Went 3-2.

efs 666: Won by over 140 points with a respectable 421. However, if my last place division rival wouldn't have purposefully tanked the game for a better first round draft pick and started stafford, a couple of better linebackers and made an effort earlier in the week to acquire OL, then it would've been a LOT closer. (He might've even won.) I've secured a top 3 seed. I play current seed #3 this week in the last double week. If i beat him, i secure a top 2 seed. If we both go 1-1, then i secure a top 2 seed.

efs 1000: i beat the first place division rival with 446 points. My entire offense & special teams scored a minimum of 12 points each. Good news = i need to win 1 more game more than him with the last 3 games to win the division, my only shot at making the playoffs. Bad news = he has a lot easier schedule than i. i put my odds at 37%.

efs 12: Scored 440 points, which is pretty good for a standard league; however, one team had a monster game against me so i split my games 1-1. If i win my remaining 2 games, i'm in. One is against the top team in the league. One is against the division bottom dweller, whom i lost against. It's not going to be a gimme.

efs 7: Lost my division game with a 400+ point score. I'm 3 games off seed #6 with 3 games to play. I need to win all remaining games. Doubtful. On the bright side, i've improved this team by almost 60ppg from last year. This team was draft seed #2 in 2008. Right now, draft seed #10.

For the last 3-or-so years, i've listened to the prior-year's top 39, one week at a time, skipping some weeks on accident and some by design (holidays/vacations). Listening to the albums on the 2008 list has felt a little bit redundant since i just listened to almost all of these by this point in 2009. (i ended up listening to heretic pride two weeks in a row and i might short-circuit this listening exercise after listening to all my favorites this week.)

For 2008, we were not able to see the decemberists again; however, we saw colin meloy's solo show at the fox theater. It was just him and an acoustic guitar, so it wasn't very exciting, but it was still fun, including his cornball banter between songs. So counting colin meloy's solo concert, i've seen colin meloy in some capacity every year from 2005-on.

2007 was the first year we went trick-or-treating with Sawyer, but he didn't really understand what was going on that year (being 1.5 years) and grew tired of it quick. (i think we hit 5 houses at most.) 2008 was the first year i could tell he had fun. (he was a cowboy and i was cowdaddy.) We probably stopped at 30-35 houses (where about half weren't home). That was fun. Last year was also his first Christmas that he thoroughly knew what was going on under the tree and anticipated opening presents. Kellie & i purposefully trimmed our xmas budgets for ourselves to give him more presents. :-)

The big news of 2008 was that the country FINALLY woke up to the republican idiocy that was george dumya bush and the republican agenda and voted them OUT. Thank the lord heavenly father jesus christ superstar above! Moreover, a majority of americans were able to look past Barack Obama's name and skin color and all the idiotic lies out there (on the internets) and voted for a smart (black) man over the angry contradictions and nonsensical decision making of john mccain. (sarah palin has been THE WORST choice for vice president since dan quayle. she's a bit more evil than dumya and less intelligent.) FINALLY sanity restored to the country! I often wonder how much better our country would've turned out if the florida court system didn't intervene in the 2000 election. (barack probably wouldn't be president now.) As a result of electing one of the worst presidents of all time, dumya bush, into office (i'm talking top 3-to-5 worst presidents EVER), the entire country was so set back economically, emotionally, militarily, culturally... that some took a chance on Barack that normally wouldn't (basically based on his skin color and strange name). It was the kind of smart choice the country really hasn't made much since 1980 (ok, since earlier as nixon had to be impeached to be cast out, but i was only 9 in 1980, so my knowledge of earlier years is learned and not learned+lived).

Obama kicks ass with his only fault being trying to do too much at one time. Speaking from the perspective of 2009 (now), he needs to pass health care NOW, add more money to adding jobs (INFRASTRUCTURE! MODERNIZING HEALTH CARE! MODERNIZING EDUCATIONAL TOOLS AND FUNDING COMPETITION!) and finish off what dumya never really cared about -- rooting out al qaeda. That's among a ton of other things that need his attention, but it's a big start. Public govt health care is a MUST. (They need to choose reconciliation if they can't go to 60!)

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The next three reviewed albums had an outside shot at the top spot, and the next two have climbed in my esteem since the end of 2008 (not so long ago...).

vampire weekend blatantly rip off paul simon (or peter gabriel, as name-dropped) and maybe a little police as well. And like those artists, nearly every song sounds like a hit on this album. i love the shimmering guitars, off-kilter drumming and violin on "mansard roof". "oxford comma" is preppy fun. "a-punk" brings the energy with chipper guitar and building bverse. i love the string action in "m79". "cape cod kwassa kwassa" is the song that definitely sounds like paul simon but name-drops peter gabriel (although there's a simliar sounding influence for both) with bongos and crooning for the sake of an sexual encounter. I could name-drop every song, but if you like "cape cod kwassa kwassa", then this album is for you. There's absolutely no let up. Today, i'd probably re-rank this album to #3 or #2 (bumping mountain goats / conor oberst down).

I've discussed numerous times on my blog the conundrum of ranking an album from an artist like girl talk. The album in question is feed the animals. The conundrum lands in multitude of questions. Is he really an artist merely playing a bunch of others' material? Sans minimally-added drum fills, he doesn't really play an instrument except the computer and doesn't sing on this, so what really is his contribution? Am i liking the mix more because of the mix or more because of the mix choices? One thing i do know, and i did some looking around the internet, is that there are very few guys right now that can throw a mashup together as well as girl talk, and girl talk can mostly sustain a very good (to great) mix for 60 minutes. I think my final opinion rests in how much i like listening to this album. For about a year-and-a-half, girl talk appeared in my last fm top artists list at #1. I love jamming to this album. It's like a mixed-up mixtape where he throws a bunch of songs i like and a bunch i don't know altogether for one fun party mix. There are so many fun mixes that it's difficult to pick out any standouts on an album that should truly be played as a whole album.

why? is one of those freaky artists i warned you about that is pretty unclassifiable on this album. This is the third time i've listened to this album in the last 3 weeks (twice by design) and the variety, even in-song, keeps the album from feeling overplayed. That and, despite the many different genres skimmed through, he also skims through pop to provide catchy choruses like "cheery A cheery E cheery I cheery O cheery U" in "the vowels pt. 2". "these few presidents" sports one of the best quirkily-sentimental lines of the decade -- "even though i haven't seen you in years, yours is a funeral i'd fly to from anywhere". The hits are "the hollows" and "song of the sad assassin" if you're looking for an entry point.

For the rest of these reviews, i will once again point you to my top 39 of 2008 post from late last year and just sum up here.

portishead - third: Darker sounding than their earlier two albums, which says a lot. I thought of burial's last album when listening to this album. (of course, any influence would be in the opposite direction.) "the rip" and "machine gun" are probably the best tracks, although the only so-so track is the acoustic number, "deep water".

the dodos - visiter: This is acoustic-based, college indie rock/pop. "winter" and "ashley" are the top tracks. "fools" bears shades of modest mouse. Not spectacular, but thoroughly solid & catchy.

fleet foxes: To me, they outdo my morning jacket at their own sound, although they strip the rock down a bit and focus more on melody and vocals. Like hot chip's "ready for the floor", my singles countdown doesn't do enough justice to "white winter hymnal". Georgeous track. i love the opening line of "ragged wood", "come down from the mountain, you have been gone too looOOooong", and how it's sung. Recorded with nice acoustics and harmonies.

old 97's - blame it on gravity: They're kinda alt-country like wilco are nowadays (and sky blue sky), which basically means they conjure the feel but otherwise are far-removed. The first 4 tracks are stellar for their version of alt-rock-pop. Nothing fancy, but those 4 songs are pretty jammin'. The rest of the album's pretty good too.

ra ra riot - the rhumb line: "ghost under rocks", "dying is fine", "too too too fast", "oh, la" and "run my mouth" are stellar. Kinda sounds like a true intersection of the stills (of their first album) meets arcade fire (first full album) but not really sounding like either. violin-based "winter '05" has despondant longing down.

mgmt - oracular spectacular: "time to pretend", "the youth","electric feel" and "kids" are the top tracks. "the youth" was sort of a 2008 election song for me, especially for the chorus. Musical bridge in "weekend wars" reminds me of 70s genesis.

drive-by truckers - brighter than creation's dark: Southern fried rock, country & bluegrass-tinged with some nice yarns spun. I finally delved further into their back catalogue as a result of this album. At 19 tracks, the album goes on a bit long but also comes with many highlights, including "two daughters and a beautiful wife", "the righteous path" ("i don't know god, but i fear his wrath"), "perfect timing" (probably the best upbeat track), "daddy needs a drink" (send one to me too!), "bob", "lisa's birthday" and "you and your crystal meth". A lot of these songs are like character sketches. Good stuff. (The opening female vox are good, reminding me of kasey chambers; but afterwords in those couple songs, the fem vox are just okay.)

robyn: Came out in 2005, 2007 or 2008 depending on your perspective, but came out in 2008 in the U.S. so i qualified it for the "best of '08". If all teeny-pop was this sharp and sassy, i'd listen to the radio more. I'm not sure if she has any say in the music composition, but that, her lyrics, delivery and attitude trump contemporaries like Annie (not to mention the teeny pop on radio / video channels). (Her best song wouldn't come out until 2009, though. [*teaser alert*] ) Top songs are "cobrastyle", "bum like you", "with every heartbeat" and "handle me".

dellrock top 13 albums airplay of 2008:

Pos.	Title	Artist	Total
1.	in rainbows	radiohead	273
2.	made in the dark	hot chip	273
3.	heretic pride	the mountain goats	259
4.	conor oberst	conor oberst	182
5.	feed the animals	girl talk	181
6.	alopecia	why?	175
7.	in ghost colours	cut copy	165
8.	the historical conquests of josh ritter	josh ritter	136
9.	vampire weekend	vampire weekend	130
10.	blame it on gravity	old 97's	115
11.	emotionalism	the avett brothers	110
12.	visiter	the dodos	103
13.	transnormal skiperoo	jim white	95

Went 4-3 around the outskirts of the playoffs in all leagues but league 666.

efs 666: Scored under 400 points for only the 2nd time this season, losing both games against my toughest opponents yet who each both scored 440+. But on the good luck side, the next-closest divisional rival lost a game, helping me clinch the division. Now i fight for a top 2 seed, and i've never been the #1 seed before, an idea i was toying with way back when i was undefeated. i expect to do no worst than 14-4 here-out, which'd most likely secure me a top 2 seed. If i win my game this week, i ensure a top 3 seeding at worst.

efs 1000: Scored 400+ but lost a game (going 1-1). i'm 1.5 games out of the lead (with my stupid tie). It's still possible, but time's running out.

efs 12: Beat a division rival once leading the division now in decline, resurfacing as a wildcard team (seed #5). If i just beat who i'm supposed to beat (and no more "go nads" type of losses), then i'm in.

efs 7: Won both of my games. But i've said it before and i'll say it again, probably every week until i'm eliminated -- IF I DIDN'T START TWO INACTIVE PLAYERS IN WEEK 1, I WOULD'VE WON THAT GAME AND I WOULD BE A PLAYOFF TEAM *NOW*!!!!!!!!!! (frustrating)

[With thanksgiving coming, i'm starting the 2008 list a week early, most likely concluding next week.]

As the new year opened, i temporarily halted my search for a new job. I was hoping that resources (aka, moui) from the big project i was on would be shifted to other efforts within the project or other efforts entirely. My boss, while he didn't seem in full control of focusing our efforts toward the ultimate goal, seemed like a nice guy who kinda cared how we were doing (professionally). Still in a "war room" on the opposite building from my desk, the work environment was moving from annoying to distracting. There were always 1-or-more platform "fires". We had multiple platforms but almost all were often down for half a day or upwards to a full day. It was tough to accomplish anything. Software version on each platform kept changing (often as a result of bug patches) making it difficult to really focus on an effort and see it through. I hadn't time to digest how much things weren't going to change at Level 3 in 2008 when my boss called me over to a meeting room.

He'd called me over a few times before to try to enlist one of his group into more utilitarian (read: non-programming) efforts in another group or to redirect my efforts to something else within our group. He always seemed at the whim of the company, not really wanting to take a big stand for our group. He was also an import from Oklahoma, coming from one of the companies Level 3 recently bought. (i can't remember the name.) There was an Oklahoma-based development contingent in our group and they were shipped a fair amount of work.

I did not suspect the bomb that kasploded at me once in the meeting room with bossman and an HR rep on the speakerphone. Not going into much detail, let's just say it was imperative that i reengage my search for better horizons elsewhere. I had 2 weeks and busted my arse to explore all related possibilities that existed at the time. My best-shot was a SR opening at Kaiser where good friend Jennifer landed after Qwest. The three developers who were caught up in the laptop scam at Qwest also worked there and seemed to remember my work at Qwest fondly. Unfortunately, although they made me an offer before even interviewing me (first time that's ever happened), the whole process of just scheduling an interview took a looooooooong time. In the meantime, i declined a government job that didn't seem to match my skills (and the work environment seemed like a downgrade on the USWest "smelly" building) before receiving an offer from Great West on the final day of the 2 weeks. (Let's just say i kicked arse. I applied all the lessons i learned from the last time-round and basically nailed at least half of my interviews.)

Being offered the Great West job near the end of Friday afternoon, i asked for the weekend to review the opportunity with Kellie. The job wasn't 100% up the challenging alley i walked at Level 3, but seemed to be without the accompanying overtime and stress. Plus, i wanted to pursue more GUI/JSP-related development in order to augment those skills and apply them to EFS. Other positives included the people i interviewed seemed nice, the company's primary focus was/is an area that would only become more active over time (retirement plan money data holding) and the job was back in DENVER. So after talking with Kaiser one more time to let them know of my situation, they increased their previous offer. I discussed this development with Great West HR and they worked out compromise compensation. If Kaiser didn't take so long to just schedule an interview with me, i might be there today. But instead i'm now in the DTC area working at Great West, and i must be in love because my first day was valentine's day.

The commute sucked. The commute from my Broomfield place to work in the DTC involved a lot of inner city congestion. I tried to avoid most of the awful traffic waking up at some ungodly time (between 5 & 6 am usually) but that sucked too. Given our disdain for Broomfield, we both wanted to move back to Denver. The economy still sucked but we hoped our place would sell, and i kind of looked forward to scoring a good deal on the purchase end of things. It took many months to we were anywhere near a remote nibble. In the meantime, i caused my first accident ever on the way home exiting highway 36 onto an under construction federal. That just emphasized how much the commute was wearing on me. Partly to expedite my drive, and partly to keep some interest in the sucky drive, i empirically determined then memorized the best lanes to be in and when...to save time.

The only good part of selling the house was there was little competition in our neighborhood compared to 2007 (when both the texans and pscyho religious neighbors moved). There were only maybe 2 other houses in eye-shot for sale. One was on our street, but a different builder and style of house. But it still took many months in that economy until finally, in July of 2008, we were made an offer. After very minor counters, we had a sale, but the owner wanted to close and move in in THREE weeks. Tight schedule considering we really hadn't looked at a lot of houses at that point.

The person that bought our house is a (professional) psychic. He planned to run his business out of our (old) house. He decided to buy our house because, when he walked up to the front of our house, the spirit of his grandmother said that this was the house to buy. (Thank you, Grandma.) He wanted to close on August 8th because 8's were supposed to be karmically lucky (8/8/2008). Of course, if there's any truth to the 8's luck, we were forced to close our new house on the same day.

