The Walking Dead

I've run through my zombie survival plan a hundred times over in my head, but no other piece of zombie fiction has ever made me realize how fast my pussy self would perish in a zombie apocalypse than this one (which means that it's awesome, of course). Plenty of people know about this comic, but not enough are reading it. The best zombie stories are less about watching dudes blow undead dudes away (with guns...), and more about what happens when all threads of society are gone and humans are left to fend for themselves in some of the most bleak situations imaginable.



The Walking Dead can be relentlessly depressing at times and there are a few moments where the horror is so comically unbelievable that it distracts away from the amazing character study, but there is no better survival story than this one. Even if you're sick to death (or undeath?) of zombies, you owe it to your artistically good tastes to check this one out. And if you can't trust the suggestion of an anonymous white person's blog, then what can you trust?

Amazon link to buy the first 48 issues + a cool fan made opening for the TV adaptation (which I know will get much better in the second season).

The Top 5 Video Games of 2010

1. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game

Creating something based purely on nostalgia is a very easy and a very tricky thing to do well. Human beings possess the natural instinct to overly romanticize their pasts, to filter out all of the bad moments and the crushing moments of minutiae that make up 99% of our time and turn those small fleeting moments of greatness into defining movements of mankind. Because of this, something that is designed to be so retro-friendly is at once advantaged and disadvantaged to meet and indulge the high expectations of the past.

With that said, Scott Pilgrim vs the World is an amazing game that does just that. It's a perfect adaptation of the 32-bit 2D golden age era of video games, and it's really fun to play. I can't think of the last game that I was compelled enough to play through with each character, but on this one I did and I'm still not bored with it. The fact that it's a tie-in for an awesome graphic novel, a mind-melting movie (alliteration!), and features a soundtrack by 8-Bit band Anamanaguchi is a definite plus too.

2. Super Meat Boy

With video games, there's frustrated and Super Meat Boy frustrated. Probably not the best way to open a description for the second best video game of 2010, but there is no game out there that is more challenging and more rewarding than Super Meat Boy. Every level is cleverly designed and well-executed, requiring a very specific rhythm and pattern to beat it that will often run counter to every expectation you have. As a Game Informer reviewer said, you will die in this game more times than you've ever died in every game you've ever played put together. While that will deter a lot of people from ever playing it, no other game that came out in 2010 will feel more satisfying to beat than this one.

3. Red Dead Redemption

What a lot of developers don't realize when making open world/sandbox type games is how dependent the level of interest people have for the game is to how much fun it is to explore the world the game is in. Red Dead Redemption - with it's endless frontiers, wildlife, and wild west atmosphere - is an incredible game just to wander around in. While the mature storyline holds its own as some of gaming's greatest, it's the intricately detailed environment and the very distinct world that will suck you in to one of the best games of this generation.

4. Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Bad Company 2 continues to build off the successful formula of the Battlefield franchise - it's the best multiplayer experience of 2010 (the single player campaign isn't that bad), and it's incredibly easy to lose way too many hours playing it. But go ahead and just try to not feel like a badass when you charge across the battlefield as everything is blowing up around you and you stab a mofo in the face.

5. Limbo

Acknowledging artistically rewarding games over the usual trough of things released every year is practically a requirement of credibility for critics, but while previous contenders like Braid or Rez had the artistic good will - they weren't as fun to play as their usual big blockbuster counterpart releases were. Limbo, on the other hand, is an incredibly fun to play game that's aesthetically pleasing as well. While the game length (about 3 hours) looks way too short on paper, there's not a second wasted.

Jamaica: No Problem

I should just make a new blog dedicated solely to dance music made by French people, because no one does it better than them. Jamaica, formerly Poney Poney, just put out their first album this year, "No Problem," that they recorded with Justice's Xavier de Rosnay and Daft Punk's engineer, Peter Franco. It took awhile to digest, but it's an album that gets better and better every time I listen to it. As it stands now, they're mostly rocking the European circuit, but when they finally hit the States, I think a lot of people will take notice. Be the cool guy ahead of the curve(!)- the coolest cat(!!), the hippest square(!!!) - & check it out below.

Myspace.

