- 2011, a year in lists
10 things I’ll remember
- Atlanta had real snow. For a week! And it made the whole city stand beautifully, silently, dumbfoundedly still.
- Our wild girl. Sweet little D. went to coyote heaven after 17 years in charge of everything. I think of her every time I walk in the back door and probably always will.
- Lila-as-Vanna. I did a product demo on stage at Google, which is pretty much a rite of passage for people in my line of work. I have no memory of my time in the spotlight other than a faint sensation that my eyes were OPEN VERY WIDE. Not unlike a deer in headlights, you might say.
- Bike commute sunsets. I bought a very adorable commuter bike and rode it back and forth to work quite a lot, and when summer evenings got very warm, fantasized about getting a pool and diving straight in at the end of a ride, bike and all.
- Unicorns and rainbows. B. took me with him on a work trip to Ireland, and we spent most of the time tooling around the spectacularly lovely countryside. One day I woke up to a magical rainbow atop some cliffs outside my hotel window. Another day we spotted white horses roaming free in a national park. It’s hard to make out in the photograph, but there’s totally a horn on that one in the front.
- iReport turned 5. And I wrote a story about it on CNN.com. And launched a totally new version that Stephen Colbert decided needed to be lampooned. My baby’s all grown up and I’m mighty proud of it.
- Thirty five. I turned 35 and also lost as many pounds. I’d made a resolution in January (the same one as each of the oh, say, five years previous) that I’d take better care of myself. Get some exercise and sleep and eat like a grownup. And this year I actually did, perhaps egged on by the mental crisis surrounding my advancing age. (I am officially halfway to seventy!) Whatever. I’m 35 and hott with two t’s, yo.
- Munich-Paris-London-Berlin. It was an epic work trip (really, how lucky am I?) with a great deal of adventure worked in on the sides, including lots of opportunities to dust off my severely out-of-practice German. The only thing the trip was missing was sleep, but I’m happy to save that for a rainy day.
- Brennan vs. the SUV. Some asshole in a black SUV hit Brennan while he was biking home from work in November, knocking him out cold and breaking four of his bones, and then drove off. After three stays in the hospital and a round of new bed linens and pillows, B. is finally getting back to being himself again. We’re lucky, really, and ever so thankful for helmets and the sweetest friends and family.
- Christmas at the White House. I couldn’t help but be giddy about receiving an invitation to a holiday reception at the White House. We got to sit on the furniture and even had our photo taken with the Obamas, who are both exceedingly tall and beautiful.
Books I read
- The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation Is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories (Frank Rose)
- Bossypants (Tina Fey)
- A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan)
- What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (Haruki Murakami)
- Rogue Island (Bruce DeSilva)
- Juliet, Naked (Nick Hornby)
- Let the Great World Spin (Colum McCann)
- The Paris Wife (Paula McClain)
- Just Kids (Patti Smith)
- Stone Arabia (Dana Spiotta)
- Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures (Robert K. Wittmann)
- The Adults (Alison Espach)
- The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (Jeffrey Toobin)
- Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Daniel H. Pink)
- The F***ing Epic Twitter Quest of @MayorEmanuel (Dan Sinker)
- 1Q84 (Haruki Murakami)
Total: 16
Fiction:Nonfiction :: 9:7
Men:Women authors :: 10:6
Trips I took
- January: New York
- February: San Francisco, New York
- March: Austin, Texas; Ellijay, Georgia
- April: San Francisco, Washington, DC
- June: New York, Ireland
- July: Portland, Yellowstone & the Grand Tetons
- July: New York
- August: Reynolds Plantation
- September: Boston
- October: Munich, Paris, London, Berlin
- November: New York, Reynolds Plantation
- December: Washington, DC; San Francisco; Red Top Mountain State Park
Total: 20
Work:Pleasure :: 14:6
Top cities: New York (5x), San Francisco (3x), Washington DC (2x)
Music I listened to most (really?!)
- Aloha
- The Dodos
- Animal Collective
- Fruit Bats
- Grizzly Bear
- Phosphorescent
- The Black Keys
- Band of Horses
- Beach House
- Paul Simon
- Our wild girl
Daisy Dee Collins was the very definition of a firecracker. Bright, crackling, lovely, and more than a little dangerous.
She died Tuesday, we pray peacefully, after seventeen legendary years. Her spark will be dearly missed.
Daisy, 1993-2011
- Project #1
Karyn and I promised one another that we’d put one little thing into the world each month in 2011. What constitutes a “thing” is up to us, not yet defined, and most likely to include elements of participatory art, gooey sweetness, and digital experimentation. This month we struck out with super low-tech stickers and sharpies.
Behold the January edition: thought bubble graffiti! I smacked this one up on the window of a defunct bank teller drive-through near my house, where some skater kids spend most evenings. Here’s hoping one of them decides to fill in the blank bubble. I walk past it on the way to Marta, so will keep an eye out. I also stuck a few others around town today. Crossing my fingers there’ll be something to find when I go back.
