Hey! Everyone’s stuck somewhere else, but that’s okay (Well, not so much that it’s okay, but what hell are you gonna do, right?). Anyway here is the Holiday Playlist from 2004 and the one from 2005. Most of the songs should still work, since I’ve just re-uploaded everything. I have a few songs ready for this year, too, but no pretty page. I’ll keep these up for a couple of week, I think:

Aimee Mann - The Christmas Song
The Boy Least Likely To - Little Donkey
My Morning Jacket - Christmas Time is Here Again
David Bazan - THe Little Town Bethlehem
The Eels - Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas
Middle Distance Runner - X-mas Party
Aimee Mann - I’ll Be Home For Christmas
Sufjan Stevens - The Friendly Beasts
Dave Brubeck - A Tannenbaum

Have a good weekend, and get some rest, all right? UPDATE: I added two more songs per request (Thanks, Owl!). Enjoy!

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - Cold White Christmas from Six Eyes

My mom had to fly back to the Philippines because her brother died. I’ll miss her, and I’ll miss everyone else in their own respective geographies.

Luckily, I finished my last paper, and I can get out the door pretty soon, headed back to San Francisco via Long Island. I’m not really sure how to get there, but I’m sure I’ll get there. I’m looking forward to some Actual Rest this week and when I get back, more visitors. Everyone have a good holiday, I will be checking in, so don’t worry if you haven’t gotten your IR fill just yet.

On Saturday we went to Momofuku again. A small noodle bar in the East Village. Originally, Ben had told me about it and I filed it in the place where restaurant recommendations live in my head and it took a while to get there. Last week I’d been craving it, so we went again. It’s tiny, so go early and avoid the crowd. Also, I’m a big guy, so getting to the bathroom is hilariously awkward. But anyway, the food:

This time I got a better picture of the Berkshire pork (above) in the Momofuku Ramen. Here’s an An article in the Boston Globe on Berkshire pork; the marbling is really amazing and the chunks you get in the Momofuku Ramen (much preferred to the shredded pork) is downright savory. The fat in it isn’t overwhelming or greasy — it’s got a taste similar to bacon but the consistency is much more firm, meatier. A little on the expensive side, but that’s the price premium of Berkshire.

The broths weren’t too salty, and the noodles were done right. The freshness is much different from a bowl of Pho (of which we’ve had none since getting here), but the chopped green onions add a nice contrast to the richness of everything else. Also, it’s topped with a poached egg sitting unharmed in the broth — There’s something ritualistic (even perverse?) about breaking the yoke yourself in the broth.

Alternative to pork? The Chicken Ramen is what Owl usually orders, and as far as I can tell, by asking and tasting a piece of chicken, it’s very good as well. No egg, either, but Owl’s allergic to eggs; or was, anyway, we haven’t conducted test — Yet.

I can’t even finish a bowl of the ramen, which makes me wary to try the much-lauded pork buns, but someday, it will happen.

Momofuku Noodle
163 First Ave., New York, NY 10003
between 10th and 11th Sts.
www.momofuku.com

I have stuff to say about these songs, but I have to get to work. Update: Stuff has been said. I know it’s just baseball, but it really does break my heart.

1. Aaron Schroeder - Fake Crimes (demo) from Here Comes the Flood.

   The name looked familiar, and then when I heard the song, I thought, “Hey, I just added that guy to my myspace!” And why, you ask? He’s from Richland, WA of course.

2. +/- (Plus/Minus) - One Day You’ll Be There

   One of the Baluyut brothers from Versus, the drums on this are pretty great. The end of the song goes into a sort of stilted, start/stop crescendo, which sounds a little bit weird — like hard-knee attack on compression, everything goes silent to quickly, but it makes for an intersting effect. Still catchy as hell, too.

3. Spoon - Everything Hits at Once from Paper Covers Rock

   Britt Daniel has always struck me as the king of indie rock cool.

4. Islands - Don’t Call Me Whitney, Bobby from Ear Farm

   These guys remind me of Oliver Brown, the ukulele playing guy from Santa Cruz. I don’t know why, they don’t sound that similar, but it may be something in the delivery. Aside from the surprise F-bomb, the song is cloyingly shy, which is charming. They also rhyme “stories” with “sorry.”