2010 Year End Lists

Top Ten Favorite Albums

1. Sufjan Stevens - Age of Adz

I think time will eventually vindicate Age of Adz for a lot of fans and critics. It's not that the album necessarily got bad reviews or fans hate it completely, but after waiting so long for a follow up to Stevens' 2005 epic album, Illinois, a lot were expecting an album much different than the hip hop electro-folk fusion prog rock that Age of Adz is. Regardless of the dressing, though, all of the key elements of a Sufjan Stevens album are still there, including his amazing ear for melody and songcraft. While the 25 minute epic "Impossible Soul," with its auto-tune breakdown section, was probably too much for people to handle from the singer of "Chicago" - this album will grow on a lot more people in the years to come and will one day be regarded as the classic it is.

2. Gorillaz - Plastic Beach

Gorillaz are probably the best example of an internationally successful band. No other group genre hops better and as seamless than the Gorillaz do, and no other group combines such a wide array of cultural influences into its music. Damon Albarn has never put out a bad album, and Plastic Beach is another example of that. If there's one downside to this release, though, it's that it didn't get enough radio airplay or it wasn't as popular as it should have been. When the concept of Gorillaz relies of a perfect fusion of audio and visual elements, a lack of funding due to an absence of faith from the record company can really put a dent in that.

3. Miami Horror - Illumination

The catchiest album released all year. It's impossible to listen to this record and not have at least one song from it stuck in your head for a week. Disco beats mixed with chillwave synths makes for a very good combination.

4. Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record

After Broken Social Scene's last self-titled 2005 release, many people questioned whether the band would carry on especially when half of the its members went onto successful solo careers. When Forgiveness Rock Record came out, the world was once again reminded that Broken Social Scene are the purveyors and the embodiment of everything that's good about indie rock. If in 20 years radio still exists and people care enough about it to actually support and listen to it much less to a classic indie rock station-Broken Social Scene will be that radio station's Led Zeppelin, and Forgiveness Rock Record will be the band's Houses of the Holy.

5. Anoraak - Wherever the Sun Sets

Eighties synth sounds drenched in sun soaked melodies. No album that came out this year was more fun to cruise around in a car with.

6. Gonjasufi - A Sufi and A Killer

Gonjasufi's album is #6 on this list, but #1 on the list of the "top ten psychedelic eastern hip hop electrofunk records of 2010."

7. Best Coast - Crazy For You

Some of the greatest pop songs ever written have some of the most cursory lyrics. Regardless, lyrics don't matter in a pop song if the melody is strong enough to drive an infectious tune straight into the core of your brain. Best Coast's first album, Crazy for You, does nothing more than muse on boyfriends and theorize ways to talk to cats, but the punk pop group has made an album so catchy and fun to listen to that it doesn't matter.

8. Ariel Pink - Before Today

The Lo-Fi movement can yield some pretty annoying results, especially when the music sounds like a demo tape getting raped by a transistor radio. Ariel Pink's record, Before Today, wisely cleans up the scratchier sound of their earlier records, while still maintaining the aesthetic that makes Lo-Fi so appealing. The result is a great sounding album that mashes up the band's retro-minded focus towards 80's cheesiness and 60's psychedelia.

9. Tallest Man on Earth - The Wild Hunt

As one AV Club critic said, "some of the best and worst music ever written has come from just one guy and an acoustic guitar." It's a fine line between success and failure, but the Tallest Man On Earth's second album doesn't even come close to showing you the other side as he makes some of the most affecting music of the year.

10. Beach House - Teen Dream

Beach House have always been good at making dreamy music to get lost in, but never have they done it with so much focus and beauty.

Honorable Mentions
Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma
Free Energy - Stuck on Nothing
Jamaica - No Problem
LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening
MGMT - Congratulations
Doug Paisley - Constant Companion
Sonny and the Sunsets - Tomorrow is Alright
Toro y Moi - Causers of This
Wavves - King of the Beach
Weezer - Hurley (yes, really)

Top 5 Favorite EP's

1. Sufjan Stevens - All Delighted People
2. Real Estate - Reality
3. Oberhofer - self titled
4. Flying Lotus - Pattern + Grid World
5. The Tallest Man on Earth - Sometimes the Blues Is Just a Passing Bird

