Worst Book I Ever Read

On the bright side: it *would* make Douggles' stuff seem less pompous in comparison, except he recently decommissioned it. (R.I.P.)

What was the worst book YOU ever read?

Ben's Top 25 (Five^2?) Favorite Albums, Lifetime

These albums are the Jenga-pieces you can't pull without crumbling down the Babel-ish tower of my personal history with, and love of, music. In the descending order of force it would take to pry them from my cold, dead fingers. Or amount I would pay in a post-apocalyptic world for the last vinyl copy. #1 being half my liver.

25. Minor Threat
24. Meat Puppets II
23. The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
22. Nirvana (yeah the posthumous collection. sofuckingsueme)
21. At Dawn

20. Joshua Tree
19. Source Tags and Codes
18. Silent Alarm
17. OK Computer
16. The Moon & Antarctica

15. Funeral
14. Turn on the Bright Lights
13. Either/Or
12. Farm
11. The Creek Drank the Cradle

10. Boys and Girls in America
9. Everybody Knows This is Nowhere
8. Born in the U.S.A.
7. Apologies to the Queen Mary
6. The Meadowlands

5. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
4. The Sunset Tree
3. London Calling
2. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
1. The Glow, Pt. 2

Ben's 3rd Birthday Slideshow

Album of the (Last) Year

This is massively late because I could not distance myself from this album at all. Objectivity was out the window. I had waited for it more excitedly than any album ever- not even sure why.¹ I really liked his first four, but all had major faults and none in my personal Top 25.² The fact that it exceeded my wildest hopes was an unreal experience, a first. So I gave in for months, soundtracking every run, multiple drives, and a fair amount of jobsearching, and then went away from it, for three³ whole weeks. When I came back, I was still rabid. Now, after 2 months and only hearing again the library's Parental Advisory version, I have come to terms with my fanboy impulses and feel like I can contain them.

Just to start my conversation, here are the top five tracks⁴

Top Five

5. Lost in the World
4. So Appalled
3. Runaway
2. All of the Lights
1. Power

I'm going to restrain myself to bullet-points because I'm most interested in hearing what others think.⁵

+Pusha-T is fucking ferocious

+Jay's Monster 16 is actually good, after he finishes reading off every monster Wikipedia could find, and his So Appalled set is fire

+Ye shouts out '30 Rock' oh yes

+different exotic fishes!

+Pat texted me: What's your theme song? POWER

+When All of the Lights leaked, it should have been a goddamn national holiday

+Its a new era when hip-hop has better guitars than indie 'rock'

+The interlude between Power and All of the Lights was necessary to prevent brain-explosion manslaughter charges

+Dude flew everyone into Honolulu like a SPECTRE mastermind. Who else is this possessed with perfection? Someday I'm gonna write an essay comparing him to Brian Wilson. (Weezy F is Bob Dylan in this scenario. I think.)

+Dear credited 'handclappers' Ian Allen, Wilson Christopher, Uri Djemal, and Chris Soper: I challenge you all to a clap-off! I should have been the one flown into Hawaii! I'm a great goddamn clapper. Do you know how many standing O's I've started? Sure, I can't keep a beat for more than a minute, but technology can fix that, and the resonance I get is uncanny.



Questions:

Q: Is this a 100% album?
A. No. 'Hell of a Life' veers into the grotesque and 'Blame Game' has limited replayability, regardless at how good Chris Rock is in it. But the interesting question here is, can something be flawed and still perfect, as if its massive ambition can justify a couple slips? Exile on Main St. has "Turd on the Run" after all.

Q: Have we already had the album of the decade?
A: I hope not, but I would be happily surprised if there was a better one.

Q: Can we get much higher?
A: No




¹unemployment
²which you'll see soon
³!!!
⁴the easily offended should replace So Appalled with Gorgeous. or Dark Fantasy. or Devil in a New Dress
⁵in my mind this is the only thing people want to take about these days, a contradictory pile of empirical evidence notwithstanding