Author: Jeff Tabaco

On Monday night at the Palace of Fine Arts, we caught the San Francisco stop of the Revenge of the Book Eaters tour, a series of events benefiting 826 Valencia and its fellow centers founded by Dave Eggers, all of which provide free writing workshops and tutoring for elementary and high school students. The highlights of the night for me were Aimee Mann, Jonathan Richman, and of course Sarah Vowell (who, with Patton Oswalt, read a funny story about Charles Preuss, a cartographer who accompanied John Fremont on expeditions out West and according to his diaries did not seem to enjoy it one bit).

Eggers and Vowell seem like a good segue to the Sedarises, so I’ll mention that David Sedaris will be at the War Memorial Opera House on Oct. 30. I can’t wait. What a great venue; do you suppose he’ll humor a request for his Billie Holiday impression?

As part of the annual Literary Events series, which benefits 826 Valencia’s scholarship program, Amy Sedaris will be at the Herbst Theatre on Oct. 23, but dang, it’s sold out.

Last Christmas I almost bought a Bratz Boyz doll (or several). Don’t laugh, but I guess my doll-playing gene, dormant all these years, suddenly kicked in. Over the holidays I almost couldn’t resist the “Winter Wonderland” dolls with their cute little wintry outfits. (The main line of Bratz dolls are girls, but we all know that girls have cooties.)

Thom and I were at Target recently, and as we looked through the toy section, I came across a new Bratz Boy named Prince Iden. (I swear, they all have Sean Cody names.) When I saw his T-shirt, I had to laugh. It says “rebel.” He’s a rebel prince!

On Saturday night we saw Little Miss Sunshine at the Balboa Theatre. Other than very basic information about the characters, I didn’t know much about the movie going in, and so it was kind of nice to be carried along by the story. Basically it’s about a dysfunctional family on a road trip to California, where the seven-year-old daughter is to compete in a beauty pageant called Little Miss Sunshine. Everything that could go wrong, of course, goes wrong. I laughed, I (almost) cried. It’s really well written and well acted (with a good soundtrack too), and I highly recommend it.

Hmm. Safeway Select isn’t exactly “premium quality” in the first place, but an inexplicably missing letter does undermine the cause. Exhibit A: the box of frozen lasagna we had the other night.

I’ll check the refrigerator. Maybe the missing T is on a milk carton.

Ha! Love this: “A Full Calendar” (Diesel Sweeties, via pylduck). And the pixelated Canadian flag shirt is nice. I may have to get one. (The hipster T-shirt is currently a woefully underrepresented category in my wardrobe.)

Last weekend our quickie home-decorating project was to put up shades in our kitchen window, which happens to face the kitchen window of the house next door. (As we had no covering there at all when we moved in, we’ve had to take care not to put on a show for the neighbors; anyway, their vertical blinds seem to be closed most of the time.) Until we come up with some cool retro window treatments, we decided to put up temporary paper shades made by Redi Shade, which we found at Home Depot. After trimming the shades to the correct width, we secured the top adhesive flap to the window frame, and then the pleats just fall into place. They can be opened to any height using the clips provided. Easy peasy!

In this photo, you can also see our shiny refrigerator, and a set of yellow canisters that Thom won on eBay and received today in the mail. The kitchen is coming together!