Top 10 Favorite Songs

1. Sufjan Stevens - Impossible Soul [from "Age of Adz"]
2. Gorillaz - Empire Ants [from "Plastic Beach"]
3. Japandroids - Younger Us [from "Younger Us" 7" single]
4. Sufjan Stevens - All Delighted People [from "All Delighted People EP"]
5. Miami Horror - Holidays [from "Illumination"]
6. Broken Social Scene - All to All [from "Forgiveness Rock Record"]
7. Curren$y - Seat Change (feat. Snoop Dogg) [from Pilot Talk]
8. Beach House - Walk in the Park [from "Teen Dream"]
9. Best Coast - Boyfriend [from Crazy For You]
10. Weezer - Blowin' My Stack [from "Death to False Metal"]

Biggest Disappointments

1. Broken Bells - s/t

DangerMouse is one of my favorite producers, and I eagerly hunt down anything he does. I'm not really big on The Shins or James Mercer. Regardless, I figured the DangerMouse half of this duo would be enough for me to like this album, but it was not. This is a very mediocre and uninspiring record.

2. Cee-Lo Green - The Lady Killer

I think at some point, I'll take this one off this list...maybe. It's not that there's a bad moment during it, but it just didn't rock me as much as I thought it would. Especially after how promising the singles were.

3. Daft Punk - The Tron Soundtrack

Ok, to be fair this is a soundtrack and it's meant to accompany a film, not overcome it, and I haven't seen the movie yet so I can't really judge how well it works in the context of the film. Regardless, this soundtrack had a lot of hype behind it, and the quiet Hans Zimmeresque orchestral moments that make up a very large bulk of the soundtrack were far from the electronic assaults so many, including me, were waiting for.

Albums That (Surprisingly) Did Not Suck

1. M.I.A. - MAYA

M.I.A.'s music is deliberately annoying and her political views are contradicting, hypocritical, and absolutely insane (just check out what she thinks about the internet)...But sometimes she can put together some interesting stuff. For an artist that had the world by the balls when "Paper Planes" and Slumdog Millionaire dominated everything to intentionally put a song out like "Teqkilla" that most people will hate on the first listen is just really funny and awesome. A lot of this album is like that.

2. Brandon Boyd - The Wild Trapeze

Incubus was the first band I was every really obsessed with. Sometime around Junior year in high school, though, I lost interest in them as I got into more diverse music. I still think they're much better than most people give them credit for and much better than any other band they're usually associated with (Hoobastank, P.O.D., etc), but they're still not that great. Regardless, Incubus' lead singer Brandon Boyd put together a solo album that wasn't all that bad. Maybe it's because this was a low-key release and Boyd was free from trying to woo alternative radio or maybe it's because it was produced by Dave Fridmann (of Flaming Lips* & MGMT fame) who made the album much rawer sounding than any other producer probably would have, but this album is much more enjoyable than I ever thought it would be.

*It's bizarre that there is now a direct link between my favorite band of now and my ex-favorite band of those (much more) awkward early teenage years.

3. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy












Kanye West has good artistic intentions, but his pretentiousness, ego, self-indulgent behavior, and coattail sampling (building a beat with nothing but the most memorable section of a classic song)* outdid his good will. Regardless, the fact that Kanye was still able to make an awesome album by embracing the hell out of these weaknesses instead of trying to transcend them is impressive in its own right. Whether the strong result is due to pure luck or absolute talent is insignificant. This is a good record.

*Yeah, I'm aware a ton of hip hop producers do this, but Kanye actually samples good songs which makes it all the more frustrating when he does nothing else with them.

4. Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty

It's not that I thought this album would be a bomb, but I always thought the biggest driving force creatively for Outkast was Andre 3000 and that any solo album by Big Boi would be nothing more than a handful of half-interesting songs. I was wrong.

The Best Music Video of 2010

Birdy Nam Nam: Acid Audio Assault.

If you're sick of waiting for Justice to follow up †, then may I suggest Birdy Nam Nam to fill your void of sadness instead? Ok, so ignore the ridiculous band name (they are French, so I'm hoping that their name actually translates into something much cooler in English like "Falcon Satan Fuck" or "Canary Anal Overload")*, and watch the video for their song "The Parachute Ending" below. And what do you know, this track was actually produced by Justice who have left their music fingerprints all over this one.

