Saddest Image Ever

Seriously. I cannot go say enough about how great Pia Guerra's work on Y the Last Man was. The last issue could have almost went without dialogue, that's how great her work was in the last book. The picture above is probably the saddest thing I've ever seen in any medium of entertainment.

Why? The Last Issue

Y the Last Man #60 came out today, and I'm not going to go in depth on the review. I just wanted to lay out a couple things.

Perfect.

It was absolutely perfect.

It could not have ended in any way, and it was tragic and beautiful and funny all in one package. Massive kudos to Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, Jose Marzan, and the rest of the crew on a job incredibly well done, and I will absolutely miss this series as much as any comic series I've ever read.

I've read it twice, and I think it may be my favorite single issue of any comic ever.

Quick note, Jeff Jensen from Entertainment Weekly has a great interview with Brian K. Vaughan and write up about Y the Last Man here. Its to coincide with the release of the last issue, and its great to see a major publication like EW shedding some publicity on this amazing comic.

Also, if interested, I did a detailed review with spoilers aplenty. See that here. Pretty darn good write up if I do say so myself. Very similar to reviews that I read after the fact. Maybe I should be writing comic reviews for a living?

Best Week Ever

This is definitely not going to sound like the best week ever to most anyone else, but I am incredibly stoked. This week is sort of a culmination of a lot of things that I've been interested in or things that have just been coming together for a long time, and they all just happen to be going on at same time. For a breakdown, let's go down to my friend the bullet list directly below...

• Tuesday: Humpy's Pub Quiz Day - Went last night, it was fun and insanely difficult, but we have a new trivia night!
• Wednesday: Comic Day - aka the release of the last issue of Y the Last Man. So excited...so sad.
• Thursday: Lost Day - The two hour season premiere of Lost, with Amy joining me as she has power watched the hell out of the third season to get ready for it.
• Friday: Review Day - My first annual review for my job is hitting. I'm alternately terrified and very excited, but it should be cool.
• Saturday: Battlestar Day - My sister and I wrap up all the existing episodes of Battlestar Galactica in preparation for April 4th (aka the beginning of season 4, or the season of seasons as I call it).
• Sunday: Super Bowl Sunday - New England Patriots. New York Giants. The Super Bowl. Party at my place, making pizzas, snacks, bunch of people. Should rock the heezy, although I'm a bit nervous - my boys better win!

So that's my week, minus one day of course. I'd say I'm most excited for the Super Bowl, but I may be lying as I secretly may be more excited for the last issue of Y the Last Man today. I'm really nervous, sad, and excited about it. It's the 60th issue, it's been going on for 5+ years...I just know it's so hard to end things well in a series. I have the faith that Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra can do it, but man, they face a lot of history to do that.

It's probably a tie with the Super Bowl though. It's going to be a great party, I just hope the Patriots don't keep it that close so I don't have to act like a freak amongst all of my friends. Only select few of them have seen me act like a crazy person while watching them play. Also really just for my sanity, because I get stressed enough during regular season games - the Super Bowl takes me to the limit. It's just awesome seeing them in the Super Bowl again, especially with how last years season ended.

I hear going 19-0 may be pretty cool too.

Maybe that's just me though.

The Butt Pat

Today I went to the gym to do my normal routine (start off with basketball to get my heart rate up, move to weights, do 20 to 30 minutes of cardio on bike or running, finish with abs), but I got caught up playing basketball. Whenever I get a chance to run some games, whether they are 1 on 1 (myself vs. Colver), 2 on 2, or even a full court 5 on 5, I take it. I was just practicing shooting when someone asked me if I wanted to play 2 on 2, so the rest of the work out went away essentially.

Now the point of this blog post is not to identify my workout habits. That would be a very, very lame blog post. Not that this isn't necessarily, but I do find this topic to be vaguely amusing. No, the topic of this is the title, which is the Butt Pat.

I was playing against this one guy in his 30's who plays often and is pretty solid, and then the other guy (the guy I was guarding and was guarding me) was a guy probably in his 60's who was wearing a Scottie Pippen Portland Trailblazers jersey. Of course, the guy who was guarding me, Scottie as he will be remembered, was a person who was a big time proponent of the butt pat, which is a tactic often used by teammates or opponents to congratulate someone for a job well done or nice try...or really anything of that sort.

