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.

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.

"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?"

Sunday night, the 2nd place T-birds took on 1st place Everett. Bear in mind, however, that heading into Sunday's game Everett had amassed 55 points and a tremendous season win% of 86%, the highest in the entire WHL. Meanwhile, Seattle had 39 points and a 59% win%. Second through 4th place were almost indistinguishable (39, 38, 38 points) with 5th place being truly abysmal (23 points, 35%).

"You could tell both teams were tired and it was a tight-checking game," Gagnon said. "We knew we had to play hard and not go on holidays until we got this game done."

... "It was atrocious," Silvertips winger Moises Gutierrez said. "For us to only get 11 shots showed that both teams pretty much sleep-walked through the game. We looked like we were already back home with our families."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/hockey/2003482839_birds18.html

Well, we enjoyed it anyway.

Since the Three Imaginary Girls' Valentine's Day tribute show was so great, I talked theCultFigure into seeing the Holiday Karaoke Party on Friday night (Dec 8th). The Valentine's Day show was better, but this was fun too. Some bands had clearly made a plan:

• Head Like a Kite - both guys dressed up as Superman, donned elf hats, and spazzed around singing "Safety Dance", except they changed it to "Santa Dance". Weird, funny, and they somehow made it work.
• A Gun That Shoots Knives - they asked for "the maximum reverb allowed by law" and brought down the house with a half-insane half-serious "Total Eclipse of the Heart". Awesome!
• Bre Ellen of Daylight Basement - sang "Gloria". It was an obvious choice, well suited to her.
• DJ Troy from KEXP brought a rap CD from his own collection and absolutely tore up the stage with a mesmerizing, blistering version of whatever it was he was doing. I have frankly no idea what it was. But it was definitely the performance of the night.

Many other performances were good but not stunning, and others were somewhat uneven. However, a good time was clearly had by all, and TIG Dana and her flamboyant co-host "Adrian LaFleur" kept things moving between songs with a lighthearted, goofy touch. What I like about these TIG parties is the sense of fun and community that's created by bringing together lots of local bands to blow off steam and make funny music together.

Oh, see Seattest review which has a photo of Head Like a Kite.

"Coaches once told skaters not to talk to them. The art of stopping shots was a mystery, so goalies lived in their own world, the pressure and isolation combining to turn them into a colorful society of basket cases.

...

The truly wacky stories came from the 1960s and 70s, when legends like Montreal’s Jacques Plante knitted in the locker room and Glenn Hall threw up before games and Gary Smith had to shower between every period.

...

[Patrick Roy] refused to skate over any lines on the ice — he had to step over them — and had a litany of pregame rituals."

Tonight I got an unexpected double treat. The TV guide said CBC's first broadcast would be NYR @ TOR. However, all three of Canada's eastern time zone teams had games tonight, so CBC stretched themselves to three simultaneous broadcasts - the Toronto game, OTT @ BUF, and PIT @ MTL. I think most of the nation, including us, got the PIT @ MTL broadcast, for which Cassie Campbell was on color commentary! Wooo!

Campbell had another great night in the booth. She and Don Wittman worked well together, and she provided a range of insights - such as explaining subtleties in how Kovalev directed the Montreal powerplay, discussing Sheldon Souray's new sticks this season (much less breakage!), and relating a cute story about Malkin learning some English words from Sergei Gonchar's preschool daughter.

Montreal beat Pittsburgh 6-3, and Crosby made a beautiful assist and set up some other chances, but only had the 1 point on the night (he's had 10 in the last two games). Pittsburgh played last night and it seemed they ran out of steam after a good first period. But the real story here is that while the broadcast team had plenty of well-deserved praise for Crosby and Malkin and Stall, they didn't make it sound like Crosby was Jesus Christ himself, sent here by God to deliver us from mullets and poor attendance and irrelevance. They actually discussed the game itself, while it was happening. How novel! And they discussed other players on both teams. Versus, take a note.

(Edited to add: photo swiped from http://www.thelavinagency.com/canada/cassiecampbell.html)

I saw this little exercise on a couple other blogs (actual ones with, you know, readership) and despite those bloggers' conclusion that it yields nothing interesting, I thought I'd give it a try. The idea is:

1) Harken back to your archives.
2) Collect the first sentence you wrote every month for the whole year.
3) Entertain us.

Well it's a lot less work than e.g. combing my archives to find the 5 posts I'm proudest of from 2006, but I can't say it yielded anything terribly amusing.

===================================

Dec: It's finally happened. [link]

Nov: You foodies out there may already know this, but it was news to me. [link]

Oct: I got back late Thursday afternoon and have been alternating between bursts of personal productivity and sloth for the last couple of days. [link]

Sept: How in the hell is a gal supposed to choose among The Black Angels at Neumo's, The Hold Steady at the Crocodile and the Rat City Rollergirls championship bout? [link]

Aug: Well, it looks like MSN Spaces decided to totally jack everything up today. [link]

July: This 8-minute video has made my day! [link]

June: For the first time in a while, we went to a show to hear the opening acts. [link]

May: I'm not saying we're definitely "grups", but theCultFigure and I have been known to go see live bands on a school night... [link]

April: I spent a bunch of time last week setting up a new computer, talking to the company helpdesk, and generally preparing to be out of town for a week. [link]

Mar: Ever heard of the Broken Windows Theory of crime reduction? [link]

Feb: I can't wait until the mp3 player I want is finally available in pink. [link]

Jan: On New Year's Day, my friend's baby threw up on my crotch. [link]

In fact, the low-pressure system approaching the coast is forecast to be more intense than the one that triggered 1993's Inauguration Day windstorm, which left six people dead, knocked out power to 700,000 homes and did more than $100 million in damage throughout the region. But this time the storm's path is slightly different, which might weaken the winds, Mass said.