Of course, we had to find a house first. We learned a couple things from our first house bought together. 01) Buy a house you definitely can expand into, 02) a yard is a good thing with a kiddo, 03) no HOA, 04) don't "max out" on the high end of what "the loan people" tell you you can afford. It was a tightening mortgage environment by mid-2008, so #4 wasn't as possible as it was in 2005, but still... And #5 -- don't insist on a new build. There were a fair amount of "big" houses out there (sqr.ft.wise) but almost all had some deal-breaker -- a "finished" basement that needed work, an adjacent busy roadway, etc. I remember one house we looked at, our agent wasn't told how to properly disable the house alarm, so we walked through the house with a blaring alarm filling our ears to the point where we just wanted to leave. Most houses we saw on one day with a ton of house shopping of which Kellie scouted with a friend prior. So she had been to all the houses first. Except one that she caught in between her scouting trip and our trip together. That last-minute add was the house we liked the most. (Isn't it always that way?)

So, we moved back to Denver and we like it. Kellie's just down the street from her friend. I'm just down the street from work with no interstate or highway necessary. We're still within walking distance to a park. Neighbors aren't within 10 feet anymore. It's nice.

Working at Great West has been good for me and reminds me a lot of working at USWest/Qwest in its hey-day when it was the most fun for me to work there. It's kind of a complete opposite of the Level 3 job. Job-wise it's a LOT less stressful at Great West -- it's a lot less demanding than Level 3. At Level 3 i carried a production pager all the time for about a year-and-a-half, often worked overtime (like everyone else) and worked a bunch of weekends every year (like everyone else). There was never any let-up. Requirements changed but deadlines didn't. The only good outcome of all of that was the knowledge i gained. In contrast, with Great West i've had to work 1 weekend so far, time-compensated the next work week. There's been very little overtime. I always have something to do, but the deadlines are more reasonable and there is more "push-back" available if a deadline won't work. Socially, it's a lot less work-cliqueish here; meaning, at Level 3 it helped your career if you mixed in with and hung out with guys at work -- went out for drinks, played basketball after work, etc. I remember my first boss there recommending to me at a couple different performance reviews that i hang out with people in my group and other groups more often -- he meant both professionally as well as personally. I felt my more reserved nature hurt my performance reviews over time there as i rarely hung out with co-workers after work, especially after Sawyer was born. At Great West, i don't feel that "we need to like you as a person and friend outside of work in order for you to have good reviews and advance at the company" thing at all. (It might exist, but i don't sense it.) At the same time, i made a couple friends within the first 6 months of working here. At Level 3, i never really made any friends that i hung out with outside of work (outside of team trips). i do miss some of the technical everyday challenges Level 3 posed, but i'm happy to be relieved of the heavy stress and workload and clique soap opera.

Great West is also more stable. [knock knock knock] Level 3 hung around the low single digits my entire time there, and dipped under $1.00 after i left. They have a lot of debt and underbid for telecom services based as a US company. Great West is a retirement money record keeper based out of Canada with stocks in the $20s right now. Now, Level 3 did have quarterly and yearly stock options (of various names), but these came in lesser amounts and more worthless over time.

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Below are the 4 albums that had a good shot at 2008's #1. At various times, i considered 3 different of these albums as my #1.

"sax rohmer #1" is my favorite mountain goats song since "this year". The do-or-die song off of heretic pride fights peril for love where the narrator sings "I am coming home to you / With my own blood in my mouth / And I am coming to you / If it’s the last thing that I do ". I love the power behind Darnielle's voice as if he's a defiant superhero frodo on the side of the volcano at the end of the third ring movie. This might be his best album. With a lot of songs as strong as "sax rohmer #1", it's really difficult to choose between this, get lonely and the sunset tree. Can't believe i haven't considered this guy as one of my favorite artists until just now. (Really, it's true...and you're a witness!) "heretic pride" is just as defiant, feeling "so proud to be alive" despite "the reckoning" that arrives like this: "Well they come and pull me from my house / And they drag my body through the streets / And the sun’s so hot I think I’ll catch fire and burn up / in the summer air so moist and sweet". "autoclave" is more fearful of the personal apocalypse singing "You ought to head for the exits, the sooner the better" and "i am this great, unstable mass of blood and foam / And no one in her right mind would make her home my home". "lovecraft in brooklyn" is pretty funky for a darnielle tune and that chugging guitar that only pauses at the bridges, then Darnielle goes frantic on lyrics "Someday somethings coming / From way out beyond the stars / To kill us while we stand here / It will store our brains in mason jar". The end is surely nigh. i love the vocal spazz-out at the end of "in the craters on the moon". "so desparate" is onomatopoeiatic in its delivery. "san bernadino" is a lush journey at sunrise through the city with plucked acoustic guitar & backing strings. i love the female fox on "marduk t-shirt men's room incident" -- a sad, delicate tale about acoustic guitar & strings. john darnielle storms out (for darnielle) with "michael myers resplendent", singing "when the house goes up in flames / No one emerges triumphantly from it / When the scum begins to circle the drain / (Well) everybody loves a winner". At one point during 2008, this was my favorite album of the year, and it might just be again when i come up with my favorites of the 00's.

in ghost colours by cut copy slowly worked its way up in my esteem until i was just diggin' this thing by the close of 2008. This is dance pop at its finest. Top tracks are opener "feel the love", "out there on the ice", "lights and music", "hearts on fire" and "far away". The opening tracks feel both synthetic and warm. cut copy has a pet shop boys quality to them of putting out these processed dance pop tunes with somewhat flat vocals that still have a warmth and heart to them. Hits "lights and music" and "hearts on fire" typify this sound at their best. Both songs are like subtle party jams -- they don't blast out like basement jaxx or rivet like daft punk, but make you wanna dance in a new order -sorta way. Very groovy album in an understated kind of way causing this album to creep up on me over time.

For a couple weeks i considered conor oberst's "solo" debut my favorite of 2008. It's a sort of more personal take on the stuff he did under the bright eyes moniker, but really sounds like an extension of bright eyes. The distinction is faint. There's still a faint country tinge. There's still some fun word play. Mostly liked for his upbeat and wild songs, he pulls off some nice ballads on here, including opener "cape canavaral" ("You've been a daughter to me, your buried shoe box grief / I felt your poltergeist love like Savannah heat / While the waterfall was pouring crazy symbols of my destiny") and "danny callahan". "danny callahan" is a sad tale of a boy who dies of bone (marrow) cancer, ending "But the love we feel he carries inside can be passed / He lay still, his mother kissed him goodbye said, comeback / Where are you going to alone?" "sausalito" is a rocker and "i don't wanna die (in the hospital)" is a frenetic, farcical romp, complete with country-bar-room piano and backing vocals. i wish brief "NYC-Gone,Gone" was more fleshed out -- "gone, gone from new york city, where are you gonna go with a heart that empty?" he sings in an upbeat, knee-slapping song before the electric guitar kicks in. "souled out!!!" is a fun walk through streets in mexico (as a few other songs are on the album) where you discover the play on words at the chorus -- "you won't be getting in / all sold out in heaven". Elsewhere, i like the chorus of "eagle on a pole" mucho and "milk thistle" is a nice and soft, if a bit long, pensive number to close it all up.

hot chip's made in the dark was the first electronica/idm/dance #1 album of the year for me. For a guy that used to DJ in college for a year playing nothing but techno and ambient music, i was surprised to come to that realization. !!! almost pulled this off in 2008, but you can say they're really not a true dance/electronica artist. (i almost typed "band" instead of "artist", but that's the technicality at hand.) I think the sticking point with me over time is lyrics -- i like good lyrics and generally something i can sing along with. A lot of IDM doesn't have lyrics or much at all. It wasn't until 1996 & 1997 that there were a couple dance / electronica albums i really liked to consider for a top 20 (those being the prodigy's fat of the land and the saint soundtrack) -- but again, lyrics/singing were all over those albums as well as moby's play, even though a good portion of the singing was sampled, which became my new favorite dance/elec/idm album up-and-through 1999.

hot chip achieved this feat starting with their prior album, 2006's the warning, which made my top 39 that year sporting the hit "and i was a boy from school". The music is witty, poppy and danceable. Hot chip bring their own style with these immediately-infectious tunes. i had a good inclination this new album would blow that one away upon hearing lead single "ready for the floor", which just builds with brilliance (and was a fav of bean's as i often sung "you're my #1 guy" to him). "one pure thought" was my other top favorite of theirs with its false-slow-build and shuffling beat. Nice backing vox. "shake a fist" is a powerful pissed off pop rant featuring grungy synths with a bridge that reminds me of 90s techno gem "two little boys" with some arcade FX to boot. I feel a bit silly giving this another review so soon (as i have for the others), so i encourage you to click the link for my top 39 of 2008.

None of these albums are perfect. Going into 2008, i predicted a weaker-than-normal year, and i was right. Each of my top 4 has some faults, like the last 2 ballads on the hot chip album. However, this is a solid top 4, but all of these albums would probably rank below 2007's #2 (arcade fire), cut copy under 2007's #3 (!!!). 2008 top 4 re-ranked as of today: 01) hot chip, 02) mountain goats, 03) conor oberst, 04) cut copy. Expanding past the top 4, there are a couple albums that could even eclipse conor oberst at #3. [*2008 teaser alert* (aka, my next retrospective post)]

There's a website called advanced nfl stats that breaks down how going for it on 4th down is actually the better option in the NFL as well -- often a MUCH better option than punting or a field goal (when within range). So when Belicheck went for it on 4th down against the Colts, he had a 79% chance of converting 2 yards. Punting away to Manning, he had AT BEST a 70% chance of stopping him from scoring. (They have a post on that specific situation somewhere in their website.)

I've included a graph from their site that tells you basically where the odds are generally based on yards-to-go for the first down and how close you are to the end zone. Basically, NFL coaches are wussies.

I officially counted my entire weekly top 20 as of 2007 although spots 11-20 were only meant as "placeholders", but i kept it accurate so i figured i might as well count 'em. As with 2006, the end-of-year countdowns based on the top 10 vs. the top 20 sport different #1 songs. (The top 20-based version holds "keep the car running" by arcade fire at the top.)

Also, this top 10 version favors the multitude of radiohead songs that qualified off of in rainbows. Radiohead tied the record set by Pearl Jam (off of no code) for most songs in my weekly top 10 with 6 in 2007, and they all show up here. The only reason there are Radiohead songs closer to #33 than #1 is because their album came out on October 10th -- so some of these songs you'll see again come 2008 (when they tie that 6-song record held w/ pearl jam). Needless to say, i was completely immersed in Radiohead in the last quarter of '07.

Dellrock debuts come from acts like !!!, subtle, voxtrot, avett brothers, justice and viva voce. Between subtle ("the mercury craze"), clap your hands say yeah! ("satan said dance"), bright eyes ("four winds") and viva voce ("from the devil himself" with charming female fox), the devil was pretty popular with me to open 2007. But d@mn you if you don't think that "satan said dance" is one of the catchiest songs of the decade. DAMN YOU ALL TO H3|| !!! (Needless to say, "satan said dance" was on the "f*ck god" playlist to blast to the pscyho-religious neighbors.)

The big change to my singles airplay countdown for 2007 was a result of a realization that not all albums i listened to also corresponded to an eligible single for my singles airplay countdown. Often, there were albums i really liked that only had 1 song eligible for my countdown or none at all. So for 2007 i created an eligibility rule that, if i added an album for consideration for the albums airplay countdown that did NOT already offer at least 1 song for the singles countdown, then i'd pick my favorite song off the album and make that song eligible. !!! was the first artist that took advantage of this new rule. (i think i chose "all my heroes are weirdos".) This new rule in turn forced me to listen a little closer to more of the albums that i permanently acquired deepening my opinion of those albums.

If you're an avid reader of my blog, then you not only have a LOT of spare time to waste but you'll also know that i like animal collective's merriweather post pavilion mucho and it most likely will end up as my 2009 #1. Well, before that album dropped there was strawberry jam, their first album with weighty pop leanings, which made my top 39 of 2007 and had a good cluster of hits of its own, including "peacebone", which is as nutty as it is groovy. (bonefish!) The other main contender for 2009's #1, andrew bird, is represented in this singles list as well.

dellrock's top 33 singles airplay of 2007:

Pos.	Title	Artist	Total
1.	must be the moon	!!!	123
2.	my rights versus yours	the new pornographers	114
3.	keep the car running	the arcade fire	109
4.	no cars go	the arcade fire	105
5.	satan said dance	clap your hands say yeah!	98
6.	bodysnatchers	radiohead	97
7.	jigsaw falling into place	radiohead	84
8.	15 step	radiohead	82
9.	all my heroes are weirdos	!!!	82
10.	four winds	bright eyes	82
11.	heart of hearts	!!!	81
12.	the perfect crime #2	the decemberists	81
13.	dashboard	modest mouse	73
14.	brainy	the national	69
15.	nude	radiohead	63
16.	mistaken for strangers	the national	62
17.	to the dogs or whoever	josh ritter	62
18.	1, 2, 3, 4	feist	62
19.	right moves	josh ritter	61
20.	mutiny, i promise you	the new pornographers	61
21.	accident & emergency	patrick wolf	54
22.	she's a rejector	of montreal	47
23.	imitosis	andrew bird	45
24.	peacebone	animal collective	43
25.	the underdog	spoon	42
26.	kid gloves	voxtrot	41
27.	my moon my man	feist	41
28.	die die die	the avett brothers	38
29.	bones	the killers	38
30.	d.a.n.c.e.	justice	36
31.	from the devil himself	viva voce	28
32.	the mercury craze	subtle	28
33.	weird fishes / arpeggi	radiohead	28

Looks like i will lose BOTH of my games in EFSports league 666, stopping my undefeated streak at 12-0, falling to 12-2, suddenly in jeopardy of not being a top 2 seed. Also, other high-scoring teams scored much more than me, so i most likely have slipped from the highest-scoring perch. It was bound to happen eventually as my teams usually fade down the stretch.

Overall, it looks like i'll go 4-3 this week.

[I forgot to mention in the 2007 post with the !!! myth takes review that their drummer Juan Maclean died yesterday. His drumming was the backbone of that great dance punk album and i don't know how they're going to find someone with that kind of timing that'll fit in with what !!! do.]

2007 is the year where i finally decided to go blog, pick a blog and started to blog regularly. (blog blog blah) i picked livejournal.com (of course -- duh!) mainly because of its html blog editor. I've been keeping track of my yearly music favorites on this site ever since (along with political commentary, personal fantasy football progress and general journal posts). I sort of miss my website, paladisiac.com, where i was able to more easily and intuitively compartmentalize and be able to go every where in a logical fashion as opposed to going back in blog history.

2007 was the year we lost peek. Kellie adopted Peek and Boo as kittens many years ago (10+). They were brothers. Peek took a liking to me from early on when visiting Kellie at her apartment. Peek liked bellyrubs and scratches on his lower back. At Kellie's apartment, Peek and Boo had free reign of the neighborhood. Kellie left her window open to let the cats wander as they liked. When she moved in with me at the chronic, she didn't allow this any more because of the traffic mostly (but some predators too). We adopted another cat living at the chronic in which i felt "kub" was a good name. (so the 3 cats were "peek kub boo".) We hoped Kub would give Boo, the fatter cat, exercise; but Kub ended up chasing Peek all the time. In Broomfield, Kellie allowed Kub out now-and-then. He usually didn't go far and when afraid returned to our front door. After Sawyer was born, Peek started to let loose in the stairwell. Whether Peek was pissed that more attention was going to Sawyer or whether he had a health ailment, i don't know. One day Kellie allowed Peek out (as Kub was out too) and Peek disappeared and never came back. i drove around red leaf a few times looking for him to no avail. Most likely, a fox ate him. Poor Peek.

