I made this brownie cake in the shape of a cross for our annual Christmas party. After dinner, turned out the lights and made all our guests sing Happy Birthday to Jesus. (i think it was actually his 2004th or 2005th..oops) Unfortunately, I didn't have time to make Pin the Tale on the Donkey on the Nativity Scene which was a huge success last year. We made Christmas sweaters adorned with ornaments and branches from our tree. My favorite was my cousin Fred who glued on my dog's Gingerbread Man Squeaky toy so it'd squeak when anyone hugged him. Then our entire party (like twenty-four of us) went to a family friend's Christmas party in our sweaters. (Thanks, Charles! :) We came home a couple hours later to our center piece on fire. (don't forget to blow out candles!) she's a violinist so she's meticulous about keeping her hands safe and warm, and now she can do it with STYLE! She just launched a CD in Japan - check out her site here: www.Esther-Kim.com We somehow manage to keep topping the previous year in wonderfulness. Best Christmas yet! will anxiously be checking this everyday: www.IsItChristmas.com Happy Holidays, everyone!! :) Look what I get to add to my book collection! A 1934 print of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. When I have it in my hands, I feel like I'm holding a relic from some enchanted land, or that it has some magical power I haven't yet deciphered. It's in pristine condition and so so beautiful... I was instantly enchanted by the set when I saw it at Feldman Books several months ago but couldn't justify that it was the price of a designer boot. I went back yesterday just to look at it and hold it again. When I came in, the book store owner greeted me with, "Didn't you come in many months ago for the Lewis Carroll set?" and I said, "I haven't been able to stop thinking about it!" He brought it out for me again, and while I was longingly admiring it he offered me a lower price, adding "because you like it so much." "Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. "I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone: "so I ca'n't take more." "You mean you ca'n't take less," said the Hatter: "it's very easy to take more than nothing." One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it : - it was the black kittens fault entirely. My Very Merry UnBirthday this past summer At my favorite SF spot, Bourbon and Branch, a real speakeasy during the Prohibition that covered as a cigar shop. They still require password for entry into their door that's hidden in the middle of the Tenderloin next to a crackwhore, and recently opened up the basement (which was the location of the actual bar in the 1920s). I really recommend trying to check out all four rooms at some point. The party invites were these "Drink Me" viles filled with port, and a riddle for the password "Mister Rabbit" to enter. All the tea cakes had "Eat me" or "Try me" written on them. It was a lot of fun...but I always enjoy planning parties more than the actual events, I don't know why... ...maybe it's the difference between hopeful creation and impending end. Both seem to me an awareness of the passage of time but with very different lights. And maybe that's why youth is generally pleasantly looks upon, the illusion of a generous portion of time that in large quantities appear to be hope. Ok, side tangent, I watched this silly historian's talk who proudly found what Michelangelo looked like, pulling from the statue of David (which is assumed to be modeled after him in his youth) and the Vitruvian Man (him in old age). The absurdity of the endeavor to begin with aside, it interested me that the portraits of him as a youth and in old age didn't satisfy the audience; people wanted to know what he'd look like in his "prime." And I thought maybe people always picture themselves in their prime as the base metric; viewing old age they as a deviance from and childhood as an approach to it. Misc Herr Johann
Check out his Car Locator app that was awarded 3rd place in the Google Android Developers Challenge!
![]() Suitcase to go home to Southern California for the holiday Clothes - Check. Shoes - Check. Flute - Check. Herr Johann - Check. The T-Rexes came to see Baby Jesus right before the Three Wise Men. They ate the camel afterward so no one really likes to talk about it. Herr Johann prefers unsweetened whipped cream because he's European. Pelle prefers sweetened (and a larger quantity) because he's American. We picked this giant tub of avocados Thanksgiving morning.
After dinner we gave out "Avocado Awards" to coerce the kids to perform. My cousin and I were offered avocados to stop playing. ![]() The Berlin Philharmonic (cond. Simon Rattle) was playing in Davies Hall this weekend (Wagner, Shoenberg, Brahms)! They were incredible. Clean without having wiped away any poetry. And all the men in tails with every shoe pristinely polished. It was the same feeling of insulated perfection I get in some chocolatiers & patisseries, but elevated to the sublime I remember attending a performance of Carmen Fantasy by an exceptionally terrible ![]() (Herr Johann scalded his tongue rushing to finish tea at end of intermission) orchestra last winter (some charity benefit, though I wondered if the actual charity was to offer the orchestra an audience). It was like a realist painter, entirely due to his own ineptitude, creating something of impressionism. I tend to get disproportionately upset by things like that (like when I see a nice clothing design made with poor fabric). I think it's because I think if one decides to endeavor in some creation then they should strive for perfection or not at all. ![]() Then I thought about my own dilettantism in dance, music (and this site), and the joy it brings me. I realized I was not recognizing the joy of creating, differentiated from creation. ..so awful orchestra and cheap clothing, you're okay, I guess. BUT, the Berlin Phil's prom queen, buddha & jesus combined. divine in creating and creation.
My usually viscous honey refused to oblige to gravity. Here it is stoically in its jar. Nothing could be done but spend all morning reading in the bathtub. ![]() "Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them by our conviction that they are themselves and not anything else, by the immobility of our conception of them." ...or because it's just really cold, Proust. "he did nothing all morning and spent the afternoon writing up what he'd done in the morning." "He never did anything to me it's true, but I once played a most shameless nasty trick on him, and the moment I did it, I immediately hated him for it."
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