My New Year’s resolution for 2009 is to keep myself entertained. And, I ask you, what could be more entertaining than launching a worldwide exploration of music together? We’ll be starting our tour in South America—specifically Brazil, because I have a special place in my heart for all things Brazilian.

Befitting such a large and geographically diverse country, the musical styles of Brazil run the gamut from Bossa Nova to Rap to Metal. But my favorite style, not just of Brazil, but of any music anywhere, is Samba. [Read more]

In American cinematic tradition, The Aging Warrior, usually played by Sylvester Stallone, returns to the arena for one last heroic battle against The Arrogant Challenger, defying expectations and muscular degeneration to prove that he's The World Champion For Eternity. The Wrestler, a moving, melancholy character study about a fictional pro-wrestler of a certain age, is not one of those films. There is no epic battle between Aging Warrior and Arrogant Challenger. There is no Arrogant Challenger, period. The young wrestlers in the film are just struggling to make it. They exhibit affection and respect for their legendary predecessor. [Read more]

Just got done watching The Happening, written, directed and produced by M. Night Shyamalan, and felt the need to do a question column on it. Yes, they are mostly rhetorical.

1) The

2) Absolute

3) Worst

4) Major

5) Motion

6) Picture

7) In the

8) History of

9) American

10) Filmmaking

It seems somewhat unnecessary to rave about a Meryl Streep performance. Ditto with Philip Seymour Hoffman. But in Doubt, they’ve both turned in flawless performances that left me with my jaw on the floor. The two screen giants are joined by Amy Adams. I’ve never seen Adams in a dramatic role before and I was impressed. In Doubt she more than holds her own. [Read more]

Let's get right to it...  Before the new year (mercifully) rings in.

(you'll have to click through for numero uno...)

3.  Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes [Read more]

Well, I believe I've managed to achieve the slowest roll-out of a top ten list.  You know you're in bad shape when you start before everyone else and you're still on number 7 come Christmas.

Therefore, we're going to speed this up a bit.  Here are my choices for numbers 6, 5, and 4.  (3, 2, and 1 to come)

6. Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles [Read more]

7. Girl Talk - Feed the Animals

A relative of mine admitted recently that even though he loved the new Girl Talk album, he couldn't help but think of it as cheating. [Read more]

While living in suburban D.C., I decided to enter the progressive talk radio business in large part because of two hosts - Stephanie Miller and Ed Schultz. I heard both in early 2004 on WWRC a weak station transmitting from Silver Spring, MD. Stephanie is humorous and has a sidekick who does great impressions - sometimes the two are almost as funny as Howard Stern on an average day - plus she is timely, topical, liberal, and doesn't leave me with that queasy feeling and slightly dirty sheen that Stern usually did. Schultz has a great voice - better than Limbaugh's. He is lively, entertaining, and frequently over-the-top. He proves that progressive doesn't mean dry, boring, and professorial. [Read more]

8.  Little Joy - Little Joy

You see, what's going on right now is a whole bunch of music critics are currently going through all the '08 releases to try and find the one or two great albums that they might have missed during the year.  And, they're probably trying to figure out whether or not the Deerhunter double album, the surface of which they barely scratched, will in a few years from now become revered as a classic album.  Quite frankly, I'm open to the possibility that it might be.  It's just that I have no real interest spending the last two weeks of the year trying to find out. [Read more]

Partly inspired by Prophet and his ongoing top 10 albums of 2008 series, and partly because I'm otherwise uninspired, I've decided to take a different tact for this week's questions: I am going to press shuffle on my IPod Nano and create a question somehow related to each of the first 10 songs that come up. I will also be giving some very quick commentary on the songs.

I am uncertain how well this process will lend itself to thought-provoking questions, and I will certainly be risking great personal embarrassment by exposing my music collection to the dagworld at large. [Read more]

9. Neon Neon - Stainless Steel

I'm sorry but any outfit who can put out an album that sounds like the music I listened to when I was 8, and make it sound pretty fantastic along the way, deserves to be in the top 10 in this very down year for music. [Read more]

What hath God rocked?  The last several months have seen major studio releases from both Guns N' Roses (who?) and Metallica.  However, these aren't just any major studio releases.  Guns N' Roses latest offering, Chinese Democracy, has been some 14 years in the making.  I won't go into the whole sordid story here, but Axl Rose is the sole remaining member of the original GnR lineup at this point.  This album took so long to put out that many joked China would see democratic rule before the album saw the light of day.  Millions of dollars later, Axl showed you jokers! [Read more]

We'll be working our way from 10 down to one. 

