Matthew (born 2002)
Flower with Insects, 2008
Marker on paper

Private collection

My nephew sent me this!

Ten television shows on which James Rebhorn has appeared as a guest star:

1. Canterbury's Law
2. New York Undercover
3. The Knights of Prosperity
4. Wiseguy
5. Law & Order
6. The Adventures of Pete & Pete
7. Texas
8. Now and Again
9. The Guiding Light
10. The Practice

I like James Rebhorn. I'm watching him as a defense attorney on Law & Order right now, and last week I saw in the movie Baby Mama, in which he delivered a very funny line: "That's the worst closing argument I've ever heard." Which isn't all that funny out of context, I guess, but at the time it made me laugh out loud.

Ten things in my freezer:

1. French bread
2. Chorizo sausage
3. Ground beef
4. Hot Italian sausage
5. Frozen spinach
6. Catfish
7. Ice cubes
8. Hot dogs
9. Ground turkey
10. Häagen-Dazs Pineapple Coconut ice cream

Nos.. 1, 8, and 10 belong to my roommate. Hot dogs are one of the two things he knows how to cook. (The other is scrambled eggs.)

Yaccov Agam (born May 11, 1928)
Night over Jerusalem
Silkscreen on acrylic glass

Engel Gallery, Jerusalem

OK, whose bright idea was it to schedule the first half of Empire Falls tonight but not schedule part two until next Sunday? HBO Signature, you are now my enemy. Until next Sunday.

Luckily, my ire at having to wait a week to see the end of Empire Falls is being soothed by the episode of Ace of Cakes I'm now watching features a cake shaped like an armadillo. Food Network is my friend.

Postcards from God (1)

Yes, I do feel like a visitor,
a tourist in this world
that I once made.
I rarely talk,
except to ask the way,
distrusting my interpreters,
tired out by the babble
of what they do not say.
I walk around through battered streets,
distinctly lost,
looking for landmarks
from another, promised past.

Here, in this strange place,
in a disjointed time,
I am nothing but a space
that sometimes has to fill.
Images invade me.
Picture postcards overlap my empty face
demanding to be stamped and sent.

"Dear . . ."
Who am I speaking to?
I think I may have misplaced the address,
but still, I feel the need
to write to you;
not so much or your sake
as for mine,

to raise these barricades
against my fear:
Postcards from god.
Proof that I was here.

Imtiaz Dharker (born 1954)

Doctor Who and/or Star Wars fans may be interested to know that this poet is the mother of Ayesha Dharker, who played the Ood Operations P.R. executive in "Planet of the Ood" and Queen Jamillia of Naboo in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. I thought it was kind of interesting, anyway.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned a couple of books whose titles were drawn from consecutive lines of poetry: By the Pricking of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie, and Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. I asked if anyone could think of other examples, and ebrookeb stepped up with Sidney Sheldon's The Best Laid Plans and John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, which in turn made me think of a possible candidate, which an amazon.com search confirmed: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and The Center Cannot Hold by Elyn Sacks.

Anyway, tonight I was watching a repeat of the third series Doctor Who episode "The Lazarus Experiment," and I heard the Doctor quote a line from T. S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men," and it struck me that there was possibly another title pairing to be found there in. Two amazon searches later, I confirmed it: Between the Motion and the Act by Melanie E. Williams and Falls the Shadow by William Lashner. And, for that matter, This Is the Way the World Ends by James Morrow and Not With a Bang but a Whimper by Robert A. Levine.

Ten characters who have appeared more than ten times on Law & Order, and the actors who portrayed them:

1. Dr. Emil Skoda (J. K. Simmons)
2. Sgt. Phil Cerreta (Paul Sorvino)
3. Det. Ana Cordova (Andrea Navedo)
4. Det. Tony Profaci (John Fiore)
5. CSU Julian Beck (John Cariani)
6. Judge Alan Berman (David Rosenbaum)
7. Lt. Anita Van Buren (S. Epatha Merkerson)
8. Forensics Tech Arlene Shrier (Christine Farrell)
9. M. E. Elizabeth Rodgers (Leslie Hendrix)
10. Judge Harriet Doremus (Barbara Spiegel)

A fun McCoy quote in an L&O rerun I watched tonight: "I'm playing legal tiddlywinks with these punks. What I'd really like to do is take 'em up to Battery Park and hang 'em by the scrotum." Best part was the extremely worried expression on the face of the extra who walked to deliver a motion just as McCoy said the last few words.

Ten of the original thirty-one flavors offered by Baskin-Robbins:

1. Egg Nog
2. Cherry Macaroon
3. Chocolate
4. Chocolate Almond
5. Lemon Crisp
6. Chocolate Fudge
7. Chocolate Mint
8. Date Nut
9. Burgundy Cherry
10. Raspberry Sherbet

Irvine Robbins, the co-founder of Baskin-Robbins, died Monday. His first store, opened before he teamed up with his brother-in-law Burt Baskin to create Baskin-Robbins, had a mere 21 flavors. A funny anecdote from his obituary:

Some were short-lived and created to mark specific events, such as Lunar Cheesecake for the moon landings and Valley Forge Fudge for the 1976 bicentennial.

When the Beatles were to arrive in the United States in 1964, a reporter called to ask whether Baskin-Robbins was going to commemorate the event with a new flavor.

Robbins didn't have a flavor planned but quickly replied, "Uh, Beatle Nut, of course."

The flavor was created, manufactured and delivered in just five days, according to the Web site.

