Sick Day!

Today I'm the most awesome kind of sick-- still too ill to really go out and be productive, but not utterly miserable (like I was yesterday, ugh!) So I get to stay home, do my laundry, catch up on little tasks like homework, thank-you notes, mending, and so on. I'm listening to A Story of Her (the main singer is a post-doc teaching one of my labmates classes! Don't tell anyone that we e-stalked him and found his band... I think it's ok since I met him at a party a few weeks ago). I particularly like "Days and Nights and Weeks and Months." I also recently got the She & Him albums from a friend, so that's been good listening too.

Sick Day by amyinegypt featuring shawl collar cardigans

I love hanging around on the couch in my truly ancient long underwear bottoms and a thrifted flannel shirt. I talked to my family, drank a bunch of tea, looked at the internet... Seriously, the only downside of today was that the hot water ran out while I was taking a shower.

Afrikan Boy: Lagos Town

Recently I've been digging this song. It includes my favorite rhyme in the history of ever, which is "1 2 3 4, 5 6 7 8, I'm great." Also the girl dancer is my life and fashion idol, I want to have her moves and her technicolor style. This dude, Afrikan Boy, is somehow affiliated with M.I.A. (I think he's on her label and toured with her). Can you tell? Yeah, it's pretty clear, but nevertheless, I like him, and he's adorable. My coworker is from Lagos, too, but she never sang me an adorable rap about it, so I'm less interested. Finally, check out his Obama t-shirt and then, check out this fact: I saw the President himself with my own two eyes on Saturday night!

Venice, Spritz: Drink Recipe!

So, my friend, we'll call her T, has a radio show. She plays classical music from 12-1:30 on Tuesday afternoons. You can tune in online! Anyway, I've been hanging out with her during the show, and kinda learning how it works and bumbling around giving announcements. It's great fun, but we only get like 5 listeners online, so you should listen! We play good stuff, and it's a very chill mid-day break. Especially for us.

Anyway where was I going with this? Oh yeah, T & I looked at the internet while our records played, and were looking at the Toast blog (again), and found these gorgeous pictures of travels in Venice. This picture made T swoon because she works as a barista in a bougey coffee shop and is really good at making excellent espresso and foam, and wishes she had such a beautiful machine with which to work.This last picture made us both swoon, probably because we're alcoholics. (Just kidding. Alcoholism is a real and serious disease, and we do not have it. We just like us some booze, preferably European booze in elegant glasses with atmospheric lighting. We will not say no if some sexy Italian bartender makes it for us, either.) So anyway, the next post had a recipe for Spritz, a common drink in Venice, so that night we went home and made it. It is very easy: one part Campari, one part white wine, and top it off with soda water. I had all these things at home, since I bought Campari this summer for aperitivo-making inspired by ReadyMade magazine's recipes for drinks like the Americano and Negroni. Anyway, the spritz was delicious, easy, cold, kinda bitter, and a great mix between T's-roommate's-grandmother's-favorite-drink and sophistication.

Coming soon: T & I swoon over all things Portuguese, and T & I have California Week in preparation for my first trip to the Pacific Ocean!

Sleigh Bells

The concert I saw last night reminded me of this song that my friend sent me the other day, if only because it's a little more "noise" than most of the music I listen to. Listen to the rest of their album, especially Rill Rill (I like it so much I've provided you a link); it's fun fun fun.

Concerts in the Park

Last night I went to see Huntsville and On Fillmore perform downtown. I'd never heard of them, because I'm not very cool, but my friend's musician boyfriend was pretty excited about it. On Fillmore is Wilco's percussionist Glenn Kotche playing with bassist Darin Gray. This time Wilco guitarist Nels Cline was also with them, and it was full of bird and wild animal sounds. To me, it felt at times like a soundtrack to a creepy movie, and other times I just wanted to lie on my back, stare at the darkening blue sky, and turn the sounds into colors and shapes in my mind. Huntsville is Norwegian, and literally describe themselves as "abstract drone Americana and yoga country." What that means, I have no idea, but I think I might have enjoyed it more had it not gotten rather unseasonably cold and had I not been sitting on damp ground for hours. Anyway, seriously photoshopped image by Sky Noir on flickr, captures the rather surreal feeling of being there, in this Frank Gehry designed shiny pile of oyster shells, listening to music you don't understand for free, looking at the sparkling skyline, and feeling so lucky to live in Chicago.

