3) Eat Me: The Food & Philosophy Of Kenny Shopsin by Kenny Shopsin and Carolynn Carreño
A cook/restaurant owner who seems exceedingly idiosyncratic, but really, the peculiar rules about eating at Shopsin's General Store all serve a unifying philosophy he has about the place, himself, and us. Colorful, exceedingly honest writing with healthy sides of techniques and recipes. You gotta see the sample menu.

2) Best American Short Stories 2008 edited by Pitlor/Rushdie
Overall worthwhile. Would read in random order as opposed to start to finish.

1) American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Others have adequately covered the cool things about this book, which I bought after reading the lighter but no less supernatural Anansi Boys last year. A slight fault with the ending, perhaps, but in this kind of book, the accomplishment is really in the imagination of its world/logic, not the details surrounding the end of your visit to it.

Last year, my book-a-month eventually fell victim to reading about the campaign. This year, some business travel again lets me get a leg up on the assignment. We'll see how it goes.

Unlike the Dead lyric of the previous post, there's plenty left to do but smile, smile, smile. So maybe it's a good day to take one more trip back to a certain five minutes in '08, as we welcome new leadership and brace for the year ahead.

Way back when, the Grateful Dead was managed for a while by the father of drummer Mickey Hart. Until, that is, the elder Hart took off with a bunch of the band's money in '71. The shame was such that the drummer left the band for a good four years. So they did what any decent band should do in that situation; they wrote a song about it.

Tonight, what's left of the Grateful Dead will play at one of the Presidential balls, if you can believe that. We'll see if they think it's too impolitic to play this one or not, but it certainly crossed my mind. I wish Mr. Bush a pleasant and quiet retirement, honestly -- unless someone manages to charge him for some piece of executive malfeasance, of course.

This is the first performance of "He's Gone" from April '72, a bit too fast, and with a flubbed lyric, but it's the best YouTube had to offer. Music by Jerry Garcia, lyric by Robert Hunter.



Rat in a drain ditch
Caught on a limb
You know better but
I know him
Like I told you
What I said
Steal your face
right off you head

Now he's Gone
Lord he's gone
Like a steam locomotive
rolling down the track
He's gone
He's gone
and nothing's gonna bring him back
He's gone

Nine mile skid
on a ten mile ride
Hot as a pistol
but cool inside
Cat on a tin roof
Dogs in a pile
Nothing left to do but
smile, smile, smile

Now he's gone
Lord he's gone
Like a steam locomotive
rolling down the track
He's gone
He's gone
and nothing's gonna bring him back
He's gone

Going where the wind don't blow so strange
Maybe on some high cold mountain range
Lost one round but the price wasn't anything
Knife in a back and more of the same
Same old rat in a drain ditch
Out on a limb
You know better but I know him

Now he's gone
Lord he's gone
Like a steam locomotive
rolling down the track
He's gone
He's gone
and nothin's gonna bring him back
He's gone....

Let's be rebels and start at the top instead, shall we? More individual explanations (and a separate reissues list) possibly to come over the holiday. Annual preface: Not necessarily best, but definitely favorite, weighted toward start-to-finish enjoyment. Hopefully, even those who have sort of followed along this year will find a couple of surprises. I know I did.

1) The Seldom Seen Kid - Elbow
2) The Rhumb Line - Ra Ra Riot
3) Winterland 1973: The Complete Recordings - The Grateful Dead
4) Viva La Vida - Coldplay
5) Stay Positive - The Hold Steady
6) Tell Tale Signs (Bootleg Series, Vol. 8) - Bob Dylan
7) Electronic Arguments - Fireman
8) Lucky - Nada Surf
9) Hummingbird, Go! - Theresa Andersson
10) Live Trax 2008 - Dave Matthews Band
11) Freeep - Matt Pond PA
12) Narrow Stairs - Death Cab For Cutie

