The less said about it, the better. But:
Best book I read: They were all very good. Remembrance of Earth's Past, maybe.
Best movie I saw in a theater: Green Room. No contest.
Best movie I saw not in a theater: A Separation.
Best album: Pile. But WORRY was very good, too.
Best song: Sex & Drugs. But Festival Song was very, very good. And Nobody Speak was also very good.
Best show I went to: A Giant Dog at Cake Shop (5/26).
Best podcasts for boys: Hollywood Handbook and The Trap.
We dropped by Cake Shop early on the 31st to wave goodbye, but it didn't seem much different than any other night there: Sparse crowd, inauspicious booking. Maybe why they're closing up shop. I was tempted to nab a t-shirt but didn't after I saw the designs. This notwithstanding, Cake Shop has consistently been a great place to see a show, play a show, have a drink, take a shit, buy a record, screen a movie; simultaneously edgy and comfy. Several of the best moments of my life took place in that sloping basement room.
I'd only found out about its closure the week before, and by that point we'd already made plans to go to out to Sunnyvale to catch an early Peelander-Z show, with Ken Minami's new band Toranavox opening. They're (Toranavox) still a two-piece, a white dude with a couple of dreads taking over drumming and yelling duties from Adam Amram. Ken still manages to evoke the sound of several different guitars all at once, although he's traded in his acoustic for a sparkling, blood-colored Strat. His stage act is several notches fiercer, too. He stalked up and down the stage, his topknot bobbing like a rooster's comb, shaking his fist at the crowd and apparently inviting individual members of the audience up on stage to fight him. He gradually shed his kimono to reveal a skeletal, Stickles-esque physique.
It's been a while since I've seen the crew from the Z area. Maybe it was the weirdness inherent to the gig - they had to hustle offstage at 10:30 sharp to make way for the late show, some NYE hair-gel DJ - but Peelander-Z's set now seems much more focused on party / audience participation bits than on, you know, funny pop punk songs. This was the first time I'd seen them, for example, that they didn't play Ninja High Schooool. Not a complaint, really; after all, per Kengo, the band is 90 percent theater and 10 percent music. And they're so, so good at the theater. I laughed and gawped the whole time. This was also the first time I'd seen Peelander Purple, who's got a super dope, like, rhinocerine costume. Afterwards we idly considered inviting them to Pumps, visible on the eastern horizon beyond the BP station, but we had to beat feet to Bed-Stuy to hit up our friends-of-friends Frank and Nelly's house party.
(Side note: Is Sunnyvale Kotaro Tsukada's bar??)
Beau and Sam and many of the Kellys and other nice adults were there, and the hosts had supplied "cookie candy salad" and chips and things, and Eileen had baked an honest-to-god strawberry pie. I drank champagne but not much else, having decided to try a (mostly) sober New Year's Eve after getting way too fucked up at Thursday karaoke at Insa and finding myself hollering out the words to Rake At The Gates Of Hell as I tottered alone down 3rd Ave. to a few queasy hours of sleep before work on Friday. Yoga played Mase on the Spotify and Suze and Frank "danced me" on the couch, pulling my arms and legs like I was a sleepy marionette.
No resolutions, per se. But Sam is retiring the iOS "funny ghost" emoji; Beau is ditching Pusheen, even though he's just acquired the official onesie. I'm going to try to do likewise. As Rilke said, You Must Change Your Brand.