2007 was the last year of brett favre & the packers. He had a strong year in which he closed with some senseless picks in the last playoff game. (SO close the the championship.) But that was brett favre -- pretty solid and fairly consistently good during the season yielding to ploppers in the playoffs. (The pack only fell below 0.500 once during his tenure.) Too bad no coach reigned him in after holmgren -- that same gunslinger stuff that helped bring the pack back in games also killed them in the playoffs. I always thought brett would be a packer-for-life, but his eternal waffling handcuffed a new regime which just went 12-4 and nearly made it to the championship game -- they had a lot of leeway to mold the team the way they wanted to, with or without captain flip-flop. i know he wants to skip the rigors of training camp and just play the games, but what does that say to the rest of the team? One guy's better than the rest? Favre said himself players had to play in training camp and the preseason as if they were real games. Favre also said that he played as if his job was on the line all the time -- he just didn't want to put in the offseason work like his job was on the line.

2007 was also the first year i had the flu since January 1992. Religious freak chick neighbor came over with her daughter about something. They were both recently sick. That was a tough-but-quick flu -- came and left in a day. But it came pretty hard and violent. I was stupid in 1992 and shared a beer cup at a house party with a friend who was just becoming better from the flu. Those were the two points across my 15 year flu-free span.

One consolation freak-neighbor-wise was both the texans and pscyho-religious neighbors both moved. Glory hallelujiah! The economy made selling one's house tough, but the texan guy worked for a company that sold the house for him, while the pscyho neighbors purposefully undercut us by about $20k with about the same house (not as good of "amenities", but they had a basement). Good news, mini-bad news.

Finally, 2007 was the year i spent way too much time (and some money) at Dave and Busters. First, a friend of mine was married in 2007 and held his pre-marriage party (i forgot what it was actually called) at Dave & Busters. After a presentation on meeting his soon-to-be-wife, there was a thanking of the guests which concluded with preloaded Dave and Busters cards. That was fun stuff. Then we took Sawyer to the reception and he was the hit of the party with his spinnin' dancing'. Second, my brother visited from the New England area with his daughter Gracie for a few days. That was cool. Hung out with Scott for a few nights. The thing we did the most was play the "deal or no deal" game at D&B.

---

After !!!, the big surprise album for me was the national's boxer. It's probably difficult to find a lead singer with such a deep, bass voice with songs this consistently good, able to vary up his vocal delivery enough to keep it all interesting. (See crash test dummies for an opposite example.) They're sort of an understated, inward-indie version of The Hold Steady, with jams that rock, just not in a customary RAWK way. Tough for me to pick a favorite on this album. "fake empire" is the full boxer introduction, with subtly paranoid lyrics ("Tiptoe through our shiny city / With our diamond slippers on / Do our gay ballet on ice / Bluebirds on our shoulders") and a building of horns and piano to the end which is quite engaging. "mistaken for strangers" is where the lower-case rawk starts, with the pounding drums and clanging guitars setting up mr invisible ("Oh, you wouldn't want an angel watching over / Surprise, surprise, they wouldn't wanna watch / Another un-innocent, elegant fall / Into the un-magnificent lives of adults"). In love with a smart woman in "brainy", the guitars are more intricate and atmospheric but the drums are still energetic as the song seems like a lazy stalker song with a chorus of "You might need me more / Than you think you will / Come home in the car you love / Brainy, brainy, brainy" (but i think they're already in a relationship). Love the drums on "squalor victoria" too, with a string section that adds some spooky tension, giving way to piano and lines like "Out of my league, I have birds in my sleeves / And I wanna rush in with the fools". "slow show" wants to "get my shit together", almost seductive in a nerd/oaf way singing "I wanna hurry home to you / put on a slow, dumb show for you / and crack you up". There's a urge to hole up inside with a loved one in "apartment story" ("We?ll stay inside till somebody finds us / Do whatever the TV tells us / Stay inside our rosy-minded fuzz for days").
It's this way throughout. Today, this album has a chance of surpassing !!! for #3.

ga ga ga ga ga is my favorite spoon album to date. Maybe it's the addition of the horn sections, but almost all songs on this album sound so damn funky. They're still proponents of the 3-minute-ish, concise indie-pop-rock song. There's some air of danger ("Clubs and sticks and bats and balls
For nuclear dicks with their dialect drawls") with opener "don't make me a target" and it's cameo clanging guitar and its extended bridge with play-along-at-home hand claps. Love the horns and cymbals in "you got yr. cherry bomb" and its perpetual drumming motion and cooing vocals near the end. Love the horns and melody of "the underdog" and its built-up ending, with snappy lyrics like "You got no time for the messenger, / got no regard for the thing that you don't understand. / You got no fear of The Underdog, / that's why you will not survive.". The guitar-work in "don't you evah" is funky and the background faint vocal plays are fun. You'll find yourself singing along to the chorus of "finer feelings". The only track that doesn't fully-sit well is the echoey, piano-monotoned lead single "the ghost of you still lingers". I like the song, but i probably missed the point of the vocal and other FX and it feels like a run-on sentence with no chorus and that piano. But that's a minor quibble -- i'm still ga ga over ga ga ga ga ga. These guys sound cooler than that Michael J Fox character tried to sound at the end of Back to the Future. See "eddie's ragga" and its groovy bass. See the acoustic guitar and rawk attitude in "japanese cigarette case". Or maybe they're the indie version of prime huey lewis & the news crossed with early inxs (and a pinch of the clash) on this album. (i'm sure the indie kids love that analogy.) Whatever the magic behind GA5, this is the culmination of spoon's talent.

josh ritter was the first artist to post back-to-back top 6 albums on my countdown in a while. This album is the loud & rowdy opposite of the intimate, somewhat folky the animal years. If i haven't said it before, i'll say it again -- Josh Ritter is probably the #1 artist that reminds me of Broomfield and my numerous stroller walks with my boy. Dark winter walks on little-traveled suburb streets with a sometimes-strong gust of cold wind. The peaks of the historical conquests of josh ritter are the opposite of such walks (and maybe that's why i played this album so much on those walks). The energy and warmth found in songs like "to the dogs or whoever", "right moves" and "next to the last romantic" kept me walkin' on. "to the dogs or whoever" is josh ritter on speed -- a rapid pace of indie pop rock storming out with lyrics "Deep in the belly of a whale I found her / Down with the deep blue jail around her / Running her hands through the ribs of the dark / Florence and Calamity and Joan of Arc" with an appropriate chorus for my walks of "I thought I heard somebody calling / In the dark I thought I heard somebody call" strolling along in the dark with headphones on. "right moves" is hip and smooth with its trumpets and classic-rock-sounding guitar and a simple endearing sentiment of "Am I making all the right moves? / Am I singing you the right blues? / Is there a time when I can call you, just to see how you are doing* (with lyrics of starry nights and the moon and constellations for my late night walks). The pace of the acoustic guitar and compressed drums of "open doors" is exhiliarating while Josh pines "I thought an open door would bring you in / Now I guess I'm gonna have to guess again". The piano and guitar-screech in "real long distance" push and pull against the march of the long distance call. "next to the last romantic" kinda sounds 50's country ("he's stolen hearts like their horses / and horses when hearts can't be found / he keeps riding from one horse / to one horse to one horse town / (it get's him down) " -- haha). Mid-tempo numbers like "mind's eye" and "rumors" have just as much energy with their horns and piano and xylophone and Josh's playful delivery. Even the ballads are warm and inviting, like "the temptation of adam" and its full, acoustic guitar backing an upbeat tale of apocalypse, upbeat as long as one can die in their loved-one's arms ("I think about the Big One, W.W.I.I.I. / Would we ever really care the world had ended? / You could hold me here forever like you're holding me tonight / I look at that great big red button and I'm tempted "). Or the inviting amour of "wait for love" or perseverence of "still beating" ("i know the dog days of the summer / Have you ten-to-one out-numbered / Seems like everybody up and left and they're not coming back / The shadow that you're standing on's still here sometimes that's all that you can ask"). Can't wait for his next album (of which i've heard NO news of yet).

Break up albums are the way to go. Artists can really milk some good material out of break ups. Of Montreal turns out their best album behind Kevin's break up on hissing fauna...are you the destroyer?. "suffer for fashion" starts the happy bitterness party with high-pitched synth and fuzzed guitars leading the way with Barnes singing "We just want to emote 'til we're dead / I know we suffer for fashion or whatever / We don't want these days to ever end / We just want to emasculate them forever". That's one of the best tracks on the album, along with "heimdalsgate like the promethean curse" (huh?), "grolandic edit" (huh?), "a sentence of sorts in kongsvinger" (huh?) and "she's a rejector", the big hit on the album. As you can tell by the song titles, Kevin Barnes is OUT THERE, which is usually how i like it. In "heimdalsgate", Kevin is pleading with his inner self to feel better ("come on mood shift, shift back to good again") relying on drugs ("Chemicals, don't flatten my mind / Chemicals, don't mess me up this time") to endure. (One can easily be left with the impression that these guys do a lot of drugs, esp. based on their live show.) "grolandic edit" is such a pretty song, especially the harmonies, with the narrator confused and almost despondent looking for answers singing "I guess it would be nice to give my heart to a God / But which one, which one do I choose? / All the churches filled with losers, psycho or confused". "kongsvinger" is elegant and dark. But "she's a rejector" with fine acoustic guitar playing supporting the conflicted barnes wanting revenge on a woman who turned him down, with some fun lines like "My, my, you busted me / Like a Robocop, strike me" and especially the chorus "There's the girl that left me bitter / Want to pay some other girl / To just walk up to her and hit her / But I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't". But the rest of the album is pretty good too, with the lounge torture of "cato as a pun" (with the line "What has happened to you and I? / And don't say that I have changed / 'Cause man, of course I have"), i like the coiled guitar work, overall instrumental breadth, wandering discontent and "ooh" harmonies of "the past is a grotesque animal" of an 11 minute track that goes by fast. i like the refrain of "Eva, I'm sorry, but you will never have me / To me you're just some faggy girl / And I need a lover with soul power" in "bunny ain't no kind of rider". Best Of Montreal album yet.

we were dead before the ship even sank is modest mouse's good news... sequel. The songs take the same basic structures and the album is pretty loose in its content and delivery. Being a sequel copy makes we were dead... good, but disappointing. Now a couple albums removed from moon & antarctica, some we were dead.. songs overextended their welcome a bit and i kind of longed for the conciseness of good news.... In spite of the disappointment, this is still a solid album. It's like good news took all of the elements of antarctica except an overriding "concept" (like antarctica's of desolation and loneliness), then we were dead tried to recreate good news, even trying to recreate a hit like "float on" with "dashboard". Anyway, i continue to criticize this album, but it's because i know modest mouse can do better. The album IS good. Their penchant for unusual instrumentation matches Brock's off-kilter vocal deliveries (low-key singing or loud sing-shouting mostly). "dashboard" is a good, near-gaudy tune. "fire it up" is a reserved anthem attempt. The chorus to "missed the boat" (w/ shins frontman on harmonies) is fun to sing along with. "we've got everything" ("down to a science, so i guess we know everything") is pretty catchy in its defiantly celebratory delivery (bringing along the shins guy again to back at the chorus). i like the hurried (w/violin) ending to "parting of the sensory" and the trumpeted ending and "antidote" analogy to "spitting venom". For having 14 songs, the momentum is carried well to the end, with a strong trilogy of "steam engenius", "spitting venom" and "people as places as people" before the engagingly decent "invisible". Of course, i always go back to antarctica and lyrics like "a rickshaw being pulled around by another rickshaw" doesn't hold a cigarette lighter to the lyrics on antarctica. But these are the haunting comparisons that result from releasing a brilliant album..

A.C. Newman, the ringleader behind the new p0rnographers, slowed down the tempo a little on his 1st solo album (and more on his 2nd album), and then brought that mellowed-out mood to the pr0n's 4th album, challengers. i prefer their upbeat stuff, so this was a slight disappointment. Now, the slower-tempo'd songs are still catchy with multiple choruses, but they're just not the toe tappers like from the previous 3 albums. But you wouldn't know it from opener "my rights versus yours" which has a slow build, but the payoff is worth it with those neko harmonies and backing vox and the feel once again of multiple choruses. "all the things that go to make heaven and earth" is another song that recalls previous albums -- with its rapid procession, multiple choruses and lovely neko backing vox -- as does stellar "mutiny, i promise you" (here' the mutiny neko promised you!). Mid-tempo "all the old showstoppers" is just as catchy as their earlier stuff (w/ neko!) except the instrumental parts blunt momentum. "challengers" is where you first notice the shift. Fronted beautifully by neko case [ 8-) ], it's a nicely, understated sort-of love song ("Another vision of us / We were the challengers of the unknown") that you won't find on the first 3 albums. Ballad "go places" is a warm invitation from neko to "come with me / go places". "failsafe", another neko-fronted number (she seems to hoard the ballads on this album), is another pr0n ballad, but falls flat. At least "unguided" has some energy with that organ synth and catchy chorus ("Something's unguided in the sky tonight..."), but goes on too long. Elsewhere, "myriad harbour" is a good, if a bit muddled, affair from bejar with only 1 chorus (shocker!) and harmonica that sounds a bit out of place. (Neko's the best part of that song, of course.) In summary, i like my porn served with a heaping helping of vim & vigor, and the down-tempo plays on challengers don't do as much for me. Bejar's pun song "entering white cecilia" falls flat with no strong new pr0n hook to sink into. Overall, i wish A.C. would up the beat and allow neko more front time on the upbeat numbers -- she's too strong and sultry of a personality to leave on comparatively-middling numbers like "failsafe" and "adventures in solitude". A.C. said something about coming back with a rocking album -- i look forward to that!

andrew bird's armchair aprocrypha was just as good as his last album and might actually be his best. [We'll see in 2009 -- teaser alert!] This guy knows how to put an indie folk rock song together with many witty twists of phrase. Opener "fiery crash", one of the highlights on the album, is aptly apocryphal, stating "G force is twisting the faith with superstition / A fatal premonition / You know you've got to envision / The fiery crash" which is "just a formality". Delicate "imitosis" and its intricate plucking states "And despite what all his studies had shown / What was mistaken for closeness, was just a case of mitosis" where petri dish germs are swinging fists at the human race. The hits don't end -- a sole string intro to "plasticities" reveals "This isn't our song, this isn't even a musical / Think life is too long, to be a whale in a cubicle / Nails under your cuticle" where andrew pulls his version of new pr0n & multiple choruses. "heretics", "dark matter" and "scythian empires" are the other main highlights. There are a few more languid numbers near the end but this could challenge challengers for its higher spot.

