Up & Over

Gotta go over to mom’s in Burbank today to help her with something so I’ve pre-charted a 20-mile course that’s gonna get me upriver over there and then to IKEA to stock up on $2 battery-operated LED light strings for next Christmas, then down to the Supply Sergeant on Victory near Magnolia because I rarely …

Heavenly Coffee

I’ve written before of the single bag of local coffee we purchased at the airport in Kigali on our way out of Rwanda back to Kenya when we visited Africa in 2005 and how it turned out to be the best coffee we’ve ever had. After we’d quickly emptied the bag I tried on several …

Night Riding

I think my brainstem mighta gotten a touch o’ the frostbite during the combined 40 miles of cycling that I did last night between 7:30 p.m. and 1:30 a.m., because I’m up this morning with a killer base-of-the-skull headache perhaps from improperly thawing my cranium out afterwards. In other words, it was COLD last night. …

Fighting For The Write

I had dinner with Mark Burton last night, one of my oldest friends. I pedaled up just ahead of the surprise rain showers  to the Versailles restaurant (never bothered to figure out why a Cuban restaurant chain is named after a French palace) on La Cienega just south of Pico. I hadn’t seen him since …

Quite Possibly The Greatest Movie Soundtrack In The History Of Movie Soundtracks

Am I exaggerating in the headline? Maybe a little, but in watching Charles Burnett’s 1977 Killer of Sheep (IMDB link) last night I was extraordinarily moved throughout this strangely compelling and haunting film about life in mid-1970s Watts — equally so by the evocative music choices that complement it. If the soundtrack is not available …

A Reflective Quality

Our wonderful tree for Christmas 2007, as decorated this afternoon and seen with its reflection in the glass top of our coffeetable: Merry Christmas!