December 9 Challenge. Something that really made you grow this year. That made you go to your edge and then some. What made it the best challenge of the year for you?

Still in the process of trying to eat better. Haven't had a hamburger or a soda in a month or so. My gf really started it, and I really feel like I let her down when I don't eat right. But dammit, it way too often transforms eating from a pleasure to an unfortunate necessity.

Meme from bing crosby!

December 1 Trip. What was your best trip in 2009?
December 2 Restaurant moment. Share the best restaurant experience you had this year. Who was there? What made it amazing? What taste stands out in your mind?
December 3 Article. What's an article that you read that blew you away? That you shared with all your friends. That you Delicious'd and reference throughout the year.
December 4 Book. What book - fiction or non - touched you? Where were you when you read it? Have you bought and given away multiple copies?
December 5 Night out. Did you have a night out with friends or a loved one that rocked your world? Who was there? What was the highlight of the night?
December 6 Workshop or conference. Was there a conference or workshop you attended that was especially beneficial? Where was it? What did you learn?
December 7 Blog find of the year. That gem of a blog you can't believe you didn't know about until this year.
December 8 Moment of peace. An hour or a day or a week of solitude. What was the quality of your breath? The state of your mind? How did you get there?
December 9 Challenge. Something that really made you grow this year. That made you go to your edge and then some. What made it the best challenge of the year for you?
December 10 Album of the year. What's rocking your world?
December 11 The best place. A coffee shop? A pub? A retreat center? A cubicle? A nook?
December 12 New food. You're now in love with Lebanese food and you didn't even know what it was in January of this year.
December 13 What's the best change you made to the place you live?
December 14 Rush. When did you get your best rush of the year?
December 15 Best packaging. Did your headphones come in a sweet case? See a bottle of tea in another country that stood off the shelves?
December 16 Tea of the year. I can taste my favorite tea right now. What's yours?
December 17 Word or phrase. A word that encapsulates your year. "2009 was _____."
December 18 Shop. Online or offline, where did you spend most of your mad money this year?
December 19 Car ride. What did you see? How did it smell? Did you eat anything as you drove there? Who were you with?
December 20 New person. She came into your life and turned it upside down. He went out of his way to provide incredible customer service. Who is your unsung hero of 2009?
December 21 Project. What did you start this year that you're proud of?
December 22 Startup. What's a business that you found this year that you love? Who thought it up? What makes it special?
December 23 Web tool. It came into your work flow this year and now you couldn't live without it. It has simplified or improved your online experience.
December 24 Learning experience. What was a lesson you learned this year that changed you?
December 25 Gift. What's a gift you gave yourself this year that has kept on giving?
December 26 Insight or aha! moment. What was your epiphany of the year?
December 27 Social web moment. Did you meet someone you used to only know from her blog? Did you discover Twitter?
December 28 Stationery. When you touch the paper, your heart melts. The ink flows from the pen. What was your stationery find of the year?
December 29 Laugh. What was your biggest belly laugh of the year?
December 30 Ad. What advertisement made you think this year?
December 31 Resolution you wish you'd stuck with. (You know, there's always next year...)


December 1 Trip. What was your best trip in 2009?

Hawaii's like a dream, huh?

December 2 Restaurant moment. Share the best restaurant experience you had this year. Who was there? What made it amazing? What taste stands out in your mind?

Just going to The Vinyard in Columbia -- great food, a little pricy -- it was just nice cos a guy from work, his gf's father owns it, so I felt like I was part of this network...

December 3 Article. What's an article that you read that blew you away? That you shared with all your friends. That you Delicious'd and reference throughout the year.

I'm not really the type to spread word of an article to all my friends that often, but I really enjoyed a recent issue of The Virginia Magazine, The Champion and the Corpse: Art and Identity in Richmond, 1950. I find political bickering over the arts just hilarious.

December 4 Book. What book - fiction or non - touched you? Where were you when you read it? Have you bought and given away multiple copies?

