2009 Wrap-Up: Music

Dec 23, 2009
Categories: music

I like to write a blog post at the end of each year to sum up what happened during the year and how i felt about it. This year has been a huge one, however, and it’s also the end of a pretty significant decade, so i’m breaking my post up into multiple parts. To kick things off, let’s talk about music.

2009 Albums

I acquired about twenty albums this year, and i think it’s worth mentioning that i only stole a handful of them. That’s right, i actually purchased most of the albums i’ll be talking about here. Not that i really think it matters, but it’ll make my mom happy. ;)

I started the year off by buying We Started Nothing by The Ting Tings, and that’s a reflection of the sort of tunes i listened to all year long. Very dance-y, high-energy stuff with just a few exceptions, including last year’s old-west-flavored Fleet Foxes and nineties-alt-punk-y Girl In A Coma, whom i was delighted to discover at the 80/35 festival this summer. I decided to buy their older album, Both Before I’m Gone, but i hope to also acquire their 2009 release soon.

Other indie/dance albums i enjoyed in 2009 include: Fantasies by Metric, Manners by Passion Pit, Miike Snow’s self-titled album which is very good, Phoenix’s very popular Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix which, in my opinion, is rather overrated as a whole, and probably my favorite album of the year: It’s Blitz! by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Many an impromptu kitchen dance party was inspired by each of these albums, but i think It’s Blitz! entertained us the most. We also streamed a lot of La Roux and Lady Gaga for a while, but i never actually got the albums. Poker Face really started to grate on my nerves after a while.

Another album i’d stick in the same genre is The Rhumb Line by Ra Ra Riot. I love this album, and i spent half the year thinking it was an ‘09 release, so i’m mentioning it in this post despite the fact that it was actually released in ‘08. It’s such fun, and you’ve gotta love a rock band that includes a cello and violin on (i think) every track.

Ursa Major by Third Eye Blind has been growing on me steadily. It’s a pretty sad album, though, and these days i prefer to listen to happier music. Swoon by Silversun Pickups just wasn’t as good as Carnavas. The Resistance by Muse got a lot of people excited, but not me. I’ve listened to it a few times and it just never really grabbed me. The New Moon soundtrack, on the other hand… I can’t stop listening to it. It’s fantastic. And i wouldn’t be ashamed of that fact if it weren’t for the utter scorn that half of my friends feel toward anything and anyone associated with the Twilight Saga. But more on that in the Movies post.

Some older albums that i got this year include: Third by Portishead, which i didn’t think lived up to all the hype even though “Machine Gun” is a really great track, Red Letter Year by Ani DiFranco which disappointed me pretty thoroughly, The Con which is a good solid Tegan & Sara album, The Shepherd’s Dog by Iron & Wine who never really makes a bad album, Neon Bible by the Arcade Fire for whom i discovered a whole new appreciation and a bunch of Ryan Adams albums which i find quite enjoyable.

So, to wrap up, here are a couple of lists:

Steph’s favorite albums of the year:

  1. It’s Blitz! by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
  2. The Rhumb Line by Ra Ra Riot (yeah, 2008, whatever.)
  3. The New Moon Soundtrack
  4. Miike Snow by Miike Snow

Steph’s favorite tracks of the year:

  1. “Sleepy Head” by Passion Pit
  2. “1909″ by Phoenix
  3. “Zero” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
  4. “Silvia” by Miike Snow


Have yourself a little dance party.

Since this is also the end of a decade, i’d like to crown Coldplay as the band of the aughts. A lot of my favorite bands hit their peak back in the nineties – Third Eye Blind, The Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead (this is arguable), Bjork, and Ani DiFranco to name a few. But Coldplay released their first album, Parachutes, in 2000. Since then, we’ve watched them go from little-known newbies to one of the biggest bands in the world, and with good reason. They’ve released four studio albums and two live albums in that time. I’ve seen them in concert twice, and it was one of the best shows i’ve seen. Of all that they’ve accomplished, though, Parachutes is still my favorite piece of Coldplay work, and it’s also my favorite album of this decade. If you don’t own it, i think you should.

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The Way Things Is Going

Nov 18, 2009
Categories: music

Anyone remember all the songs i found that mentioned being twenty-three? Well, i totally missed one and i’m pissed about it.

Gangsta’s freaking Paradise!

Death ain’t nothing but a heart beat away,
I’m living life do or die, what can I say?
I’m twenty-three now, but will I live to see twenty-four?
The way things is going I don’t know.

