvelous. My favorite breakfast item is the scrambled eggs with parmesan and chives. It comes with these hash browns that are creamy (which sounds weird, but trust me) with onions, perfectly browned and crunchy on the outside. I like to get it with raisin toast, coffee, and if I'm particularly hungry, sausage. The portions are big. When I was taking art classes at Lill Street, I'd stop by there after for a late brunch and a novel.

My second choice would be M. Henry, way up Clark near Hollywood. Oh god is this place good. The wait is always long, and it was a good long walk from my last apartment, but everything was worth it. I'd often take guests there for Fannie's Killer Fried Egg sandwich, or the Latina omeletta (I'm a sucker for dishes that come with plantains). The best thing to do is to order a bread pudding and split it, though fights often broke out over who got more berries.

My third choice would be A Taste of Heaven, which is also on Clark, but much closer to my last apartment. The service was not always the best, as I was often left waiting in vain for the check to come, but the breakfast food is bringing tears to my eyes with the thought of it. They have this amazing pancake dish, with a crunchiness and a berriness that was too good to be true. Natasha and I would go and split that with either a breakfast burrito or an omelet, either of which would come with a side salad with gorgeous dressing.

(whooshing back to reality)

Hell, I'd even go to Ann Sather's, though I maxed out on that place the first year in Chicago. Their cinnamon rolls are still awesome though. I guess I need to find a new quick breakfast joint around me. And fast.

Some random bits

These two bits of celebrity gossip make me sad. I know it's stupid to feel badly when celebrity relationships go belly up, but it's too bad all the same.

I'm also sad to hear of the passing of Pavarotti. Check Lance's place for a video.

For another music clip, check out Josh Ritter's video for his new song, "The Temptation of Adam." This song *kills* me, as does this video. Nothing like a pre-apocalyptic love song. It works on so many levels. "If this was the cold war, we could keep each other warm... I didn't have to learn to love her, like I learned to love the bomb, she just came along and started to ignore me..." His new album is good (and rocking), but is lost some where in the wilds of my storage unit. Boo.

I feel like I'm getting a little sluggish and lazy at my parents'. I keep saying I'm going to get up and go on a bike ride, but it just isn't happening.

Last night, I watched a sneak peek of Tim Gunn's newest show on Bravo and was very disappointed. It's basically a re-hash of What Not To Wear, but with bigger names and labels and expensive things. I just don't think it works as well as WNTW. Don't get me wrong, I love Tim Gunn, but don't think this is working. Maybe I'll be wrong, but it's dull so far. At least Stacey and Clinton know how to throw around quips and can make a woman feel better about herself without a lifestyle coach. But Tim has access to big designers and freebies from Coach. Maybe Tim just shouldn't mingle with the normal people.

For more not-so-great-tv-but-we-watch-it-anyway, check newcritics tonight, where MA Peel will be hosting the live blogging of Mad Men. I still think that the writers just make the characters do the worst thing possible in every situation. Which I find to be lazy and uninteresting. Where's the nuance to that?

Fun part about being home? All of the old photos to paw through. Check out how cute I was at two.

Photobooth and scanner fun

Last Tuesday was my roommate's birthday and this past Monday was our friend Libby's birthday. To celebrate we went to see Southern Culture on the Skids at Schuba's. We had cake, drank, danced and Natasha ended up on stage for the final song, throwing fried chicken to the crowd. (She actually had pretty good aim and apparently the chicken was quite tasty.) I'm feeling scanner-happy, so I thought I'd use this story as an excuse to share the photobooth pictures she and I took before everyone else arrived. (If you can't tell, we were unprepared for the first shot.)

Today I got Feist's new album and I'm currently obsessed with the song "My Moon My Man." I thought I'd share its video, so it can get your head as well. The video is a little silly, but as I'm off to the airport tomorrow to see my folks, I thought it appropriate. She's playing the Vic next month... I'm very excited.

VJF

This is the present I bought myself with the Christmas money from my grandparents. Isn't it pretty? It's a Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera circa 197?. It came with a beautiful leather carrying case with the initials "VJF" embossed in faded gold lettering. (I couldn't figure out how to work the case into the picture.) It folds up into about the size of a (heavy) paperback book and so far takes lovely photos. My two classes take place in a Mac lab, so I'll just have to take my roids there to scan them.