Ah, feist of the apple commercial. That same song, "1,2,3,4", became a fun counting song with Sawyer. Her debut didn't give me much excitement outside of the hit "mushaboom" -- it was a good album, but not close to one of that year's favs. With the reminder, she brings "mushaboom" quality to most of the album. i wish she could bring more of her personality to broken social scene, because the playful warmth on "i feel it all", "my moon my man", "sealion" and the aforementioned "1, 2, 3, 4" are infectious (and my favs on the album). She's a faint, slinky coo of a delivery with surprising depth in her delivery and writes some catchy tunes as my album favs all attest. The ballads aren't as good, but there are some nice gems like "the limit to your love" and "brandy alexander". i love the note she hits in "the park" and the harmonies in "the limit to your love".

amy winehouse might be a druggie, but she sure has an old-school bluesy voice on back to black. Smarmy "rehab" kicks it off letting you know "they tried to make me go to rehab, i said 'no, no, no'". It has the feel of old-school r&b/soul with a new-school (punk?) druggie attitude. There are a bunch of similar-sounding, old-school r&b hits on here. "you know i'm no good" seduces multiple ex's ("I cheated myself like I knew I would") with attitude atop an early-60s-sounding horn section. She almost sounds like old-school Aretha on "me & mr jones" except for lyrically she's definitely a modern girl -- "What kind of f*ckery is this? / You made me miss the Slick Rick gig" -- with more classic horns. "back to black" presents thd same dichotomy opening with old school piano and light strings with amy singing "He left no time to regret / Kept his d|ck wet / With his same old safe bet " and a beautifully sad chorus of "We only said good-bye with words / I died a hundred times / You go back to her / And I go back to" [black]. "Love is a losing game" is a wonderfully-sung tale universally relatable ("Over futile odds / And laughed at by the gods / And now the final frame / Love is a losing game"). Or check out the down lyrics to upbeat "tears dry on their own": "Even if I stop wanting you, a perspective pushes through / I'll be some next man's other woman soon / I cannot play myself again, I should just be my own best friend / Not f*ck myself in the head with stupid men". If you want female-fronted Motown soul with today's attitude, pick this up.

[Note: 2007 was the year of bonus material as i scored a bonus EP with the Radiohead, !!!, Amy Winehouse and Josh Ritter albums, and took Matador up on a special challengers package the equivalent of two bonus discs. Just 2 years in the past -- my CD intake has significantly declined and i wasn't buying a lot of CDs as it was then...]

dellrock's top 13 albums airplay of 2007:

Pos.	Title	Artist	Total
1.	neon bible	the arcade fire	298
2.	myth takes	!!!	266
3.	boxer	the national	193
4.	ga ga ga ga ga	spoon	187
5.	we were dead before the ship even sank	modest mouse	185
6.	challengers	the new pornographers	168
7.	the historical conquests of josh ritter	josh ritter	165
8.	hissing fauna, are you the destroyer?	of montreal	158
9.	in rainbows	radiohead	118
10.	the crane wife	the decemberists	99
11.	armchair apocrypha	andrew bird	97
12.	i am not afraid of you and i will beat your ass	yo la tengo	73
13.	the animal years	josh ritter	69

A highschool coach gathered statistics from college football and found that the difference in the opposition scoring between going for it on 4th-and-long from your own side of the field and punting is small enough that HE NEVER PUNTS. He's able to do so because he has a pretty explosive offense. He also goes for an onside kick 75% of the time. Nuts. Anyway, he won the championship for his high school doing this. I'm not sure about the NFL statistics on punts and onside kicks, but i doubt any NFL coach would have the ballz to try this.

Linky: Time's top 50 inventions of 2009 -- the no punt offense

Went 3-1. Check out what happened in my money league (666). Weird having 3 teams around 0.500 and still having an overall winning percentage of 63.5%.

EFS 666: At least 3 points of circumstance helped me win this game to remain undefeated at 12-0. First, just before the 11 am games, i read that westbrook wouldn't play, so i swapped out LDT for 2nd round pick LeSean McCoy. That swap resulted in 15 points. Second, div rival Liberty Vultures made a big trade for Polamalu and Thomas Davis, giving up a 1st, 2nd and essentially three 4ths. Thomas Davis busted a knee, only scoring 16 points, more than 10 points under his average. Third, the Colts decided (with no prior announcement) that Mike Pollak, starting for Liberty, would be benched in favor for scab guard Devan. (i don't remember his first name -- he's that much of a prior nobody.) The difference between starting guard and rotation guard was 15 points. Thanks to a Pittsburgh comeback on MNF, i ended up winning...by 15 points. So if one of those 3 things don't happen, we tie. If 2 things don't, i lose. Crazy. So now i'm 12-0 with 6 games to play and a 5 game lead in my division and a 2 game lead for seed #1. (I've never been seed #1.) I also have a 5 PPG lead for the $100 total points prize. It's going to be tight, especially this coming week where i play 2 big teams from division 1 without kareem mckenzie and andre johnson (and Owen on I.R.). If i can survive this week 10, i think i have a good shot at remaining undefeated despite my issues at OLB and RB. i wouldn't mind pulling a miami dolphin or a new england patriots version of undefeated season. [knock knock knock]

EFS 1000: Won a division game while the division leader lost. I'm 6-5-1 now and he's 7-5. If i can keep consistently scoring and winning, then i have a shot yet at the division.

EFS 12: Lost to an inferior team with an awful 320s score. Now i'm on the outside looking in at 6-6. I'm going to hope i can come back a game to make a wildcard seed.

EFS 7: Beat a divisional opponent going well over 400 points. I'm now 6-6, 2 games out of the wildcard. In week 1, when i had yet to memorize my new team's roster, i inadvertently started 2 guys that were inactive. i lost by about 10 points. The team i lost to is seed #6 with an 8-4 record. If i didn't screw up in week #1, i'd be 7-5 and seed #6 right now.

Working at Level 3 was turning to sh|t pretty quick. I was given incomplete specifications to a third party vendor and developed to those specifications, leaving not the most well-rounded application. In 2007 again, there were monthly layoffs from January through July. In good news, the company bought out its rival competitor it had to low-ball prices against to remaining competitive with. However, now they were tasked with incorporating that "other" company's business (plus a couple of other little companies bought) in line with Level 3. Specifically, they sought to streamline the physical and virtual inventory of both companies. This massive project did not sound like fun. The technical aspects didn't seem to work up to my strengths. Regardless, i was plucked out of the VOIP/e911 world into this massive project which had even-changing focus and scope as it went along. At a couple points, the development work was fun. (i created an API for the third party Java application software and i learned a lot of TIBCO designer stuff.) But for the most part, our team's main task was debugging a third party application we bought to manage that physical and virtual inventory. Two-thirds of the application ran on Windows, so you KNOW that it had to be buggy and not that scalable. (True and true.) Even though there were a ton of platforms to test on, this buggy third party application was almost always broken on all platforms, and broken in different ways, causing multiple debugging and software-patching efforts. It was a joke, and it didn't feel funny stuck in the middle of the mess. A couple of other times they had me messing with Excel spreadsheets. (Oy.) My talents were being wasted and i wasn't having fun at all. Around December of 2007, i decided to start looking for a new job.

Our neighbors were starting to annoy the sh|t out of us. One neighbor, we called "the texans", were constantly surveying the borders of "their land" for whatever reason, sometimes messing with the border-delimiting stakes. Due to a lot of puddling of standing water back where our "houses" met, kellie was able to push the HOA to build french drains in between our "houses" to help the water run off and away from our foundations. Smart plan. It took a lot of effort to finally force the HOA to do it. On the day they were starting their effort, "the texans" called the police. IDIOTS. You're going to call the police to stop an effort to improve the drainage around your house to help maintain the value and solid foundation of your house?? Another neighbor was surprised our cat shredded her arm when that neighbor picked up our cat in the presence of her dog. (!) Ugh. Then there were the psycho-religious neighbors who were religious-snob-jerks to my wife constantly, including blasting religious talk radio whenever she was in earshot, to the point where i created a "f*ck god" playlist and jammed it everytime i came home. (Our garage was right by their driveway where they often hung out during the daytime.) i gave them a lot of dirty looks and attitude that said "quit f*cking with my wife or i'm gonna start f*cking back". Of course, prior to this was the winter with a ton of snow in which kellie helped them shovel out their driveway out of kindness to help the religious chick who was pregnant with twins.

Those neighbors represent just ANOTHER example fortifiying my opinion that i'm fine with religion and its beliefs and might share those beliefs, but i have a BIG PROBLEM with religious PEOPLE. It's how people express their religious beliefs that pisses me off. They have no right to bomb abortion clinics and force bible readings in public schools and blunt stem cell research in the name of their intepretation of religion. Stay the f*ck out of my face, wackos. I don't have the bible memorized but i'm pretty sure killing another person is a sin and that God generally preaches "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you". Basically, God says be respectful of others. The book of revelations even covers the need for separating church and state! You have a right to believe in your God as others have a right to believe in theirs, or none at all. Don't force Jesus or the bible on me. Don't shove racism in my face under the guise of stating one people don't have it any worse off than another. Most likely, JESUS CHRIST WAS BLACK, or dark-skinned. Back then, around Africa and the Mesopotamian region, most people's skin was tanned dark by the scorching sun. I'm also sick of politicians (like that f*cker Dumya) shoving their agenda in my face in the name of our country and its (religious) beliefs when the truth is he's after the almighty dollar waging war in the middle east. God is about Love, not about hating or disliking someone because of how they express their beliefs (or lack thereof). i also like those contradictory religious zealous, like those staunchly opposed to abortion because it's killing life yet war is a necessary evil. But i digress -- don't force your nonsense on me. If you believe in God or Buddha or another or none, express those beliefs around me as you will and that's fine and maybe expect a corroborating or dissenting opinion and discourse out of me. But don't tell your kids with a "better than thou" attitude that they can't play with my kid while blasting your jesus sneezes on the radio. nobody is better or worse than anyone else unless they commit crimes worthy of long prison stays. Your christian belief is based on an old book which has been retranslated many times over time, a book which was a journal by various authors.

What really pisses me off about the religious nutjob neighbors and their look-down-their-nose bullsh|t with Kellie is that Kellie went out of her way multiple times to help them. From digging them out of a big snowstorm while the neighbor was pregnant with twins to babysitting her kids in a pinch. That b|tch had no concept of being grateful. On short notice, i tried to help her dumbass husband cram a semester's worth of algebra/trig into a couple hours of pumping out the semester's test. Forget about not doing that for many years, what the f*ck was he thinking?? Then the nutjob chick asked that i help him with his computer, not telling me until i was upstairs with their daughter in my face THAT THE DAUGHTER HAD CHICKEN POX. This was just before a significant operation of mine. WHAT THE F*CK WERE THEY THINKING??!! Just of themselves of course. (i don't think that's taught in the bible.)

With neighbors like that, living in that Redleaf suburb seemed pointless. i was bound to run into some of these freaks while taking Sawyer to the playground. i don't want that psychological BS infecting my boy. Since early in 2007, we were trying to move out of that subdivision, which also made me wonder why i should go out of my way to be nice to some around there. There was always some drama with a neighbor. One was a religious neighbor sympathizer, so she was often a snob against Kellie (and Sawyer by extension). The religious neighbor chick really spread her BS across the neighborhood, basically attacking Kellie. She's not that smart either. She began to send Kellie religious (spam-like) emails and i've continually over time offered Kellie my services to spam the sh|t out of that nutjob -- i could throw an email bot out on a unix platform and loop that b|tch hourly or every minute and make her email UNUSABLE. But Kellie never took me up on it. One neighbor couple influenced by the religious f*cknut chick often acted distant around me. Then there was cement park, an ill-conceived "park" consisting of a bunch of cement rings amidst a lake of little rocks. Whose dumbass idea was that?? Sure, most of the park was open green space, but still, WTF? Yeah, let's have a bunch of little kids play in a lake of rocks decorated with big, weighty cement rings. OK.

So Broomfield was wearing thin on me. Our house was becoming increasingly small with a growing baby starting to crawl around the place. There were no neighbors to hang out with, myself or with kid in tow. The subdivision was dull. Broomfield was dull. The job grew increasingly more annoying and less challenging. Ontop of that, we (mostly Kellie) showed the house a lot with really no bites. All that constant cleaning was excruciating for me helping after work and on weekends, so Kellie must've been tortured cleaning the place for people that never showed interest. We made investments to help sell the place, like some patio-styled landscaping off our "porch". We eventually replaced the carpet. (thank you cats.) Broomfield was boring and wasn't drawing any takers. (duh) In hindsight, i'm glad we didn't sell our place in Broomfield because we would've probably bought another place in Broomfield (and that wouldn't've worked out come 2008 [*teaser alert*]). Broomfield is that pleasant, somewhat well-to-do and nice unattractive chick standing by herself in the corner with minimal personality and prospects.

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Only went to one concert, the debut year for the Monolith festival to see the Decemberists. i don't know what was up with Colin. We had good seats arriving around 2pm and holding our seat for the duration of main stage performances. I'm guessing he must've been drunk on the wine he was carrying around with him on stage because he forgot his lyrics on multiple occassions, needing to restart a song because he had a lyric brain freeze, only to restart with the same INCORRECT lyrics, he wandered a lot on stage, and talked too much heavy-handed politics during one song. Really don't know what his deal was that night. Jenny looked annoyed at times. Overall, the performance was good, but with all of these wine-induced scatterbrain moments, it was nowhere near as tight a set as that first Fox Theater show. Also caught Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! (slightly muddled delivery) and Kings of Leon (who came off like a rockin' interpol -- i really dug their performance and can see why the LCD crowd is into them). (LCD = lowest common denominator)

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Music-wise, 2007 was the year of THE BIG, LAST-MINUTE, SURPRISE RELEASE.

The year's first big contender for album of the year was released in March, from !!! called myth takes. I heard an "early" internet release in January and bought the expanded editition when it came out. myth takes was the first dance punk album i LOVED. Tracks #1-#6 are non-stop killer dance-rock party action. It sounds like a rockin' electronica album but all those instruments are organic. In my 2006 post i mentioned how the new, significant shift in my music listening preferences was an inclination to the more freaky side of indie music. I also postulated that maybe the new shift is actually more of an aversion to house/dance/idm/electronic music. Well, !!! combined both worlds and really catalyzed the momentum of both style interests. The albums starts "It only takes a little bit of glamour glimmer / only just a little bit of shake-or-shiver / nothing never matters 'til it's shattered / smothered and covered splattered all over manhattan / sha, sha, sha sha sha-doobie / sometimes it's really just like the movies" with a mellow, near muffled-talking delivery atop bass backbone. The song, and much of the album, has the feel of an electronica song; but it's all "organic" -- all real instruments going on -- guitar, bass, keys and drums. "all my heroes are weirdos" is one of three great songs on the album (along with "must be the moon" and "heart of hearts"). i like the "a capella" (with drums) about 2/3 of the way through and the delivery of "weirdos" at the chorus. Fun song, as is "must be the moon" with powers in with guitar & drums (but sounds like a dance tune) all about a hot one night stand stating " kissing in the cab on the way back cross the bridge / she said "love is love but a fuck is what it is" / "and what's that?" she must have read my mind / cuz she looked in2 my eyes and she said "a good time" ". It must be the moonLIGHT (and cool FX to close the song). I wish songs like this were played at the church & vinyl in all those years of clubbin'. "heart of hearts" is one of the multi-section songs i love. it creeps up slow, threatening to kick your arse, and then slowly does. the high-pitched guitar lurking in the background carries the song musically. The whole song churns with delight. It's simple lyrically, but a ton o' fun. The stammered "heart of hearts" eventually rolls into part 2 of the song and the musical spazz out. i love how the "heart of hearts" stammer ends in silence then that high-pitched guitar kicks the song back in. i love how the drums fight the guitars at the end. The first 6 songs kick arse (through "sweet life" and its "ABCD" alphabet soup chorus which was a mini-fav with bean & i) but with a little party reprieve at "yadnus"(god DID rest on the 7th day, right?) before one last top jam "bend over beethoven". i like the higher-register chorus of "a new name". Almost has a franz new wavey attitude with the guitar during the chorus and is so danceable, especially at the end of the song.

