I visited my mom for her birthday, and took pictures of her garden which has literally hundreds and hundreds of plantings.

I had a very nice time in Champaign, hanging out with my friend Lisa. We drank gallons of coffee. This is what I do on vacation; search out the local (non-corporate) coffee, and sample it endlessly. I check the foam. The body. The presentation. Champaign has several very nice, non-chain coffee joints. Above you can see Lisa and I surveying Cafe Kopi in downtown Champaign on Saturday.

When we weren’t drinking coffee, I got to see Lisa in a play called “The Spoon River Anthology” which was great, not only because Lisa played 3 different characters, but because all the characters were dead people. I love the macabre, so this was right up my alley. The whole thing is short monologues by the (mostly) discontent dead residents of a tiny town in Illinois called Spoon River.

On Sunday night, as we were in fear of losing our caffeine highs, Lisa and I went over to Foellinger Auditorium on the campus of the U of Illinois to see a show by The Decemberists. It was really great, lots of audience participation and a fabulous rendition of The Mariner’s Revenge Song at the very end, complete with giant whale. It could not have ended better. I didn’t take any pictures of the show, so instead here is a link to a really great performance by them on KEXP’s website, which I’d also like to mention as a great place to listen to new music.

Yesterday as I was walking home, I passed a recently cut lawn; there were grass clippings all across the sidewalk, and a very deeply green, wet, mossy smell wafted about me as I went by. Also on the sidewalk were chunks of melting snow because it snowed all day Wednesday.

I’ve been feeling very contrasty lately. Not in an unpleasant way, however. Spring is afoot and that always brings new possibilities. Some of my pals, especially, are having very springy springs, which is fabulous.

This weekend I’m off to see one of them in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. The drive down I-74 is really very nice, so I’m looking forward to that. I haven’t been to see my buddy since I went for the Sleater Kinney show in late 2005. I’ll be checking out the local comic shop, so maybe that will be fun. Oh, and my buddy is in a play, so that will be cool to see, too.

I’m reading Palimpsest by Gore Vidal. I love Vidal’s writing, he is such a strange-beautiful creature, and so very good at turning a word.

And since I’m being contrasty, I’m also listening to Lesbians On Ecstasy and thinking about my buddy who lives in boston who sent me their CD 3 years ago. Thanks, J, miss you muchly.

I’ve sort of fallen off of my routine of regular blogging; I went travelling for 2 weeks, and then last week I was on call for my job. But now it’s all past me, so Onward Ho!

For my 4th relics post, I thought I’d drag out the 2 books I loved most as a kid, Juan And The Asuangs by Jose Aruego, and Carter Is A Painter’s Cat by Carolyn Sloan and Fritz Wegner. I remember reading these books when I was a tiny tiny kid, and I’ve loved them my whole life.

Juan And The Asuangs is a tale of Philippene ghosts + spirits. It is about Juan and his carabao who set out to find who is stealing the dogs + chickens from their village.

They run across many ghosts and creatures,

until they come upon the bottom half of the most fearsome creature of all, the Mananangal. They realize that the top half of the creature is off hunting, so they place hot peppers on the stump..when the creature comes back to land on it’s lower half, it lands on the peppers, resulting in my all-time favorite page in the book:

The Mananangal gets burned by the peppers, and it screams straight upwards into the sky and wobbles off, screaming. Something about the way my mom read, “geek! geek! geek!” totally amused me, so I made her read it over + over again. Plus, check out that awesome pespective! Juan and his carabao saved the dogs + chickens and so they returned to their village as heroes.

My other favorite childhood book is Carter Is A Painter’s Cat which is a story from England. It is very 70s groovy.

Carter belongs to Mr. Blot, a painter who repaints Carter in a new form every day. Sometimes Carter has a fancy suit, or 2 tails, or funny colors.

One day, Mr. Blot fails to show up and paint Carter anew, so Carter uses Mr. Blot’s studio and paints to patint Mr. Blot instead.

Then he paints Mr. Blot in the bathtub, and leaves him there and goes on vacation.

I think both of these books are out of print now, but re-reading them as an adult certainly gives me some insight into why I have such a taste for the surreal in life, and enjoy such quirky humor. The great part is, I have read them to Noah since he was a baby and he now has Juan and the Asuangs completely memorized.