Long Live Goat-Sucking Vampires!

Opening: Sometimes, I can't help but marvel at and be amused by the string of coincidences life throws our way. As an educated and (I like to think) fairly logical person, I know that coincidences are just random convergences of events. However, when they involve rather odd things, well, it does give one pause.

Exhibit A: Some weeks ago, a friend at work mentioned during lunch that her brother got married at a llama farm in Ohio. Since the bride's family also owned a llama farm, my friend chanced to visit two llama farms in one day. Most of us at the table hadn't even known there were llama farms in the US, so this information struck us as unusual and entertaining. In fact, it spurred a laugh-inducing conversation about llamas, alpacas, and the Amish. (Don't see the connection? Well, llamas and alpacas are both camelids, and llama farms and Amish communities apparently both exist in Ohio.)

"But the Amish can't use the llamas."
"Why not? They're not electric."

People who overheard our conversation probably thought we were crazy, but we enjoyed laughing ourselves silly. The merriment served as much-needed stress relief. Lunchtime and the bizarre conversation over, we returned to our respective desks. But, suddenly, llamas and alpacas seemed to pop up everywhere. We found out that another friend, who just moved to California this year, got married at the same llama farm in Ohio. (It is apparently a popular wedding location due to its picturesque setting.) A llama appeared in a cartoon video that yet another friend was watching at her cubicle (probably at the very same moment that we were having our llama-themed conversation). A few days later, at a girls-night-out dinner, a third friend insisted she had seen some "I love alpacas" commercials on TV. Before she sent us the link to prove she wasn't joking, I did some online searching of my own and came across I [heart] llamas buttons, T-shirts, and other paraphernalia. I had no idea camelids were so fashionable.

Exhibit B: I listen to NPR on my short commute to and from work. I tend to eschew TV news, I don't subscribe to any papers, and I don't actively visit news websites, so my weekday news diet pretty much consists of whatever I hear while I'm in the car. One night, while driving home, I heard a sound bite from Bush's visit to Cuba. He concluded his speech with "Viva Cuba libre!" Given his history of malapropisms, my immediate thought was, it would've been really funny if he had said, "Viva Chupacabra!" Now, I'd never even heard of a chupacabra until a couple of years ago, when a coworker wrote something about it as a joke on the lunchroom bulletin board. Why that thought popped into my head was a mystery, but I had a good internal chuckle over it. (For those of you unfamiliar with the chupacabra, it is a mythical creature known for drinking the blood of livestock, vampire style. Its name literally means "goat sucker.") Well, guess what came up as a lunchtime conversation topic on Friday? Chupacabras! A friend relayed the news about a Texas woman who claimed she captured the beast (or at least its corpse). Skeptics say it's some kind of fox, wolf, or dog, and samples from the creature were sent out for DNA testing.

Closing: As coincidences go, I realize that these are not the most eerie or outrageous. Still, llamas and chupacabras are not your everyday conversation topics, so I found their recurrences uncanny and amusing. Maybe next week, I'll hear that alleged chupacabras have turned their bloodthirsty attention to llamas in Ohio.

Do You Remember...?

The year is 1996. The Clintons are in the White House, and Taiwan finally has its first direct presidential election. The "Magnificent Seven" are the darlings of the Atlanta Summer Olympics, which featured the unfortunate mascot Izzy (short for "Whatizit?"). The Bulls win the NBA Championships. Again. The Yankees win the World Series. Again. OJ Simpson is on trial. Again. Carried along in life's rhythms and repetitions, I am navigating through my junior year at Berkeley. And saturating the airwaves, popping up in dance clubs and a host of unlikely places is the strange phenomenon called the Macarena. Everywhere you go, you can hear the catchy but monotonous beat of this one-hit wonder. Everywhere you look, you can see people doing this sexified version of the hokey pokey. The fad spreads and spreads, becoming fixtures at sporting events and even reaching senior aerobic classes. And this mania isn't localized. When I visit Taiwan in the winter, my cousins show me a goofy video of them doing the dance. I even participate in a subsequent homemade Macarena video. God, I hope that tape's been erased since then...

As I look back, I wonder what magic ingredients went into the synthesis of that obsession. Is it because even the most uncoordinated people could do that dance? Is it because people like songs to which they know only one phrase (Ehhh Macarena! Hai!)? Or, is it because every era (whether it be year or decade or century) needs something that will cause us to look back and ask, "What were we thinking?!"

Not surprisingly, the Macarena craze spawned a slew of parodies. Recently, I came across this hilarious video on YouTube. It is a brilliant Animaniacs parody titled "Macadamia Nut." Pure comic genius. (And it's even funnier if you compare it to the original video by Los Del Rio.)