Myspace + Amazon.

*Ok, so neither of these band names are cooler at all.

John Lennon

Rest in peace.

Star Wars: Construction Paper Remix

I hope on the tenth re-release of the original trilogy, George Lucas replaces all CGI with construction paper animation. I also hope on the inevitable re-release of the prequel trilogy, George Lucas replaces all poorly constructed plot points, one-dimensional characters, and soul sucking visuals with a better movie. Zing!*

*-Star Wars prequel trilogy zing #458,361,591,734,909,887,456

Enjoy.

'The Staircase' Documentary

For awhile, I was on a serious documentary kick. One fantastic documentary, 'The Staircase,' is a mini-series by filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade that came out in 2004 and chronicled the trial of author Michael Peterson, accused of murdering his wife. Due to the ambiguous circumstances of his wife's death, the documentary never offers a concrete conclusion on whether or not he killed his wife (despite the trial's outcome), but the lack of a final word is what makes this documentary so absorbing. The film mostly follows his family and the defendants as they go through the trial, but it shows in such extreme detail the limits prosecutors and defendants will go and have to go just to win a trial. As Michael Peterson says at one point (in a probably butchered quote I'm just pulling from my head), "They don't care about finding the truth. They just care about winning."

Here's a clip from the film where Michael Peterson laments how so much press and public focus is spent on his trial when it should be spent on the endless poverty and corruption that plagues his city of Durham, Alabama, instead.

And oh yes, a Netflix link for the lazy.

Miami Horror

The more I talk about how I'll post more in this blog, the less I post so I'm just gonnashutupnowandnotjinxit...coughcoughcough!

Anyway, 70's disco/80's synth bands are all the rage now, and while plenty of music that comes out in that style is disposable, Australian based rockers Miami Horror are not. While their warm chords and fun dance songs are better suited for cruising around during a hot summer night than blared out in the mellow fall air - global warming, pollution, the reversal of the seasons, and our galaxy splitting shouldn't make this a problem. The video for their first single, "Sometimes," from their album Illumination follows below. And if you like that, check out their song "Holidays" which features Neon Indian frontman, Alan Paloma, on vocals.

WTF with Marc Maron

If you haven't heard about him before, Marc Maron is a veteran comedian that started out in the late 80's with alternative heroes David Cross and Sarah Silverman. His bi-weekly podcast, WTF with Marc Maron, is full of hilarious and brutally honest rants coupled with amazing interviews that manage to craft a profile that very few professional journalists are able to obtain. Check out Marc's interview with Carlos Mencia where he manages to break down the deep laying insecurities that drive Carlos to steal jokes, go on power trips, and constantly fight in the effort of maintaining his massive popularity. And all without veering into Joe Rogan assault territory.

Watch a full setlist of his act below, or download the rest of his podcasts here or on iTunes.

We Are Happy Landfill: The Decree

So, I figure that I should lay out my intentions of this blog.

For the most part, I want to make this a blog about every major part of pop culture (minus any mind numbing tabloid trash).

Now more than ever there is so much art to discover and experience that it's easy to miss or even forget about the most noticeable stuff out there much less the art that frequently gets lost in the mix. While I'll probably share a lot of stuff most people haven't seen or heard, it's not my intention to be the person that "discovered" anything I post. There are so many blogs out there already that are so in depth with one specific thing that anything I "discover" has been discovered 300 times over already.

My main purpose of this blog is to point people towards great art they may be missing or have missed out on in all areas: movies, music, TV, books, video games, etc. (Now that I think about it, though, I'm pretty sure that's the main goal of every blog but...well, you're here already.)

I'll also fill this thing with an occasional piece of amateur criticism the likes blogs are known the world over...mostly because it makes me feel self-important and also because I love writing and discussing things I'm passionate about.

Now...Top That!...?

Super Furry Animals!

Ah geez, I haven't updated this thing in 8 months which is one month less than the time it would take to have a procrastination baby. But fuck it! Let's abort this shit, and bring things back with a video from The Flaming Lips of Europe, Super Furry Animals. The song is called Drygioni and it's off their album Mnwg, which is sung entirely in Welsh (a language spoke natively in Wales).