is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.

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New Year, Old Rain In San Francisco.

New Year, Old Rain In San Francisco.

So I�m back in San Francisco, and for the next eleven days I�m housesitting for my friends Roderick and James while they are in Rome. And so I have a fabulous apartment such as can be provided by a partnered-up set of gay landscape architects. I am all settled into a top floor apartment on Lower Terrace in SF, with views out all the windows on three sides. The sidekick camera doesn�t do it much justice, but here�s a photo from where I�m sitting right now.

There are some good hikes nearby too, but so far it has been rain rain rain, so I�m currently sitting around in my pajamas. Just did some pilates and must take a shower at some point. Then I plan to do some more dissertation revision-thinking.

Marco�s party on New Year�s Eve was fun. The usual suspects were there, with some missing parties. Liz had other plans, Caroleen and Jeff were with both sets of parents, my sister was mere blocks away at her own house in some fleecy hello kitty pajamas. But we had a good spread of food and booze. Evany made some very yummy daiquiris. I drank two beers, one daiquiri and some champagne. There were four kinds of bourbon but I avoided them all because I have become such a lightweight with all my Pennsylvanian non-drinking. It is as if I have become a Quaker! Um, not really. Evany and I got some people dancing at one point, but the crowd did not prove to be very dance-enthused. We did not care. Adrienne and I watched about 10 minutes of the Times Square thing, long enough to determine that Mariah Carey has gotten larger breast implants.

Late into the evening, when it was only Marco, Evany, Dave K and I remaining, we had a geekfest consisting of each of us using the three ipods present to have a four-way duel (as if that were possible, really. Maybe a modified version of the gunfight in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, without naming names as to who is who, since all of us are Above Average in all ways, of course) to pick very good cover songs. Dave started with a Spanish language cover of The Smiths� �There Is A Light And It Never Goes Out.� I fired back with Rasputina�s all cello cover of Pink Floyd�s �Wish You Were Here.� And on it went. It was fun, and was good entertainment as we ate late night snacks and cleaned up the house. (Marco did most of the cleaning part, as is his way, unless we�re talking about his last party when he passed out on the couch and I loaded the dishwasher while Evany cleaned.) It was sad for me when I played Bettie Serveert�s cover of Sebadoh�s �Healthy Sick� and Tricky�s cover of Public Enemy�s �Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos� and no one had heard the original versions. WHAT? No one had heard the original version of BLACK STEEL IN THE HOUR OF CHAOS!?! Later in the song 2 out of 3 admitted that they probably had heard the song. But still. It takes a nation of millions to hold us back. There used to be a very real political hope in hip-hop. I think I thought that everyone my age had once found it all very important. That's all.

Yesterday Evany, Marco and I lounged around for hours watching television. Marco was nice enough to let us watch three hours of Project Runway (which he also enjoyed) because all the wrong teams were winning in the football games and that was making him feel sad.

Then I made my way back to San Francisco. Heidi came by later, we ordered a pizza, and watched a lot more television. Comedy Central was having a hangover festival and we saw �The Sweetest Thing� (an underrated and very funny movie which I�ve now seen like four times. click on the link and you can see stills from its various san francisco locations. it is full of the kind of sexual humor that many would find offensive or inappropriate, but it's female sexual humor instead of male sexual humor, which makes it more "shocking," supposedly. you know. because we still live in a largely misogynist culture, and sexual humor isn't supposed to demean men or be based on observations only women could make.) and �Clueless� (also excellent and funny. clearly Comedy Central's "hangover sunday" was aimed at girls, because the boys were watching football, no? this is THE ORDER OF THINGS. i'm joking. but that doesn't mean that I'm wrong about how things get ordered.).

Tomorrow Safeway will deliver me some groceries in a van, because I live on the top of a hill without a car. Once it stops raining (if it stops raining) I look forward to climbing the tiny mountain nearby, and walking down the Vulcan steps into the Castro to go shopping, eating, movie-watching, and maybe reading in a caf� somewhere. Until then, I am quite happy in this lovely little urban treehouse. I�m sure I�ll also see some movies and friends, too.

Here is a new year�s thing, a list of the year�s top albums. I�m sure it is not definitive even of my favorites for the year, and it seems way too weighted towards Alterna-Indie music, but so be it. Here it is. These are all albums I recommend to you wholeheartedly.
John Vanderslice, Pixel Revolt (I am working on an essay about this album.)
Deathray, Believe Me (you�ve heard me talk about this already. Hot Dana�s voice is excellent.)
Ladytron, Witching Hour (so fun, so sweet, and a bit more grown up than their earlier albums.)
Aimee Man, The Forgotten Arm (o. m. g., good and sad.)
Thirteen Senses, Invitation (the good influence: Radiohead. the bad influence: Coldplay.)
The Weakerthans, Reconstruction Site (this is from 2003, but you should still get it. very good and clever songwriting.)

Also good, but not necessarily making the list:
Beck, Guero
Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine (Fiona doesn�t read criticism of her work. Perhaps that�s good because people are often needlessly mean about her. But it is also too bad because she could learn something from some of the more responsible/responsive commentaries. Like sometimes she is too teen-diary-ish. But other times she is utterly profound and/or lovely. And perhaps her singularity comes from not listening to what other people have to say. Still, it is not quite human to listen to no one.)
Soundtrack to The Life Aquatic

Albums I think will be good but haven�t yet procured:
The Evens
Betties Serveert, Attagirl
Echo and the Bunnymen, Siberia
Various recent Iron and Wine projects
Kate Bush, Aerial

I�m no longer any good at being on top of getting music right when it comes out. I�m sure I miss out on lots of good things.

Right now I�m listening to CrazySexyCool by TLC, which is from 1994. It has some very good songs, and then it has other songs.

11:33 a.m. - January 02, 2006

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