| Best09: #16 (Tea) |
[16 Dec 2009|12:15pm] |
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Tea of the year. I can taste my favorite tea right now. What's yours?
I'm not much of a tea drinker (I prefer hot water when I'm cold, or chocolate when I need a stimulant), but when I do drink tea, it's Horny Goat Weed! Come on guys, who doesn't need a dose of kidney yang restorative?
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| Beneath the Trees |
[15 Dec 2009|07:40pm] |
A dangerous professional choice.
by Mike
Two immense trees tower over parts of the landscape in southeast Bali. In the evening, when it's cool and beautiful, the trees are visible against the orange sky like temples on the horizon. They can be seen across emerald rice paddies where farmers work late into the evening; they're visible to the farmers' kids socializing on the street; they're visible to duck herders, using long sticks and whooping noises to herd their frantic flock past the kids. All this happens on the road as it bends between rice paddies to the ocean. We set course for the trees.
( Read more... )
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| The oldest woman you'll see today |
[16 Dec 2009|11:33am] |
I ran into this lady at Yeh Pulu, a kinda interesting series of scenes carved into the side of a little hill.
She was by far more interesting than the carvings. She blessed me, then told me to take some pictures of her (in exchange for a little money, of course).
( Read more... )
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| Best09: #15 (Packaging. A rant, really) |
[15 Dec 2009|11:41am] |
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Best packaging. Did your headphones come in a sweet case? See a bottle of tea in another country that stood off the shelves?
Today's subject is inane and I refuse to answer it. The mere supposition that shiny, landfill-clogging crap temporarily surrounding your material possessions could possibly register a blip in one's recollection of 2009 makes me want to stop doing this entire exercise.
The best packaging is no packaging. Shop at farmers markets and thrift shops! Reuse old stuff! Fix your broken stuff! Barter! Freecycle! Donate old belongings! Plant a garden! Raise farm animals! Meet your neighbors and lend stuff to them!
Screw packaging and screw the mentality that gives packaging equal importance as food, books, and education.
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| Best09: #14 (Rush) |
[14 Dec 2009|02:03pm] |
Rush. When did you get your best rush of the year?
Not sure I can pick just one. Here are a few times I had an elevated heart rate, in the "thrilling" kind of way:
- Getting married (the actual ceremony part)
- Biathlon races (ready, set, go!)
- Marrying Copper and James (the actual ceremony part)
- Quitting Skytap, starting at Robot Co-op ("Ross, do you have a minute?")
- Performing at Purim Spiel (the band hits their first note, and it's do or die)
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| Best09: #13 (Home) |
[14 Dec 2009|01:50pm] |
What's the best change you made to the place you live?
Moving out of Nightmare on Elmwood and into a home we own. Of course, now we're house-poor and responsible for our own home upkeep, but that's the American Dream, right?
Getting chickens is also a major plus, directly related to the move.
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| Best09: In which I un-screw-up #2 |
[13 Dec 2009|06:19pm] |
As one of my many astute readers pointed out, my favorite restaurant experience sorta happened in 2008, not 2009.
So my real best restaurant experience of 2009 was eating schwarma in Jerusalem.
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| Best09: #12 (Food) |
[12 Dec 2009|06:23pm] |
New food. You're now in love with Lebanese food and you didn't even know what it was in January of this year.
I must be turning into an old man, set in my ways. I don't think I discovered any new cuisines this year. But here are some of the foods that rocked my world:
- Everything Venessa makes, especially her pizza and desserts
- Pho (Pho Bac, of course, and also Ballet now)
- Rancho Bravo
- The fries at Cafe Presse
- Any of the curries at Ayutthaya
As you can see, my new work location plays a big role in the types of food I enjoy.
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| Best09: #11 (Place) |
[11 Dec 2009|07:23am] |
The best place. A coffee shop? A pub? A retreat center? A cubicle? A nook?