After years and years of playing sports, I've gotten used to that. But when people are doing that randomly during the game and repeatedly, even if literally nothing has happened, well...that is just weird. He was doing this pretty much all the time. Looking back on it, I find it hilarious (especially given a certain friend of mine's travels on Craig's List in which she found out that the Alaska Club West - where this took place - is apparently frequented by many gay men). It was definitely a little weird...not that there is anything wrong with that.

I did get my revenge however, as his apparent focus on the butt pat led me to have open threes towards the end of the game, and we went from being down 12-7 to winning 16-14, largely in part because of myself catching fire. 4's threes and a turnaround jumper to win it. Count it!

Quick side note in here, entirely unrelated. A little while back I made a post about my coworker asking me if I got in a fight, because she thought I had a black eye. This was of course because the bags under my eyes were so intense it looked like that. This happened again today. Good lord, I'm a freak.

Maybe this happened because it's 10:52 pm and instead of going to bed, I'm writing a blog. Sometimes the answers to questions we have are pretty easy to figure out.

Oscar Talk

The Academy Award nominations came out yesterday, and I of course must chime in on them. As many who read this may know, I watch way too many movies. I go and see pretty much everything in theaters. Additionally, as some may point out (*ahem* KIM!) I tend to favor dramas and quirky movies. Strangely enough, that is what the good ol' Academy favors! So when I'm talking about Oscars, I'm not being some elitist, I'm actually just talking about things I like! I feel as if this is a win win situation for me, so I may carry on from here.

Quick tangent (because what is a post from me without a tangent?), I still love other movies. I can get behind great comedies and action movies and god only knows I'm a Sci-Fi freak most of the time. I just happen to prefer a well delivered and written conversation over a particularly large explosion or most jinks of hi-ness (that's hijinks for the uninitiated).

Back to the point, Paul Thomas Anderson's return film There Will Be Blood and the omni-present Coen Brothers No Country for Old Men tied for the most nominations with 8, both scoring Best Picture and Directors nods in the process. Joining them for the big category are Michael Clayton (7 nominations), Juno (Little Miss Sunshine v 2.0), and Atonement. I still have not seen Blood (this Friday! Finally!), Clayton (whenever my screener gets here...from the Internet...come on), or Atonement, but the general consensus seems to be that they got it right for once.

My prediction? Blood and Old Men cancel each other out with the edgy, auteur vote, opening it up for Atonement to steal it, as god only knows the Oscar folks love sweeping, epic romances. That's just my two cents right off the bat, but of course it remains to be seen.

However, I really just wanted to write this because I really liked some of the nominations. They really knocked it out of the park in a number of the other categories. I was particularly fond of them nominating Viggo Mortensen for his role in Eastern Promises, Michael Giacchino's brilliant score for Ratatouille, Tommy Lee Jones for In the Valley of Elah, Ellen Page for Juno, Philip Seymour Hoffman in Charlie Wilson's War, and the Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford getting a nomination for Cinematography (and Casey Affleck getting a nomination for it as well).

The best category though? Best song. The Academy killed on this one, not only nominating the absolutely incredible Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova for their song Falling Slowly from Once, but they also nominated not one, not two, but three songs from Enchanted. Nothing like send ups of Disney animated songs to get the Academy to stand up and cheer.

But yeah, they did a good job this year. To be honest, no movie bowled me over enough this year to make me that animated about any snubs really. They did a fine job this year. Of course, ironically enough the actual presentation of the Oscars may not even go down because of the writers strike. The one year they get it right and could get some positive PR...and its likely that no one will watch it.

There's the rub right there.

Licensed to Blog

The Infamous Lineup

With Coachella 2008's lineup being announced yesterday, the Blogosphere went absolutely bananas in response. Everyone and their brother decided to blog on it, and I believe there were at least three backlashes just yesterday, ranging from the initial "the lineup sucks!" to the follow up of "stop being elitist, its eclectic" to the final consensus of "sure, it's good...but where are the real headliners."

Of course given the fact I'm Alaskan, I didn't post because...well...things in Indio, California rarely affect what I am doing here. However, I was debating on which Festival I wanted to take a trip to this year. Would I have my first venture to a mega-festival such as Coachella or Bonnaroo? Would I stick it to the Northwest and hit up Sasquatch or possibly the Bumbershoot/ Musicfest NW combo again? Well, after I saw the lineup for this, it's definitely not going to be the absurdly overpriced Coachella Festival.

