Lana Del Rey has something important to tell you

I first heard this on NPR's All Songs Considered. Now it's come back to really haunt me.

"The Toreador Song" as you've REALLY never heard it before

Astonishing and wonderful. Thanks to Limmie for posting the clip on Facebook.

Dueling inscriptions

Bought a copy of The Movie That Changed My Life: Great Writers on Their Favorite Films at Horizon Books on 15th Avenue East, partly for the content -- Joyce Carol Oates on Dracula! -- and partly for the fantastic inscription and counter-inscription. On a page that's a bit shorter than the others, and thus seems to have been inserted, is the following, handwritten in red pen:

D.

One might be a good bus book. The other, an interesting curiosity by one of our favorite authors.

V.

P.S. Don't leave the rat poison lying about in the garage.

This alone might have merited buying the book for a paltry $7, but wait -- there's more. "D." wrote back with a vengeance -- in fact, he or she (I have some strange intuition that it's a she) typed a response below the handwritten note from "V." And here it is:

I couldn't get into this one either. Sorry. I guess I'm just not interested in the opinions of people I don't know on movies I haven't seen. I've only seen 2 or 3 of these. I started "Bambi" but couldn't get into it, and I browsed a couple of pages in others, but didn't get anywhere. Thanks anyway.

In more than a year and a half of living on 15th, I'd never wandered into Horizon, always waiting for some excuse. Today, the friend I'd had brunch with at 22 Doors wanted to venture in, so we did. And I think it's safe to say the back-and-forth inscriptions made my day, and possibly even my week. I also picked up a 1984 Roger Ebert book, A Kiss Is Still a Kiss, that I'd previously borrowed from Michael but really wanted to own. Among the gems it contains: an interview with Woody Allen in which he, Woody, explains why women are "closer to what life's supposed to be about" than men, and a piece wherein Ebert accompanies Muhammad Ali to a screening of Rocky 2, which the legendary boxer picks apart both thoughtfully and hilariously, as is his way. Though I still love Ebert's writing, it's nice to look back at his golden years and recall how on fire he was back then.

Saw Margaret Cho at the Paramount last night and enjoyed her performance -- amazing that she can talk about sex for what feels like more than half the show and always find new angles and new absurdities. Her bits about recent political scandals, including Eliot Spitzer and Larry Craig, were also great, as was a joke about Iran. I'd try to recreate some of the best moments here, but Cho is so much about inflection, body language, and facial expressions that it'd be pointless, and probably offensive. Her delivery is what lets her get away with as much as she does; in that way she's like Sarah Silverman, though Cho's humor is more consistent, albeit with fewer big laughs. (She gets a lot of smaller ones and misses less often than Silverman, who can be positively flat or absolutely incandescent within the same minute.)

Breezed by the "Roman Art from the Louvre" exhibit at SAM last night, which I realize is heresy, but it was after 12:30 a.m. and I was tired, and the statues just looked liked... statues. I also checked out Molly Moon's Homemade Ice Cream yesterday afternoon, and realized a few things:

1. Molly Moon's is as hip as Wallingford is ever going to get, outside Babalu
2. Cardamom ice cream is excellent
3. A little salted caramel ice cream goes a long way
4. Lemon is not to be passed over; despite its ordinariness, it's probably one of the best flavors
5. Owner Molly Moon Neitzel's dog, Parker Posey (who appears in the shop's logo, which I've posted above), is very cute
6. Kids with chocolate ice cream smeared all over their faces are always entertaining
7. Wallingford -- the neighborhood I lived in when I first moved to Seattle, way back in January of 2002 -- can be pretty wonderful

Tales of the city

A few highlights from my long weekend in San Francisco:

• Saw the Gilbert & George retrospective at the de Young. Had never heard of the artists and was quite impressed and amused. (The image above was one of my favorites.) It was especially funny seeing a show full of nudity and "shocking" images (excrement crucifix, anyone?) with my mom, who found the whole thing "interesting" and was better able to reflect later, when we were elsewhere, on how engaging it was. I found myself wondering whether the Seattle Art Museum would take on a show like this. But maybe I'm not giving it enough credit.
  
