The End of 2008

Christmas and hannukah ahve come and gone now and reflections on the past year and cristal-balling for the new are underway. It's a shame really... the calander has to be thrown in the bin (this past years' bought from a street boy in a small run down ex-tourist town in India... 2007's was my fave... illustrations of birds fromt he erboleria - or is it erbolaria or erbolaio?), at least a few weeks need to be spent getting the date wrong on anything and everything and people resolve for things they want to do to change themselves. They never do, so the end of January is always full of disappointment.

I've noticed that this month there's been a push to sell lottery tickets... even I tried to buy one... they were all out. Why does everyone think it's easier to win the lottery in the holiday season? Good on the marketing staff though. I bet they made a fortune.

And everyone's talking about the financial crisis. I feel so stupid and ignorant. I have no idea what's going on and I'm sure it's something simple like 'Oh, everyone just spent more money than they had and now they need to pay it back, but they don't have any.' or 'Some guy did something bad and robbed some other guy, but that guy was already robbing someone else and that guy was too... and in the end so was the govenment and even little kids with the toothfairy money and now everything's all tangled up and no one knows what to do.' but the truth is I don't know if that's what's going on and there's no one who's talking clear in the way my first-grader brain can understand. Oh look! A shiny rubber ball!!

Got lots of booka dna DVDs for Hanukmas... all animation related. Yay! Everything's connected... and I know this cause Giulio and Alessia bought a picture book for Fabri for his birthday and it's by Shaun Tan... and then watching the credits of 2 of my new movies (Horton and Wall-E) I glimpse the guy's name again... and then reading my new book on animation Production Design by Hans Bacher Shaun's name comes up again. Anyhow, needless to say he was already becomming one of my new favorite illustrators/artists/industry dudes. This is one of his paintings.

Shaun Tan 'Footpath, Fifth Avenue' 2004, oil on canvas, 110 x 120 cm.