Greetings from Montreal. We’re here with my sibs April and Simon, sib-in-law Frances, and niece Eva. Very excited to meet Eva for the first time!

April, who lives just outside of Monaco keeps having “aw, how cute, it’s like America” moments, like that you can get coffee to-go. We keep having “aw, how cute, it’s like Europe” moments, like that people smoke and speak French and use kilometers.

After a very long couple of weeks at work, I’m just so happy to be here. More details soon.

Simon emailed that he heard something on the radio about a big storm ripping the roof off of buildlings at Wabash. Sure enough, it looks like the roof was ripped off of Kingery Hall. My theory: as our ten year reunion looms, God remembered that he meant to smite the Classics department for finally passing Tim Helmecki.

You do have to love a Pulitzer Prize winner who does his own CSS:

Hours spent learning Movable Type and CSS in order to create this site: 239,222,032

No raging fanboy posts about Andrew Bird lately, so here goes. Margaret points out in email that he’s playing a free show at the Three Rivers Arts Festival in Pittsburgh on June 7. I’d like to make the trek, but we’ll have to see. Billboard points out that he’s recording an album that may, someday, be done, and may, somday after, be sold in stores.

Bookslut points out a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story saying that the Mysteries of Pittsburgh movie might not be shot in Pittsburgh. That’s crazy. Pittsburgh used to be where people shot movies because New York was too expensive. And they just have to get the real Cloud Factory in there. When I read about that place, I knew exactly where it was; it’s a little factory in the ravine behind the Carnegie Library, and I used to park near there on Friday mornings in high school when I had that internship at Pittsburgh Filmmakers (just two years after TMOP was published, though it seemed like such a longer span of time then). I’ve had so many “Pittsburgh moments” within a quarter mile radius of there, I would just be personally wronged if the film Cloud Factory were in British Columbia.

But. What possibly irks me more is that the screenplay apparently munges the characters Cleveland and Arthur. That’s just not right. It’s been a while since I read it, but if I remember correctly, the two really kind of need to be distinct. Cleveland is an unschooled live-fast-die-young Neal Cassidy type. Arthur is a sassy, articulate gay bookstore co-worker of the hero (not really Allen Ginsberg-like, but let’s go with the parllel). The young hero is still figuring himself out and is attracted to both for different reasons, and that’s kind of a major part of the novel.

Oh, and it’s directed by the guy who did Dodgeball. What’s up with that, Mr. Chabon?

I asked Terri what she thought about Mitt Romney’s new abstinence-based sex ed grant and she replied, “What do you teach in abstinence class?”

Good question.

The kids are probably thinking “well, at least there’s no homework…”

Paul Graham writes on returning to Cambridge:

I find every ambitious town sends you a message. New York tells you “you should make more money.” LA tells you “you should be better looking.” Rome tells you “you should dress better.” London tells you “you should be hipper.” The Bay Area tells you “you should live better.” And Cambridge tells you “you should read some of those books you’ve been meaning to.”

Via Universal Hub

What am I missing that this isn’t all over the news and/or the blogosphere? The new Seymour Hersh New Yorker story on plans for attacking Iran, possibly with nuclear weapons, seems like a pretty big deal to me.

Crime scene.

Every time I hear the name of David Mitchell’s new novel I want to sing it to the tune of Neil Diamond’s “Song Sung Blue”. Not sure why.

Perhaps it’s the same demon which drives Terri to sing “If you like Jorge Posada” to the tune of the Pina Colada song every time the Sox play the Yankees. And this season has added “Why do you pull the ball, Toby Hall?” (of the TB Devil Rays) to the tune of… [guess]

Oh, I love this great anti-Shaughnessy blog I found via Universal Hub’s opening day roundup.

this blog is dedicated to all those who find wrenching the mere presence of a mule like Dan Shaughnessy on the pages of a major city daily

Sign me up! At some point I will get off my duff and actually do something with the terrific anti-Shaughnessy domain name I bought after frothing at one of his columns a couple of years back. I won’t spoil the surprise.

“Shame of sex? We can change it.”

Terri found this the other day, and we are so there! New translation by Wallace Shawn (?), featuring Alan Cumming, Cyndi Lauper (!), and Nellie McKay (?), at Studio 54 (!). It’s still in previews, but interesting commentary here.

We love the Danish Pastry House. It’s on our street, right over the hill, on the Medford side, after Curtis Street becomes Winthrop. We hadn’t gotten around to going there until a few weeks ago when John was down to visit.

It feels very much like a European bakery. Lots of almond paste-y things. No skimping on the butter. More info from the Globe and the Dig.

It was blissfully uncrowded when we went (and it seemed moreso because we had gone to Soundbites the day before, and the instant John put the last bite of omelet in his mouth, we were given our last warning to vacate our table). So, that gives me pause on plugging it. But I also fear that anyplace so uncrowded on a Sunday around these parts can probably use a bit of plugging. So if I have to fight for a table on Sunday mornings to keep such a fantastic bakery around, so be it.

Maybe I should get off my butt and finally get around to going to Somerville’s famous restaurant The Paddock. Ben Affleck was recently spotted there. I wonder if he got “more than pizza“?