Also: "Shiny" is not a touch, and "Father" is not the opposite of "Mother."
This is for super-young kids, right? The classic in the field being "Pat the Bunny", if I recall correctly: not a work of enormous complexity.
4: But the artwork is endearing. It still makes a pleasant read for the adult. It just happens to be very simple.
True.
[Go Slovakia! Humiliate those wretched Italians!]
4: I thought the ur-text of the genre was Good Night, Moon. Which, well...it's been a long while, but critical literature on the text* suggests a certain lack of compelling subtext, political commentary, and the like as well.
*Wikipedia
"Goodnight Moon" is a work of staggering genius. Just the assonance in the title is comforting.
Heebie! I am with you! May Rufus Seder forever be cursed for inflicting "Swing" on us! It is, of course, one of J's favorite books.
Also, actually, I rather like Goodnight Moon. If you want classic bad, you'll have to turn to the work of P. D. Eastman.
11: Do you like my hat? I do not like that hat. Good-by. Good-by.
Learn how to spell "good-bye", PD!
It this the place for me to finally unleash my analysis of class issues in Boynton's Hippos Go Berserk? Because if you have eight hippos working at waiters, then you can hardly say that "All the hippos go berserk." And the waiters leave on the bus, not the helicopter that the rich hippos take.
One of my kids' fave bedtime poems, altered slightly in honor of AWB:
The Polar Bear never makes his/her bed;
S/He sleeps on a cake of ice instead.
S/He has no blanket, no quilt, no sheet
Except the rain and snow and sleet.
S/He drifts about on a white ice floe
While cold winds howl and blizzards blow
And the temperature drops to forty below.
The Polar Bear never makes his/her bed;
The blanket s/he pulls up over his/her head
Is lined with soft and feathery snow.
If ever s/he rose and turned on the light,
S/He would find a world of bathtub white,
And icebergs floating through the night.
(Mostly) by William Jay Smith
For Good Night Moon, see Elizabeth Kolbert's bizarre interpretation.
But yes, it's a problem. I try to avoid all rhyming kids' books, because the level of the poetry is so bad. (Seuss not excepted.) Just recently (and my daughter is 6), I encountered some Christina Rossetti that might be both tolerable for an adult and interesting for her.
13: There are nine hippos working as waiters, Moby.
Also, eight of the hippos leave on the bus with the waiters, so things aren't as badly class-segregated as you describe.
AWB has me memorizing "i sing of Olaf glad and big." When it's good and packed into my head, I am available to recite this lovely piece of rhyming poetry to people's young children!
16: Sorry, nine waiter hippos. But, the eight hippos are still going berserk, not passing puff pastry filled with whatever hippos eat. They represent the poorer portion of the middle class. They have yet to be proletarianized, thought that is obviously their fate in the near future because otherwise they wouldn't be using public transit. The hippos with gowns, furs and helicopters are taking a bigger and bigger share of the hippo GDP.
In an increasingly ossified class system, is it any wonder that so many hippos are heading west in a covered wagon?
The creepiest part is that, of the seven hippos moving west, two are actually yoked to the covered wagon.
Is Isner the regular guy or the French guy?
As someone who spoke exclusively in car-vroomy sounds well through the age of two before breaking out in full sentences, I want to take issue with the post's critique. But honestly, if I had to read the provided examples over and over, I'd go bonkers.
Is the whole entire thing over? Or just the endless tying in the 5th thing out of 7 things?
As someone who spoke exclusively in car-vroomy sounds well through the age of two
Like "spin" and "twirl" and "glide"?
20: Right. Hard labor in an unknown region miles from home is something that both humans and even-toed ungulates can be pressed into doing if societal resources are monopolized by a narrow elite.
||
At this rate I wouldn't be surprised if the referee gave all members of the Slovakian and Italian teams yellow cards as matter of course.
|>
Are the words following all those things explicitly supposed to be the sounds they make? Because hop and loop aren't really sounds either. Actually, a cartwheel shouldn't make much of a sound at all, unless it goes badly.
24: The whole entire first-round match between Isner and Mahut is over, with Isner winning 3 sets to 2 (best-of-five-set format). The second round for the other men in the tournament is well underway, so Isner, who just may be tired, will have to catch up.
28: Someone's clearly never played my favorite childhood schoolyard game, Cartwheel Into This Wall Made Of Tambourines.
Are the words following all those things explicitly supposed to be the sounds they make?