There was a funny cat incident this evening. I got home and was in the bathroom, but Frank likes to come in and hang out while you do your thing. I stood up and was closing the door and he made a flying leap at the toilet, too late realizing that the lid was up. He scrambled on the edge like Wile E. Coyote, but ended up like a half-dunked oreo in the basin. He was not pleased. Neither was I, but he liked the impromptu bath in the sink even less. Little crazy monkey.

An old email I wrote

There has been some rumbling by Tom Watson in some of the comment sections of a couple of my favorite bloggers. In fact, it's almost come to fisticuffs. Tom wants the liberal bloggers to not write about tv or flowers in the weeks coming up to an extremely important election. He wants us to keep motivated about politics! Let us not be swayed by the shiny, pretty things that distract us from the horrors of the current administration.

All of this has reminded me of an email I wrote to many friends the day after the 2004 election. I had worked as a poll watcher that day and hadn't had a very good experience. (It's a long story, probably better heard in person.) My roommates and I threw a party the night before to watch the numbers come in, and we even got cable so we would have Jon Stewart to keep us laughing, which turned out to be very necessary. I woke up the next day not very jazzed about the world. This is what I sent to my friends and loved ones:

Dear Friends,
In times of trial, we often turn to beloved and revered texts to search for higher meanings in our earthly struggles. This morning I woke up with a burning need to read the Federalist Papers today. Federalist X has always been my favorite, and today seemed an appropriate time to revisit Madison's thoughts on the perils of factions.

"Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”

Madison defines a faction:
“By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

Madison then explains that the sources of factions (liberty and diverse opinions amongst the electorate) cannot be cured, because doing so would be like “annihilation of air” because it “imparts fire to its destructive agency.” He stresses that the effects of factions must be controlled.

This is easy, of course, with a minority faction, but with a majority faction there is danger for the democracy. “When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of citizens.”

He says that it is the question of how to control this “overbearing majority” that he desires to answer, though I do not find much hope in his answers. “Either the existence of the same passion or interest in a majority at the same time must be prevented, or the majority, having such coexistent passion or interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression.” Unfortunately, if this cannot be avoided, as it has not been avoided in this election, Madison offers little. He concedes that “neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control,” especially not if the overbearing majority sees itself as morally and religiously superior to the rest of the electorate.

Madison goes on to discuss the importance of how our Constitution balances power between the minorities and majorities, and how this balance should hold in check the dangerous factions that are inherent in our form of government. The bicameral legislature, and the checks on it by the executive branch, was created to make laws difficult to enact. Our government was designed to move slowly, so factions could not quickly rise to greatly change the legal landscape of the country. It is difficult to change the Constitution for that reason as well, as it should be. This slowness is an incredibly important check on overbearing majorities, but what happens when both the executive and the entire legislative branch are in the hands of one faction? What happens when they fill the judicial with other members of that faction? How do the checks work to balance the needs of majorities and minorities? How does our democracy continue to function as it was originally intended if the country is so divided, yet one side holds all the power? These are the questions that plague me on this sunny November morning. Unfortunately Madison has not assuaged any of my fears, only underlined them.

I spoke with my mother today, who went to bed early last night, confident and exhausted after a long day of canvassing and poll watching. She awoke this morning, as many of us did, aghast. She told me she feels like maybe the South did win the Civil War after all.

I’m sorry to fill your inboxes with such a gloomy missive. Though we may have lost this battle, I don’t think it is right to concede the control of the nation’s hearts and minds to a single faction. I think this election underscores the massive work that is needed to be done with our political parties and electoral system. It’s hard to feel energized on a day like today, but it is important to remember that our democracy constantly needs to be fought for; it is a goal that we should always be working towards, even when our causes seem lost. It is so important that we continue to fight, we cannot lie down and let a faction rule with no recourse, we must continue to make our voices heard.

My friends, you are all in my thoughts and heart today, as is this uneasy future of our country. I’m not willing to give up yet, and I hope you aren’t either.

Love,
Claire

__________________________________________________________
"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood."
-----Daniel H. Burnham

I kept the quote at the bottom because I forgot that used to be my email signature and it's a great quote. I forwarded this on to Blue Girl today and she encouraged me to post it.

