Ukes for everybody.

I bought my third ukulele this week.

According to NPR, ukulele sales are way up. Surprising, if you happen to know that instrument sales overall are down 20%. But if you flop around on the Internet much, you might not be so surprised after all. The uke, it seems, is everywhere.

I have been (at times) a tortured banjo player, a mediocre guitar player, and a passable vocalist. But I can hold my own on the ukulele. Anybody can--because there's no such thing as a bad ukulele player.*

They are inexpensive (you can get a good soprano ukulele for less than $50), easy to learn, and are tiny enough to carry in most handbags. The only instrument easier to get into is the kazoo--but take it from me--the kazoo is just going to make your lips tickle and irritate the people around you.

And let's face it--you don't get this with the kazoo.

via Ukulelehunt, who has a ukulele vid for every taste.

More nice ukulele videos here and here.

*Granted, some are less bad than others.


Image, Southcoasting.

Link love.

Back in the day, when you went to work at a new place, you were pretty well at everyone's mercy. You knew what they wanted you to know, when they wanted you to know it, and most of the time, you were damned glad for the opportunity.

These days, if you want to know something about something, it's easy enough to just meander over to the internet machine.

Which is how I came to be reading the blogs of my co-workers.

If you work at a bank, you might also have bloggers in your midst--but chances are, they aren't of the same caliber as the bloggers who make their living teaching other people how to write. I'm sorry; it's hard to hear, I know, but there you go.

Which is to say, I would read these blogs even if I didn't know the people who were writing them. It's time to add some of them to my sidebar linkedness, but as you know, only reviewed sites go on the blogroll. That's the policy.

She doesn't know it yet, but Monda over at No Telling is about to be my new best friend. When the new semester starts, I'll be moving into the office next door to hers (not my idea, but one I got behind right away, since there's a window involved), and she is--believe it or not--one of those people who is as entertaining in person as she can be on the page. Her blog is a mix of politics, current events, nostalgia, her take on writing and the teaching of writing, book reviews, and tell-your-mama-I-said-hey Southern culture.

So landing on her page can feel a bit like walking the carnival midway; she's a three-column blogger, and there's a lot to see. She's prolific--maintaining three other blogs in addition to No Telling. Who knew there would be so much worth saying about vintage typewriters? (There is, as it turns out.)

It's the left hand column, though, that keeps me coming back.

I'm guessing it will have the same effect on you. Even if you didn't keep your treasures in a Roi-Tan box or wear abandoned locust shells on your shirt (and yes, I guess there may be some of you above the Mason-Dixon Line who did not), there's a lot to admire about the writing in What This Country Needs Is A Cheap Cigar Box:

In late August I always had a fine collection of locust shells carefully picked from tree bark, screened doors, and other scratchy, irregular places. These were particularly prone to crushing in, say, the back pocket of your jeans, so a sturdy cigar box was essential. My neighborhood friends and I would travel in rangy packs like out-of-season Easter egg hunters, some of us with empty mayonnaise jars but most of us with cigar boxes. We could kill entire afternoons looking for locust shells and sticking their hooked little empty feet to our clothes and hair. After scaring my mother with them at dinner, they were always carefully placed back in the King Edwards box and spent the night under my bed.

I don't know what those kids with the mayonnaise jars did. Those were for lightning-bugs anyway.

I knew this girl, I'm almost sure of it.

Her writing takes me back, true--but there's more to this piece than mere nostalgia. Any writer will tell you that it's easy enough to write 500 or so words remembering when--not so easy to find a 21st-century hook to hang them on. I never get the feeling that she's just meandering down memory lane. The point--once she gets to it--is well worth the tip. She's funny, too--especially when handing their hats to that day's celebrity/politician/village idiot. And when she writes about her daughter and her perfect grandson, she gets me right (chest pound) here.

And that's not easy to do.

On the rocks.

I've decided to spend the rest of the month at the deluxe family condo getaway. My mother was here all of July, and my brother and Super Tara were here a couple weeks ago. I was still working then, but I did have the opportunity to come up and harrass everyone on the weekends.

It was on one of those weekends that my brother returned from a trip to the store with a monstrous, bright blue, 34-ounce, insulated mug called a Bubba Keg.

I hated it on sight.

I've never been a fan of the oversized drink container, insulated or no. I can't debate it with you; I don't know why. Something about them just screams glutteny to me. Maybe if I were gearing up to hike the Appalacian Trail,or launching my hot air balloon toward the equator, or if I had just captured an escaped boa constrictor and needed something in which to transplant it safely back to the zoo, you might be able to convince me to consider the practicality of such an item.

Then again, maybe not. My prejudices run pretty deep.

I must have curled my lip at it. Maybe, as Tawana says, I let my "church face hang out." Either way, despite my having said nary a word about it, my brother knew that something about his new Bubba Keg offended my sensabilities.

And brothers, as you know, love that kind of thing.

He carried it into the kitchen, washed it out, and filled it to the brim with ice and diet soda.

And then he shook it at me all day long.

"Hear that?" (shakeshakeshake) "Still has ice."

"Hold on." (shakeshakeshake) "I needa drink."

"Hey Sis!" (shakeshakeshake) "Thirsty?"

