While it is far too late to have even its usual minimal-level impact on my personal yearly wrap-up discussions with friends, I am writing this annual installment as ego food. That some future narcissism might look back on the contemporary opinions of its younger self and slurp until sated on its little caviar pearls of prose, cracked with insight, ( Read more... )

An epoch, a year, has passed since I last wrote one of these-an impossible accumulation of hours gunking the automatic motivations of pride, lust, foolish rightness. The exhaust of former days encrusts us chokingly, insulating and incensing ambitions to blackened husks-trophies of divvied attentions. Such is time. But time is also the hunted. It is ( Read more... )

Every year my top ten list assumes a different character. I can’t decide if it’s a clever actor or just trying to shock my boredom by stripping off layers like a tart on stage. In any case, this turned out to be a rather artsy, foreign type of year for me overall, despite liking some of the standard popcorn flicks that reared up as well-although it ( Read more... )

This is the year. I finally did it. Allow me to give myself a hearty slap on the back and cop a congratulatory feel. I have my (ahem) annual top-ten list out just after the Oscars!

While 2011 wasn’t brimming with great films, it certainly left me fatted enough on flickering spells to feed my more filmic appetites. I count just 35 movies (from 2011) ( Read more... )

I’ve made comment on it before, back when Oblivion came out, I know. It’s worth mentioning again though, and perhaps expounding on a bit, that I love the books in the Elder Scrolls games. Now, many games have had in-game things to read before and since. The codex in Mass Effect was pretty good. Any old adventure game was almost all text. There are ( Read more... )

Godbless our parents. Many of them, anyway. They give it a listen when you burst home from school yammering about Decepticons and Cobra Commands or Funshine Bear and Bowser or pizza Fridays or Matt’s birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese or the best rentals to jack your Gamerscore or how many Pokémon you still need or how you are so going to make the ( Read more... )

South Carolina, sweltering. No, but thick. Pregnant and wet, the air leaving streaks on my lungs, fingernails digging in against the sharp upward pull of my exhale. Mexico wasn’t like this. South Carolina clung to me, needful, threatening. The fading asphalt bent slightly ahead, pulling around a slow hill on its long way toward some bigger avenue- ( Read more... )

Wow. It’s finally finished. If I do this next year, I’ll either start much earlier (like now), or think of a way to limit it. As it is, this project seems to have eaten up my movie list for last year. Well, enjoy. Please.
41. Rihanna - Loud

There’s plenty here to like. If you support Rihanna and her brand of rhythm pop, you should have Loud. If ( Read more... )

Music overwhelms me. I will never feel like I can keep up with all the good music I want to hear. There are probably hundreds of decent to excellent albums from all different genres and countries every year that just go right on by me. I’m sorry, but I’ll never feel like an expert in this field. As such, I have not ranked my music list. I just hope ( Read more... )

Writing about music is like dancing about…screw that. We’re in the age of YouTube. If my thoughts here are inadequate, go listen to the damned songs yourself. Or better-do it anyway as you follow along. The internet never slinks off in a taxi in the dead of night. You can touch it whenever you want to. I’m going to break this post into three parts ( Read more... )