Birthday greetings, bottle of wine

With my daughter building makeshift Beatles shrines in the house, I couldn't let today pass without telling her that it is Paul's 70th. I asked her if she wanted some cake and she said she wanted oatmeal instead. Seems appropriate, somehow. Iconography by Ryan Jacobson.

Ravinia Nights

Began our summer concert season by spending an evening under the stars at Ravinia to see Iron & Wine.  It was such a divine show that I've immortalized the setlist in the form of a mix you can play below.

Trip The Light Fantastic

Because I suffer from a bit of Sarah Polley worship I saw her latest film, Take This Waltz, as soon as I was able.   I can't fault her for lightening up after her last, Away From Her, so much so that this one may seem slight in comparison. But it packs a candy-colored wallop, with Michelle Williams doing her naturalistic best as Margo, a woman married to an affable cook (Seth Rogen) who finds herself irresistibly drawn to a rickshaw driver named Daniel (Luke Kirby). Polley's script plays on particularly female fantasies -- Daniel doesn't seem a character so much as a figment of Margo's restless imagination -- but it does so with such skill that the film stays with you, as it stayed with me, for days. The Leonard Cohen song of the title plays over the seemingly inevitable (but idiosyncratically staged) climax, and the whole thing makes Toronto's summer streets look to be perpetually lit in the golden hour. I really, really want to go to there.

Gifted

Thanks to some lovely generosity I am the owner of these original Lonely Doll volumes, one signed by Dare Wright herself! They are nice companion pieces: Edith and the Bears catch a horse in the country, then clean up the city.