  
• Met a sweet-natured middle-aged woman named Leslie Ferguson on the streetcar to Fisherman's Wharf. Mere minutes after meeting me, she complimented my mother on how I turned out. I mention this only because she wasn't praising my upbringing; she was praising my looks. If ever there was a city in which being flirted with by a kindly fortysomething in a belly shirt wouldn't surprise me, it would be San Francisco. She's a former Manhattanite, and while I got the impression that not many locals shell out $5 a pop (one way!) to ride the streetcars, there was Leslie, proud San Franciscan, hanging on as we went up and down the hills, and chatting away. When we parted, she hugged me and my mom and kissed my sister's hand. Delightful.
  
  
• Met a disgruntled worker at David's Deli on Geary. I was quite pleased to find a deli that seemed a bit like the honest-to-God Jewish delis of my Detroit youth, of which Seattle has very few, if any. (Still haven't made it out to Goldberg's Famous since I wrote my extremely ill-considered preview for the Weekly, way back when.) Anyway, the disgruntled employee was inclined to tell the truth, Bulworth-style, since it was his last day on the job. Here's what happened:
  
  Me: "How big is a large orange juice?"
  
  Him: "You don't want a large orange juice."
  
  Me: "I don't?"
  
  Him: "No. Too expensive. Not worth it."
  
  Me: "Oh. Is there anything else I should know about the menu?"
  
  Him: "The potato pancakes aren't fresh. They're frozen. And the orange juice -- it says 'freshly squeezed,' but it's not."
  
  Me: "Okay. What is good? Are the blintzes good?"
  
  Him: "The blintzes are very good. Very fresh."
  
  Me: "I'd like the blintzes. But I kind of also want eggs."
  
  Him: "I'll bring you two eggs on the side."
  
  Me: "Scrambled?"
  
  Him: "Sure."
  
  He ended up refilling my orange juice for free and throwing in hash browns with the eggs. I kind of loved him. I tipped him $10.
  

The perfect Detroit day

Recently picked up a book (at Bailey/Coy, I think) that listed 50 cities and described a perfect day in each, according to travel writers who know those cities well. I think I experienced my perfect Detroit day today. Got up late, ate breakfast, and played Scrabble with our geeky new Onyx Edition board, then went with my mother to Greektown, where we had a fabulous lunch at New Hellas (the perfect lunch: saganaki, Greek salad, and Hellas' unbelievable spinach pie. Honestly, far too many Greek restaurants, including basically all of them in Seattle, seem to consider spinach pie an excellent way to get rid of a lot of excess phyllo dough. But you know what? Here's what a spinach pie should really be about: spinach and cheese. (And, yes, lots of oil and salt.) And New Hellas, and most every other place in Greektown, knows this. And acts accordingly. So the spinach pie has a delicate, slightly soggy (from all the oil!) layer of phyllo on top, and another even soggier one on the bottom. And between them, nothing but delicious spinach and cheese. Mmmm...

After this heavenly lunch, we went to the Detroit Institute of the Arts' Grand Opening Weekend, which was amazing and very inspiring, considering how far the museum has come. The main lobby was full of glittery paper circles hung from the ceiling, and people were fencing in front of an audience. (They weren't dueling over a lady; presumably they were paid to be there.) We checked our coats and went to the Julie Mehretu exhibit, which was cool and involved one of the biggest canvases I've seen in a long time. Then it was on to the modern and contemporary sections, which were fantastic -- especially the modern stuff, including a beautiful Georges Seurat piece with a painted frame and lots of Spanish works, including Picasso and Miró. After seeing a fair bit of art and inspecting the gift shop, we headed to Kresge Court to sip mint-tarragon tea and listen to a jazz trio perform. The whole place was lit with candles. Just lovely. Finally, we left the museum and drove home... for two more games of Scrabble! And here I am now. If there's a more perfect Detroit day out there, I'm not sure I want to know about it.