xoxo

Philly.com has taped up like eight thousand xoxo with love, Philadelphia ads all over Penn Station, which I guess is just fine by me.  It's loads better than sneaker ads, I'll give them that.

However, the text is just - I don't know how else to put it - weird.  I think there was one that said something along the lines of "let's conspire by the fire. with love, Philadelphia."  What does that even mean?  And then there's this: "Pack an extra set of pajamas and stay an extra night. xoxo Philly."  Do people seriously pack a pair of pajamas for every night they're staying somewhere?!  And can it instead read, "Pack a fucking snow plow and stay an extra night! xoxo Philadelphia."  Because we really need those more than a second set of flannels.

Can someone please explain these ads to me?  Am I missing something clever?  Otherwise, I'm just filing this away under "Yet another reason Philadelphia is broke."

Goodnight.

Liberté, Egalité, Faternité

Last week I had a supermarket crisis on my hands: the only Stonyfield Farms yogurt in stock was apricot, which is disgusting; there was no skyr; and the Greek kind had dangerously close expiration dates for someone who forgets to eat breakfast half the time. Whole Foods: fire your suppliers.

I was forced to branch out.  I hate trying new things when I'm the one who has to pay for them.  Also I refuse to buy more than one of any particular product if I've never had it before in case it turns out to be revolting.  The yogurt I ended up selecting came from Canada, so the odds were already stacked against it.

I'm just kidding - I love Canada.  And I love my Canadian friend who recommended the stuff to me months ago.  It's called Liberté, and besides the allure of its fancy French[Canadian] name, it also comes in some swell flavors [er, sorry Canada -- flavours] like plum walnut and passion fruit.  I've only seen it in health food stores so I figured it would be aspertaine-free and not have a bunch of crap in it.  Also it was just over a dollar for a little six-ounce container.  The price was right.  I bought a coconut-flavoured one and it was absolutely divine.  I enjoyed every bite.  The cat enjoyed licking the inside of the foil lid, which I let her do on occasion.  Everyone was happy.

Today I made the Liberté commitment and bought enough for the next week of breakfasts.  The delight of finding that there were little coconut bits in the bottom of some seriously tangy yogurt would not leave my mind.  More had to be acquired.  I was pleased with my purchase.

But, dear reader, don't follow my example.  For I just looked at the label on the back and this six ounce tub of yogurt contains 17 grams of fat.  I didn't think that was even possible outside of fast food establishments and microwave meals and foods containing chocolate.  Oh, and don't try to blame this on the coconut, either, because the passion fruit one clocks in at 15 g. 

Mind you: I am not an obsessive calorie counter.  I don't overdo it, but I don't fret too much over such things most of the time.  Part of the reason I don't sweat it is that I pick foods like yogurt and fruit instead of fried eggs and bacon for my breakfast every day.  Except now my yogurt is some sort of Benedict Arnold fried egg accomplice [pun unintentional, and it stays].  Honestly, there should really be a point after which yogurt is quarantined away from its bretheren and labeled "DESSERT."  I say that point is when the fat content hits double digits.

OK, I'm done yelling about yogurt now.  You're welcome.

Snow Day

First of all, let me just say: Philadelphia, you look ravishing in white.

Work is closed today.  I can't tell you how much love I have for snow days.  I loved them in middle school a lot because I got to sit at home and watch crap tv all day and this was about 1,000,000,000 x more awesome than middle school.  But the whole day was also spent dreading the next one, by which time all the snow would be cleared and I'd have to go back to school.  Now that I'm an adult and I love my job, snow days are even cooler.  Mother Nature calls a time out, and I get 24 hours to fuck around and watch movies and walk around the neighborhood in giant boots and pajamas.  And then everything is back to normal again the next day, and I just pick up where I'd left off.  No problem.

And now I am going to go finish reading Just Kids and find some Price is Right reruns on the internet.  Get your pets spayed and neutered, people.

90s box

So back in 2001 the college kids discovered the 80s.  Something happened that made new wave hits cool once again, to say nothing of the strange and only partially ironic fascination with power ballads and hair bands.  My housemate and I watched as records and cds you couldn't give away five years back were suddenly being snapped up left and right and got progressively more expensive to buy used.  And then a profound idea struck us:

Holy shit, it's not the 90s anymore.  Let's get on this before all the kids figure it out.  We started making lists of 90s hits and misses (mostly the feel-good misses).  And then on our days off we'd raid the two used cd stores in Jamaica Plain, list (when remembered) in hand.  And there we'd labor for hours, making little piles of cds, prioritizing and reordering and debating the relative merits of our selections until finally we'd decided on a small handful of treasures to buy.  The two biggest factors in this process were price v. musical merit, and then also what gaps it filled in our growing collection (which we stored in an empty Budweiser 24-can box).  Is the Spin Doctors really worth 49 cents?  Do we ever really want to listen to Chumbawumba again?  Are they really charging $4.99 for Better than Ezra?  Who the hell are The Toadies again?  Etc.

