sunday best-of blogging

most romantic song about pants: i love your pants, too, rathergood.com. i love them right to death.

best album to remember you love after having forgotten about it for years: guided by voices' mag earwhig!. so good, people. so good.

most concise summary of tuesday's state of the union: blah blah blah, terrorists secretly long for democracy, blah blah blah, 9/11, blah blah blah, i'm above the law, blah blah blah, gays and women who have abortions will burn in hell. oh, and i guess i can close with some empty promises about health care and energy reform. heh heh heh.

in six years, this man couldn't learn to pronounce the word "nuclear"? i wouldn't trust him to lead me out of a pair of velcro shoes.

best alternative to the super bowl: the discovery channel's puppy bowl, which starts today at 3 p.m., is the cutest thing in the history of television broadcasting. last year i actually wept, i was so overwhelmed by the snuggly wonderfulness of it all. do not miss it. really. don't.

best blog of note:


finally! why has it taken the world so long to give my faf some sugar? you all should listen to me. i know what's up.

most captivating concert lineup: the tibet house benefit concert, taking place at carnegie hall on march 1, will feature philip glass, laurie anderson, sufjan stevens, antony (of antony and the johnsons), nawang khechog (a grammy-nominated tibetan flautist), damien rice, and allen toussaint, plus some other folks who've yet to be announced. cheapo tickets are about $30, but even at $100, i think the priciest seats are still a steal. but if you're not the sort of person who cares to pay big bucks—or any bucks—for a good time…

best way to see malcolm gladwell for free: the columbia university arts initiative has teamed up with the new yorker to present six free events, and malcolm will be talking about something delightful on february 21 (ticket info here, other events here). there was an article on malcolm in the 2/4 edition of the ny times; it opened up with a bit of a pan, and i wasn't interested in paying or signing up with their web site for a pan (i can hear people say snotty rubbish about him anytime i want for free), but if any of you caught it and believe i'm mistaken, please let me know. and, as always, if you or someone you know makes it over to his talk, send him my warmest, fuzziest love. oh, and look, it's february! you could even shower him with a fistful of candy hearts*. awwwww.

usage directions most open to interpretation: a friend recently told me about some sort of super colon cleanser he happened upon whose label directed the user to start out with one tablet at night and increase the intake by one tablet every day until the user experienced "2–3 meaningful bowel movements per day." meaningful? in what way? isn't the significance of that sort of thing a bit relative? how does one know if the appropriate depth of meaning has been achieved? reader assignment: compose a 500-word essay on the one eliminatory experience that left you the most moved**.

erosion of willpower i feel i should be most ashamed about, and yet am not: every time i see the commercial for the new platinum-edition monster ballads compilation cd, it becomes a little harder to resist. i can't be alone, though, and if you scroll down to the "customers also bought" section, you'll see that it is in no way necessary for a person to be an exclusive devotee of leopard-print spandex and aqua net to give in to the album's allure. not that there's anything wrong with that. and i don't care how much you make fun of me, mr. big's "to be with you" is the bomb.




* the new yorker readers in the crowd may have noticed that malcolm has written me a valentine's day article on the throughly unreliable practice of profiling, and his reference point is the public's completely unfair prejudice against pit bulls, some of the sweetest dogs ever (when they're not abused) and one of my favorite breeds. i'm going to read it on the 14th, 'cause it's more romantic that way, but you should feel free to dive into it now.

** pun absolutely intended.