Remember to vote!

Beautiful Chicago Saturday

Yesterday I had a wonderful Chicago Saturday. The weather was beautiful (if a bit too warm) and it involved the Renegade Craft Fair in Wicker Park. I had been looking forward to this for a while, because it meant I was going to meet Ashley G of Kitty Genius in person (she's great, although a cramped vendor booth is not the optimal place to friend some one). I went with my crafty friend Shana (who had a booth last year) and we both spent more money than we had originally intended. I bought a print from Jaime Zollars, whose art I have been admiring for quite a while (though I can't remember how I found her originally, probably somehow through Tiny Showcase). She's also really nice— it was really neat to be able to talk to the artists, since I'm so used to looking at their work online. Shana and I both bought something from Jill Bliss, who is really great. Inside I was squealing like a teenaged fan because I think she's so great. I bought a datebook from her and she signed it for me (because I am such a nerd). I had my camera with me to take pictures of the fair but felt my nerdiness too acutely to take photos.

Shana and I lunched at Earwax (which has the flashiest website I've ever seen for a cafe/dvd rental place) and ended our afternoon with bubble tea. Fantastic.

The night included a viewing of Half Nelson at the Music Box. The movie was well made and heartbreaking. The main characters were played by Ryan Gosling and Shareeka Epps and they were marvelous. It's not a movie to wrap up things neatly or to give you an ending to have the audience walk out pleased with themselves and the moral of the film, but it's one that had my friend Allison and I talking about continually through our evening. It's a movie that makes you think without beating you on the head with it. Plus, Gosling, even as a basehead, is so pretty. As is Anthony Mackie, who seems to be sneaking into lots of films lately and is just great.

What dreams may come

I got the newest issue of Paste magazine in the mail last week. This is usually a dangerous occurrence, to my wallet at least. There's an interesting article about Thom Yorke, although the cover photo and photos with the article make him look like the male counterpart to Tilda Swinton's White Witch.

Actually, the articles that got me most excited this month had to do with upcoming films. There was one article that got me especially excited. It was about Michel Gondry's upcoming film, The Science of Sleep. I love Michel Gondry. I have his collected videos and Eternal Sunshine is one of my favorite movies. I love his mix of stop animation (which reminds me a bit of Jan Svankmejer—who has a new movie out soon too) and his creations and uses of mirrors and camera tricks. I cannot wait to see this movie. (What I don't like is Paste's WAY too busy and over produced page design. Several articles have these over designed graphic heads that are totally illegible. Can you tell I'm in the middle of a class on text and image?) The story is about a man moving to France and falling for the girl next door. Problem is he doesn't really speak French and she doesn't speak Spanish and they have to speak through broken English (and their imaginative creations). Gondry said he intended this, because in some ways the struggles with a non-native tongue can force you to be more honest. (I guess it's harder to lie in another language.) Anyhow, I can't wait for the dreamscapes and Gondry's creations.

There was also a short article about Half Nelson, a new movie with Ryan Gosling. He plays the one middle school teacher who can connects with one of his students. Unfortunately he's got a drug habit and she finds out about it. It sounds like it's well made and I'm looking forward to seeing it as well. (Not to mention Ryan Gosling...)

I have been listening to Reg's Coffeehouse weekly for a couple of months now. (He's how I discovered Will Hoge.) Reg has been talking up Ray LaMontagne's upcoming album, Till The Sun Turns Black, out Aug. 29. LaMontagne was in Reg's studio and this is what Reg had to say:

As he sat across from me in the studio this past weekend performing on the show, all I could think about was how honest and pure this music was. His voice echoes all the emotions he is feeling and it possesses anyone in its path. As you hear it, you are overcome with a calm only to be ripped to shreds emotionally by the words of a man who wants you to feel his pain. “Till The Sun Turns Black” is one for the ages, a record that will only get finer in time. It is one of the strongest offerings ever from an artist of my generation.

My only hope is that Reg shares some of that in-studio performance online soon.

So those are some of the things I'm waiting for, while I slowly melt. I hope it cooled off for those of you on the west coast, but your heat has migrated. Oy. Is it fall yet?

***************************
Also, happy birthday wishes to Harry, Mariah and Bird!