Arcade Fire's neon bible also came out in March, but !!! had a 2 month lead thanks to the internet leak. However, by the end of August, i decided i prefered neon bible to myth takes. The album sounds like it's near-bursting at the seems but remains restrained out of some sort of claustophobia. "black mirror" is a nice start to the album, with its building resentment of the black mirror, and "my body is a cage" is a nice dramatically gripping ballad (with church organ rising to "set my body free"), but the album's bookends are the car songs, "keep the car running" and "no cars go". Both have anthemic tendencies with rousing choruses and rousing build-up to the choruses, like "They know my name ‘cause I told it to them / But they don’t know where and they don’t know when / It’s coming" in "keep the car running". The rousing exhaltation reaches a climax at the climax of "no cars go". Interesting how such a simple song sounds so uplifting and anthemic. The church organ doesn't make a grand entrance until "intervention", the backbone of that song's procession, but there's some nice cascading guitar which pitches up amidst lyrics and vocals that attempt to uplift the soldier, the family man, the everyman, who is obviously under peril: "Every spark of friendship and love / Will die without a home". (Against, nice female backing vox.) Some more shimmering/cascading guitar in "ocean of noise". Outside of the car songs, my next favorites are "black wave / bad vibrations", with its split personality and female LEADING vox (they need more of this), and the run to from the memories before the split personality takes over into "bad vibrations", and "(antichrist television blues)" with its "god fearing man" struggling to do what is right. i love the finality of "bad vibrations" part with the deep drum and lyrics "Nothing lasts forever / That's the way it's gotta be / There's a great black wave in the middle of the sea". (Again, nice haunting background female fox.) The tough call was choosing which album i liked better, funeral or neon bible. At the time, it was neon bible. But now, i think funeral has the edge because it feels more expansive and experimental. The church organ does neon bible well, but also limits their instrumental palette a bit. Not a clunker on either album though -- can't wait for the next one!

As i reaffirmed my opinion of neon bible being my favorite album of the year through the month of September, October approached and some out-of-nowhere music news shocked the internet and my eyes. THE BIG, LAST-MINUTE, SURPRISE RELEASE? On October 1st, Radiohead announced they'd release a new album on October 10th called in rainbows, available as MP3s on the internet (by the way of "name your own price")!!! WTF OMFG??!!! This album is PACKT. My theory is they had to know the "name your own price" could overshadow the music and put that much more effort into this puppy, because in rainbows is the best radiohead since kid amnesiac. The album starts off with an engaging drum riff and bass that jazz out with fidgety energy not heard of in a radiohead opener before -- "15 step" is the best opening radiohead song ever, all building to the chorus that started the song off of "How come I end up where I started? / How come I end up where I went wrong / Won't take my eyes off the ball again / You reel me out and you cut the string." (And the kids cheering is a fun touch.) And then they hit me with "bodysnatchers" and that churning guitar riff introducing more fear and paranoia from Thom ("I am trapped in this body and can't get out"). If it weren't for the lyrics, I'd swear this was a happy radiohead for a happier age based on the energy of the first two tracks. Then they drop "nude", also known as "big idea" to long-time radiohead fans, a song they've been kicking around since around "ok computer". They slow this version down and make it a bit eerie, which works well. I just wish Thom added a little more nervous tension delivering line "you'll go to hell for what your dity mind is thinkin'". But his intensity building to the high note makes up for that. I first heard "weird fishes / arpeggi" on a radiohead internet boot and i like the studio version better. i love the drumwork (which is pretty good throughout the album) and the mystic "pyramid song" quality to thom's vocals and lyrics ("in the deepest ocean / bottom of the sea / your eyes / they turn me"). "all i need" slows it down and, for radiohead, sounds like a love song ("I am in the middle of your picture / Lying in the reeds") in that tortured, stalking tradition (ala police's "every breath you take"), but when the piano kicks in and thom exalts in high notes, the song goes from good radiohead song to majestic, if only for that near-minute. "faust arp" is this album's segue, pensive and beautiful with its strings and thom's soft delivery. "reckoner" is another radiohead song that's been around a little while and i think, while it's a beautiful song, they played it too conservative. This one could've been more fierce. However, "house of cards" is the only song i'd truly rework and is a comparative lull after a stellar opening 7 tracks. (i'd replace this song with "down is the new up" from the bonus CD.) But "jigsaw falling into place" snaps us back into energetic radiohead mode and is probably my favorite track on the album. Everything they do great on this album can be summed up by "jigsaw" -- upbeat song with great energy, fine drumming, strong bass in back, a strong song lyrically with the usual fear/paranoia (everything seems fine until "comatose"), great energy and delivery from thom (who manages to match the energy by the band throughout the album). i love the foreboding in the last song. Nice closer. Not as great as the radiohead holy trinity, but a very good album and has a good shot at top 10 of the 00s.

So basically Arcade Fire was robbed at the last minute by Radiohead, the first artist to score a #1 dellrock album with an album released AFTER the first week of July since i've been keeping track (since radiohead's ok computer). Arcade Fire should sue. In happier news, if Arcade Fire puts out another very-good-to-great album, then they'll secure a spot in my top 5 favorite current artists, currently topped by...Radiohead.

EFS 666: Won my 2 games fairly handliy with 471 points. I'm now 11-0 and have a few points lead in the $100 battle for top team points prize. Next-closest division rival is 7-4. Next-closest team in the league is 9-2. I play 6-5 div rival Liberty Vultures next in my first game without top-2 TE Owen Daniels, who is out for the year. I'm now glad i did not trade Heath Miller for Santonio Holmes and a pick. (We couldn't agree on a pick.) This makes my Heath-for-a-#3 trade just before the season started look that much better as Heath was about 4ppg behind Owen before Owen went down. I have Greg Olsen then Pettigrew behind Heath.

EFS 1000: Split my games to go 5-5-1. i'm about 1.5 games out of 1st in my division, but he has a 3-0 div record where i have a 1-2 div record; meaning that i'll need to sweep my remaining 3 divisional games & he needs to lose all 3 to have a good chance. Otherwise, he needs to lose 3 more games than me somewhere in the next 7 games. Doubtful. I'm probably not going to make the playoffs in 2009 in year #4 of my ORC experiment. The only good news to that is that i have my own 2010 picks.

EFS 12: Lost against div rival Hegemon. He's first in the division. We've split our 2 games so far with 1 left to play. Right now i'm seed #6. If i just beat all the teams i should beat, i'll make the playoffs. But i am a little worried as my team's scoring has fallen flat often this year. Most likely i'm looking at an opening wildcard loss.

EFS 7: Split my games. I'm 5-6 and most likely missing the playoffs. (Probably would've missed the playoffs even if i didn't have inactive guys in week 1 vs Dem Bones.) Starting a fire sale to pick up value before the week 10 trade deadline. The good news is that i've improved this team about 30ppg in one season. With the EFS regular season about 2/3 done, i'm not that excited about this orphan pickup. This doesn't have to do with the team performance but more to do with league activity, which was fairly non-existent until the season started (outside of the draft).

So beginning in 1988, my music tastes have gone through a significant change approximately every 6 years. In 1988, i started listening to a lot more rap/r&b/hip-hop. In 1994, i let the alternative music scene flood in. Around 2000, i started delving much deeper into the world of indie music. So for 2006?

Well, the change in 2006 was a lot more subtle than previous years. Beginning even a few years earlier, i started delving more into the freaky side of indie music. I started listening to artists like the Unicorns (then the Islands), devendra banhart, why?, of montreal, deerhoof, animal collective, tv on the radio and !!! and a bunch of other artists further out from the center of "typical indie rock/pop". Albums by artists like these haven't really turned up in these retrospective reviews (except for the Unicorns and Of Montreal), but a few songs turn up in the 2006 top singles chart and my appreciation for these indie freaks have grown over time to where they've recently challenged for overall #1. Give a listen to the songs on my countdown from deerhoof, clap your hands say yeah!, tv on the radio and islands to know how "out there" my music tastes were(are) headed.

Buuuuuut, i'm not thoroughly convinced right now that the significant music change around 2006 had to do with heavier leanings on freaky indie music. The brit new wavy stuff of the killers, white rose movement, franz ferdinand, bloc party, maximo park and razorlight brought new emphasis to another genre that started to grow with me -- dance punk. All of those artists have a dance element to their indie rock grooves. Combined with artists like interpol and the stills, then filtered through artists like the rapture and !!!, my indie/IDM/house/dance/electronic preferences became stronger, to the point where the dellrock countdown experienced its FIRST dance album at #1 in 2008 [*teaser alert*].

So i'm not sure if the "6 year music shift" is as applicable for 2006. I think part of the problem is that it's still so fairly recent that i don't have proper (personal) historical perspective yet. Or maybe there is no significant shift anymore. As of 2006, my biological career eclipsed 35 so maybe there's no more room for musical appreciation growth anymore.

But for all the new weird music that's present on the top songs of 2006 countdown, there's still a lot of tame indie pop stuff like jenny lewis with the watson twins, ben kweller and belle & sebastian. 2006 saw the last huzzah for depeche mode and the debut of artist like we are scientists, islands, voxtrot and panic! at the disco, among many others.

I noticed that there were a handful of songs that weren't from my favorite albums of 2006. A few retrospective years ago, a lot of songs on my singles countdown were plucked one-at-a-time because of my eligibility rules that had yet to be modified to reflect more current tastes. By 2006, i had been working my countdown under those new eligibility rules for a few years, and by that time with so many new albums passing through my ears, a lot of songs from those indie albums became eligible. Thus, this resulted in a lot of singles making my end-of-year chart that weren't necessarily from my favorite albums of the year (or year before). Pretty Girls Make Graves, while they put out a good album, fall into this category with two hot singles on my 2006 chart.

A lot of these songs remind me of Broomfield, for good and bad; mostly listening to these songs while exercising walking pushing Sawyer on the stroller around the subdivision. Oh Broomfield, the quaint little Denver/Boulder overflow with a generally-nice populace but no true identity or scene to make it much fun.

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Since i recoded my dellrock application from cold fusion to ASP, i used a separate popup window to list out the "top eligible debuters" for my weekly singles countdown. However, the list of songs to review often eclipsed 30, sometimes 40 songs. This was a ton to keep track of outside of my weekly top 10. I intended to remember which songs were my favorites "just outside of the top 10" week-to-week, but to keep track of 40 songs was a little much. As a result, i decided to expand the number of songs i kept track of from a weekly top 10 to a weekly top 20. This would keep track of those 10 songs 11-through-20 which were just outside of the top 10. In keeping an accurate account of songs 11-through-20, i soon decided that i could now use the top 20 to determine my favorite songs of the year. And so i started doing so. For the sake of the top 36 songs in this post, i stayed consistent with all the other posts from 1984-on and only counted the weekly top 10s of 2006. (the weekly top 20 -based end-of-year countdown has the top pretty girls make graves song as the 2006 #1.)

i also expanded the albums airplay weekly top 20 to not only be consistent, but because the # of albums new to my years had expanded to about one-a-day. it was nuts how much new-to-my-ears music i was listening to. about 75% of that was new music.

dellrock's top 36 singles airplay of 2006:

Pos.	Title	Artist	Total
1.	another sunny day	belle and sebastian	111
2.	gone	kanye west	110
3.	pyrite pedestal	pretty girls make graves	91
4.	handle with care	jenny lewis with the watson twins	90
5.	girl in the war	josh ritter	88
6.	insistor	tapes 'n tapes	86
7.	i will follow you into the dark	death cab for cutie	81
8.	o, valencia!	the decemberists	80
9.	parade	pretty girls make graves	75
10.	take a chance	the magic numbers	75
11.	the only difference between martyrdom and suicide is press coverage	panic! at the disco	73
12.	hold on, hold on	neko case	66
13.	wolf like me	tv on the radio	64
14.	touch the sky	kanye west	63
15.	your biggest fan	voxtrot	62
16.	white collar boy	belle and sebastian	62
17.	starlight	muse	61
18.	this isn't farmlife	the essex green	53
19.	apply some pressure	maximo park	52
20.	she doesn't get it	the format	52
21.	the charging sky	jenny lewis with the watson twins	49
22.	crooked teeth	death cab for cutie	46
23.	rough gem	islands	45
24.	turn out the light	the new amsterdams	44
25.	in the crossfire	starsailor	44
26.	nobody move, nobody get hurt	we are scientists	44
27.	cheated hearts	yeah yeah yeahs	43
28.	a pain that i'm used to	depeche mode	42
29.	penny on the train track	ben kweller	40
30.	you are what you love	jenny lewis with the watson twins	39
31.	the blues are still blue	belle and sebastian	38
32.	is this love?	clap your hands say yeah!	37
33.	letter to bowie knife	calexico	35
34.	my favorite mutiny	the coup	35
35.	rrrrrrright	deerhoof	35
36.	the island / come and see / the landlord's daughter / you'll not feel the drowning	the decemberists	35

Going back to the decemberists, once kellie became a big fan and i told her about the great concert at the Fox Theater, she wanted to see them. We went to the paramount downtown, where i last saw Ryan Adams about 12 rows back from stage. The audience (around me) was so respectful that i never had to stand to see Ryan -- sat to enjoy the whole show. The Decemberists show didn't go the same way -- everyone was standing from the moment it seemed like the group was coming on stage. Kellie, in heels, thought she'd be able to sit, so that sucked for her. Then, Colin pulled up lame with laryngitis, cutting the show short. He was rasping through all the songs and it was apparent he was struggling, but to give up on a show?? Kellie & i left disappointed.

In my first full year out of denver, i was psychologically out of the used CD element. i don't think i went to a cheapo disc (one closed) or twist and shout (which moved to colfax) once. I missed those stops if just to browse the music looking for the occassional gem. Used CD stores were replaced by ebay and half.com, emusic.com and the occassional best-buy-rewards-gift-certificate-funded new CD. That trend has basically carried on to today.

2006 is when i decided to "formally" ditch paladisiac.com and start posting to a blog. i tried blogger.com and this livejournal thing (and another that escapes me now) and never considered "myspace". (rupert murdoch is republican swine.) i tried out a couple posts on each to assess how well each site could capture what i wanted to post. In the end, livejournal's editor was easier to use to post standard HTML. But i wasn't that impassioned to do the blog thing and left the site alone for over a year (or more).

The coincidental trend of my favorite albums of 2006 was multiple associations to animals. From the crane wife to rabbit fur coat to foxes and dogs and fishes and goats and the bird on the calexico cover and the loon, i'm wondering if the eff bee aye put me on a watch list thinking i joined ALF.

Please forgive me for the more-brief album reviews this time around. I had the swine flu all last week, missing work, and don't have the usual time and energy for these reviews. Speaking of reviews, here's the rest of the best of 2006...

down with wilco was a pretty cool album for the minus 5 and, given my swelling love of wilco, i didn't think they'd be able to top it. But in they came with their self-titled album, referred to as the gun album (because of the gun on the cover). They start off classy with "rifle called goodbye" before laying into the banger "aw shit man", their most balls-out rocker yet. "out there on the maroon" is witty fun starting "i had 6 white russians tonight / and 2 of them were people / it's not pretty when your best friend is a saloon / and you're always out there on the maroon". haha. "my life is a creep" is a piano jaunt with a more serious take on the same wit where there's "no film crew for my life as a creep" (and the guy's "not supremely evil"). "with a gun" is an upbeat, acoustic piece where "i'll kick your sister's ass / i'm gonna take your brother's face and smash it in the grass / it's no wonder i'm spiral-bound / i just want to be around". A big part of the selling point of down with wilco and this album is the subtle lyrical humor, delivered atop a bed of indie-laden acoustic jams. It's like hanging out with some funny musician friends after hitting the bars for a couple hours that are serious about their careers but have the humor and self-deprecation to have a little fun at their own (and the people around them) expense while jamming during some after-bar drinks at their apartment. It's kinda like if the barenaked ladies focused a little more on their musicicianship and perfecting song structure and did less cornball ham-ups. "cemetery row" breaks through the entire album for a number of reasons. The song sounds simple and elegant. The lead vocals are handled by Colin Meloy (of the decemberists) seemingly singing in the lyrical context of a decemberist tune but without the houghty air. He delivers the song in earnest and the song has that much more power (ala beauty in darkness) because of it. This would be a standout track on a decemberists song, even with its simple song structure and slide guitar. i like how the backing vocals are handled. "cemetary row isn't such a bad place / don't you wanna go?" Wonderful choice in Colin to sing this song and he contains himself for a beautifully, understated performance (for him). (If his vocal affectations put you off, he holds those back too.) In "twilight distilliery", the additional harmonies ("we're gonna be there soon") help punctuate the sing-along nature of this otherwise plain indie-rocker. "cigs, coffee, booze" is all you need in one song where "your mama knew it and now i know it too" (more slide guitar). Some more subtle humor: "i never want to let you go / and that's why i bought a rope" (song = "bought a rope"). haha. With "leftover life" being the only "slow/filler" moment on the album, i'd still state this as the #3 album from 2006. Given the group's r.e.m. tie, i find it interesting that this group has flourished at about the time where r.e.m. took to the AC sh|tter. (r.e.m.'s up in 1998 was the beginning of the end...the first album for the minus 5 from there was down with wilco...)


