A new generation of almost-adults says "First Amendment rights? Whatever".
Maybe it really is time to move to Canada.

Good Lord!?! The Oscar nominations? Paul Giamatti? Robbed!!!

On the other hand, the Academy's snub of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" -- not quite so surprising in this day and age.

let's get it over with

According to a UK pyschologist, tomorrow (Jan. 24) will be the most depressing day of the year:

Dr. Cliff Arnall's calculations show that misery will peak this Monday.

Arnall, who specializes in seasonal disorders at the University of Cardiff, Wales, created a formula that takes into account numerous feelings to devise peoples' lowest point.

Arnall, who specializes in seasonal disorders at the University of Cardiff, Wales, created a formula that takes into account numerous feelings to devise peoples' lowest point.

The model is: [W + (D-d)] x TQ
                          M x NA

The equation is broken down into seven variables: (W) weather, (D) debt, (d) monthly salary, (T) time since Christmas, (Q) time since failed quit attempt, (M) low motivational levels and (NA) the need to take action.

Arnall found that while days technically get longer after Dec. 21, cyclonic weather systems take hold in January, bringing low, dark clouds to Britain. Meanwhile, the majority of people break their healthy resolutions six to seven days into the new year, and even the hangers-on have fallen off the wagon, torn off the nicotine patches and eaten the fridge empty by the third week. Any residual dregs of holiday cheer and family fun have kicked the bucket by Jan. 24.

"Following the initial thrill of New Year's celebrations and changing over a new leaf, reality starts to sink in," Arnall said. "The realization coincides with the dark clouds rolling in and the obligation to pay off Christmas credit card bills."

Even better, this day falls on a Monday this year. If ever there were a reason to just stay under the covers...

Actually if you had told me this yesterday I would have believed it - what with the lack of sun, the feeling achy, the freezing cold. But today I'm listening to the Beach Boys (Pet Sounds), there's sun coming through the window and a purring orange kitty nearby...I also just indulged in some Body Shop niceness - orange-scented lotions and scrubs--and everything smells citrus-y and fresh. Tonight is watching the Kings-Spurs game with some friends and there's the promise of another Amarin dinner tomorrow night (and the lingering memory of last night's feast which included a new favorite appetizer: the vegetarian deep fried combo. Cory loved the tofu cubes and I ate all the mushrooms).

Alright then, so bring on tomorrow -- at least it comes early in the year -- and get this depression over with already.

Huh, leave it to a Vanity Fair editor to take someone to task on the excessive Bush inauguration.

Judy Bachrach squabbles with a Fox anchor (Via iFilm).

By the way for all of you crazy Rudi Bakhtiar fans who keep hitting this site looking for info on the seemingly erstwhile CNN Headline News Tonight anchor -- she's back and as Rudi Bahktiar as ever.

the chronic

I had a huge list of things I wanted to get done today but it's freezing and gray and I'm achy and well, maybe printing out my to-do list is as far as I'll get today in regards to productivity.

I did make it to the vet this morning because Sophie needed her quarterly cortisone shot. She also got a leukemia shot thrown in for just an extra $17 - yes it was her lucky day. She also peed all over the hallway floor when I scooped her up to put her in the carrier. Luckily we have hardwood floors and I know her pee-ing tricks - I had a towel handy and knew to keep her butt safely positioned away from me and my clean clothes. Poor baby - but for a cat with a chronic illness (autoimmune disorder - I guess it's redundant to call it "chronic") she's the most loving, cheerful good sport around. I love that cat so much it hurts sometime and I can't ever imagine having a child because I think the love would be too much too even handle. Like I would implode with it or something.

Or maybe not, Maybe I am Joan Crawford waiting to happen except when it comes to my cats.

Anyway...

