Where we going, Thunder?

I've been in the mood for some vintage Nicholson lately. I keep telling myself that One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest would be a good one to watch. Maybe some Chinatown. Or a little Easy Rider. Hell, I even thought about adding The Shining to the top of my Netflix queue. As a matter of fact, I began streaming Five Easy Pieces the other night, but I was grabbing a bunk connection and the choppiness was getting to me so I turned it off. So it's to be totally expected that when I sat down for some late evening entertainment last night, I entrust my senses with...what else? Fuckin' Friday Night Lights.

I've never really taken the time to enjoy the the TV show based on this movie, but watching this piece of shit film made me understand why it gets the praise that it does. I've heard that the show is more character-driven and not so singularly focused on football, which, after seeing the movie, must have had something to do with Peter Berg's guilty conscience about directing a movie that failed to create any kind of character depth at all. It was fuckin' atrocious. In the right hands this movie could have dethroned Raging Bull as The Godfather of all sports movies, or at least nipped at Raging Bull's heels. My little brother had read the book, and one thing I picked up from his analysis was how much of an emotional crutch high school football is in small town Texas and how vital it would be to relay that in a film adaptation, but the only way Berg could get this idea across in the movie was to rehash a sports movie cliché by showing a quick montage of the entire town shutting down to watch the big game of the week. While the book (and I presume the TV show) tended to shine a spotlight on the town's social, economic, and racial divides and how the town depended on the football team to temporarily eliminate them, the movie did next to nothing in exploring these themes, and turned out nothing that no one hadn't seen before. I didn't get the impression that the movie even lived up to its own poster, a b/w photo of three dudes holding hands as they take the field for the coin toss, as if to indicate a rare and inspiring form of camaraderie and intimacy carried out by the Odessa-Permian Panthers. Fell a little short of that one too. It makes sense that the TV show is so lauded for its character development, simply because a serial drama has the kind of time to develop and expand on that sort of thing in a way that a movie never could (But, in thinking about it that way, you realize that it would take an idiot to fuck up a Friday Night Lights TV show, since the pool the story's coming from is so vast and deep). The TV show doesn't seem like such a bad idea to me anymore, but it'd have been a better one if it wasn't someone's way of making up for a base value, cookie-cutter piece of shit movie that couldn't have done its source material justice if it tried. The only good things about this movie were the score by Explosions In The Sky (which is what interested me about the movie in the first place) and the generous helpings of Public Enemy. Besides that, this movie was a total waste of time and it angers me that it was ever greenlighted in the first place.

On an unrelated note, while I write this I am currently listening to Gentlemen by The Afghan Whigs for the first time. Not bad. If you're ever feeling like you've got the post-grunge got-your-heart-ripped-out blues, I might recommend something like this. I personally prefer Greg Dulli in The Gutter Twins, but this early-90's stuff is okay too.

Anyway, despite all the hackneyed, poorly-executed techniques the directer employed to make it appear that the young football players were under a heap of pressure, I couldn't help but be annoyed at the thought of a high school football team being such a spectacle. That so many people could have that much of an emotional stake in a fuckin' game. It just seems silly to me. But then I thought about it for a second, and I realized that middle-American podunk Texans aren't the only people in America who get caught up in shit like this, and this is something about the conclusion I came to.

The curious thing about a spectacle is how it immobilizes the spectator. It centers their attention, their values, and ultimately their lives around something outside of themselves. It keeps them occupied without giving them control. In America today, there are countless examples of this false involement being played out on television, in movie theaters, in the pages of magazines that gossip about the lives of celebrities, in representative "democracy," or in the neighborhood church.

