theCultFigurine

http://www.warninglabelgenerator.com/

As must be obvious to you, I enjoy making pretentious lists at the end of the year. Note, of course, this list only reflects what I liked from among the albums we bought this year - a tiny fraction of what was released in the genres we like, and a considerably tinier fraction of what was released in all genres. Anyway here's what I've liked best that was released in 2006:

Top 5 (in order)

1. The Black Angels - Passover - awesome from start to finish. My favorite of the year. I love their dark moody ominous droning. Great live shows too.   
2. Lily Allen - Alright Still - at first I was just thinking it was best of the summer, but it's really stuck with me. She's cheeky and profane fun.
3. The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America - another really strong album from The Hold Steady. Compared to last year's Separation Sunday the songs aren't as tightly plotted and the lyrics are more general; the exploits of Holly and Charlemagne are downplayed for more universal tales. Craig Finn also does less shout-singing and more singing-singing. So on the whole, I prefer Separation Sunday but Boys and Girls in America still makes my top 5 easily.
4. The Mountain Goats - Get Lonely - beautiful and melancholy. Again I prefer last year's The Sunset Tree but I can't imagine how John Darnielle could top the raw emotion of that album. The Mountain Goats will be back in Seattle on March 1st, and it's already on my calendar.
5. The Gossip - Standing in the Way of Control - I absolutely love how Beth Ditto combines disco-diva with punk-goddess and sounds so fresh and modern.

Honorable Mention (no particular order)

• Bob Dylan - Modern Times - a very good album, folksey, bluesy, strong all the way through. Very American. I'm not sure if there's a standout track in the collection because they're all so good.
• Asobi Seksu - Citrus - This is cheery, happy stuff that I'm not sure is in English. I think it appeals to the part of me that loves the Cocteau Twins?
• Arctic Monkeys  - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not - smashing, hard-driving ROCK.
• Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood - nothing surprising. Just another quality offering from Ms. Case!
• DeVotchKa - Curse Your Little Heart - a great EP.
• Math and Physics Club - Math and Physics Club - I just got this for Christmas, and I'm already really liking it. If I had more time to get into the sweetly romantic tunes on this album before writing this list, might it displace one of my top 5??? Such questions will no doubt haunt my existence.

Here are the year-end lists of KEXP's djs. Yeah, you can tell that it's pretty much the only station I listen to.

We saw lots of great shows this year, it's been fun looking back over my reviews. Let's get right to the top 5:

1. The Hold Steady @ Crocodile - ROCKED MY FACE OFF but I wish they were playing with U.S.E instead of Sean Na Na :-)
2. The Mountain Goats @ Neumo's - gave me shivers... an early contender for #1 of the year
3. Valentine's Day 69 Love Songs @ Crocodile - a fun and fitting tribute that introduced us to several good local bands
4. Cloud Cult @ Crocodile - deepened my admiration of Cloud Cult, plus we discovered Daylight Basement! what could be more awesome?
5. The Black Angels @ Triple Door - a crush is born

Honorable mentions:

• Calexico @ Showbox - what a totally freaking talented bunch of dudes
• Sasquatch @ Gorge - maybe it's not fair to judge an all-day festival against smaller shows, but it's hard not to mention a day when we saw Blue Scholars, Arctic Monkeys, Nada Surf and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
• DeVotchKa @ Neumo's- unfortunately we got humped by strangers all night, or else I'd probably have rated it higher

Because I truly cannot understand the logic behind videotaping yourself assaulting someone and then posting that video on the internets.

Police say teens attacked girl then posted video on YouTube and MySpace

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16317320/

But what is REALLY disturbing me in this article is this little aside:

[South Brunswick Detective Jim] Ryan said that using a cell phone on school grounds without the permission of school officials is technically a crime. However, he said police only recommend charging someone with the statute when the cell phone is used to commit a crime, such as harassment.

Is that really true? It's a crime to use a cell phone on school grounds in New Jersey???

I just finished taking a "brain sex" quiz at the BBC science website and found out that I'm slightly dudely:

I think my dudeliness stems from my mathiness - I scored 16/20 on one set of spatial reasoning problems, and 12/12 on a set of 3-D shapes rotation problems (this second score was so high, they suggested I had transcended gender and was likely to have a science/engineering background - true!).

Naturally, I still have a lot of babeliciousness too - I scored high in empathy, in the ability to discern emotions from looking at people's eyes, and in verbal fluency. I also prefer men with masculinized faces, and my ring and index fingers are nearly the same length.

