You can see more photos over here.

My pumpkin, post carving (photo taken by Lee):

Jay’s pumpkin, lit up (it was actually quite scary, and funny too!):

My pumpkin, lit up:

All of our pumpkins, lit up:

in London (photo by Chris Dent)

On this eve of a new decade / year, here’s a retrospective of 2009 with some of my favorite things. (This is a personal post; check out this blog post for our 2009 biz/Juxtaprose thanks!)

places visited:

• Myvatn Nature Baths, Myvatn, Iceland
• the chocolate stores, galleries, and museums of Paris, France
• wandering through London on a beautiful fall day

concerts / live performances:

• Leonard Cohen (Coachella)
• The Flaming Lips (Marymoor Park)
• Akron/Family (Bumbershoot)

album(s) (in no particular order):

• The Avett Brothers: I and Love and You
• Bill Callahan: Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
• Amadou & Miriam: Welcome to Mali
• Built to Spill: There Is No Enemy
• Yo La Tengo: Popular Songs
• Wilco: Wilco
• The Flaming Lips: Embryonic
• St. Vincent: Actor
• Rodrigo y Gabriel: 11:11
• Mr. Smolin: Bring Back the Real Don Steele
• Akron/Family: Set ‘em Wild, Set ‘em Free
• Taken By Trees: East of Eden
• Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion
• Neko Case: Middle Cyclone
• Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest
• Leonard Cohen: Live in London

movies (note: I didn’t check the dates; I think these were all 2009; or at least I saw them in 2009):

• Inglorious Basterds
• Man on Wire
• Up
• The Fantastic Mr. Fox
• Extract (just saw this last night; so funny!)

tv (basically didn’t watch any live tv this year; all tv shows were via web streaming / DVD; we’re still 1-2 seasons behind on some of these; shhh):

• Dollhouse
• Damages
• Mad Men
• Battlestar Gallactica (maybe not the ending, but the rest of it was very enjoyable)

books I read this year (not all from 2009; I rarely read books when they first come out):

• Revenge of the Spellmans: Lisa Lutz (the exception to the 2009 pub date; I also read the first draft of The Spellmans Strike Again (coming March 2010!)
• The Girl who Fell from the Sky: Heidi W. Durrow (one of our clients, I got a manuscript version of her book, coming February 2010—definitely keep an eye out)
• What the Dead Know: Laura Lippman
• The Maisie Dobbs series: Jacqueline Winspear
• Innocent Blood: P.D. James (I picked this up at an “English Pub” in Paris, where they had a wall full of English language books)
• The Road: Cormac McCarthy (I don’t think I’m going to ruin the book by seeing the movie)

food / dining:

• Chez Omar, Paris
• all the fresh food from our garden!
• weekly fresh salmon from the Farmer’s Market during the summer, grilled on our grill with freshly picked corn, and a bottle of wine
• John Henry’s, Palm Springs

chocolate (yes, it gets its own category):

• La Chocolaterie de Jacques Genin, Paris (no website, but check out this article)
• Chocolate Mussy, Paris (8 rue du Bourg Tibourg, Marais)

art:

• André Kertéz photography exhibit at the Reykjavik Library (Iceland)
• Ara Güler photography exhibit, Paris
• Ferdinando Scianna photography exhibit, Paris
• Photoquai 2009, Paris
• visiting the Louvre, the Rodin Museum, and seeing all the amazing art in Paris

chance meeting:

• meeting and talking with the fine art photographer Tim Rudman and his wife, Ingrid Rudman, at Lake Myvatn in Iceland; then running into them again, two days later, in a totally different part of Iceland and having another great conversation

spa experience(s):

• Olympus Spa (Lynnwood, WA) – where I spent 6 hours of my 38th birthday!
• all the hot pools of Iceland: Myvatn Nature Baths and the “swimming pools” of Husavik and Reykjavik

None of these things would have been the same had I not shared them with friends, family, a cranky cat, and “strangers” met along the way. Mostly none would have been the same without Jay (I love you!). Looking forward to more adventures in 2010 and beyond.

We had a great time in Palm Springs and at our first time at the Coachella Festival! We saw lots of good bands and had fun with our friends.

Here are some photos from the festival:

Here are some photos from the hike:

You may recall that, last year, Curtis’ gingerbread house was a similarly stunning recreation of l’Opéra national de Paris – in gingerbread!

OK, extra bonus feature this year: after visiting his family in Salt Lake City, Curtis also made this video called “Holiday Horrors!” It’s super awesomely holiday horror hilarious! A perfect way to say goodbye to the 2008 holidays.

After being on the waiting list for 3 years, we finally got a plot! Here I am pictured in our newly acquired community garden plot. The garden is part of Seattle’s P-Patch gardens, and our garden is named the “Mad-P”. This was just when I was trying to figure out how we might be able to plant some more food / veges in our yard. So we’re really excited to have this space, and it is literally just down the street (2 minute walk).

So on Sunday our friend Jeanine offered to help plant, as she knows something about gardening, and doesn’t have her own garden at the moment. So we bought seeds and hopefully picked some things out that will still grow (we’re getting a bit of a late start). Plantings include: carrots, radishes, snap peas, zucchinis, tomatoes (these in plant form from the farmer’s market), a couple lettuce starts (also from the farmer’s market) and some flowers (marigolds and I think they were called ‘paper flowers’ or something like that).

