I am Kyle's self-indulgence

This is awesome.

The guy impersonating Owen Wilson is spot-on.

The other night I was putting Daniel to bed. We went through our typical routine of bath and pajamas, and I gave him the choice of going to the bathroom right then or after reading a book (I've learned from experience this works best when presented as a choice). Daniel chose book first, so we read Green Eggs and Ham.

After the book I said, "Okay, it's time to go to the bathroom now."

"But I don't want to go to the bathroom."

"You told me you were going to go to the bathroom after our book."

"But I don't need to go to the bathroom."

"I would like you to try."

We went back and forth a few more times, him insisting he didn't want to go, and me insisting he should. Finally, Daniel relented:

"Daddy, if you will let me be, I will go to the bathroom."

(If you don't get the reference, go back and reread the ending to Green Eggs and Ham)

I love Honey Bunches of Oats. Unfortunately, so do my two kids, and if I pour myself a bowl in the morning I end up having to share it with my hungry little vultures. After two or three days of this my cereal is gone.

So lately I've begun rationing my Honey Bunches of Oats and eating it only on days when I'm up and getting ready for work but the kids are still in bed.

This week, on such a morning, I finished a box off and left it out on the counter. When Daniel came out to the kitchen and saw the box, he said, "Did you get your special cereal?"

"Yes."

"I want some of your special cereal."

"I'm sorry. It's all gone."

"Did you eat it all?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Do you remember one time you were soooo sick and you throwed up in the toilet?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to do that again?"

"No."

"Then next time don't eat all the cereal."

A photographer for National Geographic did a project in which he marked out an area of one cubic foot of space in various ecosystems and documented all the species found just in that space. It's pretty amazing.

Check out the videos here.

Popular Mechanics published their list of 100 things every man (or woman?) should know. What can I do?

1. Handle a blowout. I've never had to deal with one, but the tips listed are pretty much what I would have assumed. Step 1: calmly pull over on the shoulder. Step 2: Change tire.

2. Drive in snow. I've been doing this pretty much since my 16th birthday.

5. Wax a car. My mom made me wax my car once. Once. I know how to do it, I just choose not to.

7. Use a stick welder. This is a skill I picked up while assisting in my capacity as a special ed teacher. I know what to do, but I've never done it for any practical purpose, and I don't imagine I ever will.

10-12. Perform the heimlich, Reverse hypothermia, and Perform hands-only CPR. I was certified to do these things for a number of years. I'm counting on that training to come back instinctually should I ever need it.

13. Escape a sinking car. Seems simple enough. I take comfort in the fact that I still drive a car with a manual window crank.

15. Use a sewing machine. Another skill I learned while teaching special ed students.

18. Remove blood stains from fabric. Parenting has made me a master of all stains. Blood is easy. The secret is cold water.

19. Move heavy stuff. Yeah, I've done that.

39. Change a diaper. I could do it half-asleep, with my eyes closed, at 2:00 in the morning (and I have).

40. Grill with charcoal. I don't use the same technique the article describes, but I think I do it pretty well.

43-45. Treat frostbite, Treat a burn, Help a seizure victim. More first aid stuff I learned years ago as a lifeguard. I've never had to use it, but I think I know what to do in an emergency.

47. Remove a tick. I always heard the "burn it off" method, but I figured out on my own that doesn't work. Tweezers work way better, and my dogs have given me way more practice than I need.

61. Surviving a tornado. Having grown up in the Midwest, this was practically pounded into my brain. I even had the opportunity to practice recently.

67. Change a tire. Yep.

70. Drive a stick shift. My wife taught me. It's all I drive now.

71. Parallel park. Please. Give me a challenge.

73. Tie a necktie. I do a passable job. Mostly I get them tied in a good knot once and leave them that way.

75. Ride a bike. Really? That's on the list? I suppose every man needs to know how to tie his own shoes, but I think that pretty much goes without saying.

76. Install a graphics card. I was doing that in high school.

80. Ditch your hard drive. I have a program that overwrites the drive 35 times.

Thank you PHSChemGuy for the idea.

I love stuff like this.

This week NPR featured a fascinating three-part story about problems with the bail system in America.

Part 1 and Part 2 deal with the inequality faced by defendants who can't afford to pay bail, and Part 3 gets into the business of bail bondsmen and a bail system that serves them and nobody else.

It's the third part I found most interesting. A couple of revelations that surprised me: most defendants who skip bail are caught NOT by bail bondsmen and their bounty hunters, but by sheriff's offices; and when a defendant fails to show up to court, bail bondsmen still do not have to pay the full bail, and sometimes still pay less than the fee they themselves collected.

From the news story the bail bondsmen system seems like a relic of the past that no longer serves the courts, the public, or inmates, but is perpetuated by a powerful bondsmen lobby.

10. One Foot In The Grave Deluxe
Normally I don't consider re-releases in my top ten lists, but the deluxe edition of One Foot In The Grave that came out this year goes above and beyond what is typical for these things. It features 16 tracks not included on the original album. Even if you take into account those that were released as B-sides or on compilations, it still leaves 12 songs that have never been heard before. They're mostly great songs, too. They're lo-fi acoustic folk recordings, but so is the original release. That's part of the reason it remains one of my favorite Beck allbums.

9. Up
Maybe I've just developed unrealistically high expectations for Pixar, but this year's Up didn't impress me quite as much as some of their other recent films. The first act is flawless with its silent montage of a man's entire life and the fantastic premise that could potentially take the film literally anywhere. It's a little baffling, then, that the filmmakers chose to take their protagonists straight to their destination in a matter of minutes, then spent the entire third act having them walk the final several hundred feet. I like movies to have unexpected turns, but this just seemed to not live up to the promising set-up. I'm also not too keen on the standard hero vs. villain conflict that emerges in the third act. Despite these faults, Up is still a great movie: the characters are warm, the talking dogs are funny, and I like the old man's personal revelation at the end; I just think the movie could have been much more. Still, even a so-so Pixar movie is good enough to rank among the year's best.

8. Beck.com
Beck's official website was revamped this year with a dearth of new and archival material. It's still not as navigable as I would like (and features the hated mystery-meat links), but if you're willing to do some digging you'll find music videos, live performances, album pages with (for the first time ever in print) authoritative lyrics and streaming audio, interviews with other famous figures (check out a surreal conversation between Beck and Tom Waits), and lot of other random weirdness.

The best thing about the site's new content, though, is the Record Club, a series of projects in which Beck and assorted guest musicians spend one day to cover an entire classic album with no rehearsals. These recordings are a return to the loose, spontaneous spirit of Beck's earliest albums, which I love. The results tend to be a little hit-or-miss, but there are enough great performances to make listening worthwhile. I recommend checking out "Venus in Furs" and "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye."

At Beck.com the songs are available only as streaming video, but fan-made mp3 rips can be found. Here are the completed covers of The Velvet Underground and Nico and The Songs of Leonard Cohen, plus a solo acoustic recording of Beck's most recent studio album, Modern Guilt. Beck.com is currently in the process of releasing Skip Spence's Oar, as performed by Beck and Wilco.

