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Favorites of 2008

Favorite reading:

I didn't read much, this year, in the way of books. In fact, all I read is the first half of Lolita; and I absolutely loved it, but even so I haven't yet gotten around to reading the second half.

That's not to say that I didn't read at all, though; the only way to tolerate a commute on Muni is to have a New Yorker on hand, after all, and besides that, I read a number of great things--new and old--this year. Here are a few. (Where possible, links go to my posts, with notes, on each of the articles.)

• Michael Bywater's "My Dad had the best death"
• Letters from Norman Mailer, from the New Yorker
• David Ramsey's "I Will Forever Remain Faithful" (the best thing I read all year)
• A quote from an old (1996) interview with David Foster Wallace
• Robert Forster, on Grant McLennan and The Evangelist
• "Chef on the Edge", the profile of David Chang in the New Yorker (now online here!)
• James Surowiecki's New Yorker blog, probably my favorite blog of the entire year

Favorite songs:

• Britta Persson, "Kill Hollywood Me" (watch/listen)
• Dirty Projectors, "Hyperballad" (listen)
• Erykah Badu, "The Healer" (listen)
• Estelle, "American Boy ft. Kanye West" (listen)
• Janelle Monae, "Many Moons" (watch/listen)
• Lil Wayne, "Tie My Hands ft. Robin Thicke" (listen)
• Lloyd, "Girls Around the World ft. Lil Wayne" (watch/listen)
• Mariah Carey, "Touch My Body" (watch/listen)
• Q-Tip, "Gettin' Up" (watch/listen)
• Solange, "Sandcastle Disco" (watch/listen)

Most popular search terms:

A couple of years ago, in my 2005 year-end wrapup, I listed a couple of the most popular search terms leading people to my blog: "cat glover", "criss angel", "selena and chris", &c. These are the things that make me proud, people!

And so here are a couple of the search terms that led people to this blog in 2008--they're a combination of terms that would've led people here in 2005, 2006, and 2007, as well as for new stuff posted in 2008.

• "biggest dog in the world" (see also: "biggest dog", "the biggest dog", "the biggest dog in the world", &c.)
• "vin diesel fur coat" (one of my favorites!)
• "dave longstreth" (#1!)
• "what does ordinary firmness mean"
• "is clinton kelly gay" (still on the list, 3 years later!)
• "'the office special' song at the end"

And that's that!

My favorite photo of the week

So small and so big, all at once.

Pen

A year ago, Penelope was born, and--let's face it--she was a lump. A really cute lump, with a good head of hair (that soon fell out) and a sweet face, but a lump, comparatively.

Before going to bed last night, on her first birthday, Mena, Pen, and I watched some videos of her as a baby: a couple of days old; a couple of weeks old; a couple of months old. Pen's fascinated by watching herself. Since she was only a couple months old, I've been adding photos to an iPhoto slideshow that I play for her when she gets fussy, so much so that she now associates the song I play along with it (Maxwell's version of Kate Bush's "This Woman's Work") with the slideshow, and upon hearing the first couple of notes, she rushes over to my computer to watch, smiling and shaking her head inexplicably, as if she can't believe how little she used to be.

The other day, Pen hid Mena's keys, and Mena couldn't find them for forty-five minutes. When I got home, I asked Pen (again) where the keys were, and she led me to a drawer in the kitchen--where we store the measuring cups, which she loves to play with--opened the drawer, and walked away. And, of course, the keys were in the drawer. It was as if she'd gotten bored of the game, and she wanted to move on to something else.

Happy first birthday, Penelope! A year ago, you were a lump; now, you're the most incredible person I've ever met.

Water Wars

I discovered today that our monthly water bill (from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission) includes a graph of our water usage over the last year. [1] It's pretty fascinating trying to correlate it to events; for example, we used a lot of water last November, the month after Penelope was born.

I think I'm going to experiment with bringing our water usage down to see how much of an effect I can have, now that I'll have this data on a monthly basis.

But here's what I'd like next: a comparison chart (anonymous, of course) to everyone in my neighborhood; my city; my state; and so on. That way, I can see how we compare to other people in our area, and it can become a competition. Give me stats, charts, and graphs showing us how we compare, and you'll see our water usage drop!

[1] Considering that they're pushing water conservation, I'll bet this isn't a coincidence.

Sometimes, I'm rather pathetic.

On Sunday I was watching the Super Bowl, and I was making myself another margarita—you know, to celebrate the Big Game, &c.—& in order to do that I had to open a new bottle of tequila. So I did, and after a lot of tugging, I pulled out the giant cork-like thing from the bottle.

In the process of which, I spilled tequila all over the v-neck undershirt I was wearing, which Mena thought was quite trashy.

That's all.

Mena posted!

And she tagged me for the fun game!