I think it's implied. The "Can you..." sentence is always on the left page, the animation is always on the right page, and under the animation it says "Froop! Pool! Pang!" or whatever.
Hard labor in an unknown region miles from home is something that both humans and even-toed ungulates can be pressed into doing if societal resources are monopolized by a narrow elite.
Don't try it with rhinos, though. They'll fuck you up.
And the animation is of a sillouhette performing the action.
32: All the Rhinos Go Berserk is not suitable for children or people who don't like impaling.
29: Don't forget, his opponent will also be handicapped by having played a long fifth set yesterday. Of course, that one only went to 16-14.
Don't try it with rhinos, though. They'll fuck you up.
I was of the impression that hippos would fuck you up more than rhinos would. Caveat: nearly all of my rhino facts come from reading that Ionesco play.
I suspect that both rhinos and hippos would fuck you up. I was just playing off of Moby's oddly specific mention of even-toed ungulates.
Moby suppobies his tobies are robies.
I really like kids' books. Thurber's Many Moons and 13 Clocks are nice. The Little Prince, Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince. Under communism, many artists went to children's books as a safe haven. I think that something similar has happened in Hollywood, actually.
Authorless and illustratorless DK guides and similarly formatted subject-specific single-volume illustrated kid's nonfiction are incredibly great, IMO, providing some hope for the preservation of human vision against automated cultural production.
I am a little troubled by the lack of authorial vision, but that's clearly the direction that publishing and the production of cultural objects is going. All of us are here instead of lingering at a blog with a single author's voice, right?
My favorite fairy-tale illustrator, Miloslav Jagr, turns out to have web images hosted in Japan, where there's a secondary market for books he illustrated in a presumably incomprehensible language
http://www.cedok.org/ehon/files/czpb01575_01.jpg
Zdenek Miler is also nice
http://www.galeriemiro.cz/gallery/5/z.miler.jpg
re: 41
Krtecek (a kalhoty), if I'm not mistaken?
Sandra Boynton aside, isn't "even-toed ungulates" the less formal name for some major biological category of largish mammals? It isn't really oddly specific.
even-toed ungulates
My next band name.
Just the assonance in the title is comforting.
There is at best merely eye-assonance in "goodnight moon". However, Goodnight Moon is fantastic; more complex than you might think and, moreover, isn't there a "goodnight nothing" or something like that page? Great work, just great.
isn't there a "goodnight nothing"
Yep.
17: Little Baby Snarktailshrubout will surely appreciate hearing "This Be The Verse" every night at bedtime. Her enjoyment of it will deepen like a coastal shelf!
PD Eastman is a big favorite chez nous. He has a kind of swinging 60s aesthetic that I like. You know those dogs in Go Dog Go could totally hang out with Don Draper at the 21 club.
The Zen Shorts series is great.
We have an illustrated edition of A Child's Garden of Verses that my 2.5 year old loves, despite vocabulary that even I don't get and occasional super racism. I think she mostly likes the old timey illustrations.
The worst books are the totally anonymous commercial ones that are just designed as adjuncts to brand development. I got some Disney Winnie the Pooh books as a gift that are so bad as to boggle the imagination.
We also read Ferdinand the Bull all the time, which is a great book. I can't decide if it's teaching excessive wussiness, though, or just passive resistance.
We had a couple of books by some guy named Bruce Degen that I was fond of in the jingly-nonsense-rhymes category. I don't remember why we picked them up.
For poetry, my son is a big fan of John Ciardi's I Met a Man, which is unfortunately out of print.
A is for salad is a clever book
Here is Slim Gaillard's excellent song version of Ferdinand the Bull:
That, and "Daddy is a Doodlebug". But I really liked Jamberry, although I have a reading-aloud problem with books requiring voices: anything with a bear in it needs a deep, gravelly voice, and while I can do it, it leaves me coughing. I'd finish the book and go into a five-minute coughing fit. (See also The Hobbit. Gandalf and the dwarves were a bitch.) Unfortunately, the kids are very keen on appropriately varied voices, so I was stuck.
We also read Ferdinand the Bull all the time, which is a great book. I can't decide if it's teaching excessive wussiness, though, or just passive resistance.
As a kid I preferred t"The Reluctant Dragon".
Gandalf and the dwarves were a bitch
That's a bit long for a band name, but it's a keeper for sure.
