Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Hugh Laurie, blues musician

So, I learned today that Hugh Laurie (of House and Jeeves and Wooster fame) has not one, but two blues albums out (you can read more details here: http://didntitrain.hughlaurieblues.com/us). Today I am also supposed to be working on my next English-language display, and this gave me the idea for a "I didn't know he did a _____!" display. I.e., "I didn't know Hugh Laurie did a...blues album!"

But I have a problem. I am struggling to find lists or examples of celebrities (actors, writers, etc.) who are famous for (or at least did) more than one thing. Any suggestions, off the tops of your culturally-literate heads?

Sharknado

Today's incidents:

AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" just returned; it's filthy.

Look up Sharknado for a woman who wants to know, is it PG-13 or R? It's a made-for-TV movie so it's actually TV-14.

Question: Do you have any audiobooks about business/real estate?

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Español

Today a middle-aged man made me repeat "It's over there by the 'Español' sign" three times because he couldn't believe I was pronouncing it so well. I wanted to let him know that I spent FOUR HOURS today making four little "Author of the Week" signs with quotes from book reviews. I'm glad my pronunciation is getting better because my reading skills are quite terrible after prolonged exposure to my second language!



Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Just about lizards

Today's nonfiction requests:
-Scorpions
-Whales
-Hermit crabs
-The 6th edition of the APA Style Manual
-Tax information
-States. Specifically, California and Chicago--oh wait no I mean Ohio
-Climate change
-Lizards--"Do you have any books JUST about lizards, not anything else?" Recommend Sneed B. Collard III's Most Fun Book Ever About Lizards.

Party

When the tiniest, oldest man who comes to the library to read the newspaper every morning came in on Saturday, he came by the desk to say "When I saw all the cars in the parking lot I thought you were having a party in here!"

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Mr. Copy-and-Paste

Mr. Copy-and-Paste, my favorite patron, wants to know how to spell "field" and "Natchitoches" (a city in Louisiana) and to tell me that "wolves are so intelligent!"

No smoking

Yesterday  my colleague had to stop a patron from lighting a cigarette in the computer lab.

Saturday, January 4, 2014

2014 so far

The person who is supposed to open the library doors at 10 a.m.: "What, it's ten a.m. ALREADY?"

Found in sad old books I am considering for weeding:
-A partially-used gift certificate to Goodwill
-A fancy paper bird (bookmark? Christmas ornament?)
-A printed-out profile from a dating website, 20-something girl "looking for her cowboy"

Marx Translations Guy comes in: "I've been thinking lately about lawgivers...Moses blah blah blah, Mohammed blah blah blah..." he walks away happily with the name of Numa Pompilious, second king of Rome.

There is information about an already-expired grant program in our not-yet-published 2014 brochure.

Angry lady can't find her holds, was looking under someone else's name instead of her own. Who knows why.

A nice man who does not understand the limits of our powers would like us to know that the self-check-out machine that is supposed to read pictures of library cards on smartphones "is being very picky today."

Coworker apparently forgot that January is her month to do the adult display, so it is still stocked with my "As Seen on TV" items from December, and while I was on vacation my colleagues have filled it with extremely weird stuff.

It's maybe going to be a long year.