A spectacle also isolates the people whose attention it commands. Many of us (myself included) know more about the fictitious characters of our favorite sitcoms than we know about the lives and loves of our neighbors, because when we talk to them, we talk about TV shows, the news and the weather. The same experiences and information we share as spectators of the mass-media serve to separate us from one another. It's the same thing at a big football game: everybody watching from the bleachers is a nobody, regardless of who they are. They might be sitting next to each other, but all eyes are focused on the field. If they talk to each other, it's almost never about each other, but about the game that's being played before their eyes. And even though football fans can't participate in the events of the game they're watching (or exert any real influence over them), they attach the utmost importance on these events and associate their own needs and desires with the outcome in an unusual way. Instead of concentrating their attention on things that have a real bearing on their desires, they reconstruct their desires to revolve around the things they pay attention to. Their language often even merges the achievements of their favorite team with their own actions: "We scored a goal-unit-basket! We beat the opponents...soundly...in the skirmish!"

Thing is, this stands in stark contrast to the way people talk about the things that go on in their own cities and communities. "They're doing road work," we say about a construction crew patching up potholes. "What will they think of next?" we say about the latest advances in consumer technology. Our language reveals that we think of ourselves as spectators in our own societies. But it isn't "they," the mysterious Other People, who have made the world the way it is...it's "we," humanity as a whole. Ourselves. No small team of scientists, city planners, and rich bureaucrats could've done all the working and inventing and organizing that it's taken for us to transform this planet. It has taken all of us, working together, to achieve this end, and it still does. We are the ones doing it, every day. But most of us seem to feel that we can have more control over football games than we can over our cities. Our jobs. Even our own lives.

We might have more success in our pursuits of happiness if we started trying to really participate instead of accepting the role of passive spectator to sports, society and life. It's up to each of us to figure out how to play an active and significant part in creating the worlds around us and within us. I admit that I still occasionally get lost in the cleverly-scripted drama unfolding on my TV screen from time to time, but in my attempts to cut down on my dependence I've found that it's not very hard to pull off. Maybe one day we can free ourselves from our enslavement to the television images and build a new society in which we can all be involved together in the decisions that affect the lives we lead; we'll then be able to truly choose our own destinies instead of living out the ones corporate America has planned out for us.

Peace.

Return of the Wild Man...?

I began wearing flip-flops a few days ago. I couldn't tell you why. I don't know. But I kinda like 'em. Comfort and breathability. I figure it's either this or have a strange woman hack at the bottom of my feet with a cheese grater. I prefer the former. I really do.

A few months ago, after paying a visit to my mom's house, I stopped by the neighborhood Albertson's (site of The Dude's infamous "I fuckin' hate kids" proclamation four years ago) to pick up some oranges. I was on line with about a pound and a half of clean, uncut, 100% pure citrus delectability in tow when I raised my gaze from the tiled floor and noticed that the creature in the white loafers ahead of me was, in fact, a dame that I had privately been keen on throughout my high school days. Man, had time been good to her; although I was (and still am) firmly opposed to consuming animal flesh, I'd have taken a burger to go with that shake. I briefly considered giving her the obligatory "Hey! How you been?" spiel (in the hopes that she'd turn it back on me so I'd be able to impress her by showing how much I've changed since high school), but I felt that the clothing I was wearing at the time was incongruent with the vegan/animal rights/social activist/self-deprecating coffee-house intellectual angle that I would've tried to work, so I put the kibosh on that.

"Oh boy," I thought. "That sure looks like a lot of alcohol for a Monday night."

It was true; this girl, to whom I had once dedicated an intentionally ugly-worded, no-flow-to-be-found piece of poetry (if you could call it that), had just hoisted what appeared to be a two-gallon jug of wine onto the checkout turntable. I slightly grimaced and silently cursed the society that would sell a person such an exorbitant amount of rotgut and meanwhile ceiling the heavenly taste of orange juice in a carton half its size. But I digress. It was possible that she didn't see me as she shuffled down to face the cashier, but I somehow find it more likely that she was pretending not to notice me, as her posture subtly grew more hurried and tense (while not exactly staring, I'll admit to giving her body a discernible amount of my attention) as the lady in the blue apron rang up her booze. The cashier tried to goad her into making small talk, and she appeased her while simultaneously letting her know that she wasn't having it (The extent of their conversation: "Ugh, one more hour until I'm out of here." "Oh...yeah?") Cash exchanged hands, and she grabbed her ponderously large jug o' wine and hustled that ass out of there. In hindsight, I had never figured this bird to be of the disposition that would avoid acknowledging a one-time classmate, although the tension and urgency I picked up from her swagger could have just as easily been attributed to a long day of selling away her labour/soul (which would have probably explained the wine). Regardless, her form has been swimmin' around in and out of ol' Bandit's noggin on a semi-regular basis ever since.