12) Plans by Death Cab For Cutie
I loved Plans, my first exposure to DCFC (an admission of significant unhipness, I  know). It was a perfect autumnal record, with an amount of elegance equal to its preoccupation with mortality.
     Fortunately, Narrow Stairs isn't like Plans very much at all. It tends to rock more and generally deals with other things (or is at least less obvious about it). Narrow Stairs got off on the right foot with me with the 8-minute leadoff single, "I Will Possess Your Heart," which won me with its musical expanse -- despite what you might call a lyrical update to "Not Fade Away" that sounded more stalkerish coming from Ben Gibbard than from Buddy Holly.
     That the band banked that track in the opening salvo among three quality harder or catchier tracks only helped the entire side sound better. "Bixby Canyon Bridge" is a well-chosen opener, and "Cath" is one of those solid songs that on first listen made me do a double-take, wondering if it was a new song or an older favorite I hadn't heard in a while.
     Narrow Stairs does dip into a couple of more mopey moments later, but all in all the disc claims an unusual stake -- in the shadow of its more muted predecessor, but a perfect complement.

11) Freeep by Matt Pond PA
I can't deny that this late-year download-only EP may have crept onto the list thanks in part to the element of surprise. But beyond the surprise, and the whole for-free thing, it's just a good little set.
     Freeep sounds a tad warmer and more immediately likeable than Last Light. That said, anyone who finds Pond's writing/singing manner a little too, well, mannered will not change his mind because of this. For the rest of us, it's a satisfying bonus. Freee's three instrumentals, sequenced in reverse order of recording and increasing order of prettiness, help to further the impression that this was music made the right way for the right reasons. Can't wait for the full-length.

Other than what is overall an unusual amount of success filling out the March Madness bracket, I have a decidedly mixed record when it comes to predicting things. However, readers may or may not have noticed two direct hits recently:

1) For the first time ever, Nebraska's electoral votes would split on account of the district that contains Omaha breaking away for Obama. It was very, very close, but yes.

2) Technically, this was more a recommendation than a prediction, but neverthless, back in June I gave the Parenthetical seal of approval to David Gregory as the new host of Meet The Press. Bingo!

Sure, you can find a few blogs that prognosticated one of these or the other, but this may be a blog-exclusive Daily Double.

(Hear me now and believe me later! For my next fearless predictions, I offer up ... <waving wand over the Mystical Bag Of Pork Rinds> ...  tails, Meryl Streep, and in the east.)

The later this week gets, the more I think I may wait until after Christmas to do this list. Even in the last three days, The Fireman's disc really surprised me on its second listen (why does McCartney have to be so ... musical?), I remembered there's a Decemberists EP that I hadn't heard yet (just fetched it from iTunes), and today the Grateful Dead announced they are drawing on one of their history's more inarguable sweet spots (the September '90 MSG run) for a new release. I was also interested enough in a couple of other releases to put them on our family-shared Christmas list.

Despite its 2008 CD release date, Radiohead's In Rainbows will not be on this list because the download made last year's list. If I had waited, it would've been considerably higher this year. I found myself listening to that record more often than I could reasonably justify, much more than anything post-OK Computer.

Another gray area was what to do with 2007 releases that I didn't hear until early this year. I decided to leave them off and keep the focus to '08 releases. The discs in question:

1) Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha. This would be in the top 2, and probably the top 1 for this year. Received the fairly rare and biggest compliment I can give a modern release: downloaded it, and later bought a hard copy.
2) Simone Dinnerstein - Goldberg Variations. Lovely. If you don't know the story of this Bach work, it's a neat piece of commissioned songwriting. Noticed she has a live recording out this year, too, available on eMusic. Will have to look into that.
3) Greyboy All-Stars - What Happened To Television. Funky, jazzy goodness. I would not lie.