The rabbit fur coat album from jenny lewis with the watson twins (that jenny lewis from rilo kiley) is a very understated, yet witty cross-in-cheek album exploring religion, its pursuers and false idols. "rise up with fists!!!" is the early centerpiece telling little synopses tales "Like when you wake up behind the bar / Trying to remember where you are / Having crushed all the pretty things / There but for the grace of God, go I ". The watson twin harmonies are like her conscious or maybe angels from heaven who've almost hung around earth long enough (see "city of angels") that they're numbed to our plight. Same religious tussle on "the charging sky". going to church because "it's a surefire bet I'm gonna die / So I'm taking up praying on Sunday nights / And it's not that I believe in your almight / But I might as well as insurance or bail" (like a lot of old people). There are a couple of songs in a row that'll warm your heart's cockles, ending with "you are what you love" (and "not what loves you back"), a song about fighting feeling all alone, sung as "Because we live in a house of mirrors / We see our fears and everything / Our songs, faces, and second hand clothes / But more and more we're suffering / Not nobody, not a thousand beers / Will keep us from feeling so all alone" and i like the chorus of "I'm in love with illusions / So saw me in half / I'm in love with tricks / So pull another rabbit out your hat". haha. There's even a good cover of the Traveling Wilburys "Handle With Care" featuring guest spots from ben gibbard, conor oberst and m.ward. Jenny Lewis is quite charming hear and brings the wit and topicality you'd find on a rilo kiley album, but strips the songs away to their base content and her pretty voice, then adds on watson twin harmonies in just the right places to give me a surprise 2006 find.

Josh Ritter's the animal years starts off with a girl in the war" crying "paul said to peter 'you gotta rock yourself a little harder' / pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire". That sets the tone for the whole album. There are some beautiful lines on this one song alone, like this closing sentiment: "Paul her eyes are like champagne / They sparkle bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain ". There's a weight to even scanning through the (am?) radio on "monster ballads" -- "Out on the desert now / I'm feeling lost The bonnet wears a wire albatross / Monster ballads and the stations of the cross / Sighing just a little bit / Smiling just a little bit ". "thin blue flame" has the weight of a closing album (or concert) track, with its cymbals and piano crashing in near the middle leaving 2:30 at the end to restretch the song and close with piano & cymbals and "only a full house". It's all singer-songwriter, indie (folk) rock with ballads and upbeat numbers (see "lillian, egypt" and "good man") galore. It's a very, subtley sweet album. Beginning late in 2006 or sometime in 2007, i began adding neighborhood walks to my exercise regimen, pushing sawyer along ahead of me in a stroller. This was probably the first album i played in full. This album will always remind me of those walks and that Broomfield subdivision. Song "good man", with its upbeat trot to a chorus that sums the song up as "Babe we both had dry spells / Hard times in bad lands / I'm a good man for ya", was a good song to walk fast too. But it's more an album of chilling at home and playing cards with family than an exercise album. Wish i could've seen this guy perform somewhere between 2006 & 2007.

If blacklisted tried to seduce you, then neko's fox confessor brings the flood tries to speak to your mind. Of course, it's that voice that i keep coming back for and by the time "hold on, hold on" kicks in, my mind's mush. It's the devil she loves, singing "I leave the party at three a.m. / Alone, thank God / With a valium from the bride / It's the devil I love" with a place in her heart for strangers. (i'm coming, neko!) There are some beautiful, echoing self-provided harmonies (like on "a widow's toast") that give more credence to her producer's claim that she's one of only 2 he's worked with (neko & nelly furtado) that have never used any form of auto tune. She has a majestic voice that can just as easily swoon you into bed as it can pile-drive a knee into your groin. The desparation is shallow, but palpable when she sings "I don't care if forever never comes" holding out for "that teenage feeling". "john saw that number" is a jaunty little number with an actual chorus-sounding bit about an angel sent from God to check on John the Baptist: "So he flew from the pit with the moon round his waist / Gathered wind in his fists so the stars round his wrists / Cryin' holy, holy to the lord ". Other highlights include "dirty knife" and the beautiful "maybe sparrow" ("Maybe sparrow / It’s too late / The moonlight glanced off metal wings / In a thunderstorm above the clouds / The engine hums a sparrow’s phrase "). I prefer the passion of blacklisted or the energy she brings to the first 2 new pr0n albums, but this album's pretty good too.

i've described listening to the format by dog problems as a fun day at the carnival, with its ferris wheel of easy pleasure and cotton candy and (beanbag) games that are more about playing than winning. "matches" musically kinda sounds like a carnival opening or walking into a baseball game. That subtle track segues nicely into the procession in "i'm actual", laying out himself singing "Can we take the next hour and talk about me?" "time bomb" is worth it just for the catchy chorus and drumwork alone. "she doesn't get it" has the air and exhaltation of a warm, breezy summer day. Hints of big star in "pick me up". There's a common feeling across songs that things didn't work out but i still hope to see you again, remaining happy throughout, as on "oceans". "snails" is the catchy centerpiece simply declaring "Snails see the benefits / The beauty in every inch / Oh why, why, why, why, oh, why / Are you quick to kiss?". Okay, i take that back -- "the compromise" is the fuzz beat master. "inches and falling" sounds like it's closing the big top ceremoniously loving love and loving being in love.

The girl talk albums, like 2006's night ripper, are difficult to critique. The guy just uses a computer and music samples from a wide array of pop to create new song (mixes). (i guess there are a few drum fills.) Then there's the choice of samples, here theres a bunch of 90s/00s hip hop with 70s/80s pop. There are the mixes themselves, like when Gillis mixes notorious big with elton john's "tiny dancer" or mixing the "i love you" part of "silly love songs" against 2 live crew's chorus to "we want some pussy" (!). Some of those mixes are quite inspired. Then there's discussion as to the definition of songs, why they exist and if this would've simply've been best served as one long party jam a la prince's lovesexy. Then there's discussion as to liking this music is more being fond of the underlying samples and reminiscing on the underlying music, as opposed to attributing worth to the end result. Then there's dicussion about how much talent it takes to weave these jams. You don't need to know how to play an (traditional) instrument or sing. You need some good software, good talent for that software, and a very good ear. (i tried making my own mixes unsucessfully, inspired by girl talk -- it's not easy!) Is the sum of the parts a collage of the parts are a brand new whole? These are a lot of topics to wade through to determine how much i like this album compared to the other stuff of 2006 because it's simply not a "typical album". One way to answer is that since 2006 girl talk has been, between this and his 2008 release, one of my most-listened to artists (thanks last.fm). It's party music. It's time capsule music. It's a dj mix. It's an amalgam of different pop styles that create a new pop style/genre. But most of all it's fun, and in those rare times the mixes aren't that good, they're over in seconds. This is the music of the mp3 generation; take that as you will.

get lonely is probably my favorite album from the mountain goats. Most of his albums are fairly fascinating character sketches, but get lonely feels like more of a personal tale; there's a lot more introspection amidst the loneliness, as on "wild sage" where "somebody stops to pick me up, / but he drops me off just down the block. / and along the highway where the empty sprits breathed, / wild sage growing in the weeds." Nothing but Darnielle and open road desolation. Title track sums up the content -- "I will get lonely and gasp for air.". In "moon over goldsboro" Darnielle does "spend all night in the company of ghosts, always wake up alone". Darnielle chronicles the first day after a breakup in "woke up new" confessing "on the morning when I woke up without you for the first time, / I felt free. / and I felt lonely. / and I felt scared." and "the first time I made coffee for just myself, / I made too much of it. / but I drank it all, / just 'cause you hate it when I let things go to waste." in an "everyman" post-breakup morning after, very human and believable and sympathizable. The other "hit"-sounding song is the third track "half dead" starting "it was raining outside, so I cleaned house today. / spent half of the morning throwing old things away." in the remnants of a break-up later singing "what are the years we gave each other ever gonna be worth?" There's a wolf at the door in "if you see light" where our narrator confides "when the villagers come to my door, / I will hide underneath the table in the dining room" With John Vanderslice co-producing, if you like John's stuff think of Mountain Goats as a little more lo-fi, acoustic version. But it's not that simple -- the songs here (and on other mountain goats albums) permeate a worldliness not found on a Vanderslice album. He's been on a good run from 2000's the coroner's gambit and on, and if you like get lonely, there's a good chance you'll like the rest of his albums in that timespan.

the essex green provide precious indie pop with on cannibal sea as heard on the best 2 hits found at the beginning, "this isn't farmlife" and "don't know why (you stay)". it's a male/female paradigm where they take turns leading. "rue de lis" and "uniform" ("Of all that can hurt in a uniform / Why do yourself when you could do worse?") are two more fun songs with uniform. This music doesn't really stand out but is pretty good on its own. They sort of remind me of the rosebuds.

ghostface killah (of wu-tang clan fame) announces his arrival on fishscale from "shakey dog" on, with its triumphant synth-horns opening the way for ghost to spit "Fasten your seat belts, I'm a take y'all on some real shit". I'm not much into rap and i've wondered, when i am into a rap album, exactly why is it? With Ghostface i think it's the tough-as-a-barking-pitbull lyrics and samples and accompanying bravado. He also brings some hilarious ideas like on "kilo" and "the champ". "kilo" has some background honies telling you "a kilo is a thousand grams, easy to remember". it's a pro-drug, pro-dealin' song served levity by the female vox interspersed throughout the song as raekwon tells you "You know your ammo better be heavy 'cause soon kids is coming in camo / Protect your land daddy, I'm an announcer / you get caught with an ounce and its over / matter 'fact they takin you down, son". "The champ" starts off with a Rocky sample setting up ghostface for a comeback saying he hasn't "been hungry since supreme clientele" bringing the pre-boxing party atmosphere while trying to fortify his rep: "Revenge is my arts is crafty darts / While y'all stuck on Laffy Taffy / Wonderin' how y'all niggaz get past me / I been doin this before Nas dropped the Nasty". I find the "bad mouth kid (skit)" pretty funny. "whip you with a strap" is old-school parenting, and "back like that" is new-school r&b inflected featuring ne-yo. i like the synth sound in "jellyfish" ("she must be a special ladieeeeeeeeeeee"). Back to the question of, why am i into THIS rap album? The attitude, the samples and some of the rhymes. In retrospect (as is part of the purpose of all these blog posts), i'm not as big on this album now as 2006. Maybe part of the appeal was the "new album" factor.

garden ruin is calexico's least-instrumental album (there are no instrumentals!), keeping the same latin-inflected musicianship they've become known for, focusing more on song that orchestrating songs, garden ruin is probably the most pop-accessible. I call this alt-mariachi. I agree with allmusic.com that they've moved more into wilco or iron&wine territory on this album, incorporated more "pop" elements into their msuic. On "cruel", with trademark calexico horns, the world's so cruel that "Birds refuse to fly / No longer trust the sky / Drifting out beyond the signals / Even the horizon is gone / Weather flees underground". "bisbee blue"'s warm melody gives the song a lazy summer day. "roka" is an inviting dance of death ("Just close our eyes / Pretend we forget / North country dreams / Twist this dance of death"), partially sung in spanish. i love the harmonies in "lucky dime". These songs feel well-worn and ragged yet strikingly pretty, like a flowering cactus on the side of a hot, old, dusty road. Most songs are somewhat hushed, especially vocally, but "letter to bowie knife" brings the roaring mustang down that old, dusty road with the closest thing to a catchy chorus ("it's too late") and guitar riff on the album. "deep down" also brings the rock as does the storm of "all systems red" ("When the dread is flowing down my veins / I want to tear it all down and build it up again").

With tapes 'n tapes the loon, this is indie pop with college-age sensibilities. There's a lot of compressed fuzz and feedback on this album. "insistor" is the charging BOMB ("And when you rush I'll call your name / Like Harvard Square holds all inane / And don't you know I'll be your badger") while "crazy eights" is a chugging, distorted hum-along. "cowfire" comes with spitfire atop a fast-strummed acoustic number. Despite the short review, this is a good album.

white rose movement's kick is not to be confused with the one from inxs. this album is in the brit new wave mold. They remind me of an 80s synth-pop band with a touch of gloom. Maybe naked eyes meets the cure filtered through franz ferdinand. (a couple times on this album i want to start singing "promises, promises, do you never keep?") Listening now, i think they don't take the best of that amalgamation. Some backing music is eerie but doesn't take on a life of its own -- the music is the most engaging when they ratchet up the guitars. The lyrics are pretty non-specific, like in "deborah carne": "Passer by don't catch her eye / Just leave her on her own". There's a good air of energy on this album buoyed by the new wavey sound making this a good album (and that's it).

"to go home" is a good place to start with m. ward in general and post-war in specific. He plays indie folk/rock, singer-songwriter material that tugs equally at the head and heart. The production's a little gritty and his vocals are a little down in the mix, emphasizing the musicianship. But the lyrics are mostly upbeat, like in "to go home": "God, it's great to be alive / takes the skin right off my hide / to think I'll have to give it all up someday". "chinese translation" has a funky groove and, if it weren't performed so understatedly, this song could easily have been a "radio hit" with its singable "what do you do with the pieces of a broken heart?" chorus. It's a good album, but not remarkable enough to merit this 2006 review...

I didn't care much for the eraser by thom yorke when it first came out. I mean, i liked it, but the eraser just seemed like a bunch of kid amnesiac outtakes. It's very synth and computer-process heavy, outlining bleak landscapes as you'd imagine on either kid a or amnesiac but also allowing for some openness not found on those radiohead albums. Some of these songs do remind me of a simplified "like spinning plates" or "pyramid song", which is the ultimate compliment. Listening to these songs now, they're pretty good by themselves. Check the bass in "black swan" or the mood of "the clock". i like the driving, spectral gloom of "and it rained all night". This album presents a consistent, and sometimes overwhelming mood.

dellrock's top 13 albums airplay of 2006:

Pos.	Title	Artist	Total
1.	the life pursuit	belle and sebastian	384
2.	the minus 5	the minus 5	294
3.	rabbit fur coat	jenny lewis with the watson twins	191
4.	late registration	kanye west	173
5.	the crane wife	the decemberists	173
6.	the animal years	josh ritter	143
7.	fox confessor brings the flood	neko case	134
8.	jacksonville city nights	ryan adams & the cardinals	124
9.	dog problems	the format	105
10.	kick	white rose movement	86
11.	fishscale	ghostface killah	77
12.	the loon	tapes 'n tapes	77
13.	cannibal sea	the essex green	72

EFS 666: Narrowly won against the last division rival. I've beaten all three. I'm 9-0 and the next-closest divisional team is 6-3. At the halfway mark, i like my chances of making the playoffs. I still have improvements to make, most notably at RB where i'm relying on LDT. Otherwise, my team's pretty solid.

