John & Belle Have A Blog

Abcat in (some sort of) a Hat

Obviously this is not your father's lazy, flabby, Thursday catblogging cat from olden days. This is a workout cat. (No, it isn't a mommy cat. I asked. Those are muscles.)

Art, art, art!

Zoë and I have been working on more projects. First, this:

This is amusing because a response to Mei Mei's newly emerging style. She has entered her 'balloon people period'. Here we see Mommy and Daddy.

The King and I

So Zoë's new thing is drawing a Chinese imperial family she has invented. This is lots of fun. We got to take books off the shelf: Splendors of Ancient China and The Forbidden City, plus Chinese Propaganda Posters, which she declared 'rather awesome'. Do you wonder why?

Unfortunately, it's kind of an expensive book. But worth it. Nice essay about Chinese communist propaganda evolving out of traditional woodcut forms, among other things.

Zoë wants pictures of 'princesses' . Forbidden City got us close. It has dragonlady-looking Empresses and lots of Imperial Consorts. I had fun explaining that one. Zoë: "It doesn't seem like a good idea. What if all your wives started asking you questions at the same time. In Chinese." One Forbidden City wouldn't be big enough to hold all that. So, without further ado, I give you: Princess Chang Ee and her imperial father, Chang Shai.

The Eyes Have It

Sunday it is traditional to build fortresses of pillows. A few weeks ago I engineered Pillow Mountain - consisting of every single pillow in the house, plus the long thin mattress from the couch at an angle, making for an excellent slide. Very popular. This morning we were working on a variation with daddy as the intervening 'troll'. On the condition that Mei Mei not jump down before I was ready. She jumped down before I was ready. The pillow cushioned the impact, but my glasses are still fairly bent out of shape. I need new ones anyway. By strange coincidence, Mei Mei managed her first really recognizable face today. Daddy:

Don't get upset

This one's pretty good. Zoë even wrote a poem to go with it, as you see. (We've been practicing reading Seuss, you can tell.) Drawn freehand with pencil. Colored and lettered with Photoshop. (I tried to teach her, once again, to use my patented technique for generating Gerald McBoingBoing-ish 50s-ish animation-style fills. But she just started trembling and said she preferred the other way. No accounting for taste.)

Mei Mei said something funny: she sneezed and covered her mouth demurely. She thought about it. "It's easy to cover my nose when I sneeze." Then she thought about it more. "I'm not an elephant." Belle is on the road, home in America! I am taking care of the kids.

There is generally quite a bit of anxiety and getting upset around the place about that. But it's obviously going to be alright. (Click for larger.)

Aplets and Cotlets

Many years before I moved overseas and became able to savor various types of real live turkish delight, a friend of my dad's introduced us to Aplets and Cotlets, America's only premier fruit and walnut confectioners. Aplets and Cotlets, and all their fruity variants, are just turkish delight by another name; the company was started by Armenian immigrants. I sometimes get my mother-in-law to send them to me from the lovely Pacific Northwest, but Sunday I found them at our very own Cold Storage, for SGD$12.90, which is less than a straight conversion of the US $9.50 price would suggest. Free shipping!! I even passed up a chance to get some Arnott's Mint Slice! In truth, Aplets and Cotlets are better than most types of turkish delight I've tried from Turkey, except for the rose flavor, so readers who want to get some of that downhome Narnian goodness should just go and eat some Aplets and/or Cotlets. Mmmm, Cotlets. (An early version in which raw veal was mixed with walnuts and sugar, called Aplets and Cutlets, was less sucessful.)

One More

Zoë did one more nice mouse this morning. A baker mouse, adapted from Mouse Guard.

Mouse MOUSE!

First, Mei Mei demands that I post one of her pictures as well. So here it is: these are 'loop de-loops'.

She wants to see it on the blog.

I got Mouse Guard, vol. 1 for Zoë today. (Here's the official site. Fun book. Mice!) Zoë drew an alternative cover:

But this is pretty much the most awesome yet:

That's based on this image. The mouse thing has led to further story ideas. (Zoë's writing still needs work.)

Verbatim Conversation

[Scene: Belle is lying in bed with the laptop; John is reading Alison Bechdel's Funhome.]
Belle: [scrolling moodily] Everyone who posts at The Corner is a dick.
John: What are you thinking about in particular?
Belle: Nothing.

Friday Random Ten

Friday Random 10. Ten songs that come up on the ol'iTunes, no skipping past stuff you're embarrassed about.
1. The Orchard/Les Savy Fav
2. This Is a Recording 4 Living In a Fulltime Era (L.I.F.E.)/De La Soul
3. Goodbye Blue Sky/Pink Floyd
4. some Schütz motet recorded off an unknown LP
5. Kiss The Knife/Turbonegro
6. You Don't Want Me Anymore/Steel Breeze (now we see the depth of my commitment to the no-skipping policy)
7. Smash It Up/The Damned
8. Fly Like An Eagle/Steve Miller Band
9. The Gloaming (Softly Open Our Mouths In The Cold)/Radiohead
10. Inner Meet Me/The Beta Band
Bonus Track 11: Ooh Baby/Bo Diddley

My favorite Bo Diddley song is You Can't Judge a Book By Looking At The Cover. My dad does a great version.

Thursday Catblogging

Couple more pics.