glasses sign

JonKoping: Galna Glasogon i neon (hope that isn't something rude because i just copied it from the website) Anyway... an Ever-So-Slightly-Creepy Swedish Sign in our Swedish Signs for Friday Series. [fixed link] IN slightly less creepy OTHER NEWS... a friend told me this funny story about when she went into Whole Foods. I had to draw it the minute we got off the phone--and here it is for your viewing pleasure. (I agreed to leave her nameless for her own fashion protection.)

new yorker cover by... iphone

the stroke by stroke video of The New Yorker cover being painted on an iPhone. Jorge Colombo drew the cover using Brushes, an application for iPhone, while standing for an hour outside Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in Times Square. more here.

common sense and sense of humor

"Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing." --William James (b.1842) psychologist and philosopher and brother of Henry James

A, B, C... wait

(in our Swedish Signs For Fridays Series) IN OTHER NEWS... You can win a FREE copy or three of The Jesus Storybook Bible by going here or here. (Plus you can read an interview they did with me that's all about the book and writing it and the thinking behind it and stuff.)

"Clean, Sexy Water"-- charity: water

The NYT just did an article on a friend's uber fab nyc based charity, charity: water which you can read here and add your thoughts here. this video tells all...

giggle and hop

Despite all his success as a painter and illustrator, Edward Lear felt like an outcast in respectable British society. He wrote in his diary: "Nothing I long for half so much as to giggle heartily and to hop on one leg ... but I dare not." and now for something completely different... Inflationary Language--watch the clip on my Tumblr blog--and try your hand at some inflationary language of your own.

HISS

Sign in Helsingborg. In our Swedish (even though I do actually speak not one word of Swedish as such) Signs for Fridays Series.

Limerick Challenge!

At the suggestion of Kristen I am launching a Limerick challenge: for you to try your hand at The Limerick and write your very own. If you feel like it put your limerick in the comments spot of the limerick post yesterday (here) and we'll all have a good laugh (with not at you I promise!)

Limericks

Now it's high time for some more Limericks. Limericks? you say. (I mentioned them last post but here we delve deeper... I like saying "delve" it makes me happy. You try. It's even better if you can add "dig" in, too. See if you can get "dig and delve" into several conversations today.) Limericks are sometimes looked down on. Reasons given are: 1/they're simple 2/short 3/only have 5 lines 4/and they're not very hard to write (come to think of it, isn't that pretty much what some people think of children's picture books? yes but never mind, onward) And because they're not hard to do, All And Sundry joined in evidently--mostly in pubs while drunk--so, worst of all, they tended to be: 5/"bawdy". Shakespeare wrote them (he has some in two of his greatest plays Othello and King Lear) so if they're good enough for Shakespeare... But the master of Limericks is Edward Lear. There had long been an oral tradition of nonsense poetry in the English language, from nursery rhymes to schoolyard chants and drinking songs. But Edward Lear was the first English writer to make nonsense poetry into an art form: something worth writing and publishing in its own right. So without further ado, one of my favorites (complete with Lear's own line illustration):

the father of nonsense

Edward Lear (1812-1888), the British poet and painter known for his absurd wit, has been called "the father of nonsense" and wrote, what else but, The Complete Nonsense (a bind up of all his various nonsense: nonsense alphabets, nonsense botany, nonsense songs, nonsense stories, nonsense pitures, nonsense rhymes), which is the first book I remember reading all the way through. I was about 7 and adored it. I didn't know it was allowed. To speak and write such a load of nonsense like that. And get away with it. Get it in a book, even. And have it published. And he did the drawings too! (Lear of course gave us Quangle-Wangles, Pobbles, and Jumblies. And marvelous things like a runcible spoon.) Things have not been the same since. Of course I immediately set about writing and illustrating nonsense limericks like him. In Lear's limericks the first and last lines usually end with the same word rather than rhyming. And mostly they are well and truly utter nonsense and have no punch line or point whatsoever. Wonderful in other words. One limerick that isn't a Lear Limerick but is one of my all-time favorites: There was an old faith healer of Deale Who said "Though Pain isn't real When I sit on a pin and it's punctures my skin I don't like what I fancy I feel." In that one, the last line isn't a repeat of the first line and stronger as a result, I think. (When it's the same word, it has always felt to me like a bit of let down.) Here's one of my favorite Edward Lear Limericks: Do you have a favorite?

