So my favorite Doctor ever is stepping down and is being replaced by some twink. Would it kill the BBC to have a woofy Doctor for once? Anyway, this weekend Skwurl ferreted out a really entertaining Dr. Who edition of BBC's Proms, which is sort of like our Boston Pops. They had the costumed villians mingle with the audience while the orchestra played music from the fantastic series. The orchestra conductor was particularly adorkable. His name is Ben Foster and he was BBC's Young Musician of the Year in 2008.
This weekend I saw Gran Torino, starring Clint Eastwood. The story was interesting but the acting was a little wooden at times by everyone other than Eastwood. The interesting thing about it for me was that the story involves the Hmong community of Asian immigrants, many of whom settled in Western Wisconsin where I grew up. The Hmong are a cultural group of Southeast Asians who are stout hill people. They assisted the U.S. in the Vietnam War but many had to seek asylum in the U.S. after that. Their introduction to our region was very upsetting for a lot of people who were accustomed to such dominant Germanic/Scandinavian traditions and cultural norms.
My old high school and college classmates have found me on Facebook. This can be good and bad, but the fun part is the photos they've been digging up from way back. Here's one of me some time in 1989 or 1990 at a reptile show in the library at my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point. I think it was my freshman year in undergrad, and I'm probably 18 or 19 in this photo:
I am holding a snapping turtle properly so I don't get bit.
Happy 2009! I didn't get too wild for the changing of the year. Just went out to Cafe Berlin with friends and had venison and pickled herring. One person at the dinner table had his precious handheld electronic device always present on the dining table and he fondled it obsessively throughout the entire dinner. And he is neither a doctor nor an emergency management professional, only self-important. I wanted to grab that blinky thing and throw it out the window or shove it down his self-important throat. Anyway, I was home before midnight and didn't want to go back out in that windy cold so I spared my party points for the New Year. I think I was all partied out after having so much fun over the Christmas break.
I've never been big on resolutions after the New Year. I tend to make and keep them throughout the year. There are a few things I keep resolving to do:
- Get more sleep. I say this every year.
- Get to work earlier. Then I can leave work earlier. But I say that every year too.
- I'm OK with my weight at the moment. I'll even lose weight once rugby starts again. I've been good at getting to the gym this winter. It's an important part of my mental as well as physical health regimen.
Somehow I missed this little tempest on the gaming table...the Christian Children's Fund (CFC) refused a donation from role-playing gaming community in November. Participants in an annual fundraising event at the popular role-playing gamer's convention Gen-Con decided to donate the funds they raised to CFC in honor of the late Gary Gygax. CFC was Gygax' favored charity, but the organization refused and gamers got pissed off. CFC tried a public relations backpedal to make them look less like douche bags, but their efforts were pretty obvious. Details down below on this site. On the bright side, when the Evangelicals and Christians start picking on Dungeons and Dragons, you know they've jumped the shark, just like they did in the 80's when they started getting hysterical about Smurfs, He-Man action figures and Rainbow Brite.
Prince didn't vote in favor of Proposition 8. In fact, he didn't vote at all. "I didn't vote for Obama either," he says.
I am not planning on partying on New Year's Eve. I partied enough over Christmas break. Plus I was over vomit on the dance floor or in bars a long time ago. Crowds and puke are just not my thing. Instead a few of us will go out for a quiet evening at a local restaurant, and if anyone wants to puke they can do it on each other in the privacy of their own home. New Year's Eve to me is synonymous with vomit, as there's always someone in the house who drinks too much and throws up before the clock strikes twelve.
2008 was a crazy, but generally positive year for me. I visited a lot of new places and got a better job. I lost a friend but gained and strengthened many friendships too. 2008 was notable for good pop music too, in my opinion. Many great albums and tracks came out just in time, as I was about to give up on it entirely.
Here are some highlights from 2008:
U Street at night, Manhattan deathmarch, an evening with TJ and Scott Bakula, going to Ft. Lauderdale with Matt, Kylie's new album, rage-inducing lemon meringue pie with Homer, I built a treebox, Celtic Festival, Brett visits DC, 1st trip to Ireland, sorghum, new job, Kieran visits DC, water polo woof, Fire Island weekend, OMG I'm in MetroWeekly, South Carolina, Touch My Body, evil sex sorcerers, Miss Adam's Morgan pageant, Hercvles & Love Affair, sinkholes and manatees, 2nd trip to Ireland, gay blogger conference.