No, definitely haven't given out multiple copies of anything... But I was annoyed that the public library pulled its copies of Kenneth Starr's Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920s (Americans & the California Dream) I bought another copy -- that just came in the mail today! Chinatown made a lot more sense after reading that.

December 5 Night out. Did you have a night out with friends or a loved one that rocked your world? Who was there? What was the highlight of the night?

My first Broadway show ever! Ha ha, saw 9 to 5 in NYC this summer. Not really worth $120 a seat, but it was something new and different for me. Once in a lifetime if I can help it.

Listened to this story on NPR, interviewing the music supervisor, Alexandra Patsavas, for New Moon, among various other TV and film. It was surreal, recognizing everything that was played, excepting the Killers' song that's new for New Moon.

The interviewer asked her to name movies she particularly liked the soundtrack -- she named The Music Man, then played a clip I could sing along with, "76 trombones in the big parade" -- and I made the exact same mistake the interviewer made with the number of coronets. Then it was Pretty In Pink, which came out the year Patsavas graduated high school (2 years after I did). And yeah, I have the Pretty in Pink soundtrack. After that, I immediately recognized The Stranglers' "Peaches." I'd actually quoted the song a couple months ago to my buddy who'd gone to the beach. I had seen the movie she was recommending, Sexy Beast, though I hadn't recalled that song from the movie. Finally, it was Free to Be, You and Me, which I'd had drilled in my head when I was in elementary school. Jesus, this whole thing was so completely deja vu, it was surreal.

I can't actually find what her other DVD picks were -- I was almost expecting her to mention All About Lily Chou Chou, but that would have too weird a coincidence...

Halloween party last weekend, was an outdoor party at a high school friend of my gf's. They had this spiffy severed head, looked kind of like Uncle Fester. It was motion sensitive and would talk, moving its mouth and opening its eyes. They put it into a dish with candy. So "That's MY candy!" and "You have your treat, now here's your TRICK!" would come out of it.

We were sitting on the front stoop with the gf and her friends, with the head on the bottom step. I said, "I'll be coming down next weekend -- it's our 2 year anniversary." Suddenly, the head piped up, "Are you sure you want to do that? Bwah haha!"

Wul, I guess I'll risk it -- need to do the date thing, hopefully fix her cable TV while I'm there.

The date's actually the 10th, but that's Tuesday and the following weekend's another anniversary -- heading to DC for the Slumberland 20th show at the Black Cat Club, November 13th.

You should come to that, too.

Happy Anniversary!

Drove back from SC along route 58 through Southampton county, south of the city of Franklin -- and this horrible smell permeated the car. That happens sometimes. At first I wrinkled my nose, but I remembered that the smell will be going away pretty soon.

Franklin paper mill to close; 1,100 to lose jobs

No millers anymore, least not in Franklin. I guess the one in West Point, Virginia's still going. I applied for a job there, about 20 years ago.

And lucky me, I didn't get it. Maybe I'd still be there, or maybe I'd be on of the peripatetic. Someone was telling me about an outfit in North Carolina who hired some (east) Indian engineer who did this amazing job, but got deported back to India for some reason. So the company kept him on the payroll, just e-mailing him back and forth, the occasional net conference. Things got better and better with the company, so they hired a few more engineers -- at about $6000 a year. Not a bad salary if you live in Calcutta, which is where all the engineers stayed -- not in North Carolina.

Nothing Freidman hasn't talked about, but the anecdotes close to home can hit harder.

***************************

Music Ended In 1991

Me: "Hey dude, this r&b song has some kinda shoegazey background music."
#1ShoegazeFan: "At least they're stealing from some GOOD music."
And then, #1ShoegazeFan goes off and listens to Ceremony, A Place to Bury Strangers, Asobi Seksu, Auburn Lull, Ulrich Schnauss, Soundpool, AutoDrone, Hartfield, M83, etc, etc, or any of the slurry of bands who dedicate themselves to carrying on the spirit of Loveless...