I only bring it up because this particular filly and I were in the same creative writing class at the end of senior year, although our rapport then was about the same as it would be in Albertson's five years later. Anyway, our teacher was badass enough to compile the class' writing into a scrapbook of sorts for us to take as mementos of what was, indeed, a rather festive and cathartic way to end one's high school career. I recently dug out said scrapbook in an attempt to match the handwriting of one of the assignments this curvaceous canary had written in her own name to that of her "admit slips," which had been written under a pseudonym, and see if I could perhaps satisfy my male curiosity by getting a better glimpse of her personality. In doing so, I also came across a bunch of stuff I had written, a great deal of which was somewhat macabre. The exercise "When I Looked Into the Mirror That Stormy Night" was particularly disturbing. I continued to go through and read my contributions and found myself in a state of utter repulsion. Was I really this gloomy back then? Was it in any way necessary? Holy jumpin' fuckin' shitballs. I seriously don't recall ever feeling as shitty as I portrayed myself in those admit slips. Who could blame the cupcake for making such a hasty retreat in the supermarket? Shit, she was probably worried that I was gonna rip out her jugular with my teeth or something. It was then that it occurred to me that it'd be interesting to re-visit some of the exercises we did in class and see how they'd compare to the ones I wrote five years ago. Then I said to myself, fuck it. After I'm through with those, there's probably a slew of writing exercises available on the Internet for me to occupy myself with. That sounds like it'd be pretty fun.

So that's the point of this here post. I'm announcing my intentions to do that. That's all.

Peace.

...then you are the suit.

"Human beings will be happier not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That's my utopia."

I'm sayin'.

Peace.

If the suit doesn't see you as a threat...

"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it."

Well, motherfuckers, zero hour is upon us. I've been holding my tongue on this for a long fucking time. Too long. Most people, if they were to read this, will come to the conclusion that I should be strapped up in a straitjacket and locked in a padded cell. But as Chuck D once said, "Man, I've had it up to here." I apologize for lacking the gumption to express these opinions any other way, but I am inclined to believe that my opinion on this subject is beyond what is socially tolerable. I expect an ass-ton of irritation and indignation to show up throughout the course of this diatribe, so be forewarned. It might also take me a while to figure out how I'm gonna get my point across, so make yourselves comfortable. And take your shoes off when you come into my house.

Now...unless there's any protest, allow me to begin by saying that I'm fully aware of the irony involved in airing the following grievances over the goddamn Internet. I understand that what I'm about to say is going to make me look like a coffee shop revolutionary, or an armchair hippie, or what have you. If there was something I could do about that at this time, believe me, I'd have packed up and taken off a long time ago. As it is, though, I'm lacking in supplies as well as wherewithal, so you're gonna have to bear with me until I get that shit squared away, okay? I'm working on it.

That being said...