Key Negatives to Coachella

• 3 day pass = $269. Wowza. If I went, the only thing left in my wallet would be a suicide note, because I would be broke, broke, broke.
• Indio, California in May? 100+ degrees. No shade? 110 degrees. Stuck amongst a ton of other concert goers? Feels like 125. This way I'd just say die straight out.
• Don't know a lot of people around Indio, so costs to stay would be higher.
• Headliners are not great enough to make the whole thing a true value proposal.

As much as I like a lot of the bands playing (Quick rundown...Day 1: Jack Johnson, the Verve, Fatboy Slim, Tegan and Sara, the Swell Season, the National, Animal Collective, Stars, Aesop Rock, Minus the Bear, Jens Lekman, Architecture in Helsinki, Rogue Wave; Day 2: Portishead, Death Cab for Cutie, Rilo Kiley, M.I.A., Cold War Kids, DevotchKa, Flogging Molly, Islands, MGMT, Dredg; Day 3: Roger Waters (Sub-Parentheses! Doing Dark Side of the Moon!), the Streets, Murs, the Field, and Sia...phew), I'm definitely not dying to see any of them. Day 1 would be pretty awesome, but seriously, last year was headlined by Rage Against the Machine, Bjork, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, with other luminaries like the Arcade Fire, Air, Interpol, and LCD Soundsystem playing. It just doesn't compare.

So in the first year I really, REALLY considered going, I'm just going to have to pass on you Coachella. Too many negatives, not enough big positives.

But I had to blog about it. I didn't want the blog police to come over and ask me why I didn't blog about Coachella. I just couldn't let that happen!

Heath Ledger dead at 28

The world lost one of its greatest (or at least most interesting) actors today. Heath Ledger died at the age of 28 from unknown causes, just having wrapped up what was likely to be one of his career defining roles as the Joker in the Dark Knight.

I'm absolutely shocked. Beyond shocked. You never see this type of thing happen, and its always weird to think of celebrities running into problems when they seemingly have everything made in the shade (stated because death was originally reported as overdose). Incredibly tragic news.

I want to live at the Beer and Barley Wine Festival

Friday evening, myself, Jon, Hannah, Lacey, and Kevin attended the 2008 Great Alaska Beer and Barley Wine Festival. I'd never been, but I'd heard loads of good things so I was very excited about attending. Those good things? All they managed to do was underrate the greatness of the GABBF (that's right...suck that acronym). Two things I will for sure do next year though is to buy my ticket ahead of time (everyone else got a head start on the drinking because they had tickets and I had to wait in line for 45 minutes...in January Alaskan weather...not smart) and to bring my camera.

Why did I forget my camera? Because my paranoia fueled me to go straight from Cloverfield (which was an excellent monster movie and an altogether good time) to the Festival and get in line once I found out that the pre-sale was now over for the Fest. When I got there there were a ton of people in line and only 50 tickets left, hence the 45 minute wait...which is why there was no camera on me and I was wearing a Wes Welker jersey (it was casual day at work...I take that term quite literally apparently). No less, even though there was no photographic evidence to be had, I can tell you one thing: it absolutely rocked.

First off, the beer was uniformly good. I had only two beers out of 30+ that were not good, and even though when they were not good they were horrifically disgusting, that 1/15 ratio is pretty damn excellent if you ask me. I'm going to go ahead and call Fort George's North barley wine the beer of the festival, as yours truly described it as "spine tingly delicious." The fact the brewery was located in Astoria, Oregon (home place of the Goonies) had nothing to do with my selection. I frequented the barley wines, and I was very impressed with my first barley wine overload.

Second off, the crew was fantastic and running into a lot of people I know while they were plastered was pretty hilarious. Jon and I had a great time being the heavy drinkers for our team, as we were pushing each other to churn through our 30+ tickets that we had in 2 hours we had to do it in. Of course we did it, and we rocked hard...although I think we both felt it the next day. I had a great time chilling with Hannah while the rest of the crew smoked, and Lacin (Lacey and Kevin...their engaged so I can combine them into one name) were fun as always.

