1964 Jaguar E-Type Roadster

This is a great little story, and reminded me of my dad's stories of picking up a Mercedes wagon off the assembly line in Stuttgart in the early 60s, and one of the very first (bright red!) Toyota Sprinters off the assembly line in Japan in 1968.

While I appreciate this gorgeous Roadster, the Jaguar E-Type Coupe from the 60s is my personal dream car, ever since I saw one on the freeway in Oakland a couple of years ago. Oy vey, thems were the days for automobiles...

Sometimes, I forget that I'm a girl, and then...

(ice cream cone brooches, 1986)

"Jewelry is not only about carats and diamonds," said [jewelry historian and curator of the Bulgari vintage collection Amanda] Triossi, "it's also about design - a work of art in its own right, which is why it should be featured in a museum."

The Art of Bulgari: La Dolce Vita & Beyond, 1950-1990.

Show opens Saturday and runs through Feb. 17, 2014. M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, S.F.

Another installment of My Friends Are Awesome.

Come to find out yesterday that Chris Lane, multi-talented illustrator of the cover of Trevor's first book as well as the entirety of Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection and Harry Houdini: The Legend of the World's Greatest Escape Artist, and super good friend and all-around piece of wonderfulness in my life, is now a San Francisco Chronicle Bar Star, 2013!

And then: amazing author and magnificent human being Renee Swindle read to a packed house at my favorite bookstore, Diesel, A Bookstore, for the publication of her second book, Shake Down the Stars.

Yes, it was a good day. So proud!

I've got lots of friends who are public service employees -- firefighters, police officers, FEMA, and the like. I was reading this article in the SF Chronicle about the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in NYC and some of the rest of the Eastern Seaboard. The accompanying slideshow really made me appreciate the gravity of what it is that they are committed to doing for our communities.

New York City police officers go door to door in a housing project to take note of which residents are ignoring the mandatory evacuation order as Hurricane Sandy approaches on October 28, 2012 in the Rockaway Beach neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. 

So, in light of this, I find what we have at stake November 6 in the United States as even more important.


Romney Says America Doesn't Need 'More Firemen, More Policemen, More Teachers'

plus this excellent, no pulled punches opinion piece from the NY Times:

A Big Storm Requires Big Government

[Eliminating federal disaster coordination and support] is an absurd notion, but it’s fully in line with decades of Republican resistance to federal emergency planning. FEMA, created by President Jimmy Carter, was elevated to cabinet rank in the Bill Clinton administration, but was then demoted by President George W. Bush, who neglected it, subsumed it into the Department of Homeland Security, and placed it in the control of political hacks. The disaster of Hurricane Katrina was just waiting to happen.

The agency was put back in working order by President Obama, but ideology still blinds Republicans to its value. Many don’t like the idea of free aid for poor people, or they think people should pay for their bad decisions, which this week includes living on the East Coast.

Oh Chris Christie, you Romney shill, the irony.

I mean, this is definitely the rotten cherry on top of Romney's willingness to say anything to win, his abysmal knowledge of foreign policy (as demonstrated in the third Presidential debate), plus his views on women, gay rights, birth control, "the 47%" -- you name the right thing to do, and he's on the wrong side of both compassion and history.

It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part.

Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, 1788

Let's re-elect Barack Obama.

Wow!



















Berkeley Sculptor Aimee Baldwin's 'Vegan Taxidermy'

Although what Baldwin creates isn't technically taxidermy, it is vegan because her creations - shorebirds, corvids, owls, raptors and extinct birds, as well as plants - are made entirely without animal parts. Instead, she uses crepe paper, glue, found objects and wire in the meticulous creation of birds so lifelike, they look poised to hop off their perches and flutter away.

Any notions associated with the term 'vegan' aside, Baldwin's birds are both incredibly realistic and breathtakingly gorgeous, and you can really see the love and care she puts into them. I also love to see someone so talented making a living doing what they love.

