end of the year... throw a party and form a list, quick, everybody's doin' it!
Its about that time of year again, the end. As if anything changed, or anything great was said or done, people will delve
into fits of sentimentality for no other reason whatsoever than to try to give the past year, which ran away into the ether so quickly, some meaning. This is my descent into such ruminations, my best of list for the year 2000. It is divided into FOUR sections; Music, Movies, Books, and Miscellaneous.
 
 
Music

Best Mainstream Rock Album:
Tie: A Perfect Circle "Mer De Noms"
& Pearl Jam "Binaural"
What can you say, no other single release this year matches the power of theses two albums, I just couldn't decide which was better. Both meet the requirements I put for, to be listen able, musically sound, and to hold together thematically. APC's album excels on the same ground that Billy Corgan failed miserably on, music that is all at once, heavy, melodic, angry and melancholy. Pearl Jam went on to show us that the seeds sown by the grunge rock movement went all killed by the post Cobain frost.

Best Country Album:
Emmy Lou Harris "Red Dirt Girl"
honorable mention: Johnny Cash "Love, God, Murder"
Emmy Lou's album is everything country should be, harking back to both the early fifties' Honky Tonk movement (think Hank Williams the First [Only? well, Hank III is good, but not great, but he's still young]), and to something older, darker... maybe some weird sapphotic minstrelsy or something. The Man In Black gets mention for "Love, God, Murder", a box set put out over the summer, this is a great over view of this genius' work, but, unfortunately, his new full length "American III: Solitary Man" isn't all the good... well, its better than 95% of the other country music out there, but I was expecting more.

Best Indie Album:
Sunday Munich "Vinculum"
More people should know these cats by now... melding the sounds of Portishead and Massive Attack with imagery gleaned from such diverse pieces of media as old Southern Jazz and the British Romanticism movement. If you see this album, buy it. I'd say it's actually better than APC's and Pearl Jam's albums, but I had to mention those, but this is an album that deserves a special mention, as it goes above and beyond what you'd think it would be by just glancing at the liner notes. When I first saw the Liners, I thought; "Oh great, another shitty EBM band that all the gothy kids are gonna shit their pants for". What I got was trip hop beats to make Geoff Barrows jealous and a singer with a voice that gives Billie Holiday a run for her money and an overall mood that makes me think of the bastard children of Byron, Faulkner and JG Ballard. Doomy, in the truest sense of the word, melancholic, and just plain fucking good. The Lyrics aren't shabby and there is a killer cover of "Wish You Were Here" tacked on at the end.

Jazz:
Umm... there hasn't been any good Jazz recorded since Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew" so all of you Medeski, Martin and Wood fans out there need to get your head out of your ass.

Best Blues Album:
Keb'Mo "The Door"
Slick updating of the old Mississippi school. You should Pick this up.

 Movies

Chicken Run
funny, absurdist comedy about chickens trying to get freedom, Stalag 17 style. Beautiful Nick Park stop motion.

Unbreakable
The best comic book superhero movie ever made, and it's not based on a comic book. Think Millennium (TV show) style mood and conspiracy... what would happen if real supermen existed. Top Notch on every scale. Should win every award if life is fair.
Books

Fiction:
House of Leaves 
by Mark Z. Danielewski

A book that single handedly renewed my faith in Horror/Suspense as a genre, and an exercise in alternative ways to write and present a novel, changing typefaces, layout, all matching the mood of what is going on in the confines of the page. The Closest you'll ever get to seeing a movie while reading. Cinematic.

Non-Fiction:
Dark Continent
by Mark Mazower

A study of the struggle of Democracy as a government theory in Europe through the 20th century. Scary how close we came to world wide totalitarianism in the 1930s... scarier still that it almost happened again, and again, and again.
Miscellany

Best Mixed Drink:
The Billiam (Tokyo Rose)

Best Pizza:
Christian's Pizza
(Downtown Mall)

Best Sleep Aid:
Excedrin PM

Best Pen:
Cross roller ball, all black, enameled, screw top.

Best Art Exhibit:
ARTWAR
(Downtown)
hehehehe...

Best Shoe/Boot:
Corcoran Jump Boot
(Corcoran Corporation)

Best Website:
http://www.stileproject.com
 
 

I dislike subcultures, genres, and images. I find people who live their lives in the confines of any of these reprehensible. Mall Metal kids, Goth kids, Candy Ravers (Crasher Kids). To build ones life around the rules of an image, in the restrictions of subculture, removes the honesty of the self from their life. When you cease to think for yourself and believe the co-opted, mass-marketed, (sub?) Culture sold to you by multi-million dollar corporations, you lose your identity. You lose all the things that make you an individual. To be a just another sheep in the heard letting marketing advisors think for you is the greatest sin (not in a moral sense, but in the sense of something that one should not do as it is deplorable) one can propagate against oneself.

see, hear, read for enjoyment, for enlightenment, for entertainment. think for yourself
 

recommend:


see
Fight Club
American Beauty
Decalog
Red
White
Blue
Rushmore
Muppets From Space
Seven
hear
Miles Davis 'Kind of Blue'
Portishead 'Dummy'
R.E.M.    'Fables of the Reconstruction'
                'Murmur'
                'Up'
                'Green'
Pearl Jam 'No Code'
Ani Difranco 'Dilate'
Radiohead 'The Bends'
Sunday Munich 'Vinculum'
Tool 'Aenima'
Bill Hicks    'Arizona Bay'
                    'Relentless'
                    'Rant in E Minor'
                    'Dangerous'
read
JG Ballard    'Running Wild'
                    'Crash'
                    'The Atrocity Exhibition'
                    'Empire of the Sun'
James Joyce    'Ulysses'
                       'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' 
Mark Z. Danielewski    'House of Leaves'
Aldous Huxely    'Doors of Perception'

polaroid montage #1