sexiest song of 2012 - premature edition

usher - climax (prod. by diplo). this doesn't sound like usher. it's way too restrained. he's not trying nearly hard enough to convince you of his earnestness. this underselling, ironically, makes the whole proposition that much more potent.

Scenes from the Green Line

Coming through the Loop in one of those midday rush hours that sometimes hits the Green Line. Suddenly our car falls silent and we're listening to a father explain how birds can't burp, so they can't eat anything with air in it.

Sun falls in slants along the car and we wait, for a moment as rapt and open as his two girls.

"You mean like pop?" the older one asks. She's maybe seven? Children's ages are hard to pin down. She's wearing some kind of generic shirt with sparkly letters on front. Sagging striped leggings. The younger one balances, bloblike, on his lap.

"Yeah, just like that."

"They can't burp?" She's suspicious.

"Yeah, so no gas. Or else they'll die."

She gets quiet, folded into herself a little, hands clenched in her lap. We hold our breath. He goes on, careful, casually. "I had a bird once, a parrot. His name was George."

"George?” the eldest says.

“Mm-hmmm.”

“Well that's not a very birdlike name!”

"It's not?"

"I wouldn’t call it George. I would call it...Birdy!"

And there it was. In the decisiveness of her tone and the childishness of her answer and the way he pulled her in with one arm. Their entire future. We sort of relaxed our attention, turning back to books and ipods and city outside, knowing that he would never get tired of her. Never stop giving his tenderness and time, because she needed them. That between them there was this indelible love, because she was the same as him, an ambulatory part of him.

"Mbababaa," the littler one said.

doomtree bangarang

siiiiiick show at the bottom lounge in chicago last night. doomtree turned it out. before last week i'd never heard of them. now i'm nursing a collective crush on each one individually, and all of them, collectively.

Weekend Reading

"Some people have made seduction a way of life. Incapable of resisting opportunities, they give priority to the nascent state; they are collectors of beginnings." - On Seduction

When Hans Christian Anderson parties with Charles Dickens, he parties RIGHT: "He gathered nosegays in the woods, cut figures from paper, invited Dickens’ son Charley to shave him, and explored London in cabs while hiding his valuables in his boots. He found that Dickens had an excellent supply of dinner whiskey and could offer a large tumbler of gin and sherry afterward. He watched Dickens perform in The Frozen Deep, burst into tears at the death scene, drank champagne with the cast, and returned to see it again a week later."

Image: The Evolution of the Modern Bookshelf.

"When Paul Rosenblatt answers the phone, he says “Bananas!” - on the banana distribution industry

From the same blog: mapping the city through smellscapes. I'd love to do this for Chicago, parts of which, especially in summer, reek of chocolate, melting hard candy and bread. Sometimes, walking home, I feel sorry for people in other cities, for whom a waft of saturated cocoa-laden air doesn't mean 'welcome home' in quite the same way.

Language Immersion

From the source:

This bath is made entirely out of books which Vanessa cut and fitted together over a metal frame to form a bath of books, which is suspended by four antique bath tub, lion-shaped feet. She intends to later cover it in layers of resin and has already applied proper taps and drain, so that it will be a utilizable, functional bath at all effects.

The idea is of immersing oneself in knowledge, books, truths, and 'cleaning' or ‘purifying’ one's mind with from external, every day life bombarding from media, by reading ad reflecting on books,- ‘pure sources’, which is of course, metaphorical, implying we can become polluted by ideas of truths and knowledge, which we can only 'clean' by reading our way through to our own ideas and reflections.

(from, via)

Lists of Note

Big ups to the NYTimes Sunday Magazine for pointing out the Lists of Note blog. Among their offerings so far:

Eye Flirtation

Winking the right eye—I love you.
Winking the left eye—I hate you.
Winking both eyes—Yes.
Winking both eyes at once [ed. – also known as blinking?]—We are watched.

Rescue Etiquette, by Mark Twain

Partiality, in the matter of rescue, to be shown to:

1. Fiancées.
2. Persons toward whom the operator feels a tender sentiment, but has not yet declared himself.
3. Sisters.
4. Stepsisters.

Who Killed JFK? by his secretary

Lyndon –
KKK –
Dixiecrats –
Hoffa –

Harry Houdini’s Rider

Require a small trap in center of stage, not less than 8 inches square (8x8 inches) two feet in rear of front cloth…
100 gallons of Boiling water (must be boiling)…
A small, clean looking (mahogany colored if possible) step ladder about 3 feet 6 inches high.

What a delight to find a Sunday magazine this late in the week. It makes you wonder about their life cycles. Where do they go so quickly? They can’t all be dumpster bound. Somewhere there’s a table made entirely of back issues, or perhaps a bed. And of course all the bathroom magazine racks absolutely stuffed with these things, wrinkling in the cold humidity behind the tank…

Barack Obama on Love

This quote from Barack Obama on his relationship with Michelle has popped up a few times over the last four years. It continues to stand out as one of the most empowering, energizing, just downright true descriptions of love I've ever heard:

Michelle is a tremendously strong person, and has a very strong sense of herself and who she is and where she comes from. But I also think in her eyes you can see a trace of vulnerability that most people don’t know, because when she’s walking through the world she is this tall, beautiful, confident woman. There is a part of her that is vulnerable and young and sometimes frightened, and I think seeing both of those things is what attracted me to her.

And then what sustains our relationship is I’m extremely happy with her, and part of it has to do with the fact that she is at once completely familiar to me, so that I can be myself and she knows me very well and I trust her completely, but at the same time she is also a complete mystery to me in some ways. And there are times when we are lying in bed and I look over and sort of have a start. Because I realize here is this other person who is separate and different and has different memories and backgrounds and thoughts and feelings. It’s that tension between familiarity and mystery that makes for something strong, because, even as you build a life of trust and comfort and mutual support, you retain some sense of surprise or wonder about the other person.

Happy Valentine's, y'all.