Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen

With the humor of Bridget Jones and the vitality of Augusten Burroughs, Julie Powell recounts how she conquered every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and saved her soul.
Julie Powell is 30 years old, living in a tiny apartment in Queens and working at a soul-sucking secretarial job that's going nowhere. She needs something to break the monotony of her life, and she invents a deranged assignment. She will take her mother's worn, dog-eared copy of Julia Child's 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and she will cook all 524 recipes -- in the span of one year.
At first she thinks it will be easy. But as she moves from the simple Potage Parmentier (potato soup) into the more complicated realm of aspics and crepes, she realizes there's more to Mastering the Art of French Cooking than meets the eye.
And somewhere along the line she realizes she has turned her outer-borough kitchen into a miracle of creation and cuisine. She has eclipsed her life's ordinariness through spectacular humor, hysteria, and perseverance.

To the Big Screen!

Norah Ephron adapts Julie Powell's autobiographical book Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen with this Columbia Pictures production starring Amy Adams as an amateur chef that decides to cook every recipe in a cookbook from acclaimed celebrity chef Julia Child (played by Meryl Streep) in order to chronicle it in a blog over the course of a year. Streep's Devil Wears Prada co-star Stanley Tucci reteams with the actress as Child's husband.

Best of TV You're Not Watching

It was a very busy fall. There were some shows you probably missed. I know I had a long queue in my Tivo. Before the football season ends, make sure you check some of these out. I've sat down to watch them and really enjoying them.

Life--on USA
Damien Lewis stars as a former police officer who, after years of false imprisonment, returns to the force with a decidedly different philosophy. You can see how the prison years give Det. Charlie Crewes a whole different insight. He's working on cases with his new partner, who also has some demons, but is secretly trying to solve the case of the person who framed him.

Aliens in America--CW
A Wisconsin mom arranges to host a foreign exchange student, believing the visitor will help her shy son become more popular. When the student turns out to be a Muslim teenager from Pakistan, her plans go awry - and everyone is likely to learn a little lesson about life. If you are missing the Gilmore Girls cast, you'll find former GG'er Luke playing the dad.

Dirty Sexy Money--ABC
At first, I couldn't figure out where this was going but it totally grows on you. When idealistic attorney Nick George's (Peter Krause) father dies, he ends up taking his father's clients, the Darlings, led by patriarch Tripp (Donald Sutherland). It's not always easy for Nick handling both legal and sometimes illegal matters. The Darling family is downright hilarious!

Big Shots--ABC
Big Shots is a drama about four friends who are up and coming executives. However there are plenty of things to also laugh about. Dylan McDermott is Duncan is a cosmetics CEO trying to outgrow his playboy image. His pal Brody is a crisis manager who spends more time placating a demanding wife. Karl is the "geek" CEO whose wife and former mistress become best friends, and Michael Vartan--who couldn't be any cuter playing the business Golden Boy--is the newly appointed "Wal-Mart" type CEO who is trying to deal with a broken marriage and a new company.

Gossip Girl--CW
It's like teen people "lite" , with cocktails, I'll admit it. But this show based on the popular Young Adult novel series is chock full of beautiful, wealthy and angst ridden upper East side Manhattanites and it's as addicting as chocolate.

Pushing Daisies-ABC
This romantic drama shows us the strange world of a man, Ned, who can bring dead people back to life through the power of his touch. The people he touches, however, can only stay alive for one minute, and if they don't die again, someone else nearby will die. Ned decides to use his ability to solve crime. Fanciful and clever!

Criminal Minds--CBS
The Behaviorial Analysis Unit is composed of an elite team of FBI profilers who analyze the country's most twisted criminal minds and anticipate their next moves before they strike again. Joe Mantagna is the newest addition replacing my fav Mandy Patinkin but I think he'll bring some interesting twists to the show.

Shark--CBS
Sebastian Stark, a charismatic, supremely self-confident defense attorney who, after a shocking outcome in one of his cases and a personal epiphany, brings his cutthroat tactics to the prosecutor's office as the head of the Los Angeles District Attorney's High Profile Crime Unit. James Woods is perfect leading a group of new DAs including the latest addition, the brother in law from Ugly Betty.

House--Fox
Dr. Gregory House puts bad bedside manner to shame. As an infectious disease specialist with a knack for diagnostics, he fights the worst of all maladies with a team of various specialists, some who are too caring for their own good and others too irreverent. He'd prefer not to deal with patients at all but as he deals with his constant physical pain, his unconventional thinking and flawless instincts have afforded him a great deal of respect. It's THE best show on television right now.

Men In Trees--ABC
After breaking off her engagement when she learns of her fiance's infidelity, Marin Frist, a relationship expert, finds herself living in Elmo, Alaska, surrounded by men and attracted to one in particular. She now has to forget everything she has learned about men and gain new knowledge about love and relationships. This show is remarkably fresh and makes you want to head up to the great white north.

Women's Murder Club--ABC
Based on the James Patterson novel series, the Women's Murder Club tells the story of four friends from different walks of life who come together to form a unique murder investigation team. Their jobs as a homicide detective, a medical examiner, a newspaper reporter and an assistant district attorney give them a formidable range of skills, and friendship to sustain them through tough times. TV welcomes back Angie Harmon.

Bones--Fox
This series is based on stories from real-life forensic anthropologist and novelist Kathy Reichs. Forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperence Brennan--played by Emily Deschanel, Zooey's sister, who works at the Jeffersonian Institute and writes novels as a sideline, has an uncanny ability to read clues left behind in a victim's bones. Her partner from the FBI is former Buffy and Angel star David Boreanaz, as Special Agent Booth, who is all grown up and does a great job in this role.

Chuck--NBC
After Chuck got kicked out of Stanford, he is meandering through life as a computer tech at a Best-Buy type superstore called BuyMore when he is sent an email from a former college buddy. As a last save before he died, Chuck inherits the email which makes him now the recipient of a database of government secrets in his brain. Chuck is a now an unwilling participant as a special agent to the CIA and NSA. Zachary Levi is great as Chuck and his other cast mates are just as funny, including his sister's boyfriend he calls "Awesome" and the high strung assistant manager at the BuyMore.

Numb3rs--CBS
We all use math every day ... Inspired by actual cases and experiences, Numb3rs depicts the confluence of police work and mathematics in solving crime. An FBI agent recruits his mathematical genius brother to help solve a wide range of challenging crimes in Los Angeles from a very different perspective. Numb3rs stars David Krumholtz as Charlie Eppes, Rob Morrow as Don Eppes, Judd Hirsch as their father.

Not on now, but hopefully they'll start up again:
The Closer--Kyra Sedgwick is fantastic in her very smart and bumbling sort of way
Saving Grace--Holly Hunter is rough around the edges but she is really good and the cast is solid
Burn Notice--CIA spy got burned and now lives in Miami as he is trying to find out who put him there
Side Order of Life--LA thirtysomethings battle--with humor--growing up

Don't Dismiss All of Oprah's Choices

It had gotten to be almost the thing to do to purposefully not read the Oprah book selections. However I want to plug a few of them and you can check out more reviews on Amazon or BN. While they are often exceedingly depressing, they are also remarkably poignant. You might want to go back and reread a few...

Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
A sprawling saga about five generations of a family from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Fall on Your Knees is the impressive first fiction from Canadian playwright and actor Ann-Marie MacDonald. This epic tale of family history, family secrets, and music centers on four sisters and their relationships with each other and with their father. Set in the coal-mining communities of Nova Scotia in the early part of this century, the story also shifts to the battlefields of World War I and the jazz scene of New York City in the 1920s.

Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman**
When March Murray travels East with her teenage daughter to attend the funeral of the beloved housekeeper who looked after her when she was growing up, March's past comes rushing up to meet her. The present is quickly dominated by the lurking presence of her former lover, Hollis, who has patiently awaited her long overdue return. The tale is populated by those for whom love brings more sorrow than happiness: a woman afraid to commit to a relationship, a husband in love with someone other than his wife, two young people who fall for each other only to find they are close relatives, and the self-destructing love of Hollis and March. While love has the power to transform those who fall under its spell--devotion to an old racehorse turns March's daughter, a sullen teenager, into a strong young woman--the love March herself suffers robs her of nearly all sense and goodness. Hoffman deftly weaves her characters' stories against a vivid New England landscape where the past always has a grip on the present. And the listener is left at the end both satisfied and longing to hear more.

Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts
A funny thing happens to Novalee Nation on her way to Bakersfield, California. Her ne'er-do-well boyfriend, Willie Jack Pickens, abandons her in an Oklahoma Wal-Mart and takes off on his own, leaving her with just 10 dollars and the clothes on her back. Not that hard luck is anything new to Novalee, who is "seventeen, seven months pregnant, thirty-seven pounds overweight--and superstitious about sevens.... For most people, sevens were lucky. But not for her," Billie Letts writes. "She'd had a bad history with them, starting with her seventh birthday, the day Momma Nell ran away with a baseball umpire named Fred..."Still, finding herself alone and penniless in Sequoyah, Oklahoma is enough to make even someone as inured to ill fortune as Novalee want to give up and die. Fortunately, the Wal-Mart parking lot is the Sequoyah equivalent of a town square, and within hours Novalee has met three people who will change her life: Sister Thelma Husband, a kindly eccentric; Benny Goodluck, a young Native American boy; and Moses Whitecotton, an elderly African American photographer. For the next two months, Novalee surreptitiously makes her home in the Wal-Mart, sleeping there at night, exploring the town by day. When she goes into labor and delivers her baby there, however, Novalee learns that sometimes it's not so bad to depend on the kindness of strangers--especially if one of them happens to be Sam Walton, the superchain's founder.Where the Heart Is oddly mixes heart-warming vignettes and surprising, brutal violence. Novalee's story is juxtaposed with occasional chapters chronicling Willy Jack's downward spiral into prison, disappointment, and degradation. And even in Sequoyah, sudden storms, domestic violence, kidnapping, and deadly fires punctuate Novalee's progress from homeless, unwed teen mom to successful, happy member of the community. This is not a subtle book; there's never any doubt that our heroine will make a home for herself and her baby or that Willy Jack will get what he deserves for abandoning them. Still, Billie Letts has created several memorable characters, and there's always room for another novel that celebrates the life-affirming qualities of reading, the importance of education, and the power of love to change lives.

We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
Everyone knows the Mulvaneys: Dad the successful businessman, Mike the football star, Marianne the cheerleader, Patrick the brain, Judd the runt, and Mom dedicated to running the family. But after what sometime narrator Judd calls the events of Valentine's Day 1976, this ideal family falls apart and is not reunited until 1993. The novel explores this disintegration with an eye to the nature of changing relationships and recovering from the fractures that occur. Through vivid imagery of a calm upstate New York landscape that any moment can be transformed by a blinding blizzard into a near-death experience, Oates demonstrates how faith and hope can help us endure. At another level, the process of becoming the Mulvaneys again investigates the philosophical and spiritual aspects of a family's survival and restoration.

**I highly recommend anything written by Alice Hoffman. Her stories are really something, they unfold with an uncanny grace.

Check out the The New York Times Book Review by David Gates: "We Were the Mulvaneys works not simply because of its meticulous details and gestures.... What keeps us coming back to Oates Country is something stronger and spookier: her uncanny gift of making the page a window, with something on the other side that we'd swear was life itself."

A Few Favorite Reads

There is NEVER enough time and ALWAYS too many books to read. Here are a few selections that I really enjoyed. All can be found at a local library or you can follow the link to a bookstore.

• Ella Minnow Pea: A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable by Mark Dunn
• The Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes: A Novel by Cathy Holton
• A Girl Could Stand Up by Leslie Marshall
• Peter and the Starcatchers by Ridley Pearson and Greg Call
• Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani
• Shoe Addicts Anonymous by Beth Harbison
• Must Love Dogs by Claire Cook
• Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
• A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

Commercial Tunes

In June, I mentioned a great singer-songwriter named Ingrid Michaelson. Well she has done it again and this time, she is the voice of the new Old Navy commercial. Such a sweet song called "The Way I Am." I'm totally loving it! Here are the lyrics from her site (www.ingridmichaelson.com) and she has some video links there too. I think she is definitely on her way!

If you were falling, then I would catch you.
You need a light, I'd find a match.
Cuz I love the way you say good morning.
And you take me the way I am.
If you are chilly, here take my sweater.
Your head is aching, I'll make it better.
Cuz I love the way you call me baby.
And you take me the way I am.
I'd buy you Rogaine if you start losing all your hair.
Sew on patches to all you tear.
Cuz I love you more than I could ever promise.
And you take me the way I am.
You take me the way I am.
You take me the way I am.

My mom also pointed out another sweet commercial song, this one from JC Penney (sense a theme here...TV and shopping!). The band is Forever Thursday which is really Melanie Hornsnell and producer Elliot Wheeler. There are lyrics and a video link on their myspace site: http://www.myspace.com/foreverthursdaymusic. Although Australian, Melanie has a 1950s style sweetness and bounce to her song.

HP used The Kinks' song "Picture Book" for their campaign for digital photography products back in mid-2004 (Wow...has it been that long?). "Picture Book" is from the Kinks' 1968 album The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society. The campaign won "Campaign of the Year" in the February 7, 2005 issue of Adweek magazine.

My dad a field day with the Wiseguys' song "Start the Commotion" from a Mitsubishi ad a while back. Mitsubishi is all about making bands famous...they gave some mainstream notoriety to Groove Armada and their song "I See You Baby" but I have a song of theirs on a Pottery Barn CD that I like better because its more mellow. I'm also a fan of the Dirty Vegas song "As Days Go By" (and you'll find a funny video on utube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKUlY9S_OW0) and the import single offers a cool acoustic version. I'm sad to say that I don't know which car it is for but Mitsubishi also has an that has a great song by Telepopmusik called "Just Breathe." If you are a fan of Kanye West (I'm not) they use his song "Stronger." Art of the mix has a whole list of Mitsubishi advertisement songs at http://www.artofthemix.org/FindAMix/getcontents.asp?strmixid=35408.

I don't even want to go about the Gap ads...they are so cute. Patrick Wilson and Claire Danes doing the "I can do better" theme in the ad for the boyfriend trouser, the Gap ad for khaki's featuring "Jump, Jive and Wail," and of course, the holiday Gap ads using "Sleigh Ride" and (especially the combo with "Cool It Now"). Fantastic.

Finally, the new Ipod Nano commercial features "1234" by Feist, who is Canadian Leslie Feist. On September 28th, you may have caught her on World Cafe, NPR's daily interview and in-studio performance broadcast (http://worldcafe.org) or you can check out her page (http://www.listentofeist.com) and hear "1234" at http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1156010133/bclid756025629/bctid751384420.

Soundtracks

This is the kind of post that could go on forever but I'm going to just take a minute now here to highlight a few favorite motion picture soundtracks, after having just borrowed "The Last Kiss". Zach Braff thinks him a connoisseur of music and this one is good. It's not great, but good.

Here's some of my favs:

“Thirtysomething”
1. Main Title (Extended Version)
2. Begging For Sex, Part 2
3. Michael And Hope's New Baby
4. Another Country (Nancy's Illness)
5. Post Op
6. It Must Be Love - Rickie Lee Jones
7. Nancy And Elliot Take A Train
8. Michael's Dilemma
9. Elyn's Wedding
10. Come Rain Or Come Shine - Ray Charles
11. Life Class (Nancy's Museum Fantasy)
12. Second Look
13. Hot Butter (Miles Comes To Dinner)
14. Melissa And Men
15. The Go Between
16. Gary's Funeral
17. The Water Is Wide - Karla Bonoff
18. Main Title (Air Version)

“Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”
1. Skylark - K. D. Lang
2. Too Marvelous For Words - Joe Williams
3. Autumn Leaves - Paula Cole
4. Fools Rush In (Where Angels Fear To Tread) - Rosemary Clooney
5. Dream - Brad Mehldau
6. Days Of Wine And Roses - Cassandra Wilson
7. That Old Black Magic - Kevin Spacey
8. Come Rain Or Come Shine - Alison Eastwood
9. Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive - Clint Eastwood
10. This Time The Dream's On Me - Alison Krauss
11. Laura - Kevin Mahogany
12. Midnight Sun - Diana Krall
13. I'm An Old Cowhand (From The Rio Grande) - Joshua Redman
14. I Wanna Be Around - Tony Bennett