Anybody who knows me knows that I've got a lot of contempt for the world as we know it. I can't stand globalization. I can't stand soundbite politics. I can't stand patriotism. I can't stand confrontationalism. I can't stand theistic religion or its perpetuation of obsolete values. I can't stand self-righteous conspiracy theorists who apparently don't realize that their arguments are methodically orchestrated exercises in futility. I can't stand the two-party system. I can't stand discrimination. I can't stand anti-intellectualism. Ironically enough, I can't stand intellectualism, either. I can't stand credit scores, mortgage payments and interest rates. I can't stand the nine-to-five mentality. I can't stand how the media engineers deception and apathy. I can't stand the way people define themselves by what they buy. I can't stand marketing, and I really can't stand 'anti-marketing' marketing. I can't stand having to keep count of how many jolts-per-minute my favorite television programs contain. I can't stand the glorification and idolization of celebrities. I can't stand knowing that millions of first world citizens are still under the misconception that television is a medium for information, entertainment or art. I can't stand it when people think I became a vegan simply for the dietary benefits. I can't stand the exploitation of animals or the Earth's natural resources. I can't stand vivisection. I can't stand the meat industry.

Wait a minute.

Let's have ourselves a second look at that word: industry. The manufacturing of products on a large scale with the intent of turning a profit. Industry: the dynamic impetus dictating the course of American culture for the past 350 years. The primary source of society's continued advancement; without it, our collected perspective of technology, refuge and economic prosperity would be decidedly different. Therefore, it is to be assumed that the vast majority of modern civilization live their entire lives in unfaltering obedience to a system of convenience, homogenization and consumption, believing that said system is evidence of mankind's evolutionary superiority (that is, if they ever even take the time to contemplate their role in the grand scheme of the universe). Drowned out by all this pandemonian horseshit are people like me, the so-called cynics, whom society has given plenty of evidence of its own fuckedupedness. For example, the huge piles of redundant protoplasm lumbering through shopping malls like a fleet of interstate buses or the fact that you could sell out a 30,000 seat arena by getting two guys to beat the shit out of each other (or even worse, pretending to beat the shit out of each other), but you'd be lucky if 10 people showed up to a fuckin' peace vigil. I've been shooting messengers for what seems like my entire life, albeit always vaguely suspicious of a more sinister presence at work; it's embarrassingly obvious to me now that there is, in fact, a higher power working to subconsciously influence our decisions, shape our lives and steal our souls. After spending my formative years questioning the morals of society, it is of little comfort to finally have a direction to point a finger of blame, because every one of the complaints stated above, and for that matter, the sum of humanity's woes, have been in some way caused by what is considered the backbone of modern civilization. Industry.

No one is out of reach from this monster's grasp. No one is immune; after all, there's a market for everything. Corporations pull the reins of society, and they rely on us to be stupid. How are they able to rely on it? Because they're the ones that made us stupid.

Did you know that political debates in this country used to last up to seven hours? In 1854, Stephen A. Douglas delivered a three-hour address to an audience in Peoria, Illinois, to which Abraham Lincoln was to respond. By the time Lincoln's turn to speak came, he had to remind the crowd that it was already 5pm, and recommended that everyone go home, have dinner, and return refreshed for his rebuttal. The audience complied, and when they came back they were rewarded with four more hours of debate (It should be noted that, at the time, Lincoln and Douglas weren't running for any particular public office; this was strictly for entertainment purposes, as people then considered their political education as an important part of their social lives). Thanks to the furthered urbanization of America and the advent of the television, such an event would be utterly unimaginable in today's cultural landscape.

Nevermind; I take that back. On January 2, 2008, comedian Dane Cook broke the Laugh Factory record previously held by Dave Chappelle by performing a set that lasted seven hours and ten minutes. Silly me.

Anyway, we've finally gotten to the part where I tell you what's really been bothering me lately. Paying attention, boys and girls? Good.

Five years ago, as George W. Bush was preparing to bum rush Iraq with U.S. military might, about how many people in this country gave a hoot about global warming? I mean, really gave a hoot? Aside from the crazy sons of bitches who wore Birkenstocks and smelled like patchouli oil, I doubt you'd have found very many. I mean, who had the time? With network news putting the entire nation on edge over an imminent invasion that would lead to the unjustified deaths of countless soldiers and Iraqi citizens alike, the environment seemed like the last thing on anyone's priority list. Similarly, what was the consensus on "leaving a lighter footprint (a phrase I absolutely loathe, by the way)," say, three years ago? Again, unless you lived in a fuckin' commune (or in Ballard), you probably couldn't be bothered to care. Most of us were too distraught from the thought of having to put up with four more years of Bush's bullshit. Which isn't to say that no one was aware of any environmental problems; I'm sure there were those who turned off the sink while they were brushing their teeth or recycled their bags at the grocery store, but on the whole, there wasn't any sense of urgency or anything. Personally, my biggest worry at the time was figuring out how to unhook a girl's bra without looking like a jackass (I'm not too incredibly proud of that, but at least I'm willing to admit it).