For the record, I'm not against nonsense words qua nonsense words. I'm against the Scanimation series' use of nonsense words, because it's a totally lazy cop-out.
Holy crap! The Reluctant Dragon was by the author of The Wind in the Willows!
Let's see what else KenGrah was responsible for besides RelucDrag and TWITWillows.
Count me as one who greatly enjoyed reading Go Dog Go and Seuss to little kids. And The Owl and the Pussycat. And Richard Scarry is good (yes, stereotyping etc. We skipped that early, and pointed it out and discussed it later)
Some other favorites for the slightly larger ones :
A Hole Is To Dig - Krauss/Sendak
Harold and the Purple Crayon
Katy and the Big Snow
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
Six Dinner Sid (gorgeous)
Minn of the Mississippi (gorgeous)
When they get a little bigger, you can subvert them with Bill Peet; we started with The Caboose That Got Loose
The Witch's Broom is beautiful and mocks out religious bigots
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats was a big favorite when Sam was six.
So was Butterworth's The Enormous Egg.
Then later there's The Wonderful Flight To the Mushroom Planet, Elizabeth Enright's Gone-Away Lake, Eager's Half-Magic ...
yes, I miss my little ones, and am looking forward to the next generation so I can once again ham it up.
Audio for little ones :
When you can't stand another song by Raffi, go find the kids recordings by Sharon, Lois, and Bram, which are witty and unfailingly musical.
Red Hen LLC is now re-publishing the very-silly Little Orly stories narrated by "Uncle Lumpy" aka Hugh Brannum aka Mr. Green Jeans
The incredible failures of scansion are a good portion of what makes the books quoted in the post so extraordinarily awful.
second graders are ready for DeJong's The Wheel On The School, which starts slowly and will stick to you for the rest of your life.
Perhaps I will make an illustrated version of Mervyn Peake's brilliant "The Frivolous Cake" and have it printed up by one of those online print-it places to make into a bedtime reading book. Hm! I think I will.
second graders are ready for DeJong's The Wheel On The School, which starts slowly and will stick to you for the rest of your life.
I also really love his Journey from Peppermint Street, which works in a similar fashion.
65: I tried, honestly, to read Titus Groan. I just could not get into it.
65: I tried, honestly, to read Titus Groan. I just could not get into it.
I find that wholly understandable. Did you get as far as the poem, though? It's a winner.
I don't recall a poem. I remember the hiring of the wet nurse and that is about it.
My kids loved The Seven Silly Eaters
A freckled and frivolous cake there was
That sailed upon a pointless sea,
Or any lugubrious lake there was
In a manner emphatic and free.
How jointlessly, and how jointlessly
The frivolous cake sailed by
On the waves of the ocean that pointlessly
Threw fish to the lilac sky.
Oh, plenty and plenty of hake there was
Of a glory beyond compare,
And every conceivable make there was
Was tossed through the lilac air.
Up the smooth billows and over the crests
Of the cumbersome combers flew
The frivolous cake with a knife in the wake
Of herself and her curranty crew.
Like a swordfish grim it would bounce and skim
(This dinner knife fierce and blue])),
And the frivolous cake was filled to the brim
With the fun of her curranty crew.
Oh, plenty and plenty of hake there was
Of a glory beyond compare -
And every conceivable make there was
Was tossed through the lilac air.
Around the shores of the Elegant Isles
Where the cat-fish bask and purr
And lick their paws with adhesive smiles
And wriggle their fins of fur,
They fly and fly 'neath the lilac sky -
The frivolous cake, and the knife
Who winketh his glamorous indigo eye
In the wake of his future wife.
The crumbs blow free down the pointless sea
To the beat of a cakey heard
And the sensitive steel of the knife can feel
That love is a race apart
In the speed of the lingering light are blown
The crumbs to the hake above,
And the tropical air vibrates to the drone
Of a cake in the throes of love.
"To the beat of a cakey heard" should be "To the beat of a cakey heart," of course.
"Of herself and her curranty crew" is very vivid.
I will stuff the ballot box for Hand Hand Fingers Thumb, which is great and full of hippie monkeys.
One thumb one thumb drumming on a drum
One hand two hands drumming on a drum
Dum diddy dum diddy dum dum dum!
Monkeys come and monkeys go
Hands with handkerchiefs blow blow blow!
Hello Jack! Hello Jake!
Shake hands, shake hands, shake shake shake!