We’ll keep you posted on how things grow!

Photo by Jeanine Anderson. (Check out her photos, they’re really interesting!)

(more info here)

Read Jim’s posts to see his comments, reviews, and the full address info for each restuarant. I’m going to just list them here to help us remember that we need to go (again):

1. Crush
2. Monsoon
3. Salumi
4. Bakery Noveau
5. Chiang’s Gourmet (7845 Lake City Way NE)
6. Palisade
7. Shiki
8. Saint Germain
9. Cafe Besalu (5909 24th Ave NW, Ballard)
10. Sichuan Bistro (212 N 85th)
10. 663 Bistro (663 S Weller St, in the ID)

(Jim, if you’re reading this: I did warn you about the Mussel Casserole at Saint Germain!)

Sarah snapped this picture of Anastasia and me while we all were eating at Indian Oven, in San Francisco. (Sarah’s got more pictures of us on her Flickr.)

Sarah and David, whom we became friends with when they lived in Seattle, now live around the corner from Indian Oven in San Francisco. And, we were happy to simultaneously revisit our own Indian Oven obsession and initiate them into their own.

Altogether, Anastasia and I had fantastic times in both SF and NYC. Eating lots of good food was definitely a fun part of our visits in both locales, and we had many Seattle-SF, SF-NYC, and Seattle-NYC cuisine comparison discussions, given the amalgam of our (Anastasia and my, and all our friends) combined nomadic eating histories.

Nancy and Jonah in NYC get special thanks in this foodular dimension. Not only did they take us to uncountably many wonderful eateries in a handful of days, they also made us a totally bitchin’ home cooked Moroccan-themed meal with a super-fine tequila-themed digestivo. Also note: Gawain came down from Rochester and joined us, which, while not specifically food-related, should highlight what an all-out good time the meal was.

So, burritos are often a topic of conversation amongst all of us: they’re awesome in SF, harder to get awesome in Seattle, and, it turns out, harder to get awesome in NYC. James and Radha say the Mexican place near them in Brooklyn is good, but we didn’t have a chance to try it. In fact, we didn’t have any burritos on the whole trip, believe it or not.

Thus, The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel is the perfect complement to this blog post. I look forward to a similar Alameda-Renton tunnel to get me a good burrito here in Seattle, sooner than later.

Finally, special thanks to cousin Lisa Lutz for taking us on book tour with her. Lisa, if you’re reading this, definitely get yourself a good Pancho Villa or El Toro when you’re back in SF—just in case the burrito tunnel to Seattle isn’t open when you get back!

Going with the nostalgia, since both Bre Pettis and Lee LeFever tagged me in the five things you don’t know about me blog game, I’ve decided to play it here and now in the form of “five things from the 1980s that you don’t know or remember about me.”

1. The first live music show I saw was the Ramones at the Hollywood Palladium on April 10, 1980. I was still under 5′ tall. I went with my friend Loren Philip. Several people whom I didn’t know at the time, but who were also at the show, would later become my good friends. It was an incredible show.
2. So, it’d be fair-enough to categorize me as: one of those kids who saw the Ramones and then went out and started their own bands. My first band was Popped Oxheart, which was led by Bernard Bernard (who also was at that Ramones’ show). Popped Oxheart’s active career spanned from morning to afternoon on November 27, 1981, during which I recorded a 30-minute side of a cassette, labeled “Jay’s Garage.” In 2006, I remastered “Jay’s Garage” for private release on CD. (btw, if any of the other members of Popped Oxheart are reading this: contact me—I’d love to hear from you, and I’ll send you a copy of the CD!!)
3. From ’81 to the present, Bernard Bernard has been my best friend and musical collaborator. Most recently, we’ve been talking about releasing a CD compilation of Slobot, our band with Eduard Margidan that I recorded on cassette in 1986. In 2006, I finished remastering all of the Slobot tapes for CD—so, maybe we’ll release a Slobot CD in 2007.
4. Speaking of bands and my friend Loren, when we lived in Santa Cruz, he once (circa 1988) got himself a gig playing a big party at Davenport beach. He didn’t have a band or songs per se, and I don’t remember how it all came together. But, I do remember that we ended up on a makeshift stage on the beach in front of 150+ people, and that I improvised on guitar for two hours or so, up until the police came. Some people came up to me afterwards and said they really liked the music!
5. From ’83 to ’87, I gigged a lot in LA, especially with a band called Man on Fire (’85 – ’87). We played pretty much all of the classic Hollywood clubs that were left at the time, plus many of the less-classic West LA / Santa Monica and Valley clubs: the Whiskey, Roxy, Troubador, Central (later called the Viper Room), Palamino, Madame Wongs West (we played there every month), Hop Singhs, and others whose names escape me. We also did a big outdoor show as part of the L.A. Festival in 1987, which apparently made me a famous rock star in many non-English-speaking tourists’ photos.

(Be sure to check out the music on the Popped Oxheart and Slobot pages. Plus, if you don’t own them already, be sure to buy the new CDs of Bernard Bernard music—they’re awesome.)

So, in order to perpetuate the five things game, I should tag five more people. But, pretty much everyone I know with a blog has already been tagged. So, I’ll just change the game: anyone can play, no need for invitations—what are five things from the 1980s that we don’t know or remember about you?

Head over to Straus Literary and get ready for that bidding war on your memoir. . .