Saturday, January 21, 2006


As I write this Maddy is diligently sitting next to me removing TV programs she doesn't want on the TIVO any longer. The first three seasons of AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL have already been zapped into oblivion (she's kept season 4, though). Now, because she knows what she likes, she's carefully, one by one, deleting all the Dick Sargent episodes of BEWITCHED.

I grumbled to Claudia Gonson about the lack of Magnetic Fields live albums, and she sent me a link to where you can listen to an hour-long Magnetic Fields at the Carnegie Hall gig.

Hello, I just finished reading Anansi Boys some time ago, and when I was flipping through it recently one line caught my eye. When Spider fetches Fat Charlie from the prison cell and they briefly visit in Italy, Spider calls the waiter by saying "Gar�on". If I'm not mistaken, it's very rude to call a waitress like that (it's usually used when addressing relatives or close friends). So, uh, any comment on this?

They weren't actually in Italy. They were actually in the Republic of Macedonia, although Spider was barely aware of that, and I don't think I spell it out for the reader. I'm happy to say that the waiter spoke no French. "Dos Chocolatos, dude," incidentally, is not actually Italian. Nor is it Macedonian. It's not even Spanglish. But it worked for Spider, as such things tend to.

As far as I can tell, the only people who shout "gar�on" to summon waiters in France are tourists with an old phrase book, who then can't work out why the service is so bad for the rest of the evening.

... is a marvellous idea -- the purpose of which is to take a photograph of every map grid square in the UK (which is a lot like the one they don't have in America yet --

& so to bed. As long as I can get this to post, of course.