Bye bye Jake! Bye bye Jack!
Dum diddy dum diddy whack whack whack!
Man, I loved Hand Hand Fingers Thumb growing up. Even better than Hop on Pop.
My wife and I love children's books, mostly for the art. I'm especially fond of Peter Sis and Yumi Heo's illustrations. It will be interesting when we do have kids at what point they will be allowed access to our book shelf full of childrens books, as they are generally not chewing or ripping friendly.
Probably depends on the kids, since I definitely know some who are careful and conscientious about objects. But along the lines of "never pour more than you care to clean up," you might want to pick up some used copies you wouldn't mind getting some rough treatment. Why let the situation arise?
I really like kids' books. Thurber's Many Moons and 13 Clocks are nice. The Little Prince, Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince. Under communism, many artists went to children's books as a safe haven. I think that something similar has happened in Hollywood, actually.
As a kid I had a variety of tapes of children's stories (recorded, IIRC, off records from the library) and Many Moons was one of my favorite.
Speaking of non-children's authors writing children's books, the paired titles of Rosa's Singing Grandfather and Rosa's Grandfather Sings Again make me smile
I have Hand Hand Fingers Thumb, but it's different from 74. Weird.
The Green Frogs book that I linked to should probably also be saved for kids old enough to do critical reading, as the moral is essentially "You kids'll be sorry when I'm dead."
Huh... maybe mine's abridged (see negative reviews). Sort of shitty that it doesn't say that anywhere on it.
76: Yeah, I think the kids will have their "own" books to start and only be introduced the ones we have some attachment to once they've shown themselves capable of resisting the impulse to color.
The art in M. Sasek's This Is... books is fantastic and they are very popular in our house.
80: I appear to be one with Brock.
Books for young children (the good ones, anyway) are great. Recorded music for young children ranges from making you want to slice your ears off with a carving knife to, at absolute best, being something one could maybe tolerate for about 45 seconds. Mystery!
Re: children's music, All Things Considered does regular bits with the guy from Zooglobble highlighting seemingly bearable kid's tunes.
Maybe I'll put up an adult-friendly kid mix tonight.
I dunno. I've been bitten pretty hard by allegedly "bearable" kids music; so far it all sounds terrible to me.
I like singing with my kid, who really loves to sing, but I never ever put on recorded kids music. I do play a fair bit of folk music that I wouldn't put on otherwise because it has recognizable lyrics and simple melodies, which she seems to like. But mostly I just play whatever I want to listen to, unless it's Peaches or the Ghetto Boys or something.
86: I'd rather have free wine, but a mix would be nice, too.
87.1: Dan Zane sings the Farmer/Labor Party anthem.
87 before seeing 86. I would love to hear Blanding's mix!
Mine has liked club music since he was about two. The strong beats, simple melodies, and exaggerated emotions of the singing work for both of us, and are robust with respect to driving, the venue in which we're most often listening to music together. Bhangra and bailie funk are also pretty good.
He can't stand country music, but most of what I listen to there is pre-1970, slow, and sad, so I can see that.
Yeah, funk also seems to work pretty well. "I like that good funky music" was a fun phrase to teach.
Maybe I'll put up an adult-friendly kid mix tonight.
My dad made me beloved "mixes" (tapes) of kid-friendly adult music, mostly pre-WWII pop.
Maybe I'll put up an adult-friendly kid mix tonight.
Ooh! (Or maybe even, "Ooooh!!!") Please do!
Heh. My dad raised us on old-timey music and Baptist hymns. Why, Daddy? Why does a lapsed Jew from Los Angeles know dozens of hymns? They're great to sing, though.
Hymns are great for kids; we often play them on the way to church! But kid-friendly adult music is different than (allegedly) adult-friendly kid music.
Seems like kid-friendly adult music is the way to go, then.
The truth is that very few songs stand up well against being played for several hours on repeat, especially for days on end.
My dad made tapes of Mitch Miller, Tex Beneke, Gene Autry, the Boston Pops and the like, for us to listen to on car rides.
M and I recently made a series of kid-friendly compilations for his niece and nephew. (Anyway they were supposed to be kid-friendly, although recently upon listening to it we realized there were a ton of bad words.) Nb., kids love Gang of Four and the Runaways.
My favorite band was the Stray Cats from about age 5 to 9. I also liked Depeche Mode and the Go-Gos.
Re kid-friendly adult music: a mix made in the spirit of music that I heard around the house when I was growing up.
