Photography

Rockabye Baby

If you're afraid you might slam your head in the door on purpose if you have to listen to another cheery childhood lullabye get yourself these Rockabye Baby CD's. They're lullaby renditions of all your favorite songs. You can find them and take a listen here. The Rolling Stones one is my favorite. The second I hit play Violet stops babbling and listens to the instrumental lullaby version of Start Me Up that leads off the album. They've got them for just about any of your favorite bands. Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, ACDC, Pixies, Queen, U2 and more.

TV On The Radio

TV On The Radio is this fantastic band from Brooklyn. Wolf Like Me is a single released in 2006. This song gets me. Don't know why. It just does. Maybe it's all connected with today's post and the deer sighting. Either way, I dig it.

Crummy Mummy (who drinks)

For anyone who wonders where their life went... Crummy Mummy is a longtime reader of The Girl Who. Somewhere along the way we began exchanging the odd email here and there to prop each other up during our low points. She is bitingly clever, hilarious and all sorts of I-am-woman-hear-me-roar but acknowleges when she's behaving like a complete nutter too. I like to hear her roar.

Just Another Day Around The Way (In Brooklyn)

Years ago, I first introduced you to Charlie here and then later here. He was my neighbor in Brooklyn. Charlie lived in the stairwell of an apartment a block from mine on Berry Street. You can see where he lived here. God, I loved that man. A true life diamond in the rough. I recently found this video of him rocking a fringed leather jacket someone must have given him, listening to eighties jams on a ghetto blaster on the streets of Brooklyn. Just hanging around the way with his friend Will. Both drunk as skunks. Charlie always was. The video is simultaneously hilarious and sad as hell. If you look closely you can see Serge and Max far off in the background patiently waiting for me to finish talking to Charlie. We talked a lot, Charlie and I. Always drunk, but a good man. I just realized I'm writing about him in the past tense, as if he's gone, because I assume he is. One can't sustain a lifestyle like that for long, can one? One night, a few days before we moved to Utah, I woke up around three in the morning to the harsh grating of a snow shovel on the sidewalk in front of my apartment. I peeked out the window and there he was, in the thick of a snowstorm, shoveling the neighborhood walks. I miss him and I'm glad I found this video. More evidence of his charm and sweet personality, in spite of a pretty fucked up life. Look at that expression on his face up there! Breaks my heart, breaks my heart. You can see more photos of Charlie here. They're some of the best photos I think I've taken.

The Nie Nie Dialogues

Exactly one year ago today a young mother from Utah County (my childhood 'hood) was in a small plane crash with her husband and another man. The man died. Stephanie and her husband were severely burned and barely survived. She spent months in a medically induced coma while her family rallied to care for the couple's four children. Stephanie has undergone surgery after surgery to fix her skin. This girl's spirit is huge... just read her blog. When I feel down her tremendous attitude in the face of such intense adversity reminds me I have absolutely nothing to complain about. Today, for the first time, she posted a photo of herself after the crash. Still beautiful. More so, even. You can read about her here and here is another article about her with a photo of her before the crash.

Night of the Gun

This is a recent book I thoroughly enjoyed. Dude is now a writer for the New York Times. The book is a razor sharp autobiography about this guy's life of drug abuse and journalism. He investigates his own past because much of it he can't remember due to extensive drug use. It's honest to a fault, if there can be such a thing and examines the way we use our memory to help us feel better about our past transgressions. Anyway, it's a good read, folks. Highly recommended. David Carr is the author. Because of his background in journalism he researched his own past in the way he would were he writing a book about anyone else. His website can be found here and includes video footage of all the interviews he conducted. I suggest reading the book first then going to the website.

The Typing Makes Me Sound Busy

Jelisa Castrodale is a comedian who I've spent the morning developing a giant girl crush on. I might've even peed a little. Admittedly, I did just give birth so that area is a tad stretchier than it might ordinarily be and therefore doesn't necessarily mean Jelisa is funny. But she is! And the good thing about Jelisa is she's everywhere! Twitter and YouTube and her blog, The Typing Makes Me Sound Busy. If you're hoping to look busy yourself, just waste two or three hours watching and reading Jelisa. You won't be disappointed.

Texts From Last Night

Yet another laugh inducing way to look busy while at work. You're welcome.

Time Warp

So these two dudes with The Discovery Channel make these videos where they record any old event and then slow it down so you can really check out what it actually looks like when your dog uses its tongue to drink. Or how a face responds to being punched. Wanna know what it looks like when somebody sneezes? Unfortunately, you can check it here.

Marah

A couple years ago Serge did a show with his band, Marah, on German television. I've never seen it before. But now you can watch the whole thing here. I miss Rock Boy sometimes. He's such a fucking ham. Love it.

Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros

I have yet to give the debut album Up From Below by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros a listen from beginning to end, I'm embarrassed to say. I'm that kind of musical idiot that hears one song and will just keep playing it over and over although I do like to listen to an album in its entirety because I believe in vibing on the overall context of songs and what the artist was trying to convey as a whole. But Violet and I are currently stuck in the vortex of listening to this song every morning. It makes us happy. Well, it makes me happy and she smiles and snorts a lot, which I take as a good sign. Or else she's already a skeptical music critic. We also like to watch them live. Just good, fun shit. I wish Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros would swing their bus by my place and pick me up so we could go drop acid in the Bonneville Salt flats and play music. Even though I don't know how to play music. And I've never dropped acid. I figure I'm good for banging a tambourine around. Or something.

Tapatio

This video isn't too far off of my home life with Tapatio. I love Tapatio in the morning on my boiled eggs, at noon on my quesadillas, at night on my burritos, nachos, soups... WHATEVER! If you haven't become acquainted with the wonder that is Tapatio I suggest you do so as soon as possible. It's, like, two cents for twenty gallons! Do it. Spice up your life.

Modern Family

I happened to catch the premiere of this new ABC sitcom last night and was so stoked. Very Christopher Guest-Waiting-for-Guffman-Best-In-Show vibe. And Al Bundy is back! Well, okay, it's really Ed O'Neill but damn if he isn't the most underrated actor since Jon Goodman of Roseanne. Ever seen Dutch? Anyway, if ABC cancels this show they're as dumb as NBC for putting Leno in prime time. Check this out to see what I'm talking about. My favorite part comes at 1:40 where The Cool Dad breaks it down for you (WTF...Why the face?) and then just let it roll through Mitchell and Cameron's cream puff bit on the airplane. Finally! A funny sitcom on ABC. Cougar Town wasn't too shabby either. And all hail The Soup's Joel McHale's new sitcom Community. Maybe sitcoms are making a comeback and I can be done with So-You-Think-You-Can-Dance-With-The-Stars-With-The-Batchelor-Who-Now-Has-More-To-Love-And-Oh-Look-Here-Comes-Brett-Michaels-With-His-Guitar! So over it.

Retro Style

Ever since I decided to start trying to buy as much as possible secondhand I've become really interested in fashions from the 1940's. It truly is the kind of stuff you can find or easily replicate in thrift stores. It started with the retro jersey dresses and spread to old school shoes like these slingbacks and ALL OF THESE. I could spend hours trawling around this website and also this one for fun fashion ideas.

This Idiot

I am currently digging this idiot. But only for a minute. I'm sure he'll do or say something shortly to fuck it up.

Kid To Kid

I glossed over it in this post the other day but Kid To Kid is one of the greatest stores in the world. Their first store was in Utah, big surprise, and now they have a bunch all across the country. It's a secondhand store for kids that has everything for a quarter of what you'd buy it for at Babies R Us or one of the other stores that enjoys raping parents of their hard-earned cash so they can buy the latest and greatest in baby gear. I've purchased a majority of Violet's things (clothes, toys, baby gear) secondhand and, lucky for me, I live around the corner from Kid To Kid. You can also convert your used baby stuff into cash or credit. My best purchase was a fancy schmancy Bob Revolution Stroller for $150. It would have retailed for more than $300 but the brake needed a minor adjustment. That's all! Otherwise it was brand new. The latest item was the walker you see in the picture. What would be upwards of $100 brand new was $19.99 at Kid To Kid. And it's perfect! You should see the kid zooming all over the house. For the first time since she's been born I'm stoked to have hardwood floors. Yes. I said stoked. And no, I don't surf.

How I Became A Famous Novelist

This is the novel I mentioned in this post. Here is how much I like it. I'm recommending it to you even though I've not yet read the end! Serge assures me I won't be disappointed. The premise of the novel is tough to explain; a novel disguised as the memoir of a man who sets out to write the bestsellingest bestseller of all time. What he discovers about many authors is brilliant and I suspect, not too far from the truth. Dan Brown and Danielle Steele, I'm looking at you. And not faulting you, I might add.

Firefly

A while back a reader of Serge's blog sent him this series called Firefly. It ran on FOX in 2002. Considering I worked at FOX during that time period it's bizarre I don't remember the series. I don't. So one night, after we'd exhausted all our Dexter DVDs we turned to Firefly. Had I known the premise I never would've popped it in the player. I'm not sure why I say that, just that I know myself and had Serge explained the premise of the series before we watched it I probably would've taken a pass saying it didn't sound like something I'd be interested in. I'm glad he just turned it on because from scene one I was hooked. I promise you will love this series. The characters are fantastic... Just trust me, you'll love it. Of course, like most good series (My So Called Life being the best example) Firefly was yanked off the air. There was this crazy outcry from pissed off fans. A big enough outcry that a documentary was made about the fans and enough to get a Firefly movie made which wraps up the series. If you've already watched The Wire, are all caught up on Dexter, I highly recommend Firefly and the movie Serenity.