Last night's Old I show with The Haints, The Arlenes and Jackpot was really good, at least musically speaking. OK, well I really enjoyed the Haints and the Arlenes but it's no secret I prefer Jackpot on CD....live, they get a bit too jam band-ish for my tastes and of course they always bring out the silly drunk dancing girls. Some of those girls were out early to see the Haints play and for a while there I thought I was at the Torch Club, standing back to let the state workers --freed for the weekend from their government building cages -- do their thing. Yeah, actually it was really a strange night. Very crowded (that's not the strange part) and a mix of people that included hostile, rude twits who don't know how to handle being in crowded places and silly drunk people who don't know how to handle being in crowded places.

Tonight should be good though, we're going over to see some friends to watch last week's episode of The Surreal Life and then it's off to dinner at my favorite Thai restaurant in Sacramento, the Amarin and then off to see The Life Aquatic (finally!). What's funny is that we'll go to the Amarin again on Monday for Cory's mom's birthday dinner (her request) and for a brief moment Cory wondered if that was too much Amarin goodness in a 48-hour period. As if. You really can't beat the Amarin for its good prices (even if they did raise them in the last year), great food and really friendly service. I'll take it over a place like Thai Basil any day.

OK, I think I'm going to go fold up that to-do list now and take a nap.

One of my favorite entries from Wonkette's take on the inauguration:

11:58AM: Four more years, minus about a minute. Just keep the bourbon coming.

And another:

12:00PM: Pre 9/11, America was in "repose" and on "sabbatical." Or maybe he's just talking about himself.
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Anyway. I'm wearing blue today. But I did spend money despite pleas to do otherwise. Sorry, America -- I've failed you yet again.
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Two of my favorite photos from this weekend's Oregon trip: The first is a shot of the tide coming in - I like how the ocean appears to be a smooth plane of glass instead of the choppy, wavy tide it really was. The second photo is from the aptly named Whalehead Beach:




Two of my new favorite things, musically:

The new Esthero EP

and

the Boulevard of Broken Songs mash-up (Green Day's Boulevard of Broken Dreams w/ Oasis's Wonderwall, Travis's Writing to Reach You with some Aerosmith and Eminem thrown in for good measure. Toronto's Eye Weekly breaks down the mash-up as such:

GREEN DAY VS. OASIS VS. TRAVIS VS. EMINEM, "Boulevard of Broken Songs": Here's an example of the wit and intelligence at work behind this mash-up by San Francisco producer/remixer/alt-radio guy Party Ben, built around Green Day's soon to be ubiquitous "Boulevard of Broken Dreams": when he gets to the line "I walk alone," he segues seamlessly into "All the roads we have to walk are winding" from "Wonderwall." And for good measure, he tosses in the first verse of Travis's "Writing to Reach You," which poses the burning musical question, "And what's a wonderwall anyway?" Dazzling.

Check it out.

Back from Oregon = a total of 16+ hours in the car along the 20 and 101 (the 20 being the most god-awful stretch of dry black hills at 7pm on a Monday night) and 64 hours of coastal Southern Oregon beauty. Several trips to stare at the jagged, rocky beaches, crashing waves and pick through the shells and pretty stones and pieces of glass. Too much bad/good food. Too many, yet not enough small, lost-in-time roadside towns and boarded up buildings and wondering how about how the process of time wears something down to nothing.

Other pictures may come later but here are the first two snapped inside a Stop N Shop (or was that a Gas N Save?) on Friday somewhere pre-Willets. Cory thought this might make a good gift at this year's white elephant gift holiday party.

(Sorry about the quality - they're from my camera phone [yeah, the same one that nearly got me banned from the Elektra screening - in retrospect, oh how I wish it had] but I was glad to see someone finally address the serious health hazard that is chocking.)

Hmmm, not sure if I like the look of the re-designed Pitchfork site. It still seems navigable enough, mind you, but all that white space and airy blue really seems to undercut the snottiness I've come to love and expect. It's unsettling. Of course, maybe that's what they were going for.

Maybe I just don't like change...

time never leaves me

I'm listening to the new Archer Prewitt record and it's one of the few things making me happy on this drizzly Monday afternoon.

I think it may get stuck on repeat for the next few hours. In a not-to-be-unexpected way, its rhythms and melodids remind me of 1997 - the year I fell in love with his solo debut, In the Sun. In many ways, that record became a soundtrack to a very tumultuous year.