Finally, there is nothing like the sensation of having 30+ brewers serving you beer, and all you have to give them is a little purple ticket. I know I had to pay money to get in there, but when you are drinking and you have to exchange a stupid ticket for a sample of delicious beer, it really feels free. I have this theory that everything is better when its free, and this theory is no less sound when referencing alcohol. Hell, considering how expensive it is normally, I think it works even more accurately.

So all in all, I loved the Great Alaska Beer and Barley Wine Festival. I'm already excited for next year, and hope I can get even more people to go. Also, I now know what I need to do to make next years experience even better. Just 363 (ish) more days 'til next years festival!

The Patriots Way

Left: Heath Evans killing people. Right: Laurence Maroney winding up to kill someone.

Today, January 20th, the New England Patriots beat the San Diego Chargers to earn a birth in the Super Bowl in an attempt to win their 4th Super Bowl since 2001 and to become the first team ever to go 19-0 in a single season. I of course was where I always am during Pats games: My living room, wearing my lucky shirt, shifting side to side in a controlled panic attack. That's the way I roll, but today the Patriots rolled a bit differently. They beat the Chargers with a ball control offense, running the ball deftly, sticking to short passes, and using their offensive line (maulers all) to beat up the physically inferior Charger defense.

Laurence Maroney, all season the forgotten man behind the Flying Elvii (as the Patriots passing offense has been strangely referred to as), ran for 122 yars for the second straight game. With the Patriots passing offense floundering (Brady has 3 int's today), Maroney picked it up with 106 intense yards on the ground in the second half and third down back Kevin Faulk (Whom I will now refer to as Mr. Patriot for the rest of my life) caught some incredibly difficult and timely passes to carry them to victory. Between the two of them, they picked up 221 yards, and even fullback Heath Evans got into the act, picking up two third and shorts for first downs and all in all being a man amongst boys, spearheading many of Maroney's shifty and powerful runs.

Needless to say, I'm excited. I am a tad less excited because the Green Bay Packers (I'm sorry to say!) absolutely choked in the later game, losing to the New York Giants on Lawrence Tynes third attempt at winning the game by a field goal. It's hard to really pick who beat them...was it the Giants? Was it Brett Favre and his incredibly costly and errant bad passes? Was it Ryan Grant, he of the hype and the 26 total yards? No, it was none of them. I'm going to give the losing game ball to the entire Packer secondary, who killed them with horrible coverage, incredibly bad penalties, and altogether stupid decision making. I had at one point called them one of the best secondaries in football, and I am now ashamed to have said that. Bad Packers secondary!

Back to the point, a Patriots/Packers Super Bowl would have been one of the most highly anticipated Super Bowls ever. 90% of the nation would have sit squarely in favor of one team, while I would have stood firmly with my kindred spirit Patriots fans. Now? We get the Giants, a team we already beat once, and we get to play them indoors in warm weather. To quote my Counter-Strike playing alter-ego, Shaft, "GG nubs." I will be the first person to chime in with a predicted score, and here it is: Patriots 34, Giants 13.

Let's do this.

Go me! Go me! It's my birthday!

So today, January 17th of 2008, I turn 24 years old. Very odd, that feels very old to me, but no less, it is true. So far, for the fourth year running or so, my old girlfriend and all together cool gal Kim Kryger clocked in as the first person to wish me a Happy Birthday. Congrats to Kim to beating everyone to the punch once again!

Also, thanks to Amy for being the first person to give me presents, buying me a delicious White Chocolate Mocha and Almond Poppyseed Muffin for breakfast AND hooking me up with the Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and a Dave Eggers book whose title escapes me. Not to mention the fact she actually brought a candle to put in my muffin (which was a trick candle that would literally not go out...Kaladi Brothers by Title Wave may have burnt down by now) and serenaded me with the world's quickest rendition of Happy Birthday. Needless to say, Amy is the early frontrunner for MVBW (Most Valuable Birthday Wisher for the uninitiated).

Regardless, I had to make a bday post because I feel as if it will be a wonderful way to score comments, so comment to stroke my ego as a birthday present. Yay ego stroking! I kid (sort of).