The best place this year (and of all time) is a cafe, a pub, a retreat, and a nook, all rolled into one. It's the DeMeules residence in BFE. The log cabin they built with their bare hands.
I recently read this passage in The Stranger (describing a similar structure), and it really sums up what I like about the place:
The wood, the linked walkways, the blue on the roof, the dusky beyond—this arrangement filled my chest with a familiar feeling. For reasons I had never been able to pin, certain types of buildings (usually wood-warm and human in scale), in certain types of crepuscular moments (usually the very final minutes of the day), produced this feeling—part sad, part hopeful, part dream, part real, part human, part animal. In my mind, a line from James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake best expressed the feeling: "It darkles...all this our funnanimal world."
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| Best09: #10 (Album) |
[11 Dec 2009|07:11am] |
Album of the year. What's rocking your world?
Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective.
And I didn't just choose it so I could post that awesome album art. This album came out early in the year and it stayed on my playlist literally the entire year.
Honorable mention to Phoenix.
update: according to last.fm, here are the albums I listened to most in 2009:
- Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
- Tobacco – Fucked Up Friends
- Midlake – The Trials Of Van Occupanther
- Daft Punk – Alive 2007
- MSTRKRFT – Fist Of God
- Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend
- Wolfmother – Wolfmother
- Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
- They Might Be Giants – The Else
- Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
Interesting that my favorite album is only #10.
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| Best09: #9 (Challenge) |
[11 Dec 2009|07:04am] |
Read the rules here
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?
Parenting. It's the best challenge of the year because the stakes couldn't be higher.
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| Motorcycle Safety |
[10 Dec 2009|01:15am] |
Since we intended to ride all over Southeast Asia & Europe on two wheels it was prudent to take Washington's motorcycle safety course. So, the weekend before I left, I sat with four other guys in a classroom captained by a well-intending man who reminded me of Dr. Phil, though not quite as stern nor insightful.
In his introduction he explained that he loved helping people safely experience something that's given him so much joy. But he especially loved getting to know his students. This was a safe zone. There would be no wrong answers, he emphasized.
That said, we jumped into it. "First off, can anyone tell me the greatest risk to motorcycles on the road?" The answers he wanted were pretty obvious - other cars, potholes, dangerous surfaces - but we were reluctant to raise our hands. I've met a lot of idiots, but maybe the biggest idiot I've met was in the class, and he finally spoke up:
( Read more... )
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| Do you make the art? |
[09 Dec 2009|04:33pm] |
Hi Kids.
If you make visual art (or would like to try) and are interested in participating in a project, contact me via comment. I'm going to ask you to draw/paint/whatever your interpretation of something and then scan & email it to me. Interested?
Comment!
Thanks.
PS - There are some new posts up at http://www.quarteryear.com .
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| Best09: #8 (Moment of peace) |
[08 Dec 2009|11:06am] |
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Read the rules here.
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?
A few peaceful moments:
- Meditating and fasting on Yom Kippur. Especially in the afternoon when hunger really sets in.
- Yichud, right after the wedding.
- Sitting on the beach in Tel Aviv.
Interesting how they're all Judaism/Israel related.
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| Best09: #6 (workshop) & #7 (blog) |
[07 Dec 2009|11:00am] |
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Read the rules here.
Workshop or conference. Was there a conference or workshop you attended that was especially beneficial? Where was it? What did you learn?
I didn't do any workshops or conferences this year. But there's no entry for classes/schooling, so I'll put my Hebrew class that I'm taking. Every week I'm amazed once again at what a beautiful and poetic language Hebrew is, and how the more of it I know, the better I'm able to connect with both the history of my people, and with our vibrant present through our lingua franca.
Blog find of the year. That gem of a blog you can't believe you didn't know about until this year.
Cupid's Poisoned Arrow a psychology blog about the intersection of love, sex, and the brain.
