Welcome, everyone, to 2010!! Let’s settle something right away. It’s pronounced
two thousand ten. [too] [thou-zuh nd] [ten]
NOT,
O-ten. [oh] [ten]
Two-K-ten. [too] [key]* [ten]
Naught-ten. [nawt] [ten]
Twenty-ten. [twen-tee] [ten]
The year two hundred one time ten. [th uh] [yeer] [too] [huhn drid] [wuhn] [tahymz] [ten]
*Dictionary.com
Having only just slipped into the new decade, the holiday season is still fresh on our minds. The instinctual desire to be with your family, and the subsequent desire to hide in the crawlspace in order to escape fatal quantities of “holiday cheer.” The warm, fuzzy feeling of giving thoughtful gifts to friends and loved ones paired with the homicidal rage that accompanies outings to the local shopping center. In order to avoid this particular annoyance, I would highly recommend purchasing a (concealable) cattle prod. According to the world wide web, “Prods can be useful for moving stubborn or aggressive animals shoppers, but often cattle humans will not move forward when they are fearful of something they see, hear, or smell” such as makeup attendants, Christmas carolers, or homeless people. (Note: homeless people and makeup attendants are interchangeable as it relates to this quote.) Besides, nothing embodies the spirit of Christmas while saying, “Get the fuck outta my way” like a high-voltage, low-current localized dose of electricity that will liquefy a grown man’s gonads.
*ZAP!*….”Mommy, why is daddy break dancing?” Never you mind, little girl. Just remember that if you’re on the left side of the escalator, you’d best keep moving.
Aside from the chaos of Christmas, the end of the year brings other annual rituals. Perhaps my favorite aspect of winding down the year is the inevitable flood of LISTS that populate websites, magazines, television and radio programs. Don’t be fooled, Santa isn’t the only one with a shit-ton to sort through. No doubt, some lists that make it to the North Pole are just as ridiculous as the ones that end up in front of internet surfers, listeners, and subscribers. For example, the cultural beacon of hope that is “Jersey Shore” has a top ten rundown of quotes from a single episode that included this musing, “You have to stay fresh to death.” – Pauly D, on his tan/exercise/hair regimen. I’ve heard heavier reflections from Keanu Reeves.
Truthfully though, I LOVE LISTS!! If you left me in a windowless room with a gross of post-it notes and a pack of mechanical pencils and came back in one week, I’d have the next 17 years of my life planned out. You’d find me laughing maniacally, meticulously affixing each post-it to the one above, just so, such that the entire 84-foot chain lay completely straight. Does it bother anybody else that the “D” in “OCD” stands for “DIS-order?” No one? Yeah, me neither.
Well, in the combined spirit of the great music and the end of the year, I’m putting forth my offering to Albumus (Latinized), Greek god of lists. My top 40 albums of 2009. I do this with a tinge of trepidation, as I’m aware of the controversy such lists can create, both stemming from who made it onto the list, to who did not. I’ve read my fair share of top 10/50/100 lists this year and I’m tired of reading the comments section. There are always a few “special people” that try to undermine the reviewer’s opinion and present some glaring oversight, an album that surely could not have not made the list. Preposterous! Here is a falsified example of the rhetoric I’m referencing.
“Your exclusion of Grizzly Bear’s exquisite masterpiece ‘Veckatimest’ is a travesty. Not only is it one of the most thoughtful, well-composed albums of the year, but it’s timelessness and shear brilliance makes ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ sound like feral cats making love to Gwar. I fully intend on blogging about your ignorance for a full week unless you publicly apologize to all music lovers and send a handwritten apology of no fewer than 1,000 words to my home address.”
Irritating, huh? To these people I say, please compile your list and post it on the internet so I can eShit all over it and use the comment section to assert that I’m far more qualified to have, and present, music-related opinions than you are. On top of that, I should probably include one of the following lines:
- “A deaf manatee with only one flipper would’ve not only assembled a better list, but would’ve made better music than the artists on your list.”
- “Your opinions lack any trace of ‘street cred’ and you’re a total poser. I hope your genitalia get caught in the zipper of your super-tight hipster jeans and you scream so loud that the prescriptionless lenses of your black, horn-rimmed glasses shatter into a million pieces like your heart did in 4th grade when Jennifer Bledsoe dumped your ass for the new kid.”
- “You were, in fact, an ‘accident’ and it’s a shame that abortion technology had not been perfected when you were conceived.”
Harsh!! So instead of logging on and sounding off, consider how opinions can make life great. Everybody has them and they’re all worth the same in the end…unless you’re Oprah.
Without further ado, my top 40 albums of 2009…
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Albums-of-2009/lm/R3VWZJTJRLBR0S/ref=cm_srch_res_rpli_alt_1
If it appears that I’ve completely missed the boat on your favorite album of 2009, please let me know (nicely!) so I can reconcile and maybe you’ll find yourself on the contributor’s list next month!