Ten grocery stores I've been to:

1. El Mercadito Hispano II, Sterling, Va.
2. Gary's Foods, Mt. Vernon, Iowa
3. Capitol Hill Supermarket, Washington, D.C.
4. Harris Teeter, Carrboro, N.C.
5. Snider's Super Foods, Silver Spring, Md.
6. Albertsons, Chula Vista, Calif.
7. Jewel-Osco, Wheaton, Ill.
8. Kroger, Cambridge, Ohio
9. Copps Food Center, Madison, Wis.
10. Harvest Co-op Market, Jamaica Plain, Mass.

This was a lot harder to put together than I thought it would be.

Ten musicians who have appeared on Sesame Street:

1. Diane Schuur
2. Gloria Estefan
3. Donny Osmond
4. India.Arie
5. Mahalia Jackson
6. James Taylor
7. José Feliciano
8. Itzhak Perlman
9. Harry Belafonte
10. Patti LaBelle

And speaking of which, my brother showed me this video the other day:

My niece is pretty much obsessed with Elmo right now.

I saw Made of Honor this afternoon, and man was it bad. I will, however, limit my complaints to one extremely petty issue. The female lead is an art restorer for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in the scene where Patrick Dempsey's character visits her in the restoration lab, the following painting can be seen in the background:



That's Raphael's Small Cowper Madonna -- one of my favorite paintings, and one that the Met would be proud to have in their collection. But they don't; it's owned by the National Gallery of Art. And it's not like the NGA has to farm out their restoration projects to other facilities; they have one of the finest restoration labs in the country. I'm all for featuring great works of art in major motion pictures, but they couldn't have chosen a picture that is actually owned by the Met? I've never been, but I understand they have some pretty good stuff up there.

Ten soap opera parodies:

1. All My Circuits (Futurama)
2. Southwest General (Tootsie)
3. The Sun Also Sets (Soapdish)
4. Gay As Blazes (Queer as Folk)
5. Invitation to Love (Twin Peaks)
6. Search for the Sun (The Simpsons)
7. Days of the Week (SCTV)
8. Moody's Point (The Amanda Show)
9. Mary Backstage, Noble Wife (Bob and Ray)
10. Love of Chair (The Electric Company)

Today is also my nephew David's mother's birthday, and the anniversary of Alan B. Shephard's orbital flight, and Liberation Day in Ethiopia, and Søren Kierkegaard's birthday. But I don't have any Buffy pictures to use for those. Here's a funny cartoon relating to the last one, though.

Katsushika Hokusai (1760 – 1849)
Red Fuji, ca. 1831
Color woodblock print

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

This print is part of Hokusai's print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. You may be more familiar with another print from this series, The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.

From The Masnavi, Book II, Part VI:

Love endures hardships at the hands of the Beloved.
Through love bitter things seem sweet,
Through love bits of copper are made gold.
Through love dregs taste like pure wine,
Through love pains are as healing balms.
Through love thorns become roses,
And through love vinegar becomes sweet wine.

Through love the stake becomes a throne,
Through love reverse of fortune seems good fortune.
Through love a prison seems a rose bower,
Without love a grate full of ashes seems a garden.
Through love burning fire is pleasing light,
Through love the Devil becomes a Houri.
Through love hard stones become soft as butter,
Without love soft wax becomes hard iron.
Through love grief is as joy,
Through love Ghouls turn into angels.
Through love stings are as honey,
Through love lions are harmless as mice.
Through love sickness is health,
Through love wrath is as mercy.
Through love the dead rise to life,
Through love the king becomes a slave.

Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī

As I was walking from the grocery store to the bus stop this afternoon, I saw a caterpillar creeping along the curb. "Ooh, caterpillar!" I said, and stopped and leaned over to watch it inch along. Then I heard laughter, and looked up to see a couple of women, also toting shopping bags, watching me watch the caterpillar. "You know," I said to them, "inside every grown man there's a little boy waiting to get out."

Ten books I read during the month of April:

1. The Great Lakes Water Wars by Peter Annin
2. Eureka! by Jim Lehrer
3. Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World by Samantha Power
4. Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
5. The Legion Companion by Glen Cadigan
6. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three by John Godey
7. Utter Incompetents: Ego and Ideology in the Age of Bush by Thomas Oliphant
8. Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie
9. Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz
10. The Night Ferry by Michael Robotham

Ten people for whom counties in Maryland were named:

1. John Work Garrett (Garrett County)
2. Edward Sackville, 4th Earl of Dorset (Dorset County)
3. Grace, Lady Talbot (Talbot County)
4. Cæcilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore (Baltimore, Cecil, and Calvert Counties)
5. The Virgin Mary (St. Mary's County)
6. Lady Caroline Eden (Caroline County)
7. Prince George of Denmark (Prince George's County)
8. Anne Arundell (Anne Arundel County)
9. Henry Harford (Harford County)
10. Gen. Richard Montgomery (Montgomery County)

It's May Day, so it's once again time for me to resume the fight against the capitalist pigs. As always, my comrade Buffy Ann Summers is here to serve as the poster girl for the cause:



Using her hammer to break the chains that bind our fellow workers in servitude to the bourgeoisie, and her sickle to slice through the weeds of injustice, Buffy and I soon will be able to achieve our dream of establishing a glorious socialist paradise. Join us, won't you? Here, let Billy Bragg get you in the mood with his interpretation of "The Internationale" (MP3, 3.5mb).

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go get ready for work.