“Marie Antoinette”
1. "Hong Kong Garden" - Siouxsie & The Banshees
2. "Aphrodisiac" - Bow Wow Wow
3. "What Ever Happened" - The Strokes
4. "Pulling Our Weight" - The Radio Dept.
5. "Ceremony" - New Order
6. "Natural's Not In It" - Gang Of Four
7. "I Want Candy (Kevin Shields Remix)" - Bow Wow Wow
8. "Kings Of The Wild Frontier" - Adam & The Ants
9. "Concerto in G" * - Antonio Vivaldi / Reitzell
10. "The Melody Of A Fallen Tree" - Windsor For The Derby
11. "I Don't Like It Like This" - The Radio Dept.
12. "Plainsong" - The Cure
Disc: 2
1. "Intro Versailles"* - Reitzell / Beggs
2. "Jynweythek Ylow" - Aphex Twin
3. "Opus 17" - Dustin O'Halloran
4. "Il Secondo Giorno (Instrumental)" - Air
5. "Keen On Boys" - The Radio Dept.
6. "Opus 23" *- Dustin O'Halloran
7. "Les Baricades Misterieuses"* - Francois Couperin / Reitzell
8. "Fools Rush In (Kevin Shields Remix) - Bow Wow Wow
9. "Avril 14th" - Aphex Twin
10. "K. 213" * - Domenico Scarlatti / Reitzell
11. "Tommib Help Buss" - Squarepusher
12. "Tristes Apprets.." - Jean Philippe Rameau /W. Christie
13. "Opus 36" *- Dustin O'Halloran
14. "All Cat's Are Grey" - The Cure

“Grey’s Anatomy” (v.1)
1. The Postal Service - Such Great Heights
2. Roisin Murphy - Ruby Blue
3. Maria Taylor - Song Beneath The Song
4. Tegan and Sara - Where Does The Good Go
5. Mike Doughty - Looking At The World From The Bottom Of A Well
6. Get Set Go - Wait
7. The Eames Era - Could Be Anything
8. Rilo Kiley - Portions For Foxes
9. Joe Purdy - The City
10. Medeski, Martin & Wood - End of the World Party
11. Ben Lee - Catch My Disease (Live Version)
12. The Ditty Bops - There's A Girl
13. The Radio - Whatever Gets You Through Today
14. Inara George - Fools In Love
15. Psapp - Cosy In The Rocket

“200 Cigarettes”
1. Cruel To Be Kind - Nick Lowe
2. In The Flesh - Blondie
3. Just What I Needed - The Cars
4. Save It For Later - Harvey Danger
5. Our Lips Are Sealed - Go-Go's
6. I Want Candy - Bow Wow Wow
7. I Don't Care - The Ramones
8. Boogie Wonderland - Girls Against Boys
9. Ladies Night - Kool & The Gang
10. It's Different For Girls - Joe Jackson
11. Nowhere Girl - B-Movie
12. More Than This - Roxy Music
13. Romeo & Juliet - Dire Straits
14. (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding - Elvis Costello And The Attractions
15. Blondie Medley: Rapture, Maria, No Exit (The Loud Allstar Rock Remix Featuring Coolio & The Loud AllStars - Havoc And Prodigy Of Mobb Deep, Inspectah Deck & U-God Of Wu-Tang Clan) - Blondie

“Grosse Pointe Blank”
1. Blister In The Sun - Violent Femmes
2. Rudie Can't Fail - Clash
3. Mirror In The Bathroom - English Beat
4. Under Pressure - David Bowie, Queen
5. I Can See Clearly Now - Johnny Nash
6. Live & Let Die - Guns N' Roses
7. We Care A Lot - Faith No More
8. Pressure Drop - Specials
9. Absolute Beginners - Jam
10. Armagideon Time - Clash
11. El Matador - Los Fabulosos Cadillacs
12. Let My Love Open The Door (E. Cola Mix) - Pete Townshend
13. Blister 2000 - Violent Femmes

What to Read Next!

Looking for something to read? Check out one of these novels!

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
In her first novel, Sarah Addison Allen has written a tender, bewitching book told with captivating invention, peopled with characters to care about, and filled with the irresistible magic of dreams come true.

The women of the Waverley family -- whether they like it or not -- are heirs to an unusual legacy, one that grows in a fenced plot behind their Queen Anne home on Pendland Street in Bascom, North Carolina. There, an apple tree bearing fruit of magical properties looms over a garden filled with herbs and edible flowers that possess the power to affect in curious ways anyone who eats them.

For nearly a decade, 34-year-old Claire Waverley, at peace with her family inheritance, has lived in the house alone, embracing the spirit of the grandmother who raised her, ruing her mother's unfortunate destiny and seemingly unconcerned about the fate of her rebellious sister, Sydney, who freed herself long ago from their small town's constraints. Using her grandmother's mystical culinary traditions, Claire has built a successful catering business -- and a carefully controlled, utterly predictable life -- upon the family's peculiar gift for making life-altering delicacies: lilac jelly to engender humility, for instance, or rose geranium wine to call up fond memories. Garden Spells reveals what happens when Sydney returns to Bascom with her young daughter, turning Claire's routine existence upside down. With Sydney's homecoming, the magic that the quiet caterer has measured into recipes to shape the thoughts and moods of others begins to influence Claire's own emotions in terrifying and delightful ways.

As the sisters reconnect and learn to support one another, each finds romance where she least expects it, while Sydney's child, Bay, discovers both the safe home she has longed for and her own surprising gifts. With the help of their elderly cousin Evanelle, endowed with her own uncanny skills, the Waverley women redeem the past, embrace the present, and take a joyful leap into the future.

"Garden Spells didn't start out as a magical novel," writes Sarah Addison Allen. "It was supposed to be a simple story about two sisters reconnecting after many years. But then the apple tree started throwing apples and the story took on a life of its own…and my life hasn't been the same since."

Combine two parts Alice Hoffman and one part Rebecca Wells with a splash of Sue Monk Kidd, and you have Garden Spells! A great read for anyone who loves cooking, southern fiction, or just a great love story.--Angel Ramandt, Baltimore, MD

Garden Spells is a magical escape into a world gentled by caring and ancient ways. A sweet story that adds hope to the world. --Patty Rogala, Birmingham, AL

The Love Wife by Gish Jen
This is a generous, funny, explosive novel about the new "half-half" American family. You've got Carnegie Wong, second-generation Chinese American warm heart and funny guy, his WASP wife, Jane, whom his mother calls "Blondie," and their two adopted Asian daughters, and half-half bio son. And here is Mama Wong, Carnegie's no-holds-barred mother, who, eternally opposed to his marriage, has arranged from her grave for a mainland Chinese relation to come look after the kids. Is this woman, as Carnegie claims, a nanny? Or is she, as Blondie fears, something else?

What happens as Carnegie and Blondie try to incorporate the ambiguous new arrival into their already complicated lives is touchingly, brilliantly, intricately told. Powerfully evoking the contemporary American family in all its fragility and strength, Gish Jen has given us her most exuberant and accomplished novel.

This novel has a robust, lived-in quality that makes you miss it when it's over.

Michiko Kakutani - The New York Times
“The Love Wife, is also a big story: a story about families and identity and race and the American Dream, a story about how one generation deals with the expectations and the hopes of an earlier generation, a story about how sons and daughters make choices that define themselves against their parents. It is a story that works a minor-key variation on many of the themes that Ms. Jen has sounded in her earlier fiction, yet a story that also represents her most ambitious and emotionally ample work yet.”

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
Jodi Picoult refuses to tiptoe around volatile issues. Nineteen Minutes recounts a deadly high school shooting rampage, its causes, and its aftermath.

Sterling is a small, ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens — until the day its complacency is shattered by a shocking act of violence. In the aftermath, the town's residents must not only seek justice in order to begin healing but also come to terms with the role they played in the tragedy. For them, the lines between truth and fiction, right and wrong, insider and outsider have been obscured forever.

In flashbacks, we witness the deepening alienation of teen killer Peter Houghton, a helpless victim who sinks steadily into the execution mode of his combat video games. Josie Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case, could be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened in front of her own eyes. And as the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show, destroying the closest of friendships and families. Standing in literal judgment over this teen killer is Alex Cormier, the judge who presides over his trial trying hard to balance her professional duties with her relationship with her daughter.

The topic is a hard one but Picoult does a great job at making the story compelling. You feel for the characters, reliving the heartbreak of high school. You learn about how a small town can barely survive such tragedy and you watch families crumble. You also learn how they can also start over again.