**************************

"I have seen Sansho only once, a decade ago, emerging from the cinema a broken man but calm in my conviction that I had never seen anything better; I have not dared watch it again, reluctant to ruin the spell, but also because the human heart was not designed to weather such an ordeal."

- Anthony Lane

Wul, I watched Sansho the Bailiff twice last week -- the second time with commentary. Gotta hand it to the folks at Critereon -- they've been putting out some good stuff. The box had a booklet with the short story, so when I returned the movie to the video store, I stood there for 15 minutes or so reading it.

*************************

Who to vote for, who to vote for? The zany right-winger remade centrist or the politically inept (Obama? I don't know anybody named Obama. Oh wait a minute, I need him to support my campaign). I guess I don't feel as soiled as the typical New Jersey voter, at least.

Penguin Cafe Orchestra -- Cutting Branches for a Temporary Shelter

Discussing Philip K. Dick a bit with Tom Daschle, I happened to find two bands with Dick references -- ambient-metal The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, apparently from San Antonio or thereabouts, who kick ass, and the folksy Mary and the Giant, kinda less to my taste...

And that was purely accidental. God knows what I'd find if I tried.

In other news, finally finished Battlestar Galactica. That was nice of Anders to volunteer for the Final Mission, there. It would have been inconvenient to script him into the brave new world. So why didn't they jump the second Hera got on board? And why doesn't artificial insemination work anyway? Do the human and cylon have to have true love to get a conception? That'd be nice in the real world, huh...

Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, pops and clicks and all cos I'm too cheap to buy it if I already have it on vinyl

Cal Thomas' latest column, No Peace, No Prize was worth a read -- not for its predictable attack on Obama getting the peace prize, or even in its slightly more interesting attack on the prize itself -- what I liked was the statement of political philosophy:

Peace generally occurs when aggressive evil is defeated, which is why Germany and Japan no longer war with the United States.

I don't have a problem in using Germany and Japan as a valid exemple of defeating evil -- the problem with statements like this is that it's awfully easy to come up with counterexamples in history -- cases that don't really fit into the statement. What about the peace that came to Spain when Franco crushed the rebels? The peace that came to China when Mao kicked out Chiang? The peace that came to Viet Nam when the Americans evacuated? The peace that comes to a totalitarian country when its government destroys its domestic enemies?

What Thomas is more specifically honing in on is the wrong-headedness of trying to negotiate with enemies -- yet Reagan negotiated plenty with the Soviets.

Thomas really has this good vs. evil idea of what war is -- and I think he's right, in certain cases. But generally? As in are more than 50% of all the times that peace came about, it was due to some aggressive evil being defeated?

Didn't surprise me much when Vern wanted to see Paranormal Activity last night -- the man just digs horrorshows. He even took me to see Twilight a few months ago just cos he digs vampire movies, though he did apologize to me afterwards. But hey, he took me to Let the Right One In and that Godzilla original cut restoration (sans Raymond Burr) a few years ago.

And Paranormal Activity was actually pretty good. The bedroom scenes when yr just sitting there waiting for something to happen were always good, nice tension, nice suspense, and a few touches of humor really worked well ("I have to leave, now"). It's also nice to see what a smart director can do with a small budget.

Vern wanted to get a lot of his chest and really talked to me a lot on the way to the theater and back -- his girlfriend, his job, he kept asking me for advice. I don't think he really wanted it though, because whenever I said anything, he would just talk more, but that's OK, I doubt I had an awful lot to give him.

Yesterday, went to Chesapeake Public Library's annual monster fest. Not quite DragonCon, but hey -- went with Sam, saw Vern n Jennine. Vern was all about a panel concerned with the history of Godzilla, which was just these two dudes talking about the chronology. I didn't have a chance to ask my burning question concerning Godzilla vs. King Kong -- who did the pop song on the radio that they play??? They did talk about The Peanuts, identical twins who did the Mothra song, but I don't know that it was the same.