Ah, nostalgia. They just don't make cartoons like this anymore. And maybe that is the real secret behind silly fads. They make us laugh, in all their incarnations. More importantly, they make us remember with a smile those days of yore and with them, our past selves. So, no matter how stupid and incomprehensible the fad, we still feel fondness for it because of all the associated memories and feelings it brings back.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Yesterday, a friend and I went to see the Noah's Ark exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center. Apparently, the exhibit had received prominent coverage in the LA Times and the NY Times, but I was blissfully unaware of this. When my friend briefly told me about the exhibit, I assumed the display would include an intricate ark in miniature, with myriad animals on or boarding the vessel. Imagine my delighted surprise when I walked into the exhibit space and found myself immersed in a hands-on, interactive experience populated with animals of all shapes and sizes made from found objects! The creativity that went into this project was awe-inspiring. I marveled at the amazing artistry of the puppet-sculptures even as my inner child gleefully emerged to create mini-cyclones, generate rainstorms, and animate various creatures by pulling levers, pumping hydraulic systems, and spinning wheels. The place truly is designed for kids of all ages.

Here are some pictures I took while wandering (and playing) through the exhibit.


Notice how the elephant's trunk is fashioned out of bamboo baskets, the kind commonly used to steam dim sum! His feet are made from steel drums, and although you can't see it in this picture, he has a "gong-able" heart. The deer's ears are shoe horns, the zebras' bodies are rotating turbines, and their manes are made from organ keys. Talk about clever usage of materials!






This picture shows part of the ark. You can load the ramp with foam animal pairs and send them up to "board" the vessel. How can one not feel like a kid again surrounded by all these cool contraptions and toys?!









More animals on the ark...

Check out the crocodile made from a viola case! And the flamingos below it have purses for bodies, fly swatters for legs, and combs for feathers on their wings.

More cool animals...



















At first, we had trouble figuring out what these brown critters were. We just thought it was cool that they had boxing gloves as bodies. Finally, I realized that these were kiwis! How cute! For more great images, check out the Skirball's website. (The penguin and hedgehog are amazing, not to mention adorable!)

Design Changes

Barely three weeks into this blog and already I'm making design changes. Much as the Scribe template spoke to the "classic" side of my personality, it just didn't seem to fit with the spirit of this blog. Parchment, quills, and ink bottles don't exactly convey "airy words." If anything, they announce "weighty words." So, I thought I'd switch to this Harbor template for a while and see how it feels. At the very least, the clouds and the sky suggest airiness. And I do like the cleanness of the design. I haven't decided whether I like the lighthouse or not, and the title font may need some work, but for now, this will have to do. Maybe one of these days, I'll actually learn CSS and design my own blog template.

P.S. If you are new to this blog, this is what it used to look like:
I have to admit, the flower bullet points were fortuitously apropos for the Pushing Daisies quotes. (Click on image to see enlarged version; flower bullet point will be clear.) Still, I didn't feel that the cute dingbat bullets justified keeping the whole template.

A Bouquet of Daisies

Due to the Country Music Awards, I wasn't able to get my weekly fix of Pushing Daisies tonight. So, I thought I'd relive the show's finest verbal moments by listing some of my favorite quotes thus far. A bouquet of Daisies quotes, if you will. (No, I do not have a photographic memory. Yes, I am enough of a geek that I re-watched the episodes online to jot down quotes. But, to be fair, I also re-watched the episodes simply to enjoy them.) Anyway, here goes.