5. Regina Spector - Fidelity from Said the Gramaphone

   I’ve been whistling this song for days.

I know I post about this frequently (don’t I?), but I was listening to some old My Little Brother recordings that are available at archive.org and I remembered that Dear Nora is releasing one last album for Magic Marker Records. You can get it at iTunes and there’s a free mp3 over at the Magic Marker Website, too. I haven’t been keeping up with much of anything lately (I guess, Heroes and Studio 60), especially music , but now that everyone is putting up year end lists for music, I find myself not having much of anything to contribute to the discussion.

I do, however, want to do something. Remember when I recorded a version of Brand New Colony for my 2003 Favorites List? Listening to old stuff and being a firm believer in covering-songs-makes-you-a-better-person, I kind of want to do it again, but I don’t know where to start. What new stuff did you listen to this year that you really liked? Don’t have any opinion? Go listen to something from one of the many compilations of year-end lists over at The Hype Machine. I just snagged one randomly; work from this list, even: Audio Deficit Disorder’s list, 33-26. Leave a comment, let me know, and if I get some good suggestions, maybe early next year we’ll have some new covers up.

Don’t want to hear me do it? Do it yourself. That’d be fun for everyone.

I decided today that there’s no way in hell I’m going to ever survive my first East Coast Winter with my current wardrobe. Even if I did somehow manage to wear all the clothes I own at once, I think I would still get chilled to the bone; it’s that evil, evil wind that just shoots right through you.

I’m getting closer to done; I still have two papers left, which is more than half-way. Now that I think about it, that means I had an insane amount of work due this past couple of weeks. I haven’t felt this kind of school-related stress, like, ever. I’m kind of glad I didn’t get into law school.

What’s interesting is that the amount of traffic around here has been increasing for the holidays; I think people keep looking for that .mp3 of Horation Sanz & SNL gang’s “I wish it was Christmas today.” Well, I’ll put it back up eventually, but too many people were deep-linking to it and gobbling up my bandwidth. I’m working on a new Holiday Playlist, maybe, but I usually don’t put it up until like three hours before Christmas Day, look for it around then!

I will, however, leave you more AIH. Enjoy!

That’s the silence around here. I’m working hard on projects and wrapping things up with the last two weeks of the semester. This week is particularly crazy, but next week, perhaps even Friday, I’ll be back with some content. Holidays are coming fast, I hope you know what you’re doing.

I’ll be in San Francisco this season, by the way, so if you’re going to be around, you know what to do.

The last few weeks have been crazy around here, what with three straight weeks of visitors at Crooked House (that’s my newly dubbed name for our place). I’m really freaking tired and now way behind on work; this weekend I will be consumed with catching up for the end of the semester.

The time, however, was ample and worth it — Family and friends, and especially my niece, CIA, running around and making everyone laugh and not be grouchy about anything in the world because she just laughs and usually isn’t grouchy about much, unless she’s tired or sick or something. Simplicity at its finest.

We went to Bryant Park and saw people ice skate and they lit up a Christmas tree from Quebec — Canadian Mounties posed with everyone by the tree. I find that we constantly stumble upon things in this city, there’s always something going on and just the volume of people makes everything seem much more majestic.

I find it hard to understand, but maybe I will in the future, that people don’t like New York. It may be overwhelming, scary, crowded, and at times impersonal, but that can go for just about anywhere, and elsewhere you don’t have the Promenade or the DUMBO waterfront to go to when you’re sick of Manhattan and just want to decompress. Next year, I will stay in on Black Friday, or most definitely will not go to Macy’s. I said to my mom, “It’s one of the biggest cities in the world on the busiest shopping day of the year.” I don’t know what I expected, but it was nice to get the hell out of there.

But back to reality as I drive to the airport once more tomorrow, the Belt Parkway, provided there’s less traffic than the 278, is actually an enjoyable drive — Through Bay Ridge, Coney Island, and an impeccable view of the Verrazano.

This guy is younger than me, and to think that from now on, this will happen more and more often, is a little bit unsettling. But it’s okay. Have a good weekend.