So they had the costume contest -- again, not quite DragonCon, but there was a good Pris from Blade Runner, there was Hermann and Lily Munster, a pretty cool zombie dude. There were two categories -- adults and children. Third place in the children's division went to a 10ish girl dressed a beautiful kimono or robe or something, the blood on her face. That was definitely the prettiest costume. Second place went to a girl who'd just put on a semblance of a brownie uniform, put some blood on her face and hands and called herself the "cannibal girl scout." She was 9 or 10 I guess and it was a creative way to make an easy costume come out well. First place went to a boy in a hospital gown and a woman's wig, holding a severed hand being "hospital zombie." Not quite sure I understand the wig, but hey. Oh yeah, and face makup, either decay or a burn, I dunno.

Frida and Saturday nights, went to Bar None and saw some bands at a little festival put on by some local pop labels -- The Sky Drops put on a great set -- also saw local band Churn, Fredericksburg's Screen Vinyl Image. The band that was new to me that I thought was great was Pan Galactic Straw Boss. The lead guy said that he didn't have any product because he'd forgotten to print out labels or his printer wasn't working or something like that, I forget.

Today though, did next to nothing -- watched lots of Battlestar Galactica, returned Crank and Shohei Imamura's Vengeance is Mine to the video store, currently watching Carnival in the Night and Sam loaned me Big Man Japan. So that's all lined up for tomorrow. Also got together the songs for the second anniversary CD -- I gave my gf a CD when we first met up, then last year when our anniversary of our first date (november 10) was coming along, she hinted pretty stongly that she wanted another one. This third one'll be a little different -- instead of "my" music, I'm putting stuff together from various vinyl that she'd bought for herself back in the day and hadn't bought on CD. So far here are the songs, though I may have to drop a few, and I haven't settled on an order yet:

UB40 - I Got U Babe
Billy Joel - I Love You Just the Way You Are
Peter Pan soundtrack Main Title, Second Star to the Right
Donna Summer - Love to Love You Baby
Captain & Tennille - Song of Joy
Jeffrey Osborne - You Should Be Mine
The Beach Boys - Had to Phone Ya (this may get cut, it's appropriate, but not top-notch)
Johnny Bristol - Hang on In there Baby
Andy Williams - I Think I Love You
Carl Carlton - Everlasting Love
The Bee Gees - Morning of My Life
The Crown Heights Affair - Dreamin' a Dream
Al Downing - I'll Be Holding On
Abba - Bang a Boomerang
Debbie Boone - When I Look at You My Love
Bay City Rollers - Rock and Roll Love Letter
Tony Orlando & Dawn - Tie a Yellow Ribbon
Roger Whittaker - What Love Is

Woulda loved to put some Sade and Prince and Luthor Vandross, but there's only so much space to fill...

Saw a guy with four bumper stickers on his jeep -- I can't find the exact bumper sticker images online, so we'll just have to suffice with the texts as I recall them:

- A VILLAGE IN KENYA IS MISSING ITS IDIOT (photo of Obama with a turban photo-shopped in)
- THE #1 FIREARMS SALESMAN IN AMERICA (photo of Obama)
- THEY GAVE EVERYTHING (POW/MIA image) HE GAVE NOTHING (Obama photo)
- something like how can America be racist if it elected a black president

The #1 firearms thing is pretty funny -- maybe Obama had a deal with the gun makers, "Hey, how 'bout I whip the gun nuts into a buying hysteria and we can pump up the economy??" I didn't get the POW one, wasn't Bush the draft dodger? The draft was over by the time Obama turned 18 in '79... But mainly, I was just kinda blown away by the obsession this fellow in the jeep had with our president...

So says my cousin George, who lives in Columbus, Ohio. Not too much to do there as toursity stuff, sure enough. Just a concrete cornfield and the immense Ohio State University... Sorry I never got out there while I had LJ friends there, but they've scattered to the winds now, though my cousins still live there.



