Favorites of 2008

Goodbye 2008. It's been grand. Well, not really. But it's definitely been memorable.

Favorite News Moments

Not to be confused with most important news moments, although there is some overlap. These are favorites because they were enjoyable/diverting, with was not the case with Mugabe stealing elections or terrorists bombing Mumbai.

1. Obama presidential election victory speech: I love watching people cry in patriotic fervor
2. Giants beat Patriots: best, most satisfying game ever
3. Sarah Palin's convention speech: yep. that was fun.
4. Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich busted: lots of criminality and venality in 2008, but rarely with such jaw dropping anecdotes, tetchy gossip and theatrical hair. And he just keeps on giving.
5. "Boris vs. Ken" London mayoral race: or rather "bonking Boris vs. Red Ken"

Favorite Movies

This year my favorite movies are mostly popcorn fun flicks. Sorry.

1. Wall-E: I loved him from the very first trailer
2. Son of Rambo: P made me watch the original Rambo movie first but I love this one the best
3. Iron Man: and unlike Batman not a massive metaphor
4. Hellboy II: full of beautiful and inventive detail
5. Ghost Town: ricky gervais
6. Twilight:hated the book. loved the movie.
7. Redbelt: Rocky for those of us who like Son of Rambo better than Rambo

Here is a list of movies that are supposedly going to be on my favorite movies 2008 list when I finally see them all sometime in September 2009

1. A Christmas Tale
2. Slumdog Millionaire
3. Waltz with Bashir
4. The Wrestler
5. Wendy and Lucy
6. I've Loved You So Long
7. Tell No One

Favorite Music

This is not year-specific. Just a list of some things I enjoyed this year.

1. Spirit of the Century, Blind Boys of Alabama
2. The Crane Wife, The Decemberists
3. Wrecking Ball, Emmylou Harris
4. Spirit, Willie Nelson
5. Turn Around, Jonny Lang
6. Charles Mingus Plays Piano, Charles Mingus
7. The Greatest, Cat Power (yes I have her release of this year, but this I listen to more)

Favorite Books

Ditto the above category

1. Let the Trumpet Sound, Stephen B. Oates
2. Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner
3. New Art City, Jed Pearl
4. All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
5. Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky
6. Living Things, Anne Porter
7. Lalla Rookh, Thomas Moore (if you have a thing for overwrought romances of yesteryear, read this aloud with a friend and you will laugh till you cry)

Cold and Foggy Night

Walking around the Heights on Stonewall Road a block off Kavanaugh Blvd, just before heading over to Starbucks for something hot. The cold, wet, wintry weather makes warm interiors and fire places so much more inviting. Perfect for Christmas. I'm savoring it now because by Friday the forecast is a high of 67 degrees.

Arkansas Symphony Christmas Spectacular (and City Hall)

Robinson Center lit for Christmas

The other night P and I (boyfriend, I guess should specify, not brother) took advantage of the gift of some tickets and went to the Christmas Spectacular at the Robinson Center. On the way we passed City Hall, and P and I stopped to look at it. There was a lit Christmas tree inside and lit Christmas trees have a hypnotic power when you are out on the sidewalk looking in and it is freezing cold outside. I'd never even been inside City Hall. Shocking, I know, that in a childhood full of field trips we never visited city management but there you have it. So today on my lunch break I went by to have a peek.

Surprisingly, City Hall is still in City Hall. I half expected operations to have moved to some drab 80s-era municipal building with nothing left of the old enterprise but the words "City Hall" in stone on the lintel. But no, City Hall is still in City Hall! This was the big discovery of my brief tour.


Scott Carter, public relations guy for city management, xeroxed me some plans for the building and tossed out a few recollections of the site. Apparently this is the 100th anniversary of the building and the Arkansas Historic Preservation people put together a tour to commemorate the occasion. So maybe I'll look that up. But mainly what impresses is the quiet and order and stately calm of the interior which belies what most people know of city operations. You expect the dehydration and muscle strain unique to airports and modern bureaucratic office space. Instead you get smooth proportions, tall windows, and cool, gray marble. People were quiet, and moved purposefully between offices across atriums, and answered questions directly. If the feeling of an interior can lend itself to efficient bureaucracy, then City Hall should have no trouble developing a functionary soft shoe through the troubles of officialdom.

Welcome Home P

My brother says he was just mugged at gunpoint downtown. "It was clear the guy was new to mugging." Which made me laugh because being told someone has just had a gun on them is hard to absorb. P complied and A did too, which amounted to an empty wallet and a cheap watch, until the mugger saw A's iphone. So he demanded that. At this my heart constricted a little. Because A is poor but he does own this one beautiful thing, his iphone, and he loves that iphone. And P says that to his panic A refused. And told the guy what he could do with himself. And at this point of the narrative I remembered Richard Price's Lush Life and this is the point where the inexperienced mugger shoots the victim in order not to loose face. But possibly because the mugger had no friend around to see how it all turned out, or possibly because it was cold, or possibly because he was genuinely overwhelmed with curiosity, instead of shooting somebody (and I remembered Brian Beutler's account of being shot) he asked what the boys were up to with all those photos and adhesive and made small talk for a minute and then walked away.

And this was on a street downtown. Not a bad part of town, my brother says, although the details seem fuzzy to him. Just one of those streets parallel to Main. I've heard people who live downtown talk this way; people living on twelfth say it doesn't get bad till nineteenth and so on. And the rule apparently is that the area you are used to navigating yourself never seems dangerous to you personally. I am guilty of this myself. Little Rock has been famous for its crime in the past, but most of it is in a few particularly bad areas, so that whole swathes of the city are largely untouched by it. Yet I mentor in one of those few bad spots and have never felt any qualms about being down there by myself, often after dark. It's familiar. Only in the abstract do I acknowledge the foolishness of that arrangement.

Off To Work

Frozen on my windshield

cafe au lait

Gingerbread Baking

Courthouse Art Update

Artwork Tweaked To Satisfy Its Critics (But you have to sign in)

So, I've already blogged about the Echo Dynamics water sculpture out in front of the federal courthouse that has been raising local ire since it was unveiled in 2007. Now comes the announcement (scroll down to "Water Feature") that improvements to the tune of $120,000 are slated for the sculpture.

From the graphic links on the website it looks like the improvements are mostly landscaping. How to improve hated public sculpture 101: hide it behind trees.