Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Diwali, Halloween and Jenny Lewis

On October 28 we went to Balboa Park (big park in the middle of SD) to see the Diwali celebrations. Diwali is the Indian festival of lights and is one of the biggest holidays of the year. People light small candles to signify victory of good over the evil. There was some Indian food and dancing and then the lamp lighting, which took quite a while as there were 1008 lamps to light.






These 1008 lamps were commisioned by some self-congratulatory American twit who was in a temple in India and was so moved by the lighting ceremony that he just HAD to get some made for use in San Diego. While the lamps may be a celebration of good over evil, the battle against narcissism and hubris rages on.

Balboa Park also has some great architecture









San Diego, Balboa and Juniperro Serra formed a potent midfield combination for the Spanish national team in the 1960s. The off-field animosity between the trio was so great that they refused to appear together for official team carvings.

The following Friday was Halloween which is a huge deal over here. We only had a few trick or treaters but Tamsin made friends with all of their parents because when the parents said "Just take one candy from the nice lady and say thank you", Tamsin would tell the kids to take as much as they liked. We went out to a Halloween party which was lame so the less said about that the better but here we are in our costumes.


Tamsin the tavern wench and me putting on my creepy monk face.

The following night we went to see Jenny Lewis in concert. Jenny Lewis is a former child actor who was the lead singer of the indie/alt country band Rilo Kiley and has released a couple of solo albums. She is also a favourite of one Tamsin Jemima Pointon-Sheen. I am able to listen to her music too, so I decided we could go. There were a couple of warm-up acts, the first of which was Pierre de Reeder who is the former bassist of Rilo Kiley and grew up in San Diego. His dad was there videoing the performance. He was OK, 5 out of 10 for him. The next act was called Beachwood Sparks or something and they were not fun. Too country for me, which is to say they suck. Jenny Lewis was really good, she has a fairly amazing voice. Although it would have been more suited to a venue where either A) you could sit down or B) you could drink. I would give it an 8/10 and Tamsin gave it an A+ out 5.

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