But that all changed in the summer of 2006, when former Vice President Al Gore (whose name hadn't been mentioned in pop culture since the Supreme Court made him look like a bitch six and half years before), armed with an Oscar-winning hit documentary on global warming, resurrected his career like an emerald phoenix rising from the ashes to impassion the public mind with a quadruple shot of environmental awareness. Filled with scientific evidence, heartfelt sincerity and the occasional spurt of humour, the impact of the oft-lauded An Inconvenient Truth was felt across the entire country. Once-obscure catchphrases such as 'alternative energy' and 'sustainable living' became buzzwords seemingly overnight, and millions upon millions of bourgeois yuppies grew anxious to join the environmental movement. It was suddenly hip to be green. And so began a shift in American consciousness that saw citizens take action by converting their homes to coincide with environmentally-friendly living standards, such as switching to wind-powered electricity or installing low-flow faucets, showerheads and toilets. Gore's star rose to God-like status, especially when compared to the dipshit who cheated him out of the White House gig, and in the fall of 2007 he was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize.

By the way: Jack Bandit's quick capsule review of An Inconvenient Truth? Piece of shit.

Yeah, it would be fair to say that I saw that movie from a different perspective than most. That movie was wretched and horrible. Don't misunderstand me here; if you finish reading this and conclude that I don't believe that global warming is a very serious threat to life on this planet, you would be wrong. But there was another inconvenient truth in that movie, one that Gore failed to mention: When offering solutions to the global warming crisis, he puts accountability in the hands of the individual while neglecting to hold corporations responsible for the amount of carbon they continue to emit year after year. The fact of the matter is that, of the 7.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by the United States each year, private citizens only account for approximately 20% of that amount. The rest of it is put out by factories and refineries, who burn energy producing the things we've been conditioned to think we need to live. I kept waiting for Gore to address the issue of corporate pollution, but I already knew that that was asking too much (in the world of politics, you don't bite the hand that feeds you). What does he do instead? He encourages us to buy energy efficient goods and pay for energy efficient services, smokescreen practices that serve to make his back-scratching friends (and in turn, him) a lot of money. Rather than pointing that out, though, director Davis Guggenheim tugged at viewers' heartstrings with intimate vignettes focusing on Gore's personal and professional distresses, which allowed him to win sympathy points for how much he's done for the environment while simultaneously making the audience feel guilty about how much they haven't. Gore's ultimate solution is that we all have to do our part as individuals. I say, fuck that. Individuals aren't the problem. Corporations are.

And don't go and say something like, "But we can't do anything to change corporate practices; we can only control ourselves." They're counting on us to think like that.