Reissues? Sure, I also had reissue issues. They won't be on the list, either. The two that would otherwise be in the running:

1) Billy Joel - The Stranger. I haven't even played the new disc of the album proper, but the bonus live material is solid. The previously unreleased CD from 6/3/77 Carnegie Hall airs some Stranger material before the album came out (maybe even before it was recorded), but the band is in quality road-shape nonetheless. "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" is nimble as it moves from section to section, and you can hear a working arrangement of "Just The Way You Are" that would continue to evolve in studio. Beyond that, you get energetic renditions of the core setlist material of the era -- a lot of Turnstiles, a little of the earliest albums -- from Billy and the classic backing band.
     That also goes for most of the DVD bonus, from Old Grey Whistle Test in '78. Some overlap, but a few different tracks, including the welcome inclusion of a live "Root Beer Rag" and a solo "Souvenir" (which often closed shows back then), and a true encore in "Ain't No Crime" from Piano Man. To almost repeat myself, it's enjoyable to see such a band at work, even in the slightly odd studio-audience setting. Without a doubt, the unsung onstage VIP is Richie Cannata; footage like this allows one to finally realize that the guy playing those classic horn parts? And the guy playing those beefy Hammond organ parts? The same guy.
     Back in 1980, Billy Joel made a hard left turn, releasing an obligatory live album, but one that ignored all of his hits. Songs In The Attic is one of my desert island records, and imo it was a brilliant way to stoke newcomers' interest in the backcatalog. However, this set is a long-overdue measure to give the longtime fans a more traditional live document from that era. Something live from the Glass Houses and/or Nylon Curtain tours, and we should be all caught up!

2) U2 - Boy. The reissues of October and War were nicely done as well, but they don't quite match the youthful punch of the debut in this deluxe setting. Here in diehard-worthy packaging, their remastered first album sounds better than ever. The bonus disc compiles both previously unreleased contemporary performances, with other b-sides that until now existed solely on the import 45's and 12-inch singles we hunted down way, way back in the '80s. From aesthetics to sound quality to liner notes to extras, the band and label got this one exactly right.

What? The list of the possible suspects that I didn't even hear this year? Right. Uh, this post is long enough already, don't you think? I'll spare you and deal with that later. Why don't you go over to The Middle 8 and peruse Paul's quality year-end list instead? (Current estimate of albums that will make both of our lists: 2.)

For various professional and personal reasons, we don't do much in the way of vacations. More specifically, we haven't taken trips for leisure beyond an occasional three-day weekend since we went to Hawaii for a week on our first anniversary (which had been a quite original/generous/excellent parental wedding gift).
     So this year, approaching a 10th-anniversary/Mrs. P's birthday/part-Christmas convergence, we decided to carpe the diem. Took *four* days off from work, booked a nice hotel, got tickets for a slew of theater, identified several places we wanted to eat, and enlisted our friends pssp to join us for many of the proceedings. It was a big operation, and as it turned out, it exceeded expectations.
     I figured I'd write up a recap here, in case you're interested, but primarily so when I'm 70 and this blog is 36 years old, I can remind myself of what a good time we had.

Last Thursday. Woke up in a DC hotel, in order to catch the early Vermonter from Union Station up to Penn Station. I'd planned to check our several bags, but the train didn't have a baggage car. Bother. However, in a lucky break, the train originated in DC, so the car wasn't already full. Plenty of room to stash our bags and grab a seat in the last row.
     Especially as compared to the hassles of flying, and especially if the destination is Manhattan, we are big fans of train travel. Can't beat arriving underneath 34th Street, as opposed to risking flight delays, eventually getting to LaGuardia or wherever, paying for a ride into town by a driver who may or may not know how to drive, etc.