EFS 1000: Lost my divisional game, now about 3 games out of the div lead. It's looking more and more like i should be planning on a good draft pick out of my original first round pick. My problems have been quality and depth at DE, QB and WR. With a good shot at having the overall #1 pick next year, i think i'll address not ever having a true franchise QB in this league since my rookie experiment began in the 2010 draft.

EFS 12: split my 2 games. I'm on schedule to make the playoffs as wildcard seed #5 or #6. Based on who i've lost against, i'm going to need some luck and good matchups to do anything once the playoffs begin.

EFS 7: Lost again. I'm 3-6 with little chance of making the playoffs. This team is still too weak at DE, LB, TE and WR to have a shot, even after my pickup of Randy Moss. I could sell out the team's draft picks to make a run of the second half of the schedule, but it'd take a lot of pieces. I'm inclined to work with what i have, maybe pick up some good bargains at the trade wire, maybe trade away some spare parts for picks, then see what 2010 holds. (i'm still planning on letting this team go to the orphan bucket and saving my $ since EFS doesn't reimburse me anymore.)

What hasn't been said about the impact of one's first child? Gamechanger, life-changer, diaper-changer, etc. I'm sure anything that i would add would add nothing to what has already been stated billions of times. Phrases like "nothing is like it" and "your life will never be the same" are both quite true.

Across the 9 months, Kellie only had about 1 week where she didn't feel terrible for some pregnancy-related reason. Part of the reason was explained by bean's full head of hair on birth.

Unfortunately for Kellie, Sawyer didn't want to leave. On the day we scheduled, Sawyer just wouldn't come out after hours of being induced. Stubborn kid (still is!). Finally, kellie called "C" and the bean was born. "Sawyer WR Rockey", nicknamed "bean". (Not stating his whole name, just in case.)

I was in love with him the first moment i saw him (and all of his dark hair). After i cut the cord and they cleaned him off, i met the bean at what i call the incubation waiting room -- walled-off glass (?) cribs with a heat lamp on top of each to keep babies warm. Kellie was still being sewn up. i just talked to the newly-born bean, taking some pictures.

The first few weeks and months were a struggle just to wake up every 3 hours (kellie & i took "shifts") and it was tough watching him because he had to be watched for every -little- thing. (Were the pillows TOO soft?? How warm is that milk?) At first, we kept him beside our bed. Eventually, he had a room (and crib) all his own.

But the bean was an equal part joy & scare. He really wanted to skip crawling and just stand up, eventually compromising by climbing the stairs whenever he wanted to. He skipped "sippy cups" and went straight to a regular cup-and-straw. Always had to remember to pull up the crib wall (Forgot sometimes.) Needed to keep a constant quantity of bottles ready. Certain amount and duration of naps a day. ... My favorite part was probably the end-of-day rock-to-sleep (although it didn't always manage to put him to sleep). I'd walk him upstairs after. If not asleep, i'd rock him in my arms singing some baby song by the window.

Kellie bought me some "baby books", and while they were good for information, they generally didn't cover all the nuances, like kissing a baby on the lips as he vomits, or bean's tendency to talk with himself for a while after waking up from an afternoon nap. All of those naps.

We were told early on that kids don't develop humor for a while, but Bean was telling his own jokes soon enough, saying "something" then thinking it was funny. He is a very happy kid. It's tough for me to write about the Bean "of 2006" without think of him now. He's still plenty young.

So i'll talk about the Bean of now. His favorite color is still purple. He loves cars (plus Cars TM). He has the most adorable, warm, brown eyes. He gives the best hugs (when he's handing them out). He's currently in swimming and spanish classes (at age 3). I asked him about 4 months ago what he wanted to be for halloween and it's always been "a fireman". It took him forever to potty train, but when he did, he basically drop-kicked his mini-potty after only a couple days, using ours most of the time thereafter. He now loves to ride his tri/bike around our house. He loves it when i sit and watch cartoons with him. He used to love brocolli, now doesn't. He's always disliked lettuce and rice. He loves playing cars with me, having me push him on the swings and playing "throw and catch". These are are simple, common, ordinary things you've heard a billion times before. But speaking as myself from the P.O.V. of myself, these things i now cherish. With my affliction, i don't know how many hugs & kisses and ball-tosses are left, so i try to cherish each one. Sure, he can be frustrating. But at the end of the day, i see my sleeping bean possibly dreaming of all he has before him and i pull a cover up on him if he needs it. That's what he means to me.

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The surprise winner of 2006's "album of the year" went to the ultra indie-pop of belle & sebastian. On the life pursuit, they perfected everything they did well on dear catastrophe waittress. Every song seems riddled with a broad smile and a wide ray of sunshine. "act of the apostle" is an elegant introductory number singing "Oh, if I could make sense of it all! / I wish that I could sing / I'd stay in a melody / I would float along in my everlasting song / What would I do to believe?" at the chorus. "another sunny day" is the song you take your girl by the hand and skip out to the park to, singing "Another sunny day, I met you up in the garden / You were digging plants, I dug you, beg your pardon / I took a photograph of you in the herbaceous border / It broke the heart of men and flowers and girls and trees" with some pretty harmonies as if a couple singing together. "white collar boy" sounds like the more-serious fallout from DCW's "step into my office, baby" running from the law with "dirt in your pants / She got egg in your hair / You got spit in your chin". "the blues are still blue" is a soothing, laid-back number basically saying "i'm cooler than cooler" because my "blues are still blue". "sukie in the graveyard" and "we are sleepyheads" are two other fun upbeat numbers, as in "She had a slut slave and his name was Dave / She said ‘Be my photo bitch and I'll make you rich'" (in "sukie"). "funny little frog" seems like a song written by a grade-schooler, except it just so warm and fun, especially that muted-shimmering guitar, singing "Honey, lovin' you is the greatest thing, / I get to be myself and I get to sing, / I get to play at being irresponsible, / I come home late and love your soul". The start of "the act of the apostle ii" reminds me of r.e.m.'s "nightswimming" before slowing down into its intimate acoustic number gone piano number then slipping into something more of a 70s elton john experience in the final minute. Not a dud on the album, if you're into this sort of twee. If "your cover's blown" was released on this album instead of an in-between albums EP, then this would be a great album. Otherwise, it'll be tough to top.

Part of the surprise was that the decemberists's the crane wife didn't run away with "album of the year" following achieving that feat with previous album picaresque. the crane wife, MY wife's favorite decemberists album, was a natural extension of the grand vision of picaresque, taking on its own "concept album" hijinx with 3 parts to "the crane wife" and a lot of mayhem in-between. It's a very good album, but i denied it #1 because the songs central to the "crane wife" theme (man finds chick who can basically spin $ from "air", really feathers in this case, and loses the money and woman when he breaks his promise not to check on her while in the $-making process) weren't (IMO) strong/fully-developed enough, at least lyrically. BUT i was definitely taken by "the island", which reminded me of 70s-era genesis (especially at 8:30 through the song culminating in that mello/organ). And the rest of the album's pretty cool too, from the fleetwood-funk of "the perfect crime #2" to the sadistic lullaby of "shankill butchers" ("if you don't mind your mother's words / a wicked wind will blow the ribbons from your curls") to closer "sons & daughters", a very good concert closer. "sons & daughters" works as a good campfire sing-along in the tradition of "row row row your boat" with partitioned singing parts between the band. It's also an anti-war song, about our bringing home all our at-war sons & daughters, ready to "hear all the bombs fade away". If you heard any song, it's either the repetitive funk of "perfect crime #2" or "o, valencia!". In "valencia", ill-fated lovers (are there any others on this disc?) must run away under the cover of night, her waiting for a rock tap at her window, because of her family not liking the boyfriend. They must sneak out. "perfect crime #2" sort of reminds me of a more literary version of genesis's "whodunit?" with its own crime mystery: "Five and twenty burglars by the reservoir / A teenage lookout on the signal tower / The mogul's daughter in hogtie / The mogul fingers the wrong guy, all lies". in seemingly-sweet "yankee bayonet (i will be home then)", we come to find our lad is in post-death denial "Soldier: Look for me when the sun-bright swallow / Sings upon the birch bow high / Girl: But you are in the ground with the voles and the weevils / All a-chew on your bones so dry", apparently lost to war. Loving this album along with my wife, its sentimental value has grown over these few years and the crane wife could easily creep above the life pursuit when i re-compile a "best albums of all-time" or compile a "best albums of the 00s" list.

ok, so my boy & i came down with that swine thing. First flu i've ever had (not that i've had many) where there was no vomiting involved (although it can be a symptom). i've been laid out for nearly a week. Yesterday was my first full day UNDER 99.7. i'm going to try to keep that to around 98.6 today, but i don't know much voodoo. Bad time to be republican, as i'm sure i could hit up some liberal democrats for some "herbal" remedies.

Overall, i had a good week, going 5-2.

EFS 666: Started out sorta bad. I was in wyoming mostly AFK (i had a couple minutes to check my teams on saturday) and didn't know that jason spitz was inactive until i returned home. add to that a questionable decision to start lesean mccoy (2 points) over LDT (15pts) and i was worried i'd lose at least 1 game. However, the footballshop quartet of champ bailey, quentin jammer, dj williams and vincent jackson gave me more than enough points to pull off my FIRST SWEEP of legend and zdevil (with 461 points) en route to an 8-0 record. in light of my wins, i still need some depth/help at tackle and running back.

EFS 1000: Scored 475 points to win 2 games (with ray rice giving me 50 points himself) putting back in the outskirts of the playoff hunt at 4-3-1 as current seed #9. Right now i think i have a shot at both the division and wildcard, but at only 415ppg, i'll need to catch some breaks. One bad break i might catch is the demotion of jason campbell, my only starting qb. to counter that loss, it looks like vince young could take over as the starting qb any week now.

EFS 12: Lost to perfessur again, probably blowing my chance at winning the division. My DBs and matt forte let me down. Despite the loss, i'm now 5-3 and would be shocked if i didn't at least capture a wildcard spot come december.

EFS 7: i sucked scoring only 343 points, but caught a break playing someone who sucked worse. I'm now 3-5 (I SHOULD BE 4-4 DAMNIT!), 2 games behind seed #6. (good luck.)

There were a bunch of things i missed about living in Denver. One particular point of fun was that twist and shout records was on my drive back from Qwest. i'd stop there every-other-week checking out the used section and "exclusives" rack for fun stuff. Somewhere around 2003 i severely cut down on buying new CDs, buying mostly used CDs or mp3s via emusic. I still had fun with the hunt for, and discovery of, CDs i'd been trying to find for a while or relatively new albums i had yet to buy on sale used for $6.99. There was also a cheapo discs on the way home near downtown.

Outside of emusic, i was finding a lot of new singles online as freebies at sites like cmj.com and insound.com, able to sample from a wide variety of artists across the alt/indie spectrum. Inside emusic, they had/have a "free song of the day" which invariably is from a new album. With the internet, the possibilities, legal and otherwise, grow exponentially daily.

There are a few artists on 2005's top singles chart that i probably wouldn't've considered listening to 5 years (or so) earlier. First-time charting artists like Why? and Clap your hands say yeah! are quite batsh|t nuts in delivery and content. Their songs that made my chart are of their "tamer" variety. But they (along with the Unicorns) were at the beginning of a movement that would take full-force within the next couple years. [*2006 teaser alert*]

The chicks once dominated my chart and now can barely be found -- ladytron's the only majority-filled female artist around. Sure, rilo kiley and neko case (probably my new favorite female artist by this point) exist within group form, but gone are the (poppier) days of janet and jewel and jlo. My interest in rap waned a bit as well as there are only 2 true rap songs on the chart (and one HILARIOUS "b|tches ain't sh|t" rap cover by ben folds, lounge-style with g-funk keyboard in back for part).

The album-oriented singles chart trend that began with new song eligibility rules continues to trend here. arcade fire, the decemberists and new pr0n abound near the top of the chart. Other new entries (not covered above) came from josh rouse, stellastarr*, the game, the mountain goats, ladytron, the magic numbers, ed harcourt and ted leo and the pharmacists, whose song "me and mia" is the song i most attribute to driving the frontage road aside highway 36 and the railroad tracks on the way to and from Level 3. the opening verse of rilo kiley's "it's a hit" seems like a dumya-swipe: "Any chimp can play human for a day. / Use his opposable thumbs to iron his uniform / and run for office on election day / fancy himself a real decision maker / and deploy more troops than salt in a shaker."

I don't recall the magic numbers much at all and decided not to listen to their album for this year's dellrock albums retrospective, but after hearing the two songs that made this chart (i love the female vox of "looks like it all went wrong" in "forever lost"), i gave that album a listen. Survey says? I was right to downgrade it -- outside of the couple hits and 1-or-2 other songs, it's just "okay".


dellrock's top 33 singles airplay of 2005:

Pos.	Title	Artist	Total
1.	let it ride	ryan adams & the cardinals	143
2.	me and mia	ted leo and the pharmacists	108
3.	chicago	sufjan stevens	101
4.	the sporting life	the decemberists	100
5.	rebellion (lies)	the arcade fire	99
6.	come on! feel the illinoise! - part I: the world's columbian exposition / part II: carl sandburg visits me in a dream	sufjan stevens	96
7.	heard 'em say	kanye west	94
8.	neighborhood #3 (power out)	the arcade fire	85
9.	we both go down together	the decemberists	85
10.	the hardest part	ryan adams & the cardinals	79
11.	the engine driver	the decemberists	74
12.	sweet troubled soul	stellastarr*	67
13.	destroy everything you touch	ladytron	62
14.	heavy lifting	ambulance ltd	61
15.	use it	the new pornographers	61
16.	forever lost	the magic numbers	60
17.	sing me spanish techno	the new pornographers	59
18.	easy/lucky/free	bright eyes	58
19.	born in the 70's	ed harcourt	52
20.	first day of my life	bright eyes	50
21.	pressure point	the zutons	50
22.	evil	interpol	49
23.	i want you to stay	maximo park	48
24.	hate it or love it	the game	47
25.	encore	eminem	47
26.	bitches ain't shit	ben folds	46
27.	it's a hit	rilo kiley	44
28.	it's the nighttime	josh rouse	42
29.	love me like you	the magic numbers	39
30.	this year	the mountain goats	39
31.	this is the last time	keane	38
32.	is this love?	clap your hands say yeah!	36
33.	gemini (birthday song)	why?	34

A new job and a new address wasn't the only news of 2005 nor the biggest news -- we found out in May that we had a baby on the way! "we had been trying" (put in quotes because it always feels weird to hear the phrase knowing the base implication of the statement...i'll not be crude here) since around our wedding the year before so we were starting to wonder if mr. & mrs. potatohead had better odds of popping out a little french fry. Just as you've heard from other (grown up) kids, the news was all surprising, glorious and scary for all the reasons you've heard from other kids. It was fun following along with him with purchased baby books. It was a relief (not that i was worried since it wasn't a hereditary thing) to see he had all normal organs. He never really had any problems at all except for.