Queer Cooking

My dear journalism colleague has taken my crock pot campaigning very seriously and has been promising me a video blog about his own crock pot endeavors. Today I logged on to The Girl Who and what to my wondering eyes did appear? You guessed it. He had posted his video in the crock pot recipe section which, by the way, you should totally do the same and add your own recipes! So! Max's first edition of Queer Cooking. Behold, the beauty that is my favorite fella ever.

Freaks and Geeks

NBC fucked up when they cancelled Freaks and Geeks. Based on high school in 1980, it was on the air in 1999, I think it was. Next to My So Called Life it's one of the best high school television series to hit the airwaves. If you've not yet watched this series via DVD you are sorely missing out. Think Superbad with a twist of My So Called Life. You'll recognize virtually every actor as they're all so damn talented they've gone on to other things. Seth Rogen, James Franco, the dude from How I Met Your Mother. I'm just about to begin at the beginning, AGAIN, because I just love it so damn much. A quick Wikipedia search would tell you that the series appeared on Time magazine's 2007 "100 Greatest Shows of All Time" list,and in 2008 Entertainment Weekly ranked it the 13th-best series of the past 25 years. If you are disappointed email me why and if I think your argument holds water I'll send you a crisp twenty, I swear to God. If you've never seen it, do so immediately. If you have, watch it again, you know you want to.

A Good Grief

When I was a few months pregnant I stumbled across the blog of a woman who lives in Park City, about twenty minutes from my home. Her two-year old daughter Lucy had just died. She choked on an apple while they were leaving church. Imagine me, late at night, all hormoned up, pregnant with my daughter, reading words from this beautiful woman who had just lost her daughter. Her only child. This mother Molly's raw pain was simply incomprehensible to me. It weighed heavily on me for many months and I spent countless nights awake, crying my eyes out over the loss of little Lucy. And even now, just last week, this post had me hiding in a restroom stall at work, physically unable to face anyone.

This blog makes me cry nearly every time I read it. It hurts so bad that I cannot even fathom how Molly feels. I even feel ashamed writing about my pain over her blog because it's nothing compared to what she and thousands of other parents go through when they lose a child. Words are sorely inadequate and so I really won't even try. It would be a disservice to Molly, I think, to pretend to know a thing about what she's going through. Just read her blog yourself.

This is one of the reasons I admire the Mormon church so much. The comfort it brought/brings this family is incomparable and I'm glad Molly has that to cling to in a time that may otherwise be unbearable. I've not linked to Molly's blog before, or even really talked about it to anyone, because it felt too sacred. To her. To Lucy. I almost felt it would be inappropriate, an exploitation of Molly's pain that she continues to bravely chronicle.

However, today, now, it feels right to introduce you to Molly because she's started a website, called A Good Grief, in an attempt to help others. You can find Molly's personal blog here.

The Uniform Project

A reader (thanks Selena!) sent me a link to The Uniform Project and this girl is blowing my mind! I'm toying with the idea of trying my own variation for six months. But instead of one dress I'd create seven ensembles, one for each day of the week, and every day my outfit would have to be created from that stockpile of clothing. This would be cool because it would keep me from buying new clothing however it would kind of put a crimp in the Secondhand Style projects. I'd love to do the exact same thing this girl does with The Uniform Project but OH MY GOD click through all her outfits! Here and here and here. I'm afraid trying to be creative with accessories would be more expensive than buying outfits on the cheap. Something tells me this girl has A LOT of time to come up with these ensembles and ready access to high fashion.

Every Man Dies Alone

The first book I ever cried about was The Diary of Anne Frank. The book started me on the path to reading every book about World War Two I could get my hands on. I just couldn't wrap my brain around what happened. Still can't. And I'm just a bystander nearly sixty years later. Later, in junior high, a woman who survived Auschwitz came to talk to our school about her experiences. I remember her showing us the number tattooed on her arm. Reduced to a number. I held her hand and had her sign her name on a piece of paper because, even then, I was aware of how quickly those that experienced WW2 were dying and that my generation was one of the last to hear first-hand accounts from those who were there. Still later, documentaries depicting piles of bodies being thrown into mass graves further threw me into a tailspin. I didn't understand. I don't understand. It is still incomprehensible.

