BMOWP’s Favorite Album of the Decade

December 28, 2009


The Moon and AntarcticaOh, come on. Let’s be honest. You don’t want to read another list. You’re absolutely ecstatic that I chose only one album.

That’s good. I’ve skipped a lot of them this year, understanding that everyone’s “best of the year” or “best of the decade” collections are created through the ether of personal taste. One person’s Kid A is another person’s “How can you choose Kid A as the best album of the decade when it’s barely Radiohead’s third best record overall?”

I was about to enter the fray, actually. My ten favorite albums of the decade:

#1 – Modest Mouse, Moon and Antarctica
#2 – Er… Um…

Well, there was a problem.

Call it a shift in execution. This was the decade in which I started listening to songs instead of albums. My personal trends were driven by college radio and the Internet instead of touring punk bands and my friends’ CD players. My tastes expanded to the point that I could no longer devote enough attention to specifics, looking for the quick fix over the long play.

Which is not to say that I completely forgot the album format. Jets to Brazil, Arcade Fire, Wilco, The Strokes and The White Stripes all threw out great albums that I listened to as a whole. Some of my favorite bands released albums that I certainly paid attention to: bands like Built to Spill and Hot Water Music put forth a great effort, but nothing compared to the albums they released in the 90s. Even recently, MGMT and The Antlers alerted me to defining music that, given another ten years, could rival the albums I’ve already deified.

For me, there’s only one album that stood strong enough for the entire ten years. And it was all rooted in a time and a situation: the summer of 2000. It was a trip to England. It was a realization of whatever I thought my talents would become. It was my first year out of the dorms thanks to a year in limbo and a year as an RA.

And while Modest Mouse’s The Moon and Antarctica works well both as a collection of spacey, intense songs and as a concept album on the meaning of life, it never would have become quite the life-altering force without the situation in which it played a part: the soundtrack to a generational change, from grown-up child to aspiring adult.

The top 10 list wilted, a strong top album unsupported by the willing (though not necessarily able) albums below it. Paired up against #1, no album really stood a chance.

I guess I knew that from the beginning.

Tags: Music, The Top..., Vilhauer |

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Merry Christmas, etc.!

December 25, 2009


The Vilhauers

Merry Christmas and all of that stuff!
From all of us at Black Marks on Wood Pulp and Much More Sure.

(Special thanks to Craig for the picture, yo.)

Tags: Meta, Much More Sure, Vilhauer |

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The Christmas season

December 24, 2009


At one point in my life, Christmas was a one-day thing. It was December 25, and not counting a rare outlying appearance at church on Christmas Eve night, all festivities were confined to that day.

The sleeplessness of Christmas Eve night was heightened by the uncertainty of the next day, of what Santa would bring and, even after I had stopped believing, what my parents had cooked up for me. It was a celebration, like a birthday or the 4th of July.

Christmas was an event.

Since then, Christmas has shifted from one day to many, from a single holiday to an entire season.

It didn’t take much. Where there was once a flurry of activity, there is now a gently stretched period of merriment, from the weekend before to the weekend after. For me, it began when my parents got divorced, creating two distinctive Christmases, and expanded as I got married.

This year, Christmas began on the 20th, with my mother. It continues tomorrow morning with my father, and that evening with Kerrie’s family. Christmas morning is for us, just Kerrie and the kids and me and Kerrie’s parents. The gifts we spent so long planning and buying and creating and baking slowly leak out like an unused bike tire until, eventually, we look around and realize they’re all gone.

And, ironically, Christmas day – the day when all of the magic used to happen, the day I used to count down toward for weeks – has become a complete day of rest, shaking off the hustle and hunkering down for the rest of the holiday.

Tags: Vilhauer |

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The big event

December 23, 2009


South Dakota doesn’t have much in terms of professional sports. We have semi-professional sports, which can often be difficult to follow, thanks to the vagabond nature of minor league athletes. But we don’t have anything that can fill up a sports page, creating trends in conversation, a common ground among everyone.

Instead, we have the weather.