BAD sign

(in our small Swedish Signs for Fridays Series)

Fourth Plinth

(Plinth is a nice word. And Fourth Plinth is even nicer. It's also quite nice to say it twice. Fourth Plinth Fourth Plinth. Except then you feel as if you have something wrong with your tongue) Trafalgar Square has four plinths. (Sorry. Why are you telling us this again?) The plinths are these enormous pedestals that stand at the four corners of the square. Three of them hold statues of George IV, Henry Havelock, and Sir Charles James Napier. (No, seriously, why?) The fourth plinth (fourth plinth fourth plinth) on the northwest corner was going to hold a statue of William IV, but they ran out of money. And then no one could agree which hero or king should go up there. So, instead, they didn't put anyone there. So the fourth is vacant. These plinths are usually reserved for statues of Kings and Generals but for the next 100 days, there will be real live people standing on the fourth plinth as living statues, taking it in turns, for an hour at a time, (even if it's 2AM and pouring rain). Jason Clark, 41, an NHS nurse from Brighton, was the second person to stand on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth Anyone can apply (but you have to live in the UK) and you can watch what people are up to here on the live video. There's a warning on the site that they may be up to all kinds of anythings... (one man dressed up as a poo). Read more here. (I think, due to them being the most famous feature of the square, wouldn't the most appropriate statue to put on the fourth plinth be of a great big giant pigeon?)

PS random odd fact

random fact for today it will be... shortly... (in America at least) 12:34:56 7/8/9 and all over the world, in a couple of months, it will be 09:09:09 09/09/09 What does it all mean? Nothing and now i have a headache.

"Best kids' books ever"

Nicholas Kristof of the NYT has made his list of the top 10. His kids have too. Needless to say they aren't the same. Not even close. I don't think I'm even going to try and make my own top 10 list ... although I will say (because it's one of my all time favorites and I can't help it) ... what about Winnie The Pooh FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE? Which really only goes to prove one thing: making such a list is a fool-hardy and impossible task. Thank heavens. There are far too many wonderful children's books out there to squish into a list of 10. (Why do you have to choose anyway? Can't all of them be your favorites?) Plus, even if you could choose, no one will ever agree. Which is just the way it should be. If books are like friends, then it makes sense you're going to have some that are your particular favorites. Ones that may be entirely over-looked by someone else. It's individual and intimate, the conversation that goes on between the reader and the book. And have you noticed how passionately you will defend your favorite book, just like you would a friend? But, just out of interest... What book would you have included in the list that wasn't?

fireworks on the hudson

The best sign in Stockholm

The Stomatol sign in Söder. How cool is that? Other cool Swedish signs: check them out here. (don't actually speak swedish. as such. Just pretending. I like it so much in fact--pretending and signs--that I'm going to start a small series of Swedish signs for Fridays... this is the first...)

world magazine interview & photo

World Magazine, in their Books Issue, interviewed me and did a fun article about how I came to write in the first place and what brought me to the US. (You can read here.) Which was very nice of them. (Thank you World Magazine and Marvin Olasky!) The photo was taken standing by a window at the Tribeca Barnes and Noble one day last month. The photographer (James Allen) was great--and came with big lights and fancy reflectors and lots of leads and very large cameras to photograph me while I was at an event (I think Barnes and Noble now believe this is how I always arrive, with paparazzi and lights). A friend says it looks like I'm balancing on a building ledge and how did I get there; another says it looks like I have NYC at my feet; and my sister says what's that big round elbow growth you've got? In Other Reviews... HOW TO GET MARRIED turns up as a June pick for the older sibling here (they can't say enough good things about the book so I love them I love them I love them); and THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO GRANDMAS AND GRANDPAS is a Summer Reading Selection from none other than Grandparents.com (and they should know) which you can read here. And The Witchita Eagle says of BEING A PIG IS NICE: "dirty, slow, noisy, messy, goofy kids everywhere will love this book" and you can read more here and it's also featured in a piggy round up here.