Chicago, we're coming for you!

Get excited! It's officially ALA week in Chicago! 25,000 librarians, writers, publishers, bookshop owners, and library students all invading one city for a week of awesomeness! I've never gotten the chance to go, so this is my first trip to the Conference of Win. [I might meet Lois Lowry!! EEEEEE!]

There are so many people coming to speak that I'm sad I won't get to hear and see everyone! I'm bummed especially about my train schedule meaning I have to leave the conference in the morning of the last day before Octavia Spencer takes the floor for her big talk to close the conference. Remember Octavia Spencer? She was on Ugly Betty, Big Bang Theory, and most notably as Minny Jackson in The Help (for which she won an Oscar! Yay!). She's taking the leap into a mystery series for children that features a Ninja Detective and she is the keynote for the closing of the conference. I'm sure she's awesome. Plus, she's writing books for kids about Ninja Detectives, how can that flop?

Octavia Spencer as Minny Jackson. She was my favorite character in The Help!

Speaking of non-floppers on the children's lit scene: Mo Willems is going to be there and I've got a book for him to sign for my friend's son. Elephant and Piggie books are all the rage! I love his work. He's such an amazing author, it'll be interesting to hear him talk about how he comes up with all of his ideas.

Giada DeLaurentis is going to be there, and I'm really hoping she's actually cooking. Cookbooks don't do a whole lot for me, but I'd like to eat free food! Especially free food prepared in front of me by a famous chef I've seen on tv before.

Khaled Hosseini is coming to talk about his newest book that came out last month, And the Mountains Echoed, which is sitting at #3 on NY Times Best Seller list this week. I always wanted to read The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, but I still haven't gotten around to it. Maybe hearing him speak will inspire me to finally read these books?

Oliver Stone is coming to talk about his new documentary, which I might stop in to hear a bit about. It's called "The Untold History of the United States" and is going to be challenging the traditional history taught to students. I'm all for it.

And Alice Walker is coming! I don't actually own a copy of "The Color Purple", but I might see if I could get one and see if she could sign it? She's got a new book of poetry coming out and I hope she reads some from it. It'd be pretty cool to hear her read a little.

And, as I mentioned at the start: LOIS LOWRY! This is probably the coolest thing, ever. Because Number the Stars and The Giver are two of my favorite books in the world, I actually don't have full copies of them any longer. Books that I love, I tend to tear pages out and frame for decoration in my house. So, unless I track one down, I won't have one for her to sign. I don't know that I'll actually be able to meet her. I mean, I might stand in front of her and just sort of stare awkwardly and then be like, 'hi?' But, regardless of whether I can actually form a coherent sentence and have some actual dialogue with the woman, I'm going to hear her speak about dystopian fiction on the first night. She's part of a panel of other young adult fiction writers who are going to be holding a discussion on the topic. Maybe hearing her speak first and not having the chance to meet her face-to-face until the next day will give me some sort of conversation starter, like, 'I really agreed with what you said last night about....' Or, I'll just hover and hear what other people say to her and inwardly go 'EEEEEEEEE!!' the entire time.

Plus all the actual sessions and things I have to go to for work and networking and generally having a blast with fellow bookish people! It actually doesn't start until Friday, but I've been so looking forward to this for months that I'm already overcome with joy! That being said, there will be no Throwback Movie Night this weekend...possibly not next weekend, either?

Speak for me.

Happy Sunday! I finally turned the air conditioning on last night for a while. It was uncomfortable in the apartment. I think it's really the mugginess that eventually gets to you.

I worked a photo conservation workshop yesterday. We had about 14 people attend and I think everyone was pretty pleased about it. It was the first workshop for our photo archivist, who started a year ago. She did a great job and went into a lot of detail about the history of photography, the chemistry of the processes, etc. I was in and out a lot, but I was learning plenty of things when I was in there. Good job! I was sort of the go-to person for taking money for registration, making sure lunch showed up, etc. But there were also some newspaper microfilm problems in the Research Center and I was called in there to help. One poor woman was having the worst luck finding an article. She finally found it, but it took three reels of film for her to locate it. I think we could do more workshops, actually. Maybe split the photo one into a couple of different shorter workshops. I think maybe a document mending and storing workshop would be good, too. I know plenty of people have tons of papers and letters and things just sitting in boxes and maybe they just don't know what to do with them? We can help! We're having a strategic planning meeting tomorrow at work and I might bring it up.

