Six (Seven) Songs From The Last Ten Years

I’m having an old man moment, a “How can it almost be new year already?” confusion that’s bedeviled me for the last week or so; it felt like my Christmas feeling didn’t really kick in until a couple of days before the main event – and then, extra-unusually for me, then kicked straight back out – and now I feel surprised that it’s almost 2010. What happened to all the time? Have I really been working that hard? Wait, don’t answer that one.

Anyway, what with all the “Decade In Review” blogging I’ve been doing for io9, I’m kind of stuck in that mindset, and so: Six songs that I heard and fell in love with this decade, anyone? Please to enjoy:

Camille, Ta Doueur:

Camille in general, I’ve fallen in love with, but this was the first song I heard by her and the one that I have the most nostalgic sweetness for based on lyrical intent alone. Plus, Camille live is the best show I’ve seen in the last ten years, easily.

Arctic Monkeys, Brianstorm:

The Arctic Monkeys are one of those bands that, like the Streets, give me this romanticized view of British pop music years after I’ve left the country. But they sound awesome and their lyrics are smart and witty and funny and I can’t resist. Also, the spin-off band, The Last Shadow Puppets and My Mistakes Were Made For You:

The Streets, Let’s Push Things Forward

Already bizarrely dated (“Enhanced CD”?), but always a mix of the past and the present, Mike Skinner at his best manages to be honest and sincere despite the snark and the smarts. I still want to see a collaboration between him and Damon Albarn.

Nellie McKay, Ding Dong:

I have a big crush on Nellie despite the uneven (read: overproduced, overlong and a bit shit) second album. But, again: Good tunes and funny lyrics. Apparently, that’s the key to my heart this decade. Who knew?

Danger Doom, Crosshairs:

As much as I like MF Doom (and I really do), Danger Doom really worked for me because of Danger Mouse’s choice of samples and what he did with them; there’s something playful and yet really evocative about every track on this album that manages to transcend the gimmicky Adult Swim guest shots (and I say that as someone who loves Adult Swim).

Little Boots, Meddle

A relatively recent discovery, but there’s something about this song – and this performance, in particular – that seems perfect, all handclaps and girlpop and threats and just everything you could ever want in a pop song, but skew-wiff somehow, slightly “off” and all the better for it.

Beyonce, Crazy In Love

If I need to explain why this is awesome, then I give up.

To those who follow the calendar that says that tomorrow starts a new year, have a good night tonight, and here’s to 2010 being better than 2009 (And, for that matter, the next decade being better than this one). Fingers are crossed, and hopes are high.

Take This, My Don Juan

This just in from the Department of Awesome Spam Subject Lines:

Seriously, someone has to put together a collection of the greatest spam subject lines ever written and/or automatically generated. I’d at least smile at its existence in whatever bookstore I saw it in.

All I Want For Christmas Is My Right Arm Back

So, there I was, lying on the ground on Christmas Eve, unable to feel my right arm, which lay underneath me, having just broken the fall I’d just finished.

To be fair, there was a moment there when I couldn’t quite feel anything, but that was also a moment where I wasn’t quite sure if I could think straight either, so I’m not sure that really counts. Anyway, it was quickly replaced by a searing pain in my leg, where I’d hit the gate we’d set up to keep the dogs out’ve part of the house and gone flying in a particularly groundward direction. To be equally fair, I was somewhat flying when my leg connected with the gate; I was, in some rushed and clearly unsuccessful manner, trying to jump over the gate when my leg caught it and sent me crashing downwards.

When I say it like that, it sounds pretty pitiful: I tripped and fell. But I know it’s not just me who was surprised by it: Kate came running through, panicked by the noise, and looked at me in a “Oh God, he’s broken something and on Christmas Eve, this is not good” manner. Once I’d realized what had happened – There were a few seconds where I really had no idea why I was lying on the floor at all, and probably would’ve had some trouble explaining what a floor was – and picked myself up, she made me try and lift my arm up to various points, and evidently read my wincing to such a degree that she could tell that I hadn’t, in fact, broken anything, but clearly strained some muscles. I was disappointed by the news (Straining muscles? So why does it hurt so much? Am I that much of a wuss?), but it’s since been explained to me that straining muscles (a) can be more serious than it sounds, and (b) really would explain the fact that, every now and again, I lose strength in my right arm even a couple of days later for no immediately apparent reason.