To see more of Aimee Baldwin's work, check out her website or her Etsy site.

I started this slideshow in part because the teaser pic made me want a Twinkie, and I ended it, well...wanting one just an eensy bit little less.

What's in a Twinkie?

Apparently, 37 ingredients, some of which you have to buy at a chemical supply store.













[Photographer Dwight] Eschliman says to keep in mind that minuscule portions of these ingredients are used and his intention isn't to scare you and make you feel as if eating a Twinkie will give you cancer. Rather he wants people to think twice about what they're eating and seek out more foods with familiar and fresh ingredients.

Scientists always say that we need to remember that even a food laden with chemicals that are approved for consumption in that product as a whole can be toxic when used in conjunction with other chemical products. Dan White aside, wonder what happens to the chemicals in a Twinkie when you deep fat fry it? I shared one years ago with 3 other people and we couldn't finish it. Like Eschliman and his chemicals, I felt sick just being in its proximity.

But that's deep fried.

James Dewar, the inventor of Twinkies, said at age 83 that he ate 3 Twinkies a day, and fed them to his children and grandchildren. I ate two a week for years (one on the car ride home, and one I saved for later that day) when my dad would take me to the grocery store on Saturdays and let me choose anything from the Hostess rack I wanted. It's a treasured memory for me.

Result? Good times sometimes trump. Maybe I'll see if I can choke one down later. :P

Things to look forward to:

1) 10 Essential Cocktails To Make At Home

I can't stomach buying The Chron anymore, ever since they downsized to their hokey one-horse town layout and news style, but sfgate still pumps out some of the gems I'm missing by not getting the paper. This article takes a stab at listing the "essential" cocktails, but much more exciting is their list of affordable and non-pretentious essentials for the at-home bar. Class.

2) Sol Food in San Rafael

Vegetariano Plate: rice, beans simmered with Spanish olives, organic salad, tostones, Puerto Rican hot sauce, and a house-made limeade served in a Ball jar.















Sigh. I could eat this every single day, yo. Not having Puerto Rican food in Oakland is killing me. Killing me!

Not that I have to worry too much though. Soon, I may get to have it as often as I want, because of...

3) Trevor's sweet librarian position in San Rafael.

He studied, he withered my nether regions with talk of metadata, he worked tirelessly as an adjunct professor dedicated to his students, he honed his craft with internships, networking, and being seriously passionate about information and education. And it has paid off.

Trevor will be a librarian at a lovely, progressive, and academically challenging private college preparatory high school, with lovely students, lovely peeps, and a reverse commute. I am excited for him, and for us!

This was a pretty interesting read:

Stanford Biologist Sees Money in Preservation of the Environment

This is a new way of saving nature. Until now, the conservation movement has said people should care about nature for nature's sake - with charity as the driving economic force to preserve land. And that, [Stanford biologist Gretchen] Daily said, has failed. She sees a renaissance in the conservation movement hinging on investment.

[...]No one gets paid for water purification or climate stabilization or protecting biodiversity on a large scale. That's what Daily envisions.

She advocates at the state and even country government level, using software developed that can, for example, "estimate the worth of a forest full of pollinating insects vital to nearby crop production."

Where does it make sense to convert forests to agricultural production? Where should they be left alone?

Financially strapped countries could find the tool crucial, advocates say. A poor nation might be tempted to let a rich corporation develop land because it doesn't know the dollar value of the natural resources that will be destroyed.

"If you put yourself in the shoes of a poor government, it's hard to turn down the cash deal," said Mark Tercek, a former official at investment giant Goldman Sachs who recently left to head the Nature Conservancy. "It's hard to put a value on these services. That's what (Daily) is trying to map out."

--

"We're in the biggest mass extinction since the dinosaurs," [Daily] said in her Stanford office, which is covered with photos of her husband and two children. "People estimate we'll lose half of the Earth's life forms in our lifetime."

I don't know who "people" are, but that postulation is scary.