After work, I headed over to sell some of my clothes at a consignment store and all of the power was out on that side of town. It apparently had just happened. It's always nerve-wracking trying to go through busy intersections in those first few minutes of a power outage, when the stoplights are out, but not everybody realizes it yet. I was happy to see the stoplights working on my side of town, but it was a very careful drive home after I dropped my clothes off. The cashier called me last night to tell me that their computers had come back on and that I could get my money today, so I'm planning to head back out that way again. I don't know why the power was out; I didn't actually hear what had happened.

I think I might have an allergic reaction to the violet hair color I've got right now... I got my hair re-dyed last week and my scalp is so irritated since then. I remember that it was sort of itchy the first time I got it dyed violet. I don't remember it ever happening with any other color. It makes me wonder what exactly the violet is. Aveda uses natural dyes and non-petroleum agents for their hair colors, so it's always better for the hair to use their system, but I wonder what sort of flower extract they get the violet color from? Maybe I'm allergic to it. I wanted to go more intense violet next month, but maybe I'll just return to brown. Ho hum.

Throwback Movie Night: Clue

Clue! I love this movie! My dad had never seen it before, so we watched it this week. I think he enjoyed it! If you've never seen it, it is indeed based upon the beloved board game. The premise is just as you would expect it to be: Col. Mustard, Miss Scarlett, Mrs. White, Mrs. Peacock, Prof. Plum, Mr. Green all show up to a house party and then people start dying. Whoddunit?!

The movie was filmed in 1985 with a pretty stand-out group of actors (Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd, and Leslie Ann Warren to name a few), but it opened to mediocre reviews and didn't even make enough money to cover the cost of filming.

But, it has since garnered a cult-following. Yay, cults?!

Tim Curry plays the butler, Wadsworth, and he's also sort of the mastermind behind the house party. The movie is full of comedy, but not always with an 'in-your-face' sort of way. Sometimes it's very subtle, which makes the movie enjoyable time after time. Another reason to watch this movie repeatedly? There are three endings! When the movie was released to theaters, the studio sent an random ending to each theater, so that if you went and saw the movie in the theater in Denver and then asked your sister what she thought of the movie when she saw it in Little Rock, she might have seen a completely different ending than you. The dvd version allows you to see all three or have the dvd choose a random ending. I usually like to be surprised and have it choose a random ending. We watched it through once with its random endings and then went into the scenes and had it show us the other two. All really intriguing and, for me, I never know who's the murderer (much like when I play the board game). The set is pretty awesome and at the time, the old house was furnished with various antiques, including things from Teddy Roosevelt's home. Sadly, the actual set itself burned up in a fire on the studio lot in 2005, I'm assuming long after Roosevelt's things had returned to their true home.

Librarian love.

I have a secret to tell you about librarians: the reason people become librarians is not because they love books (although, many do), it's not because they want to get paid to read (I don't know a single librarian who gets to do this), and its not because they live to 'shush' people. It's because they have absolutely no ability to commit to anything.

It's true. Librarians are those people who could never choose a major. We're the people who could never really commit to a future career path. I wanted to be an interior designer, a paleontologist, a bed & breakfast operator, a meteorologist, a speech pathologist, and a museum exhibit designer in college--just in college, mind you. That doesn't even count the millions of professions I decided upon during high school, my first attempt at grad school, the gap between grad school attempt 1 and 2, the academic probationary "break" in the middle of grad school 2, and finally getting my MLS). I have a theory that librarians are the ones who never could settle down with anything in particular. Never stick with anything for very long before they get tired and have to move on. The sort who feel like they would rather scratch the surface of knowledge of tons of topics than delve too deeply into any one in particular. I have absolutely no desire to become an expert on anything. Nothing. It scares the hell out of me to have to devote much time to anything because of what I feel I'll be missing if I focus too long on one thing. I look at my co-librarians and see that we are all very similar in this way. It's both alarming and hilarious to me at the same time. We're an industry full of people who can't stand to tie ourselves down and truly commit to something, so we spend our whole lives committing to the awesomeness of everything for short periods of time.

