Saying Goodbye to 2007

It seems like 2007 was ushered in just the other day - now it has to move over and allow 2008 into the room. For me, the last year has come by quickly, and just as I was getting used to writing “2007” I now have to remember to date everything with “2008.”

Right now it’s 11:31 pm, and in about 29 minutes all the countdown shows are going to be singing Auld Lang Syne (which literally means “old long since,” or “once upon a time”) at the stroke of midnight. The only lyric I remember is the first line, which goes:

Should old acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind

What does that mean anyway? Does it mean to say that we shouldn’t forget old acquaintances? Or does it mean to say that we should forget the old ones and look for new ones?

Today, in an effort NOT to forget my friends, I spent the day with two old friends Nikki and Rachel.

Rene and I had fun catching up with Nikki and playing the game Rock Band. Have you ever played this game? It is a lot of fun! For those who have never played, it’s a game where musical notes are shown on the screen and the players use a drum set to hit the notes on the screen. The player gets to pick the song they want to play, and at the end of the set they are given a grade, like 75%, for accuracy. Here's a picture of Rene rocking out and a screen shot of the game:

Nikki says that the game could also include a guitar (which she owns) and a singer, and we promised to come back for a Rock Band party and play with a full band. How awesome would that be?!

After pretending to be rock stars with Nikki, we visited Rachel at LACMA, where they were showing the Salvador Dali exhibit. Unfortunately, Rachel was working today and only had enough time for a late lunch and a belated gift exchange. She did, however, manage to get us passes to see the Dali exhibit for free (thanks Rachel!). If you haven't stopped by, you should come and see the Dali exhibit before it goes away on January 6.

Tickets for the exhibit assign times to when you can enter, so we had two hours to wander the museum before we could look at the exhibit. We spent the time exploring the museum grounds. There are a few outdoor art installations outside the museum that we explored, including this untitled cinder block work:

A is for Abby

Next to LACMA are the La Brea tar pits. It's amazing that tar has seeped up from the ground in the heart of LA for tens of thousands of years, forming hundreds of sticky pools that trapped animals and plants that happened to enter. The biggest pit has a statue of a family of mammoth elephants with the mommy elephant getting trapped in the tar. The pit is still active and bubbles up so that methane gas is released into the air. It's a pretty cool place to visit if you've never been.

After visiting the tar pits, Rene and I climbed to the second story of the George C. Page museum. Once there, you can view the tar pits and the museum complex, and look down at the Page museum below. The museum didn't have a ceiling but an interesting rooftop structure made of steel instead, giving it an open-air (and futuristic) feel.

We got to see the Dali exhibit at 5 pm (they assign viewing times due to the crowds), and the most famous piece on exhibit was The Persistence of Memory, which shows melting clocks in a severe landscape. I liked this piece because of its subconcious quality; I always feel like this image is something people see in their dreams. Rene and I learned that Dali worked on a lot of films (including a Disney cartoon called Destino, An Andalusian Dog and Spellbound) and incorporated images of bicycles, ants, eyeballs, pianos, and burning giraffes in a lot of his sketches and paintings. It was an interesting exhibit, a definite must-see before it travels to the Dali museum in Florida.

After catching up with friends and exploring LACMA, Rene and I called it a day and stayed in for the rest of the night. We rang in the new year in bed, in between watching movies and surfing the internet. 2007 has been a good year, and we hope 2008 will be even better.