On a related note, this reminds me of the fundamental difference of policy that has guided two different nonprofits I've worked for, and how I believe it has been the key to their successes. Both social justice nonprofits, this difference stems from a crucial bit in their mission statements: investing in their grantees and clients, versus a "charity" approach, which I have seen firsthand foster community and allow dignity and personal power in one's life to drive lasting change.

Oh lord, help me remember this in my own life's little interactions!

I love the tamale lady. It's about time she got her due in the city rag!

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

A delicate ribbon of gas -- a remnant of a supernova that occurred more than 1,000 years ago -- floats eerily in our Milky Way galaxy in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. The supernova was probably the brightest star ever seen by humans and surpassed Venus as the brightest object in the nighttime sky, with the exception of the moon.

We live in a mysterious and beautiful world.

It's a good day in California.

If you're a sop like me, be sure to check out SFGate's wedding album. I cry with joy every time I open it up.

Oi, '80s sentimentalist alert! Check out this article (and some true stories) about the lure, the lore, and the sad demise of the mixtape.

Amazing to think how we've all probably got our share of forgotten mixtapes banging about out in this world, eh? I made loads of them in junior high and high school, exactly the same way as described in this essay -- first from the radio, forbidding my little sister in our shared bedroom to make the slightest noise, lest it come through in the capture. Hoping hoping hoping that the DJ wouldn't talk too long in the intro to songs or fade it out too early, or, god forbid, fade the song I wanted into something horrendous.

I can almost feel my legs falling asleep as I picture myself as a gangly and awkward 12 year old, sitting on the floor of my room with my finger poised at the ready over the pause button of my shiny and new dual cassette boombox that my parents bought for me for my birthday.

You know what I'm talking about, right? Have you forgotten?

When we were kids
We hated things our parents did
We listened low
To Casey Kasem's radio show
That's when friends were made
To think of them just makes you feel nice
The smell of grass in spring
And October leaves cover everything

Later I would record songs tape to tape, priding myself on my mixing skills to choose songs that got that fade in/fade out just right, whilst maintaining the "mood" just right as well.

I also remember getting very good at gauging how long I really had left on a tape and having a list of songs that I used pretty exclusively as end filler. Anything by The Dwarves and Minor Threat was pretty much a given, most songs being less than a minute long anyway!

I loved making covers for them, poring over discarded magazines and, oddly enough, the J. Crew catalog, which I subscribed to but from which I could never afford to order. Great colors abounded for tape covers though, and the catalog meshed with the mixes I made to fuel my passionate adolescent dreams of getting out of my little hometown someday (and wearing clothes like that, and meeting men who look like that!) Anyway, I digress -- the mixtape cover: in our increasingly throwaway world, what a lost art that is as well.

I can credit a mixtape for snagging my hubby. I can't remember the particulars, but I do remember 'I Want You Now' by Depeche Mode and 'There is a Light That Never Goes Out' by The Smiths making an appearance. I am anything but subtle.

I still love making mixes, now on CDs, and I love receiving them as well. But there's just nothing like the love that is apparent in a mixtape. RIP.

Ugh. God forbid I should ever agree with off the deep end Debra Saunders, but her article lambasting $200,000+ earners who lambasted her for calling them rich is creating that (albeit, tiny) snowball in hell.

They see only what other people have and they do not have. They do not see what they have, but others do not. They apparently do not notice the people with whom they work every day who live on less. They are not chastened by SFGate.com commenters who were appalled that anyone would complain that he could not buy a home or put aside any savings on a measly $200,000-plus a year.

And these SFGate.com commenters pretty much say it all for me:

Okay, first off, I am in the family of three making under 50K a year category. If we made another $20K-150K a year it could all go to savings. I am sorry, but I see you guys out there with the $1000 strollers (when you could buy one for $10), the $4 Lattes (when you could make your own for 50 cents), the $100 pairs of jeans, the $100+ diaper bags... You think you are struggling, but what it really is is that we have been taught to hyper consume. And yeah, I know I am unlikely to be able to buy a home in the Bay Area, but that is no longer part of the middle class experience here in the Bay Area.

