Best Of

At my 'day job' over at JVBackups.com, the site's owner and operator, Brendan 'Booz' Langen, decided to do highlight some of his favorites from 2010. Being that imitation is a form a flattery, allow me to flatter my boss.

Best Of 2010:

Albums (in no particular order):

The Age of Adz - Sufjan Stevens: Sufjan Stevens has fairly and unfairly been compared to Bob Dylan. The new age master of Hipster Folk pulled a Dylan in 2010 and plugged in. Some synths, some auto tuning and a song that includes the audio definition of cacophony later and Stevens proves folk can can be more than a banjo and whispered lyrics.

This Is Happening - LCD Soundsystem: James Murphy proves yet again that dance music can have a soul. Murphy's third try at perfecting his electro sound takes a So-Cal feel and dances it's way through a range of emotions while remaining pertinent, poetic and irreverent.

False Priest - Of Montreal: If it weren't for Kevin Barnes, James Murphy or Sufjan Stevens would be my favorite musician. Barnes latest record shows his willingness to evolve his sound from record to record. His two collaborations with soulful sistas Solange Knowles and Janelle Monae take this already outrageously funky pop fiesta to a new level. The dude is a mad genius and creates the most innovative psychedelic dance pop this side of 1976.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - Kanye West: Say what you will about ol' fish-sticks, he makes the best hip hop albums of his generation. After a very poor showing in a depression laced and over-auto tuned fourth album, Kanye got back to doing what he does best: innovating rather than imitating. It is rare that the louder and closer you listen to a hip hop album, the better it gets but that is precisely the case with the arrangements that sprinkle MBDTF. Only Kanye can make such layered hip hop with such amazing hooks, lyrics and guest artists.

Odd Blood - Yeasayer: Not everything on this album is great, but the best is amazing and the worst still shows signs of untapped potential. It's danceable, complex and unique all while maintaining a feel that something greater should be coming down the pipe from this young band. I hope they can keep together for a while, their upside is up there with Hockey and MGMT (whose 2010 release, Congratulations, was good but just a little too intentionally inaccessible for my tastes).

Concerts (in order):

Phoenix - Lollapalooza: Finally consummated my French love affair. This band is one of my favorites and meant a lot to me in college. After waiting almost a year and a half to finally see them, I was able to catch my French Connection at my yearly excursion to Grant Park.

Cyprus Hill - Lollapalooza: Because of this cloud of smoke and this amazing kid. That's all you need to know. That and they kicked out the mother fucking jams...

Of Montreal / Janelle Monae - The Riv: An Of concert is always a great concert, they try to play as many songs in their allotted time possible and it's always a dance party, but the Michael Jackson medley featuring all of Of and all of Janelle Monae and her band as the encore was A.MAZE.ING.

Best part: the 40 year old guy in front of me who tried to Shazam PYT. Dude, you're twice my age, you should know what PYT is... idiot.

Hockey - Lollapalooza: It was just a super fun, super chill concert for one of the best bands I discovered in 2010.

LCD Soundsystem - Pitchfork: I didn't stay for more than a handful of songs, but I danced to my heart's content for the the 30-45 minutes I stayed for.

•Flaming Lips - IU Auditorium: Best concert I payed for and never went to. Hawks win, Hawks win...

Songs (in no particular order):

All Of The Lights    - Kanye West: Talk about your all star anthem... Just a well layered hip hop jam with a great hook and a really cool horn fanfare.

Runaway   - Kanye West: This is what Kanye does that no one can emulate. Watching Kanye perform this surprisingly simple, yet wonderfully complex song at the MTV music awards was amazing. Listening to it at full volume with headphones on makes it better.

All I Want   - LCD Soundsystem: James Murphy does sincere well because he maintains vitality and fun. Even when he's at his least exciting and fun, he's still danceable and/or masterful. 

I Can Change   - LCD Soundsystem: He's also one of my favorite lyricists.

ONE   - Yeasayer: If the chorus don't move you (pun sort-of intended), the bubbly dance beat will. It's like some bizarre combo of Afrocentricity and electronica and I want more

Tighten Up   - The Black Keys: The best thing to come out of Akron since... well, let's not talk about that. 