7. The BQE
Sometimes it feels like Sufjan Stevens is purposely teasing his fans. After announcing plans to record an album for each of the 50 states in the union, he followed up the greatest album of the decade with a full-length disc of outtakes, a box set of previously bootlegged Christmas music, and now an album of original music that is an instrumental soundtrack to a film about a divided highway. In case it weren't obvious that Sufjan is just going to do whatever the heck he wants, he recently admitted in an interview that the whole 50 States idea was just a gimmick he made up after Illinois came out, and that he has no intentions to fulfill his promise. Although nobody ever believed he would really record 50 albums, hearing him admit the deception actually helps me to relax a bit and enjoy these other projects as more than stops along the way.

So anyway, how is The BQE? Musically it's very good. I still would prefer something with vocals and more rock and folk instruments, but this is quite nice to listen to. It has all the bombast, quietness, and weirdness we've come to expect. The movie that accompanies the music is surprisingly good too. It's nothing but shots of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, but is edited in a collage style that lays three simultaneous screens side by side. The effect is oddly mesmerizing and quite interesting at times.

The DVD and CD set is supplemented with a View-Master disk (you'll have to borrow your kids' View-Master to see it) and a booklet with an essay by Sufjan Stevens. The DVD also includes after the credits two bonus songs: one that is an unnamed electronic noise jam and a beautiful new song (with vocals!) called "The Sleeping Red Wolves." So while The BQE isn't the new album fans have been anxiously waiting for, it is a lovely little assortment of wonders.

6. The Cartoon History of the Modern World, Part 2
Over thirty years after starting, Larry Gonick published the the final volume of his Cartoon History series. It began as The Cartoon History of the Universe, then continued as The Cartoon History of the Modern World in the last two volumes. The final book continues with the winning formula of the rest of the series: very brief summaries of major events with cartoon illustrations and jokes. It's great for filling in the gaps of history that I really don't know much about (I finally understand something about the political state of the world before World War I) and even illuminates a few points about more recent history that I didn't know, such as Iraq's stated reason for invading Kuwait in 1990.

I was also impressed with Gonick's relative objectivity in this book. The previous volume, written in the midst of the Iraq war, tended to look at past events through the lens of Bush-era politics. This book, though, tends to deal with historical events strictly within their own contexts. And while Gonick certainly has his own biases (as all historians do) I think he addresses the political issues of the modern world pretty fairly, even when he gets to the conflict between capitalism and socialism.

This is a great end to a great series of books. Obviously a cartoon history of all of existence is bound to be rather superficial, and as Gonick catches up to recent events it becomes a bit more obvious how compressed his history is (the Iraq war is addressed in just two or three panels), but if you want a survey of history that is informative and entertaining you can't do much better than this.

5. Dark Night of the Soul
Danger Mouse teamed up with Sparklehorse to write and record an album with a wide range of guests. Due to a dispute with EMI, the resultant album may never be released, but you can still stream it at NPR (I'm not sure how they managed that legally) or download it through extra-legal channels.

Normally Sparklehorse's music is a little too flat for my taste, but all the special guests help to make Dark Night of the Soul a dynamic and very enjoyable album. Of course I recommend "Revenge," one of the strongest songs to feature The Flaming Lips in recent years. "Angel's Harp" with Frank Black (or Black Francis) and "Pain" with Iggy Pop are also terrific. With no commercial copy for sale and the creators encouraging fans to download it, there's no reason not to try it for free.

4. Wait For Me
It seems that 2009 was a year of renewal for several of my favorite musicians. I first fell in love with Moby when he released Play ten years ago, but his next several releases after that were disappointing. 18 and Hotel seemed like radio-friendly imitations of what worked on Play, and Last Night is just not at all my cup of tea.

Moby has acknowledged that during this time he often followed the wishes of record company executives against his own better judgment. Then he heard David Lynch say in a speech that creators do best when they are left alone to do what they feel is good, rather than consider market pressures. Moby then decided to make the kind of album he wanted, alone in his home. The result is the best music he's recorded since Play. It is a very quiet and personal album, and it captures the more gentle bits of Everything Is Wrong and Play. For me this is the musical equivalent of wrapping up in a warm blanket.

3. Where The Wild Things Are
I had very high expectations of this film and it was still better than I expected. Spike Jonze does a fantastic job of making blending computer with practical effects to make Max's monsters into believable characters. I love that their personalities reflect the way that kids really think and act. I know that some people thought the story lacks direction, but I thought it was entirely appropriate. Kids are unpredictable: one minute they're laughing and having a great time with a dirt clod fight, and the next they're fighting and yelling at each other because someone's head got stepped on. This is a nice change of pace from movies that just treat children as little adults who think and act rationally. It's ironic that the most realistic children's interaction I've seen in a film in recent memory come from actors in giant fur suits with CG faces.

2. The Hazards of Love
Concept albums have gotten a bad rep in recent years, and a lot of bands try to avoid the label, even when their fans try to interpret their work conceptually. I don't see any objective reason, though, that a 12-to-15-track collection of music can't carry a narrative just as easily as writing or film. After all, music itself began as a way to tell stories. This also happens to be what The Decemberists have been doing with their music, making little stories into songs. On the Tain and The Crane Wife they even told a longer story over multiple tracks, so it was probably inevitable that they would eventually go for a full-length album built around a fairy tale. It's my favorite Decemberists album yet: it has an engaging story, an interesting cast of characters (with corresponding guest vocals) and absolutely flawless songwriting. I know that one complaint people sometimes have about concept albums is that songs that work within the larger context don't really hold up on their own. That is not at all the case here. With the exception of the instrumental prelude, I think any of the songs can easily be enjoyed individually. Within the story, though, they take on even greater emotional power as they build toward the emotional climax.

1. Embryonic
The Flaming Lips have made a career of reinventing themselves, from their early freak-out punk days, to the effects-driven guitar rock of the 90s, to the totally unexpected orchestral space-pop of the past decade. After releasing three albums in that last incarnation, there was a sense that they were marking time, which is death for a band that makes its business to be experimental. So they went into the studio and recorded an album unlike any before.

For starters, they brought Kliph Scurlock, their touring drummer, into the studio for the first time (for years Stephen Drozd played drums and the majority of other instruments when recording). Instead of recording prewritten material, the band spent time just jamming in-studio and chased after whatever hook or fragment interested them. Somehow they grew and assembled these bits into enough songs to fill out a double album. The result is something that is new and original, yet unmistakably The Flaming Lips. It's noisy, adventurous, and rough, which is a refreshing change after the polished production of their last two albums.

Tuesday iTunes released The Dark Side of the Moon, as interpreted by The Flaming Lips and Wayne Coyne's nephew's band, Stardeath and White Dwarfs. This is the same team-up that recorded an amazing version of Madonna's Borderline earlier this year, and their performance of Pink Floyd's classic doesn't disappoint either.