My dad's car mixes (all taped from records) included Roger Miller, John Phillip Sousa marches, Rogers & Hammerstein, the soundtrack from The Sting, and The Best of Henry Mancini.
Sandra Boynton aside, isn't "even-toed ungulates" the less formal name for some major biological category of largish mammals?
Yes, the artiodactyls, which include hippos. But why not just say "ungulates"? That would be less specific, and I don't think you were trying to make the distinction between even- and odd-toed ones that I implied in the rhino comment.
Elizamuqin's three-year-old likes to have Jabberwocky read to her. Also if you ask her what a Jabberwock says, she answers "burble, burble, burble"
The worst books are the totally anonymous commercial ones that are just designed as adjuncts to brand development.
Sweet Christ yes. Some somehow made their way into our house, and I would occasionally catch myself reading them in a tone that expressed my loathing. Children, these books are beneath you! (And now I'll go into the smallest room of our house, and they'll be beneath me.)
For very little kids, Eric Carle's books are great, and for slightly older little kids, Sendak's Nutshell Library is highly recommended (I had to get a new set to be potentially destroyed when I found that mine from my own childhood were first editions).
For kids' music, Jill Trinka is great. She does classic simple tunes in a high, clear head voice, which is ideal—little kids hear best in their own vocal range, and my girls frowned when I sang in my bass chest voice.
Sendak's Nutshell Library
sipping once
sipping twice
sipping chicken soup with rice
Daniel Pinkwater's excellent Irving and Muktuk: Two Bad Bears teaches us that the sound a helicopter makes is FWOP FWOP FWOP. They should do a scanimawhathaveyou book about that.
Under communism, many artists went to children's books as a safe haven.
My girls love Daniil Kharms. I also have a book of kids' poems by Mayakovsky, but they're in Russian. Maybe I'll take a stab at translating them this summer.
I quite like 71.
Under communism, many artists went to children's books as a safe haven. I think that something similar has happened in Hollywood, actually.
Yeah, capitalism, too, manages to drive artists to children's books and the Hollywood equivalents.
If people are mentioning Russian illustrators, surely Gennady Spirin should get a nod.
For nice sounding kids books I have to recommend Robert Munsch. I don't know how to link but at his website (http://robertmunsch.com/jonathan-cleaned-up/) you can listen to him read the.
He's probably be best known for his treacly "I'll Love You Forever" and feminist "Paper Bag Princess", but his other books are so much fun to read. I especially loved (when I was little and probably now too) "Jonathan Cleans Up" (about a kid who gets a subway stop redirected to his livingroom and his mom keeps arriving home just in time to yell at him for the mess), "Murmel, Murmel, Murmel" (a girl finds a baby in a hole in her sandbox, gives it to a trucker), "Mudpuddle" (a mudpuddle keeps jumping on a kid and getting him dirty), and best of all "Mortimer" (a kid who doesn't want to go to bed).
And for kid-friendly adult music, Mermaid Avenue.
there not the
and nice-sounding should be hyphenated maybe?
He's probably be best known for his treaclytotally creepy "I'll Love You Forever"
103: I think the "even-toed" thing is from the Bible in the part about what to eat and what not to eat.
I'd heard of Raffi, but I don't really think he's made it over here. And then my kids started singing Bananaphone and I found out it was one of his (I think). I quite like it.
Generally we have not ever done kids' music in our house. Mostly because I wouldn't have thought to, and C just wouldn't want to. My kids seem to mostly like things with words they can hear and sing along to. If it's funny, so much the better. So, plenty of Tom Lehrer then, just like my childhood.
Fucking magnets, how do they work ?
113: Cloven hooves, and it is kind of complicated--cloven + cud = good, just one of those characteristics = bad. Reason #733 that ancient tribal religions in the modern world boggle my mind.
#734:
Leviticus 11:20-23 permits certain kinds of "winged swarming things" (i.e. insects) while prohibiting others; however, today rabbis are uncertain as to which insects were specifically permitted, so now, to be on the safe side, all insects are prohibited
116.2: Don't nobody get between Stormcrow and his plate of pan-seared botflies. Yummo!
113: "Cloven hoof" is the more usual translation, but yeah, pretty much the same thing.