We were totally stoked about all of this, and subjected just about every house guest to a selection of tunes they almost certainly wanted to forget.  We patted ourselves on the back for our sound judgment and genius idea when we heard later that year that the Post Office would be releasing 1990s stamps.  Boy were we ahead of the game on this one.

I still have the 90s box, though it's all digital now because I couldn't see why I would spend all of graduate school lugging around Third Eye Blind and MC Hammer CDs.  Today just for a good laugh I shuffled the 90s playlist and here for you, dear reader, are the first five hits.  Bon appetit.

1.  Cracker - Low



2. L7 - Pretend We're Dead



3. Jesus Jones - Right Here Right Now



4. Naughty by Nature - Feel me Flow



5. Blind Melon - No Rain (side note: that bee costume is someday going to be my Halloween getup)

Forgetting. Remembering.

Rediscovering a song I once loved that somehow (like so many things) got lost in the shuffle.

Radiohead: Fake Plastic Trees

This is what evil looks like

I'm not even going to post the picture, that's how much it is dripping with pure, unfiltered EVIL.  You'll have to click the link.

(despite the horrors within, this link is safe for work viewing)

Just click it already.

Courtesy of my boss.

Four wheels in two rows

You know how much I love my roller skates.  Old school white ones with red gel wheels and some serious 'tude.  Just wait until springtime, when I start skating to work.  It's going to be epic.  Look out, Kelly Drive runners.  It's on.

However, right now there is snow all over the place, so here's a pile of 19th-century roller skating trading cards instead:
Roller skates

Enjoy.

Sounds about right

Well, it's that part of the long weekend in which I just missed one train home because the scanner in the library was taking forever and now have an hour to kill and am too tired to read more AND already a bit anxious about and dreading how tired I am going to be at work tomorrow.

But that is not what I was going to write about.  Instead I wanted to throw this your way:

I spent some of today reading Lewis Wickes Hine's collected letters, which he signed in all sorts of clever ways.  I can't decide whether my favorite is "Hiney" or "H-sign."

Also you should look at this, because it's awesome - Lewis Hine Project - even if you're not a photo nerd.

Library. All weekend.

Men in skirts who aren't Mummers

So, you should know that the internets are broken in my house.  Right now I am practically hanging out the window trying to steal signal from the neighbors to get a train schedule online, and while I'm at it I figure I'll post something here.  I mean, the window is closed, but it's winter and I'm cold in my own home and I am especially, especially cold by the window.  At the wee hours of the morning tomorrow (7am), a nice gentleman or gentlewoman from Comcast is on the case.  We'll see.

Anyway, I just rediscovered this great photographic postcard from ca. 1910.  I bought it as a cheer-you-up present for a good friend, but you'd better believe I scanned it first.  When I am in a bad mood - like, say, when I'm freezing my butt off trying to check my e-mail - I like to look at it because it makes me laugh.  So now you too can look at it and laugh.  You'd better be laughing.

Consuelo Kanaga

Consuelo Kanaga, Creatures on a Rooftop, 1937
(courtesy The Brooklyn Museum)

Overheard: Penn Station, New York Edition

Two girls - who I am assuming to be American based on the absence of foreign accent.  And by "girls," I mean "college-age teenagers."

Girl 1 [looking at departure board]: Where is Chicago, anyways?  It's near Boston, right?
Girl 2 [looking pensive]: Yeah.
A moment passes.
Girl 2: No wait, no it's not.  It's totally in the South.  I think it's in Georgia?
Girl 1: Oh, cooool.

MONSTER BOOBER

You know, for the most part I eat pretty well.  I'm not one of those people who does so on principle and gets all self-righteous about it.  It's just that I really like to eat fresh vegetables more than I like to eat processed, vacuum-sealed foods.  Generally speaking.

There are some strange and stubborn exceptions to this rule.  I wrote them out here in a list - there were eight of them - but then it started to gross me out, especially because I started thinking about eating them together -- like, a big mouthful of canned black olives and oatmeal cream pie.  I couldn't do it.  But I'll tell you this: at the top of the list is Boo Berry Crisp cereal.  I don't know what it is about that stuff that is so good, but it really is.  And it's only available at Halloween time!