It's clearly an homage to the original recording, but that doesn't stop the bands from making it their own, working in a lot more noisy distortion, weird audio samples, and just different stylistic choices. Even though I've heard Pink Floyd's album at least 50 times, the covered songs are so different at times that I had to listen carefully to recognize what it was. Of course, songs with an immediately recognizable melody like "Money" are hard to disguise, though not for want of trying, with an electronic bleep intro and a half-whispered, half-distorted vocal track.

I wasn't sure how a cover version of a full album would turn out in this case, especially one as class as The Dark Side of the Moon, but I am very impressed with the result. Those who regard Pink Floyd's album as a sacred artifact that should never be touched may want to avoid this release, but those who listen to it with an open mind and a spirit of adventure will be greatly rewarded.

The Dark Side of the Moon by The Flaming Lips & Stardeath and White Dwarfs is available now on iTunes and will available through other online retailers next week.

This has been a great decade for comics. The much-hyped maturation of comics in the mid-1980s resulted not in greater sophistication, but greater violence and sexuality with the same juvenile stories throughout most of the 1990s. But after that, gradually, things shifted. Perhaps it's because new writers and artists emerged who grew up on Frank Miller and Alan Moore or because the comics audience itself was growing older and more mature, but suddenly mainstream comics stopped sucking. The stories got more interesting, the dialogue was more realistic, and characters' body proportions actually began to resemble something at least approximating normal human anatomy.

On the indie side of things there has been improvement as well. Independent comics have always been the place to look for innovation and fresh ideas, but in the age of the Internet they have gained much more exposure and influence over the mainstream, with many talented writers and artists crossing over to both worlds.

Out of this environment came a number of great works that rank not just among the best of the decade, but the best of the modern comics era. Here are my ten favorites.

10. The World's Greatest Super-heroes by Paul Dini and Alex Ross
This is a slipcased hardcover collection of short stories, first published individually in an oversized format, written by Paul Dini and illustrated by Alex Ross. I think Ross's style of painting, both realistic and larger-than-life, is best when he is working on stories that evoke the innocence of golden- and silver-age comics, which is precisely what you get here. The four primary stories in this collection, not technically comics, but illustrations with written captions, each deal with a classic version of one of DC's big heroes struggling with some problem of the real world. Superman tries to solve world hunger, Wonder Woman struggles to get beyond the cultural barriers between her and the women she is trying to protect, Batman fights the root causes of crime in Gotham, and Captain Marvel deals with the abusive father of a boy he has met in the hospital. In each case the hero gains some new wisdom about his or her own limitations and role as a hero.

Rounding out the collection are a series of brief origins of DC's classic heroes and a comic (the only true comic in the book) about the Justice League that is in keeping with the tone of the original four stories. The lessons are stated pretty overtly and the style tends toward the sentimental, but I think it works. The book captures the innocence and sincerity of these classic heroes, but with a modern sensibility. It would make a great introduction to the superheroes for readers of all ages.

9. Daredevil by Brian Micael Bendis and Alex Maleev
It's hard to imagine where Daredevil would be new without Brian Michael Bendis. During the late 90s the series suffered in quality and, presumably, sales and Marvel gave it a reboot in 1998. The first issues of the new series were an improvement over what came before, but still fairly standard superhero fare, even with stories written by Kevin Smith and David Mack, and drawn by Joe Quesada.

But then, after having done an earlier four-issue arc with David Mack, Brian Michael Bendis took over full-time writing duties, starting with issue #26 and continuing for four years and roughly 50 issues. His writing on the book marked an immediate change in tone for the book, with emphasis on strong characterization and snappy dialogue, a cinematic feel inspired by Scorsese, Tarantino, and Mamet, and a return to noir-style crime stories. Illustrating a bulk of Bendis' run was Alex Maleev who helped establish a gritty and realistic (at times photorealistic) look to the series.

The actual storylines are not revolutionary and owe a great debt to Frank Miller's work on the series, with the Kingpin, Bullseye, Elektra, and Gladiator figuring prominently. But with Bendis' gift for character development and natural-sounding dialogue, and Maleev's excellent artwork the series was more fun to read than it had been in many years.

8. Planetary by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday
Warren Ellis's Planetary follows three super-powered beings who claim to be archaeologists of Earth's secret past, and whose investigations unearth remnants of Godzilla-like monsters, obsolete superheroes, alien civilizations, and all manner of characters that resemble familiar characters of science fiction. It's a neat set-up that is used to comment directly on the nature of mainstream comics and pulp fiction.

The series represents Ellis's best writing and is hampered only by an over-reliance on specific references to, and characters from, other comics. Any weaknesses, however, are more than made up for by the otherwise great stories and the breathtaking artwork of John Cassaday. Just take a look at these pages from the Planetary/Batman crossover.


7. All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
I don't like Superman. I can appreciate that he was the first superhero and will likely always be considered the best for that fact alone, but I find him terribly boring. He's too powerful and his character is too pure and good to generate that many interesting stories. I'm also not a big fan of Grant Morrison. I feel like much of his writing is purposely obscure and strange without any real point behind it. It's odd, then, that I enjoyed All-Star Superman as much as I did. In fact, it may be the best Superman story I've ever read.

Morrison's series begins with Superman being supercharged with the yellow solar radiation that gives him his abilities, making him more powerful than ever, but also threatening to destroy him on a cellular level. With Superman's days numbered, the rest of the series is like a tour of the long, campy history of Superman, complete with Bizarro, a new kind of kryptonite with transformative powers, a metamorphosed Jimmy Olsen, a superpowered Lois, and more. There are lots of references that comic book geeks will immediately recognize, but it's also accessible to the uninitiated. Because the story takes place outside the DC Universe, it doesn't get bogged down in continuity issues and long character histories. All the characters are presented as if for the first time. It's a fresh, bright take on Superman that pays homage to the past but also feels new and fresh.

6. In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman
In the years immediately following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks a great number of artistic responses emerged. Most of them will probably be forgotten, bound as they are to a specific time, but I like to think that Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers will endure longer than others. For one thing, it remains Spiegelman's only volume of new work after the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus.

Also, Spiegelman copes with the trauma of the attacks and his rage over America's political response by looking back to American comics of the early 1900s. The format of the book is modeled after those full-page Sunday strips: each huge two-page is oriented vertically (like the towers) and contains a range of gags and commentaries from Spiegelman that capture the contradictions and conflicting emotions that arose from that momentous day. Spiegelman's work is both intimately private and broadly communal; it is bitterly critical of America and loyally defensive of it.

5. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill
I think what I love most about Alan Moore's League is how it rewards rereading. The first time I read through the primary volumes I was only interested in the main stories: a collection of Victorian-era heroes and monsters teams up to save England from a mysterious villain and, later, a Martian invasion. As expected from Mr. Moore, these are stories are told with impeccable plotting and fascinating characterization. The emergence of the non-super-powered Mina Harker as the series' strongest character is a particulary inspired move.

