Hi; I'm still alive. Here's a new video of Sterling running around Portland in his stripy shirt.

	I'm in New York City, Long Island City to be precise, and Sterling's taking his afternoon nap while I sit beside an open window. A summer thunderstorm is rolling in. I miss summer thunderstorms. Of course "I miss rain" is a weird statement coming from someone who lives in Portland, where it drizzles from November through June. But the Pacific Northwest very rarely gets summer storms, which were an oddly memorable element of growing up in the Midwest. You'd be outside on your neighbor's monkeybars or wherever, hearing the buzz of a lawnmower three yards over. And out of nowhere the air pressure would drop, the sunlight would take on a spooky orange-gray quality, heat lightning would flash in the distance, and there'd be that thick pre-rain smell. I loved it, maybe more for the anticipation than the actual eventual storm. Of course today's humidity has also made my hair double in size, which is no mean feat. (See the entry below.)

	I sort of wish I looked more like my Simpsons avatar (shown here with those of my lovely spouse & toddler). Except for the whole fewer-fingers thing, I guess. You can make your avatar at the website for the upcoming flick.

posted July 4, 2007

	I generally don't like videos that spell out lyrics (except of course for this and Weird Al's awesome palindromic parody here), but I appreciate the ton of work that went into this cute handmade video by Kris Moye for a summery little pop song by the Softlightes.

posted June 28, 2007

	At least he tried to help.

posted June 28, 2007

	I just edited an article about the Kikkoman soy sauce company, which reminded me of this insane animation.

posted June 14, 2007

	Okay, three more early-'70s Sesame Street clips, this time with Philip Glass and mod rainbow geometry. Sterling loves the muted-colors second one. (Some commenters remember a fourth one; I couldn't find it.)

posted June 13, 2007

	"For the art world, the addition, known as the Bloch Building, should reaffirm that art and architecture can happily coexist. The rest of us can draw comfort from the fact that public works of our own day and age can equal or surpass the grand achievements of past generations." (NYT) It seems many visitors are "stunned" by Steven Holl's once-controversial contemporary addition to the Nelson-Atkins museum in Kansas City, which opened today. I once lived a block from the museum. Even looking at the pictures, I'm having a hard time visualizing how this fits into the south lawn, once sprinkled with lots of Henry Moore and Claes Oldenberg statues. I'll have to try to visit at some point.

posted June 9, 2007

	During his bath tonight, Sterling picked up his James Brown Celebriduck and joyfully proclaimed: "Happy birthday, James Brown!" He was off by a little over a month, but I'm sure somewhere JB smiled.

posted June 6, 2007

	A dream, the night after visiting the Oregon Coast Aquarium: I've found a frog that can expand its eyes and nose to comic proportions, like a puffer fish. I've donated it to a high school science department, where they'll take better care of it. But before I leave, I want to take its photo. Yet my digital camera (the only one I have with me) won't work when I point it at the frog. It'll take shots of other things, just not the magic puffing amphibian, which is making all of these great faces while I futz around with the camera settings. I'm not sure whether to be frustrated with my camera or the frog.

posted June 4, 2007

	Richard Pryor: "The Alphabet" Another vintage "Sesame Street" clip ... but I have a two-year-old, it's allowed! I get the feeling Pryor wrote this about three minutes before the cameras rolled, but his delivery is great. Here is another "Sesame" alphabet clip ... this time from 1971, featuring aliens and a bubbly proto-electronica soundtrack. Wendy Carlos, is that you?

posted June 2, 2007

	Hey, it's my old NYC apartment building, on the corner of Houston & Allen, as presented by the new Street View function of Google Maps (Flash required). You can virtually walk the streets of New York (most of Manhattan & major streets in the boroughs), San Francisco, Miami, Las Vegas & Denver. It's pretty awesome for just wandering New York -- even though everything's presented in a super-fly-eye wide-angle view, and of course you don't get the full experience with sounds and smells. Give it a few years, I'm sure.

posted May 29, 2007

	Charles Nelson Reilly takes over "The Match Game" With Ava Gabor and McLean Stevenson. RIP. Here are more "Match Game" clips with him. I'd love it if today's vogue for reality shows was replaced with witty '70s-style "adult" game shows like this, though it's hard to imagine something so loose and free-form being allowed on TV these days. Who is the new Charles Nelson Reilly?

