Ultra-score

and a Gringos rave-up by Wells Tower

The kids are alrite

Can't get over how fully-formed Stewart Anderson was musically at the onset of puberty. Been loving The Wetherbeat Scene 1988-1991, a compilation of David Gedge swoons capturing a joie de vivrie missing from 99% of history's pop/rock hits. These kids just get it. Alternating between this and the new Twerps is kind of like rediscovering a favorite shirt. Everyone should get themselves two copies one for them and one for their nieces, even though I'm not. I just sent my neices two Of Montreal CDs (one of which is my favorite album of the last ten years). By next year, they'll be ready for the wetherby players no doubt.

Made my first BLT and other profundities

Brought a bottle of cheap red over to Jen and Stew for their Christmas Party on Sunday. Then I listened to their band Cheap Red while practicing yoga later that night. I felt really bad for bringing the cheap red over to their place. I felt even worse for having enjoyed it! I felt better when I made the connection with Cheap Red. This is really a fine album that resulted in a good yoga stretch. Made the transition to vinyl, haven't bought a CD in months. Alex sent me the new Twerps, I been loving that. Stewart brought a paper sack to the jingle bell partay full of funky yieldings from his outstanding label. Here's a weird photo of our house at night. I walked through the snow to the shops for ingredients to make my first BLT ever yesterday. School's out, I got myself hungover and I'm home now working on an essay that I think will be good. Outside, the snow melts.

Jingle Bell Partay

I liked the party that was thrown here last night by me (this rather incongruous photo was taken a few nights later after we were dumped with snow and the moon to the north).

My housemate Doris who is European and thus cultured in ways that are far-more-interesting than run-of-the-mill Americans, made swedish glugg, mulled wine to a certain extent. Anyways it was ripping and patrons were thankful for the killer partying that resulted partially from that. We also played killer tunes that were consistently brilliant. The party was commemorated by a new pair of shoes worn by me. Aside from partying and wearing funky new shoes, I am learning that it is important to write about something that means something, so I am working on writing something that means something, infusing ordinary scenes with my usual flair (by flair I mean voice and strong sentences, two things I care about the most). Fiction is an art-form that needs to be taught, or learned, I reckon and since I didn't learn it, I am being taught it. The brilliant stuff is magic and there are ways to render this magic and that is what I'm being taught. I am off to Coco's now - a local diner. I hope it is not too loud. I have been craving an omelet since gawd knows when.

November Snow

My uber-goth Austrian housemate and I went to Sedona and got entrenched amongst some rocks. Earlier in our lives we hosted a Thanksgiving celebration (turkey pictured below). Saw Scorsese's Hugo earlier in the same (my only) existence and found it too patchy to recommend. The Melies parts are good, but gawd the rest of it... Been rifling through old scraps for inspiration and found unfamiliar scribblings clearly in my hand on the reverse of page 7, a page from an essay entitled 'Developing a New Course for Adults'. The first seems to be a half-baked idea for a story: "sibling finds a pen that was meant to be buried with the Dad and says, 'okay let's write for it.' The differences resolved with civility." The second one says, "monkeys with guns...it's hard to overstate who was lost because they were all important." Whatever.

Been snowing a lot. Finished Love in the Ruins this morning. Was reading it last night at the Escape from NY screening. "Whatcha reading?" someone asked. "My life story," I said.

November is a month of bonanzas, to distill it all in a post would be inane. Furthermore it's December.