Your Neighborhood Librarian

Monday, August 21, 2006

The "G" stands for Gentlemen's: What "Gentlemen" stands for is up for grabs

Well the kids and I listened to Appetite for Destruction this morning, the Guns 'n' Roses album, the epitome of rock n roll circa 1987. Perhaps the epitome of rock n roll period. Ok perhaps not. But it hit the kids like a dozen cupcakes with sprinkles. They literally bounced off the walls and furniture. Seriously, it was like Nell getting a Snickers bar for the first time.

I was prompted to delve deep into the iPod and find this sweet-sixteen-year-old album by a very weird article on Axl Rose in GQ ("GQ?" you ask... "Clive Owen," I reply, and you nod sagely).

GQ is very weird overall. There was a spread (and I do mean spread) on men's underwear featuring a mostly naked woman reaching into the male model's shorts. There were also many many many photographs of rippling abs. Bob, seeing the word "football" on the cover, picked the thing up looking for the football article, and instead found a half-dozen pictures of an expressionless Reggie Bush putting on and taking off sweaters so that each shot exposed his torso. He leafed past the beefcake looking for the article and there was none. There was an actual interview with Troy Polamalu, but the writer was so distracted by Polamalu's hair and lifestyle that he all but failed to mention that Polamalu is apparently an athletic polymath.

The guy writing about Axl Rose seems as conflicted as the entire magazine. He admires Axl's virtuoso voice; he reminds us that Axl looked like a sexy girl when he was 20 years old; he says that Axl's "package is huge. Only reporting."; and he says that the way Axl dances, especially in the video for "Patience," which I thought was just a blown kiss short of nauseating, is "lovely, I'm sorry."

It seems like, at GQ, it's all about "not gay! oh no, not gay!" If you want to report that Axl has a big penis, that's fine by me; if your visual taste allows you to admire that snaky dance thing that Axl used to do, I don't give a powdered-milk fuck. But all the disclaimers and apologies - who exactly is he apologizing to? His editor? "Sorry I'm sounding a little GAY here, but no homosexual on earth would admit to liking Guns N Roses so I'm ok right?"

The style columnist however doesn't remotely get a pass, especially once he's admitted that he uses an anti-aging night cream. We are assured that he didn't BUY it or anything, his wife gives him her surplus - "some Patricia Wexler pink goop". Mentioning the brand means he gets a crate of the stuff as a thank-you, but if he'd called it by its name, "Skin Regenerating Serum," which he can certainly read, it's on the jar right under "patricia wexler, M.D." well then he would have been a fag.

There's even a sidebar in the etiquette column: "How to deal with gay people." WE'RE NOT GAY, DAMMIT!!!

UPDATE: I CANNOT get "Sweet Child of Mine" out of my head now. That album is fucking genius.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Bringing out the dead

This is an old story, a Brooklyn story.

One St. Patrick's Day my friend Tod came with his friend Van to Brooklyn. St. Patrick's Day in Brooklyn is like an uglier Mardi Gras. Hence, many bars packed with fratty preps and swaying, drunken idiots ensued. Van, who wrote for the Baltimore City Paper, knew New York pretty well, and as we roamed Brooklyn in search of less-crowded bar we were joined by various friends.

By the time we're at an ancient dive on Atlantic Ave, surrounded by kitsch and miserabilia, I'm talking to an apparent speed freak named Joe that I don't know HOW Van knows.

So Joe hears I work for Mosby, the medical publishing company, and he tells me he's an ambulance driver. My division published all the non-doctor and non-nurse textbooks - we worked a lot with EMTs, which is what you call ambulance drivers these days. "Great," I think, most of those guys are egotistical pricks. What's more, he's written a novel. "Terrific," I think, every one of these guys thinks he has a novel in him, and I have to hear about most of them.

I start to say that Mosby never touches fiction, and he says oh no, he has an agent and a book deal and everything.

I relax, let him tell me about the book (tragedy, dissonance, exhaustion). He's a nice guy, funny, cranked a little too tightly but that goes with the job. He insisted on calling himself an "ambulance driver," which I liked. It's less accurate, but conveys more urgency and purpose than "EMT" or even "paramedic." We all get all hammered and have a weird day.

Saw a guy running down a side street with a two by four.
50 feet later, saw a guy sitting on the curb holding his bleeding head.
Met a crowd of sanitation workers who treated Joe like a king once they heard he was an EMT.
A very small Ecuadoran or possibly Peruvian man threatened Tod's life over his sweater.

All things being equal, I sort of forgot about the book.

Months later, I see this paperback on a table at the megabookstore on Union Square. A stray synapse fired and I flipped the book to see if there was an author photo. Sure enough, Joe Connelly, Van's friend.

I read the book. I enjoyed the book. It's a balls-ass book, not as preoccupied with le romance as the movie is.

In the book, the protagonist tells us of his dream job. He would be a consultant for the movies and TV. "E.R." drove the protagonist wild. I know comparatively little about emergency medicine, but it used to drive me wild too. "You don't shock asystole!" I used to growl, outraged.