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| identity auteurs, etc. |
[06 Dec 2009|11:20pm] |
And now, this weekend. I guess it started on Thursday when everyone converged upon Havana for some sort of party where there wasn't too large of a crowd. After a while, Scottie and I went over to Moe Bar because Michael Cera was supposed to show up for his movie's afterparty with the Cobrasnake. We at first assumed that we'd missed whatever was happening, since the distribution of sunglasses and fake mustaches seemed to have stopped and the overcrowdedness dissipated after a few minutes. However, some faulty intelligence, inspired us to stick around, crowded into a booth and on the lookout. Eventually, we gave up. I went back across the street only to find that our friends had migrated up the hill to Pony, where there was a whole lot of fog and lasers. We managed to get in a drink or two, some epic pictures, and a rousing game of air hockey before the lights came on and we were all sent out into the cold.
Somehow, I didn't do anything on Friday.
Last night we fortified ourselves with Thai dinner and walked down to Re-Bar to see a friend performing in a drag show / underwear product placement event called Bacon Strip. True to its name and tone, bacon was served throughout the evening by a guy in a dreidl costume who was also toting a bottle of Manichevitz (that he didn't seem as into sharing). Parts of it were funny and enteratianing, but the makeup and costumes are kind of a degree or three away from clowns, which everyone knows are horrifying. I also made the terrible mistake of going to get a beer at the bar during one of the acts. The lines for bartender attention were so long that I ended up unknowingly missing the act that we came to see. By the finale, we had kind of maxed out; so instead of staying for the danceparty we paid a quick visit to the photobooth and then raced (really) up the hill to the Living Room and its fake fireplace upstairs lounge.
Today during the long long wait for a brunch table, we made the incredibly overdue discovery that waiting is a lot more palatable if you just order a beverage from the bar to help pass the time. Honestly, I'm not sure why it took me this long to figure this out. When our leisurely meal was completed we walked downtown, looked around at a few stores (a new backup fur lined hat, half-price!), and took in a second (for most of us) viewing of the Fantastic Mr. Fox. I still died with laughter and tears at many many parts. It's just so meticulous and funny and whimsical and a little sad and generally burbling over with big emotion and, to me, pretty much perfect all around. It's strange that it's gotten near-universal acclaim, but nowhere near as much buzz as it seserves.
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| the long thanksgiving weekend |
[06 Dec 2009|10:36pm] |
The long Thanksgiving weekend started with a traditional party in Fremont, with wine and cheese and desserts and kittens. It continued the next day with cooking at home, brief looks at the dog show, and an afternoon taxi ride over to Sedea's house where dance movies and cases of champagne were in full effect. Everyone took turns in the kitchen and there was far too much food and frequent demands that leftovers be taken home. There were epistemological discussions about the appropriate capitalization of the "s" in "Streets" w/r/t to where the dancers were taking it at the end of the movie. I missed most of Up due to some cooking responsibilities. Asa showed up just in time to carve the giant beast of a turkey that Joe had cooked and covered with bacon. There were tons of music videos OnDemand. We named the turkey by drawing names on napkins from a bowl. I was legitimately pleased with how my Tofurkey turned out; it may have transitioned from a one-time joke to an annual tradition. The pumpkin clove ice cream pie from Molly Moon's did not disappoint. After about six hours of festivities and bearing days worth of leftover food, I walked home on wet sidewalks and back alleys. A few hours later, there was a reconvening at a bar. I walked over mainly for the fresh air and the light exercise, returning home soon after when the party transitioned to dancing, an activity hardly advisable given the day's massive food consumption and incomplete digestion.
Rather than hunt for big box bargains, Carinna and I took a field trip to Ballard on Black Friday to look for boots and to hear a free show at Sonic Boom. The XX had caused a massive neighborhood shift, with much of Capitol Hill showing up in Ballard to crowd into a record store while a shy trio stood on a stage playing sexy music and either making a joke or a mistake about their location.