In the first two volumes Alan Moore supplements these core comics stories with extras like a serialized short story (volume 1) and an extensive Almanac of fictional places from throughout literature (volume 2). At first these seemed superfluous, and I confess I gave up reading the Almanac after the first several pages.

It wasn't until I read The Black Dossier (itself more a lengthy collection of "extra" material than a full comics story) with the essential Jess Nevins annotations and saw reference after reference after reference to events in the Almanac that I realized there is a story there that tells the adventures of Mina and Allan after the Martian invasion. This, combined with The Black Dossier itself, outlines a much longer and richer history of the League than is revealed in the comics stories, and introduces characters and story elements that are still being developed in the Century series.

4. Pictures That Tick by Dave McKean
While I appreciate good artwork in a comic and even recognize that it is an important factor in good storytelling, I generally don't read comics for the art. I read them for the writing, and I pick what I read based on who the writer is.

My primary exception to this rule is Dave McKean. I will read, watch, or look at anything with his name on it. It doesn't hurt that throughout his career he has chosen only great writers to work with (most often Neil Gaiman), but he also creates a good deal of solo work, much of which is collected in Pictures That Tick.

This volume is a good representation of the full gamut of McKean's artwork: ink drawings, paintings, mixed media, photography (with and without photoshopping), and various combinations of them all. His comics aren't always easy to understand, but that's okay: I get the impression that they are often more about experimenting with interesting visuals or setting a mood than about telling a clear story. But that's not to say he doesn't know how to tell a good story when he wants to. "His Story" is a fairly straightforward autobiographical essay about a story McKean's father told him when he was little, accompanied by the visual metaphor of a shard of class working its way into the boy's mind. It sounds weird, but it works.

Even when the comics are not entirely straightforward (like the wordless "Eye", whose title is not actually the word "eye" but a drawing of a human eye), they are still a delight to read simply for Dave McKean's artwork. This is a book that I consider less a group of stories and more a work of visual art. The very book itself, personally designed by McKean from front to back, is a beautifully crafted art object and is my most treasured book in my collection. For years it was very difficult to find, but it has recently been released in paperback, so it can be enjoyed by anyone.

3. Promethea by Alan Moore and J.H. Williams III
Alan Moore has said that his purpose in creating Promethea was to hook readers with a Wonder Woman-like mythical super-heroine, and then hope at least some of those readers stay on as he turns the series into an outlet for his philosophy of magic. It becomes a very challenging read once the protagonist leaves the physical world to embark on an abstractly intellectual tour of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, and I'm not sure how many readers Moore lost in the process, but those who stick around are treated to the most experimental comics of Alan Moore's career.

I still don't know how he managed some of it, like issue #12, each page of which is based on one of cards of the Tarot deck, with accompanying anagrams for Promethea, historical pictures of Aleister Crowley, and a running joke across the bottom of each page, all of which connect back to the theme of the page; or the final issue, #32, which is a summative essay on magic and language that can physically be dismantled and reassembled as two large posters, and that retains a logical structure however it is read.

I can't imagine this working in any other medium. J.H. Williams's artwork illuminates Moore's more difficult ideas and dazzles the reader throughout what, in prose, would be an unforgivably tedious departure from the main storyline. So while Promethea lacks the efficient and concise storytelling of Alan Moore's other masterpieces, its innovative experimentation makes it his best work of this decade.

2. Blankets by Craig Thompson
I feel about autobiographical comics the same as I do about superhero comics: there are way too many, most of them are crap, but occasionally you read an exceptional work that is totally original and transcends the genre. Blankets is such a comic.

I'm sure at least part of the reason I love it is that I can relate to it so well. Blankets is about a boy raised in a Midwestern conservative Christian household coming of age during his last year of high school. It's mostly about Thompson's first love and heartbreak, but in the end it also gets into his shedding of his parents' beliefs.

Thompson's delicate artwork draws the reader into the emotional inner world of his adolescence and elicits tremendous empathy for his characters. Thompson's girlfriend is rendered with such young grace and beauty that the reader falls achingly in love with her right along with the protagonist.

Blankets is nearly flawless in conception and presentation, and deserves its place among the absolute best graphic novels of all time.

1. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid On Earth by Chris Ware
Although most of the story was serialized mostly during the 1990s, Jimmy Corrigan wasn't finished and collected as a single volume until 2000, so I'm counting it. Besides, the graphic novel format is how most people experienced it for the first time.

Despite his status as one of the most important comics creators today, Chris Ware's praise often comes with a qualifier. Even the critics who like him tend to celebrate his technical skill, original visual style, and experiments with form, but criticize the content of his stories. I will do nothing of the sort. I think Jimmy Corrigan is an unqualified masterpiece. In real life people don't always achieve reconciliation, they don't alwayas learn valuable lessons from their experiences, and they often just go on with their mundane and unhappy lives.

Despite the gloom, there is a lot to love in this graphic novel. Ware tells the story of three generations of James Corrigans, intercutting between two main stories: the most recent Corrigan, Jimmy, is invited to meet his father for the first time over Thanksgiving; and 100 years previously, Jimmy's grandfather, James Corrigan, struggles to have a relationship with his abusive father in the weeks and months leading up to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. James's loneliness stands in contrast with the majesty of the exposition (gorgeously rendered by Ware's geometric drawings), right up to the heartbreaking climax.

In the present day, the setting of the characters' lives is also integral to their stories. Ware perfectly captures the look and feel of a dull Midwestern town in winter, which accentuates the awkwardness of trying to communicate with a father who is a total stranger.

As mundane as this all seems, by the end of the book the reader has the feeling of having undertaken a great journey. And although Jimmy seems little changed, there is a sense that something important has happened, and that, as in real life, the effects are not immediately apparent but are there nonetheless.

The Reprints
One rule I set for myself in making this list was that I could only choose works that were originally published (including at least a majority of the series) during the last decade. This means no reprinted material. However, I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention two essential collections that came out during this decade.

Absolute Sandman by Neil Gaiman and various
DC has released a wealth of material in their Absolute format in the last several years, some of which has been great and some of which has been disappointingly identical to their standard releases (but bigger). There's little doubt, though, that no other volumes can compare with what was done with Sandman. The first entire volume completely recolored the original art in a way that dramatically enhances the story, and all four volumes boast copious amounts of bonus material, including a couple of stories that have been reprinted nowhere else. This is how Sandman needs to be read.

Akira (Dark Horse Reprints) by Katsuhiro Otomo
This decade also saw the first publication of Akira in English, which still surprises me, considering the importance of the Akira movie in American culture. And even though I had seen the film many times, the manga series still blew me away when I finally got to read it. With incredible artwork and an epic story that dwarfs the movie but still manages to be cohesive, it's a crime that this was unavailable in America for so long, and an even greater crime that it went back out of print. Fortunately, I've just learned that Random House is in the process of bringing it back in a new edition.