Anyway I totally stocked up on this stuff and forgot all about it until I found the receipt for my purchase on my desk.  It's itemized by the grocery store as MONSTER BOOBER.  Now I am eating MONSTER BOOBER right out of the box.  Life is grand sometimes.

At the Met

William Langenheim, Frederick Langenheim Looking at Talbotypes. Daguerreotype, ca. 1849-51.

Belated Christmas fodder

This print is fantastic!  As is the trivia!  And the blog!  Lots of exclamation points!
Printing Press Descends from Heaven

Philadelphia, 1955

So I had absolutely nothing to post, but then a friend found this gem:
Philadelphia, 1955

A lot has changed in ~half a century.  I'm fascinated.

Handwriting

When you spend an extended period of months poring over documents, letters, notes, annotations, and so on by a particular author (in my case, a photographer), you really grow to deeply understand their handwriting.  At first the learning curve is really steep with all but a precious few excessively careful writers.  You spend a lot of time scrutinizing a word, a letter, a phrase, trying to decipher what at first glance looks like a daunting row of squiggles and scribbles.  But as you push forward, light bulbs go on and you realize, "Oh, that thing that looks like a Euro symbol before the Euro was actually currency is really a very fanciful "F" and it eventually seems absurd that you couldn't read this stuff in the first place.  Then comes the moment when you can intuitively imitate it yourself.  And in some strange, slightly quirky way the fact of this makes me, at least, feel very close to a person who I only know through the artifacts he left behind.

This all makes me wonder (worry?) about what the archives of the present generation onward will look like.  Or really, what it will be like to look at them.  Maybe I'm just a fuddy-duddy to be attached to letters and paper books full of marginalia and the contents of peoples' rolodexes.  But I can't imagine that scrolling through e-mails and tweets and hard drives will feel the same or reveal as much about their authors. 

Thank you, British Museum

And many thanks also to the good friend who sent this along today:
WOMBATS!

I have so much love for 19th-century weirdness, friends.  Especially of this sort.

If not for this ...

...then for what, I ask you, what is the internet for?  I have absolutely no idea what the first picture posted to the intertubes was, but I would bet that it was a cute cat picture.  Someone find this out for me, ok?

In any case, it's my cat's birthday today.  Specifically, she is turning fourteen, which is not a small number.  I have had her since before she was born - her momma, Porch (named for where she got knocked up), was a stray we took in back in 1996 - out popped one kitten.  A kitten who is now really old, with arthritis and heart problems and thyroid issues and the whole lot.  Sometimes when my mind wanders, I think about how much of my student loans from undergrad I could have paid back if I'd never gotten a cat.  But then she's just so adorable, it's hard to think that way.

In any case: now that she's 14 and totally legal to work, could one of you hire her, please?  I'm sick and tired of being the only breadwinner around here.  She's, um, homeschooled?  and ... can't lift forty pounds or more and definitely lacks opposable thumbs but is friendly, outgoing, and really good at killing mice (despite the arthritis).  Prefers to work from home, but will commute.  Any leads on this, please e-mail me.

Also: she will be getting tuna fish shaped like the number 14 on a plate later.  Just so you know.

MUMMERS! (part 2, nighttime)

After the parade ended, we took a break and ate some delicious food at Jamaican Jerk Hut.  Ali saw a pair of earrings hanging off their fence:

A lot of the 2 Street night pictures are blurry.  Sorry about that - but to be honest, that's how the whole event feels, anyhow.  It's fitting.

One of the many things I learned from others regarding the Mummers parade:
Mummers = cool.
Mummer = weird.
It's really true.  Collectively, they're awesome but there is something really creepy about an aimless, wandering, solitary Mummer.  This guy seems to have lost his people somewhere:

Silly String : Daytime :: Beer cans : Nighttime:

Salvaged parasol!:

Other moments:

After 2 Street, we went to Franklin Fountain for ice cream and headed home.  2011 has begun, and it is awesome.

Things I learned about Mummers Day from others that turned out to be true:
* you will be offended at least once.
* if a Mummer approaches you in a staggering-type way, just run, because that means they're going to try to make out with you.
* there are good soft pretzels and bad ones, and a way to tell the difference (which I am not sharing with my blog readers! Ha!)
* it is unlike anything else you will ever see.
* "it's like third-world party strategy in a first-world city"
Things I learned on my own:
* unless you are transporting lots of beer cans, you don't need a bag and you will be happier without one.
* don't wear anything you ever want to wear again, because it will probably smell like warm domestic beer forever.

Philadelphia: I love you.

