Happy to report that the christmas festivities have subsided for now. No more fitting a million parties into one night. No more having to deal with rabid shoppers. I'm pretty much in the clear until the family arrives from the islands in a week.

Thoroughly enjoyed Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker. More modern dance than traditional ballet, it included cartoonish characters like a flamenco dancer with matador sidekicks, a troupe of freddie mercury looking bodybuilders, a technicolor gang of motorcyle beatniks, and bespeckled, pajama clad cupids. Excellent all the way through.

Also happened to stop in at the UCLA Fowler Museum on the way back to the car to check out the Botanica exhibit (photo above). Very facinating stuff and reminded me of why I took up anthropology in college. Who says that LA doesn't have any valuable culture? Its just not European based culture which is overrated anyway. I'd better stop now before I start getting into the evilness of colonialism - thats a WHOLE other disscussion best left for another time.

The christmas parties were cool. Curly's was pretty low key, at her apartment with a bunch of people from the office as well as others. Guess it was considered a general "holiday" party as half party was Jewish. She had a great cd mix exchange which I thought was different. Bring a mix cd you made and take someone else's home. I ended up with some lazy ass dudes cd that was barely labelled and was basically a best of Stevie Wonder cd. Interesting tidbit of the night had to come from my talk with an ex-Arclight Cinema employee who told me that all the employee training one goes through there is all based on Scientology teachings, right down to the pie charts. Doesn't really surprise me as the church has their hands in all kinds of dealings when it comes to entertainment in this town.

Left Curly's just in time to catch Nightstalker's closing set at some random bar/club in TARZANA(?). Yes. Tarzana. In the valley. First time for everything right? He dropped some major drum and bass tunes and the kids were going bananas. Racked up a couple of rewinds as well which isn't bad. Guess the party was supported by MySpace.com which I'm starting to believe is slowly becoming a cult...haha. My ex-housemate has come a long way. Seems only a short while ago that I was teaching him the basics of beat-matching. He's so loving it and it shows....the adulation, the 'rockstar' treatment. I'll probably check him out again this week at another weekly dnb club he's playing.

And in the random discoveries department, I don't what the hell is going on with my facial hair these days but one side of my face seems to be growing at a faster rate than the other. Very puzzling...

hasta luego.