it’s not too -late- early to look back on the year. right?

in some ways, it’s been a very hard year. so now i will give myself only things that are good for my soul.

things that i know are good for me:

* radio and not tv

* petting the cat

* book and not tv

* almostanything and not tv

* being with my homiez

* doing good work

* driving the van on a clear fall night with a full moon

* pee-wee’s playhouse (ok, that is tv, but it can be the exception)

* food i make for myself. also, coffee.

that is just a short list.

sometimes over the long holiday breaks, i go into ebay mode.

things i didn’t win, really wanted, and just made more expensive for other people with last minute bidding wars:

* a pair of “these boots”:http://www.fluevog.com/code/images/00001141_zoom.jpg in my size.

* a set of coolant hoses for my van. these hoses are no longer made and not obtainable through any of the usual channels. a full set for the previous model year goes for $800. i probably should have been hugely more agressive in my bidding, because i really need a set, but i caught the auction six minutes before it ended and didn’t have time to check part numbers and etc.

* a very complete pee-wee’s playhouse with basically every possible toy that was made to go in the playhouse. i kind of gave up and decided i didn’t want all of that. maybe just a jambi and a conky to go in my existing playhouse.

ok, i am totally procrastinating on making the applesauce for tomorrow so i am going to tell you (all one of you reading this over the holiday when everyone leaves, or tries to leave if the crippling fog ever clears) about my day.

first as i was driving to work this morning i happened to be running parallel down a large one-way street to “xa and ra”:http://singintomymouth.com/blog/ who were in fact leaving town for the beach at that very moment! actually, i think they were going to blue coffee at that very moment, but close enough. they looked very happy. ray had on his buddy holly glasses that i think make him look like elvis costello.

then as i was pulling into jesus chicken to get some breakfast, i called d. in his office to see if he would also like some jesus chicken. he sounded very happy about the idea and said he would like that very much. then i got him to transfer me to joe and i asked joe if he would like some coffee from java jive, and he sounded very happy about that and said he couldn’t pass that up. check me out, i make two guys happy with just one phonecall!

ok, so i got home tonight and made that pumpkin cheesecake. sadly, it burned 🙁 but mom and i figure that it’ll still be just fine on the inside and next time i’ll have to use a lower temperature. she sounded pretty happy on the phone when i talked to her.

then i decided to check the tivo. a while back i put in the names of some of the bands that i remember seeing in the early 80’s on saturday night live. i’m kind of desperate to see these episodes of SNL again because they were very important, formative musical experiences for me. however, these keyword searches tend to result in a lot of junk on my tivo and very few cool old episodes of SNL. a few weeks ago i did get an episode with the cars, but they were way past their prime in this episode and it kind of sucked.

so i saw the SPARKS folder, that one tends to pick up a lot because a lot of show descriptions include the phrase, “sparks fly”, and i was thinking “i should get rid of that search, it’s no good” and went in to delete the crap and _yes there it was, the 1982 episode of SNL with sparks playing ‘mickey mouse’ and ‘i predict’!_

oh man, that performance of ‘mickey mouse’ is really something. ron mael does geek weird to the extreme with a little monologue about mice beforehand and his performance during the song is funnier than the entire rest of the snl episode. russel mael is wearing the most hideous example of men’s 80’s fashion that i think i have ever seen– a very oversized, bright green sequined suit with a red wrap shirt.

a couple of years ago i actually caught a pretty good run of these episodes and i’ve got them all on VHS. i’ve got david bowie, squeeze, blondie, kate bush, and that infamous elvis costello performance where he stops in mid-song and switches to ‘radio, radio’, which he’d been forbidden to play.

anyway, i think i need to start the tedious process of getting this stuff digitized so i can save it and share it and enjoy it.

safe to say– i am happy.

now i go make applesauce, which will make the brothers happy.

you know that episode of star trek where everyone is all tired and grumpy but they don’t know why, and then someone finally figures out that they’re all being kidnapped at night and aliens are performing cruel medical experiments on them and then wiping out their memory and returning them in the morning, having been tortured rather than having slept?

i feel like that. i don’t know why.

comments are gonna be dicey for the forseeable future. maybe forever. this spammer has been taking his own viagra because the hardon he has for my blog is not natural.