Yesterday I received my friend Jami Attenberg's book in the mail, and tonight I have finished it. The Kept Man is that kind of book. Compulsively readable, told in Jami's confident, wry style. The humor is there, but muted; dude IS in a coma, after all. But the protagonist is totally likable and even when she's just doing laundry and musing on life, love, art, men, Williamsburg, the works, you just want to keep reading to see what happens to her. I'm biased, of course, but I liked it a lot. You should totally buy it, perhaps at the Barnes & Noble Chelsea, where Jami is reading tomorrow, Wednesday, at 7 pm. She's a fantastic reader. And she's getting good reviews, too.

And here's a pretty hilarious story Jami wrote for the Huffington Post about signing her books in bookstores. In it Jami heartily recommends The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which I too am reading (on Jami's recommendation) and loving. Even if it is missing a comma in its title.

As long as I am being ultranerdy, here is a link to a language blog from the founder of wordie.org: Errata. It's been leading me to even more language blogs, which is cool. Much more tightly focused is this hilarious blog tracking the rampant misuse of the word "literally." Nice!

Also, have you heard about MTV's virtual Lower East Side game? Pretty much the height of ridiculousness.

In other news, why is it so goddamn hot in my apartment? Oh, because it's spring all of a sudden? What the shit is this? I don't like it one bit. There is sweat coming out of my facial pores, people. It's January! This is not right.

Finally, my pretties, here it is, a plain old fashioned PUNK SONG OF THE WEEK! Yay! This one is from the Mclusky dudes, whose new band is called Future of the Left. They are, I would say, almost as awesome as Mclusky were before they died a sad and untimely death. I've found that the second half of this new record, Curses (from 2007! a late-breaker!), is better than the first half. Weird!

::: Future of the Left, "adeadenemyalwayssmellsgood" :::

That's me and Carl at 4:39 a.m. New Year's Day. We look pretty good for such an hour, eh? That was the end, right there. In the beginning, we headed to Spike Hill to see my friend's Siwat's band, conveniently (for Siwat) called Siwat, and some of Siwat's friends' bands. One of the friends, Richard McGraw, was nice enough to give me a "fancy CD" of his as opposed to a regular CD. It's really quite beautiful, and though I haven't yet listened to it, based on his highly energetic, borderline crazy one-song performance, I'm optimistic. So that was leg one. But we grew restless, and felt like a chance of venue. I then had the following text message exchange with my friend Brian, who was at a party down the street:

me: Address of party please. How is it?
Brian: s.1st and kent. It's a young hip one.
me: Are we too old?
Brian: It's a good transitional party. Just come.
me: How is the music?
Brian: OK
me: You are not convincing me! We may go to party in Chinatown. Which I know nothing about. New Year's! Where's GBV when u need them most?!
Brian: Probably a good idea.
me: I think Santa's on the move though. See u soon i think.

We get to the party and reluctantly pay the $20 cover, which includes booze. However, we're dismayed to find that a) it's packed as hell, b) they're out of whiskey and the beer is flowing very slowly, and c) they're playing things like the Pointer Sisters. I'm sorry, but I am just NOT doing the Neutron Dance tonight. (I don't even know what the Neutron Dance looks like.) After some miserable clustering together, I went back to the bar to get two more beers. I came back and Carl had magically started an insane dance party to "People Don't Dance No More." Unfortunately, I had two beers in my hands and could not join in. But once those were dispatched, for the next 15 minutes, it was great. Good songs, dancing, party nirvana!

We left on a high note, determined to go get our visitors, Betsy and Mike, who had had some adventures without us already, and take them to the show with us. Unfortunately it was not to be, as Betsy had already gotten lost and ended up drinking on a street corner with random Williamsburg youths, and thus was in no shape for much more partying, even if she happened to like dancey art-punk. Which she does not. Too bad for her!

And so we were left to journey to the Bowery on our own. I was still very energized thanks to an earlier nap, and we made it to the Bowery pretty much just in time to see Les Savy Fav take the stage. And it was possibly the best I've ever seen them, and I've seen them a lot. People were going nuts -- a mosh pit broke out! They sounded so awesome, nirvana was immediately reached. By everyone, it seemed. And just when it couldn't get any better, they encored with a bunch of kickass covers. Pixies...Misfits...Nirvana! And we managed to stay up! So phooey on all youey disbelievers. But happy New Year anyway!

I should also mention that Betsy and Mike and Carl and I had a very enjoyable dinner at Convivium Osteria, which I would recommend most heartily, especially for a date (or double date) situation. Here we are bathed in its soft warm light:

As promised, I'm taking baby blog steps into the new year. Above are pictures from John and Leanne's visit to Noo Yawk City, circa Thursday to Saturday. In that span, we: ate Korean fried chicken with the little Werde baby and his parents; took a walking tour of Brooklyn, hitting Brooklyn Heights, the promenade, Dumbo, and the Fulton Mall (including Junior's Cheesecake and, ahem, Strawberry); celebrated my birthday with a lovely meal at Al di La and drinks at Abilene, two of my favorite establishments; got caught in a tremendous downpour on the walk home; bought bread from the back door of Mazzola's on said walk. Their visit was too short but we hope to catch up with them in their home city of San Francisco in the spring. It's been way too long since I was there....

Your link of the day is John's gorgeous photography site (some might say photoblog), ebokeh. You may never understand the concept of bokeh, but you can gaze upon the pretty, pretty pictures. John is very into running water at the moment. My favorite birthday gift is a beautiful framed print of this image.

Tomorrow: the magic, wonder, and shitty loft parties of New Year's Eve.

Happy New Year! I have a bunch of pics from the past week, so I figured I'd start with some scenes from my New Jersey Christmas. This one was a little unusual in that Carl's brother Brian joined us in the usual shuttling around to the various festivities, providing an extra dose of hilarity everywhere we went, not to mention wasabi shrimp-flavored potato chips.

Plus, there was trifle! Everybody loves trifle. Birthday and New Year's pics are on the way, but in the meantime you have got to go look at passiveaggressivenotes.com, a blog that collects notes from coworkers, roommates, neighbors and the like, with heelarious results.