Jose Jones told me alone his story

fixing the picnic table frame 3, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

Bob took this picture when I was on my back fixing the old pickanick table. It's kind of a funny series of photos. And yes, I got grass clippings down the crack of my ass. I know you were wondering.

They're kicking out in Dohini too

self portrait on Mount Royal Ave, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

My parents took the kids this weekend to their place in Virginia.

This is huge. Bob and I haven't had more than about 18 hours to ourselves in going on 7 years. When somebody asked me what we were going to do with all this time, I said, "I think we're just going to sit and cry for 48 hours. Then we'll watch TV." We've been wound pretty tightly.

Anyway, Bob took the afternoon off yesterday and we had ourselves a little Baltimore photo safari. From Mt Royal Ave to the Camden Industrial Area, from the deck of cards on Wilkens Ave to the Domino warehouse, we had a beautiful day playing with my new camera. And we didn't have to worry about the kids getting tetanus, or falling in the harbor, or any of the other terrible things that can happen when you scramble around industrial areas.

If you ever have a spare sunny afternoon in Baltimore, go to Tide Point, the fancy live/work complex the Struever Bros made out of an old Procter & Gamble site, and watch the giant claw unload raw sugar from a giant ship. It smells like pralines.

Can you not dig it?

pea tendrils, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

On the topic of books not read, here is a list of post-apocalyptic grownup fiction, compiled by Keir Graff at Booklist, some of which I've read (Canticle for Leibowitz, Oryx and Crake, Riddley Walker) and some I mean to.

Also, this guy is really funny describing what he's not been up to promoting his book.

Not in my head
Two things that have been bugging the shit out of me ever since I noticed them:

1. "Elmo's World" on Sesame Street is to the same tune as the Budweiser beer jingle.

Elmo loves his goldfish (One taste will tell you)
His crayon too (So loud and clear)
That's Elmo's (When you say Bud you've said it)
WORLD! (ALL!)

1. That Josh Ritter "Right Moves" song (which, I mean, we already have a Nick Lowe, and he's great, so does that mean that two Nick Lowe's are even better?) sounds just like "Thank you for being a friend," the Golden Girls theme song.

Not encouraging it
I was talking to my friend Christine yesterday, when we heard Zhou burst out crying. He had tripped and scraped his hand. Now, Zhou is very into quantifying things: "This dinner is two hundred and forty-four delicious!" "I like Max a lot, but Joseph only medium." "If a baby was a hundred and one smaller than a mouse baby, then you might step on it."

Consequently, he needed to explain just exactly the extent of his pain. Through his tears, he blubbered "My hand hurts almost as much as hell!"

I managed to stutter out, "Oh, baby, that's a lot of hurt isn't it? But that's a grownup word..." before the effort of not laughing made speech impossible. Christine had to walk away, doubled over, and I had to hold my nose.

Speaking of scrota

Poppy bud, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

New fancy expensive camera and what do I do? Take dirty pictures.

Meemy-meme

That picture yesterday looks like the fruits of a weekend spent castrating clowns. Don't you think? Really they're juggling balls I made for the elementary school's juggling club. Balloons filled with millet. Anyway. Here's a meme that MotherReader tagged me with. I would do it on Pink Me, but then I couldn't talk about drugs and multicolored scrotums. Scrota?

What were you doing five years ago?
2003? That's easy. Unpacking boxes while WAITING for Zhou to be born. He was born June 3 - two weeks late and induced. We moved into this house May 7. I was large and psychotic. I mowed the entire lawn with the weedwhacker because we didn't have a lawnmower yet.

What are five things on your to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

1. Roast a chicken
2. Start taking pictures with my brand new long-awaited Nikon D40 as soon as the battery charges
3. Pick up Mao and Small Batch from school
4. Shower*
5. Score*

What are five snacks you enjoy?
Flaming Hot Cheetos
Pickled okra
Real licorice
Gummy bears
The other half the bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos

What five things would you do if you were a billionaire?
Buy the school a science teacher
Buy every school a science teacher
Live in Africa half the year
Not clean
Pitch in with George Soros

What are five of your bad habits?