Only three items on Thursday's agenda, but in some ways, this was the biggest day of the whole trip. After unpacking, the immediate task was lunch, going crosstown to Hell's Kitchen and a Mexican place named, coincidentally, Hell's Kitchen. Exposed brick, narrow room, and a large bar. We were the first lunch patrons and enjoyed a nice spot by the window.
     We watched multiple dogs and their owners pass by, a kid who apparently was skipping school to play tennis, and a couple of big guys in a Mercedes SUV having no compunction about spending a few minutes stopped in a lane of traffic, the driver on the cell phone as if getting instructions and the other eating a sandwich. There was a very Sopranos vibe to the whole thing.
     After homemade (orange) tortilla chips and guacamole, we both countered the outside chill with something warm. I had the chicken chilaquiles, a warm, comfy, semi-crunchy bowl of a dish featuring chicken and tortilla strips, a slightly tangy green/white sauce, and some nonessential radish slices. Similarly, Mrs. P had the mushroom/queso fresco chilaquiles.
     Turns out our local Mexican spot's chilaquiles acquit themselves pretty well by comparison (they're the only chilaquiles we'd ever had before these), but this was (as you'd hope) a bit better and an encouraging gastronomical start, even if neither of us could come close to finishing our dish.

Back to the hotel, in midtown east but on a quiet passage tucked between the NYC Library and Grand Central Station. Just enough time for a small rest inverval before the first of Mrs. P's much-anticipated events: The Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular!

Having put up the temporary static box at top about my shared-items folder and new note-leaving ability, I thought maybe it'd be good to let you know exactly what RSS feeds I'm culling from these days to create said compendium.

BBC - news, science, and tech.
Discover Magazine - six departments.
Food - about six blogs.
London Times - Curious, Travel, and Tech&Web departments.
Music - A surprisingly small number of music blogs and a couple of news sites. Includes Billboard, Steve Hoffman forums, Paste,  and Pause&Play for release info.
Netflix feeds for new releases and new online-viewing additions.
New York Times - seven feeds.
Politics - about 20 sites of various niches and ideological persuasions, with a recent interest in the unashamedly secular right and the ACLU newsroom.
Personal blogs - An even more surprisingly small number, from Dooce to the ones listed at right.
Et cetera - Ranging from McClatchy news service and Wall Street Journal to Esquire and ESPN. A Phrase a Week, 43 Folders, Adland's adnews feed, the brilliant kottke.org, Red Sox news, and TED.

That's about it. No, I don't read anything close to everything from all of these. I scan the headlines and pick from there. In particular, Netflix offering feeds for its various releases is somewhat logical and yet especially beautiful in its convenience, don't you think?

The more important question is, what interesting feeds am I missing?

It rose up from New Orleans, the Six Random Things meme. It goes a little something like this:

1) Link to the person who tagged you.
2) Post the rules on your blog.
3) Write six random things about yourself.
4) Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5) Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6) Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Seeing Sophmom's version today reminded me that Adrastos had tagged me for something a couple of weeks ago when I couldn't take a second to go see what it was, and then I subsequently forgot. (Sorry, dude.) So let me push away my ham biscuits and bourbon (correctly mentioned by him as hardly random things about me) long enough to invite a few folks to jump in if they want: AreSeven, Instant Comma, Oblique Passage, Revolution In The Head,  Mercy Buttercup, and my colleague at the dormant Middle 8. Links are over there on the right.
   Now, over to the randomizer.

1) I am an only child and a seventh son. (Depending on which parent you're considering.)
2) Temperature extremes: I cope better with a lot of outdoor heat and man-made cooling, and hate too much man-made heat or outdoor cold.
3) I do not own The Beatles (White Album) on CD. (Too close to remasters to break down now, says the stubborn optimist.)
4) Somewhere in a box: my Henrico County 1983 Middle School Girls' Basketball Champions trophy. (I was team scorekeeper.)
5) I have never been snow skiing. (Not a problem. See #2.)
6) Linguistic disease most likely to eventually drive me to (what others would term) an irrational outburst of violence and/or profanity toward an unsuspecting stranger or television: subjunctivitis. (It afflicts others, and yet I suffer. Oh, the humanity.)