The film stated that "we are witnessing a collision between our civilization and the earth," but no one wants to hear about solutions that don't benefit corporate interests, which, by the way, do nothing to cushion said collision. Sure, you can recycle your cans and buy brand new energy-efficient appliances, but just because a product is sustainable in its use doesn't necessarily mean that it's sustainable in its manufacture. I mean, they have got to come from somewhere, and in a market-driven economy, profit is the only thing that matters. And that's the problem that everyone has hitherto failed to realize; "green" has become just another marketing tool. The goal of An Inconvenient Truth was not to spread awareness about the environmental movement. It was to kill it and replace it with an environmental market: a way to exploit yuppie guilt (Their self-consciousness is evident when they feel the need to validate themselves by bragging about their recent environmentally-friendly purchases). It gives the impression that they are taking part in a campaign of compassion and progression, but, as in every other aspect of their lives, their real desires to make something happen have been channeled into consuming, and their own abilities and potential have been displaced, projected onto the "green" items they purchase. It's been done before. In the past, the sell was, "Aw, man. Hollywood's got us feeling bad about our self-image." "Hey lardasses, here are some treadmills you can buy!" The only thing that's changed about the formula is what form of self-hatred they're shining the spotlight on: "Oh, drag. Hollywood's got us feeling bad about the environment." "Hey kids, I've got just what you need to put on a happy face! Buy a hybrid car! Or some solar panels! Or some compact fluorescent light bulbs! Or some recycling bins! Or some certified-green insulation! Or whatever else you, the apathetic, docile masses, need to get on board with our new-wave environmental market. It doesn't really matter what you buy; if you want to save the environment, all you need to do is KEEP BUYING FROM US." At best, this new breed of environmentalism is just swishing the mouthwash of big business over to the other cheek. At worst, it's walking us right into a new Cold War.

Again, don't get me wrong; I have nothing against the public's new-found awareness of environmental concerns. As a matter of fact, I think it's great. The problem I have is that the courses of action we've been taking simply aren't enough.

Our corporate masters are trying to feed us the illusion that by buying different products, we're making enough of a contribution to environmental change. Here's my question: If we're still opening up our wallets and bending over for big business, what's changed? To see the reality of the situation is to realize that it's the same old media-spun story of the mighty manipulating the meek into lining their pockets. If you truly believe that companies like this are being sincere in their environmental practices, then you're full of shit, because it's been pushed in by a thick, purple-veined corporate dick (oil conglomerates buy out all the small, cutting-edge companies under the guise of funding sustainability, but they're really out to silence them before the public gets word on what they're up to). It's as if the corporate elite have given themselves the right to spit in our face and say, "Fuck you, pay me." We need to realize that our accountability doesn't end at buying sustainable goods, because sustainability is a joke as long as it's being sold by a bureaucracy. Therefore, it is our responsibility to wash our hands of our dependence on their services and learn how to live in a self-sufficient manner; in essence, freeing ourselves from their grip. As long as we accept the displacement of our desires into the marketplace by paying for imitations of their fulfillment, then the corporate world will continue to consume the natural one, and we will never truly know freedom.

"Its funny when the movement makes the mainstream but still don't do shit but bruise a dream."

I know that, to most people, all of this sounds crazy; questioning the established social order and long-practiced national pastime (fuck baseball; I'm speaking of consumption). If these ideas seem foreign and ludicrous to you, I suggest you take a look around our culture and the world in which we live and re-evaluate how much of it actually makes sense. Haven't done that in a while, have you? I'm fairly certain that in your answer is where you'll find all the ludicrousness.

I'll leave you with a stellar poem written by a man who, while not known for his writing, is a noted actor, raw food vegan, peace activist and supporter of hemp legalization, the latter of which he's all but been Munsoned by a misinformed public at the hands of (guess who?) industrial America, who would absolutely go apeshit if the secret of the Cannabis were to get out. I'm posting it up here because it's primary time, and while the rest of the country is caught up in the corporate-funded hoopla, I, knowing that it'll be a cold day in hell before a candidate who represents my political ideals is given the opportunity to run (let alone get elected), romanticize that if that day ever came, the inaugural address that that person would give would probably sound something like this. Ladies and gents, I give you Billy Hoyle himself, Woody Harrelson.

I sometimes feel like an alien creature for which there is no Earthly explanation.
Sure, I have human form
Walking erect and opposing digits
But my mind is upside-down.
I feel like a run-on sentence in a punctuation crazy world
And I see the world around me like a mad collective dream.

An endless stream of people move like ants on the freeway
Cell phones, PCs and digital displays.
In money we trust we'll find happiness; the prevailing attitude
Like a genetically-modified, irradiated Big Mac is somehow symbolic of food.