Tom Tomorrow has had some great comics recently contrasting the real Obama with the imaginary Obama, but I think this one really nails it.

This was both the easiest and the hardest to compile of all my "Best of the Aughts" lists: easy because I had so few books to choose from, and hard because I quickly began to question whether I could legitimately claim that these are the best books of the decade, even in my opinion. My problem is that I just don't read very much contemporary prose literature. I read plenty of great books over the last ten years. It's just that most of them were not written this decade.

But the point of all these lists isn't necessarily to establish the greatest works of the decade, but merely the ones that had the most profound impact on me personally. So with that in mind, I present my list: the Best Prose Books of the Aughts.

Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon
As a reader I really like to challenge myself to read works that tend toward the avant-garde and the difficult. It was probably inevitable, then, that I would eventually give Thomas Pynchon a crack. I started with the then-brand-new Against the Day, and blogged the whole experience. http://www.brendoman.com/kyle?s=against+the+day+pynchon&sentence=AND&submit=Search
Since I've already written so much I won't go back to revisit it, except to say that overall it was an enjoyable book, albeit a very long one. I plan to read all of Pynchon's book someday, but I have yet to read another. I'm just waiting for the right combination of ambition and free time.

Teacher Man by Frank McCourt
Frank McCourt's third and final memoir is all about his career as a teacher, from his start teaching working-class kids to his retirement and the start of his new career as a successful writer. As an English teacher myself, I found it to be fun to read because I recognize so many of the problems McCourt dealt with, and also encouraging to know that he was not a great teacher from the start, but that he learned from his mistakes. I think that was an important thing for me to see during my own first two years of teaching English to working-class kids.

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Defining economics broadly, Levitt and Dubner use scientific statistical methods to describe and explain a bizarre range of human behavior. Some of my favorite chapters are the ones that prove teachers in Chicago cheat for their students on standardized tests, outline the organizational structure of a street gang (which, interestingly, looks a lot like a fast food chain), and make the very provocative claim that decreased crime in the 1990s is mostly a result of Roe v. Wade. On the latter point, the authors stress that they are making no moral or political argument, but are merely attempting to account for the truth. This objective, scientific approach to a diverse range of unusual questions makes Freakonomics an essential read.

The Universe In A Nutshell by Stephen Hawking
Theoretical physics fascinates me, although I don't pretend to understand more than a small fraction of it. The most helpful and enjoyable book I've read on the subject is this one. The low per-page word count, concise writing, and numerous color illustrations and diagrams help me to read it at such a pace that I can mostly follow what Hawking is saying, although I still get lost when he starts mentioning Branes, and what I do understand of it blows my mind.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman
I haven't read American Gods since it came out in 2001, back when my only exposure to Neil Gaiman was through his comics. I read almost the whole book in one sitting, on a 20-hour bus ride to Florida in the middle of winter, and something about watching the landscape fly past the window resonated with Shadow's mythical journey across America. This is familiar territory for those who have read Sandman: a world in which all gods and mythical figures physically exist and draw their power from the beliefs of their followers. Gaiman writes it very well, though, and has some new things to say about the waning power of these gods and what the new gods are in a modern America.

Everyday Apocalypse by David Dark
My approach to Christianity has changed considerably over the past 5-10 years, and there are certain ideas and assumptions that I take for granted now that seemed revolutionary to me just five years ago. http://www.brendoman.com/kyle/2004/06/14/everyday_apocalypse So when I think about the book Everyday Apocalypse and its proposition that spiritual Truth can be found in the best of "secular" popular culture, that in fact, any separation of religious and secular is artificial, my gut reaction is "Well, duh." It seems so obvious now. I think that's a tribute to the influence David Dark's book (and its follow-up, The Gospel According To America) has had on my worldview.

America (The Book) by Jon Stewart and The Daily Show
Next to The Onion's Our Dumb Century, America (The Book) is one of the most hilarious works of political satire I've ever read. Done in the style of a Civics textbook gives the authors room to mock American history, contemporary politics, and school textbooks themselves. I also think this was the first audiobook I ever listened to (performed by Jon Stewart and the cast of The Daily Show), which made for a very entertaining drive to Chicago. Here's one of my favorite bits:

Warren G. Harding: Our Worst President by Stephen Colbert

Historians debate feverishly over who is the best president in American history. However, there is little disagreement over who was the worst. His name was Warren G. Harding (1921-1923), and he sucked.

The reasons why he sucked are many and, to be truthful, have been widely catalogued in the annals of presidential history. So, with your indulgence, I'd like to focus instead on the intensity of his sucking.

Warren G. Harding was a worthless piece of s***. F*** him. His presidency was a taint, not just in the sense of a "stain on the office," but literally a taint--the anatomical area between the anus and the testicles. I hate Warren G. Harding.

To this day, every time I hear the name Warren G. Harding I can hear Stephen Colbert slowly slowly enunciating "I hate Warren G. Harding."

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
During my senior year in college I wrote a paper about the modern adult-oriented trend in American comics, and whenever I would talk about it with people in my writing class I would hear, "Have you read Kavalier and Clay?" I had not, and I didn't have much desire to read it: I was much more interested in good contemporary comics than a prose novel that take a nostalgic look at Golden Age of American comic books. Still, enough people brought it up that I decided I ought to give it a try.

What struck me at first was how well-researched the novel was: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is about a pair of fictional comics creators, but some very specific elements of their characters are obviously inspired by their real-life counterparts: Siegel, Shuster, Kirby, Lee, Eisner, etc. Plus, the world they work in and the course of events are very true to the history of American comics.

Chabon does great things with this set-up. He is a masterful writer who elicits powerful empathy in the reader. It's been about seven years since I read the book, and I don't recall much about Chabon's specific writing style or even all the events of the story, but I have very vivid memories of how it feels to inhabit the world of his novel: I can still see and smell the office of Amazing Midget Radio Comics and the abandoned Antarctic cabin. It's this quality of description and characterization, paired with Chabon's sincere love of comics and genre fiction, that has made him one of my favorite living writers.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
I just can't say enough good things about Gaiman's recent all-ages novel. It has a simple premise: orphan boy raised by ghosts; but it's written so well that each self-contained chapter is an absolute delight to read. This is a book that I hated to finish, not because the ending is sad (and it is), but because I, as a reader, do not want to have to leave the characters and the world they inhabit. My favorite character by far is Silas. He's the type of character, like Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, who is lovable but also very dangerous, and who you're just glad is on the right side. I think The Graveyard Book has the potential to be a new children's classic. I'm certainly looking forward to reading it with my kids.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic masterpiece is the most engaging and heart-wrenching book I have read in recent memory. The premise is that some global catastrophe has killed all plant life, and therefore all animals that survive on plants, and so on up the food chain until, when the book opens, the only living creatures left are people. In this world a man and his son struggle for survival, scavenging for what food they can find without being eaten themselves. This description really doesn't do justice, though, to the real heart of the novel: the relationship between father and son and the desperate empathy they evoke in the reader.