Wow. That was nearly eight years ago. In a small but significant way that thought makes me feel a lot better...to know how much time has passed and how far I've come. How far most of us have come. Things aren't so heavy anymore, not really, not at all.

That said, I'll probably still play the hell out of this CD today.

A recent view from my dining room window, during a break from the weekend rain:

I was in a pissy mood last night after the Kings stunk up the joint in New Orleans, but a trip to Old I helped with that. There was rock'n
'roll to be had and sometimes I forget just how good it feels to pogo. Even at the end of the night when certain people got all mushy-pushy (you know what I'm talking about - it's closing time and your drunk acquaintances (CASUAL acquaintances) are suddenly your new best friends), I felt as if the pressures of the week had finally lifted away. The whiskey-and-diet-cokes probably didn't hurt either.

Yesterday I drove to Woodland for a baby shower and on the way back into town I took note of all the new subdivisions cropping up around the freeway curve near the airport. I swear, every single time I make that drive it seems as if a new subdivsion has reared its ugly little beigy-bland head. A few weeks ago Cory & I were in Woodland on Co. Road 102 and noticed a little plot of land near the gas station that's close to the freeway - there was a sign promising the forthcoming of a new neighborhood --something along the lines of Stonegate or Stonewood or Stonehenge. We were both horrified -- this was a tiny piece of land. How many homes could they possibly fit into it? Enough to qualify as a "neighborhood"?

Every so often someone who knows that we are looking for a house will ask me if we've thought about buying a new house. Usually this is someone who does not know me very well, or at least well enough to know that I'd rather stick newly sharpned lead pencils in my eye than buy a house in a subdivision. I mean, forget the aethetics (or lack thereof) involved...these houses are built to such crappy standards that it frightens me to put so much money into something that may be crumbling on its foundation in just 20 years. Sure you have to put a lot of money into older homes, but at least you've got a solid start --something that was made to generally withstand a little time, a little nature, a little bit of passing fancy. That said, Cory and I have both agreed that we could probably even be happy with a 1960s tract home --like the ones we both grew up in --because those too are generally more sturdy and even though they were part of the subdivisions of their time, there's still enough aesthetic varience to make them interesting. Also, these houses are not completely crammed together - there is at least a semblance of space in the neighborhoods -- and they do not have those stupid vaulted ceilings that only make you think that you are in a big house. I hate vaulted ceilings in new houses - it is the biggest insult-to-injury factor I can think of. Tiny rooms with giant pockets of air floating above you...so wrong.

Which brings me back to the baby shower (like how I've tied it altogther?), Heidi & Dave's house is a 60s tract home (at least I believe it's '60s era....Heidi? Dave? Anyone?) but they've done amazingly cute things with it and seeing it again yesterday in all of it's generous square foot/painted walls/gleaming hardwood floors/converted garage glory made me realize that there are indeed still good pickings out there for those of us who are not fortunate enough to have huge down payments at the ready. Still, I'm not looking forward to diving into the housing market fray and I predict some extended crankiness over the next few months. You've been warned.


Alright, today's the premiere of The Surreal Life 4. So much preparation needed before I tune in, so little time.

Just sitting here minding my own business (working) when suddenly Badly Drawn Boy's "Silent Sigh" came on the iPod and infused me with a little happy/sad jolt and the sudden desire to watch About a Boy again. Wow, I love that song. And the movie too. The book - aint' bad either. But can someone tell me why the IMDB page shows the French poster for the film?


Last night I kicked off my healthy New Year by making a super-yummy recipe that involves chickpeas, curry spice, mango chutney and bulghar. Had it for lunch today. I also made these very very healthy muffins that do not taste like ass. Don't be scared, check out the recipe and consider making them if you're looking for something that's good and good for ya.

Also, was listening to the Gonzales hearings on NPR today in the car and I just have to ask -- Why do we let people get away with these lame-ass "I don't remember the details of that" type of answers? I'm sorry but you are in a high position that affects millions of lives and you are paid the big bucks to be in this position and you have people who help you organize/accomplish/remember everything, so tell me again why you can't remember what you thought of what, when, where and how. Fuck.