115. Fermions have odd-parity wavefunctions and fermionic ungulates have an odd number of hooves.
today rabbis are uncertain as to which insects were specifically permitted, so now, to be on the safe side, all insects are prohibited
When I was in the orange business a certain kind of wax was made out of some sort of bug parts and was certified kosher.
the orange business
Industry slogan: "Oranges have a lot of a peel."
120: Could you zest the orange? Or just eat the inside part?
When I was in the orange business
TLL is a true Southern Californian.
One Raffi song is charming.
Three Raffi songs are tedious.
An entire CD or tape of Raffi songs is endurable.
More than that is justification for violence; no jury in the country would convict.
My son can still sing Lehrer's Elements Song and of course Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, and we had The Bungie Jumping Cows and Broadway Kids Songs and Holst's Planets and Peer Gynt and Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite and Peter Paul and Mommy and Luboff's Songs of the Sea and Songs of the South and Songs of the West and Harry Chapin and Will The Circle Be Unbroken and Aretha and Ella and Satchmo ...
I still like Sharon Lois and Bram. They had a Canadian televsion show, I think in the late 80's, "The Elephant Show", that was non-saccharine and had occasionally wonderful musicians sitting in.
I liked Mitch Miller as a kid, but the arrangements are all the same and now sound utterly banal to me.
Could you zest the orange? Or just eat the inside part?
Of course you can zest it. The coating sprayed on the oranges is to replace the natural wax that gets washed off when the oranges are um, washed. Makes 'em nice and shiny.
This article explains it
http://www.star-k.org/kashrus/kk-vegetables-wax.htm
57: Jamberry made my ex want to tear his eyes out. This, of course, meant that his children requested for it to be read aloud as often as humanly possible.
127: I have enough trouble worrying about whether or not the fry cook looks like a spitter.
Your ex was clearly sensitive. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
128: Are you sure you have the cause and the effect right there?
131: I had a particular aversion to the books Micro Monsters, about human parasites, and Shark Attack!, which described gruesome human deaths by shark, and they made it very clear that inflicting these books on me with a religious intensity and regularity was my punishment for having a funny irritated face.
TLL is a true Southern Californian
Brother Halford is a gentleman and a scholar.
The truth is I was delivered on Long Island, after my mother went into labor on Fire Island and was transported by boat to the hospital.
We also read Ferdinand the Bull all the time
A rare bit of verse that's better in translation
134 -- I like it how Polish Ferdinand is a smoker.
Also, he mysteriously seems to have udders.
We also read Ferdinand the Bull all the time
I remember watching a cartoon of this like a million times in Spanish class. Or one time in a million different Spanish classes. Something like that.
You know those dogs in Go Dog Go
This was my childhood favorite, or so I'm told.
There's a book that's led to generations of women believing that the only obstacle to finding true love is getting the hat right.
Having had occasion last year to go through the family keepers, so to speak -- things my mother kept through thick and thin -- I was astounded to see what I remember as the ultimate for me as a child: books with accompanying records (45s!)
Rikki Tikki Tembo, and Thumbelina, and The Story of Ping. Ping was a duck, Chinese, I know, though I don't remember his story without Google's help. I adored these things, reading along while the record sing-sang me the story.
Those tales are for an older child, though I'm not sure of what age.
Two on Higgledy Piggledy Pop:
One. The first girl I approached on the internet personals had it listed as a favorite book. I wrote, "I have a pillow, bowls, eyedrops, eardrops and a red sweater. I just lack experience." She wrote back "Sounds like you need a leading lady." That led to a fun new friend, some misguided making out, and a dozen more half-obscure literary references in emails that got ignored.
142.2: Oh, so that's how online dating is supposed to go! Thanks!
Er, I don't mean the emails that got ignored, just the repartee part.
No, but really, Go, Dog. Go can bite me. I suppose it's sort of a book about prepositions? Maybe? But it's endless, and boring, and they're in and out of the cars like half a dozen times, and really, in the end, the hat asshole gets the girl? Come on.
in the end, the hat asshole gets the girl? Come on.
That's life, my friend. That dog is a master of the negliment. Suck it up and deal.
There once was a puffin will always be my favorite kids poem , Although I now love "everyday children " to say to my own kids before bed
Oooh, Miranda, and he ate little fishes and they were most delicious! There are so many fantastic recommendations here.
Apparently I was obsessed with a book called Jeanne-Marie in Gay Paris and my parents got so sick of it that they hid it behind the bookcase to prove to me that it wqw "lost."