Once I began reading The Road I didn't want to stop even to sleep because I couldn't bear to leave the characters in such dire circumstances. It's not that there is a lot of action or new threats constantly popping up: it's that the characters are so close to starvation and so vulnerable in this lawless world that something as simple as walking down an abandoned highway and seeing another figure far off in the distance takes on a nail-biting suspense.

The hopelessness of the characters' situation is so unrelenting that, in the one moment when they have a very brief respite, when they are actually able to fill their stomachs and sleep safely for the night, I felt a great relief and and could finally put the book down and get some sleep myself.

Why read a book that is so hopelessly and utterly grim from beginning to end? In the midst of all this darkness, of a nightmare world in which it seems the only survivors are the very worst of humanity, there is a single shining spark in this father and son, determined to not just survive, but survive without resorting to murder and cannibalism. I have to admit that several times during the course of the book, I questioned why they even bother. There is no hope of rescue in this novel, no chance that the human race can recover from this. Everyone is just delaying the inevitable extinction that will come when all food is gone.

It reminds me of what Wayne Coyne said about the song "Evil Will Prevail": to recognize that evil really will win out in the end and that there is no reward for those who do good, but to choose to do good anyway is a noble and beautiful thing.

Every once in a while I read something or see something or hear something that so specifically addresses my experiences and interests that you feel it was written just for me. This morning on the way to work I heard a story on the radio that was tailored in such a way that, as the story unravelled, each detail brought me new joys.

NPR's Morning Edition introduced this piece as part of an Open Mic program, in which a famous individual takes a turn as an interviewer. This morning that individual was Neil Gaiman (joy!) talking about audiobooks. He began with an ancient recording of Walt Whitman reading his own work (joy! joy!) as an introduction to how he loves hearing writers read their own work aloud. Gaiman's first interviewee in the story is David Sedaris (joy! joy! joy!), a man well-known for his oral readings.

To explain my personal response, I've recently (in the past several years) discovered the joys of hearing an author read his/her own work aloud, and my two favorite examples of writers who do it well are Neil Gaiman and David Sedaris. In fact, I've never even read a print edition of one of Sedaris's books: I've only heard his audiobooks, because I love they way he performs them.

This was a great way to start my drive to work this morning.

15. Little Miss Sunshine
I know that the quirky dysfunctional family independent film genre is starting to get a little bit stale, but this utterly original movie avoids the usual pitfalls with believable and endearing characters, and a story that entertains from start to finish. It's just a very enjoyable film to watch and rewatch.

14. The Dark Knight
I've already said everything I can and should about this. If you really want to, you can read it here.

13. Donnie Darko
This is a true cult film whose success was propelled mostly by talk of it on the Internet. Thus, anything I have to say about it would probably be redundant. I will say that it deserves whatever praise it's received (despite the unfortunate Director's Cut that ruined some key ambiguity) simply for being a story that nobody has ever told before.

12. Where The Wild Things Are
I just saw this two weeks ago. Is it too soon to say that it's one of the best movies of the decade? I don't think so. I have about half a review of this that I started writing but haven't really gotten around to finish. The gist of it is that Where the Wild Things Are does a great job of capturing the reality of childhood, with all its pain and confusion and illogic (to borrow from Bill Watterson, anyone who is nostalgic about childhood doesn't remember what it was really like). I'm looking forward to watching this with the kids when they're a few years older.

11. Dancer in the Dark
It's strange: I think Dancer in the Dark is the only movie on this list that I have not watched multiple times, yet it's still very vivid in my memory. That says something, considering it's also the oldest movie on my list (I really do need to finally just buy a copy and watch it again). I once had a professor of theater appreciation say that it's impossible to make a musical that is a tragedy (something about the inherent spectacle and unreality of musicals). He said the only one that comes close is Sweeney Todd. I would argue that Dancer in the Dark pulls it off. It's a true musical with overture, song and dance numbers, and everything, but the musical parts of it all take place in the protagonist's imagination, as a way to escape the harsh, gray reality of her life, which makes the tragedy even more tragic.

10. Punch-Drunk Love
It's hard to say why I like this movie. I saw it again recently after not watching since it came out, and while I realized that I had forgotten a lot of the story, there were a lot of interesting visuals that had stayed with me: the piano in the street; the table full of pudding cups; Barry driving for hours to confront an enemy and arriving with his phone still in hand, cord dangling. I also vividly remembered the tension I felt watching a love story with this violent and emotionally unstable character, and genuinely not knowing if the story would end in happiness or catastrophe. I think the movie is also notable for featuring Adam Sandler in his first dramatic role, and, I would argue, his best performance to date.

9. The Man Who Wasn't There
Probably the Coen Brothers' most underrated film, The Man Who Wasn't There followed the hugely successful O Brother, Where Art Thou? but had a very limited release. The general plot is typical Coen Brothers: a barber tries to make some money by blackmailing the man who's having an affair with his wife, but things go wrong, blame is misplaced, etc. As usual, the beauty is in the way the story is told--in this case, as a 1950s noir film. It has beautiful black and white cinematography and a minimalist performance by Billy Bob Thronton, who spends most of the film staring silently and smoking cigarettes.

8. The Incredibles
My favorite recent comment about the Incredibles was from the person (whose name I can't remember) who said that The Incredibles is the best Fantastic Four movie ever made. Truly, it is everything those actual live-action FF movies should have been: a fun, adventurous, smart superhero film with a close-knit family at its center. It immediately became my favorite Pixar movie, and it still ranks high up, just under another Brad Bird production.

7. About Schmidt
I feel a special affinity for Alexander Payne because he's a fellow Nebraskan and the only director I know of who depicts my home state in a way that is realistic without being overly negative, and affectionate without being overly sentimental. I'm convinced that if you want to see what Omaha, Nebraska is really like all you need to do is watch About Schmidt. I'd like to think, though, that even if I weren't from Nebraska I would still adore this movie for the vividness of its characters, for all their comic contradictions. One minute Jack Nicholson's character is mourning over his recently dead wife, and the next he's trashing her belongings because he's found evidence of an affair she had. The man has a gentle sincerity that endears us to him, in spite of his many faults (and there are a lot of them).

6. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Looking back at the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, what is most remarkable to me is that, for a major studio big-budget action epic, Peter Jackson managed to get everything right. He cast great actors, not necessarily big names (although many of them became big names by the end of the trilogy); he relied heavily on makeup, scale models, and practical visual effects; and he used CGI only when it was the best option. I think that 20 years from now The Lord of the Rings will still look great, while most recent CG-heavy films will look hopelessly dated.

While the first two Lord of the Rings movies were excellent, I think the third achieves an even higher level of artistry. I love the opening sequence that departs from the linear story to shed new insight into the origin and character of Gollum, the heartbreaking scene in which Pippin sings a mournful song to Denethor while Faramir and his men needlessly ride to their deaths, and the extended fade to black after Sauron is defeated and before the eagles come to rescue Sam and Frodo. I even love the endless endings, which I think are essential to bring a satisfactory close to this epic of epics.