MUMMERS! (part 1, daytime)

So I promised a whole bunch of people that I'd try to explain the Philadelphia Mummers Day Parade, and, frankly, this task has been stressing me out a bit.  There is something about the whole experience that seems completely indescribable to me.  It's unlike anything I've ever seen, and I don't think I have the vocabulary (written or visual) for it.

A lot of the intricacies of it are totally lost on me - I know a native Philadelphian could explain much better to you how the different brigades work and where their clubhouses are and what the costumes mean.  I can't do that.  What I can tell you is that some time in the mid-eighteenth-century, Mummers grabbed some instruments and costumes and played and performed at various houses for money.  And if you didn't pay up, they'd punch in your windows and stuff.  At some point in the 19th century the whole event ended up more structured, and became a parade that included all sorts of whimsical stuff like giant six-story cakes made of wood and live elephants in costume.  Lots of gun-firing into the sky, too, of course.  And there is a long history of sexism and racism woven into the spectacle -- even this year, I saw some cowboys and Indians nonsense that made my blood boil.

So this feels like the first field day for an anthropologist - everything new and confusing.  But here is what I've figured out, told by way of uncertain words and crappy photographs (disclaimer: I just got my first digital camera a few months ago.  I want it to work like an analog camera, but it won't.  This camera and I are new friends, the mixed results of which are shown here).

First of all, this Mummers Day business really separates the men from the boys.  It's on New Years Day, which means it follows the amateur night of amateur nights -- New Year's Eve.  The parade itself lasts seven hours, and is then followed by this wild gathering at night on 2 Street (note: not Second Street. 2 Street) where all the Mummers unwind and everyone else who's already been drinking all day keeps doing so.  Almost everyone I talked to had been drinking since 5pm on New Year's Eve and planned to sleep all day today.  I didn't drink a thing, but feel a little hung over by proxy.

The parade makes its way around Philadelphia -- slowly.  It consists of four different types of clubs - Comics, Fancies, String Bands, and Fancy Brigades - I don't know how many of each kind there are, but they all have these clubhouses (most on 2 Street) where they spend all year preparing costumes, rehearsing, building props, etc.  They compete for best performance, so everything is over the top and really elaborate.  These clubs are mostly men -- mostly white men, really.  So cross-dressing becomes a huge component of the humor.

Over the course of this seven-hour event, the clubs march along the parade route and stop at pre-determined intersections along the way, assemble their props, and perform.  The city sets up bleachers at some of these intersections, and the whole thing is super crowded -- full of [again, largely white] Philadelphians wearing silly hats and drinking beer out of cans.

I should say that I have no idea what Philadelphia's laws are about public drinking, but whatever they are, they get brushed under the carpet on New Year's Day.  There are beer cans everywhere - decorating dirty snow banks, hanging off discarded Christmas trees, all over the sidewalks and streets and gutters and windowsills and stoops.  I saw at least one 10 yr old pounding a Coors Lite.  There was lots of weed, too.  Cops everywhere but they seemed only present to break up fights and make sure nobody got hurt.  There were lots of arrests that could have been made but weren't.  Most people were walking around with huge duffel bags full of canned beer.  On 2 street in the evening, this included the Mummers.

Here is what I saw:

I started out at City Hall, but this was not the best move because it was where all the tourists go.  It was really crowded, and I couldn't get a good view of the performances.  But I did get some idea of what I was missing as I watched the props roll by:

This one seemed to be Russian-themed, because there were also some eggs:

And then there was this one:

Time out for Claes Oldenburg, who was also present for the parade:

Santa?

These ladies are fucking amazing:

Besides beer cans, there was silly string all over the place:

I'm pretty certain the Mummers single-handedly keep the glitter and feather factories in business.

Eventually we wanted to actually see these groups perform, so we headed south.  On our way we spotted a guy selling pretzels who was keeping them hot by burning coals in a grocery cart.  Seemed up to health code inspection to me.  He was really excited about showing off his genius contraption and having his picture taken:

Eventually we found a place by the University of the Arts where we could watch the performances.  Supposedly each performance has some sort of narrative thread.  I don't know that I knew what the fuck they were, but this one had something to do with railroads?

(side note: that guy in the Kangol hat was fucking hilarious)

This was followed by scary clowns:

(love the prop guy with the mouths so much)

Then there was some strange fruit-themed thing?  To which the Kangol hat guy responded: WE'VE SEEN THE FRUIT BEFORE, YA FOOLS.  LAST YEAR.  OR THE YEAR BEFORE:

Then a string band.  I'm not sure which one of those parasols I ended up with, but Alison totally salvaged one off 2 street sidewalk for me later:

Next: some 49ers:

[continued in next post]