Bests

Drinking rum, listening to Manu Chao at high volume, it's New Year's Eve with your host SL. But I actually don't mind that I have nowhere to be, no group to join tonight. I walked home from work past three separate front yard bonfires on my block, one playing loud merengue on a blaster, another full of giggling hipsters, one fire with no one around it, and that was all new, I've never seen other bonfires before on my block. So hallelujah to New Year's for bringing the fire. I stopped at Von's on the way home to pick up a pineapple (see Bests list below), some Granny Smiths and a packet of dark chocolate M & Ms for a New Year's treat. If you were here on my couch with me you would see I have my little potted winter tree with its glass pickle ornament, an owl, four fish, a pomegranate, a frog and a rooster dangling from it over on the console table. There is a Chinese lucky cat perched on my fireplace-less mantle next to my Selkie platter (a glass plate with a seal on it) which itself is next to a miniature Eiffel tower (from neighbors - I've never been), a Marcel Dzama Tree Man figurine, the optical illusion Neon Bible case (neon pages flutter when you turn it this way and that), and one of my speakers that looks like a jellyfish. I didn't think I had such a fondness for animals.
In the middle of the mantle is a big gaudy mirror with a pagoda carved into the frame. It sits so high up on the mantle that I don't have to look into it. Next to my foot is a stack of Dwell magazines I've never read. I am however reading a book on conquistadors, called Conquistadors. I met a guy from Guatemala who worked for GAP tours and his favorite moment from leading the trips in Spain always came in the churches when a docent had completed their lecture on the nave and asked if anyone had questions and this guy always asked (with, as he said "A gigantic Guatemalan shit-eating grin"): And where did the gold in this magnificent church come from? And he loved to watch the docent try to explain or avoid explaining how the church obtained its murderous sheen by way of stolen Inca gold melted from idols into ingots at factory pace by Pizarro in the 1500s. Prick.

Pizarro is the biggest dickhead I've heard about all week. But my dad forwarded me Bill Maher's List of the 14 Biggest Dickheads of 2007. It couldn't be more concise. I love it.
Here are the other things that made my year full of goodness, kind of sort of in categorical order:

Showing up in my dreams:
There Will Be Blood
Juno
Once
Sunshine
Superbad
The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Eastern Promises
No Country for Old Men
The first 30 minutes of Dewey Cox
The posters for Norbit
Elmo's World: What Makes You Happy?
Hot Fuzz
Right At Your Door
Eagle Vs Shark (bits of it anyway)
Sicko
Harry Potter & TOTP

Constant Rotation:
Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?: Of Montreal
Neon Bible: Arcade Fire
In Rainbows: Radiohead
Super Taranta!: Gogol Bordello
Is Is: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Challengers: The New Pornographers
Boxer: The National
Random Spirit Lover: Sunset Rubdown
White Chalk: PJ Harvey
La Radiolina: Manu Chao
Armchair Apocrypha: Andrew Bird
Flying Cup Club: Beirut
The Reminder: Feist
No Shouts, No Calls: Electrelane

Flor de Cana rum
Pineapple and cucumber with fresh lime juice, pico de gallo and salt
Pickles! Always pickles, I mean, come on.
Intelligentsia americanos

Assault on Reason, The Gore
Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon
501 Spanish Verbs
I'll be honest - I didn't read very much.

30 Rock
The Mighty Boosh
Sopranos
Planet Earth

Moving my body all over the places:
Bike rides in Baja, Griffith Park, Pasadena and Palos Verdes
Hiking in Grand Canyon, Runyon, Griffith and Malibu
Zip lining, clambering in Central America
Skiing at Mammoth
Sailing in Howe Sound

Boo! Thumbs down!: Rafting in Costa Rica.


I wanted to post U2's Windows in the Sky video again as we are about to go around the orbit again on this world gone to utter mindless shit to remind us it's ok to feel good about some things, but some corporate goblin took it off youtube.


Happy New Year if you read this far. Keep your nose clean in 2008! Keep passing the open windows.