Also, if you are feeling extravagant, I also accept tickets to the Super Bowl as a present (assuming of course that it is the Pats vs. Packers...or Pats vs. Giants for that matter...my boys the Patriots will be in it one way or another...knock on wood) or tickets to the below event. How cool is the below event for me? It's a celebration for the release of the last issue of one of my all time favorite comics, Y the Last Man, and it features special guest Joss Whedon and the magnificent creative team from Y the Last Man, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra. There will be Q and A, there will be punch, and there will be all kinds of awesomeness I'm sure. If you feel the need to express how you feel about me financially, I fully encourage tickets to either of those events as the way to go. But that's just me.

Liars! You're making me unhappy!

The title of this post is of course in direct reference to the old slogan to Hooters - "It makes you happy." Well you know what Hooters...you most definitely did not make this guy happy.

Tragically, Hooters of Anchorage, Alaska is now closed for business (until supposedly the summer). This is terrible news, as it happened to fall on the very day we were to go to Trivia, and doubly terrible because Lacey's fiance Kevin was going to get his first foray into trivia himself. Robbed of trivia, we all still had a good time with a Taco Night mixed with Rock Band and partial viewings of Grease and Terminator 2, but it just was not the same.

That begs the question...will life be the same without trivia night? I previously had a post about Wednesday were my favorite days of the week because of the perfect combination - Comics and Trivia. Now we're down one part of the amazing day at least temporarily, my weeks have been downgraded a bit because of the lack of my precious trivia. I'm sure I will find something to fill the Trivial Pursuit shaped hole in my heart, but it will take time to heal that wound. All I know is that Hooters shutting down was definitely NOT what I wanted for my birthday.

Stupid Hooters not making me happy...

R.I.P. Drunken Cowboys (2005-2008)

The Lament of Pretty Baby

Saturday night after I went to see the Alaska Aces play hockey, myself, Colver, Lorna, Kim, and Nick went out to Chilkoot Charlie's to have a nice, festive evening. I have a theory about Koots, and that is that you have a good time one in every four times you go. Its incredibly inconsistent, but the one time you have fun, you have A LOT of fun. Saturday night was one of those nights.

Quick aside...I call Koots the Royal Fork of bars. For those that do not know what Royal Fork is, its a buffet restaurant that has a lot of food, tons of varieties, but none of it is very good. Koots is "world famous" for its 8 bars within one bar setup. Hence the Royal Fork of bars. Needless to say, being called the Royal Fork of bars is not the best thing to be known as.

Back to the point, it was a great time, but it also acted as a microcosm for my success (or lack there of) with girls over the last year. Now I've been "successful" with girls over the last while, but it seems that whenever I meet one, there is always some glaringly large negative that impedes my ability to date them. Example? Saturday I met three really cool girls, each of whom had the aforementioned giant negatives. What were they?

1. Girl #1 - Was a Flight Attendant who was in town two days a week and loved her job. Extremely attractive, into me, yet never here.
2. Girl #2 - Cool girl who I knew through a friend, pretty attractive, yet found out way later on in the night that she was a) currently dating someone and b) getting over someone else.
3. Girl #3 - Comes by, makes a comment to me essentially saying "I'm unbelievably interested, find me and talk some more." I go find her, talk for a while, get her number...at which point she announces she has two kids.

Does it make me a terrible person for quickly losing interest in all three of these people? Typically, every girl I've been meeting that I'm interested in fits into one of five classes. The previous three (Transient, dating someone, has kids) and two others...

1. Girl #4 - Cool, attractive, interested...married. I'll call her Girl #2 squared, which fittingly would make her girl #4 anyways.
2. Girl #5 (with a bullet) - Very cool, very attractive, seemingly interested, yet is a combination of overly busy and "not" interested, thus nothing ever happens.

Those are the five classes of girls that I meet anymore. My friend Amy and I frequently lament to each other about why is it so hard to find someone that is dateable in Alaska, and you know what? That's a damn good question. I guess I just need to meet girls in other places, but its so hard to do that anywhere really.

I'm really not too worried about it to be honest, but it really is amazing that I have such bad luck and that it really is so hard to find someone in such a ridiculously large place. My day will come, I know that.

Precious Little Life

A little over two weeks after Christmas, I believe I've come up with what is my favorite present. One of the things I asked for after getting recommendations from people I talked to about comics and from a lecturer I saw a while back (See my post Understanding Comics) was the series of comics called Scott Pilgrim, created by Bryan Lee O'Malley. They are much more akin to Manga than they are to traditional comic books, but at the same time not similar to them at all. They are digest sized books that follow around the 23 year old Scott Pilgrim in his bizarre journey to date the delightful Ramona Flowers.