I stopped reading about WW2 many years ago. Until now. Every Man Dies Alone is one of the best books about WW2 I've read. About the working class in Germany and what they did and didn't do to fight Hitler. None of this heroic underground resistance, just an accounting of what regular folks did when their world turned mad. The book is based on a real couple. I didn't look up their real names and view their pictures until after I read the book. And when I did, there they were, faded black and white photos of the couple I'd been reading about, hollow-eyed, staring at me from the grave. Anyway. The book was written in 24 days by a German author with quite the storied past himself yet it wasn't published in English until quite recently. What struck me was not the obvious horror of the Holocaust you so often read about, not the mighty battles fought across country lines, it was the subtle and sometimes mundane lives of those everyday, working-class citizens in Germany struggling to live through such a dark period while facing the toughest questions of their lives? Do you side with Hitler for appearances sake to make your life easier? Or do you deny even while knowing it's a death sentence because you can go to your death with a clean conscience? What would you do? This book is about what millions did to get by. This is how it was. This is what happened. Read it, know it, don't ever forget it.

My Parents Were Awesome

There's something about the website, My Parents Were Awesome, that I just love. A peek into the lives of thousands of couples that have gone before. But just a peek. A single snapshot into the life of two people in love once. Did they last? What happened to them? We'll never know. But I like looking at all the pictures and wondering.

A Christmas Kind Of Town

I'd been a part of Serge making albums with his band Marah before, but kind of from a backseat "How did your day go?" perspective. So when Marah decided to make a Christmas record in the middle of July in a sweaty Brooklyn apartment, well, I got to experience first-hand what it takes to get the job done.

They strung up Christmas lights and decorations everywhere and settled in to the process. My favorite song on the album, an original called New York Is A Christmas Kind of Town, is a classic that holds up to any holiday song that's come before. And that's saying a lot people. I'm telling you, this is the album to purchase for your permanent Christmas rotation. The boys even convinced me to sing a little ditty on there called Handsome Santa. I don't sing. Still don't. But it's there for your listening pleasure along with a slew of other classic covers and some more originals too. You won't be disappointed, I promise.

Creations By Kara

Martha Stewart I am not. But I'll be damned if I don't get all hot and bothered over a room makeover and love the shit out of every HGTV program that does it on the cheap. I stumbled across Creations By Kara and Kara's blog alone is proof enough that Pottery Barn and the like do not deserve your patronage. Because you can do it at home for a fraction of the price. Now, before you get all eye roll-y with I'm-not-crafty and I-don't-have-time just listen! Or read on, rather. If I think this stuff is doable you can TOTALLY do it. Here are a few of my favorite Kara posts. Just check 'em out!

Amazing bathroom makeover for under $200

Hurricane vase knock-off

Power of paint

Check out Kara's rack!

Saved from the dump

Short Bus and the Manny

As if my friend Xmastime's blog isn't funny enough, may I present to you Short Bus and The Manny! I swear to god, this shit needs to be a sitcom OR SOMETHING. The Firesides, The Manny Tapes, all of it. Can someone get this man a book deal?

Eshakti

I absolutely LOVE this style of dresses and Eshakti is an awesome clothing site that sells every item in any size from 0-26. And guess what? They also do custom orders. Say you like a dress but want it shorter or want to lengthen the sleeves... They'll do it for you! If I wasn't on the damn Money Makeover I'd be ordering in no time.

Gregory and Xeno

A reader of Serge's blog posted a link to this story. I love when I read someone's writing and it literally takes my breath away. Not only the way they write, the words they use, but what they're writing about. A combination that makes me weak in the knees. Enough of me... Here then, is the story of Gregory and Xeno.

Nothing But Bonfires

Holly Burns is so cute it's annoying. Really. I mean, look at that photo! Couldn't you just stab her? I've been meaning to point you Holly's way for some time now. She writes a blog called Nothing But Bonfires. I found her several years ago, I think we started blogging at about the same time and were both contributors to The Very Best Weblog Writing Ever By Anyone Anywhere In The Whole Wide World. It was also Holly's blog on which I left my most embarrassing drunken comment ever. But that was many years ago, let's not go there now.

Today Holly wrote a blog about the five best mispronunciations she's ever heard. The comments are killing me. If you've got some time to kill, head on over, Holly's a hoot.

Jim Carrey's Website

Dude. Check out Jim Carrey's website. It's insanely awesome. I just burned a half hour clicking around at all the craziness.

Wardrobe Dresstruction

A lovely reader from Canada took my Little Black Dress idea and ran with it. She calls herself a dork with a cause but I beg to differ. She's an amazing woman who will finish what I couldn't even start. Please, go support her as everything she collects will be given to charity. Go Mamachu!