Nonetheless, it felt, for a couple of minutes, like the disaster that ruined Christmas. And even the next day, as I failed to be able to lift up a laptop without sharp stabbing pains in my right arm, I was convinced that it was some strange omen luckily avoided.

Who Could Resist A 2-For-1 2010?

Upon receiving this email, my first thought was “What do these people know about my future finances that I don’t, that they think that a coupon book is a necessity?”

I am now worried that I shall be a Media Hobo next year, living off of television food stamps and celebrity charity.

Well. Even moreso than usual, I mean.

Ho, Ho, Ho

From 2000, I think. But it was always about the past anyway.

Happy Christmas, if you’re into that kind of thing.

The Horror Of Holiday Journalism

(For the first – and probably last – time ever, I’m running an Ono essay while it’s still available in Comix Experience’s newsletter at the store in San Francisco. Normally, I wait until the new one is out, but this ceases to be topical… well, a few days ago really, but definitely today, so I figured what the hell. Happy Holidays, people.)

It’s the Holiday Season already, which means many things to many people: Children complaining that you won’t tell them Santa’s phone number so that they can text him their wish list for the year, stores filled with decorations that seem to have nothing to do with even the most commercial understandings of any known religious holiday on the planet, the same seven songs on every radio station you listen to, people on random street corners selling fir trees that are quite clearly merely seconds away from dropping their needles all over the ground trying to convince you that this is the tree that will make your family happy for the next three weeks at least… It’s a winter wonderland and no mistake. But just as you find yourself settling down in front of a Yule Log video and mug of steaming eggnog, kindly spare a thought for those less fortunate during this time of year. The ones who won’t get to celebrate with their loved ones. The ones for whom the end of the year doesn’t mean laughter, joy or even the innocent happiness of a peck on the cheek under the mistletoe.

I’m referring, of course, to journalists.

For journalists, the Holiday Season is the second worst time of the year (Closely following the summer, when it quickly becomes clear that the rest of the country is going on vacation and enjoying the good weather while it lasts, while they are stuck inside trying to come up with yet another angle on the already-tired story that’s dominating the headlines due to the fact that nothing of any interest happens in the summer and so everything will be written about, reported on and analyzed until it crumbles to pieces in front of your very eyes. What, you thought there was actually anything important about summer movies? Not at all! It’s just that, without Megan Fox’s piercing stare and limitless acting abilities, you would’ve read more stories about President Obama’s dog or something. It’s all a terrible sham). It’s the time of the year when editors turn to them and, without fail, ask for one of two things: A “Best Of The Year” list – which, this year, may also be a “Best Of The Decade” list, terrifyingly enough* – or a Gift Guide for concerned shoppers who care enough about the people they’re giving the gifts to that they want to them to be successful and liked, but not enough to actually know what they should be getting for said people without the help of a stranger who has been forced to write a guide that is generic enough to appeal to many different types of people who have almost nothing in common.

Neither of these things are fun to write. For one thing, both require varying amounts of research, whether it’s reading lots of back copies of their publication to find out just what came out that year anyway (And, inevitably, discovering that not only did that book that you were convinced was this year actually from three years ago, leading you to become concerned about your age if time is appearing to squash down like that and it wasn’t like that when you were younger and measuring your life in terms of school semesters and oh God those were the days what did I do with my life) or spending hours trawling through Amazon.com to try and find out what is actually selling these days and therefore might be worth recommending to people. Research, as anyone who’s read any DC or Marvel comic that has ever featured a scene involving a medical professional in any kind of medical setting can attest to, is both so hard and so boring that it’s not something that any writer wants to do at all; that’s how we end up with such scientifically unfeasible concepts as the psychic nosebleed or female hemophiliacs. Therefore, anything that requires any amount of research heavier than just going to Wikipedia a couple of times** is generally frowned upon, and last time I checked, Holiday Gift Guides aren’t on Wikipedia just yet, and user-generated Best Ofs won’t appear in time. That’s why no-one wants to write one of those stories.