I've been messing around with the backend of this here blog, fixing and reorganizing and deleting. I've deleted all my archives from 2001 up to November 2007. The weight of all those entries and comments associated with them was bogging down my blogging from an administrative point of view. That and I just didn't feel comfortable with all that personal stuff from so much time up there. I have saved the content and hope to commit it to print for my personal use and rememberance.
A few important technical issues:
- I reorganized and reclassified the blog links to the right. You might not agree to where I put you, but hey I'm no librarian so I organized them as I saw fit. My single list was just getting too big so I thought it would be a good idea to break some down into categories. They should show up as drop-down menus - let me know if they don't work for you. You should be seeing a drop-down list of plain 'ol blogs, artsy-fartsy blogs, gay & punditry blogs, nature blogs, shaw & dc blogs, and dead blogs. The last list was created for those old skool blogs who no longer post entries, but have a body of work that is still worth a visit. That is where I will put YOUR BLOG if you don't frikkin' update soon.
- I see from my server log stats that some of you are only bookmarking category pages. Don't you like the rest of what I write, other than entries categorized under 'woof'? When you link to or bookmark this blog, please use this base URL: http://www.jimbo.info/weblog
- I've been told the RSS feed and trackbacks don't work. Then I'm told they do work. What case is true for you? The problem may never have been fixed, or maybe it only works for some of you. If it works or does not work, please leave me a comment as to what system/browser/interface you're using, and under what conditions it does or does not work. Hopefully we'll figure out how to fix it.
- Webmistress: you may delete that massive "archives" folder on the server, and any old stuff up to November 2007. Thanks!
Any other URL (web address) will only link to some of the entries from this blog, but not all of them.
I had a very nice holiday and birthday weekend with a lot of debauchery, but am generally refreshed despite this malingering cough I picked up somewhere. Judging from the complaints about weather delays and choruses of screaming children on the airlines, I don't regret avoiding travel this time of year.
NOTICE: I'll be givin' the blog an overhaul/makeover/enema today, so please be patient.
Bleh - what an inauspicious birthday. No drama in the years between 35 and 40, just kinda bleh. I'm holding out well though. I've still got some constitution left in me, and the career's going well. Not exciting at the moment, but interesting.
Tonight we went out to Nellie's and then to Town to celebrate ME and my place on this earth and amongst you mere mortals. I didn't last long though as I'm fighting some kind of pheghm monster inside of me that keeps producing gelatinous globs of slime-based life that I do not want in my body. It does not want to be in me either and keeps coming out of its own volition. Hauk.
On Christmas day eve we went out to Taint and the music was awesome. OMG Neneh Cherry. On Christmas day we had dinner upstairs and the demi-glace on the brussels sprouts wasn't bad at all. Christmas eve with the Baltimore Bears was lots of fun and they had delicious microbrew and lovely food of course as you would expect from Bears.
The real Christmas miracle is that I somehow have not gained weight this week. It must be all the running around that negates all the binge feeding with Bears, and coughing up phleghm. Yes, my weight loss is via my lungs and their expectorations.
I hope your holidays have been as cherished and warm as mine.
There's a new Paul Rudd film called "I Love You, Man," about a guy who is on the hunt for a Best Man. In one scene locks lips with Thomas Lennon (Lieutenant Jim Dangle, "Reno 911") who thinks Rudd's character is looking for a date.
DC is already a ghost town, but there are a few things to do here and there. On Thursday there's the All-Star Christmas Day Jazz Jam at the Kennedy Center, and on Friday you can hear Golem, a six-piece Eastern European folk-punk band is “where Eastern Europe meets the Lower East Side.” Golem, not Gollum.
I'm staying in town, but have been quiet about my plans. If you brag about how you're going to stay in the District and chill out over the holidays, people with pets will approach you to perform babysitting duties. Then you end up spending your vacation time running around all over town taking care of animals the whole weekend, when you originally intended to just chill out. So it's best to stay quiet this time of year.
I'll be having a very hairy Christmas Eve at the annual Baltimore Bear Party tonight. I've been explicitly told that it is not officially a "Bear" party, but bitches please, you've never seen that many large people of facial hair under one roof. Speaking of fur in a warehouse, Joe.My.God posted his photos of his visit to DC to debauch at Blowoff.
Tomorrow we're having Christmas dinner upstairs. Hopefully the two Seans will negate each other. One is the type to spend three days formulating just the right demi-glace so it is absolutely perfect on top of the Cornish game hens. The other is content with Stove Top stuffing. Hopefully the result will be something in between the two extremes. Hopefully it will not be too intense. I've learned to fear the gays on the holidays, as they often go over the top.
The moustache is brought to its logical conclusion. Thanks Fitz!