Enemy Gene   - Of Montreal: Kevin Barnes + low end base + Janelle Monae = the best moody, funky soul jam in decades.

Sex Karma   - Of Montreal: This is a love song only Barnes could write:

"I know that you want to scream / Run and touch my everything / Because I look like a playground to you, playa / Close your eyes and count to three / I'll kiss you where I shouldn't be / Because you look like a playground to me, playa"

I Want To Be Well   - Sufjan Stevens: It's pretty rare to hear the somewhat overtly-religious Stevens say the f word, which is why hearing him repeat it like 16 times is a bit of a shock to the system. Something tells me he's not fucking around...

Get Real Get Right   - Sufjan Stevens: As said before, Stevens' foray into the electric goes very well, and this song brings his compositional prowess to the forefront of Adz. And Sufjan is seems to be learning himself somethin' fierce.

"I must do myself a favor and get real / Get right with the Lord"

•Cousins   - Vampire Weekend: Close to the top 10 but the single was released in 2009 while the album was released in 2010. Still, it's just too much fun. This is dance-pop I want from VW.

Music video:

This isn't even a competition. This is the best music video in years. I have no idea what's happening or why, and I'm not sure anyone else does either:

Ok, Now This Is Getting Ridiculous

The Hoosiers are known for the candy stripes, I think they could work in Memorial Stadium...

I found a new template for creating football uniforms yesterday, so I've been busy.

First I figured I would see what I could do with the new template by just doing something fun so I took a whack at creating a fictional unifrom set

HOME - 1 2

ROAD -1 2

ALTERNATE - 1 2 3

Well, that went so well that I decided to see how much stuff I could get away with.

And after all that I decided to turn my sights to my Hoosiers, and finalize a design I've been toying with for some time.

Home - Road

...I have a problem.

Answers To Questions I Am Tired of Answering

Modernity and my background have me answering many of the same damn questions in what seems like every casual conversation. In order to stop the continuance of these conversational nonstarters, I have penned (or, I guess, fingered...) the usual answers I give to these usual ?uestions. Here are just a few:

What's a Hoosier?

This is a Hoosier...The only real answer to this is that a Hoosier is a citizen of Indiana. While it make less sense than calling them Indians or Indianans, it sure sounds cooler.

Now, I took A Survey Indiana History at IU. This making me an expert, I can say with absolute certainty that no one really knows where the word comes from.

This article, first published in the Indiana University Alumni Association Magazine, is the preferred response to the age old question. In fact, this article was the required reading and sole basis for discussion in my Indiana state history classThis is not (...probably). during our hour and 15 minute lecture entirely on the term.

In the article, many of the famous takes on the origin of the term are discussed but, as the author concedes, "the historical explanations are 'more ingenious than real.'"

Here are just a few popular explanations:

• When a visitor hailed a pioneer cabin in Indiana or knocked upon its door, the settler would respond, "Who's yere?" And from this frequent response Indiana became the "Who's yere" or Hoosier state. No one ever explained why this was more typical of Indiana than of Illinois or Ohio.
• Indiana rivermen were so spectacularly successful in trouncing or "hushing" their adversaries in the brawling that was then common that they became known as "hushers," and eventually Hoosiers.
• There was once a contractor named Hoosier employed on the Louisville and Portland Canal who preferred to hire laborers from Indiana. They were called "Hoosier's men" and eventually all Indianans were called Hoosiers.
• A theory attributed to Gov. Joseph Wright derived Hoosier from an Indian word for corn, "hoosa." Indiana flatboatmen taking corn or maize to New Orleans came to be known as "hoosa men" or Hoosiers. Unfortunately for this theory, a search of Indian vocabularies by a careful student of linguistics failed to reveal any such word for corn.
• Quite as possible is a facetious explanation offered by "The Hoosier Poet," James Whitcomb Riley. He claimed that Hoosier originated in the pugnacious habits of our early settlers. They were enthusiastic and vicious fighters who gouged, scratched and bit off noses and ears. This was so common an occurrence that a settler coming into a tavern the morning after a fight and seeing an ear on the floor would touch it with his toe and casually ask, "Whose ear?"

