Twenty-five.

Picked this up over at The Fourth Row. Fun.

Top 25 Favorite TV characters:

1. James T. Kirk (Star Trek)
2. Heathcliff Huxtable (The Cosby Show)
3. Gaius Baltar (SciFi's Battlestar Galactica)
4. Samantha Stevens (Bewitched)
5. Lt. Worf (ST:TNG)
6. Alex Krycek (The X Files)
7. Alistair Deacon (As Time Goes By)
8. Lex Luthor (Smallville)
9. Malcolm Reynolds (Firefly)
10. Gareth (The Office --GBR)
11. Jack Arnold (The Wonder Years)
12. Q (ST:TNG)
13. Hannibal Smith (The A Team)
14. Buster Bluth (Arrested Development)
15. Uncle Iro (Avatar: The Last Airbender)
16. Julius Caesar (Rome: The Series)
17. Mum-rah (Thundercats)
18. Niles Crane (Frasier)
19. Dr. Cox (Scrubs)
20. Lodz (Carnival)
21. Denny Crane (Boston Legal)
22. Frasier Crane (Cheers/Frasier)
23. Kermit the Frog (The Muppet Show)
24. The Lone Gunmen (X-Files)
25. ALF (ALF)

Tick. Tock.

Nothing. Nothing at all.

The living room smells of old coffee grounds. It's most likely Creepy Bunny--slowly asserting himself. As predicted.

I sat and watched as a bee carried off a grasshopper three times its size. Abduction? Elopement? Medevac from a remote buggy battlefield? Six-legged heroism?

That. And I've ignored the dog long enough that his pissing on the floor is no longer just a potential.

It's nothing special.

Some random Hans Christian Anderson. I was looking for a story on mud--a nod to the "your mind gets dirty as you get closer to thirty" that's been doing laps in my head--and came up with a handful of shit. Lots of boots and dusty saddlebags. Maybe a goat or two. Ugly, big-nosed rustics getting the girl based on spunk. Hate it.

But it can't all be selkies and blackbird pies. A person's got to commit to his time in the trenches. That copy of "Bremer Town Musicians" isn't going to illustrate itself.

And you smell like one too.

Best thirtieth birthday presents ever.

From my grandmother: an (opened) "OmniHotels" box with shower cap.

Runner-up (also grandma): a blue envelope with a "Happy Belated" written on the front in colored pencil. Licked and sealed. No card.

...gone apey.

Rhapsody Playlist

Here's the artist I was losing my wits and words over the other day.

Little goose, who made thee?

Feelin' barnyardish lately.

The Goosegirl. It's a fave. Perhaps because it reminds me of my sister in law (has a thing for headkerchiefs). Or because there's a talking horsehead. Or because in the end they roll the fraudulent princess down a hill in a barrelful of nails until she's dead.

There was one small, horrifying moment when I thought I'd got it all wrong. That it was goats instead of geese and I'd made some terrible mistake and how the hell was I going to explain a gooseherder? I mean, if it had been the other way around, no problem. There's Bo Peep, and Mary's Little Lamb, a handful of Aesop's, maybe even some Blake that I could have fudged. But geese? Nuh.

But it's all good. No worries. Except for the missing gooseboy Conrad that I sliced out and am fairly sure is harboring a grudge over being deprived his fifteen minutes.

Seriously.

A curse on blogger.

The Rhapsody links aren't working, but I'm going to suggest an extra bit of fingerwork to check out Jeremy Enigk's one solo release. I'm about ten years late on this one, which doesn't really matter as he sounds thirty years out of place. Missed a couple of grooves on the generational circuit that all music travels.

But so worth the lag. Tull-esque. Drake-y.

With undertones of Lewis Carroll. Complete with what sounds to be an orchestra of tiny grass dwellers. Playing on instruments of reeds. Amplifying the sound with webbed hands and feet. Raising voices in sweet unrestraint.

Compass.

It was only a matter of time.