I'm so cool.

I'm finally making good on my threat to poke some fun at the cultural directives in InStyle magazine (thanks for the nudge, Wendy...). I've still got the November and December issues on hand, and am currently reading January's. Wheeee!

For this first post, I'm lazily choosing the most obvious idiocy that can be found in nearly every issue. Some background may be helpful. Every month, InStyle features a female celebrity, usually an actress, on the cover. The overall tone, especially when it comes to celebrities, is very upbeat. You'll never see InStyle speculating about whether an actress is pregnant or anorexic, showing her looking slovenly, or tsk-tsking over her behavior.

The cover articles are uncritical puff pieces. Furthermore, the cover interview nearly always seeks to reassure the reader that female celebrities are down-to-earth and don't truly desire the success they've earned - in their hearts they belong to the traditional feminine realm. These are not uppity b!tches who use their status to threaten the status quo. These are women with conventional, socially-approved desires*.  These desires are probably ones that the reader can share with the celebrity. I am often left with the impression that famous women don't really want to be famous and successful and respected profesionnally and well-paid, not really. Not deep down.

---

The November cover interview with Lindsay Lohan is a good illustration of this framework in action.

Lindsay and InStyle want to assure us of the following humanizing feminizing information. Any of it may be true - but we'll see that the formula for the cover articles recycles many themes. This month's narrative:

• Lindsay Lohan "love[s] to cook" and is "a very domestic person"
• Linsday Lohan's co-stars and directors agree -- she is a great actress
• Lindsay Lohan is mystified by the attention the public pays to her [implication: Lindsay Lohan is humble and self-effacing]

and of course

• Lindsay Lohan strongly desires to marry and settle down: "I want to get married before I'm 30. And have my own house"

Lindsay is only 20 years old, which might explain the absense of one of the cover article's usual talking points. She did not state a burning desire to procreate. I assume that we'll hear that from her when she's on the InStyle cover again.

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December's cover belongs to actress Kate Winslet. The blurb that leads into the article immediately assures us:

"So much for British reserve: At 31 the sublime Kate Winslet may have scored four Oscar nominations, but she prefers life unscripted -- making a pot of soup for the kids, watching Antiques Roadshow, or sharing a bit of a giggle with husband Sam"

In the article we also learn that

• Kate Winslet loves to cook -- something she and Lindsay Lohan have in common! -- "Winslet uses cooking as therapy... She devours recipe books and actually looks forward to shopping for ingredients" [this actually kind of describes me!]
• Kate Winslet shuns materialism -- "At Christmas time she puts a cap on gifts from friends and family"
• Kate Winslet is a supermom -- "Juggling work, motherhood and stardom is, it turns out, something Winslet excels at"
• Kate Winslet is "hoping to have more kids. I don't know whether one or two. Oh, God, I would love to have more"

 

*footnote: I don't mean to sound sneering about conventional desires. Heck, I got married and we bought a house and whatever. My point is that month after month, the formula for the cover article never changes. I am suspicious. Female celebrities seem to be under pressure to publicly affirm their gender roles at every turn.

It was only a matter of time, I suppose, when my alienation from mainstream culture would finally get me branded as one of "those people":

“Those people who go on the Internet will not be shocked by this,” Mr. Ludwin recalled thinking.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/21/arts/television/...

Here's what he's referring to. Well, ya caught me!

I just don't understand superstitious/magical "reasoning". As I mentioned recently, I'm totally obsessed with Pink Truth, a blog that claims to tell the truth behind Mary Kay, and this example of superstitious reasoning comes from a recent comment thread. One woman described her experience of sending her inventory back to MK thusly:

actually when i tried to return them last monday at 5pm, the UPS computers had been down all afternoon… i was flabbergasted..
I actually thought…am I not supposed to do this?
so my husband tried to call his friend who owns a mailbox thing but they had already closed. then we drove to the post office. And just before we went in, my husband called UPS again and wouldn’t you know it… the computers went on as he was on the phone with them…
twilight zone music……

In essence, she's saying that because the UPS computers were down, she seriously wondered whether it was a SIGN (from God?) not to go through with returning the inventory??? THAT IS INSANE! How can people live that way? For one thing, she could just have easily reached the opposite conclusion, that the computers being down was a TEST! To see if she was really committed in her resolve to ship it back!

And as Woody Allen once said, "If [God's] gonna test us, why doesn't he give us a written?"