This is one of the songs that sparked my deep love of music at the age of ten. :)

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Ch-Ch-Changes

Nov 12, 2009
Categories: jobs, life, relationships

Hello again to the five of you who still have a subscription to my blog! Now that i have all sorts of things going on in my life to talk about, i of course have less time for blogging. I do miss it, though. It’s good to be back. :)

Three major life-changes have taken place since the last time i wrote. The first was a new job! I started work at Spindustry Interactive a little over three weeks ago. I’m still doing web design, and i actually have a full work load for the first time since college, and i really enjoy it. I won an award for fitting in right away, because on my first day the office prankster sent out an email to everyone and spelled my name wrong where he mentioned me in it. I hit reply-to-all and corrected him. They apparently loved that. :)

On my third day of work, Nathan surprised me when i got home with a note which he instructed me to read in private. The note was beautiful, and featured a series of little drawings. At the end it said “come find me,” and when i went to him he knelt down and asked me to marry him! Needless to say, I said yes. I cried and cried, and then we went out to a nice dinner and called our families to tell them the news.

The Ring

Photographic Proof

So with a new job and a new jewel on my finger, i figured the only thing to do was buy a new car. A few months ago i sold my Saturn and bought Nathan’s Blazer for insurance purposes. The Blazer was great for plowing through the snow last winter, but the body was rusting badly and it needed at least one repair, so i decided to trade it in on a newer snow-worthy vehicle. I won’t go into the details of that story because car-buying proved to be quite a stressful process. Suffice it to say i have a new 2004 Honda CR-V and – yes, it’s a manual transmission.

My new ride!

Prior to my test-drive, i had driven manuals on all of two occasions, and both attempts had involved an abundance of tears and frustration. But, hey, everyone told me i’d learn to love it, so why not? Right??

I’ve been driving my Honda to and from work this week, and today was the first day that i managed not to kill it even one time. I have not been a quick learner with this. Digital stuff is easy to learn – Javascript? No problem! But physical things take a lot more practice.

Speaking of Javascript, i will still be taking classes on Monday and Tuesday evenings for five more weeks. If i take a class next semester it will only be one, because now that i’m working full-time, six hours of classes each week is cutting into my free time a little more than i’d like. Learning programming has been pretty fun, and i think next i need a refresher course in Flash (especially since i’m supposed to be the office Flash expert at Spindustry).

As beautiful and wonderful as last fall was, i think this one has definitely rivaled it. I had never heard of any such thing as “engaged bliss,” but i’ve discovered that it exists. Or maybe that’s just understood to be the state of being engaged. :) Everything is so lovely. I feel terribly fortunate.

fallen

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Weekend Movie Review

Oct 19, 2009
Categories: movies, religion

This weekend was beautiful and cozy and reminded me once again of why i love fall so much. Part of the cozy bit was watching several movies, all of which are pretty noteworthy.

On Friday we saw The Invention of Lying. I was really excited to see this film because i came up with the idea of an alternate universe where people haven’t evolved the ability to lie a couple of years ago. I contemplated writing some sort of script or book about it, but that sort of thing takes far too much patience for me and it never happened. Thankfully, someone else had the very same idea and turned it into a movie.

I loved the part about religion, of course. Surprisingly, i hadn’t even thought of that aspect of a world without lying. In the movie, there is no religion until the main character invents the lie, and subsequently tells a big fib about what happens after death. Everyone is overjoyed to hear that you go to the most wonderful place you can think of after death. It makes plenty of sense that they would be. But when the main character goes on to describe the “man in the sky” who decides whether we go to that good place or instead to a bad place, the headlines read “finally, a reason to be good.”

I don’t understand this bit. In a world with no lying, everyone would have to own up to the bad things they did immediately, and face the consequences right away as well. Wouldn’t there be plenty of reasons to be good in a world like that?

Anyway. Onward.

The characters were terribly flat. Apparently “no lying” also means “disclose everything” and nobody really has a personality to speak of. The chemistry between the two main characters wasn’t believable at all. The complete lack of graphic design in this universe rather confused me, considering that the fashion was plenty imaginative, and the characters are able to dream up images and talk about them. I decided back when i came up with this idea that there would still be acting and art if there was no lying. I feel like the movie hinted at the fact that life without lies would just be colorless and unhappy, but i think they could have explored the possibilities so much more deeply. The Invention of Lying is ultimately just another romantic comedy, and i think it could have been so much more.