5. No Country For Old Men
It took me a few days to come around to No Country For Old Men. I thought it was a great movie, but I wasn't sure if it measured up to the rest of the Coens' work. For several days, though, I couldn't get it out of my head, and all I wanted to do was watch it again. It's still hard for me to say exactly why it's great. It lacks many of the obvious stylistic trademarks of the Coens' films: rapid and clever dialogue, cartoonish characters, and elements or suggestions of magic realism. In its style, No Country For Old Men is one of the most traditional of the Coens' films, perhaps because it's their first movie to be adapted from another work of fiction (I don't include O Brother, Where Art Thou? Despite its claim of being adapted from The Odyssey, it's an entirely original story). What Joel and Ethan Coen do give us in No Country For Old Men are all the elements of a great film: a great story, engaging characters, unforgettable scenes, and brilliant camera work.

4. Ratatouille
With The Iron Giant and The Incredibles Brad Bird established that he is one of the best American directors working in animation; with Ratatouille I think he solidified that position for himself. It's not just the best movie Bird has made; I think it's the best movie Pixar has made. The story has a timeless feel to it that brings to mind 101 Dalmatians or Lady and the Tramp. It has a fun, original story and interesting characters. It has plot twists and excitement and some action sequences, but Bird never lets them go on any longer than they need to. He wisely resolves (well, mostly resolves) the conflict with the head chef early on and allows the final tension in the film to come from the food critic, Anton Ego, a brilliantly sinister character whose love for food has become twisted and cynical over time. Of course, the single greatest moment of the film is when Ego takes a single bite of Remy's cooking and his cold exterior instantly drops away to reveal a man who is again genuinely passionate about good food. His final line of the film, a joyous "Surprise me!" leaves me beaming every time.

3. Requiem for a Dream
Most of the titles on this list are films I could watch (and have watched) again and again without getting tired of them. Requiem for a Dream is not one of those films. This is one of those essential films that demands to be watched and considered and pondered over, but that most people will never want to watch a second time. For its horrific depiction of how addiction destroys people's lives and the extreme emotional reaction it evokes in the audience, I consider this movie an unqualified success. It's also the apex of what Darren Aronofsky termed his hip-hop editing style: ultra-quick cuts repeated in succession every time a character shoots up or pops some pills, showing the compulsive and automatic nature of the action. Add in a stellar performance by Ellen Burstyn (my favorite story from the director's commentary is the one about the cameraman who, during an emotional scene with Burstyn and Leto, let the shot drift off-center because he couldn't see the actors through his tears) and my favorite original film score of the decade, and you've got one great film. Highly disturbing, but great.

2. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
I was showing this to my ninth grade English class last year (I connected its themes to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) and while watching my students' responses it occurred to me that O Brother, Where Art Thou? may be the perfect film, as far as widespread appeal goes. Directed by the Coen Brothers, it has enough art cred for the film snobs. Its story is fun and entertaining enough for my high schoolers. It has clever lines and verbal humor for the high-brow and plenty of slapstick for the low-brow. Even its soundtrack, which is responsible for a modern bluegrass revival, appeals to music snobs, top 40 listeners, and rural country music fans. This movie is all things for all people, which is pretty remarkable, considering its surreal premise as a screwball comedy set in depression-era South that follows the structure of Homer's The Odyssey.

Like so many of the Coens' films, this keeps getting better with age. There are hilarious performances (Stephen Root, John Turturro) and wonderfully quotable lines ("I slaughtered this horse last Tuesday. I'm afraid she's startin' to turn.") that I look forward to with each viewing.

1. Adaptation
I'm a sucker for metafiction, although I'm not too keen on the term itself. It seems too limiting to me. But give me a clever premise like a movie about a guy trying to write adapt a book into a screenplay, but instead decides to write a screenplay about trying to write a screenplay which turns out to be the screenplay for the very movie you're watching, and I'm hooked. Charlie Kaufman's writing is very clever and funny, and I think it's best when paired with the directing of Spike Jonze. There are so many things to love about the film that I'm not going to get into right now, but I think my favorite is the way that it satirizes both artsy filmmakers like Kaufman and the kind of lowest-common-denominator movies that Kaufman's fictional twin brother wants to make, and in the end seems to redeem them both.

So there you have my list, not necessarily of the absolute best films of the decade in any objective sense, but at least the film that had the strongest impact on me.

In preparation for Black Friday, Amazon.com is offering 500 albums for the very reasonable price of $5 each (I don't really understand why this is a Black Friday deal, seeing that it's kind of hard to buy an mp3 download FOR somebody else, but I'm not going to complain).

Now that manufacturing, materials, and shipping don't have to be figured into the costs of music albums, I think $5 is the perfect price to pay. I hope that Amazon continues to offer music at these lower prices.

Go browse the entire selection or look at my recommendations:

Flight of the Conchords by Flight of the Conchords

The Crane Wife by The Decemberists (one of my favorite albums of the 00's)

For Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver (I haven't heard the whole thing yet, but I know a lot of hipsters were drooling all over this last year)

Paul's Boutique and Licensed to Ill by Beastie Boys

Space Oddity by David Bowie

Noble Beast by Andrew Bird

Wait for Me by Moby (One of my favorite albums of the year. In fact, I insist that you download it immediately. It's only five bucks!)

I Might Be Wrong by Radiohead (excellent live recordings by the world's greatest rock band)

Carmina Burana by Carl Orff

Raditude by Weezer (I have no idea if this is any good or not, but this is very cheap for a brand-new release)

Also available are numberous recording by The Avett Brothers and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (although the latter feature only the tracklists of the original vinyl releases and not the additional tracks included on the CDs).

I just learned that the first ever Rhodes scholar from Truman State University has been announced--and he's a swimmer!

Congratulations, Andrew. Way to represent Truman and Truman swimming.

When I first read an allusion to this in an interview several weeks ago, I spent a confused minute reading and rereading the paragraph to make sure I'd gotten it right. Now, seeing it in The Guardian's headline, it still sounds like a bizarre meeting of worlds, like when you find out that your coworker is friends with your cousin:

Alan Moore to write libretto for Gorillaz duo

followed by the subtitle

Fans of graphic novels and Gorillaz rejoice! The comics legend is writing the lyrics for Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett's next opera

The "next opera" bit makes me laugh because it makes it sound like this is just the latest in a series of operas Albarn and Hewlett have done.

According to Beck.com, today marks the 10th anniversary of the release of Midnite Vultures. The site promises videos and rare B-sides, in addition to the inclusion of Vultures on the developing Collected Works page, where you can stream the full songs.

Over time Midnite Vultures has emerged as one of my favorite Beck albums, and quite unexpectedly. I liked it pretty well at first, but as I've grown older I've learned to appreciate it on multiple levels. There's the satirical aspect of it, much of which I didn't really get until after I learned a bit more about funk and R&B.