Away by Amy Bloom
Panoramic in scope, Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent, an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York’s Lower East Side, to Seattle’s Jazz District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia. All of the qualities readers love in Amy Bloom’s work–her humor and wit, her elegant and irreverent language, her unflinching understanding of passion and the human heart–come together in the embrace of this brilliant novel, which is at once heartbreaking, romantic, and completely unforgettable.

“This beautiful, effulgent book sped me forward word by word, out of the room I was in and into Amy Bloom’s world. This is a wonderful novel, a cosmos that transcends its time period and grabs us without compromise. Lillian’s astonishing journey, driven by a mother’s love, will be with me for a long, long time.”
–Ron Carlson, author of The Speed of Light

A Great Author (and Librarian!) Passes--Salute to Madeleine L'Engle

Madeleine L'Engle Camp Franklin, 88, of Goshen, CT and New York City, died Thursday, September 6th. Born November 29, 1918, in New York City, to Charles Camp and Madeleine Barnett Camp, she was educated in Switzerland and South Carolina, before graduating from Smith College. She was the author of over 60 books, including the award-winning A Wrinkle in Time.
She is survived by her two daughters, Josephine Jones of Goshen, CT and Maria Rooney and her husband John of Mystic, CT; her five grandchildren, and five greatgrandchildren. She was preceded in death by her husband, Hugh Franklin, and her son, Bion Barnett Franklin.

She was a warm, loving and fun mother, grandmother and friend, who will be missed by many. Her influence will live on in her family and many friends, and in her books which have brought countless delight to all who have read them.

There will be a service on Saturday, September 15th, 2pm, at the Church of Christ, Goshen, CT, and a later public memorial service around her birthday, the actual date to be decided, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City.

In lieu of flowers, a memorial gift may be made to Crosswicks Foundation, Ltd, 924 West End Ave, apt 95, New York, New York, 10025. This is just an option, and we encourage you to honor her memory in any way you choose.
Read a banned book!

HISTORY

Madeleine was born on November 29th, 1918, and spent her formative years in New York City. Instead of her school work, she found that she would much rather be writing stories, poems and journals for herself, which was reflected in her grades (not the best). However, she was not discouraged.
At age 12, she moved to the French Alps with her parents and went to an English boarding school where, thankfully, her passion for writing continued to grow. She flourished during her high school years back in the United States at Ashley Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, vacationing with her mother in a rambling old beach cottage on a beautiful stretch of Florida Beach.
She went to Smith College and studied English with some wonderful teachers as she read the classics and continued her own creative writing. She graduated with honors and moved into a Greenwich Village apartment in New York. She worked in the theater, where Equity union pay and a flexible schedule afforded her the time to write! She published her first two novels during these years--A Small Rain and Ilsa--before meeting Hugh Franklin, her future husband, when she was an understudy in Anton Chekov's The Cherry Orchard. They married during The Joyous Season.
She had a baby girl and kept on writing, eventually moving to Connecticut to raise the family away from the city in a small dairy farm village with more cows than people. They bought a dead general store, and brought it to life for 9 years. They moved back to the city with three children, and Hugh revitalized his professional acting career. The family has kept the country house, Crosswicks, and continues to spend summers there.
As the years passed and the children grew, Madeleine continued to write and Hugh to act, and they to enjoy each other and life. Madeleine began her association with the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, where she has been the librarian and maintained an office for more than thirty years. After Hugh's death in 1986, it was her writing and lecturing that kept her going. She has now lived through the 20th century and into the 21st and has written over 60 books and keeps writing. She enjoys being with her friends, her children, her grandchildren, and her great grandchildren.

• Bibliography: Publication Date
  18 Washington Square South: A Comedy in One Act, 1944
  The Small Rain, 1945
  Ilsa, 1946
  And Both Were Young, 1949
  Camilla Dickinson, 1951
  A Winter's Love, 1957
  Meet the Austins, 1960
  A Wrinkle in Time, 1962
  The Moon By Night, 1963
  The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas, 1964
  The Arm of the Starfish, 1965
  Camilla, 1965
  The Love Letters, 1966
  A Journey With Jonah (a play), 1967
  The Young Unicorns, 1968
  Dance in the Desert, 1969
  Lines Scribbled on an Envelope and Other Poems, 1969
  The Other Side of the Sun, 1971
  A Circle of Quiet, 1972
  A Wind in the Door, 1973
  Everyday Prayers, 1974
  Prayers for Sunday, 1974
  The Risk of Birth, 1974
  The Summer of the Great Grandmother, 1974
  Dragons in the Waters, 1976
  The Irrational Season, 1977
  A Swiftly Tilting Planet, 1978
  The Weather of the Heart, 1978
  Ladder of Angels, 1979
  The Anti-Muffins, 1980
  A Ring of Endless Light, 1980
  Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, 1980
  A Severed Wasp, 1982
  The Sphinx at Dawn, 1982
  And It Was Good: Reflections on Beginnings, 1983
  A House Like a Lotus, 1984
  Trailing Clouds of Glory: Spiritual Values in Children's Literature, 1985 (with Avery Brooke)
  Many Waters, 1986
  A Stone for a Pillow: Journeys with Jacob, 1986
  A Cry Like a Bell, 1987
  Two-Part Invention, 1988
  An Acceptable Time, 1989
  Sold Into Egypt: Joseph's Journey into Human Being, 1989
  The Glorious Impossible, 1990
  Certain Women, 1992
  The Rock That is Higher, 1993
  Anytime Prayers, 1994
  Troubling a Star, 1994
  Glimpses of Grace, 1996 (with Carole Chase)
  A Live Coal in the Sea, 1996
  Penguins and Golden Calves: Icons and Idols, 1996
  Wintersong, 1996 (with Luci Shaw)
  Bright Evening Star, 1997
  Friends for the Journey, 1997 (with Luci Shaw)
  Mothers and Daughters, 1997 (with Maria Rooney)
  Miracle on 10th Street, 1998
  A Full House, 1999
  Mothers and Sons, 1999 (with Maria Rooney)
  Prayerbook for Spiritual Friends, 1999 (with Luci Shaw)
  The Other Dog, 2001
  Madeleine L'Engle Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life, 2001 (with Carole Chase)
  The Ordering of Love: The New and Collected Poems of Madeleine L'Engle, 2005

No more racism!

A friend alerted me to the incident in Jena, Louisiana. Please take a minute to familiarize yourself with the situation at: http://www.whileseated.org/photo/003244.shtml.
It is a sad day in our country when we are faced with such racism living alive and well. The signs say it all "No Justice, No Peace."

Visit http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/
You'll see...

Justice for the Jena 6
The lives of six young black men are being ruined by Jim Crow justice in Jena, Louisiana.
The District Attorney has refused to protect the rights of Jena's Black population and has turned the police and courts into instruments of intimidation and oppression. We can help turn things around by making it a political liability for the authorities of Jena to continue the racist status quo, and by forcing the Governor of Louisiana to intervene.
Today is only the first step. Please join us.

You can sign the online petition or cut and paste the information below.



Dear friend,
I just learned about a case of segregation-era oppression happeningtoday in Jena, Louisiana. I signed onto ColorOfChange.org's campaignfor justice in Jena, and wanted to invite you to do the same. http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=2241-345936

Last fall in Jena, the day after two Black high school students satbeneath the "white tree" on their campus, nooses were hung from thetree. When the superintendent dismissed the nooses as a "prank," moreBlack students sat under the tree in protest. The District Attorney then came to the school accompanied by the town's police and demandedthat the students end their protest, telling them, "I can be your bestfriend or your worst enemy... I can take away your lives with a strokeof my pen." A series of white-on-black incidents of violence followed, and the DAdid nothing. But when a white student was beaten up in a schoolyardfight, the DA responded by charging six black students with attemptedmurder and conspiracy to commit murder. It's a story that reads like one from the Jim Crow era, when judges,lawyers and all-white juries used the justice system to keep blacks in"their place." But it's happening today. The families of these young men are fighting back, but the story has gotten minimal press.Together, we can make sure their story is told and that the Governorof Louisiana intervenes and provides justice for the Jena 6. It startsnow. Please join me: http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=2241-345936