How's this for a plot? He meets this girl, but to capture her love he has to defeat her seven evil ex-boyfriends. Along the way, he's trying to survive his ex-girlfriend (deranged high schooler Knives Chau), melt faces with his band (named Sex Bob-Omb), brave ex-girlfriend related panic attacks (caused by ex-love-of-his-life and honest to god rock star Envy Adams), and continue to live in his one room apartment that he shares with his gay roommate Wallace, with no money or any real prospects. Besides the fact he's pretty much the best fighter in Canada, as he proves in battles against the League of Ramona's Evil Ex-Boyfriends.

The influences of this book range everywhere from Manga, traditional comics (Scott wears a jacket that has a patch he got from Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters), Indie Rock, musical elitists, sitcoms, video games, everything. It can be incredibly touching, real, hilarious, badass, and altogether awesome at any different moment. Scott himself is a strangely likeable guy for someone who is so stuck on himself, and the rest of the supporting cast is absolutely fantastic (especially Sex Bob-Omb drummer and other Scott ex Kimberly Pine). O'Malley's heavily manga influenced art is alternately crisp in a comic strip type of way, while showing the kinetic energy of his aforementioned influences.

I'd recommend this to anyone, besides the fact I know that there is still a lot of skepticism about the comic book medium. Can it really be good, or is the perception of it (kiddy and ridiculous) true? Quick answer, yes and it isn't, respectively. Generally, the comic book medium has gained a lot of respectability (check out Jeff Jensen's article in Entertainment Weekly this week as a bit of mainstream proof) recently, and its because of titles like Scott Pilgrim that it has done this. Have guts? Want to try something new? Pick up Scott Pilgrim. Maybe you'll like it, and if you do, you'll probably love it.

Anyone can cook!

Ingredients pre-cooking

After making my New Year's resolutions and watching Ratatouille, I had an incredible desire to start cooking bigger meals (even if, as someone reminded me, I was just cooking for myself). I love cooking, and the bigger and more complex meals definitely bring out the best in my cooking and in food. First up this past weekend, I made some delicious Pad Thai, and continuing with my Thai theme, I made some Yellow Chicken Curry.

Curry Ingredients in the Blender...not pretty

It was a simple enough recipe - simply combine the sauce ingredients in the blender, blend them for a little bit, and bingo bango, Curry sauce! From there, chop up your chicken, pour the curry sauce over it, bake for 45 minutes and you are almost all the way there.

Vegetables pre-cooking

After that, add your potato that you cut up, cherry tomatoes, and green pepper with the chicken and sauce. Stir it up, bake for 20 minutes, pour over freshly cooked Jasmine rice, and you have yourself some ridiculously awesome Yellow Chicken Curry.

Chicken in the casserole with the sauce mixed in

After the baking in the oven

My plate vs. the whole dish

This turned out pretty awesome, although it was a bit spicy because I put in two pretty intense red peppers in there that stepped it up quite the notch. Next time I may go a bit more mild as the spice was a bit overpowering. No less, great second foray into big meal cooking. What's next for me? No idea, can't wait though. I love cooking and it's been fantastic getting back into it.

Best of 2007 (Music Edition)

So I've decided to not to do comics, just because I honestly think most people will really care about comics (and I've already posted my list a number of places elsewhere...also know that most people likely don't care about this list either, but hey, doing it anyways!) and also because of lazyness. Instead of blogging, I spent the night watching Ratatouille for the first time since theaters. Man. That movie rocks. If I were to theoretically redo my movie list, I might have to move that little guy up to #5.

Regardless of all that, here are my top 30 cd's of 2007. Note that there is literally no space to do write ups, so just let me say they are tiered like this.

1-5 are "I can recommend these to anyone and they'd be loved."
6-8 are "I could recommend these to 95% of everyone I know and they'd feel strongly towards them."
9-15 and 18 are "If I find the right person, this will be an absolutely cherished CD."
16-20 and 29 (minus 18) are "Reliable, but not going to bowl anyone over."
21-23 are "Great music for a very specific mood. Outside of that mood, prepare for bed."
24-26 are "Proceed with caution...can be ridiculously great...can be absolutely bizarre."
27-30 (minus 29) are "Indie darlings whom I like less than everyone else, but are still very good."

