We make ourselves lists in order to know if we think what we think.
There is no finality in a list, just a promise that we will argue about everything listed, adjust our thoughts, and watch our feelings change over time.
Tag: lists
Adam Yauch’s Top 10 – The Criterion Collection
3. Nights of Cabiria. I don’t know what to write. I just love this movie.
4. Yojimbo. I guess you have figured out by now that I am really not going to review any of the films that I picked.
The Hundred Best Lists of All Time : The New Yorker
Favorite albums of 2012
My music listening was way down this year. I blame it on all the movies and starting a new job. The end result is that my best picks here probably aren’t quite as strong as they were in 2008, 2009, 2010, or 2011. But still, some good stuff. As in previous years, the vast majority of this came before 2012, but this was the year I paid attention.
January
Greatest Hits – Mariah Carey. This album saw me through the end of a hard winter. So much goodness. I don’t know if I’ll ever dive into one of her full albums… but some of these peaks are so high I may reconsider. Emotions!
Return to the Winners Circle – Curren$y. If I needed to, I could rank this solely on the strength of Moon & Stars Remix. Rare that the headliner and two guest rappers all just destroy their verses. And I love that backbeat.
The Soul Tape – Fabolous. I like Pain (“An old head told me, let nothing disturb your business / Beef is only good when you in the burger business”) and In the Morning.
February
Da Chip Vol. 1 & 2 was a fun listen, but probably works best if you’re already familiar with Daft Punk, right?
March
Sometimes you don’t realize it, but what your life is missing is an awesome collection of Kraftwerk tunes covered with a Latin/lounge feel. Thankfully my buddy John knew what I needed to hear: El Baile Alemán from Señor Coconut y Su Conjunto. For all the campiness, there’s some smart, creative arrangements here. Neon Lights and Showroom Dummies are good examples.
Fuck a Mixtape – T.I.. I don’t loooove the whole album, but worthy of mention: No Competition is my JAM.
Big Bach Set. It’s a great bargain. The Mass in B minor is a big draw, but besides that, the Adagio from the Concerto for Two Harpsichords in C minor, BWV 1060 really stood out. Pizzicato in stereo is so wonderful on headphones.
April
My best music month overall.
Come Shop Wit Me – Young Jeezy. I’m 9 years late, but it’s album of the year for me. My faves from Jeezy’s second are: Let Me Hit Dat (love those reverb guitars and the overactive bass; Fi Chief & Big Dank kill it), Take It to the Floor (pump-up/act-like-I’m-someone-I’m-not song), Come Shop Wit Me (fun storytelling, and the overdriven bass line reminds me of a late ‘80s video game), Thug Ya (steel drums!), and Bananas (fat, dopey bass, and something about his voice in the verses here: looser, goofier, unhinged).
Way Down Low from my friend Kat Edmonson. Listen to “Hopelessly Blue”. I mean, geez. Incredible voice.
Blue Afternoon. You’d figure I’d catch on to Tim Buckley sooner, having spent college obsessing over his son’s music. You’d figure wrong. Listen to Happy Time and Blue Melody. He’s got a wonderful back-up band. The whole gang is so loose. And look at that album cover!
And I can’t forget Françoise Hardy’s Soleil. I don’t understand any of it, but the mood is right. My favorite track is Je fais des puzzles.
May
Bloom – Beach House. It’s a lot like the previous three, which is totally fine by me. (I think only Bach and Camera Obscura beat them in my music archive for comfy, catchy, beloved predictability.) Myth is an obvious stand-out, but I think the verses on New Year are kinda genius. Same for Wild.
Shortly after that album came out, I caught Beach House on tour again. On the drive back from Athens, a friend introduced me to Bad Vibes by Shlohmo. Drippy, druggy lullabies. Places and Seriously are favorites.
June
I got nothin’.
July
Loveless – My Bloody Valentine. Woah. Slept on this one but the Grantland article woke me up. I was so proud of myself when I recognized the Loomer/Optimistic resemblance.
August
A great month for radio in the car!
Kaleidoscope Dream – Miguel. Adorn has gotten crazy playtime in Atlanta. That bass is perfect for your car. And I love how the harmony is a little suppressed, so that voice and the bass do all the driving.
Trilla – Rick Ross. My friend Katie and I were driving to one of my favorite places to eat too much, if I recall correctly. I heard the opening sample from my favorite Stevie Wonder album in Here I Am and I was sold. I made her Shazam it for future reference.
To round out the group: Channel Orange – Frank Ocean. WRAS 88.5 FM played Pyramids while I was driving over to another friend named John’s house and I lost it. I *had* to call in and find out what it was. You can’t beat that feeling.
I didn’t hear it on the radio, but I can’t forget the Thief soundtrack by Tangerine Dream. Probably best if you’ve seen the awesome movie, but it’s great for working on secret projects.
September
{crickets}
October
I didn’t bother with the whole album, but Clique from Cruel Summer is dope. Perfect beat, but the song doesn’t really take flight until Jay-Z gets on the mic (that jet engine glissando helps). Kanye takes lovable insufferability to a new level.