The noose-hanging incident and the DA's visit to the school set thestage for everything that followed. Racial tension escalated over thenext couple of months, and on November 30, the main academic building ofJena High School was burned down in an unsolved fire. Later the sameweekend, a black student was beaten up by white students at a party.The next day, black students at a convenience store were threatened by ayoung white man with a shotgun. They wrestled the gun from him and ranaway. While no charges were filed against the white man, the students were later arrested for the theft of the gun. That Monday at school, a white student, who had been a vocal supporterof the students who hung the nooses, taunted the black student who wasbeaten up at the off-campus party and allegedly called several blackstudents "nigger." After lunch, he was knocked down, punched andkicked by black students. He was taken to the hospital, but wasreleased and was well enough to go to a social event that evening. Six Black Jena High students, Robert Bailey (17), Theo Shaw (17),Carwin Jones (18), Bryant Purvis (17), Mychal Bell (16) and anunidentified minor, were expelled from school, arrested and chargedwith second-degree attempted murder. The first trial ended last month, and Mychal Bell, who has been in prison since December, wasconvicted of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravatedbattery (both felonies) by an all-white jury in a trial where his public defender called no witnesses. During his trial, Mychal'sparents were ordered not to speak to the media and the courtprohibited protests from taking place near the courtroom or where thejudge could see them. Mychal is scheduled to be sentenced on July 31st, and could go to jailfor 22 years. Theo Shaw's trial is next. He will finally make bailthis week.The Jena Six are lucky to have parents and loved ones who are fightingtooth and nail to free them. They have been threatened but they arestanding strong. We know that if the families have to go it alone,their sons will be a long time coming home. But if we act now, we canmake a difference. Join me in demanding that Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco getinvolved to make sure that justice is served for Mychal Bell, and that DA Reed Walters drop the charges against the 5 boys who have not yet gone to trial.http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=2241-345936
Thanks.

The Loss of a Great Dame

The world has lost a true leader and a real inspiration to both young women and friends to the environment.

Body Shop founder Anita Roddick dies

Anita Roddick, founder of beauty retailer The Body Shop and one of Britain's best known businesswomen, has died at the age of 64 after suffering a major brain haemorrhage.Roddick founded The Body Shop in Brighton in 1976, selling toiletries made from natural ingredients, and her brand became a byword for socially and environmentally responsible business.
The daughter of Italian immigrants, Roddick saw her business mushroom into an empire of more than 2,000 stores serving more than 77 million customers in 51 different markets. She sold her stake in The Body Shop to France's L'Oreal last year.
"Anita Roddick was admitted to St Richard's Hospital in Chichester, close to her home, yesterday evening when she collapsed after complaining of a sudden headache," her family said.
"Mrs Roddick was admitted to the hospital's Intensive Care Unit and her husband Gordon and two daughters, Sam and Justine, were with her when she died," it said.
A multi-millionaire, Roddick campaigned against human rights abuses and was an environmental activist.
The mission statement of The Body Shop was: "To dedicate our business to the pursuit of social and environmental change."
Roddick said it was her mother's frugality during World War Two that inspired her to campaign for environmental issues and question retail conventions.
"We reused everything, we refilled everything and we recycled all we could. The foundation of The Body Shop's environmental activism was born out of ideas like these," she wrote on her Web site.
"The Body Shop is not, and nor was ever, a one-woman-show - it's a global operation with thousands of people working towards common goals and sharing common values," she said.
Roddick revealed earlier this year that she was suffering from liver damage after contracting the Hepatitis C virus more than 35 years ago and soon began campaigning for support for sufferers of the potentially deadly disease.
She developed Hepatitis C from infected blood given to her during the birth of her youngest daughter, Sam, in 1971.

from: http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4197926a10.html

Body Shop founder Anita Roddick dies
By D'ARCY DORAN, Associated Press Writer
Anita Roddick, founder of the international Body Shop cosmetics chain, died Monday night after suffering a major brain hemorrhage, her family said. She was 64.
Roddick, who died at a hospital in Chichester, had revealed in February that she contracted hepatitis C through a blood transfusion while giving birth to a daughter in 1971. She made the announcement after being named head of the British charity Hepatitis C Trust.
The business woman was lauded as the "Queen of Green" for trailblazing business practices that sought to be environmentally friendly and won her renown in her native England and around the world.
"Businesses have the power to do good," she wrote on the Web site of the company, which was bought last year by the French company L'Oreal Group.
Roddick opened her first Body Shop outlet in 1976 in Brighton, southern England, before fair trade and eco-friendly businesses were fashionable.
She said her business ethics were inspired in part by women's beauty rituals that she discovered while traveling in developing countries and lessons from closer to home that her mother passed on from life during the hard years of World War II.
"Why waste a container when you can refill it? And why buy more of something than you can use? We behaved as she did in the Second World War, we reused everything, we refilled everything and we recycled all we could," Roddick wrote.
The Body Shop opposed product testing on animals and tried to encourage development by purchasing materials from small communities in the Third World. It also invested in a wind farm in Wales as part of its campaign to support renewable energy, and it set up its own human rights award.
The company has grown into a global phenomenon with nearly 2,000 stores in 50 countries and remains independently run despite being owned by L'Oreal Group.
In recognition of Roddick's contribution to business and charity, Queen Elizabeth II made her a dame, the female equivalent of a knight, in 2003.
Greenpeace executive director John Sauven called Roddick an "incredible woman" who would be "sorely missed."
"She was so ahead of her time when it came to issues of how business could be done in different ways, not just profit motivated but taking into account environmental issues," Sauven said.
"When you look at it today, and how every company claims to be green, she was living this decades ago," he added.
Roddick, the daughter of Italian immigrants, said she opened her Brighton store with only modest hopes.
"I started the Body Shop simply to create a livelihood for myself and my two daughters while my husband, Gordon, was trekking across the Americas," she wrote. "I had no training or experience ... ."
Roddick and her husband stepped down as co-chairmen of the company in 2002, but she continued to contribute as a consultant.
She joked that the Body Shop's trademark green color scheme came by accident because it was the only color that could cover the mold on the walls of her first shop.
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070910/ap_on_re_eu/obit_roddick

National Library Card Sign Up Month

Don't miss your chance to take advantage of National Library Card Sign Up Month!
All month long libraries will have lots of great programs to highlight the advantages of being a library card member.
Be sure to check out your local library!

Texas: Band not State

Texas are a pop music band from Glasgow, Scotland. They were founded by Johnny McElhone (formerly of the bands Altered Images and Hipsway) in 1986 and had their performing debut in March 1988 at Scotland's University of Dundee. They took their name from the 1984 Wim Wenders movie Paris, Texas. Their musical sound went from blues rock on their debut album Southside via the blue-eyed soul of White on Blonde to the disco pop of Red Book.

History
Texas scored a UK hit in 1989 with their debut single "I Don't Want a Lover." This was taken from their debut album Southside, which went on to sell two million copies worldwide.

Ellen DeGeneres had approached the band, and Sharleen Spiteri and Ally McErlaine flew to the U.S. to re-record a song from the third album, "So Called Friend," which went on to become the theme song to DeGeneres' US sitcom Ellen.

In 1997 Texas came back with "Say What You Want"; this became their biggest hit single yet, peaking at #3. The album White on Blonde followed, entering at #1, where it would return a year later. Other hit singles from the album were "Halo," "Black Eyed Boy," and "Put Your Arms Around Me"; a reworking of "Say What You Want" with Method Man was released alongside album track "Insane."

The band's fifth album, The Hush, was released in 1999 with the lead-off single "In Our Lifetime" which was a huge hit in the UK reaching number 4 and was included in the "Notting Hill" Soundtrack.

In 2000, a greatest-hits album was released that included three new songs (In Demand, "Inner Smile," and "Guitar Song"). The video for "In Demand" featured actor Alan Rickman, and in the video for the anthemic follow-up single, co-written by Gregg Alexander, Spiteri dressed up as Elvis Presley. "Inner Smile" was a big hit in Europe and was later featured prominently in the 2002 feature film Bend It Like Beckham. The song "Like Lovers (Holding On)" is featured during the ending credits of the animated feature film Titan A.E.

In September 2002, Spiteri gave birth to her daughter Mysty Kyd. However, this did not prevent her from working on another album. In the television show The Office, fictional character David Brent claims that Texas used to open for his band, "Foregone Conclusion," before he gave up music to manage the Slough office of Wernham Hogg, a paper supply firm.

The band returned in mid-2005 with the single "Getaway," which entered the UK Top 10, the video for which was shot by Christopher Doyle and directed by Tim Royes. The single "Can't Resist" and album Red Book followed in the autumn.

