David's Best of 2008, Part 2

A couple of items to add to my Best-of-2008 list, one because I forgot it the first time around, one because I've only just discovered it:

Best Musical Discovery of 2008: David S. Ware.  His music is uncompromisingly avant-garde (also uncompromisingly beautiful), but he seems to have internalized the advice Thelonious Monk gave to a young Steve Lacy: "Don't just go out there and play weird shit."  Ware and his colleagues never forget that the roots of jazz are in the blues, that it must swing.

Best Roadside Food of 2008:  I consider myself a connoiseur of roadside and street food; more often than one might expect it stands at the pinnacle of a country's cuisine.  I'm thinking for example, of satay in Bangkok or tacos in any Mexican city.  Here on the island of Oahu one wants to head to Kahuku where one will be delighted to find Fumi's Kahuku Shrimp.  One of the reasons that street food is so good is that they don't try to do everything.  They do the one thing they do, with, perhaps a few variations on it, and nothing else.  That focus ensures that they do that one thing right.  This is certainly the case with Fumi's where one finds on the menu: shrimp.  We tried the coconut shrimp and the ginger shrimp.  Both were tremendous, and leave us, on our last day on Oahu, contemplating a drive back to the North Shore.

—David