Which explains the local news’ insistence on covering an upcoming winter storm with the same pomp and gusto as a team of ex-athletes hyping the Super Bowl or the Olympics.

Our most popular local celebrity is a weatherperson, after all.

Willard Scott would be so proud.

Tags: Sioux Falls, Sports |

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For the love of the game

December 21, 2009


Today, despite the hard work of Peyton Manning and Marquis Colston, despite a 6-2 rally to end the season, despite a ridiculous season from a handful of throwaway players destined for the scrap heap, my fantasy football season ended.

I’d say prematurely, but as a #4 seed, facing a team that outscored the rest of the league by a couple hundred points, this was in the cards all along. Then again, it might be a blessing. After all, now – more than any time during the season – I can actually sit and enjoy a game of football.

Without the ancillary anxiety. Without the constant updates. Eyes straight ahead, focused on the game, mocking the commercials, filtering out the sarcasm.

We all keep score on something. We all spend some part of our lives measuring up against someone else, against the ideal, looking for quantitative data to prove our worth. But, when it comes down to it, that data proves nothing. It throws up smoke, much as Ben Wallace’s diminutive scoring undermined his talent on the basketball court.

I just switched sports on you, I know. But, you see, it’s all an exercise in not keeping score. Now that I have nothing left to play for, I can enjoy the art and spectacle that professional football is.

Take that metaphor, and you can probably attach it to whatever you want. Industry awards. Popularity lists. Elections. The old Favrd community.

I know, I know. Awards, championships, blah f’n blah. You play to win the game and all of that. But when you’re not playing by the same goals in the first place, you’ve got the freedom to weasel out the competitiveness and land on something more pure.

I guess it’s called “the love of the game.”

Tags: Basketball, Football, Sports |

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Radio Shack sucks. But sometimes, so do the commenters.

December 18, 2009


Listen. I get it. There are a lot of people who work for Radio Shack that don’t enjoy working for Radio Shack.

But why me?

It’s not like I set out to be a sounding board for the teeming, unsatisfied masses that Radio Shack seems to hire. It’s not like I opened up Wordpress and began piling on in hopes I’d become the center of disgruntled employees, my site the sun to their swirling planets of retail woe.

But, that’s what happened. All because I said, “Radio Shack Sucks.”

I’m not sure many commenters have even read the posts. My situation was solved. It was remedied. I figured everything out and, despite my anger at the time and my fist shaking and yelling and threats of boycott, I still buy my cheap wire and television antennas at Radio Shack. I never called for an army of employees to rise up and slay the monster.

Which makes a bigger point. This was never about the employees. This was customer versus a system. Individual versus corporation. David, Goliath, etc.

Not anymore. Now, it’s a symposium of part-time commissioned hell.

Let’s be honest. It brings a lot of traffic. It’s my most popular post (which goes a long way in proving a search engine’s ability to separate good from bad). But that doesn’t mean I’m thrilled every time Keith from Store 543 in Pasadena or Jules from some suburb of Boston stops by to drop another paragraph of poorly worded angst, like Black Marks on Wood Pulp was the Domesday Book of shitty jobs.

In fact, when Keith or Jules stop by and leave yet another un-punctuated mess in the comments of a post, I realize that to a small subset of people, that post defines what my site is - and, therefore, what my writing style and personality are. All I can do is shake my head. Saddened that this is what I’ve brought upon the Web. After so long, I’m simply too tired to respond.

What’s more, I’m unwilling to delete the comments, because sometimes it’s one of the few real things that people leave behind.

Tags: Meta, Technology, Vilhauer, Writers |

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The Idea

December 15, 2009


The Idea. The Idea. It’s all about The Idea. It’s all about The New Idea. The Great Idea. It’s all about an Idea that’s never been dreamed of, an Idea that’s been marinated in thought, a result of an outlier’s uniqueness, standing on its own, ready to take the reigns of the buzz train and gallop into the world’s collective awe.

With my hands over my face, my mind a complete wasteland, I continue to search for The Idea.

Tags: On... |

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