Albums
Southside, Heaven, Ricks Road, White On Blonde, The Hush, Greatest Hits, Careful What you Wish For, Red Book

Don’t Miss the Songs:
Inner Smile and Fool for Love

Book Review: Barefoot by Elin Hilderbrand

SUMMER READING...don't miss it!
Synopsis:

It's summer on Nantucket, and as the season begins, three women arrive at the local airport, observed by Josh, a local boy, home from college. Burdened with small children, unwieldy straw hats, and some obvious emotional issues, the women--two sisters and one friend--make their way to the sisters' tiny cottage, inherited from an aunt. They're all trying to escape from something: Melanie, after seven failed in-vitro attempts, discovered her husband's infidelity and then her own pregnancy; Brenda embarked on a passionate affair with an older student that got her fired from her prestigious job as a professor in New York; and her sister Vickie, mother to two small boys, has been diagnosed with cancer. Soon Josh is part of the chaotic household, acting as babysitter, confidant, and, eventually, something more, while the women confront their pasts and map out their futures.

This sixth book by the author of The Blue Bistro may not be the best piece of literature ever written, but the cover says it all...showing female legs, standing together, at the beach. It is a quick read with the main divergents. The three female characters each have a chance to tell their story as they struggle to find some peace in their chaotic life. The fourth main character is a young man who is dripping with the possibility of a bright future that only a 20 year college student can demonstrate. Looking for a beach read? Make sure you toss this one into your book bag.

Resume Site

I got an email from someone who is graduating soon with a little note on the bottom.
"I'm graduating in a few months..."
and it listed a URL for emurse.

Emurse is an online resume site. Very easy to use. I'd recommend you check it out!

Lake Superior

Lake Superior Changes Mystify Scientists

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070803/ap_on_sc/
superior_puzzle&printer=1;_ylt=AnRnlahDbmGXRtXNqnN9SJlxieAA

Deep enough to hold the combined water in all the other Great Lakes and with a surface area as large as South Carolina, Lake Superior's size has lent it an aura of invulnerability. But the mighty Superior is losing water and getting warmer, worrying those who live near its shores, scientists and companies that rely on the lake for business.

The changes to the lake could be signs of climate change, although scientists aren't sure.
Superior's level is at its lowest point in eight decades and will set a record this fall if, as expected, it dips three more inches. Meanwhile, the average water temperature has surged 4.5 degrees since 1979, significantly above the 2.7-degree rise in the region's air temperature during the same period.

That's no small deal for a freshwater sea that was created from glacial melt as the Ice Age ended and remains chilly in all seasons.

A weather buoy on the western side recently recorded an "amazing" 75 degrees, "as warm a surface temperature as we've ever seen in this lake," said Jay Austin, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota at Duluth's Large Lakes Observatory.

Water levels also have receded on the other Great Lakes since the late 1990s. But the suddenness and severity of Superior's changes worry many in the region. Shorelines are dozens of yards wider than usual, giving sunbathers wider beaches but also exposing mucky bottomlands and rotting vegetation.

On a recent day, Dan Arsenault, a 32-year-old lifelong resident of Sault Ste. Marie in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, watched his two young daughters play in mud on the southeastern coast where water was waist deep only a few years ago. A floatation rope that previously designated the swimming area now rests on moist ground.
"This is the lowest I've ever seen it," said Arsenault.

Superior still has a lot of water. Its average depth is 483 feet and it reaches 1,332 feet at the deepest point. Erie, the shallowest Great Lake, is 210 feet at its deepest and averages only 62 feet. Lake Michigan averages 279 feet and is 925 feet at its deepest.

Yet along Superior's shores, boats can't reach many mooring sites and marina operators are begging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dredge shallow harbors. Ferry service between Grand Portage, Minn., and Isle Royale National Park was scaled back because one of the company's boats couldn't dock.

Sally Zabelka has turned away boaters wanting to dock at Chippewa Landing marina in the eastern Upper Peninsula, where not long ago 27-foot vessels easily made their way up the channel from the lake's Brimley Bay. "In essence, our dock is useless this year," she said.
Another worry: As the bay heats up, the perch, walleye and smallmouth bass that have lured anglers to her campground and tackle shop are migrating to cooler waters in the open lake.
Low water has cost the shipping industry millions of dollars. Vessels are carrying lighter loads of iron ore and coal to avoid running aground in shallow channels.

Puffing on a pipe in a Grand Marais pub, retiree Ted Sietsema voiced a suspicion not uncommon in the villages along Superior's southern shoreline: The government is diverting the water to places with more people and political influence — along Lakes Huron and Michigan and even the Sun Belt, via the Mississippi River.

"Don't give me that global warming stuff," Sietsema said. "That water is going west. That big aquifer out there is empty but they can still water the desert. It's got to be coming from somewhere."

That theory doesn't hold water, said Scott Thieme, hydraulics and hydrology chief with the Corps of Engineers district office in Detroit. Water does exit Lake Superior through locks, power plants and gates on the St. Marys River, but in amounts strictly regulated under a 1909 pact with Canada.

The actual forces at work, while mysterious, are not the stuff of spy novels, he said.
Precipitation has tapered off across the upper Great Lakes since the 1970s and is nearly 6 inches below normal in the Superior watershed the past year. Water evaporation rates are up sharply because mild winters have shrunk the winter ice cap — just as climate change computer models predict for the next half-century.

Yet those models also envision more precipitation as global warming sets in, said Brent Lofgren, a physical scientist with the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor. Instead there's drought, suggesting other factors.

Cynthia Sellinger, the lab's deputy director, said she suspects a contributing factor could be residual effects of El Nino, the warming of equatorial Pacific waters that produced warmer winters in the late 1990s, just as the lakes began receding.

Austin, the Minnesota-Duluth professor, said he's concerned about the effects the warmer water could have.

"It's just not clear what the ultimate result will be as we turn the knob up," he said. "It could be great for fisheries or fisheries could crash."

Mulder Tribute

I had a total flashback. Today is one of those mornings that reminded me of Chicago Summer. There was this radio show I used to listen to (Eric & Kathy) and they were playing a song called "David Duchovny" sort of a tribute/joke song written by Bree Sharp. I never even watched X files but Gillian Anderson is a hometown girl (Grand Rapids native!) so I thought I'd do a little post here.

I'd to upload the music but since i don't know how right now I'll just guide you to the link at: http://duchovny.net/multimedia/radio.htm. The radio show transcript is after the lyrics. I hear there is a new X files movie coming out sometime so who knows, maybe there's a revival coming our way...

David Duchovny by Bree Sharp

It's Sunday night
I am curled up in my room.
The TV light
Fills my heart like a balloon.
I hold it in as best I can.
I know I'm just another fan.
Still can't help feeling i could
Love a secret agent man...
And I can't Wait any more
for Him to discover me
I got it bad for David Duchovny
David Duchovny
Why won't you love me
Why won't you love me
Why won't you love me
My friends all tell me
Girl, you know it's just a show.
But deep within his eyes
I see me wrapped up like a bow.
Watching the skies for a sign.
The FBI is on my mind.
Waiting for the day
When my lucky stars align
In the form of David Duchovny
Floating above me
In the alien light
Of the spaceship of love
David Duchovny
Hovering above me
American Heathcliff
Brooding and comic
David Duchovny
Why won't you love me
Why won't you love me
Why won't you love me
So smug and so smart
He's abducted my heart
And I'm falling apart
From those looks I receive
From those eyes I can't leave
You could say I'm naive
But he told me to believe (ooooooooh)
My bags are packed,
I am ready for my flight.
To put an end to
Daydream days and sleepless nights
Sitting like a mindless clone.
Wishing he would tap my phone
Just to hear the whisper
- the man, the myth, the monotone...
And I'll say David Duchovny
Why won't you love me
Why won't you love me
David Duchovny
David Duchovny
I want you to love me
To kiss and to hug me
Debrief and debug me
David Duchovny
I know you can love me
I'm sweet and I'm cuddly
I'm gonna kill Scully!
David Duchovny
Why won't you love me,
Why won't you love me,
Why won't you love me....(repeat and fade)