The New York Observor on why CNN's Anderson Cooper was chomping at the bit to cover the tsunami disaster:

"In news, we tend to focus on one thing and forget that in many ways, in towns and villages and in people’s hearts across these areas, the disaster continues," he said on the phone. "Small and private are what’s most interesting right now. From a larger perspective, it’s the aid story, but on a personal level it’s where people’s heads are at and ‘Where are people’s hearts?’ and ‘How do you wake up and live every day in a home which has been wrecked and it’s hot and the smell wafts across your village?’ and ‘How do you think about your future?’ and ‘Where do you go?’ And that’s what I’m most interested in."

It was in hell holes like this one where Mr. Cooper had earned his stripes as a TV guy, first as a scrappy Channel One kid toting a Betacam around Africa, later as an ABC News correspondent. Now, with an imminent schedule shuffle likely under Mr. Klein, he was poised to helm prime time—Anderson Cooper Now, anybody?—with some critics suggesting he take over CBS Evening News after Dan Rather departs in March. But Mr. Cooper said he hadn’t been contacted about either job and those thoughts were far from his mind now anyway—he was too busy slogging through the humid wreckage of a Sri Lankan quagmire, witnessing the abject misery of the human condition.

"To me, one of the saddest things in life is people who were decent and living decent lives get killed or died and no one notices or celebrated the lives they lived," he said. "I just wanted to be here."

Cooper had been vacationing in the Dominican Republic when he heard about the disaster:

"I heard about it Sunday morning and I called in and was pushing to go immediately, and I was hoping to fly back to J.F.K. and just catch a flight," he said. "But, you know, it didn’t happen."

It didn’t happen for a lot of news networks. The question why is probably a big one, and when a reporter addresses whether President Bush reacted too slowly to the unfolding disaster in the Indian Ocean, it was hard not to see a bunch of pots calling a kettle black.

Jon Klein, CNN’s recently hired president, said he was reluctant to send Mr. Cooper off while the anchor was conducting the network’s field reporters, but he eventually relinquished when it was clear Mr. Cooper could wait no longer.

"At first, I was absolutely against it," he said. "And then as I saw the revelation of his connection to the story, I just felt that he could meet the challenge that you face in week 2 of a major story like this, which is to advance it."

The CBS News veteran added that he felt Mr. Cooper "owned" the story and that his career would be defined by the tsunami coverage in the way that other world-class anchors were defined by their coverage of other historic events.

So does this also explain why Cooper seemed to be on the hurricane beat in 2004? Certainly it's refreshing to see a name-brand anchor who's literally unafraid to get his feet wet and his hair mussed in pursuit of a story. I used to feel a bit sorry for him - thinking he'd pissed someone off and was being punished by being put on disaster duty - but apparently it's all part of his enthusiasm for the job. And of course for the desire to raise his profile.

Our New Year's Eve was perfect. It rained all night as we sat, warm and cozy in front of the fire, watching the rest of "The Office" (season 2) and then "The Office Special" (and because I'm a sentimental sap like that, I cried at the end, so sue me). And then, because some of our clocks were apparently 10 minutes off, we almost missed the official countdown and literally tuned into "Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve" at 11:59 p.m.

Oh and we also ate Zelda's pizza and that was superb. In fact there are some left-overs in the fridge that I'm going to have to check out in a minute.

At the end of 2003 I thought it would be good to catalog my entire year in blog -- but while it’s fun to look back on it now, the one thing I remember is how damn long it took me to put it together. It’ll take even longer this year because Blogger sucks even harder these day when it comes to Macs (which is why one of my New Year’s resolutions is to change blogging softwares).

That said, I think I will do that sort of an update –tomorrow, the next day, before 2006 – but for now here are some of my favorite things of 2004.

(P.S., I am being a bad blogger and not linking to a damn thing -- but y'all are grown-ups and should know how to Google whatever your little hearts desire)

Albums
1. Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand - Sony
A super-fun record that also had depth and stayed in my car stereo for months on end. We also saw them play twice and both shows were very good.