(I'm feeling guilty for my excessive use of exclamation points. It was only once they became forbidden fruit that I found myself using them all over the place.)
Argh, and "wqw" in 146 should be "was." Three comments in a row means I'm out and should go to bed, I think.
Or not in a row. Now that I'm banned, I can comment as much as I like!
¦¦
Currently drunk somewhere in Boston. Amy one want to take bets on whether I can find my hotel again?
¦>
152: Go up to people and say "Kobe!"
152: excellent! We need more liveblogging. Drunk on what? Did you take my getting-drunk suggestions?
We could probably help you navigate home. JP, can you get the Malden Stop & Shop on the horn?
They sell the coke flavored with insect parts, right?
I am coming back from the redhat sponsored party. Free beer. I found the harbor so I think I am doing pretty good so far.
And now I know where I am. that was kind of anticlimatic.
that was kind of anticlimatic.
Said Al Gore to the masseuse.
(I ban myself.)
Said Al Gore to the masseuse, heatedly.
157: oh, huh. You are here for the same reason my friend is here. Where was the party? Any details will be informative.
Hey, thread's still going. OK, so here's a mix for kids, or at least a mix that was popular with my own particular kid. A couple of the songs may perhaps reflect a bit of geographic bias.
Red, Red Robin - Rosie Flores
Rankin' Full Stop - The Beat
You're Nice People You Are - NRBQ
A-Tisket A-Tasket - Ella Fitzgerald
Hey Bo Diddley - Elizabeth Mitchell
Chicken Payback - The Bees
Hockey Monkey - James Kochalka Superstar
The Luckiest Guy On The Lower East Side - The Magnetic Fields
I'm Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon to Your Star - The Boy Least Likely To
New York City - They Might Be Giants
Old McDonald Had A Farm (Part Two) - Rufus Thomas
Everybody Eats When They Come to My House - Cab Calloway
One And One Makes Two - Johnny Cash
Meet the Mets - Yo La Tengo
Animal Farm - The Kinks
Green Eggs And Ham - Dylan Hears a Who
Rubber Duckie - Kelly Hogan
I've found when getting lost in Boston that it helps that the whole city is like 10 feet across.
It was at Ned divines in quincy market. there is a pub crawl going on now, but I was up at 5 to go jogging and was already drunk so I decided to call it a night. I did find my hotel.
Oh goodness. Ned Devine's is terrible. I'm sure it was lovely, though. And hey, you got to see the Rose Kennedy Greenway, I bet!
You were up at 5 to go jogging? Some people.
Well they rented the whole place out so it didn't really matter what the normal atmosphere was like. it was all redhat summit people.
170: right, I imagined that was the case. And you got to see the Greenway! That's the important thing.
Also, I can't offer the free wine Stanley wanted instead of kids' music, so here's some free wine advice:
Produttori del Barbaresco is a producers' coop in Piedmont, Italy. They make a fantastic basic Barbaresco that sells for about $30, and a number of single-vineyard Barbarescos from their best sites that go for about $60 (also a fine Langhe Nebbiolo that's under $20). The current vintage, 2006, was great, but since it followed a great 2004 and 2005 and the economy is shitty, the winemaker thought the market might not absorb a whole lot more $60 single-vineyard wines, so he put all the single-vineyard production into the basic Barbaresco, rendering the 2006 just insanely good. If you would ever spend $30 on a bottle of wine, this is definitely one to pick up.
Wow, that's pretty cheap for a Barbera in any case.
Why isn't Barbaresco made from Barbera grapes, Blandings?
Because if it was 173 wouldn't have been vaguely uninformed and embarrassing.
Come on people, live on the edge! Breaks some laws!
181 was me. And wine-searcher.com.
Aha. I was looking at a different wine-searching website, which got me zip.
181: South Egremont is in the Berkshires. Just FYI.
Some wines are worth driving across the state for.
I didn't realize there were places in Massachusetts that are closer to Scranton than to Boston. Probably farther in terms of driving time, though.
But I guess they could ship legally within state.
188: you never know. Some parts of Western Mass. get a lot more traffic from NYC than they do from Boston.
141: Rikki Tikki Tembo This had me confused until google enlightened me. I know Rikki Tikki Tavi, but this Tembo chap sounds suspicious. Up to no good, I'll wager.
I'm resurrecting this thread to thank Blandings for the tip in 172 and to recommend that you heed his advice. Those are great wines.