So on a later edition of the book, I saw that it was "Soon to be a major motion picture! Directed by Martin Scorsese!" and in smaller print, Joe Connelly was to be hired as the movie's technical consultant.

Any story that ends with the protagonist climbing out of the ambulance under his own power is by definition a happy one.

It's 4am. Do you know where your child's vaccination records are?

Phone rings at 4:30 a.m. I am so deeply asleep that I don't actually manage to answer it before the 4th ring, but as of the 4th ring I am completely awake.

Inventory:
The kids? Sleeping.
Bob? Sleeping.
My parents? At their house in Virginia.

Crap. Something has happened to my parents. I wait for the light on the phone to start blinking, indicating a message. It doesn't start blinking.

Ok, wrong number. Try to fall back asleep.

Phone rings at 5 a.m. I'M AWAKE! I'M AWAKE! "Yes?"

"This is an urgent message about your child in the Baltimore City School System." Ga-wha? He's in the other room - ISN'T HE???!

"We are missing important medical information about your child. Please contact his or her school immediately with the proper medical documentation." Or some shit like that, seriously, once I processed that the computer voice was talking about his SHOT RECORD, who cares?

I never got back to sleep after that one. Bob works for the school system. On his way out the door, I said, "Oh hey, don't forget to give someone shit about that 4:30 phone call."

He calls from work later. "Between the hours of 11pm and 6am, 20,000 households got that phone call - that's 10% of the homes with schoolchildren in this city." They had used the "Reverse-911" system - a nifty thing that takes a list of addresses and makes computer phone calls - but they didn't teach the system the difference between a.m. and p.m.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

the aforementioned noodle soup with tofu

noodle soup with tofu
Originally uploaded by pwilnyc.

Lunches can be a pain. Anything that is easy to fix and is not mac & cheese is my friend.

Put about 6 cups water on to boil.
Cut a 3" slab of firm tofu into half-inch cubes and set to dry on paper towels.
When the water is boiling, put in fresh udon noodles, pho, dried buckwheat soba, or ramen if there's nothing else.
When the noodles are mostly done, dump in the tofu.
Dip out about 1/3 cup of boiling water and mix 3T of miso paste into it.
Turn off the flame and as the boiling subsides, dump the miso back in, also about 2T liquid soup base (only soup flavoring I've found that is absent MSG, which makes me and the kids real hyper).

Soup should not boil after miso is added. This advice is from my cousin-in-law Yoko. She once advised me not to eat squid intestines - I now obey her without question.

Adult seasoning:

kimchi (they make their own at Han Ah Reum, aka HMart, where we get all this stuff)

sriracha (that's Bob's sister Mary doing the Vanna thing)

Kid seasoning: Japanese soy sauce, furikake.

And don't get me wrong, there is plenty of mac & cheese in my pantry too.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

What's for lunch?

"Hey guys, how about noodle soup with tofu for lunch?"
The other one: "Yay!"
This one: "NO!"

"Well, we're going to have noodle soup with tofu."
This one: "No! No noodle soup!"

"We're going to have noodle soup. If you were making lunch, what would you make?"
This one: "I want to have newspapers, and birds, and dirt for lunch."

"That DOES sound good, but I don't know how to make newspapers and birds and dirt."
This one explains: "Well, you just shake it up like a baby [!!] and then you put cheese on it!"

Monday, August 14, 2006

How to foment terror

I saw this comic the other day that made sense of the whole thing.

I am waiting for a crafty terrorist (or just a practical joker who doesn't mind spending a long time in prison) to get himself caught boarding an airplane with a bomb up his ass.

Won't airport security be fun THEN?

composition with bunny and Elmo

composition with bunny and Elmo
Originally uploaded by pwilnyc.

Thoughts:

1. We bought Spotlit Bun from Margot Curran about 6 months before she blew town to the next art school teaching gig. Margot's daughter was named Merle - "Merle the Girl" we called her. Margot made the best clothes for kids out of old adult clothes. Her label was called "Miggy". We hadn't found just the right place for this painting until we painted the living room green.

2. That baby doll is named "Lefty". You may have to look closely to see why.

3. My brother gave us Chicken Dance Elmo probably 4 years ago at Christmas and the batteries haven't given out YET.

4. Sometimes that kid isn't smiling like a blast of sunlight, but usually he is. Bob took this picture.

Saturday, August 12, 2006

A book that should be one sentence long

"If you looked at this title and thought 'That's me!', do your child a favor and don't homeschool her."

One dummy in the family should be plenty.

Friday, August 11, 2006

The librarian blogs

My sidebar was getting ridiculously long, so the links to my spiritual colleagues are now getting their own little corner of the workroom. You'll still be able to get to them from the sidebar - just click on "Librarians blogging their butts off".

The Society for Librarians* Who Say Motherfucker

@ the library

Bad Girl Librarian

Biblia, the Warrior Librarian

Dewey-eyed and shelfchecked

Dewey's Dartboard

DIY Librarian

Earth to the Librarian