Anna Karina, FTW

When We Say "Get Up," What Do We Mean?

"The one thing that can solve most of our problems is dancing."

                                                                                                              -- James Brown

Put A Buckle On It

Just finished Sarah Vowell's tight little book about the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It took me awhile. I know she'd hate my saying so, but Puritans are a bit of a tough slog, even in Ms. Vowell's winning snarky pluck.

She has obvious and deep affection for her subjects, maddening and flawed though they so clearly were. She is able to take the foundational myth of the American character and find new and unexpected truth inside of it where people seldom look or think to look. There is the sagacity of Winthrop and the rather stunning egalitarianism of Williams and the charmingly iconoclastic Hutchinson. There are the strange and shifting rivalries between the local Native tribes and the almost casual barbarity of the colonists when they are roused to revenge.

In other words, it has all the ingredients of a ripping yarn and in Vowell's hands, it is also humane and funny and ironical. I can't say anything against it, save what I've already said and that sort of pains me to say: It is simply not an easy thing to get interested in the Puritans. They repel interest and affection like emotional Gore-Tex. No matter how internecine their struggles, no matter how learned their words, no matter how actually and truly historic their actions, they just absorb whatever excitement you can throw at them and return a certain dry dreariness to you, like a mummy's cough.

Which is a shame. And is my fault. Because no one could have managed to tell their story in so short a book in so charming a way.

Nice Dinner. Nice Restaurant. Good Service.

This Is The Luckiest Car In The World, I Expect

We Live in a Diminished Age; Behold the Paraceratherium

The MichaelCeratherium was smaller, but charminingly twee

Dancing and Pretty Girls Go Together Like Pretty Girls and Dancing

Cults - Abducted from George Tanasie on Vimeo.

Let's Definitely Buy Some Sunglasses, You Guys! (and White Pants, amirite?)

Devendra Banhart at the Rainbow House - Director's Cut from Oliver Peoples on Vimeo.

The Pale Blue Dot (Is Always The Best)

Pale Blue Dot - Animation from Ehdubya on Vimeo.

Advice For Pretty Girls: Give Creepy Dudes A Chance (Don't Give Creepy Dudes A Chance)

Teams vs. Star Slinger - Close To Me from Jordan Kim on Vimeo.

I Believe That Girls Should Always Coordinate Their Eyepatches And Outfits (But I'm Old-Fashioned That Way)

Purity Ring- Lofticries from David Dean Burkhart on Vimeo.

Watch A Collection of BestBuy Managers Sing My Favorite Sea Shanty

That'll Do, Universe and Earth, That'll Do.

The Mountain from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

The Chiara Heresies IV

Getting home at four in the morning, Chiara complains of the lateness of the hour.

Says me: "But what do we care? We have nothing to do tomorrow. We have no kids. We don't have church in the morning."

Says Chiara: "I have church in the morning - The Church of Sleep."