Listening, Watching, Reading, Wearing, Wanting

Listening: Besides the dance music of the previous post, I've been listening to some mixtapes online: Kitsune Noir has a recent one with my lover Josh Ritter, Deb Oh's got a good set of them, and a girl in my class has one (at least I think it's hers) on Mixtapes from my Ex. I also like the electro mixtapes from The Music Ninja, like this one.
Watching: This video is of a little boy who got a hearing aid. His parents videotaped his reactions as he hears their voices and his own for the first time. Incredible, made me cry.
Reading: I just finished Dance, Dance, Dance by Haruki Murakami. I've read most of his books. I'm halfway through Edisto by Padgett Powell which I picked up in the free bin outside Powell's on Friday, only because it's about South Carolina lowcountry and I was going to the Point. On my reading list for the summer: Somerset Maugham, Edith Wharton, and Arcadia by Tom Stoppard which I used read while cat-sitting and never finished. I also never finished Demons by Dostoevsky, but it's been so long since I put it down that I might not finish. I'm so excited to have time to read this summer, hit me with suggestions!
Wearing: today, reversible skirt from Old Navy I think, magenta side out, and white three-quarter sleeve wrap top with black lace. Pakistani flats. BUT, last night I sewed some chain onto a white "wife-beater" tank top that I actually found in the trash can in the laundry room of my old apartment building (it wasn't IN the trash, exactly, it was kinda draped over the edge) and I think it looks pretty cool.
Wanting: mostly a letter or email from Africa. But other than that, I want to sell some stuff I don't want to take with my when I move, and for that I need access to a good camera. These pictures from my computer's camera are no good, and won't woo the etsy buyers.

D.A.N.C.E. by Justice

Seems like a good time to get your dance on.
Sweet video too.
I listen to hours and hours of this stuff at work.

Josh Ritter is the greatest

Last weekend I went to go see Josh Ritter for the first time in concert! After having two good friends totally obsessed/in love with him, and listening to Animal Years on repeat for weeks, I was still blown away by how great he is in concert. It was one of those rare moments that takes your emotions and melds them with those of a crowd and makes you forget your discomfort and all the petty stuff you were worrying about, transcendent in an experience.

Listening, Watching, Reading, Wearing, Wanting

Listening: I got this video of some peep-looking robot dancing to Spoon's "I Turn my Camera on" from No Good for Me, which it's clear that I'm obsessed with, but I also can't get enough of this song. I've been spending a lot of time in the lab & in the library, so it's my jam.

Watching: A friend at work just told me about Chatroullette, and I am both alarmed and intrigued. I bought a new computer yesterday, and it has a webcam. I can't wait until it comes so I can resist the temptation to get on Chatroullette. She was like, "I can't believe you've never heard of it! Where have you been?" It's quite nice under my rock, actually. Out of the rain.

Reading: nothing, I don't read, I'm too burnt out reading for school. A couple weeks ago though we went to Filter & I sat in the boiling hot sunshine and caught up on all the articles I'd been putting off, and it was fabulous.

Wearing: "it's like a sexy version of Minnie Mouse" except with two pairs of tights and my grandma's old boots and an old thrift-store navy hoodie + this year's favored winter accessories

Wanting: to be out in the sunshine, for my final papers to write themselves, to go pick up the clay beads and birds that I made last night at a friend's house and to string them on some red library string, and to show off the pots that I finally got glazed from my pottery class last spring.

Random Music Videos

I don't remember where I came across this video, but I also like the version of the song by Eydie Gorme.

I'm trying to remember a video I dimly recall as a French young woman singing a 60s American pop song, in French. She was terrible but it was somehow so very cute and endearing.

Also, nothing can compete with how cute this video is.

Listening, Watching, Reading, Wearing, Wanting

Listening: I recently got 2 McGarrigle sisters CDs & Wust al-Balad all the way from Egypt, which I am really stoked about, also, Tina Turner's greatest hits. I would be listening to these A LOT more if I had a working computer to upload them to, which I no longer have.

Watching: catching up on this season's Project Runway, and this crazy video by Charlotte Gainsburg, who is my French alter-ego, and I am just like her only less famous. I wish that being crazy was like this video, and not scary and disorienting like it really is.

Reading: oh, school, you know. Also this book called Comfort Me with Apples, which was lying around and I read to procrastinate, but I didn't finish because I hate reading about infidelity.

Wearing: green t-shirt that I stenciled with trees at the Art in Action community art picnic last summer, old roommate's old tan sweater, the denim skirt that has gone from below the knee (high school-- I think it was a hand-me-down from my cousin) to super-mini as I get older and bolder and the slit tears further, green wool tights from mom, grey thigh-high socks from Target, heavy-duty wool socks that mom gave me, mom's Sorrel boots from the 70s, purple pashmina scarf from Dahab (actually from India), blue beret from dress-up box in back of closet at parents' house, perfect black coat that I got for Christmas this year from my mother and I picked it out at JCPenney, and its perfect because it has two rows of brass buttons and comes almost to my knees, is long in the sleeves and skinny in the cut, yet warm and cozy.

Wanting: to avoid interviews for internships next year; reservations at Ed's Potstickers for Chinese New Year/Valentines Day. Obviously the beginning of the Year of the Tiger is WAY more important that Valentine's Day. To be done with work. A computer that works. For all time to be weekend time.

Bedoin Songs

This video was taken the first time I was in Egypt, when we went camping out in the dunes with a Bedouin family who put us up for the night. The men were singing around the campfire.