Welcome 2008! Happy New Year to all. Here’s a little postcard for you: The holiday lights at the Marina on Alamitos Bay.

Many faithful readers will know that Val and I share a bottle of Veuve Clicquot every Friday night. Of course, the wine is good, but it is the sparkling moment it creates — a moment in every busy week to toast our lovely and lucky partnership in life — that has kept the tradition going […]

Click play to enjoy the show. Coming soon: the latke recipe.

Hate that tune? To lose the audio, mute the sound on your computer.

I got my new book on Epicurus today and a new word for 2008, ataraxia. Ataraxia is the goal of Epicurean thought: peace of mind.
No advocate of 21st-century-style hedonism — as is the popular idea of Epicurean philosophy — Epicurus advocated friendship, freedom, thought, prudence and just living. He is one of the great […]

Yum! Potato Latkes with gobs of caviar and creme fraiche. Served with orange wedges and a nice sake. Coming soon: a seven fishes slide show and Kate’s new Latke recipe. Have a merry day!

Here is another beautiful example of Andrew’s photoshop woodcut technique. It is the perfect illo for tonight’s Feast of Seven Fishes Menu. Laurie brought the Fish Feast — The Seven or Nine or Thirteen Fish Feast — with her when she moved from New York, where she was introduced to the venerable Italian-American tradition by […]

… and madass mountain biking coach Andrew Lucas has been keeping an eye on The Night Note from Denver. This weekend he e-mailed to wish me Happy Festivus and was generous enough to tip me to his very cool Photoshop “woodcut” technique. (He’d seen the sketches I’d done for Mike’s solar co.) He writes: […]

I watched this BBC series that aired on PBS when I was in my late teens and really enjoyed it. I think I identified with the working class heroine, who with pluck and ambition and foibles a-plenty, creates a grand life on her own terms. I mean, pluck, ambition and foibles were about all I […]

Winter Solstice officially arrives at 0:22 UT, December 22 or 4:22 p.m. December 21 PST. Our Solstice celebrations have begun and I am sipping champagne as I invite you to join me in my annual Solstice-eve walk to watch the sunset at the beach. So begins the year’s longest night in Belmont Shore … Merry […]

Last night Val and I had a little Shrimp Remoulade and settled in to watch Helvetica, a stylish documentary about typography, culture and the influence of — and controversy surrounding — the Helvetica typeface, which turned 50 in 2007.
Yes, controversy. You see, in the world of graphic design, the ubiquitous typeface is a divider, […]

… What’s with that Amazon store?
It’s not greed, but another deadly sin, sloth, that lead to The Night Note Amazon.com Store. It lets me create links to things I’m writing about with many fewer steps. And too, it becomes a kind of nifty collection of links in and of itself.
And, although The Night Note […]

Friend and californiaauthors.com co-publisher, Donna Wares has a new book coming out in May: Great Escapes: Southern California. The book also features images by Night Note friend and renowned photographer Rick Rickman and a first person story on fighter-pilot fun by Val Cohen!
Today, the book’s cover went up at Amazon. Wee! Let the pre-orders […]

Okay. I spent this morning researching menopause. Yeah, that’s right. So many annoyances explained. The result: one sparkly red self-pedicure. What else are you gonna do? No, don’t answer that. I read all about it this morning. Hmm. I think I’ll go put on a little eyeliner, maybe pour a three-finger Knob Creek.

Using her powers for good, of course! Our friend Mike Murphy is starting a new solar energy installation company — Artisan Electric — in New Orleans and I am working on a corporate image package for him. Here in color are a few sketches that seem to be working in one way or another. The […]

she’s on planet Mukau slaughtering the fishy minions of the Cragmite overlord.

The Unaired 1994 Pilot of 24 from collegehumor.com.

[thanks val]

So I was working for my last client on earth today when this fell out of an old notebook. Fresh as ever.

Hey, why isn’t Kate kicking more alien overlord butt? I mean M&M have graciously provided the world’s premier platform for alien overlord buttkicking, and yet no exciting play by play here at The Night Note. What gives? Well, isn’t there some kind of universal law that says, if you have one last client on earth, […]

First a word about safety: You should never leave your holiday tree lights on when you are sleeping or not home. You should not use lights on a dry tree. My house has never burned down because I used these “lanterns” on my holiday tree, but that is no guarantee that your house won’t burn […]