Too much time on the computer
Being the last to get up in the morning
Getting all OCD on the dishwasher
Gossip
Driving with my eyes crossed just to see how long I can do it without crashing into something*

What are five places where you have lived?
Baltimore
Cleveland
New York City
Provincetown
Soledad*

What are five jobs you have had?
Dishwasher
Director of marketing at an insurance finance company
Artist's model
Assistant editor at a medical publishing company
Special Collections Manager at the American Museum of Natural History

What five people do you want to tag?
AH, who doesn't do these things
Heidi, who might
Lori, payback for those 106 books (which was actually pretty interesting)
mb, because I'm curious
and ACW, because I haven't had enough profanity in my day yet*

*that is a lie

Give me an issue, I'll give you a tissue

Balls, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

Now, I don't review children's books on this blog anymore, after repeated complaints (Jaime, Juliet, some rude anonymous namecalling commenter) and after realizing I could maybe make a buck or two if I stuck all the reviews in the same place and cleaned up the language.

So I review all the little kiddie books, the bigger kiddie books, the books about sharing and the books about colors and numbers, over on Pink Me. I even review the books about how to deal with it when your big brother has autism. And I leave you Your Neighborhood Librarian readers to your hard drugs and your fetish behavior. You're welcome.

But this morning's crop of new books was, I thought, noteworthy even for you cynical glue-sniffing bastards. This morning's new book cart covered depression, head lice, physical handicap, cancer, and strabismus.

Strabismus! (No, it's not a new way to do anal - get your head out of... wherever... and go look it up.)

Mini-meme

Courtesy Compu-Diva, here's a little free-association meme:

1. Track ::
2. Snake ::
3. Assignment ::
4. Blockbuster ::
5. Bombastic ::
6. Adventure ::
7. First time ::
8. Aged ::
9. Grip ::
10. Shortcut::

1. Track :: shoe
2. Snake :: skin
3. Assignment :: desk
4. Blockbuster :: video
5. Bombastic :: Erma
6. Adventure :: Indiana Jones
7. First time :: out
8. Aged :: hippie
9. Grip :: death
10. Shortcut:: keyboard

Play along here.

Your guide to famous Chinese Communists

Yy is for yawn, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

I made an alphabet book for our youngest child, whose blog name is now Zhou. I never cared for "Mr. Four". "Mr. Three" was ok, but "Mr. Four" never made it for me, and now that he's about to be Mr. Five, yeah forget it.

So he's Zhou and the Big Man is now Mao. Deal.

I think the ABC book is pretty damn cute, if I do say so myself. You can see it for yourself on Flickr. A couple pictures will be off-limits to you because they involve underwear or real names. Deal.

No, but at least I'm not driving around with a severed head in my car

got Jesus and a severed head, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

There's a beauty school in our neighborhood - sometimes makes for some startling sights.

Fug the READ poster - wishful thinking

Now that we've had a good look at some of the worst of the American Library Association's celebrity READ posters, I think it's time to offer up some ideas for making them better. After all, it's fun to poke fun at something, but until you offer constructive criticism, you're just being a punk.

When I look at the READ posters, certain things jump out at me:


Location/occupation. The typical pose in a READ poster is: standing or seated in front of a bland, colored backdrop, or, even worse, an over-Photoshopped melange (poor Tony Hawk). Often the celeb is HOLDING the book, instead of reading it.



Personnel. Skanky Colin Farrell is meant to appeal to whom, exactly? Probably not teen girls, and if in fact that's the case, get those girls the HPV vaccine, stat. William H. Macy? Very few readers of Curious George are likely to recognize him. Obviously there's not a lot of choice here - ALA probably gets the celebrities who are either involved with literacy programs (Levar Burton) or currently promoting a movie (Salma Hayek). Speaking of Salma, her poster says "LEA," Spanish for "read". Why doesn't Aishwarya Rai's poster include the Hindi word for "read"?



Book choice. The worst are the movie promotions. Do I believe that Keira Knightley reads Jane Austen for pleasure? Just look at that face - she has less patience for carriage rides to the ha-ha than I do. I am considerably more convinced that Britney Spears has read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. And Swank probably chewed through The Freedom Writers Diary, but for work, not for fun.


Here are some of my ideas to make them better:


That's Jada Pinkett Smith reading to kids.

The celeb. My system had the opportunity recently to make some of our own READ posters, and I suggested a local band (Secret Crush Society was my nominee) or members of Baltimore's roller derby league, the Charm City Roller Girls, as literacy advocates. I also thought it would be great if we could get cast members from The Wire (especially Snoop - she has her own memoir out, Grace After Midnight) or Ogun, a hip hop star from Baltimore.