- The year in listicles
Ten things I will remember about 2010
1. I started off the year calling it 20-zen. That – and my daily yoga regimen – lasted until the first major news story hit, on January 12. The long weeks that followed I’ll never forget. An earthquake hit Haiti, and suddenly all the many thousands of people who knew people in Haiti needed to get in touch, but couldn’t. So instead they started posting messages on places like CNN iReport: My mother is missing. She is 74. Last seen near Rue St-Honore. Help. Please. Together with a ramshackle group of 100 or so unstoppably kind colleagues, friends and family, we turned all those pleas for help into a database. We shared it with Google and the Red Cross, put it on TV, and reconnected some families and helped give others peace. That is why we go to work every day.
2. Snowshoe-ing with Brennan to peer into the glacial void at Mt. Rainier, then cozying up with his sweet parents and cocoa at the still-original 1916 lodge. Sidenote: I wish my government were still interested in building such beautiful places.
3. Dude, I was totally on a panel with Pete Cashmore. My Twitter friends recognize why this is awesome. My Facebook friends mostly do not.
4. For at least a few months (the warm but not hot months), I rode my bike back and forth to work.
5. My beautiful and badass sister got married to an equally badass (if not quite as beautiful because, hey, she’s my sister) fella, and all the people who love them danced by the sea all night long.
6. I survived a very heated public debate on the value of user-generated content in the news. IN FRENCH.
7. Thanksgiving in London, where they love Christmas lights even more than Americans do.
8. I made a photo booth in my house (for the annual holiday party) and the pictures sparkled, if I do say so myself.
9. My little brother’s house burned down. Mercifully he’s OK, and his dog Peach, too.
10. More than anything, I’ll remember tiny, wonderful moments with friends all year long. Smoky eyes, art scheming, crowded front-porch suppers, and on and on and on.
The books I read
1 – Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger
2 – And Then There’s This, by Bill Wasik
3 – The Manual of Detection, by Jedidiah Berry
4 – The Ask, by Sam Lipsyte
5 – Citrus County, by John Brandon (read this! now! Flannery O’Connor mixed with Judy Blume.)
6 – Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen
7 – Where Good Ideas Come From, by Steven Johnson
8 – The Big Short, by Michael Lewis
9 – The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman
10 – [UPDATE!] All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost, by Lan Samantha Chang
10 – [UPDATE!] Cognitive Surplus, by Clay Shirky (not worth it, dear friends)
There were many others I started but did not finish, including the newish Jonathan Lethem book, Chronic City, whose characters are just awful. I also tried a little Tao Lin (too too clever) and enjoyed quite a few of the stories in Doug Dorst’s The Surf Guru, even though short stories tend not to fill me up.
P.S. Where are the women writers?!? Note to self: Fix this in 2011.
What I listened to
The lovely thing about Last.fm is it tallies up all the music I listen to deliberately (that is, the stuff I queue up on my own, on my own computer or iPod) and gives it back to me in tidy little charts. Soooo … my most-listened artists of 2010 were:
1 – Paul Simon. When Vampire Weekend’s second album disappointed, I went back to the source and found what I wanted.
2 – Local Natives. Ah-maze-ing live show.
3 – Fruit Bats. Really? I hardly remember listening to this band this year. Must’ve been the old favorites (and maybe the memory spurred by ‘Youth in Revolt’?) and not the new record, which is entirely forgettable.
4 - Big Star. RIP Alex Chilton.
5 – Coconut Records. For the first cup of coffee.
Homemade dinners I remember liking the best
2010, you were a good one.
xoxo
- Feed archives are back online!
- Feed archives are back online!:
Hooray! This magazine was my first online love. Now, if only Open Letters would make a reappearance. Oh how I adored those printable PDFs with their sweet little New Yorker-like illustrations at the tops of the pages. Always thought I’d do my own printable mag someday, but iPad makes the idea seem a little antiquated. Maybe will save for the day when paper goes retro chic. (Or perhaps it already has?)
- This is a video trailer for a book (a book I think I’d…
This is a video trailer for a book (a book I think I’d like to read).
- Books and lists
I promised myself at the beginning of this year I’d pick back up on my book reading. God knows I read a TON most every day of the year, but lately it’s more short-form than long, more utilitarian than adventurous. (Note to self: this would be a good point to mention that Nicholas Carr book. You know, the one about short and longform reading, attention and intellect. The one you keep reading, um, tweets about.)
ANYway, I just finished a book today and feel like making a list. So. Books read in 2010 (so far):1. Catcher in the Rye. (A re-read, on the occasion of Salinger’s passing.)
2. And Then There’s This, by Bill Wasik.
3. The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry
4. The Ask, by Sam Lipsyte
5. Citrus County, by John Brandon (Rumpus book club selection!)
Quite a few others are on the not-yet-and-possibly-never-finished list. Such as the new Jonathan Lethem, which I want badly to love but can’t really. And Jonah Lehrer’s “How We Decide,” which I might finish, but also kinda think the first 100 pages are enough, you know?
Next up: whatever comes in the mail from Rumpus, and First Stop in the New World, a history of Mexico City.
- My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-6-13)
- My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-6-13):
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
- Fascinating: blue dots indicate local photogs, red ones are…
Fascinating: blue dots indicate local photogs, red ones are tourists. (via Coudal)