I find this so true to myself and can laugh at it, to a point. But, it's also sort of frustrating to know you have such a short attention span. Part of it can be blamed on my generation, I guess. Growing up as part of that group who first dealt with computers as children, saw the internet, realized information really was at our fingertips is heady stuff. It's hard to focus when you can flit from one thing to the next, literally at the click of a button. I have a bad habit of dropping things and moving on, leaving things less than tidy in my wake. I have a really bad habit of getting anxious if I start to feel tied down by something. I get the overwhelming urge to flee, regardless of what I leave behind. This happens even during the minutest of things, like if I'm supposed to be driving my car and following people on a trip to somewhere, or if I'm in a group of friends for too long (even just for a long evening). I start to feel really stuck in a situation and I just flee. I push down on the pedal and speed around the leaders and am off, usually to parts unknown. Or, I just take off on my own and walk for a while, whether I know the city my friends and I are in or not. Not the smartest thing to do, but the only way I've ever been able to quell the feeling of being 'stuck'. I'm lucky in that I have a Dad who seems to understand this about me and I've learned that when I feel like this, I can often talk to him and he'll logically punch holes in my anxiety, and soon enough I'm floating back down to my status-quo of happiness and zen while immersing myself in latin dance, origami crane-making, baking, some photo challenge, sewing clothes, searching for the perfect mashed potatoes in town, or whatever interest I happen to be indulging that day.

Even though I frustrate myself with my total lack of commitment, I think it makes me love being a librarian even more, because never at any moment are my co-workers and I interested in the same thing, and this adds such diversity to a workplace. I love it, even when I'm tired of my job and want to flee to Alabama (because Daphne and Fairhope look like the loveliest places), I still love the career that finally chose me.

Throwback Movie Night: Gigi

Tonight's movie is the 1958 film version of "Gigi" starring Leslie Caron in the title role and Louis Jourdan as the main male actor (he was in "Three Coins in the Foutain", a possible future TMN feature film).

"Gigi" was directed by Vincent Minelli (Liza's dad), and one of the supporting actresses was Eva Gabor, who was Zsa Zsa's younger sister (and also the voice of Miss Bianca in Disney's "The Rescuers").The songs were written by the fantastic duo known as Lerner and Lowe (Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe), who were also responsible for the songs of the film version of "My Fair Lady". They actually wanted Audrey Hepburn to be the leading lady in "Gigi" as she was in "My Fair Lady" but Hepburn turned them down, so they went for Caron instead.

The setting is Paris in 1900 and Gigi is a teenager who finds it difficult to fit in. She lives with her grandma and her mom (but you never see her mother, only hear her practicing her opera in some back room of the apartment), but takes courtesan lessons from her great-aunt Alecia. She learns things like how to tell if pearls are real and which jewels are the most precious, how to eat certain meals correctly, how to choose a cigar for a man, etc. Gigi would rather play cards with Gaston Lachaille, a very wealthy Parisian who, somehow, knows her grandma and has been a part of Gigi's extended family for years. Great-Aunt Alecia decides that Gaston is the perfect test for Gigi's courtesan training and sets out to 'glamify' the awkward teenager and turn her into a beauty. Gaston is at first completely shocked by the change, but of course, he comes around and in the end the two are married (happily).

There are songs galore in this film, and overall, I really liked this musical. It's not hard to see that it's done by the same people behind the 1950s classic "My Fair Lady". In some ways, it's "My Fair Lady"-Parisian style, but that didn't stop it from breaking records at the Oscars in 1959: It won 9 Oscars. It's reign atop the Oscar ladder didn't last long because Ben Hur came the next year and won even more, but still: It was beloved, despite being somewhat of a repeated storyline. According to Wikipedia, the day after Gigi won so many Oscars, the MGM studios switchboard operators answered their phones with "M-Gigi-M".

Get lost in all the little things.

I've been spending a lot of time lately vacation planning. Road trip planning, really. Discovering places to see, places to stay, that sort of thing. Roadtrippers.com is a pretty cool website to help plan destinations. I've got about three different road trips somewhat-mapped out on there right now. It's been a cool site to work with for a bit. They send you e-mails about trip ideas, but usually they're focused on California or the NE, neither of which fall into the category of 'Rad Weekend Roadtrips' if you live in the middle of the country.

Earlier today I was at Barnes & Noble trying to decide whether or not to buy a book and started shelf browsing through the history area, which ended up becoming the music section and the society section, or something like that. It had memoirs of celebrities, but also it had the Postsecret books. I think I've mentioned that a personal hope of mine has been to randomly find a secret or something stuck inside a Postsecret book in a bookstore. People tend to do that with those books and so whenever I see one on a bookstore shelf, I flip through them to see if anybody left any secret or anything in the book for another stranger to find. And today, it happened! Someone left this (not so much secret as much as note of encouragement from a stranger) in one of the Postsecret books in the Columbia Barnes & Noble and now I have it, stuck to my fridge:

