Seasons Greetings to all!

Season's Greetings, everyone!
Thank you for being so wonderful and for sharing the Wordtryst journey!
All the very best for 2009!

December Hunk: Jason Momoa

To round out the year, here's a drink to warm the cockles of your frost-bitten little hearts, me dearies. Jason Momoa, model and actor, is a 6'5" green-eyed hunk of hotness. He was born in Honolulu but raised in Iowa. He has won "Hawaii's Model of the Year," participated in the prestigious "Governor's Fashion Show," and walked the runway for Louis Vuitton. He also hosted the 1999 "Miss Teen Hawaii USA" contest. And he surfs. But you guessed that, right?



You might know him from Baywatch Hawaii. He caught my eye because he looks so, well, Trini. Just toss him in the crowd here with my son and his surfer pals and you'd never guess he hadn't spent his life riding the waves at Beach Break and Mount Irvine*.

In case anyone is wondering what to get me for Christmas... Ahem. Hint, hint... Forget the gift paper; unwrapped is fine with me. I'll make him my muse for novel #3.

(* Surfer hangouts on Trinidad and Tobago respectively.)

For those who hate Christmas

Okay, maybe hate is a strong word, as a friend cautioned me yesterday. But I'm really not that into Christmas. I know, I know; I'm a horrible person and unchristian and a douche-bag who wants to rain on people's joy. Whatever! I like the Christmas season here in the tropics when the temperatures are cooler, the sky is breathtaking, the rainy season is tailing off and the earth is no longer soggy, when the breeze... Well, you get the picture.

I enjoy some of the music, the classics that bring back memories of magical childhood Christmases. I even like some of the pop tracks, and the local parang/soca parang that hearkens to the old Spanish influences on our culture. I enjoy the warmth of friends and family getting in touch. I love the food! But I hate abhor the fuss, the frenzy, the crowds, the traffic, the insane lines at the bank, the false cheer all over the media that screams BUY BUY BUY... And I hate abhor the soppy movies that proliferate around this time.

So, in response to akalol's call over on This Beach Called Life to nominate the best Christmas movie ever, I'm going to list the antidote to all this saccharine sop: the top 10 Christmas movies for cynics, lifted from http://worldfilm.about.com/od/toppicks/tp/christmasmovies.htm.

1. Bad Santa."Billy Bob Thornton falls down drunk a lot in this hilarious and sublimely offensive tale of a pair of Yuletime robbers."
2. Gremlins. "For mad holiday mayhem, Joe Dante's 1984 invasion of anarchic critters can't be beat."
3. Brazil. Fascist troopers come busting through the roof in Terry Gilliam's hallucinatory dystopia, and all Mrs. Buttle gets for Christmas is a receipt for her kidnapped husband.
4. La Buche. A film about bickering sisters, Christmas and infidelity. Doesn't get much better than that.
5. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. "At the end of Jacques Demy's impossibly romantic love story, Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo meet again on a snowy Christmas Eve. Too bad it's for the last time..."
6. Life of Brian. Slip in this classic Monty Python comedy if the holidays are getting a bit much, and celebrate the birth of Brian instead.
7. The Nightmare Before Christmas. "Tim Burton brings Halloween and his own twisted vision to the holidays in this 1993 animated musical."
8. Die Hard. When terrorists take over a skyscraper during a Christmas party, Bruce Willis gets a chance to kick some butt. "Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho." I'm not an action film fanatic but this was a good 'un.
9. Eyes Wide Shut. After a Christmas party, a wife admits she has sexual fantasies about other men. Her husband prescribes for himself a harrowing and dangerous night-long odyssey of sexual and moral discovery. Just what the doctor ordered.
   
10. Go! A story of a bunch of young Californians trying to get some cash, do and deal some drugs, score money and sex in Las Vegas, and generally experience the rush of life. Doesn't quite go as planned, though...

Grab a few of these if you feel the need to dispense with all this fake holiday cheer!

Animoto - the end of slideshows

That's their name, and their slogan.

I discovered Animoto through a post on one of the numerous Facebook writers' groups I belong to. This is my first video and it's not perfect, but they make me look good!

It's easy to do, even for a technopleb like me:

• Create an account (of course!)
  
• Upload your images
• Choose your music
• Create the video!

30-second vids are free; if you want the 60-second version, you pay $3. You can post your videos directly to Blogger, YouTube, MySpace, Live.com, TypePad, iGoogle, Wordpress, LiveJournal, Facebook, and a number of other places, or just copy the code and embed where you like. (The direct posting makes me think: Security breach! Security breach! Probably my paranoia kicking in, so I chose to embed.)

Check them out at http://animoto.com. At worst, you sink a couple hours having fun and feeling like a technowizard. At best, you get a sweet promotional widget for your book - or whatever you're pimping!