Four jobs I've had:

• Soccer referee. Does that count? I don't know if I actually got paid. I was probably 12 or 13.
• Ice Cream vendor, Baskin Robbins. I worked at Baskin Robbins for about a year, I think. I was probably the worst BR employee ever—I wasn't openly disdainful, I guess, but I never really smiled at customers, &c.
• Software Engineer, Excite@Home & Ignition Design. & some other places while in college, too.
• Co-Founder/CTO, Six Apart

Four movies I can watch over and over:

• The Godfather, Part II
• Brain Candy
• XXX
• Trapped in the Closet (more)

Four places I've lived:

• Petaluma, CA
• Santa Clara, CA
• Redwood City, CA
• San Francisco, CA

(Yes, very boring.)

FourTen TV shows I love:

• Blow Out
• Project Runway (more)
• America's Next Top Model (more)
• Survivor (more)
• Lost (more)
• I'm Alan Partridge / Knowing Me, Knowing You (more)
• 24
• The Sopranos
• Arrested Development
• Freaks and Geeks (more)

Four places I've vacationed:

• Los Cabos, Mexico. November 2005, after Thanksgiving. (some photos)
• Big Island, Hawaii. July 2005. I fell off of a bike & had to get 15 stitches in my chin, & thereafter couldn't go in the water. But it was still a fun trip.
• Charleston, SC. Twice, as day trips while visiting Mena's family in Charlotte, NC.
• England & France for a month, after college.

Four of my favorite dishes:

• Curry Udon in Tokyo, which is always our just-off-the-plane-and-somewhat-delirious meal. Mie has some good photos.
• Coconut cake at Peninsula Grill in Charleston, SC. This cake was so amazing! Here's a photo.
• Fish tacos! Anywhere, really, but especially here.
• Vietnamese potstickers, which I haven't had for probably 15 years, I guess, but when my dad used to work in San Francisco, my family would drive down to visit him every so often. We'd meet him out in the Inner Richmond (he'd take the bus out from the Financial District), and we'd go to a Vietnamese restaurant, The Garden House, around 3rd and Clement. The restaurant isn't there anymore—I remember when they told us they were moving to the East Bay, & that was a sad day. I loved those potstickers.

FourThree sites I visit daily:

• my LJ friends page
• my blog
• Whatever sites NetNewsWire tells me have been updated.

Four places I would rather be right now:

• New York
• Disneyland
• Hawaii
• sleeping

Tag some other bloggers:

• Sippey
• Tatsuhiko

"Some days it's dark. Some days I work. ..." [1]

Is January 24 still the most depressing day of the year in 2006? Seems that it must be, according to news stories.

Now, granted, I realize that the formula for Most Depressing Day isn't particularly scientific [2], but I find it quite suspicious that it's chosen the same day at least two years in a row, now.

But for those who're looking for a little Tuesday depression, here are some suggestions on how to prove the scientists right:

Listen...

to one or more of the following:

1. The Clientele, "K"
2. Dios, "Just Another Girl"
3. Dusty Springfield, "Breakfast in Bed"
4. ABBA, "The Winner Takes It All"
5. Jane Birkin, "Fuir le Bonheur"
6. The Go-Betweens, "I'm Allright"
7. The Beach Boys, "You Still Believe In Me"
8. The The, "Love is Stronger Than Death"
9. The Afghan Whigs, "When We Two Parted"
10. Willie Nelson, "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain"

Watch...

The Godfather: Part II. Or, maybe, watch it more than once! It gets more uplifting the second & third times round—I promise. [3]

Happy Sad Day!

[1] Best song ever.

[2] This is the frighteningly new-agey, feel-bad formula, btw:

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.

Of course, it leaves quite a few questions unanswered:

• What about the southern hemisphere, where the temperature in January can be above 100 degrees Fahrenheit?
• What about people who celebrate another holiday (or none at all) instead of Christmas?
• What if I have no motivation whatsoever, which would cause M to be (presumably) 0, which would cause a division by 0 condition, leading to an infinite amount of... something?
• & most importantly: What is the final unit of measurement? Days? Weeks? Minutes? Number of depressed people?

&c.

[3] Not really. But it does tend to numb you after a while, which can be helpful.

"You can't say no in December..."

2005 == the year where I had a blog! As in, for real! [1]

And so I actually posted a lot this year, starting in around August or so. 72 posts this year (again, all but 3 of them since August), as compared to 7 in 2004, 14 in 2003, &c. [2]

But if there's ever been a type of post that I'm consistent about, it's the year-end wrap-up/favorites post (c.f. 2004, & 2003). I love reading them (I've already read a bunch this year, on other people's blogs—in fact, I feel like I'm reading more this year than usual). And I even like writing them, because I love that combined feeling of sadness & hope that the EOY always brings.

So, to the favorites of 2005!

Favorite Songs

I've spent way too much time on creating this list—much more than you'd think by looking at it—& its size has varied greatly, from about 28 songs now down to half that size. Not all of the songs have "listen" links alongside, because some artists just don't want you to hear even samples of their music without paying for it. Or, at least, they seem to want to make it prohibitively difficult. [3]

So then, in no order other than alphabetical, & without any useful commentary alongside [4]:

• The Ark, "This Piece of Poetry is Meant to Do Harm" (listen)
• The Clientele, "Since K Got Over Me" (listen)
• Dios Malos, "Feels Good Being Somebody" (listen)
• The Fiery Furnaces, "Evergreen"
• Fiona Apple, "Red Red Red"
• Girls Aloud, "Models"
• Hey Willpower, "Hundredaire" (listen)
• Jamie Lidell, "When I Come Back Around" (listen)
• Maxi Geil! & Playcolt, "Making Love in the Sunshine" (listen)
• M.I.A., "10 Dollar"
• Spoon, "The Beast and Dragon, Adored" (listen)
• Sufjan Stevens, "Chicago" (listen)
• Sugababes, "Push the Button"

Favorite Awesomely Amazing Song Cycle!