posted May 28, 2007

	"Click anywhere to start an orange tree. Click again to reset. The tree will grow until its limbs all terminate in oranges or if a certain max of oranges are reached." Finally, a link referencing the "fruit" part of this blog name.

posted May 26, 2007

	Shop Assistants: "I Don't Want To Be Friends With You" Youtube user provokatie has a lot of awesome C86-ish clips up, mostly from the old "Shelter" video compilation. I suddenly feel an urge to wear fuchsia tights with black Birkenstocks, like I did back in '88.

posted May 25, 2007

	Bedazzled has a fun movie of '50s-era TV weather updates (Quicktime).

posted May 25, 2007

	Nothing says "I reject the oppression and exploitation of organized government!" quite like a beaded bamboo door curtain.

posted May 25, 2007

	"Lightplay: Black-White-Gray" (Quicktime). An excerpt of an abstract silent 1932 film by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Via Ubuweb.

posted May 23, 2007

	A recent daily comic from Natalie Dee.

posted May 22, 2007

	"Human eyes will never behold another." When visiting my mom in Florida a few years ago, Douglas & I went to the Ringling Museum of Art & the Circus Museum in Sarasota. The Circus Museum had this poster from 1901 -- the accompanying text admitted that this was the only time Ringling Bros. knowingly lied in an advertisement, taking advantage of Americans' new fascination with giraffes. It's now up on their website, along with 1400+ other historic circus posters, here. (Unfortunately there aren't hi-res versions, but they're fun to browse.)

posted May 20, 2007

	The Long Take: a blog entry featuring filmclips of super-long tracking shots, from "Touch of Evil" to "The Player." (I'd forgotten how hilarious the opening of the latter is.) Via Very Short List.

posted May 19, 2007

	Eggway: a charmingly weird Japanese flash game with no English instructions. Just click through to Level One; I'll let you try to figure it out. It's more fun that way. (Hint: eggs like to be in pans.)

posted May 18, 2007

	A Halt in the Desert, 1898 A stereoscopic scene from the "Old Historic Camel Photos" section of camelphotos.com, the "Camel Hub of the Web."

posted May 18, 2007

	My favorite sweet/weird/heavy Swedish psych band, Dungen, have a new album out; listen to samples here, or just be hypnotized by their logo (warning: sound).

posted May 18, 2007

	Shoes! This has been all over the Internet already, but Douglas just showed it to me (via his pal Leah): Shoes! OMG. (It's from The Liam Show; more videos there.) Not particularly safe for work. These shoes rule; these shoes suck.

posted May 18, 2007

	Awesome Tapes From Africa: just what it says. A blog featuring MP3s from cassettes of all sorts; I haven't gotten through all of it, but I like Ata Kak a lot.

posted May 17, 2007

	I can't believe it, given Richard Carpenter's gazillion suits against this movie, but Todd Haynes' legendary underground Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story is up in its entirety on Google Video here. See it in all of its melancholy Barbie-doll glory while you can.

posted May 16, 2007

	Snails are totally underrepresented on I Can Has Cheezburger?, but this is a good start.

posted May 16, 2007

	Telly Monster: "Shapes in My Room" Here's another video I discovered while seeking small appropriate Youtubes for Sterling. I don't remember Telly from Sesame Street; he was added after I stopped watching in the '70s. I'm not sure when this song first aired. But I love it; it sounds like the Muppets covering a Belle & Sebastian B-side. About shapes.

posted May 14, 2007

	Italian artist Daniele Guido paints hands as animals, then photographs them; work here and here.

posted May 12, 2007

	Wubbcast #2 This is the second "Wubbcast" video ("The world's first preschool video podcast!"); I've let Sterling watch a few. This one is notable for the second feature, starting about a minute in -- an awesome stop-motion animation alphabet by Meghann Artes. (Her website has a few other videos of her work, but they're only partial samples.)

posted May 11, 2007

	"Grandma," you ask. "Can I have this one?" "Why not?" she says. "It's just a picture of nothing."

posted May 11, 2007

	I loved this huge panorama of proto-flappers in bathing suits circa 1917; the big version is here. Stripes were big that year! I'd totally wear some of these, at least in modern drip-dry fabrics. Via Shorpy.

posted May 11, 2007

	A picture of Edie circa 2004 in our first Portland apartment. I made this blog template back then and used this photo to test it, but of course it took me three years to actually start the blog. She thought she was invisible.

posted May 11, 2007

	Hey, it's the start of the one billionth blog on the Internet!

posted May 11, 2007