Morality is legislated
Prisons over-populated
Religion is incorporated
The profit margin's permeated all activity.
We pay our government to park on the street and war is the biggest money-maker of all;
We all know that missile envy only comes from being small.

Politicians and prostitutes are comfortable together.
I wonder if they talk about the strange change in the weather?

This government was founded by, of and for the people but everybody feels it like a giant open sore
They don't represent us anymore.
And blaming the President for the country's woes is like blaming a puppet for the way it sings
Who's the man behind the curtain pulling the strings?

A billion people sitting, watching their TV
In the room that they call 'living'
But as for me, I see living as loving
And since there's no loving room
I sit on the grass under a tree
Dreaming of the way things used to be...
Pre-Industrial Revolution
Which, of course, is before the rivers and oceans and skies were polluted
Before Parkinson's and mad cows
And all the convoluted cacophony of bad ideas like skyscrapers and tree paper and Earth-rapers
Like Monsanto and DuPont had their way
As they continue to today...

This was pre-us.
Back when the buffalo roamed
And the Indians' home was the forest
And God was nature and Heaven was here and now.

Can you imagine clean water, food and air?
Living in community with animals and people who care?
Do you dare to be responsible for every dollar you lay down?
Are you going to make the rich man richer or are you going to stand your ground?
You say you want a revolution?
A communal evolution?
To be a part of the solution?

Maybe I'll be seeing you around.

Peace.

The 2007 Bandito Awards

I've put this off for too long. Two weeks into the new year and I still haven't published my "Bests" of 2007. How shameful. It's not even like I have a good excuse. Well, unless you count reading. I've been doing a lot of that. Anyway, 2007 was a pretty good year for me. I made quite a few perception-altering changes last year, and I feel that my life has improved substantially as a result of them. It would be fair to say that these changes are reflected in my favorite media releases of the year. So, without any further adieu, here we go.

Top Ten Albums of the Year

10. Pocket Symphony - Air

9. Pride - Phosphoresecnt

8. Tim's House - Kate Walsh

7. Ma Fleur - The Cinematic Orchestra

6. All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone - Explosions in the Sky

5. Bayani - Blue Scholars

4. My Heart Has a Wish That You Would Not Go - Aereogramme

3. One Man Revolution - The Nightwatchman

2. How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul? - Public Enemy

1. Music for the Motion Picture Into the Wild - Eddie Vedder

Hon. Mention
Ongiara - Great Lake Swimmers
Iller Than Theirs - Iller Than Theirs
Ghost - Radical Face
White Moth - Xavier Rudd
The Brag & Cuss - Rocky Votolato

Song of the Year
"Society" by Eddie Vedder

Runners-up:
"Guaranteed" by Eddie Vedder, "The Road I Must Travel" by The Nightwatchman, "Far Behind" by Eddie Vedder, "Barriers" by Aereogramme, "Sunshine" by Atmosphere

Song Lyric of the Year
"Everyone I come across in cages they bought/They think of me and my wandering but I'm never what they thought/I've got my indignation but I'm pure in all my thoughts/I'm alive..."
- from "Guaranteed" by Eddie Vedder

Runners-up:
"I read in the newspaper/They questioned all my friends/They hoped that they could find my ass/Before I struck again."
- from "The Road I Must Travel" by The Nightwatchman

"They tried to blame it on the anarchists; garbage/I was there, I'll tell you right now: the pigs started it."

- from "50K Deep" by Blue Scholars

"Empty pockets will allow a greater sense of wealth/Why contain yourself like any other book on the shelf?"
- from "Far Behind" by Eddie Vedder

"Peace to my Third World equivalent/Even though I can't fight besides you, I write what I can/To get our fam in other lands to understand your pain/Because your beef is mine and we're one and the same."
- from "Opening Salvo" by Blue Scholars

Top Ten Films of the Year

10. 3:10 To Yuma

9. Michael Clayton

8. Reign Over Me

7. War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death

6. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

(No poster available)

5. Exhibit A: Leary Vs. Hicks

4. Juno

3. An Unreasonable Man

2. Year of the Dog

1. Into the Wild

All in all, a fairly productive year (at least by my standards). I think my 2007 would be best summed up, and appropriately so, by a quote from Kurt Vonnegut:

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center."