I was pretty excited when I found it. I love stuff like this. Back when I used to pick up stones from places and paint sayings on them and leave them in random spots all over the country, I used to hope people felt a sense of excitement when they saw one. I think they must have, because I've never seen any of my rocks again. I would go back weeks later to see if they were still where I left them and they never were. Even ones that were slightly obscure in their new locations. Whoever found them, took them someplace else. It's nice to see fun, happy-go-lucky sorts of things from strangers. It helps to make someone else's day, you know? And today's note from a stranger has made my day! I ended up not buying anything at the mall today, but came away with this note and a realization that I can now say I found something a stranger shared in a book! After I found this in one of books I had to stop myself from flipping through all the other ones on the shelf to see if I could find more. But I thought that if someone had hidden something in the others, I would leave it for another person to find in case someone else has this same hidden hope of finding something in a Postsecret book someday.

Also, earlier this week I got a free download of the new full album of Green River Ordinance. This is a band that I learned about a couple of years ago through Birchbox. They shared a free download of a GRO song in one of their monthly boxes one time and I fell in love with the songs and somehow ended up on a mailing list from the band. Earlier this week they sent out an e-mail to the list with a link to download their new album, so I did. I like them a lot. Sometimes they remind me of Jimmy Eat World, if you remember them from the last decade? That's the only band that comes to mind that they remind me of. But they also have a tiny bit of a country/folk feel to some of their songs sometimes...in an instrumental way, not vocally. Anyway, here's one of their new songs that I've gotten stuck in my head: 

Throwback Movie Night: Driving Miss Daisy

In 1989, Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman agreed to play the lead roles in the movie version of "Driving Miss Daisy", and it was good.



Tandy plays Miss Daisy, a rich, old Jewish woman who is hesitant to accept the fact that she's both rich and old. Freeman plays Hoke, an elderly black man who agrees to work as Miss Daisy's chauffeur. He actually is hired and is paid by Daisy's son after Daisy drives her car into the neighbor's yard and can't get auto insurance any longer. At first, Daisy is stubborn and refuses to allow Hoke to drive her around, but she doesn't want him doing anything else around her house either. He's just stuck sitting around doing nothing and getting paid for it, which for some people might sound nice, but Hoke wants to feel useful. He finally convinces Daisy to allow him to drive her to the Piggly Wiggly for groceries one day and from that day on, the two seem to strike a wonderful friendship that lasts for a quarter of a century.

This is such a fantastic story. It was adapted into a movie from a play. Morgan Freeman played Hoke in the play and reprises his role in the film. Jessica Tandy signed on for the movie version, but wasn't part of the play at all. The film garnered lots of Oscar nominations, including for Best Actress and Best Actor and Best Picture. It won four Oscars including Best Picture and Best Actress. I personally think Morgan Freeman steals the show in this movie. I like Jessica Tandy and think Miss Daisy was a perfect character for her, but Freeman is out-of-this-world awesome as Hoke. I especially love his laugh in the movie. It's completely infectious.

There is also a pretty infectious tune as part of the soundtrack, which was composed by Hans Zimmer. The entire score was done by Zimmer without using a single live instrument, but using electronic samplers and synthesizers! (I found that factoid very interesting for a 1989 movie about two elderly people.)

The movie is wonderful, sad, and touching all rolled into one. The friendship between the two is strengthened due to the prejudice that both face in the South, one as a Jew and the other as an African-American. At one point, the synagogue that Hoke is driving Miss Daisy to is fire-bombed, and at another point during a road trip through Alabama, both are insulted by a highway patrolman. The movie covers a span of 25 years, which includes the death of some characters and, of course, the aging of the rest. The sad part, to me, is the aging of the characters, and the death of some, which is inevitable. On a personal note, in this movie, Jessica Tandy is the spitting image of my grandma, and watching her just grow very old is sad. The touching part though, and one of my favorite aspects of the entire story, (spoiler?) is that the movie doesn't end with their deaths. In a story that begins with people in their 70s and which covers decades, I think it's sensible to think the main characters are going to die, but they don't. And I love that about this movie. It's a much better this way.

Paint you by number and color you in.

Happy Tuesday! It's June already. May went by pretty quickly, it seems to me. We're getting into the swing of Summer now. Road trips! Vacations! Conferences! What do you need for all of these things? Music to help you on the way to and fro.