The clincher:

$200k per year IS rich, where you CHOOSE to live and HOW to spend it is a different matter, but it IS rich.

I grew up solidly working class, no fronting. I also grew up with a sense of need vs. want, and to value quality vs. quantity/keeping up with the Jones' (thanks Mom and Dad!). I have lived in the Bay Area -- one of the most "hyper-consumer" places in the world -- for 8 years. Most of the time, my honey has been in grad school (oh glorious graduation in December!), so we have never made enough to live more than paycheck to paycheck, yet we still vacation and eat organic and go to shows and aren't freezing in a cardboard box. We also drive a car from the 80s (when we drive) and live in a studio apartment, our idea of good meal out is usually under $30, and I would never spend $100 on jeans. Choices, baby.

I don't disparage people who make $200,000 a year and then make the choice to have a new car or eat at a fancy restaurant or buy the $100 jeans. I take extreme offense, however, at said person calling themselves working class (even middle class) or "struggling." Bitch, please. Pull your head out.

I have a good friend who lived on $7-9 an hour in Oakland for many years. She lived in a cooperative house, didn't own a car, and shopped at the thrift store. Girl saved a big chunk of change, put tens of thousands away in her retirement account, and still bought quality clothes and organic food.

Good choices can augment sparse economic reality, but nothing makes someone who earns $200,000+ a year struggle but ignorance.

Peter Hartlaub at the SF Chron listed his best breakup songs a while back, and I saved the article because I thought I'd take a stab someday. But then I thought, breakup songs are easy.

I want to make a mix of the best stalker songs -- not the obvious ones like "You Oughta Know" and "Every Breath You Take" and such, but the ones that masquerade as terribly romantic ditties. Though I don't think I can bring myself to place some of them in my iTunes long enough to burn the disc.

See what I mean:

1. "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?" by Michael Bolton

And I don't wanna face the price I'm gonna pay for dreaming
Now that your dream has come true

Screw you and your dream! And hello -- y'all know who is actually going to "face the price." Nice.

Tell me how am I supposed to live without you
Now that I've been lovin' you so long
How am I supposed to live without you
How am I supposed to carry on
When all that I've been livin' for is gone

Truly chilling.

2. "I'm Your Man" by Wham!

Admittedly controversial in its stalker potential, for George Michael finishes the song with a nod to the consensual -- "If you want me, I'm your man" -- but I still place it on my list for this:

So good, you're divine
Wanna take you wanna make you
But they tell me it's a crime
Everybody knows where the good people go
But where we're going baby
Ain't no such word as NO

And the best one ever...

3. "Hungry Eyes" by Eric Carmen

The classic from every girl's favorite movie, Dirty Dancing. Aww it's so romantic! Um, no.

I've been meaning to tell you
I've got this feelin that won't subside
I look at you and I fantasize
You're mine tonight
Now I've got you in my sights

...

I want to hold you so hear me out

...

Now did I take you by surprise
I need you to see
That you were meant for me

Creeeeeeeeepy.

I can't front worth a shit though -- I actually like that song, saxophone and all. Makes me feel like I'm 12 again.



Okay, and those of you who know me know I'm totally bullshitting about not frikken LOVING that Wham! song too. George Michael in black, gyrating with inexplicable gloves and a tambourine = best. thing. ever. Though I was always an Andrew Ridgeley kind of girl.



I know I'll make you happy with the one thing that you never had.

C'mon, admit it -- you're so 12 again too.

In case you didn't know...

Men Who Do More Housework May Get More Sex.

I hope my taxes aren't funding these oh-so-surprising conclusions! :)

Also, C.W. Nevius in the SF Chron today gets it right when he says that everyday life is the best argument for gay marriage.