Oh, by the way, just to introduce myself - I'm prophet and I know the future.

Moving on...

10. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

 [Read more]

I love books. And I love talking about books--more than politics. Actually, WAY more than politics.

Right now, I'm reading Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan. It's a fictionalized version of a love affair that Frank Lloyd Wright had with a woman he designed a house for. So far, I like it and I especially like that it happened in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago where Wright designed many houses. I'm not far enough into it yet to say much more than that.

But my "To Read" list is getting kind of short, so I've decided to solicit suggestions. To be fair, I'm going to suggest some good books myself. My favorites list is in a constant state of flux. I change my mind a lot. But for now, here are five top reads. [Read more]

Welcome to the first installment of My One Favorite Thing. This will be a regular (maybe weekly) post on the one thing I'm really digging at the moment. It could be a game or activity, an album or song, a movie or TV show, a person, a food, or just about anything at all.

MOFT (pronounced Mahf-tee) this week is Geo Challenge, a geography game on Facebook. The game is actually three minigames in one: You have to match the flag to the country in round 1, name the country just by looking at its shape in round 2, and then place cities in their correct place on the world map in round 3. [Read more]

City of God (2002) tells the story of a good kid from the teeming slums of Rio who struggles to escape the gravitational pull of poverty, crime, and prejudice in quest of love and a better life. Slumdog Millionaire tells the story of a good kid from the teeming slums of Bombay/Mumbai who struggles to escape the gravitational pull of poverty, crime, and prejudice in quest of love and a better life. Thus, a genre is born. [Read more]

Vampires. They fascinate us. Whether it's Bram Stoker, Ann Rice, Josh Whedon or Elisabeth Kostova, writers keep finding ways to make the same old stories compelling, and we flock to bookstores and movie theaters or set our Tivos so we don't miss one gruesome detail.

The latest, Stephanie Meyer's Twilight, is a tale of vampires who deny their monstrous urgings to live among mere mortals. Meyer dispenses with traditional vampire characteristics like aversions to garlic or daylight. These newer, trendier vampires wouldn't be caught dead spontaneously combusting in the sun. Instead, they just go all sparkly. [Read more]

The Secret Machines just haven't been the same since Ben Curtis, one half of the fraternal duo, left to focus on his own band, School of Seven Bells. The unsettling but electrifying harmony between Ben and Brandon Curtis could send a current through the back of your head. Imagine Geddy Lee and Robert Plant on stage together like Simon and Garfunkel gone bad. [Read more]

Funny short by filmmaker Ilya Chaiken, set during the great power outage of '03. It was a bizarre moment in New York. The city stopped for almost 24 hours, depending on where you lived. People couldn't get up to their high-rise apartments or hotel rooms. I had a date scheduled that night, but with the mobile network down, I couldn't reach her, so I went to find a friend of mine instead. I had to creep up a dark stairwell, using my cell phone as a flashlight, to leave a note on her door. She found me later, and we drank warm beer in a candlelit bar. Unfortunately, we missed the massive bonfire in nearby Tomkins Square which I only heard about after the fact. [Read more]

Some things are made for a top ten list.  Others aren't.  Tonight, I decided to rank ten noncommensurable things.  You're free to disagree, of course.

1.  That Meal I Had At Alan Wong's in 2007.  Best meal I ever had.  Wong's "da bag" dessert is great and deservedly famous, but this meal was memorable for the 2005 Kosta Browne Russian River Valley Pinot Noir, the nice Japanese guy who kept refreshing the bread like Eastwood emptying the chambers in a Sergio Leone flick, and my favorite food of all time, the bite-sized pig kalua sandwich, a Hawaiian barbecued pork sandwich fried in foie gras.  I can taste it as I type.  Damn. [Read more]