1922-2007

So it goes.

Peace.

A discouraging turn of events

I got in a car accident today. A great start to the year.

My little brother had a check-up at the dentist's office, because he had some weird metal apparatus attached to his braces. My other little brother, as you might remember, had a huge chunk of his tooth knocked out by a BB last week, so we were hoping that the dentist would take a look at his mouth really quick as well. I came along because my youngest brother had basketball practice a little later on in the day, so as soon as his dental work was done, I was to drive him to practice and my mom was gonna stay with my the older one while the dentist finished up with him.

Well, when we got to the office and showed the dentist the hole in my brother's mouth, he said that this trumped my other brother's check-up and that they'd re-schedule him later in the week. With no reason to be there anymore, by brother and I left and went home. We stopped by the Subway on 228th and 44th, where I was disappointed to find that they didn't have any veggie-max patties. I had to settle for a veggie sub, which isn't so bad, as far as runners-up are concerned.

So my brother and I headed north on 44th and drove up the windy hill that turns 44th into 164th. We're in the innermost of two eastbound lanes, getting ready to make a left turn onto 36th. I noticed that the right lane was backed up to Spruce Way, at least. Before we're able to get into the turn lane, though, we're struck on the rear passenger side of the car by a forest green Nissan Altima, sending my brother and I spinning out of control into the suicide lane. I screeched the car to a halt, and I remember looking out through the windshield and being able to see the sides of cars in the lane next to me. One driver, a balding, bespectacled man (who, to the best of my recollection, looked a little like Larry David) appeared to show a little bit of concern as he drove off. It was right around then that I began to hear the air deflating from the rear tire on the passenger side, and I thought to myself, "Aw, shit." Some people let me through as I drove into the parking lot of the Evergreen Fire & Safety store.

As I got out of the car to assess the damage, a car pulled into the parking lot to see if we were okay, which was nice. A rather attractive young blond-haired lady leaned her head out the window and asked if we needed any help with anything, and I told her we were fine. To be honest, if there wasn't a dude behind the wheel, I might have asked her to stay and at least act as a witness (because you never know where things might have gone from there, you know), but with circumstances as they were, we were fine on our own. They drove off and I walked around to the other side of the car to check out how bad things were. The rear door was dented in pretty bad, and it didn't look like it'd ever open again. On the bright side, though, the front license plate of the car that hit us was embedded in our rear tire, so even if they ran away from the accident, we'd know where to find them.

As it turns out, the driver of the other car had pulled into an apartment complex across the street and was waiting for me there. Her car didn't appear to be damaged at all. She did, however, seem a little frantic as she got back in her car and parked it across the street from me, in front of the teriyaki restaurant. I, on the other hand, was surprisingly calm. Cold, but calm. When it seemed apparent to us that the girl wasn't going to get out of her car again, we crossed the road and knocked on her window. The girl was fuckin' crying. She opened up the car door and apologized right away, and said that she'd never been in a car accident before. I was glad she apologized; she knew it was her fault.

See, what had happened was, I guess she was trying to make a left onto 164th from her apartment building, but like I said, the near lane was all backed up. Someone was kind enough to let her in, but her visibility was blocked by the car who let her in. Right as she pulled out, I happened to be driving by in the inside lane. Bam.

She got on the horn and called the cops, we exchanged information, and my brother and I waited out in the cold for 20 minutes until a burly deputy pulled up and settled shit out. Both of us told our own side of the story, and he told her what we already knew. It was fuckin' freezing out.

That's all I really feel like saying about it right now. What with the commotion, I wasn't even able to enjoy my sandwich by the time I got around to eating it.

Peace.