Author Archives: Duff

Two Days of Sick Twittering

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A week later, this all seems hilarious to me.

11:58 PM Feb 22: Getting out of bed to chew pepto tablets with 4 am wakeup looming

4:25 AM Feb 23: puking puking puking all night long. fun times NOT

6:47 AM Feb 23: lying on the bathroom floor sucking on an ice cube and praying for death

8:39 AM Feb 23: needs ginger ale but is too weak to go get it

9:17 AM Feb 23: hiccups in this state canNOT be good

1:08 PM Feb 23: testing out a few saltines thanks to @laureneo taking pity on my patheticness

5:02PM Feb 23: Silvia has the punes too! something on the plane fucked us up

8:52 AM Feb 24: just ate some rice. waiting to see if this stays down…

12:23 PM Feb 24: being sick is so tiring. i think i need a nap.

2:36PM Feb 24: marvelling that I watched an entire hour of desperate housewives of new york

RIP Bill Holm.

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A Minnesotan and a Icelander.

A poet. An essayist. 2008’s McKnight Distinguished Artist of the Year.

Author of one of my favorite travel/experience books EVER!!!: Coming Home Crazy.

And Barton Sutter sums him up poetically: “Tis also a gift to be complex and ornery / with a house full of music / cigar smoke and whiskey / and Icelandic sagas / preserved by farmers / for nearly a thousand years.”

À la Nick Hornby, books in/books out for February.

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Bought:

  • Rogue Angel: Renaissance, by Alex Archer (trilogy in one volume)
  • Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories, by Lauren Groff
  • L.A. Outlaws, by T. Jefferson Parker*
  • The Devil’s Bones, by Jefferson Bass*
  • Lies of Silence, by Brian Moore^
  • Every Dead Thing, by John Connolly^
  • Sweetheart, by Chelsea Cain^
  • For All We Know, by Ciaran Carson (poetry)^
  • Nocturnes, by John Connolly (stories)^
  • The Three Evanglists, by Fred Vargas^
  • That They May Face the Rising Sun, by John McGahern^
  • Domestic Violence, by Eavan Boland (poetry)^
  • Finding the Gossamer, by Patrick Hicks (poetry)^
  • Eureka Street, by Robert McLiam Wilson^
  • All Summer, by Claire Kilroy^
  • The Pillowman, by Martin McDonagh (play/drama)^
  • The Feminists Go Swimming, by Michael Collins (stories)^
  • The Girl Who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larsson^
  • Antarctica, by Claire Keegan (stories)^
  • Dark Hollow, by John Connolly*
  • Carved in Bone, by Jefferson Bass
  • Flesh and Bone, by Jefferson Bass
  • The Killing Kind, by John Connolly

Read:
  • Satan Says, by Sharon Olds (poetry)
  • The Broom of the System, by David Foster Wallace
  • L.A. Outlaws, by T. Jefferson Parker
  • The Devil’s Bones, by Jefferson Bass
  • Lies of Silence, by Brian Moore
  • Every Dead Thing, by John Connolly
  • Sweetheart, by Chelsea Cain
  • Dark Hollow, by John Connolly
  • Delicate Edible Birds, by Lauren Groff (stories)
  • For All We Know, by Ciaran Carson (poetry)

*bought in airports
^bought in Dublin, baby

A Surely Incomplete List of Chicago Photobooths

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Old B&Ws (often broken):

  • Schuba’s (Southport & Belmont)
  • Empty Bottle (Western just south of Division)
  • Reckless Records (the Wicker Park one, on Milwaukee just south of North)
  • Double Door (round the Milwaukee/Damen corner from Reckless)

Old Color (and in the case of * =POLAROID!):

  • Sheffields (just north of Belmont on, wait for it, Sheffield)
  • Waveland Bowling Alley* (Western & Addison)

New B&W:

  • The Bottom Lounge (waaaay west on Lake)

New B&W/Sepia/Color:

  • Lucky Strike (Bowling Alley)(at the River East cinema)

À la Super Eggplant, currently, I am…

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Eating: Toaster Strudel. It’s my go-to breakfast when I have to leave the house before 5 a.m. Like I have to every day now.

Making: Supposedly working on two baby boy quilts. Supposedly.

Reading: Our challenge book for February, “The Broom of the System” by David Foster Wallace, which I am loving. I call it “Vonnegut if he wrote female narrators.”

Watching: BStarG season 4.5 and Holy Frak the last two episodes have been NUTS. Remember all those interviews Tahmoh was giving where they asked him about the last 10/11 and he said “Everybody dies!” Yeah, I’m wondering if that might not be the truth! Also loving Bones (hockey dream sequence!!!) and the past few episodes of The Office have been really side-splittingly funny. I have a bunch of random other series on DVD saved up but I just can’t get around to watchin’ ’em.

Listening to: “Alopecia” Why (like a lot); “Oracular Spectacular” MGMT (Love! and hello where have I been?); Bon Iver “Blood Bank” (love) and a few singles from LadyGaGa (sounds like a combination of Pink + Gwen Stefani? no?) and just bought the latest singles from Kelly Clarkson (only the second song of hers I own! but it’s fun!) and Eminem!

Snip To-Dos [Updated: Halfway there!] DONE!

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1) Eleven books read in December (from here to here) (whoops, forgot this one)
2) leftover December movie? (may skip) (here)
3) leftover December gig? (may skip)
4) December Albums bought (thankfully very few) here
5) December best of (here)
6) Year-end gigs/tunes (here)
7) Year-end flicks (here)
8) Year-end books (here)
9) Two movies in January (so far)
10) NineTen12 books in January (so far)
Looks like I’ve been doing a lot of reading and NOTHING else and since I’m actually busy trying to get some last minute stuff done this week over in the “real life”, it may be February before I even get started on this list. Just another thing to beat myself up over, you know I can’t have too many of those! Indeed, February it is.

Best of December

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The best movie I saw in December…was Bolt, the ONLY movie I saw (Pathetic! Especially considering I was on vacation the first week of the month.

The best book I read in December was… hmmm, hard to pin it down when you read 11 books that month!!! I’ll make it a three-way tie between Tender Morsels, by Margo Lanagan; Deaf Sentence, by David Lodge; and Black & White, by Dani Shapiro. But I don’t think there were many of my December reads that I wouldn’t recommend to you. It was a great month for reading.

The best gig I went to in December was My Morning Jacket, which was allright but I actually thought the time I saw them at Lollapalooza was a better set. The ony other show I went to I didn’t review. It was The Sea and Cake on New Year’s Eve, which was good, but I wasn’t really aware of their stuff before so I wasn’t necessarily super engaged. Plus you know, NYE, crowds, loud drunk girls, etc. Cathy and I had fun but then we had enough fun so we went home early! 🙂

My favorite tunes in December boils down to one album: Frightened Rabbit “The Midnight Organ Fight” which I pretty much listened to nonstop. And I listened to a lot of Kanye, Killers, and Pink (all from November) as well.

Random personal highlights: A week off! Yay!; hung out with Cinnachick!; Back to the Future marathon with Carlos; dinner with my cousins; brunch with MK; brunch with KC; dinner at the Coopers; and Cathy came to visit!!! YAY!!!!

Lowlights? Can’t remember any in particular. Now that’s rare!!

Oh look, I finally got through December. Now I can write up my year-end lists. I’m SO TIMELY this time around. Ha!