Huh?

Check out this fabric. It's a Japanese import, "Rakugaki Sketchbook," designed by Megumi Sakakibara...but look, it's like a page from a sketchbook, seriously, just like, a bunch of partially drawn rabbits and trees and...whoa.

Also, I'm a little dizzy from the Pulitzer announcements this year. Usually I just yawn and roll my eyes. But this time, one of my favorite writers grabbed the award for fiction. Whutt? Elizabeth Strout is a great writer, and I'm proud to say I've shown up at several of her readings to stare googly-eyed at her and tell her what a genius she is in person (fortunately she has not yet met my eye with a weary "are you stalking me?" gaze), always a kind of awkward and yet totally satisfying thing to do. If you haven't read her *award-winning* novel Olive Kitteridge, or Amy and Isabelle, or even the essay she wrote in The Friend Who Got Away, a great collection of essays about the oh-so-interesting subject of women's friendships that have gone awry, then hotfoot it to the bookstore or the library or start clicketty-clacking on your computer to find her stuff online, O.K.? O.K.

Lynn Nottage, an awesome playwright and my fellow MTC fellow, also won, for her play Ruined that's up at MTC right now. Congratu-hallelujah-lations, Lynn! And can I just point out that the finalists for both drama and fiction were all women? This contributes to my dizziness, O.K.? Reading the list was like a weird optical illusion or something. Since when are women so thoroughly represented, unless it's like, Pulitzer Prizes for Women year, or something? I'm just sayin.

Cake head

My sister Brook made a birthday cake for me back in 2001.



See, it really is a cake.



I'd given her a drawing of her wedding party as a present, and she used the caricature I'd drawn of myself in it as her inspiration.



This year, Brook told me she's going to paint a portrait of my cat Beatrix. Yes, Brook, the creator of such astounding canine portraits as this and this, is now stepping into feline territory.



I'm very excited.

A wolf loves pork!

No, this is not about my brother and his love of all things that oink. (Although, come to think of it, Wolf did have a black t-shirt when he was a very young laddie that said "OINK" in big capital letters on the back.) This is an amazing stop motion video that my brother Max sent me this morning. Thanks, Max! Enjoy...that is, if you haven't seen it yet. Apparently it's getting a lot of play on the web. Understandably!



And you don't have to watch this with volume to appreciate it, but the music is pretty funny.

Awww mannn

Henry, Hazy and their momma Brook were in town this past week, and I'll have more to show about their awesome visit soon, but for now...can you tell these guys know how to have fun?



It totally sucks that they live so far away.



The cats might not miss them too much (look at those grouchy feline expressions!) but I do!