And yet, they appear every single year without fail, just like Bing Crosby’s disembodied head following you around while you’re in Macy’s singing “White Christmas” and telling you how much weight you’ve put on since the last time he saw you, before adding a bombombombombom for effect. It’s what editors in The Biz call “supply and demand”: They pretend there’s a demand of it, so it’s the journalists’ job to supply it or else they’ll be demanding a new journalist who can write a simple story when it’s asked for, on deadline, no questions asked. Again, anyone who’s read any X-Men comic that wasn’t written by Grant Morrison or Joss Whedon in the last two decades*** is probably intimately familiar with the concept****.

Therefore: The Best Of The Year List and Gift List. We here at Fanboy Rampage Towers are no stranger to the zeitgeist when it comes to publishing fads – Who could forget our 3D issue, just a couple of years ago, or the month in the mid-1990s when every word came on its own individual Pog? The most successful gimmick we were tried, of course, was the issue of Comix Experience Onomatopoeia that came with five different variant covers, meaning that there were more covers than there were pages in the actual newsletter… But each one had its own headlines in the speech balloons down the right hand side that, when read in the correct order, revealed the end of the then-ongoing Infinity War mini-series from Marvel – and we also know what side our metaphorical bread is metaphorically buttered (Metaphorical butter, of course, because we choose to use a low-fat spread for health reasons) on. Oh, we’re not going to sell out completely, don’t worry; you won’t get a Best Of The Year list from us, because we just don’t dig an agenda that puts a value on art, man. No piece of work created by human hands is better than any other piece of work created by human hands, unless we’re talking about Astonishing X-Men: Ghost Boxes, which was pretty lackluster to say the best, come on. But that aside – and, sure, if you really push us and put a metaphorical gun to our completely-non-metaphorical heads, we’ll admit that we really thought that Richard Stark’s Parker: The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke was kind of the bar for awesome over the last twelve months, so sure, you can imagine your own list that has that at the top, then everything else that was published in 2009 in the middle, and Astonishing X-Men: Ghost Boxes at the bottom if you really wanted, but are you really going to be that guy? Honestly? – we don’t do Best Of lists.

Gift guides, however… Well. That’s another story.

There’s an art to doing a truly great Gift Guide. Anyone approaching one has to come at it with a fresh mind and a clear head… A new pair of eyes and your ears to the ground… Your nose to the grindstone, and I think you know where I’m going with this. But you have to say goodbye to the old cliches and instead look at Society anew: What kind of people are there in the world? And what do they want? I’d be tempted to call it a meticulous science, but that would suggest that it’s only a science, and really, it’s so much more. It’s more like alchemy, but even alchemy is a bit too sciencey, so let’s just call it magic and accept that, like Doctor Strange and Doctor Voodoo have demonstrated, it’s not for the weak-hearted or for those with sensible hair. There are entire organizations dedicated to this kind of endeavor. Maybe you’ve heard them described as “Cool Hunters,” “Intellectual Pop Culture Strategists” or even “People Taking A Survey For No Immediately Apparent Reason.” They’ll ask you about your tastes, your likes and dislikes, and even what you had for breakfast this morning, and then frown when you say that you were in a rush and so skipped breakfast so that you could make it to work on time. These are the people who knew about Facebook, Twitter and even the entire internet before you did, because that’s what they get paid to do: Know things first, and then make sure that you know about them and want them too.

You don’t mess with the Cool Hunters.

For months already, these people have been at work, looking at what you’re reading and listening to and wearing, shaking their heads in silent despair the entire time, writing things down and planning out what to sell you for Christmas or the Religious Holiday of your choice. They map things out, create PowerPoint presentations and flow charts to explain why you should buy Product X for your girlfriend but Product Y for your Aunt Flo, and they put all of this information into giant supercomputers that even Jack Kirby would’ve been impressed by, ready to spit out suggestions for whoever can afford to ask.

The gift you should get anyone for the Holidays is one of those supercomputers. And, when they ask why, you should tell them that I told you that Knowledge Is The Greatest Gift Of All.

You’re welcome.

* – Seriously, am I the only person who is stunned that it’s been ten years since we were all concerned about the Millennium Bug and the Y2K virus? I mean, I know it wasn’t yesterday, but still, this seems ridiculous. I feel like there are entire years I must’ve missed in there. It’s like I was starring in a particularly unambitious version of Futurama or something.

