Happy New Year! It's going to be a busy 2006 for me, culminating in a Master of Science in Publishing. Two more weeks of down time before it all gets underway again, but I'm ready.

Mythias and Contagious came down for the Yo La Tengo New Year's show at Maxwell's, and YLT were awesome as usual. Fred Armisen opened with a comedy bit in which he took the stage in different comedian personas and instructed the audience to react a particular way. For one entrance, he instructed the back of the room to pretend they couldn't hear him and to shout "louder!' and such, while the front of the room was supposed to get pissed off and tell the back of the room to shut up. He said he was videotaping the whole thing, for what I don't know. It was funnier than it sounds, and the interaction was fun.

But the highlight of the night was him taking the stage as Prince and doing "1999" and "When You U Were Mine" with YLT. That alone was worth the three hour round-trip trek from Brooklyn to Hoboken. He also sat in on drums with the band for the whole show (after taking off his Prince outfit). Click here and scroll down to the entry for Night 7 for Yo La's own recap and photos.

I've now been out of work for 11 days. I've probably forgotten all my work passwords. And three weeks before Christmas my manager quit. God knows what's festering in my inbox. Oh well. It doesn't really matter. I'm determined to have a good year, so bring it on!