November
Asterism/Requiem/Green/The Dorian Horizon – Toru Takemitsu. I really like it, but only recommended if you’ve got ears for late 20th-century orchestral music…
December
It’s not too late for your suggestions!
AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies is a list of the 100 best American movies, as determined by the American Film Institute from a poll of more than 1,500 artists and leaders in the film industry who chose from a list of 400 nominated movies.
I’ve seen a little over half of the updated list. Interesting to see how the rankings changed between the first list in 1998 and the revision in 2007. Vertigo, City Lights, and The Searchers each jumped over 50 spots. Doctor Zhivago and The Birth of a Nation, originally list in the top 50, failed to make the cut the second time around. But The Sixth Sense did!
AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lists of Note: 10 Commandments for Con Men
mark larson | Favorite albums of 2011. This makes the fourth year I’ve spent too much time tallying up the best not-necessarily-from-2011 things I listened to. 2008. 2009. 2010.
The New Atlantis » History as Wall Art
Excerpt from the Annals of St. Gall, a yearly chronicle from an early-medieval Frankish monastery:
709. Hard winter. Duke Gottfried died.
710. Hard year and deficient in crops.
711.
712. Flood everywhere.
713.
714. Pippin, mayor of the palace, died.
715.
716.
717.
718. Charles devastated the Saxon with great destruction.
719.
720. Charles fought against the Saxons.
721. Theudo drove the Saracens out of Aquitaine.
722. Great crops.
723.
Harry Bertoia’s “My-self Rating Chart” school assignment. Harry Bertoia papers, 1917-1979.
Eero Saarinen’s list of Aline Bernstein’s good qualities, ca. 1954. Aline and Eero Saarinen papers, 1857-1972. Featured in What we can learn from lists. This reminds me of Charles Darwin trying to decide whether or not to marry Emma Wedgewood. Sounds like a cool list-focused exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum.
An illustrated packing list from a notebook by the artist Adolf Konrad, Dec. 16, 1963.
via ‘Lists,’ Exhibition at Morgan Library & Museum – NYTimes.com
Woody Guthrie’s New Year’s Rulin’s, 1942. (via). See also Johnny Cash’s to-do list and David Foster Wallace on the philosophical depth of country music.
- Work more and better
- Work by a schedule
- Wash teeth if any
- Shave
- Take bath
- Eat good – fruit – vegetables – milk
- Drink very scant if any
- Write a song a day
- Wear clean clothes – look good
- Shine shoes
- Change socks
- Change bed clothes often
- Read lots good books
- Listen to radio a lot
- Learn people better
- Keep rancho clean
- Don’t get lonesome
- Stay glad
- Keep hoping machine running
- Dream good
- Bank all extra money
- Save dough
- Have company but don’t waste time
- Send Mary and kids money
- Play and sing good
- Dance better
- Help win war – beat fascism
- Love Mama
- Love Papa
- Love Pete
- Love everybody
- Make up your mind
- Wake up and fight
2010 Review of Books (Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought)
Good round-up and commentary on his year in reading. New to/of interest to me:
- Secrets by Daniel Ellsberg
- A Bee Stung Me So I Killed All The Fish by George Saunders
- Prince of the Marshes by Rory Stewart
- Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman
- Becoming Attached by Robert Karen
- Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
- The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman
2010 Review of Books (Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought)
Good round-up and commentary on his year in reading. New to/of interest to me:
- Secrets by Daniel Ellsberg
- A Bee Stung Me So I Killed All The Fish by George Saunders
- Prince of the Marshes by Rory Stewart
- Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman
- Becoming Attached by Robert Karen
- Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
- The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman
The 10 best foreign films of 2010 – Roger Ebert’s Journal
Biutiful, Cell 211, and Home look good. I didn’t like Mother all that much, but what do I know?
The 10 best foreign films of 2010 – Roger Ebert’s Journal
Biutiful, Cell 211, and Home look good. I didn’t like Mother all that much, but what do I know?
Stephen Schenkenberg: My Favorites for 2010
So at the end of just about every year since 2000, I’ve rounded up my favorite (mainly cultural) stuff of the previous 12 months and posted it online. Here are my picks for 2010, which I’ll soon be adding to my permanent Annual Favorites page.
Aside from the great idea of keeping a running annual favorites page, I also appreciate Stephen’s inclusion of museum collections/exhibitions and wines. I keep telling myself I need to keep a beer/whiskey/etc. journal.
mark larson | Favorite albums of 2010
SPIEGEL Interview with Umberto Eco
We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That’s why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It’s a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don’t want to die.
And also:
I was fascinated with Stendhal at 13 and with Thomas Mann at 15 and, at 16, I loved Chopin. Then I spent my life getting to know the rest. Right now, Chopin is at the very top once again. If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you’re an idiot.
The difference between potential and output comes from human qualities. You can make a list of the qualities you admire and those you despise. To turn the tables, think if this is the way I react to the qualities on the list, which is the way the world will react to me. You can learn to turn on those qualities you want and turn off those qualities you wish to avoid. The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. You can’t change at 60; the time to look at that list is now.
Warren Buffett on habits and being a better person. Ties in with some of my thoughts on a well-balanced life earlier this year. Write it down, check in every so often, re-calibrate as needed.
Mark Larson 