I'm really for civil unions for all, and think we'd gain a lot more converts quickly if we lobbied for both straight and gay unions to be recognized as civil unions instead of marriage by the State and Feds for tax, inheritance, etc. purposes, and then recognized marriage as only a religious, extraneous thing that is personal and private.

But I digress: gay unions becoming commonplace and acceptable by most is inevitable, and this is common knowledge to me and many people I know, but it is still nice to read this in print -- at the very least, in order to keep the faith while we trudge forward through the haters toward that destination:

At the end of the day, when the change comes to allow same-sex marriage - and it's coming, don't kid yourself - it won't be because of protests. It will be because people in this state, and across the country, are talking to gay and lesbian co-workers and neighbors, meeting same-sex couples and their kids at Little League games, and working at companies with domestic-partner health plans.

...

It is that familiarity driving the change in perception. Polls tell us that those born before 1940 are probably a lost cause. But those in their 40s, for example, have seen a dramatic uptick in support for same-sex marriage. And the real sea change is among the teens and twentysomethings who seem to wonder what the fuss is all about.

When my parents were children, it was illegal in the State of California for them to marry and/or have children. My father once told me of an interracial couple who were tarred and feathered in my hometown when he was a small child in the late 1930s.

These horribly backward things are, thankfully, just ugly, fading memories for many Americans now. But they are very relevant in the fight to recognize full equal rights for gay unions. So, it is good to be reminded of this truth: in my lifetime, anti-gay marriage platforms and the moral panic around gay folk that feeds it will go the way of anti-miscegenation laws.

It is just so tiresome fighting the haters, and waiting!

New Threat to Our Way of Life: Giant Pythons!

The giant snakes are slithering from Florida toward the Bay Area, very slowly to be sure, but inexorably. And they can strangle and eat an entire alligator.

The U.S. Geological Survey released a map Wednesday showing that the Bay Area has comfortable climatic conditions for the python. It also said the reptile, which prefers to swallow its prey in one gulp, is "highly adaptable to new environments" and cannot be stopped. (emphasis mine)

The snakes weigh up to 250 pounds and slither at a rate of 20 miles per month, according to USGS zoologist Gordon Rodda. They are not staying put. In fact, one of them has already slithered about 100 miles toward San Francisco.

...

At 20 miles a month, a determined Burmese python from Florida could arrive in San Francisco as early as August 2020.

Oh SF Chron, you rascal -- it's not even April 1st! Though I must admit it is slightly exciting to imagine pythons or anacondas or some other crazy shit in San Joaquin Valley irrigation ditches, eating coyotes and city folk. I suppose to be safe, in 2020 it'll be time to move to Denver.

I feel compelled to say yet again that this is why I don't live in Dixie -- the Australia of the United States.

Completely off the subject, but I dreamt last night that I was in a fast food restaurant where there were live kittens curled up in those flat french fry boxes like you get in a cafeteria or stadium, and then being placed under heat lamps and people were picking them up like rotisserie chickens.

must. stop. being. ill.

I’ve blogged aplenty in the past about my good friend Jon Stich and his mad illustration skills. But lately the boy’s really been working it. Jon took his portfolio to Chronicle Books, where the folks in the design department were so impressed with his work (apparently they were especially impressed with his portrait of me and my sweetie-pie) that they contracted with him on the spot. Check out this story from Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle Magazine for his first piece!

Doing what you love and making a living is a blessed existence indeed.

Speaking of magazines, design, and things I love, anyone check out the new Harper’s Bazaar and their fashion spread in conjunction with the Simpsons film? A big bunch of fashion design heavy-hitters – Donatella Versace, Marc Jacobs (for Louis Vuitton), and Victor&Rolf, just to name a few – are Simpsonized and pieces from their latest collections are modeled by Marge, her sisters, and Linda Evangelista.

Love the Jean Paul Gaultier panel, with Maggie in a Birkin:

























And here's the real deal:















So well done, and really fun. This is what gets me to buy fashion mags and not regret it later.