** – For those who feel the need to just mess with journalists, editing a Wikipedia entry of someone particularly newsworthy to include a lie that is obvious enough for readers to catch it when reading it in, say, the San Francisco Examiner one day but subtle enough so that it’ll remain invisible to the reporter who decided to cut and paste instead of actually doing their own research is a way to do so that is fun, easy and surprisingly satisfying in an admittedly shameful manner. I highly recommend it.

*** – Chris Claremont left the X-Men books in 1991. Which is now almost 19 years ago. Again: See “Old, getting” and “Old age and senility, I think I’m closer to it than I actually knew.”

*** – Potentially available to the exception list is Chris Claremont, who not only invented the formula that X-Editors have tried desperately to stick to on his original run throughout the 1980s but has also shown a weird ability to nonetheless write whatever the hell he wants no matter what editorial prodding he is getting, presumably by saying “When you invent a multi-million dollar franchise that almost singlehandedly kept the publisher’s reputation for innovative storytelling alive when your editor in chief is pushing a retro agenda that will see books like X-Factor and Thunderstrike be published, then you can give me advice on whether or not to kill Wolverine and make Kitty Pryde into a miniature Wolverine even though it makes no sense whatsoever” whenever challenged. See: “X-Men Forever” and “No, Really, She Phased Through His Arm And Kept A Claw And Just Didn’t Notice? That’s Ridiculous.”

Just Like The Ones I Used To Know

I’m not quite sure if I can remember my first White Christmas – the real thing, that is, not the first time I saw the movie (That was only a few years ago, and I remember being surprised by the story: What was this shit about a hotel and the war? Where’s the Christmas stuff? As much as I like Danny Kaye, Holiday Inn is better). It’s possible that Portland’s reportedly-unusual snowstorm last year was my first, a first time that it was actually crisp and white outside on Christmas Day itself. I remember it snowing during the Christmas holidays when I was a kid, but I’m not sure that there was ever really a snow-covered Christmas Day – either the snow would come too late, or it would snow on top of rain and melt away quickly or worse, turn to slush. But nonetheless, the idea of a White Christmas has always been incredibly nostalgic to me, as if I’ve had some secret childhood filled with them that I just can’t remember properly.

It’s not snowed yet this year and, like the last few years – although for very different reasons – Christmas has kind of snuck up on me this time around; I’ve been head-down with work for most of the time, and then all of a sudden, it’s two days away (There are those who’ll be getting cards late. Pretend they’re New Year cards, okay?). But even though my thoughts should really be on many other things – including the fact that I’ll have some work to do on Christmas Day itself, because io9 never stops – I find myself paying too much attention to the temperature, praying for some small Christmas miracle that will see the white stuff fall from the sky and make the season bright, just like the song says.

Coming Down Fast But I’m Miles Above You

Still, incredibly, swamped with work. Or, to be more accurate, the usual amount of work but a brain that doesn’t want to process information, so work takes twice as long as it really should, which is practically the same thing. And so, instead of real content, my latest obsession: People putting Beatles Rock Band videos on YouTube. I don’t know why this amuses me so much, but it really does (Note: I don’t own Beatles Rock Band myself)…



Why would someone want to put these videos online? To show off how well they score? Because they just love the Beatles that much? I have no idea, but I kind of love it nonetheless.

Everybody’s Looking For You Down At The House.

As if to emphasize that I haven’t been (a) blogging too much of late – blame busyness on all manner of counts, I’m afraid – and (b) writing about seasonal music at all, despite my promise to do that very thing, iTunes has just happily provided the following double bill to provide a little bit more guilt:


I love the fanmade videos for both of these, even if I’m not convinced by the edits made in the Eels song, which is actually twice as long in real life. But still: The OC! How can you say no to that?

There’s something about both of these songs that are weirdly… maybe not melancholy, but definitely ambiguous about Christmas and the surrounding season. As I get older and more ambivalent about it myself for a multitude of reasons, I’ve learned to appreciate that kind of undercurrent a lot more. Still: Everything’s gonna be cool this Christmas. Right?

Jimmy Andreewson Lies

In my inbox this morning:

I love that it says twice that it isn’t a spam email, as if just saying that is enough to convince someone that it genuinely isn’t one.