PROBLEM: Kellie & i went to a couple Bronco games together since we met. One we went to was the Philadelphia game that year. It was still allergy season and the day was cold and wet and became worse as the game went on. Between allergies and the weather and kellie's asthma and years of smoking and being about 6 months pregnant, she had to go to hospital having problems breathing. She was in there nearly a week. There was mild concern for the baby -- mostly for Kellie who was nearly inhibated -- but she eventually pulled through. Not worth mocking "Donut Van" McNabb over. (Nowadays i make a point to mow the lawn and make a fuss about buying cigs for her.)

2005 was financially tough. After we made some coin selling the old place, we had bean on the way and decided we could afford Kellie a new (used) car. A month after signing up for her TP cruiser, i met a deer at 85 MPH. (Last song i remember hearing was a Decemberists song. Maybe it should've been Kanye's "drive slow"!) i pulled a 180 on the interstate eventually sliding into a guard rail. Guy behind me who was nice enough to drive me to the next trucker's stop said he was surprised i didn't flip over. Bent the frame just behind the back, right tire, which to the insurance agency means it was TOTALLED. :-( Moorea, my first car ever, died at the still-young age of just under 11 years (and under 100k miles, although the total escapes me now). That really sucked, forcing me into buy a new car years before i wanted to. Ended up with a brand new toyota camry. Then my brother's summer wedding came. Then there were the hospital bills including Kellie's near-inhibated stay. The only thing that started saving us were the Level 3 "stock option" awards that i started cashing around year's end. However, we still had rolling credit card debt from around April into 2006.

In some sense, i believe that whatever entity that exists that watches over everything, from God to Buddha or some vibrational energy permeating throughout the universe down to the billiions of atoms that make living things, wanted to force my hand to buy a bigger car knowing that a baby was on the way. It was less than a month after i crashed moorea that we found out our bean was on the way. I've had other coincidences like that in my lifetime, so looking back i wasn't surprised.

Not to be outdone by Ryan Adams, Bright Eyes kicked off January with TWO separate albums of his own, one was an IDM-collaboration a la The Postal Service called digital ash in a digital urn, and the other was more of an alt/folk/country album called i'm wide awake, it's morning.

i'm wide awake, it's morning is the better album of the two because it's more consistently good, feels more personal and therefore the songs feel more "real" to Conor (or his character), and the song ideas are generally better if only by simplicity (versus the electronic layers on the other album). The album starts off with the ONLY "intro" piece that i actually like and want to listen to of all of his Bright Eyes albums, which segues into "at the bottom of everything", a fun, upbeat song which is actually a fully-sounding (from music to lyrics) HAPPY song as in this sentiment " (in)to the caverns of tomorrow with just our flashlights and our love / We must plunge". The gist of "we are nowhere and it's now" can be summed up by "Why are you scared to dream of God / When it's salvation that you want?" -- the best part of the song is the backing vox of emmylou harris. She appears again on "land locked blues", probably the album's best song, a sad, touching song about walking away from where you're stuck with this humorous bit: " there's kids playing guns in the street / and one's pointing his tree branch at me / So I put my hands up I say: / 'Enough is enough, If you walk away I walk away.' (and he shot me dead)" culminating in "You'll be free child once you have died / from the shackles of language and measurable time / And then we can trade places, play musical graves / till then walk away". She also appears on upbeat-but-dark "another travelin' song", where the narrator states "I dream the dark on the horizon / I dream the desert where the dead lay down / I dream a prostituted child touching an old man in a fast food crown". "first day of my life" shares the optimism and light, upbeat nature of the opening track, with simple acoustic guitar as the song's backbone and lines like "This is the first day of my life./ I'm glad I didn't die before I met you. / But, now I don't care, I could go anywhere with you / And I'd probably be happy." which fit in with my mood then. "Lua" was the lead single, and it's a quiet, personal-yet-trivial account of love that will never be, where Conor sings "I know you have a heavy heart, I can feel it when we kiss / So many men stronger than me have thrown their backs out trying to lift it / But me I'm not a gamble, you can count on me to split / The love I sell you in the evening by the morning won't exist". Overall, the complex and tumultuous narratives of Lifted aren't present here, but there are still lines like "I'm a single cell on the serpent's tongue" ("poison oak") and "Well I could have been a famous singer / If I had some one else's voice / But failures always sounded better / Let's fuck it up boys, make some noise!" (from closer "road to joy" which evokes Lifted while seeming auto-biographical) that permeate throughout the album.

Bright Eyes's digital ash in a digital urn is Conor's take on electronica. There seemed to be a bunch of these indie-songwriter-meets-IDM after the success of the postal service. (See last year's Neon Neon.) Conor's lyrical style doesn't mesh 100% with the musical style, which keeps this from flowing as well as his other 2005 album (or Lifted, for that matter). Best songs = "take it easy (love nothing)" (a tale of exploration, as in "First with your hands, then with your mouth / A downpour of sweat, damp cotton clouds / I was a fool, you were my friend / We made it happen") and "easy / lucky / free" (great closer). When he hits the mark, it's because his lyrics don't overweight the FX and the FX don't overwhelm the song, like on the two best songs or "light pollution", which sounds like a typical bright eyes song just given some not-so-usual backing "instrumentation". "easy / lucky / free" is the perfect marriage of the IDM with Conor's narrative over how the end of life is the easiest (luckiest and freest) part of living, singing "Sometimes I worry that I've lost the plot / My twitching muscles tease my flippant thoughts / I never really dreamed of heaven much / Until we put him in the ground / But it's all I'm doing now" and showing how actual living is chaotic enough "I set my watch to the atomic clock / I hear the crowd count down til the bomb gets dropped / I always figured there'd be time enough / I never let it get me down" with backing FX of people's hysterical screaming. "There is nothing as lucky, as easy, or free". One of his best songs. When Conor doesn't hit it, you have a cluttered "time code" (with the usual annoying intro) and "" the jumbled message and unnecessary outro of "i believe in symmetry" (which sounds more like it's backed by a NIN-light band than an IDM guy) or the crying baby segments of "ship in a bottle". But for the most part, this album is closer to "hit" than "miss", but not as consistently-good as anything from fevers and mirrors to i'm wide awake, it's morning. And with the recent ear-shot, i'm not as high on this bright eyes album either now vs. 2005.

Riding high on the brit-wave in 2005 was Bloc Party and their silent alarm. "like eating glass" is a rousing opener with an urgent sense of desparation, where one's house is so inhabitable that it's "Like drinking Poison, like eating glass " (with rapid drumming). i hear franz ferdinand in the guitar of the opening of the next song, "helicopter" ("are you hoping for a miracle?"), with some fine, intricate strumming to close it out. "positive tension" sounds like its title, building up to "the reckoning" described as "something glorious is about to happen", with a "run run run" chorus that reminds me of some 80s song. They even rock in a blur-sorta-way (unlike Franz) like on "banquet". They go a bit political in the charging "price of gas". It's a pretty good album for its genre. There's no one song i absolutely love, but it's pretty solid through "luno" (with the last 2 tracks middling).

Spoon's always funky. You wouldn't know it by their lead single "the beast and dragon, adored" from gimme fiction, their most complex song to-date. Spoon's into the funky, catchy, short single format -- leave 'em wanting more routine. While "beast" is a good song, it's not as representative of their usual indie pop/rock groove funk that they bring on the rest of this album (and all their other albums that i own). "two sides / monsieur valientine" is a song black sheep boy would've made for the stage names if they were trying to hit early 80s pop instead of mid-70s prog rock. "i turn my camera on" brings THA BASS and is probably tied for the best track with "sister jack" and "i summon you". For Spoon, it's more about the pure, unadulterated, make-the-beatles-want-to-reform simple pop gems than lyrics (like other artists i often quote for these retrospective reviews). Like on "i summon you" and that simple acoustic guitar lick and soft drum; the lyrics just roll off effortlessly as another fabric of the song as a whole ("you got the weight of the world coming down like a mother’s eye / And all that you can / All that you can give is a cold goodbye"). They brings some tricks too, like the reverb/gate of "sister jack" or they xylophone-like FX of "the infinite pet". I always have a blast putting on a Spoon album, but for the record: kiss the moonlight > girls can tell > gimme fiction.

John Darnielle of the mountain goats is the preacher before the dawn, telling intricate, interesting tales of characters giving abandon to hope and hope to hopelessness. As he said in a recent interview (paraphrased), his characters are like a good friend who's also a chronic liar. The Sunset Tree probably contains my favorite mountain goats song of all-time, "this year", which i first heard during my "bad luck cycle" of late-2004-to-late-2005, with a more-than-appropriate chorus of "i am going to make it through this year if it kills me" sung with conviction and testament of having a bad year, starting with abandon singing "I broke free on a saturday morning. / I put the pedal to the floor. / headed north on mills avenue, / and listened to the engine roar." (i LOVE singing the line "there will be feasting and dancing in jerusalum next year!" for some odd reason.) i hear that sentiment again on opener "you or your memory" where Darnielle's character reaches for some courage singing "down there in the dark i could see the real truth about me, / as clear as day, / Lord if i make it through tonight / then i will make my ammends and walk the straight path to the end of my days:". Other major highlights for me are "pale green things", "dilaudid", ""lion's teeth" and "love love love". "dilaudid" continues the abandon (and recklessness?) of its characters, almost daring "We won't pass this way again. / So kiss me with your mouth open. / Turn the tires toward the street. / And stay sweet. " "doing things our bodies weren't meant to". "up the wolves" looks for ghosts in closets confessing "there'll always be a few things...that you're going to find really difficult to forgive" but "there's gonna be a party when the wolf comes home". "lion's teeth" aggressively owns up to the truth and confrontation ("in come the cops / they blow torch the doors. / I start wailing. / the lion roars./ there's no good way to end this.") knowing the outcome might not be good ("I am going to regret the day that I was born"). Violins punctuate the tension and ease while the combatants hold on. Dirty deeds go down for love on "love love love" as summed by the chorus "some things you do for money and some you do for love love love" revisiting kurt cobain's final moment to punctuate "some moments last forever, but some flare up with love love love". (Prime candidate for a revisited "beauty in darkness" compilation.) "pale green things" notes how life goes on after the loss of a father remembering "got up before dawn / went down to the racetrack. / riding with the windows down / shortly after your first heart attack" noting "and that morning at the race track was one thing I remembered. / I turned it over in my mind / like a living chinese finger trap. / seaweed and indiana sawgrass ... pale green things". Easy to imagine this person just staring down at the sidewalk at the track remembering his father. "dance music" is upbeat, drowning out familial chaos. There's impending near-apocalyptic tragedy everywhere, from "magpie" ("shore up the crucifixes / above the archways and the doors. / the magpie will come at midday./ and you will go down on all fours.") to acceptance of such tragedies on "song for dennis brown" ("on the day that dennis brown's lung collapsed, spring rain was misting down on kingston" and "and when the birds come home in spring, / we will fill them full of buckshot. / and jets of contaminated blood / will cloud the rivers and the lakes.") because life & loss go hand-in-hand on "the sunset tree", quite aptly named. Most of the songs are brief and to the point, which benefits the songs' urgency and bluntness. I'm drawn to really strong songwriters, and Darnielle fits that description. I'd enjoy the mountain goats for many albums after (and a couple before).. This album will probably receive the greatest post-2005 bump up.

More unassuming introspection for John Vanderslice on pixel revolt with undercurrents of distress. Again he sounds affected by 9/11. Scenes of senseless death ("plymouth rock") and actual images of 9/11 ("exodus damage") are all over the place. "exodus damage" calls for revolution amidst images like "So the second plane hit at 9:02 / I saw it live on a hotel T.V. / Talking on my cell with you / You said this would happen / And just like that, it did", not sick enough to guess what comes next. That and "trance manual" -- inviting senseless destruction in lines like "come to me now / you are warming weather...the kind that comes with / sandbags along the river" -- are the best songs on the album. Upbeat songs like "peacocks in the video rain" and "dear sarah shu" dwell on loneliness and surviving. "new zealand pines" reads like a fun trip at golden gate park save the chorus "You were my proof / You were my wetsuit / I will be okay / If i can keep / The things i love at bay". "continuation" is a murder mystery with suspenseful strings and synth eventually chasing the killer chasing him. "angela" finds the epiphany at the heart of all the characters' plights -- "maybe those last days of freedom were the best of his life". John Vanderslice and Darnielle are similar in their perspectives, if you haven't figured that out for yourself(ves)...

"you're what happens when two substances collide". haha. This line from "a nervous tic motion of the head" off Andrew Bird's the mysterious production of eggs is pretty indicative of the album. He brings intelligence, a good vocabulary, fun turns of phrase and a bit of kooky wit under the guise of his indie folk/pop. i just love the moment in "tables and chairs" where he announces "we're gonna live on our wits / we're gonna throw away survival kits, / trade butterfly-knives for adderal / and that's not all / ooh-ooh, there will be snacks there will". haha, an hor de vours table at the end of the world. "fake palindromes" is as raucous as folk rock touched with violins and xylophone can be,, with crazy scenes like "she says i like long walks and sci-fi movies / if you're six foot tall and east coast bred / some lonely night we can get together / and i'm gonna tie your wrists with leather / and drill a tiny hole into your head ". The album's beautifully-sweeping at times like witnessing a lightly-breezy, sunny day across a grassy knoll, like on "masterfade", but IMO, this quality is his weakest strength. Turns of phrase are his strong suit, like "Today was supposed to be the day / Molecules decide to change their form / Laws of physics lose their sway / Youthful indiscretion now is suddenly the norm / With the good kids sprouting horns" in "opposite day". and remember, there will be snacks!

a certain trigger from maximo park is in the mold of franz ferdinand or bloc party, some more of that new wavey brit-rock i was in to at the time. The hits are "apply some pressure", ""i want you to stay" and "the coast is always changing", but the whole albums pretty rockin'-solid after the opening track. There are two sections to "apply some pressure" where the second ("what happens when you lose everything / you just start again / start all over again") vaults you to the conclusion of applying pressure via backing harmonies. Cool song. "nothing works around here" without the chick desired in "i want you to stay". In "the coast is always clear", "age doesn't make a difference until you open your mouth" (haha) summed up at the chorus of "We look out upon the sea, / The coast is always changing, / I'll bring my camera out to sea, / My heart is always changing". "postcard of a painting" find some semi-organ-sounding keys backing sentiments like "I wrote my feelings down in a rush, / I didn't even check the spelling, / Enclosed the postcard of a painting / You are just another thing that I have yet to fathom". "limassol" featured a compressed synth effect (think genesis "lurker") droning on behind the action. "the night i lost my head" was obviously a poor night to meet. "acrobat" is one of those spoken/sung pensive numbers (that i think pearl jam has done well). In "kiss you better" the singer's "beliefs will make you drown" where the recipient is "so scared [she's] gonna let it happen". Hey now. Good song, good album.

i quick-skipped through okkervil river's black sheep boy just for this thread because, although it's not ranked within the top 16 of the year, i have a fond remembrance for it. Plus, that opening performance for the decemberists was pretty tight. It's earthy, indie rock, glowering yet indignant. I'd recommend starting out with tracks "for real" or "black".

dellrock's top 13 albums airplay of 2005:

Pos.	Title	Artist	Total
1.	cold roses	ryan adams & the cardinals	330
2.	picaresque	the decemberists	255
3.	i'm wide awake, it's morning	bright eyes	232
4.	illinois	sufjan stevens	211
5.	funeral	the arcade fire	190
6.	good news for people who love bad news	modest mouse	172
7.	twin cinema	the new pornographers	147
8.	nashville	josh rouse	138
9.	digital ash in a digital urn	bright eyes	130
10.	shake the streets	ted leo and the pharmacists	106
11.	jacksonville city nights	ryan adams & the cardinals	100
12.	a certain trigger	maximo park	92
13.	encore	eminem	91