2. Arcade Fire - Funeral - Merge
A sad, complicated record that is also pretty and endearing and filled with quirky hooks. The album is, officially, about death - but it is also about so much more.

3. Elliot Smith - From a Basement on the Hill - Anti
Very mournful final offering from one of my favorite singer-songwriters --and yet somehow it also sounded hopeful.

4. Sufjan Stevens - Seven Swans - Sounds Familyre
Just very, very pretty and also intelligent.

5. Concretes - The Concretes - Astralwerks
Intricate, joyful girl group-ish pop

6. Elected - Me First - Sub Pop
Dark and messy but full of hooks

7. Libertines - The Libertines - Sanctuary
I just couldn't get this record out of my head.

8. A.C. Newman - The Slow Wonder - Matador
Same with this album - most of the songs here define the term 'ear worm.'

9. Stereolab - Margerine Eclipse - Elektra
Just when I thought I'd heard everything Stereolab had to offer, they give me this pretty, haunting record. Not too far off from their previous efforts and yet somehow it sounded fresh.

10. French Kicks - Trial of the Century - Star Time
Just a great album from an SF band - it really grew on me as the months wore on.

Singles
1. Franz Ferdinand - "Take Me Out" - Sony
2. !!! - "Pardon My Freedom" - Touch & Go
3. Green Day - "American Idiot" - Warner Bros.
4. Kanye West - "Never Let Me Down" - Roc-a-fella
5. Arcade Fire - "Neighborhood #2 (Laika)" - Merge
6. The Libertines - "Can't Stand Me Now" - Sanctuary
7. A.C. Newman - "Miracle Drug" - Matador
8. Loretta Lynn - "Portland Oregon" - Interscope
9. Scissor Sisters - "Take Your Mama" - Universal
10. The Elected - "Greetings in Braille" - Sub Pop

Live performances
The Black Rider (At the A.C.T. in SF)
Getting to see Mary Margaret O'Hara not once but twice this year was amazing. Oh yeah, and Marianne Faithfull and the rest of the cast were also super.

Patti Smith at Empire
Just a super-rockin', super fun show

Jon Brion at Largo (LA)
What can I say - Jon Brion is the master of live shows and I could probably watch his marathon Friday night show every week if given the chance

Wilco (Oakland)
Jeff Tweedy & Co. stepped it up with a show that was fresh and fun and politically tinged and acerbic and oh-so-rockin'.

Fiery Furnaces (SF)
A short set, but it seemed just right - fast and frenetic and a good way to start 2004.



Favorite Films
(I've yet to see "Maria Full of Grace," "The Life Aquatic ..." and a few others that I really really want to check out and which may make the 2004 list, after the fact)

• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind


• Sideways


• Fahrenheit 9/11


• I Heart Huckabees


• Saved!


• Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself


• Mean Girls


• Before Sunset


• Super-Size Me


• Mayor of the Sunset Strip

Television

• The Daily Show with Jon Stewart


• The Office


• Gilmore Girls


• The Sopranos


• Desperate Housewives


• Entourage


• Survivor


• America's Next Top Model


• Blow-Out


• super-duper honorable mention (as it was obviously NOT a 2004-era show): Freaks & Geeks

Books
(Most of the books I read in 2004 were published long before that year, so this list is a little more mish-mash -- and because so many of those damn books were by Gertrude Stein, it's also a rather short list)

• Why Did I Ever? - Mary Robison


• The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides


• Orlando - Virginia Woolf


• A Question of Power - Bessie Head


• America: The Book - Jon Stewart, et. al


• Bushworld: Maureen Dowd

Oh, and I also watched a lot of basketball in 2004 and joined a fantasy basketball league and I just want all you suckers in the Love League to see it and know it: Fifth place! This after starting out the season in last place and staying there for so damn long...Team DeathbyCupcakes will rule the world.

Cough

Anyway, now that I've just embarrassed myself and doomed myself to a humiliating loss, happy New Year to all of you, I've got some holiday slacking to do.