UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

Yesterday, in the men’s room at my office, I noticed a penny on the floor directly under one of the urinals. I should note that, for some reason best left unexplained, there’s always a small puddle of something on the floor under the urinals. (Apparently someone has chronic bad aim.)

There was no chance in hell I was going to pick that penny up! But it got me thinking, what is the smallest unit of currency I would pick up from that location, assuming it required me to touch it with my bare hands? I pondered for a minute and decided with confidence that a five dollar bill would be the minimum value for which I would subject myself to the sub-urinal horrors.

What about you?

At least it didn’t take me until July this time, but the only reason I’ve gotten around to this year’s list so soon is because I just happened to be looking at last year’s list and I realized, “Hey, I haven’t made a new list yet!” So, here you go.

5. Field Music: Field Music

This is what Gentle Giant might sound like if they appeared on the scene today. What’s amazing is how much nerdy intricacy these guys can cram into each song without coming across as pretentious, something first-wave prog rockers constantly struggled with (or, occasionally, as with Gentle Giant, embraced with tongue in cheek).
 

4. Beck: The Information

As I said with 2005’s Guero, any Beck is good. When I first heard this I thought it was too reminiscent of things he’s done before, but now I’ve come to see it as a further refinement of his style. I don’t get the last track though… and I pride myself on getting weird-for-the-sake-of-weird stuff.
 

3. Keane: Under the Iron Sea

I’m not sure the world really needs the next Coldplay yet, but here’s the next Coldplay. Great atmospheric yet melodic piano-driven pop-rock.
 

2. Donald Fagen: Morph the Cat

Half a Dan is better than no Dan at all. The Fagen/Becker duo has given us a lot to relish in the new century, and that continues with this fantastic album, easily the best of Fagen’s outstanding (if very slowly emerging) solo trilogy.
 

1. The Decemberists: The Crane Wife

I consider this to be the best album in nearly a decade, certainly on par with the likes of OK Computer. I was immediately blown away by this band upon hearing this album and within a couple of weeks, had bought everything they’ve released. Why are you still reading this? Buy the album! Now!
 

Honorable Mention

Here are some other great albums released in 2006 that didn’t make the cut:

Umphrey’s McGee: Safety in Numbers
Wolfmother: Wolfmother
Dave Douglas: Keystone
Tool: 10,000 Days
The Mars Volta: Amputechture
The Flaming Lips: At War with the Mystics
Red Hot Chili Peppers: Stadium Arcadium

I know many of you have been waiting patiently (?) for the return of the “Offspring” photo galleries. Unfortunately I’ve been really busy with work (and life)… and I’ve been spending most of my “geek” time doing music in GarageBand or playing the Wii (i.e. losing to Fletcher at bowling), rather than getting the new photo gallery stuff set up on the site.

Fortunately for you, we’ve taken almost no new pictures since Christmas, because a) the camera’s batteries are crapping out and b) the camera has been misplaced for several weeks. So, you haven’t missed anything, really.

One of the key points in getting this set up was finding a mechanism in WordPress to restrict access: in short, I want to know who’s looking at pictures of my kids. Now I’ve found a plug-in to manage access to individual blog posts, so that’s one more hurdle jumped.

Future posts in this category will require you to be logged in. Fortunately, it’s easy to register and once you’ve done it, you should never have to do it again. (At least, not until I decide to change my site entirely again. But I don’t anticipate doing that in the near future, if only because I’m not going to have the time to mess with it!)

Wow, here’s a blast from the past. And perhaps a disturbing look into the bizarre and meandering train of thought my brain often follows.

Sometimes I will get a word or name stuck in my head, the way many people (myself included) often get songs stuck in their heads. For instance, once a few years ago I had the name Frau Farbissina on a mental audio loop.

Anyway, today the word in my head was “foreshortening.” And whenever I think of that word, I think of the place where I first heard it… from a crazy PBS drawing show host named Commander Mark!

Back in the day, I watched his original show, The Secret City.

I am certainly accustomed to encountering PHP parser errors, but I was not expecting to see this: T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM

And apparently I’m not alone. Even with an explanation (it’s Hebrew for “double colons”… and I leave for you to discover on your own why PHP constants might be named in transliterated Hebrew), it’s still a bit confusing, as the expected character should have been a dollar sign, not a double colon. Still awaiting an answer on that one…