-Taken from The Word Hoosier

While some of these explanations are beyond belief, others are overly simple. While some are just plain wrong others just ring true. One of the most ironic part of the Hoosier story is that the term is revered in Indiana, but in other states, such as Missouri, calling someone a hoosier is about the meanest thing you call someone, basically translating to the worst kind of white trash.

No one knows for sure where Hoosier comes from but Hoosiers know what it means and that's what's important to them.

What is Classical Studies?

When I went into college, I had a plan. My journalism degree was going to be my major and the way I found a career and I was going to find a minor in something I liked studying whether it could get me a job or not.

In the IU Journalism school, a concentration is the field of study you choose aside from your journo major that requires you to take a certain amount of credits in another field of study. Most students take a concentration in business but it is not uncommon for other fields to be used to help focus a degree on a particular career path (i.e. concentration in music to become a music critic). I quickly found a few classes that I liked in Classical Studies and signed up for a concentration in it.

I was sitting in a J-School class my sophomore year on syllabus day when I realized that that my academic concentration was going to be a sticking point with some people.

The goal of syllabus day, if you are unfamiliar with the term, is to kill the 50 minutes to an hour and a half of the first day of class by either reading the syllabus and dismissing the students early or going the sadistic route and playing introduction games.

Well my J201 teacher decided to go the latter route.This is my life now...

This version of the game was simple, name your major, any minor and something interesting about yourself.

That last requirement always shows up and is always the most popular way to have your students hate you by the end of day one. The problem is that few people are 'special', and the ones who aren't think they are while the ones who are think they aren't. This leads to shocking revelations like girl A has two cats and boy A owns a motorcycle. No one wins.

BUT ANYWAY...

Being in the middle of the pack, I soon realized all the Journo majors were telling their concentrations as minors.

When my J 201 teacher stopped on me, I rattled off something along the lines of, "My name is Tim, I'm a Journalism major with a concentration in Classical Studies and I have four fake teeth (that's my go-to 'special')."

People - literally - turned around in their seats to look at me quizzically.

I thought it was the tooth thing. Shows how much I know.

After a few seconds of awkward silence, my teacher finally asked, "Is that like ancient history?" I responded that, yeah, it's basically just ancient Greek and Roman history.

At this point someone audibly murmured, "Why?"

Before I had time to acknowledge this, the professor decided I needed defending and started treating me like a special needs kid. Speaking in the slightly-higher-than-normal pitch that can only mean bullshit is coming out, she started to argue that knowing ancient history and myth allows you to understand the present and allude to it in your writing.

Not exactly why I was taking the classes but, sure, that works.

Basically, ancient Rome and Greece interests me. That's it. I think the Roman Empire was one of the most interesting times in all of human history and I think what they accomplished, physically, socially, architecturally etc. was amazing given the fact that these people didn't even understand basic tenets of science.

What's a Blog?

A blog is basically a website that is written with regular entries and in a journal-y form. But everyone kinda understands that by now, what this question is really about is what the hell 'blog' actually means?

Originally, the name of a website that functioned like this was called a Weblog. It was on the web and you logged in entries. Then some asshat decided it would be cute to split the word in to the phrase We Blog. This nonsense term stuck and is now the bane of my existence.

How is anyone in my position supposed to gain legitimacy by Bad Blogdoing something that's verb is 'blogging'. Why don't I just 'smiggle' and 'wogg'. If that fails, I could always 'farf' or 'gabble'. I mean, I already lack authority and respect, do I have to be embarrassed too?

I just remember having arguments with a Good Blogprofessor of mine in college where another student and I would defend the fact that many blogs report news with the same veracity and high standards as newspapers and he would just come back with, "but anyone can have a blog."

It's hard to argue against that. For a couple hundred dollars a Great Blogyear, I maintain this website at a custom domain name. If I were to use a service like Google's Blogger.com, I could do it for free if I were okay with a crap domain name.

With all the crap that can show up on the intertubes, it would be nice if there were a term for a 'blog' site that could certify quality sites as reputable.

...That or if 'blog' just became the technological epithet it was born to be.