R. Kelly, Trapped in the Closet (more)

Favorite Unexpected Reissue

Jean Claude Vannier, L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches (more)

Favorite Thing about 2005

Friends, having such & spending time with, which it seems like we did more of this year. [5]

Favorite Search Terms that led people to my blog

These are from just one day last week, when I chanced to look at my stats!

I'm unashamedly proud of this list, mostly because they're like a reward for me: I've always wanted the sort of blog that would lead to search terms like this. I've helpfully linked each of the search terms to the post that they lead to.

• cat glover
• clinton kelly gay
• criss angel
• mindfreak
• songs on degrassi tng
• anti clay aiken boards
• selena and chris
• alan partridge abba medley
• crack den

---

[1] Well, hopefully, the first of many such.

[2] One of the greatest things about having a blog, I'm now finding, is that I actually have posts to refer to in this post. Which is just so meta, really, but to me it's all new & amazing, because I have actually produced content this year (i.e., written content, as opposed to just code).

[3] Of course, it doesn't escape my notice that it's the indie bands, generally, who've got the best (official) arrangements for fans to listen to their music.

& the reason I've not linked to the Fiery Furnaces site is that it's so fucking inscrutable that I can't even figure out where the songs are. But I have to say, these videos are just so relentlessly charming that it makes me forget about their frustrating web site, & love them once again.

[4] I actually tried writing something about each of these songs, because personally I like reading commentary. I started by aiming for a couple of sentences, which didn't really work, partly because I've just gotten over the work involved in writing such treatises in my set of holiday mix posts. I must say, I've really got a huge amount of respect for music bloggers who can write about music every day. It's fucking exhausting.

So anyway, I then tried describing each song w/ just a single adverb-adjective combination. I even loosened the rules here rather severely, such that neither the adverb nor the adjective needed to be real words. E.g. "authentically timberlake-esque".

But that was even more difficult, because it seems it's even more difficult for me to be succinct—I suppose I'm naturally discursive, though you'd not know it to talk with me. So, I gave up on the commentary.

[5] Yes, I'm a sentimental & sappy fucker, but you must've known that by now.

Something for the Weekend

Mena & I've had a busy (but fun!) weekend. We flew to North Carolina for Anil's and Alaina's pre-wedding party. It was fun to see David and Adriana, who we don't get to see very often, along with Anil's parents and sister. We also got to meet a friend of Anil's from his Harrisburg days, and hear about the time (or one time, at least) that Anil spent $100 on a Prince CD that he already owned, just because it was in a pretty wooden box. [1]

But so as part of the trip, we also got to see Mena's family in Charlotte. We took a red-eye flight to Charlotte on Friday night, and arrived at 6:30am, then drove about 30 minutes to their house. Somewhat exhausted, we took a nap for about 3 hours, and then Mena went swimming in her parents' pool, while her grandparents watched from the shade. Mena took Annie in the pool with her, as well.

So when I got outside it was kind of a crazy scene: Mena, and her dad, and Annie in the pool; the theme from the Enchanted Tiki Room playing loudly on the speakers out by the pool; Augie locked up in the house, because he'd been barking too much.

But then, to top it off, Mena's dad said, "Turn on the fountains!" As an added touch, Mena's parents had some fountains installed out by the pool—they recycle the water from the pool & spray it in an arc from the brick fence back into the pool. And so, after they turned on the fountains, I took a picture that just seems to completely capture Mena's family:

All I'd need to do is to embed some audio into it that plays music from Disneyland, and it'd be a quintessential representation of Mena and her family.

[1] Which I can actually relate to, sort of. In college I had a phase where I bought a bunch of nicely-packaged versions of albums I already owned: the glow-in the dark version of Spiritualized's Pure Phase; the actually in-a-metal-canister version (Metal Box) of Public Image Ltd's Second Edition; etc.

All very pretty, and very useless, & which I just sigh about whenever I have to pack them in a box when we move.

And none of these cost $100, mind you, but then again, it's not really the price that's important—it's the fact that you're buying an album that you already own.

Blogging is fun!

Inspired by Mena's graph of posting frequency on all of the sixapart.com blogs, I decided to plot my posting frequency per month for all time on StupidFool:

Those months without any bars on them are where I didn't post at all. Yes, there are a lot of such months.

To put it in perspective, I've written more in the last 2 months than over the previous 3 years combined [1]. The main reason being to remind my vast readership that they're pretty lucky how often I'm posting now!

Yay for my blog!

[1] Note that September 2005 is a projection based on my posting thus far, which could be considered cheating.