 

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003476748_windy14m.html

The Highway 520 bridge may be closed tonight if the expected storm brings the winds that are forecast.

[...] "The forecast is pretty clear," said Pat Moylan, director of maintenance for the DOT. "Between midnight and 8 a.m., wind gusts will very likely reach the criteria we use to close the 520 bridge."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003477958_web420bridge14.html

Kate recently posted about a topic that I've been meaning to say something about: the trans-fats ban that just went into effect in New York City. You can read more about it in the NYTimes.

After I hit "publish comment" over at Kate's place, I kept thinking about the difficulty of knowing how restaurant food was prepared... So the NYC solution is to get harmful trans-fats out of restaurant kitchens. Another idea would be to extend another aspect of the ban. In addition to banning the use of trans-fats in all restaurants, fast-food and chain restaurants must display calorie counts of each menu item. So why not have a supplemental sheet distributed with all restaurant menus that discloses each dish's nutritional analysis.

Nutrition labels aren't perfect by any means, but that's a topic for another day. The government would have to be the impetus behind this too, of course. It'd probably be difficult in non-chain restaurants where products and preparations aren't standardized and constant, but I don't know how hard.

I suggest this would be more of a "let the market decide" approach in which the market customers actually have the information they need in order to decide! Frankly, the American cowboy mentality of "everyone always knows what's best for him/herself and the guv'mint should butt out" stops being convincing for me when it's clear that

1. people don't have sufficient information,
2. which is a problem that's probably exacerbated by class structure, leaving the most vulnerable members of society most susceptible to cheap unhealthy food, and
3. powerful corporations spend zillions of dollars to obfuscate crucial information from us about the considerable harms their products or practices cause.

On the whole I want the government to spend its time and money on stuff that keeps us healthy and safe. I guess that makes me a filthy commie :-)

I've gone on way too long and I haven't even addressed Kate's further point considering how effective the ban will be in increasing heart health. And furthermore, this whole trans-fats hullabaloo serves to remind me that I've yet to write up my reviews of What to Eat and Fast Food Nation. Goddammit. I am seriously behind on that. How am I going to make my year-end picks without having finished all my reviews!?

Back in November, was it? ACT Theater hosted a special weekend of Waiting For Godot by the Dublin Gate Theater. There were two major problems that had nothing to do with the performance:

• I was very unfortunate to be suffering from a flu-shot hangover that evening, complete with fatigue, joint aches everywhere from my neck to my knees, and mild malaise.
• The Moore Theater is cavernous and did the nuanced performance no favors. Dialogue sometimes got lost in the enormous space of the theater.

Despite these setbacks, I really enjoyed Waiting for Godot. The minimalist staging - a rock to sit on, a thin, wan tree - was just lovely. The actors were utterly convincing in their portrayal of the cyclic despair and acceptance of a life spent waiting for things that never happen. The Dublin Gate theater specializes in Beckett, it was plain to see. I'd summarize further, but why bother?

I recently found a feminist blog that focuses on women's experiences in science and engineering fields: Thus Spake Zuska. In a recent post about discussions spawned by the 1989 Montreal Massacre, in which 14 female engineering students were shot to death and 13 others wounded by a gender terrorist, I was struck by this [bold emphasis mine]:

During the discussion, one of the students said she doesn't see how you can be a ' "woman woman - like a traditional woman - and be an engineer" '. This, and other statements by the students in the discussion, illustrated their concerns that the "professional identify of an engineer is at odds with the gender identity of a woman". Students talked about "gender distancing" or needing to physically transform themselves, through the way they dressed, to blend in and appear less female, so that they would not be harassed at work or on internships. Another student, a Black woman, told a story of being mistaken for the secretary while on an internship. Upon telling the man who thought she was the secretary that she was actually an engineeering intern, he replied "You don't look like an engineer". Several other students noted they had had similar experiences. Overall, the discussion illuminated the "extra identity work that the women engineering students are doing on a daily basis."

It's identity work that men students don't have to undertake, because no one around them perceives a conflict between "man" and "engineer", no one perceives a conflict between the average mode of dress for men and the way they expect engineers to look, no one perceives a conflict between the average way men are expected to be and the way engineers are expected to be.

http://scienceblogs.com/thusspakezuska/2006/12/the...

YES. Oh Lordy, a thousand times YES. I've never seen it put into words like this and it really resonated with me. I have wrestled with this, particularly when I was a math major and a math grad student. This weird mental dance you do to reconcile your appearance and your vocation can sap your mental energy. But it's almost invisible. It's like a very mild headache that you don't notice until the end of the day.

When I was teaching undergrad math, I sometimes wondered whether dressing "like a girl" (an offbeat girl maybe, but still a girl) was a contradiction or not. Did I demonstrate that math isn't scary by defying a stereotype about women and math? The flip side of my teaching-self was my student-self. If I presented myself in a too-feminine way, would I receive unwanted attention? Would others think I was unserious or worse, that I was somehow flirting my way to success? Not that I had much success in math grad school, ha ha.

Upon reading this I started thinking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the feminist implictions of a conventionally feminine female superhero. I found it kind of a brain-buster at times: on the one hand Buffy defies stereotypes of what a pretty, feminine woman is capable of. On the other hand, what's so subversive about having a beautiful heroine? Gaaah.

I guess only in that far-off future utopia time when we've achieved actual equality will we be able to eliminate this craptastic identity work because there won't be any conflict between genders and vocations...