Peacocks have adopted my father. I kid you not, I saw them this morning. He has named them "Peter" and "Penny". They appear to be a very young mated couple -- Peter hasn't yet gotten his full plumage. The thing is, my dad never wanted peacocks. They just showed up one day eating the cat food. Now they wake him up in the morning, and he's taken a shine to them. Apparently, if we were to buy them, they'd cost somewhere in the range of $600 or something. *shrug*
Anyway, that just caps off the wonderful weird of this week... Not only is the weather warming up so I can go running again, but the Brandywine River museum's got an exhibit on Caldecott Medal winning children's book illustrators... I attended a lecture on the matter the other day, and now I'm very taken with David Wiesner (he's local, I believe), and Jerry Pinkney.
Wiesner's got this wonderfully whimsical storytelling through his mostly wordless books of floating frogs, mysterious cameras washed up on shore with impossible photographs inside.
Sidebar: Talking about impossible photographs, have you seen this?!
Anyway, Pinkney, who'd received Caldecott honors five times prior, is finally the most recent winner. His painting style's a little more hairy-scary than Wiesner, but in a good way... Plus, while I like Wiesner's storytelling, his humans are a little "off". Some consistent errors in facial structure throw me. But Pinkney's anthropomorphic animal emotions are spot on...
This week, I also caught a brief mention that my favorite musician, Josh Ritter was stopping through for a free concert... ...I just didn't catch the part that said you needed reservations. So, I took the train -- wait, lemme not get ahead of myself -- I tried to take the train from Malvern, but they've got no frigging parking! So further on to Paoli -- still nothing, time was running down, so I figured I'd move on to Daylesford station, but ditched my car instead in a mall parking lot and ran the 5 blocks back to Paoli Station, just making the last train that would bring me to Philly in time.
I get there, and having only been to the World Café once before last year, I forgot its location a bit, and wound up running, taking a wrong turn, crossing and recrossing the Schuylkill unnecessarily, but finally arriving, quite the unkempt and sweaty Yeti -- only to find men with lists checking names. Shite.
So I inquired, and dude said he'd let me in if someone didn't show, and thankfully for me (alas for them), someone didn't, and I took a spot along the wall.
I'd have thought that over years of touring, Josh would have become something like the stereotypical engaging, consummate entertainer -- like the little electric gorilla that Billy Joel becomes onstage. But, charmingly no... I had to smile when I heard a "Howdy" from an artist who never thought "putting a boot in your ass" was "the American way". He was like a nervous geeky kid -- amped and pogo-ing that people came to see him, but kept his side comments brief, his "aw shucks" demeanor genuine, later revealing that he gets nervous when on the radio, and prefers "writing words, memorizing them, and making them rhyme" before he presents his thoughts.
There are some great new tracks he played from the as yet to be released new album, "So Runs The World Away". Allow me to share some...
This new album will have a fantasy love song to rival his previous one, "The Temptation of Adam" (about finding love during an impending nuclear apocalypse).
It's called "The Curse". This clip was recorded when the song was much younger, so you'll notice a couple of slips as he forgets where he is:
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Another New World:
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Southern Pacific:
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This next one was neat, too... It interweaves some classic murder ballads (a favorite genre of mine). Josh borrows heavily from Mississippi John Hurt's "Louis Collins", and mixes in "Delia" from "Delia's Gone" and "Stack O Lee" for good measure... Here's "Folk Bloodbath":
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Josh Ritter is the only artist whose album I'll buy sight unseen, because he's always excellent.
In my meanderings through Philly afterward, I learned the following things:
DO NOT eat cheesesteak at Jim's Steaks on South Street. My God, what a horrendous travesty of a food-like substance. Their service is swift and efficient, but their "food" is crap. I don't care if they do have a signed pic of Mr. T on the wall upstairs. I guess it was a "location is everything" deal that allowed them to survive this long. People must just figure, "I'm in Philly, I want a cheesesteak, and I'm on South Street, so why not here." Don't make that mistake. Geno's is head and shoulders above them in quality. Hell, Steak-umm (where the "umm" means "umm... ...we don't know what the hell else we put in this thing") is better than Jim's.
There seems to be an interesting place on Locust between 15th and 16th called "The Kibitz Room". I've never seriously explored kosher cuisine, or even know how different it is from anything else, but that may be a good place to start.
"Showcase Comics" on South Street has downsized (again! 🙁 ), moved east a couple of spots, and become "Atomic City Comics". Still, I picked up Craig Thompson's "Blankets" -- something I was long remiss in doing.
"Fat Jacks", however, still seems to be going strong on Sansom, cater-corner to Capogiro, my choice for gelatto in the city.
Leslie ****** in Perkins' English 101: You shouldn't leave your papers behind. You're just asking for someone like me to point out the fallacies in your arguments. 😀
And finally, this week, I've learned something about my overall creative persuasion, which may be the most rewarding thing of all... My interests in what I consume and what I produce may vary, but they're centered in Americana and Magical Realism. Whether it's visual art and my attraction to the Wyeth family's body of work, or that of countless American illustrators, music and my love of Josh Ritter and geeky neo-folk-rock, Craig Thomspon's "Blankets" (which, while I have yet to read it, I believe it to be its own little slice of the magical American experience), or my own research into Annie Oakley and what I'll produce from that, it all seems to have a similar feel to me -- a thread running through it that I love that is both fantastic and uniquely American...