For ALA, how boss would it be to get the whole cast of Battlestar Galactica lounging around on set reading books of their choice? Or the American Idol judges reading books about performance and criticism (Paula Abdul could pick whatever she wanted though - I bet she'd surprise us by reading Derrida or something). You know what I mean? ALA needs to go pop. Lil Mama. Jay-Z and Beyonce. People that young people actually recognize - none of this Ethan Hawke stuff.



The setting. It's no crime to take advantage of a celeb's promo tour for a movie... but do it right. Costume is good, but setting is better (except for poor Elijah Wood). WAAAAY back in the day, Sting posed for a READ poster, in full costume and on location, with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Click through, it's a crappy cell phone photo, but it's worth it.

The Serena Williams poster is one of ALA's best, and it's because she's standing on a damn tennis court.

A cheap way to achieve this is with illustration. William H. Macy's Curious George poster is so much better than most because the blank background is replaced with H.A. Rey-style illustration.

The success of that particular poster makes me realize that ALA is missing a trick. Nowadays, big stars are voicing characters for animated TV series and movies. Brooke Shields did Miss Spider's voice. Jack Black is the Kung Fu Panda. You could insert Freddie Highmore into some Tony DiTerlizzi Spiderwick illustrations and bingo, you've got a poster. Jim Carrey and Steve Carell are in Horton Hears a Who, fer crap's sake. For the teens and grownups, get Marjane Satrapi to draw a panel of Persepolis with a book in it.



Next, tha book. Nice try, getting hot Eva Mendes to pose for a poster. But you let her choose Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic? Right. That's what she reads for fun. (Plus, they covered up her boobs with it - a crime in any context.)



Jennifer Love Hewitt

Here's my idea: as soon as the celebrity gets to the photo shoot, rifle through his or her bag. Go out to the car. Any reading material that you find - Thug-A-Licious, US Magazine, Three Cups of Tea, even a script - bring it in, shove it into his or her hands, and point his or her face at it. J Lo Hew is amused by what she's reading in OK! magazine in this picture (plus she looks great) - I have no idea what Kareem Abdul-Jabbar actually thinks about Huck Finn in his poster.



Roger Federer as Wart from The Sword in the Stone. Photo by Annie Liebowitz.

But in my wildest dreams, the ALA READ posters would be like the Annie Leibowitz Disney portraits. Styled to within an inch of life, featuring name-brand stars shot in the most flattering light, you could just dive into them.

Rachel Weisz as Snow White, lost in a deep forest? Find a way to incorporate a picture of the book, and that's a poster that makes someone want to read. Beyonce I'd say is a little... ripe as Alice in Wonderland, but who could argue with Baryshnikov as The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up? Do those tableaux make you think of the animated Disney movies? Not me. Those pictures make me want to revisit Alice and Peter on their home ground - in their books. [Oh, screw Disney. None of the picture links will work - you have to go to the site and click on each image.]

OR: since I'm wishing, I'll wish that ALA had the money for authentic location shots. Madonna - she even writes her own children's books (although they suck). Get her in bed at home reading to her kids. Find Miley Cyrus backstage getting her hair did, reading The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Shoot Lil Mama in the back of the tour bus, smoking a blunt, reading Estee: A Success Story.

I especially yearn for photos that show the book in use. Take a picture of Travolta referring to a pilot's manual as he checks out his plane pre-takeoff. Show us Angelina Jolie citing precedent from a book of case law about international adoptions in some dusty Lesotho courtroom. Jet Li with The Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook open on the counter as he fills his pastry bag with royal icing. Owen Wilson consulting a Chilton car repair manual as he tinkers under the hood of Lightning McQueen. Give me Seagal beating someone to death with a copy of Eat, Pray, Love.

Oh, and Johnny Depp you can shoot in my back yard, lounging in the grass reading The Once and Future King out loud to me and my kids.



Here's ALA's latest. At first glance, I'll say "better." But let's parse.
Personnel: Steve Carell - big star.
Setting: Location photo with illustration elements - good.
Movie tie-in: Get Smart - funny movie (probably). More kid interest than, say, Miss Potter, and may I say what a WASTE of Ewan McGregor!
Library tie-in: "GET SMART... @ your library" Well, not so much. Looks like a movie poster with superimposed library text. He's nowhere near a book. And he's talking into his shoe, which makes you think he hasn't learned a daggone thing since 1965. Sigh.