Highway Gothic

Need something meaty to read this morning? Try “The Road to Clarity,” The New York Times Magazine’s six-page story about highway sign fonts. (Use BugMeNot if you don’t have a NYT login and it asks for one.) I’m still on page one, but here’s what makes it relevant to Eugeneans: Continue reading 

Morning Reading

Good books are not conducive to a proper amout of sleep. Do you hear me, Craig Thompson? I was going to go to bed at a reasonable hour, but then I picked up Blankets and seeing as I was about three-quarters of the way through … I just kept reading. Continue reading 

OH EM GEE: Violet Blue Is a Genius Edition

From the San Francisco Chronicle comes this utterly brilliant and deeply funny Violet Blue column about Conservative Sexual Fetishes. A tiny, tasty sample: “Promoting abstinence as a truism over accurate sex information actually acts as a magic golden force field carried by beautiful fairies (the straight kind) to prevent you and everyone who agrees with you from getting HIV/AIDS.” Continue reading 

Morning Reading

Yawwwwwn … OK, time for more coffee. But first! A few interesting things crossed my Safari tabs this morning as a result of the usual roundup of blogs (apologies to those via whom I found these sites but then didn’t credit – I lost track of my tabs. Bad Molly, no cookie! Except for the cookies sitting at our reception area and calling my name, anyway): Continue reading 

Booker Prize longlist

Maybe it’s a little American-centric of me, but I wish, oh, I wish that when they announce the Booker Prize longlist, they’d, say, tell me which books are published in the U.S., so I don’t have to go hunting through the interwebs to try to find them. How many of these have YOU heard of? And no, having heard of the McEwan doesn’t count. You ought to have heard of that one. Continue reading 

Portland, How Do I Love Thee? Oh, crap, I’ve lost track of the number of ways

Do you like books? How about movies? Magic? Neil Gaiman? Yes? If not, what’s your problem? If so, well, go see Stardust. Obviously I’ll elaborate about this in review form soon, but for now, I simply gush. I came up northwards last night for a screening in Tigard (Tigard! When was the last time you had a good reason to go to Tigard?), at which I met up with a Portland-based movie-critic friend, gleefully sat in the media personnel section of the theater, missed my friend Lolly winning a book and giggled ferociously at the best parts of the movie. If only I could do that every week. Continue reading 

So … what year is it, again?

First I got the new issue of Rolling Stone, which features Guns ‘N’ Roses on the cover. Then I got a press release announcing the Black Crowes’ upcoming show at the Cuthbert. Sorry, but did I miss something? Did I wake up in 1990? Should my jeans be tighter and stretchier and my hair a couple feet longer? (The shirt, it will remain black and plain. Some things never change.) Continue reading