( one more )

Here's the black sand at Punaluu Beach:





And we headed out to drive to the south tip of the big island -- the southernmost point in the states. Though not in the United States of America -- that would be either Samoa or Amunden Station in Antarctica. Depending on your definition of the United States of America. Or greater America.

Anyway, for all that, it wasn't all that exciting. The best part were the cows and the disused windmills.



Looks kinda like Midland/Odessa...

Someone recently told me that the Philippines should have become a state in the United States. I think it was my girlfriend who said that. That would have been interesting.

This is where we stayed -- at the Holiday Inn at Ulehawa Beach Park... : )



Not really! Really, we stayed at the gf's brother's house in Kailua. But hey, wherever you are in Hawaii, it's all good... 'cept for getting sunburned. Stayed in Hawaii for about 10 days, mostly on Oahu, but with two nights on the big island.

( Paparazzi shots )

Even flying from Norfolk to Houston and back didn't give me enough time to finish Against the Day. The fact that I couldn't constantly refer to the Againt the Day wiki actually was a bit of a bummer. Since Pynchon often dates things by events, and I didn't know when the Anglo-Russian Detente was, or bits of German and Italian here and there... Not necessarily essential to the plotline, but often very interesting. Did anyone else know what a little-go was?

Anyway, still not done. Part of it was when I was at my aunt's, I selected, out of the piles of mystery paperbacks my aunt has, Debra Joh Rowland's Black Lotus and got about halfway through.

I hadn't planned on reading so much at her place, but Saturday morning, after we ate breakfast, and were supposed to be on our way to Luling, my aunt became ill. In the parking lot of Jim's, right after we ate, we walked across the parking lot to take a look at about 10 or 12 Model A Fords. All 1929 to 1931, according to their license plates -- apparently, the San Antonio Model A Club had come to Jim's for breakfast too.

However, by the time we were walking back to my rented Journey, my aunt was dizzy. By the time I got her home, she was in tears. She lay down for a while, but got up a couple times to throw up, then got back in bed. I called her friend Doris, and Doris came over. Doris told me that this had happened twice before, that it would be a waste of time to take her to the emergency room -- we'd have to wait hours for a bed, and she could lie down right here.

And by noon or so, my aunt was OK -- not quite 100%, but good. Just had to expel a few things and get some sleep. Doris stayed with her, and I went out for lunch and a quick trip to the McNay for the Edward Gorey exhibit.

Dinnertime was a battle -- Doris and I kept trying to convince my aunt that no, we shouldn't go out for dinner, there was plenty right here for a small meal. Doris left, and immediately, my aunt started talking about going out to dinner. Instead, I said I wasn't hungry, and we walked around the assisted care facility she lives at. It's a pretty nice place, actually, with a pool room, a library, a beauty salon. When we went back to her room, I said I was going to make a sandwich from stuff in her fridge, and finally she went along with it.

Whew. But we did go BACK to Jim's the next morning -- fortunately, things were OK that time...

It was also great to hang out with folks in the evenings -- saw Rodrie and Van and met Veronica Guess and Rodrie's boyfriend. Friday, went to Second Saturday with Dave and met his gf, Jess. Took a picture of Jess with her head on a book, but it came out a bit blurry... :P

Sunday, headed to Houston, by way of Taylor. My girlfriend had told me that there was an immigrant detention center in Taylor, so I drove around town looking for it. It took me few minutes, finding an ostrich farm first, but then I saw what had to be a prison. It looked just like some low-security prison, but with kid's playground facilities in the yard. Cos the immigrants keep their families there, apparently there are lots of kids. The only thing that stumped me was when I got to the front of the facility, and the sign read "CCA R. DON HUTTO RESIDENTIAL CENTER." wtf? I was looking for an internment facility. A jail, detention center, concentration camp, prison, penitentiary -- slammer? Nope, this isn't a lockup. This is a "RESIDENTIAL CENTER". Yeah, whatever.