When the show was over, we hurried downtown to see the Fantastic Mr. Fox. Taking up half of a row, I think that we laughed harder than the rest of the theater combined. It was a pure delight, whimsical, weird, and hilarious in tiny and wonderful ways. I don't know that I've liked anything more all year. It was an early show, so we had plenty of time for adventuring. We started with pizzas at the Alibi room, walked downtown to the Polar Bar (ideal), and then returned to Capitol Hill for drinks around the big Tin Table with happy hour cocktails and ultra-salty fries. When my dream of making BOOM Noodle our new hangout fell through, we instead went to Oddfellows where some Fox-inspired hard apple cider induced some sort of allergic reaction on the order of sneezes and watery eyes. I went home and Benadrylled the night away.
I eventually left the house the next day to celebrate Carinna's birthday. It began with a cozy dinner at Cafe Presse, proceeded to a party at the Hideout, and ended at a talcum-covered Chop Suey with Emerald City Soul Club.
The weekend ended (relatively) quietly with the usual brunching, some drinks with bloggers at Bimbo's, dinner at the Sitting Room, and watching Bad Lieutenant, a pretty bizarre new Werner Herzog movie (which, I guess offset my usual Nicholas Cage aversion). I'm still not really sure what I think about it or the iguanas.
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| weekend of sound |
[06 Dec 2009|08:20pm] |
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record-keeping |
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Approximately a hundred us-years ago, we went to play apocalyptic mini golf at a place called Smash Putt. It was a mechanical arty installation in an abandoned garage warehouse on the lower realms of the part of twelfth avenue that still clings to Capitol Hill. Inside, there was a bar and nine holes of golf. It was extremely loud and crowded and terriffically fun. The holes involved jets of air, ferris wheels, closing holes, foosball obstacles, perilous Indiana Jones-like crossings, power saws, an air gun (goggles required), a catapult, spinning fans, a honking motor scooter, and, at the end, a drill that pierced your golf ball. When we arrived, despite having tickets, we were told that getting a tee time would be impossible. Undaunted by the screaming angry man in the doorway who had tired of waiting (without a "reservation"), we decided to at least take a look and get a drink. Miraculously, while sitting happily at a booth we lucked into a spot on the course and galavanted madly from green to green, delighting in the ingenuity and most definitely not keeping score.
Even though we were there for several hours and only a couple of adult beverages, I left feeling massively and happily off the rails. We continued the madness by dropping in at Pony, where I'm sure that we played a spirited game of air hockey with plenty of cheating.
The next day, was this tiny music festival called Expo 86. It took place in a cramped art gallery and a cluttered junk store. After some time at a steamy Summit Pub, we dashed across the rainy street to look at a hand drawn map of the incestuousness of Seattle's music community. A bit later, armed with a large can of cheap beer (that fell into a puddle, making it all the more authentic and sad), we returned and found a spot on the small rug in the back room to listen to Mount Eerie play songs about geese, wind, mountains, and the usual nature magic that I continue to find so compellingly endearing. Next door, at the Anne Bonny, John Atkins (of 764-HERO) sat in a chair in the middle of the room and we all crowded around him in the spaces between the folding chairs and vintage artifacts. Every time someone needed to enter or exit, the whole room had to slightly reconfigure, but this never really upset the quiet concert.
Finally, in anticipation of a trip to Canada, we took some time after brunch to venture "into the city" to have a look at hats. H & M proved a useful outlet, where I was able to secure a Siberian-appropriate faux fur head-warmer and a wolf-faced sweater. We celebrated our finds with a feel-good movie about a rock and roll radio station on a boat defying the will of British bureacrats (Pirate Radio) and walked back up the hill for a cozy dinner at Oddfellows that was marred slightly by the unexpected presence of dairy in a dish and some subsequent questions about the check and negotiation strategies. However, bolstered by the warmth of my new hat, I still picked up an ice cream cone for my walk home.
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