It's been a good week, and so I hope it has been with you.
Anyway, that just caps off the wonderful weird of this week... Not only is the weather warming up so I can go running again, but the Brandywine River museum's got an exhibit on Caldecott Medal winning children's book illustrators... I attended a lecture on the matter the other day, and now I'm very taken with David Wiesner (he's local, I believe), and Jerry Pinkney.
Wiesner's got this wonderfully whimsical storytelling through his mostly wordless books of floating frogs, mysterious cameras washed up on shore with impossible photographs inside.
Sidebar: Talking about impossible photographs, have you seen this?!
Anyway, Pinkney, who'd received Caldecott honors five times prior, is finally the most recent winner. His painting style's a little more hairy-scary than Wiesner, but in a good way... Plus, while I like Wiesner's storytelling, his humans are a little "off". Some consistent errors in facial structure throw me. But Pinkney's anthropomorphic animal emotions are spot on...
This week, I also caught a brief mention that my favorite musician, Josh Ritter was stopping through for a free concert... ...I just didn't catch the part that said you needed reservations. So, I took the train -- wait, lemme not get ahead of myself -- I tried to take the train from Malvern, but they've got no frigging parking! So further on to Paoli -- still nothing, time was running down, so I figured I'd move on to Daylesford station, but ditched my car instead in a mall parking lot and ran the 5 blocks back to Paoli Station, just making the last train that would bring me to Philly in time.
I get there, and having only been to the World Café once before last year, I forgot its location a bit, and wound up running, taking a wrong turn, crossing and recrossing the Schuylkill unnecessarily, but finally arriving, quite the unkempt and sweaty Yeti -- only to find men with lists checking names. Shite.
So I inquired, and dude said he'd let me in if someone didn't show, and thankfully for me (alas for them), someone didn't, and I took a spot along the wall.
I'd have thought that over years of touring, Josh would have become something like the stereotypical engaging, consummate entertainer -- like the little electric gorilla that Billy Joel becomes onstage. But, charmingly no... I had to smile when I heard a "Howdy" from an artist who never thought "putting a boot in your ass" was "the American way". He was like a nervous geeky kid -- amped and pogo-ing that people came to see him, but kept his side comments brief, his "aw shucks" demeanor genuine, later revealing that he gets nervous when on the radio, and prefers "writing words, memorizing them, and making them rhyme" before he presents his thoughts.
There are some great new tracks he played from the as yet to be released new album, "So Runs The World Away". Allow me to share some...
This new album will have a fantasy love song to rival his previous one, "The Temptation of Adam" (about finding love during an impending nuclear apocalypse).
It's called "The Curse". This clip was recorded when the song was much younger, so you'll notice a couple of slips as he forgets where he is:
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Another New World:
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Southern Pacific:
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This next one was neat, too... It interweaves some classic murder ballads (a favorite genre of mine). Josh borrows heavily from Mississippi John Hurt's "Louis Collins", and mixes in "Delia" from "Delia's Gone" and "Stack O Lee" for good measure... Here's "Folk Bloodbath":
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Josh Ritter is the only artist whose album I'll buy sight unseen, because he's always excellent.
In my meanderings through Philly afterward, I learned the following things:
DO NOT eat cheesesteak at Jim's Steaks on South Street. My God, what a horrendous travesty of a food-like substance. Their service is swift and efficient, but their "food" is crap. I don't care if they do have a signed pic of Mr. T on the wall upstairs. I guess it was a "location is everything" deal that allowed them to survive this long. People must just figure, "I'm in Philly, I want a cheesesteak, and I'm on South Street, so why not here." Don't make that mistake. Geno's is head and shoulders above them in quality. Hell, Steak-umm (where the "umm" means "umm... ...we don't know what the hell else we put in this thing") is better than Jim's.
There seems to be an interesting place on Locust between 15th and 16th called "The Kibitz Room". I've never seriously explored kosher cuisine, or even know how different it is from anything else, but that may be a good place to start.
"Showcase Comics" on South Street has downsized (again! 🙁 ), moved east a couple of spots, and become "Atomic City Comics". Still, I picked up Craig Thompson's "Blankets" -- something I was long remiss in doing.
"Fat Jacks", however, still seems to be going strong on Sansom, cater-corner to Capogiro, my choice for gelatto in the city.
Leslie ****** in Perkins' English 101: You shouldn't leave your papers behind. You're just asking for someone like me to point out the fallacies in your arguments. 😀
And finally, this week, I've learned something about my overall creative persuasion, which may be the most rewarding thing of all... My interests in what I consume and what I produce may vary, but they're centered in Americana and Magical Realism. Whether it's visual art and my attraction to the Wyeth family's body of work, or that of countless American illustrators, music and my love of Josh Ritter and geeky neo-folk-rock, Craig Thomspon's "Blankets" (which, while I have yet to read it, I believe it to be its own little slice of the magical American experience), or my own research into Annie Oakley and what I'll produce from that, it all seems to have a similar feel to me -- a thread running through it that I love that is both fantastic and uniquely American...
It's been a good week, and so I hope it has been with you.