Eric & Kathy Show
Chicago Radio Station Interview
June 1999
On the set of Return to Me
Swanny: Hi Mr. Duchovny, I John Swanson, Swanny, from the Eric and Kathy show, howya doin'?
DD: Good.
Swanny: It's David Duchovny Why Won't You Love Me? on Eric and Kathy.
Eric: David?
DD: Hello.
Eric: Hi David, how are you?
DD: I fine, who is this, Eric or Kathy?
Kathy: It's actually both.
Eric: Wow. How are ya? We've been playing your song all week, "David Duchovny Why Won't You Love Me?" and it's a pleasure to finally speak to you.
DD: Sure, that's what Swanny told me here, that you've been playing that song.
Kathy: You've heard the song, haven't you?
DD: Yeah, a friend of mine brought it to my attention about nine months ago.
Zwecker: This is Bill Zwecker of the Chicago Sun-Times, David. How are you?
DD: (with his usual wit) How many people you got over there?
Eric: (joking) It's like a studio full of people.
Kathy: We're just having a party.
DD: Sounds like you're doing a good job.
Eric: What do you think of the song?
DD: When I heard it I thought it was a really good tune, and I was embarrassed by the lyrics. But I never thought it would be a public thing, so right now it's just even more embarrassing than when I first heard it.
Kathy: Hey David, what did Téa think of the song?
DD: It was actually a friend of hers that brought it to me and her first reaction was "I wish I had written a song for you."
Eric and Kathy: Awwwwwww. . .
DD: But then, of course she's not musical at all, so. . .
Kathy: That's sweet.
Eric: That's nice. So have you had a chance to meet Bree Sharp, the woman that sings it?
DD: No I haven't.
Eric: Really, uh, would ya?
DD: Would I meet her?
Eric: Yeah.
DD: You mean like, would I be scared to meet her?
Eric: I don't know. Would ya?
Kathy: I would.
DD: I think it's kinda a funny song. I like the tune.
Kathy: And it's got a good beat.
DD: It does. It has a good beat, you can dance to it, I give it an 85.
Eric: There you go. Quite a tribute. How are things going on the movie there? Bonnie Hunt is fantastic.
DD: Bonnie's the best, yeah, a Chicago native.
Eric: Things are going well for ya?
DD: I think they're going really well. You know you can never tell with a movie until it's all done but there's a good feeling here.
Kathy: Hey, we should wish you an early happy Father's Day.
DD: Is that this Sunday?
Kathy: Yeah.
Eric: How's the baby?
DD: The baby's great, thank you. She's doing great. She's spent more time in Chicago than in any other place in the world.
Eric: Oh that's great.
Kathy: Well wasn't she born just before you came to Chicago?
DD: Exactly. That's what I'm saying.
Kathy: Wow.
Eric: Pretty soon she's gonna be a native Chicagoan and demanding pizza left and right.
Kathy: Yeah.
DD: I know. When do you become a native Chicagoan? How long do you have to be here?
Eric: Oh, about three weeks.
Kathy: No, you have to survive a winter, Dave.
DD: Oh, well then she's not going to make it.
DD: Neither am I.
Eric: Well, David, we appreciate you taking a couple moments out of your busy schedule. Best wishes to you and Téa and the family and good luck with the movie and we can't wait to see it.
DD: Thank you very much.
Eric: Thank you. Take care, and goodbye.
Kathy: Thank you.
DD: I'll give you back to Swanny here.
Eric: Thank you. Sorry about that if he's frightening you.
DD: He's a little scary with the White Sox jacket on, he looks like a normal person.
Kathy: Oh, no.
Eric: Thank you, David.
DD: Alright, bye.
+

Time On Earth

Time On Earth by Crowded House

The pop-rock band from Australia has come together for their first studio recording in fourteen years. Crowded House's latest album features founding members Neil Finn and Nick Seymour along with former member Mark Hart and new drummer Matt Sherrod. Time On Earth weaves together a range of moods from touching, introspective ballads to upbeat, Beatlesque rock 'n' roll. The fourteen tracks also feature the guitar work of Johnny Marr and include the song "Silent House," which Finn co-wrote with Dixie Chicks.

Book Suggestion: Friday Night Knitting Club

Friday Night Knitting Club
by Kate Jacobs

As a single mom in her late 30s, Georgia has her hands full juggling the demands of running the Walker & Daughter knitting store with the challenges of raising her spunky teen daughter, Dakota. Georgia’s regular customers gather once a week to work on their latest projects and chat – and occasionally clash – about love, life, and everything else.

The members of the Friday Night Knitting Club are as varied as the skeins of yarn in the shop’s bins. There’s Peri, a pre-law student turned handbag designer; Anita, a silver-haired uptown matron; Darwin, a somewhat aloof grad student; K.C., an out-of-work editor looking for inspiration, and Lucie, a petite television producer with a few surprises up her sleeve. But soon their quiet Friday nights are shaken up: James, Georgia’s ex, wants to play a larger role in Dakota’s life – and possibly Georgia’s as well. Cat, a former high school friend, uneasily renews her bond with Georgia. And when the unthinkable happens, all of Georgia’s customers are forced to realize they’ve created not just a knitting club, but a sisterhood.

Snow Patrol

http://www.snowpatrol.com/
Check this out. My sister made me a great mix and this great band kicked it off. I had forgotten about them!

Also wanted to plug http://www.ingridmichaelson.com/. She's the artist doing the final song of the last Grey's Anatomy episode of the season. Very cool songwriter.

Wanted to put some lyrics down here for you to peruse as well. A little flashback but I thought you would enjoy:

I'LL BE YOU
The Replacements

If it's a temporary lull
why'm I bored right outta my skull?
Man, I'm dressin' sharp an' feelin' dull

Lonely, I guess that's where I'm from
If I was from Canada
then I'd best be called lonesome

[BTW, I read in an interview that Paul was struck with how some people inCanada used the word "lonesome" instead of "lonely," hence this lyric.]

And if it's just a game
Then I'll break down just in case
Oh yeah, we're runnin' in our last race
Well, I laughed half the way to Tokyo
I dreamt I was Surfer Joe
An' what that means, I don't know
A dream too tired to come true
Left a rebel without a
I'm searching for somethin' to do
And if it's just a game
Then we'll hold hands just the same
So what, we're bleeding but we ain't cut
And I could purge my soul perhaps
For the imminent collapse
Oh yeah, I'll tell you what we could do
You be me for a while
I'll be you
A dream too tired to come true
Left a rebel without a clue
Won't you tell me what I should do?
And if it's just a lull
why'm I bored right outta my skull?
Oh yeah, keep me from feeling so dull
And if it's just a
we'll break down just in case
Then again, I'll tell you what we could do
You be me for a while
You be me for a while
and I'll be you

Home of the Replacements and Paul W. would be the Twin Cities...so here's a shout out to the best ice cream per Bobby Flay after his throwdown:

Ice Cream
Nothing's better than ice cream on a hot summer day, and Jeff Sommers of Izzy's Ice Cream has cornered the market on everyone's favorite frozen treat. Creator of the Izzy's Scoop, a little sample-sized scoop on top of each order, Jeff loves to give out samples and, more important, lots of smiles. Completely run on solar power, Izzy's experiments with great flavors, from its top-rated vanilla to the more outrageous Red Zinfandel. Bobby Flay loves ice cream more than anything else and is always looking for something new.

2034 Marshall Ave.
St. Paul, MN 55104

Christopher Buckley's Modest Proposal

Weekend Edition Saturday, April 7, 2007 · Political satirist Christopher Buckley's novel Boomsday features a young blogger who suggests the U.S. government might offer baby boomers tax incentives to kill themselves before retirement age.

Boomsday
by Christopher Buckley

Outraged over the mounting Social Security debt, Cassandra Devine, a charismatic 29-year-old blogger and member of Generation Whatever, incites massive cultural warfare when she politely suggests that Baby Boomers be given government incentives to kill themselves by age 75. Her modest proposal catches fire with millions of citizens, chief among them "an ambitious senator seeking the presidency." With the help of Washington's greatest spin doctor, the blogger and the politician try to ride the issue of euthanasia for Boomers (called "transitioning") all the way to the White House, over the objections of the Religious Right, and of course, the Baby Boomers, who are deeply offended by demonstrations on the golf courses of their retirement resorts.

