checking out and signing off

My D.C. museums roundup for 2009 is in this week's Washington City Paper. Read all about it here. And, yes, I do devote a number of paragraphs to the bulbous membrane. Surprise!

What about the blogosphere in review? The year has been a little bittersweet for me. Richard Lacayo, a guy who works a heck of a lot harder than I do, announced around Thanksgiving that he was hanging up his blogger's hat. J.T. still blogs, but he's essentially retreated into the bunker. Kriston, meanwhile, looked to me like he'd bagged Gp in favor of twittering, but he's roared back to life in the wake of the great Mera Rubell handwringing of 2009.

The story in a nutshell: If a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear? Okay, say a wealthy Miami collector is there to tell the tree how sorry she feels for it. What then? (Jessica had her take in the Post here; Kriston offers a different view--on a different sampling of artists--at AiA here.)

Me, I keep occasionally letting you know what I'm up to...cracking jokes that may or may not be funny...and, once in a blue moon, writing something that's actually useful. Hell, I can keep up this level of productivity indefinitely.

So thanks for coming back, for reading, and for commenting, if you've done any of those three things.

This will be the last post until January, so I'll leave you with a little Christmas present: Below are parts one and two of Seasons of Belief, an episode of Tales from the Darkside about a vicious anti-Santa called The Grither, who punishes those who take his name in vain on Christmas Eve. Kind of like It's a Wonderful Life, except with E.G. Marshall instead of Jimmy Stewart...and a big bat-eared monster instead of Donna Reed.