________________________________

Year End Special -

A page of year end lists - best and worst all all that sort of thing.

___

Christmas elsewhere ...

Update: Ric Erickson has updated his Noël in Paris feature, if you find yourself there.  Just everything that's happening.  And he's added an item on New Years Eve - Scène's Eves - which will get you edgy to be in Paris that night.  I like the menus - check out Chez Clément's 'Boule de Neige' de Bloc de Foie Gras de Canard sur une Gelée for example.  But I'll be here in Hollywood.

A few times I have done my Christmas shopping in Paris.  Not this year, as times are a bit lean.  But one can dream.

If you have a high-speed internet connection you might want to try this: the two dozen webcams offering live real-time views (streaming video) of Paris.   I am fond of Les Champs Elysées depuis "Atelier Renault" - the Christmas lights are nice.  I was there at Christmas two years ago.  It takes me back.  La mairie de Paris depuis la place de l'Hôtel de Ville will give you a live shot of city hall.   Les quais de Seine (2) will give you a good view of the traffic across the bridges right in front of the big department store La Samaritaine - there's a nice gift book section on the third or fourth floor. 

If you're in Paris and miss California, here's a live camera at Venice beach.

Either way, remember the time difference between here and there.

____

Full court transcript of the Fox-Franken hearing, as discussed at various places in Just Above Sunset:

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT. SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

FOX NEWS NETWORK, LLC,
Plaintiff, New York, N.Y.
v.
03 Civ. 6162 (RLC)(DC)
PENGUIN GROUP (USA), INC., and ALAN S. FRANKEN, Defendants.

A detailed guide to some great restaurants in France:

Rick Brown, whose comments often appear here in Just Above Sunset publishes a website in Atlanta called City-Directory.  In it you will find just about everything you need to know about what is going on there, and I believe he updates the site daily.  See www.city-directory.com of course.

Now on his site is this week's edition of The Fire & The Hearth billed as "An occasional newsletter devoted to food, wine, and those things that make for a good life" (and named after a short story by William Faulkner), in which host Randy Harber - gourmet chef and globe-trotting bon vivant who, in his spare time, helps run CNN's internal "wire service" - reviews eateries visited during his recent sojourn to Paris and the French (not Texan) countryside.

Here's where: http://city-directory.com/fireandhearth/home.html

Rick comments:

Sounds yummy, even to someone (such as myself) who has traditionally considered eating food a chore that must be endured, in the same general category as putting away the clean laundry.

He even visits, without any prompting whatsoever from me, La Coupole, where "It was said that if you were a young and broke American in the '20s, you could go to La Coupole and that for a few turns on the restaurants dance floor, a wealthy Parisian lady would buy you a meal." (Haven't we Yanks always been like putty in the hands of them Frenchy broads?)

Well, Rick and I, and Ric in Paris (editor of MetropoleParis www.metropoleparis.com), have been batting about how to sell website advertising slots to various places, and we were just discussing La Coupole.  Now Rick's site has a review of the place. 

And as for French women, well, my friends know about Liane.  Sigh.

I read The Fire & The Hearth carefully.  It's great.  I need to get back to Paris, soon.  Highly recommended.

________

As the country gets more polarized, for opinion, you might check out these sources for political commentary.

On the left, the two general anti-Bush sites that provide daily links to selected commentary on the current issues as seen from that side:

• The Smirking Chimp  - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/
• Bush Watch -  http://www.bushwatch.net/ 

On the right, a general pro-Administration site providing daily links to the major conservative columns:

• Town Hall - http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ 
• And the dramatically right site of angry commentary NewsMax -  http://www.newsmax.com/  (Richard Mellon Scaife spent tens of millions funding the anti-Clinton campaign, and still spends a lot of money each year underwriting NewsMax)

_________________________________________

When I want to know what's happening in two cities I like a lot, one where I visit when I can and one where I live, I consult these links....
 
Ric Erickson's weekly on-line magazine from Paris, MetropoleParis, updated each Monday night:  http://www.metropoleparis.com
 
LA Weekly for what is happening out this way, updated every Thursday: http://www.laweekly.com

_________________________________________

Drop me a line at Contact "Just Above Sunset" if you would like a list of the bookmarks (links) I use regularly...

• North American Newspapers
• European Press in English
• French Press, dailies and weeklies in French
• Opinion (left and right) and political humor/satire 
• Streaming live radio (news, music, talk) and streaming video (news, music, talk, and where to find episodes of The Simpsons dubbed in French)

_________________________________________

Highly Recommended
 
Emmanuelle Richard  http://www.emmanuellerichard.com/ is a French freelance journalist who had been based in Los Angeles since 1998.  She covers news in the western United States for French radio (France Info, France Inter) and Swiss radio (Radio Suisse Romande).  She writes regularly for the daily Libération. 
 
Her bilingual (French-English) web log is quite good.  You'll find it here - http://www.emmanuelle.net/ with daily entries since October 2000.  A good take on life out here.  She said nice things about Just Above Sunset there, and I soon saw logons from France, the Netherlands, Germany and Portugal. 

_________________________________________

Other forums, other audiences...
 
Interested in some Canadian writing?  You might want to check out The Writers' Collective, or maybe even join - I don't think you have to live in Sarnia or Moosejaw or Mississauga or any place like that: http://groups.msn.com/TheWritersCollective/