Very odd scale for sure, but that is kind of how I look at it.









1. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga










2. The Apples in Stereo - New Magnetic Wonder









3. Motion City Soundtrack - Even If It Kills Me












4. The Shins - Wincing the Night Away










5. Against Me! - New Wave

6. Matt Pond PA - Last Light

7. Eluvium - Copia

8. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver

9. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala

10. Beirut - The Flying Club Cup

11. The Go! Team - Proof of Youth

12. Art Brut - It's a Bit Complicated

13. Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha

14. Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?

15. M.I.A. - Kala

16. Air - Pocket Symphony

17. Arctic Monkeys - Your Favourite Worst Nightmare

18. Panda Bear - Person Pitch

19. Radiohead - In Rainbows

20. Jimmy Eat World - Chase This Light

21. The Good Life - Help Wanted Nights

22. Iron and Wine - The Shepherds Dog

23. The Field - From Here We Go Sublime

24. The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse

25. Architecture in Helsinki - Places Like This

26. The Polyphonic Spree - The Fragile Army

27. Feist - The Reminder

28. The National - Boxer

29. Hot Hot Heat - Happiness Ltd.

30. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam

Best of 2007 (TV Edition)

Alright, back to the best of 2007 (about time as we are now two days into the new year). I'm going to make this one short and sweet because I need to be off to the gym, but everyone knows I love TV. I think this is the best time ever for TV, and I'm not even watching a bunch of shows that are considered to be top rate right now as well. So below are my top 12 (!!) favorite shows that broadcasted in 2007. Enjoy!

Breakdown by Network: 2 for Showtime, NBC, CW, and ABC, 1 for Sci-Fi, HBO, Discovery, and Fox.

1. Battlestar Galactica (Sci-Fi)

I am a complete and absolute Battlestar Galactica freak. Even though it only had 11 episodes this season, those 11 were so absolutely uniformly superb that no other show could fit here. I won't go on too much about this because everything about this show is the best on TV, but I'd like to point that Aaron Douglas (Chief Tyrol), Michael Hogan (Exec. Officer Saul Tigh), and Jamie Bamber (Lee Adama) really took the leap this year, transcending limitations earlier in the series to really set themselves apart. In addition, the season finale was the single greatest hour of television I've ever seen.

No fooling. Check this show out.

2. Dexter (Showtime)

Oh Dexter. How sad for you that I am an absolute Bstar nutcase...otherwise you'd be a clear cut number one. Dexter does have one thing going for it that no one else does, and that is the greatest character/performance on TV today: Michael C. Hall as Dexter.

With season 1 being so incredible and the plot line so riveting, I didn't see how it was possible that they could top it. Season 2 took a completely obvious plot thread (how I didn't see it, I have no idea) and ran with it, completely and utterly topping the first season in all regards. Darkly hilarious, wickedly clever, and occasionally tragic. Dexter set itself apart this year.

3. Lost (ABC)

Even more amazing than Dexter being displaced as number one? Perpetual TV giant Lost falling down to number 3 on my list. Now this has absolutely nothing to do with its failings, as there were very few in season 3 (and the season finale of the third season fits snugly against the third season finale of Bstar as the second best episode of anything this year), but it was just a highly competitive field this season.

Lost was remarkably good, with some people calling it an incredible comeback from the up and down and very hatch oriented second season. There were huge surprises, terribly sad deaths, and plenty of mystery to be witnessed by all in this season. Plus, they did a fantastic job of setting the two (arguably) main characters, Jack and Locke, back up as what they were in Season 1: fierce leaders and certified badasses. Plus the show gets bonus points for hiring my favorite comic writer as a staff writer (Brian K. Vaughan).

Better yet? Season 4 looks to be even better...and it starts in less than a month.

4. Chuck (NBC)

5. 30 Rock (NBC)

6. Weeds (Showtime)

7. Veronica Mars (CW)

8. Reaper (CW)

9. Prison Break (Fox)

10. Pushing Daisies (ABC)

11. Planet Earth (Discovery)

12. Flight of the Conchords (HBO)