1. Emerson: Words that sound alike get mixed up in my head.
   Olive: Me too. I used to think masturbation meant chewing your food. (pause) I don’t think that anymore.
2. Chuck: I'd kiss you if it wouldn't kill me.
3. Narrator: In fact, Emerson Cod had finished knitting a sweater vest and two handgun cozies in the week since Chuck's return.
4. Olive: This isn't Pies 'R Us, Pie City, or Thousands of Pies in One Place. This is a bells-on-the-door, pies-baking, mom-and-pop place. We chit-chat here. Chit!
5. Ned: What's so great about knowing? When you lift up a rock, do you find whipped cream? No, you find worms. I say no to knowing.
6. Chuck: You love secrets. You want to marry secrets and have little half-secret half-human babies.
7. Mark Chase: The Dandy Lion car is the culmination of my life's work. It's a flower-powered phenomenon born of a thousand sleepless nights, intense Ritalin abuse, and a long sublimated interest in botany. So what if in the unlikely but not impossible event that the car gets up to a speed of 70 miles an hour, with the headlights on, and the seat warmer on low, a short circuit in the radio causes a cataclysmic chain reaction that blows the car and its precious human cargo to smithereens?
8. Narrator: Emerson Cod did not like to knit in public, but he often left the house with the needles in his pocket should an opportunity to rib-stitch a ski cap present itself.
9. Chuck: Remember, mind over matter makes Pooh un-fatter.
   Emerson: I may be stuck, but I can still reach my gun.
10. Chuck: Kick, Pooh, kick!
11. Wilford Woodruff: I think you should know that I was thrice named alternate sword master at the southern area regional volunteer infantry reenactment regiment.
    Ned: I wanted to be a Jedi.
12. Ned: I'm gonna see if I've got some plastic wrap.
13. Emerson: Is that a dead bird? Why are you holding a dead bird? Throw that away. It's swimming with disease, and you serve food!
14. Emerson: What is the rate of exchange on the life of a bird? Because if it's equal to or greater than mine, I need to get back to my car.
15. Ned: It's raining dead birds!
16. Emerson: Because Big Daddy needs some new yarn.
17. Ned: He's not Conrad; he's the hijacker. And he's going to the bathroom in my kitchen!
    Chuck: Boy, you miss one trip to the morgue.
18. Ned: Good news is you're not blind. Bad news is you're dead.
19. Ned: Why did they send it to Nam? Do the Vietnamese need windmills?
    Chuck: NARM--National Area of Retired Mills.
20. Elsita: Oh no, you didn't use bows to tie me up, did you? You take a hostage like you tie your sneakers!
21. Olive: Ned hates Halloween, you know. Makes him moodier than a pumpkin full of PMS.
22. Ned: They put a bomb in your daybed?
23. Emerson: His goat killed you?
24. Olive: Sweet Secretariat.
    Emerson: That don't look like John Joseph.
    Olive: A horse with no name.
    Emerson: Or legs.
    (shudder)
25. Chuck (to Digby): You know what we are? We're the walking dead on Halloween.
26. Chuck: First of all, huh? And secondly, Olive thinks that I faked my death, which is completely different to knowing that I'm dead.
    Emerson: Yeah, different like purple and mauve.
27. Mama Jacobs: Well, you wouldn't need all that bait if your belly were full of fish, dear.
28. Vivian (about weekly pies): I don't know how we survived without it. It's like a sex addiction. I would imagine.
29. Chuck: What if he changes when his blood sugar level drops?
    Olive: Like a hypoglycemic werewolf!
30. Olive: Tell Ned I love . . . his pies.
31. Emerson: I love you, shovel!
32. (doorbell)
    Vivian: Is that clock right? It's two o'clock in the a.m.!
    Lily: I'll get my gun.
    Vivian: And I'll get the candy bowl.

Mmmm.... Ratatouille...

Since the Ratatouille DVD was released today, I will take this opportunity to extol this little gem of a film. Only Pixar can take an animal so traditionally reviled and make it not only cute and sympathetic, but get away with placing said critter in a restaurant kitchen!
The movie has heart, humor, and the usual Pixar standard of amazing visuals. The scenes of Paris are breathtakingly gorgeous; they made me ache for a return to the magical City of Light. And the food, which rivaled the culinary masterpieces one might see on the Food Network, actually made me hungry. (Never mind that the dishes were being prepared by a rat.) As for the characters, they are rendered with such detail that I swear you can see every hair on Remy's furry little body.
This feel-good movie brimming with artistry and laugh-out-loud moments will have you cheering for its unlikely but lovable hero. I think I'm going to go to amazon and order it right now...

It's an Existentialist World, Charlie Brown

As part of the office festivities for Halloween yesterday, we participated in a trivia quiz while consuming pizza and various spooky potluck concoctions. The first question on the quiz was:

Every Halloween, Charlie Brown helps his friend Linus wait for what character to appear?
a. The Grinch | b. The Great Pumpkin | c. Godot |
d. Pigpen

I found the concept of Peanuts characters waiting for Godot hilarious. Considering that the content of Charles Schulz's comics was often quite deep, ironic, and satiric, perhaps the connection is not such a stretch. Tickled by this idea, I was moved to Photoshop a couple of images to illustrate a Peanuts take on existentialism.

As part of my research for this mini-project, I went to trusty ol' wikipedia to refresh my memory of Beckett and "Waiting for Godot." (I don't know what I ever did without wikipedia before!) There, I found out that one of two possible paintings by Caspar David Friedrich inspired Beckett to write the play: Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon or Two Men Contemplating the Moon. This composite of Friedrich's painting and Linus and Sally in the pumpkin patch is my tongue-in-cheek homage to both Beckett and Schulz. (By the way, Caspar David Friedrich's oeuvre includes some wonderfully atmospheric and sublime paintings.)

Thus, another Halloween has come and gone, and we find ourselves suddenly in the month of November. And even though neither the Great Pumpkin nor Godot has shown up, we find laughter and friendship and thought and creative expression as we continue to mark our time on this earth, and it is enough.