Weeks ago I watched the (horrendous disaster that was the) Billboard Awards ceremony on tv. I realized it had been a long time since I'd seen a music awards show all the way through and I heard early on that they were going to give Prince a big award and I really like to see Prince perform on these shows. He's always pretty awesome. Well, of course he was awesome, but he was also dead last on the broadcast so I had to sit through a lot of horrible things to get to it. I mean really horrible things like artists kicking fans, terrible performances, even more terrible introductions and uber-pretentious acceptance speeches, and the boos-heard-'round-the-world of Justin Bieber (who is apparently only 19 years old??? Really? I thought the dude was at least in his early 20s by now...seems like he's been around a long time). Anyway, it was basically a broadcast of the worst music has to offer until: the one (really, the only...) highlight of the entire night other than Prince was this performance by Ed Sheeran. I really didn't have a feeling one way or the other about Sheeran's music, but this performance completely made me into a fan. It was beautifully done and so simple. I'd heard the song on the radio but never really listened to it. It's a beautiful song! He's quite talented, I think. So, the evening wasn't an entire waste thanks to Mr. Sheeran and Prince. They saved it. Well done, you! I haven't bought his entire cd, but I did at least buy this song and it's becoming a staple on my playlists:




Summer also brings us soccer! Yay!! A friend of mine went to a Sporting KC match over the weekend and got me a poster of the team. I've never been able to make it up to KC to see them play, but I know they're really really good. I've seen them play on tv a few times. Several of the Sporting KC players play for the national team. Speaking of the national team, they beat Germany over the weekend in Washington D.C.! Germany wasn't at its full strength, but still, it's a top-ranked team in the world and to beat them is a pretty awesome thing. Admittedly, the German goalie did help us out by scoring a goal for our side by accidentally hitting it into his own net, but hey: every little bit helps, you know? I hope it helped the US men's team in their confidence level since they got their butts handed to them by Belgium earlier last week. Neither of those games were World Cup Qualifiers, they were just friendlies for experience. US play a WC qualifier on Friday, so hopefully that goes well. There's still a long way to go to make it into the World Cup, but the US is tied with two other countries for third place at the moment and our region only allows three berths into the World Cup before you have to 'play-in' against a team in the Pacific region for the last spot. I think we can claim one of the top three spots out-right, our team has some really outstanding talent. But, for some reason, we seem to fall flat on our face when we really can't afford to fall flat on our face. The Gold Cup begins next month, too. That's a big deal for other reasons. I had thought that the winner of that competition got an automatic berth into the World Cup, but I'm not so sure now. It might be an automatic berth into the Confederations Cup, which will actually be the year after the World Cup. But, anyway, I hope the US does well. We need experience in international games and the more we have, the better we'll be, I suppose. I'm also hoping for a good showing in the Gold Cup because one of my summer plans includes a trip to the Finals of the Gold Cup this year. My first ever real soccer match! And an international final of a tournament, at that! The last two Gold Cup finals have been Mexico vs. USA, so I'm sorta hoping for something like that again. That would be pretty exciting, I hope. Although, Mexico isn't as good as they used to be and USA is sort of unpredictable. Plus, countries sometimes send their B-squads to the Gold Cup instead of their A-teams who are trying to play for the World Cup qualifiers. Still, CONCACAF's World Cup qualifying matches end in the middle of June and don't pick up again til September so that teams can send their best players to take part in the Gold Cup. We'll see what happens, eh? I've got my fingers crossed that the US will do well and maybe I'll get to cheer on the USA from my really fantastic seats. Regardless, I hope to see a good game no matter who I see play. And, the best part of seeing a final is that you know it won't be a draw! And penalty kicks are super exciting, if it comes to that! They just released the preliminary roster for the Gold Cup for the USA men's team and there are some really fantastic players on the roster including Landon Donovan, who retired and then decided earlier this year that he wanted to play again and he's been fighting to get back into shape and onto the team. I wasn't sure if the coach would allow him back on or not, but he's on the preliminary roster and I'd love to see him play in person. He's not on the final cut for the team yet, but at least he's made it onto the prelim roster, yeah? Other guys that I was really excited to see on the roster is Gooch Onyewu, Carlos Bocanegra (yayay! I thought he might be too old to be on the team, but he's on the prelim list!), Herculez Gomez (I really just want to cheer for Herculez...), Graham Zusi (who had an assist for a goal against Germany over the weekend and normally plays for KC), DaMarcus Beasley, and Bill Hamid and Sean Johnson (who I think are both pretty awesome goalies, and we need somebody who can back up for Tim Howard on the national team...and hopefully either of these guys can become that dependable back-up.). Seeing the preliminary roster made me happy about the chances of the guys making it to the final. The preliminary roster has to be cut down by about 12 guys within a couple of weeks before the final roster is ready, but this is a pretty good team already, I think. Here's hoping!