He shook it at me over cards and over chip and dip. He shook it at me as we watched TV. He was still shaking it at me as I drove away. A week later, my mother packed up and drove back to New Mexico, and a few days after that, my brother and Super Tara lassoed and packed up their little chicken-nugget-hiding Chihuahua and headed back to Tennessee.

They left cool vacation food I probably wouldn't buy--Dove's Ice Cream Bars and imported beer and a freezer full of steaks and buffalo wings. Mom planted flowers and landscaped the walkway down to the lake. I've been here four days, now--long enough to see that it really is a great place to get away from it all. Private. Quiet. Much bigger than it was when everyone was here at the same time.

The cat watches the birds and the squirrels and the neighbors. I sit and write on the back deck until the afternoon heat drives me indoors. There are naps to be had, and books to read. I have almost everything I need. In fact, it's pretty much perfect.

Well, it is now. Yesterday, I went to the store and bought a monstrous, olive green, 34-ounce, insulated mug called a Bubba Keg.

Hear that? (shakeshakeshake) Still has ice.

Photo, Auguste Léon, Guests on the lawn at Kahn's cliff-top house in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, England, August 1913, courtesy of BBC, © Musée Albert Kahn. Via Telegraph UK.

The best thing is to wear pantyhose under a short skirt, I think. And you can always take off the skirt and use it as a cape.

Oh, happy day! HBO's production of Grey Gardens, staring Drew Barrymore as Little Edie Beal, is being released on DVD today!

I hope the 23 of you out there who haven't already seen the original documentary will do so, though, before sitting down to watch Sister Barrymore live up to the family name. You can rent them both for a double feature.

I'm also pretty excited about the complete first season of Thirtysomething, finally out on DVD August 25th. I know, I know--Faludi doesn't approve. And even though it could cost me my NOW card, I just can't help myself, dammit. (Oh Melissa--you quirky, single-earring-wearing mess--I've missed you.)

I'll wait until I've seen it again before recommending it to all you young whippersnappers. Who knows? Yuppy angst might not be that compelling, all these years later.

Meanwhile, the poor Echo Boomers are still waiting for Daria, which is rumored to be released on DVD sometime in 2010. Yeah, that's how they keep you on the line--rumors of release. Hang in there, kids. 18 years will fly by before you know it.

Hear Fresh Air's Terry Gross interview Barrymore about becoming Little Edie here.

I'm sorry. Could you repeat that?

While discussing his new book, Beowulf on the Beach, author Jack Murnighan confessed to NPR's Liane Hansen that he believes it better to read one book twice, than to read two different books. He feels that the read is richer, the second time around.

I'd been thinking about this exact thing, and had a tentative plan to talk about it here. I was just letting it stew until a plan of approach presented itself to me. Thank you, Jack Murnighan.

English majors are all about reading the same books over and over again. Although I did read all the books my university said I needed to read in order to be an educated person (and to understand Woody Allen's jokes) I can't offer up so much as a synopsis to prove that I did. In fact, many of the subjects on which I consider myself to be something of an expert (the monstrous feminine, gothic literature, the Peculiar Institution) are subjects that experience has taught me to avoid in conversation:

Me: You know, Stoker's Dracula is frightening only because the vampire is feminine in nature.

Fred: Really? How so?

Me: Ummm. Well, ummm.

If you happen to suffer from mooshy brains, as I obviously do, reading the same book over again might not have been the original plan. Maybe you've forgotten that you'd read this particular title, or maybe the publisher changed the cover design when the book crossed over into paperback. When this happens to me (and it happens a lot), I just keep reading. Chances are, I don't remember enough about the book to give anything away. The down side of this is that if you're another English major, and you want me to deconstruct with you, you'll have to let me re-read and then catch me before the experience expires.

(I don't know what my brain bucket is protecting, but I think we can rule out how-to-get-there-from-here, my PIN, and anything I learned in college. Maybe I'm carrying around old CSI storylines, up there.)

On nights when I'm too tired and stupid to read myself to sleep, I like listening to books on CD. It wasn't long before I realized that I liked listening to the same ones--over and over. Whether I'm listening to David Sedaris (that's a line from the audio version of his story Six to Eight Black Men in the blog title, and it's probably only hilarious to me because I have heard him deliver it in exactly the same way 211 times), or Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf, what I hear depends--in large part--on what I'm listening for.

It's not just because I can't remember my own address that every book is a new experience--regardless of whether or not I've read it before. It's because books are dynamic; they change, depending on who is reading them, and where in life that who happens to be standing. (Read Tan's Joy Luck Club as a twenty-year-old single woman and then again after you've had a daughter.)

So, yeah, it's great that Murnighan is encouraging us to re-read. But do me a favor? When you get to the part he suggests that you skip, give it a look-see. You never know--the part that speaks directly to you might be right there, waiting for you to come along. And you'll never know if you skip it.


My top 5 list of books worth reading over and over again:

Morrison's Song of Solomon
Allende's The House of the Spirits
Irving's The World According to GARP
King's The Shining
McMurtry's Lonesome Dove

See any Joyce on this list? No. No, you don't.


You can read an excerpt of Beowulf on the Beach over on Murnighan's site. I really wish he had asked me about this book's cover design, though. It's awful.