On Saturday we watched Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, which is one of Hayao Miyazaki’s oldest films. It’s older than i am, in fact. I think i first saw Princess Mononoke almost exactly ten years ago, which makes me feel slightly old. I read a few of the Nausicaa graphic novels not long after that, so the film has been a long time coming for me – especially since i never got to the end of the story. This movie was more similar to PM than Miyazaki’s other works, and i enjoyed it immensely. I think it’s now my second-favorite. If you like Miyazaki, post-apocalyptic stuff and/or really imaginative stories, watch this one for sure.

Finally, last night we saw Where The Wild Things Are. Knowing that the book is very short, i expected a lot of embellishment on the story. There was indeed much added action, and yet the plot was almost as simple as that of the original book. I thought it was funny at times and spectacular at others and imaginative through and through, but the wild things had strangely human personalities – and stupid ones at that. I felt like i was watching a childish drama play out among a group of trashy white people. Nothing was resolved at the end. Really, the movie took the book and added a bunch of loose ends to it. The most important thing was the way Max learned and changed while he was away from home – or at least, we can assume that he changed his ways upon returning. The film felt awkward at times, but it was definitely entertaining and somewhat thought-provoking, so i give it a thumbs-up.

And i believe that brings the total number of movies i’ve seen so far this year to forty-seven.

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My Thoughts on The Lost Symbol

Oct 05, 2009
Categories: books, religion

After reading Angels & Demons on a whim back in 2007 within the whirlwind (for me) span of a single week, i hadn’t given much thought to Dan Brown’s other works despite having enjoyed the book. I had seen The Da Vinci Code movie and have now seen Angels & Demons as well, but i didn’t actually anticipate wanting to read another Dan Brown book. However, several weeks ago as i was driving to Ankeny for class, i heard an interview with Dan Brown on NPR regarding his latest addition to the Robert Langdon series, The Lost Symbol. I learned that the man wakes up at FOUR every morning and writes seven days a week, 365 days a year (”even on Christmas”). Maybe it’s just the fact that i’m taking a break from nonfiction, i don’t know, but from that moment i felt compelled to actually purchase the new book, hardcover and all, and devour it as quickly as possible. Which is more or less what i did.

Two weeks after purchasing the book, i found myself unenthusiastically getting through the last forty pages of The Lost Symbol. Up until that point it was a regular Dan Brown page-turner; formulaic but entertaining with a nice little twist toward the end that i didn’t see coming. The one thing that really bothered me was the usual heroine scientist’s discussions of her research in the field of Noetic Science which would, once published, prove beyond a doubt that people are more than just flesh and blood. People have souls and can use their mind-power to alter matter outside of the body, and God most definitely exists. I asked myself why that pissed me off, and i decided that if such research was actually published, i would learn about it and grant it whatever it did in fact prove, but at this point i can’t conceive of any science that could do any such thing. The mere idea is a little aggravating.

The last forty pages of The Lost Symbol really drove the metaphysical point home, though. Apparently the thesis of this action-packed work of fiction is that God is within all of us, and our belief in him is what has always unified people and will bring peace to the world (never mind the fact that there are very peaceful people – and whole cultures, in fact – who don’t believe in any god).

My first thought was, okay, whatever, this little fiction book, like many other things, was not created with people like me in mind. Perhaps Dan Brown is trying to smooth the ruffled feathers of believers with this book by emphasizing the importance of religious belief in general and no particular church (especially not the Catholic church) in particular. But, then again, i know a lot of religious people who might be put off by the idea, maniacally pursued by several of the book’s main characters, that God is literally in us; that we people are all gods or can become gods. Not that i think anyone will ban the book from their libraries for that reason, nor that atheists, who are perhaps the latest victims of Brown’s feather-ruffling novels, ought to. I’ve come to realize that there’s nothing Dan Brown could have written about religion or God without rubbing somebody out there the wrong way. And after all, it’s only a novel.

As far as the book goes, i wasn’t as enamored with it as i was with Angels and Demons, partly because i’m not familiar with Washington, D.C., whereas i had enjoyed the memory-lane tour of Rome in the latter book. The Lost Symbol seemed to drag a little at first. Robert Langdon was tricked into solving the puzzles this time, and dragged his feet for half the plot line accordingly. Once things got cooking, it was fun to read. I’d say it’s definitely worth a week of your time, especially if you’re patriotic and have your own particular brand of faith.

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