It'll be interesting to see how a children's movie deals with an issue Potter only hinted at--that mean business of soul-cutting.

Wah, wah.

Opinion seems to be unanimous. And while I've flat-out refused to do a second installment of the bothersome Baa, I will admit to a change of heart. From here out, it's all flower petals and large, blinking eyes. Ankle socks and ribbons and small, shy things peeking out from under their mothers' skirts.

Feels good, dammit.

Locking horns.

Alex commissioned a pic for a work friend's baby shower. He gave me a curt "She likes sheep" and left me to my devices. I paged through our Mother Goose, double checked the appropriateness factor, and opted for Baa Baa Black Sheep.

On giving him the piece, he refused to bring it in.

"There's no way I'm giving this to her in front of an office of women. It looks like a demon goat."

"Why on earth not? And it's a long-horned ram. Technically a sheep."

"It's the devil and it's roaring damnation down on your audience."

"It's bleating. It's just been sheared, for chrissakes. He's a little testy."

"No one is going to hang this in a nursery. It's the sort of thing that scars children. And grandparents."

"It's the sort of thing that kids appreciate later on."

"It looks like the cover of a Tenacious D album. No."

Ever on and on.

Took to sorting through and sifting out my drawerfuls of illustrations the other day. It's an excercize in humility that leaves me more deflated than inspired, despite the headiness of a good cleaning, but it's hard to stop once begun.

I came across this one, which I consider the first of its kind-- slick with age and from a thousand adventures in bookbags. It's at once a detailed testament to a cramped, unrelenting seventeen-year-old hand and a model of my complete (and completely irresponsible) textual disregard. (Bilbo Baggins in Persian pantalones? Gracious no!).

But I love it. Thundercat influences and all. And it remains in the "Keep" pile. On top of The Owl and the Pussycat, between the parades of pen and ink dwarves.

Fighting in the shade.

I grew tired and halfhearted in the middle of a particular snit yesterday and decided to change subjects.


Fairly characteristic, but the segue was ill-timed:

J: "Do you realize what today is the anniversary of?"

A: (stammering) "What? Well...uh...just give me...lemme...Maybe it's...?"

J: "You know this one."

A: "I really...er...well..."

J: (suddenly aware that it all sounded like a nasty trap) "Oh, good christ no! What do you think of me?"
"Thermopylae, dude. Thermopylae."

Happy August 11th.

Cornflower Blue Crayon on Canvas.

In case Alex forgets. There are more at the 1988 site (including a great Princess Toadstool) if you're up to a little digging.

Are we having a party?

I passed by a house on my walk today that gave me pause. Underneath the low wall was an empty forty, a bottle of bubbles, an open package of stick-on tattoos, and a suspiciously skittish flock of small brown birds.

The chaff.

A little Rumple for your weekend.

A classic. If only for holding to true Grimm form by offering up a cast of horrible characters.
They're all detestable, through and through:

The girl who wails without reason. Just shut up already.
The father who claims falsely that his crying daughter can spin gold from flax.
The king who not only carts off the miserable kid, but locks her away with an injunction to spin and marry his son, or keep weeping and die after three days.
The son who--let's face it--has no better prospect than to be married off to some semi-attractive street urchin.
And the bargaining Rumple himself. Though what the offspring of two such ill-favored parents could have to offer the linseed alchemist, I'll never know. Perhaps doughy half-royals are an essential ingredient in the whole conversion process.

That or they make for good sport.

Chill.

Nothing doing beyond sweltering. Listening to Alison Goldfrapp's icy vocals--this in particular.

Pastime in the dusty thoroughfare.

On my honor, I saw a mini tumbleweed dart past this afternoon. The baba a few houses down has been preparing for this day. Her garden is all shale and sage and spikey drab things that smell lovely when crushed under your sneaker--and I swear I heard the snapping of blistered fingers as it butted up against her porch.

That and the clouds have been burning for days. No substance or wet. Just grey breath on a clear sky and always the smell of smoke.