Rickie Lee Jones' Divine Departure

All Things Considered, April 7, 2007 · (npr.org)

In Rickie Lee Jones' heaven, Janis Joplin works at the corner bar and folks ride around in Elvis' Cadillac.
It's a paradise that only the "Dutchess of Coolsville" could imagine, and one she's brought to vivid life in her new album, The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard.
The Grammy winner's first original album in four years was inspired by the words of Jesus – some with a bit more poetic license than others.
Jones isn't religious in the traditional sense. Growing up, she occasionally attended Catholic mass, but was never baptized. She tells host Debbie Elliott that in America, Jesus is "kind of owned by the religious right."
Jones says her album is an attempt to spark a conversation about Jesus' teachings, and make him more accessible to people who don't go to church.
She credits longtime friend Lee Cantelon with providing the genesis of her new album. In 1997 Cantelon published The Words, a compilation of Jesus' words taken from the four Gospels of the New Testament.
He turned his book into a spoken-word project, and in 2005 he asked Jones to read a passage. Rather than do a reading, Jones improvised and sang "Nobody Knows My Name," which eventually became the first track on the album.
The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard doesn't stray entirely from Jones' bohemian roots. The lyrics, which tell stories of the divine and the worldly, still contain her beat-poet style.

AFI Dallas

DISPATCH FROM TEXAS Newbie AFI Dallas Fest Kicks the Door In
Wednesday March 28 4:58 PM ET
by Michael Jones
Four hours north from the Whole Earthy shops that sell "Keep Austin Weird" merchandise, an upscale Dallas thread shop displays, for twice the price, their own T-shirt: "Keep Dallas Pretentious." And with no apologies, the AFI Dallas International Film Festival began as founder Liener Temerlin, an unabashed "old ad man," stated that Dallas "may now hold the world record in size, films, venues, and sponsors for an inaugural film festival." Though the birth of yet another new film festival shouldn't make much of a ripple, Temerlin and company might have started a new franchising trend. Licensing the AFI brand for a festival was probably akin to attaching stars to a script -- it brought in a laundry list of big blue chip sponsors.

Artistic Director Michael Cain, previously of the Deep Ellum Film Festival, and his team built a program heavy on Texas-born talent, AFI alum (David Lynch's "Inland Empire"), and suggestions from AFI Los Angeles' Christian Gaines ("Drama/Mex" and "Screamers"). Opening the fest with Dallas-native Steve Sawalich's "Music Within" was the safe choice. Starring Ron Livingston as a deaf Vietnam vet fighting for the disabled Americans' rights, the film rides the middle of the road well, though breaks no ground.

Fellow Dallasite Amy Talkington's light, cheery romp, "Night of the White Pants," turned a circus mirror onto the furs and boots in the audience. Shot locally, it stars Tom Wilkerson as an ex-millionaire Dallas dealmaker battling lawyers, greedy ex-wives, spoiled children, and his own spoiled past. Wilkerson threw himself into the North Texas drawl with both feet and fists, but within all his character's good ole boy ego, Wilkerson's hound-dog eyes keep his performance refreshingly grounded. The audience ate it up, as they'll do with Talkington's next target: Dallas debutantes.

Narrative competition films included a few imports from Sundance 2007 including Steve Berra's "The Good Life" and Martin Hynes' "The Go-Getter," a lost-in-America story that, despite genuine moments of young love between the illuminant Zooey Deschanel and Lou Taylor Pucci, manages to lose its way mid-story. Crowds inside the Majestic Theater in Dallas attending the inaugural festival. For more photos, check out the festival's Flickr photo site.

Among the docs, Joel P. Engardio and Tom Shepard's "Knocking," put the audience inside the homes of Jehovah's Witnesses, for a change. In its best moments the journalists follow a Witness family into a "bloodless" liver transplant. Witnesses don't believe in using another's blood, or even a stored bag of their own, during surgery. Most even carry a card instructing caregivers "no blood." When a father decides to donate a portion of his liver to his ailing son, the family searches far and wide for a hospital that will do a transfusion-less transplant. They find it at USC who, in exchange, want to use the surgery to test new procedures that will reduce the need for donor blood. Using that as a jumping off point, the filmmakers continue to outline Jehovah Witness history, including their imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps and their victories in litigating for free speech in the US and abroad.

Other noteworthy docs included University of Texas professor Andrew Garrison's "Third Ward, TX," named after a Houston neighborhood where a group of African-American artists took over a block of abandoned homes just before their leveling. After creating unique artist spaces, parks, and much-needed low-income housing, the group then faced the result of their success: gentrification and myopic real estate development. In the aptly titled "A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar," filmmaker Eric Chaikin follows six people striving to become among the measly 39% that pass the California bar exam, including one unlucky subject who's failed it 41 times.

While potshots at Dallas pretension are easy, it's as useless as shooting barrel fish. Dallas doesn't care what you think. They like their art and they like to pay for it. The Dallas Contemporary, The Nasher, and neighboring Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth are all well funded and arguably premiere destinations for modern art in the Midwest. And while Variety reported the fest's pricetag at $4 million, much of that money seemed spent on the filmmakers: from the first class airfare to the swank W Hotel rooms, complete with a 3-bottle gift of fine wine in a fancy Target-designed box (just one item among the avalanche of swag). And when Dallasites show up to see David Lynch present his three-hour, interior-view of Laura Dern's head, they do it in their Neiman Marcus best, they stay through the whole thing, and they applaud when it's over. There is pretension here, and there is also class.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The inaugural AFI Dallas International Film Festival continues through Sunday, April 1 in Texas.]

Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette

Sena Jeter Naslund made flesh and blood a boldly original fictional character called "Ahab's wife". Now, she combines rigorous scholarship and blazing imagination to illuminate the life of Marie Antoinette, one of the most courageous—and misunderstood—queens in history.
"Like everyone, I am born naked."

This opening line of Naslund's compelling new novel, a very human Marie Antoinette invites readers to live her story as she herself experiences it. Marie Antoinette was a child of fourteen when her mother, the Empress of Austria, arranged for her to become the wife of the fifteen-year-old Dauphin, the future King of France. The young queen embraces her new family and the French people, and she is embraced in return. She shows her new husband nothing but love and encouragement, though he fails to give her a child and an heir to the throne.

Deeply disappointed and isolated, the queen allows herself to remain ignorant of the country's growing economic and political crises, and the people turn against her. Poor harvests, bitter winters, war debts, and poverty precipitate rebellion and revenge known as "the Terror."

Once again, Sena Jeter Naslund has shed new light on an important moment of historical change. Exquisitely detailed, beautifully written, heartbreaking and powerful, Abundance is a novel that is impossible to put down.

Library Journal
Lush with description and deep with historical detail, Naslund's (Ahab's Wife) latest novel weaves the epic of Marie Antoinette in all her misunderstood glory. Beginning with the ceremony that transforms the Hapsburg archduchess into the dauphine, the story captures a young girl's becoming the product of her circumstances. From her struggles to be diplomatic with her new family and subjects, to her marriage left unconsummated for years, Marie recalls her life in intelligent and mature observations. And when the first tremors of the French Revolution are felt, we see her struggle with her wishes to keep her children and husband safe. Immersing us in the life of the French court at its most vulnerable and decadent time, Naslund's marvelous work is more detailed and has more depth than Carolly Erickson's The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette. Highly recommended for all public libraries.

A Little Bit of Night Music

Learn about the Sarabande
In music, the sarabande (It., sarabanda) is a slow dance in triple metre with the distinctive feature that beats 2 and 3 of the measure are often tied, giving a distinctive rhythm of crotchet and minim in alternation. The minims are said to have corresponded with dragging steps in the dance.

The sarabande is first mentioned in Central America: in 1539, a dance called a zarabanda is mentioned in a poem written in Panama by Fernando Guzmán Mexía.[1] Apparently the dance became popular in the Spanish colonies before moving back across the Atlantic to Spain. While it was banned in Spain in 1583 for its obscenity, it was frequently cited in literature of the period (for instance in works by Cervantes and Lope de Vega).

Later, it became a traditional movement of the suite during the baroque period. The baroque sarabande is commonly a slow triple rather than the much faster Spanish original, consistent with the courtly European interpretations of many Latin dances. The sarabande form was revived in the 20th Century by composers such as Debussy, Satie and, in a different style, Vaughan Williams (in Job) and Benjamin Britten (in the Simple Symphony)

Perhaps the most famous sarabande is the anonymous La folie espagnole whose melody appears in pieces by dozens of composers from the time of Monteverdi and Corelli through the present day.

This was discussed in the book Abundance: see previous post.