The Least of These

And in Houston, hung out the afternoon with Virginia -- watched some Danger Mouse, ate pho, and saw some presidents and some Beatles. Thanks, VA for the tour of the museum and everything! And I'd driving through Austin on the way to Taylor, and I thought about calling Fortunate, but figgered cos it was about 9am, that would be fruitless -- but according to Virginia, Fortunate's been getting up early, so I'm sorry I didn't make the call!



( pix! )

coming soon, more Texas pix!

Just watched (most of) Altman's MASH. I'd seriously grown up on the TV show and didn't see the movie until maybe 10 or 15 years ago. The movie didn't make all that big an impression on me, compared to the TV show. In fact, they're such different entities -- the most obvious is that of all the actors, only Gary Burghoff was in the movie and the show. Next obvious was the character of Frank Burns -- in the film, a lot was made of Burns' religious faith and that was completely dropped for the TV show. Larry Linville's demeanor was also completely different -- Robert Duvall was no "ferret face."

The thing that really struck me this time around though was how shitty Hawkeye and Trapper were in the movie. They were mean-spirited pricks.

Just because the main characters of a film are shits, I don't always assume that the intent of the film to glorify assholes -- I can more or less take it as it comes. Clockwork Orange, Miami Blues, Magnolia (a lot of Tom Cruise movies, in fact), are all like that. I guess what makes this different was that what I had inculcated into me as a kid was Alan Alda -- the irreverent, but highly decent and highly competent surgeon. I just couldn't see Alda's Hawkeye viciously goading Burns about Burns' affair with Houlihan like he did, and it went against what I was wanting to see, really.

Well, by coincidence, I watched the most recent episode of 30 Rock on www.NBC.com and there was Alan Alda, though he didn't have that much screen presence in it.

The Sonics - Louie Louie

not a murder after all -- some poor widow got publicly embarrassed:

Discovery of female ‘corpse’ reveals lonely man’s plight

In other news, just recorded Debby Boone's album, Contains the Hit Single You Light Up My Life.

the music is really awful, open for snide comments -- "If I could write a rock and roll song..." holy crap, it's difficult to imagine the writer of that song to be even capable... (fyi, she didn't wrote that -- Joe Brooks wrote it, as well as several of her other tunes including "You Light Up My Life").

The only redeeming aspect of this music is depressing it all is. Alot of the songs seem to be attempts to cheer someone up. "You Light Up My Life" starts with Debby sitting alone by her window -- there's this happy ending, assuming it is an ending. "Rock and Roll Song" has "don't let the rain fall down your window." "It's Just a Matter of Time" -- "I'm so sad and lonely and I guess that's how I'll always be".

Debby Boone - When I Look at You (My Love)

Written by Bob Gaudio and someone whom I can't find anything about, G. Finley Jr. -- reminds me a little of Julee Cruise.

Sounds kind of ass-backwards, but I kind of think of His Name Is Alive, particularly the Home Is In Your Head album as a guilty pleasure. GnR's "Used to Love Her" isn't a guilty pleasure -- that's just fucking cool shit.

But HNIA is just so self-consciously arty, deliberately. These deadpan vocals repeating what are often inanities -- it's just sooo ART.

So I feel guilty liking this shit. But I like it.

His Name Is Alive - Are We Still Married?

The gf and I went to New England for the weekend. Spent some time in New Haven:



( pix )

Domestic Violence in Japan

The comments were more interesting than the video, I thought -- the video doesn't really portray anything unusual here in the states, but the comments, mostly from white women as far as I could tell, many with experience in Japan, were more interesting, going a lot into stereotyping. Although one person, yaoipassion, thought that a western man's perception of japanese women's submissiveness to be "racist and sexist," there was plenty of the same kind of stereotyping from women -- "I really can't imagine dating a Japanese guy" -- "Japanese men have a real problem with strong women".

I tend to be more of the opinion that this is cultural stereotyping rather than racial -- and isn't there a real divide among various cultures?