boho hipster jewish wedding rave

adventures in babysitting: i was asked by my landlord to look after his son yesterday while he went to a friend's surprise birthday dinner. i didn't mind as i was going to be at home anyway. his son and i watched "finding nemo" and "james and the giant peach" (no CSI this time!) before i marched him up to bed. i helped him get into his jammies but managed to accidentally hurt his willy by pulling his jammy bottoms up too high. whoops! as a bedtime story he wanted me to read the leaflet from the "finding nemo" video cassette case (that's right people, we watched these movies on VHS!), which i found hilarious, then i read to him from a book about animals before he fell promptly asleep. i went back downstairs to watch more tv, secretly praying that he wouldn't wet the bed before his father got home.

i had forgotten how the "james and the giant peach" story went and when i watched the movie (it was the tim burton version) i was impressed by how creative and whimsical the story was. what imagination! it's sad that we lose that sort of imagination as adults, and the belief that things like huge flying peaches can exist in our time and our world. i mean, why not?

jewish rave, anyone?: a friend of mine came up from brighton to visit me and some other friends this weekend. after having lovely brunch and a lazy wander around camden market in the afternoon, i met up with him later on in the evening to go to a club/arts collective/whatever you want to call it - passing clouds - to see a world music group called balkan beat box. i can say with some authority that this was one of the more interesting evenings i've spent out in london.

a la sophia from the golden girls: picture it, london, england, febuary 2009. a winding road leads the group of us to a non-descript warehouse, used as a church on sundays (according to the banner hanging from the roof). after waiting in the line-up/queue for an age, we're finally ushered in to a cavernous room filled to the brim with hipsters in various states of boho chic, with an odd freak in ghost makeup thrown in to keep things spicy. suddenly the band starts playing and it's the oddest music i hear coming from their instruments - jewish klezmer music mixed with spanish beats of some sort, along with a bit that sounds like the soundtrack to "the godfather". and the music wasn't even the weird part (it was actually pretty good); the weird part were the people going absolutely APE SHIT for this music, dancing like their lives depended on it and practically bouncing off the cinder block walls. i've never seen people go nuts like that. it was all quite surreal. who knew an underground jewish wedding could garner this type of reaction?

night night,

CET :o)

wee man

my landlord's three-year old son was crying tonight; long story short but on tuesday nights there's about an hour in the evening when my landlord's out and his ex-wife - who comes to put the little one to sleep - leaves after doing so. it was in this window of time that the wee man gets up to find both parents not home. he was sitting on the steps crying and my heart went out to him. poor little guy, feeling all alone. he obviously wasn't going to go back to bed so he sat with me for a while watching CSI with me. okay, maybe i shouldn't expose a three-year old to an autopsy and obvious signs of rigor mortis but it was CSI! anyhoo, i had to study so he slept on my bed while i tried to do some work, waiting for his dad to get home.

i'm sure commentary on the fallout of divorce and parenting is in this post somewhere, but right now it's not for me to make. i just want the little guy to be happy.