the dinosaur above and the birds below

There's that baby.

Los Lobos, Tin Can Trust (NPR freebie) and The Town and the City


Media Announcement: My story about the barn dances at Lakeview Park & Beach RV Park in Eunice, LA is up on the Country Roads site. Lakeview Park has quickly become one of my favorite places ever, and I haven't even done the beach part during the day yet.


Portrait of the family as a music room.

We've been big on the Ed Emberley drawing books this week. I used to get those from the Scholastic catalogs when I was in grade school. We all can draw already, but we were having competitions to see who could do the steps the best and that turned into posters that are turning our house into one giant Ed Emberley book, like the dinosaur above and the birds below. We are one craft project away from going all Esty on y'all's ass, so watch out.

We love each other.

Speaking of, check out this tour of the charming nightmare that is Etsy HQ.

It reminds me of when I once had a meeting in the Hallmark corporate offices, whose vast halls were smartly marked with an impressive contemporary print and painting collection. Like we had to turn right at a Christopher Wool to get to the IT department, which was labeled by a lilac hanging sign that looked exactly like the one that tells you where the candles are in an actual Hallmark. On each desk - made of the same blond, polished wood as the counters in the stores - no matter how geeked out were furnished with Hallmark junk: a lamp whose base is a baseball player, a line of miniature vintage auto models, shit-tons of stuffed animals. It took a second to understand that this was a conscious realization of Hallmark totality. It was both calming and anxiety inducing, that just-pick-a-card-already nervousness. I can only imagine the forced march of quaintness that is Etsy HQ.

Los Lobos kicks ass.