It's not all satire, though. I think a lot of the music is a sincere tribute to those musical genres, and Beck pulls it off superbly. This is my favorite album to sing along to, because a lot of the lyrics, as delightfully absurd as they are, have a great cadence to them that just roll off the tongue. Check out this verse from Hollywood Freaks (to get the full effect listen to the song while you read them):

People look so snooty
Take pills make them moody
Automatic bzooty
Zero to tutti fruitti
Sex in the halls
Niagra Falls
Local shopping malls receive
Anonymous calls
Hot like a cheetah
Neon mamacita
Eat at tacoria
Pop lockin’ beats from Korea
Looking like jail bait
Selling lots of real estate
Looking like a hot date
Banging like a 808

I think Beck is at his best both musically and lyrically when he's being playful.

Then, of course, there's Debra, which is the silliest and most satirical song on the album. I read once that this song dates back to the Odelay period, but that Beck didn't feel it belonged on any of his albums until this one. I can certainly understand why: it would be easy to dismiss it as a novelty song. I love it, though. Beck captures the cheesy R&B slow romantic song that's really just about getting a girl in bed. He gives it a slightly more humble setting for hilarious effect. This part makes me grin every time I hear it:

I pick you up late at night after work.
I said, "Lady, step inside my Hyundai.
I'm gonna take you up to Glendale.
Yeah, gonna take you for a real good meal."

So give Midnite Vultures another listen to for old times' sake. And if you don't own it, take advantage of Beck.com's streaming audio.

I just found through Lifehacker.com the amazing program Celestia, a fully interactive three-dimensional model of space's celestial bodies. It's like Google Universe (well, the known universe at least).

You can browse stars by proximity, brightness, and the presence of orbiting planets. Once you have selected a star you can explore all the objects in its system (I recommend starting by exploring our own solar system--I had no idea it contains so many things).

Of course, you can do the same with planets in other solar systems light years away. It really gives a sense of how grand our universe is, and it's a little bit spooky if you let yourself become immersed in this 3-D model.

Here are a few fun games to try. Randomly selecting stars in the visual field, see how long it takes to find one with a planet.

Select and zoom in on stars in your visible field, gradually venturing farther and farther from Sol. See if you can reach the end of our knowledge of the universe. When I did that, I eventually stumbled upon this:

When I first saw that emerge on my screen I was blown away. It's the M 54 globular cluster (in Celestia, under Navigation, select "Goto object..." and type M 54).

Update: I've just discovered you can speed up time to watch the rotation of the planets. Awesome. This program keeps getting better the more I play with it.

Click the links for streaming music courtesy Lala.com

10. Where Is The Line - Björk
A fascinating song from Medúlla, the album Björk recorded almost entirely from human voices. The album loses my interest about halfway through, which is why it didn't make my top ten of the decade list, but this song is spectacular.

9. Seven Nation Army - The White Stripes
This is perfect songwriting at its simplest: seven notes repeated with minor variations for just under four minutes. It's catchy and immediately unforgettable, yet it never grows old.

8. Did I Step On Your Trumpet? - Danielson
It's impossible for me to listen to this without a big smile on my face.

7. The Man Comes Around - Johnny Cash
Probably my favorite Cash song of all time. He didn't write very many original songs for his American Recordings, but the ones he did are amazing.

6. The Day After Tomorrow - Tom Waits
A very sad anti-Iraq war song from the point of view of an American soldier, it's probably the most beautiful bit of anti-war protest to emerge out of that period.

5. John Wayne Gacy, Jr. - Sufjan Stevens
Leave it to Sufjan Stevens to write a song about an infamous serial killer in a way that makes him seem sad, fragile, and utterly human. This is folk music at its best.

4. She Don't Own Me - Micah P. Hinson
This one incredible song just stopped me dead one day and inspired me to buy Hinson's complete studio albums. I still hang on every note whenever I hear it.

3. Hold On To Yourself - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
I feel like I'm getting redundant. There are only so many ways you can say that a song is so beautiful in its melancholy that it makes you want to weep (okay, maybe not weep, but you get the idea).

2. The National Anthem - Radiohead
Hey, look! It's an upbeat, energetic song that doesn't make you want to lay down and cry! This was my favorite song off Kid A the first time I heard it, and it still is. I love everything about this: the driving bass and drums, the distorted vocals, the chaotic horn section. It's also amazing live.

1. Enthusiasm For Life Defeats Internal, Existential Fear - The Flaming Lips
The studio recording is not available on Lala.com or anywhere else that I can find, so you may have to download it to hear it (it's available on this compilation, but I wouldn't recommend getting the whole CD unless you're a hardcore fan). This song is the perfect mix of unflinching optimism with just the barest hint of melancholy that makes The Flaming Lips so loveable. The lyrics are remarkably simple but deeply moving.

Last night I had a horrible dream
But the dogs barking in the morning
Came and chased it all away

Last night I had a horrible dream
But the sunrise in the morning
Came and burned it all away

Last night I had a horrible dream
But your smile in the morning
Came and took it all away.

Here you can see a rare performance at the Pitchfork Music Festival:

And here they are playing it live in studio:

I was going to write up full descriptions of why I like each of these, but I don't think I have the time for that. Instead, you just get brief comments.

10. The Grey Album - Danger Mouse
I was a little bit surprised that this made it on my list (I basically went through iTunes, wrote down every album I like that came out in the past decade, then began eliminating my lesser favorites until I was left with ten). Anyway, I've never really thought of this as one of my favorite albums, although I do like it a lot. It's fitting that it ended up on the list, though, because it kind of embodies the issues of music creation and ownership that emerged during this decade: it's a mashup of The Beatles and Jay-Z, made without permission of the original artists, released online for free. Did I mention it's also really good?

9. Elephant - The White Stripes
I'm a little surprised this made it as well, but looking back I do think it's one of the most influential albums of the last ten years.

8. American IV: The Man Comes Around - Johnny Cash
I discovered Johnny Cash's music in the '00s, and I think this album, the last released before he died, is the best of his American Recordings.

7. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots - The Flaming Lips
Surprisingly, I almost didn't include this album at all, I think because I've grown a little tired of this particular phase of the band (that's partly why I've been so excited about their new direction on Embryonic). I went back and listened to Yoshimi, though, and was reminded of why I liked it so much in the first place, and how it helped shape my musical tastes. So it went back on the list. I still don't think it's as good as the next ones, though.

6. The Crane Wife - The Decemberists
I don't have much to say about this one, except that I had a hard time picking which Decemberists album to put on the list (I made an arbitrary rule of no more than one album per artist). They really can do no wrong in my book.

5. Ships - Danielson
This album really took me by surprise. I listened to it because of the Sufjan Stevens connection, and I really didn't know what to think at first. I couldn't stop listening to it, though, and eventually came to love every song on it, Daniel Smith's weird falsetto and all.

4. () - Sigur Rós
Beautiful music, ironically made more accessible by the fact that there is no album title, no song name, and no discernible lyrics, because I don't have to wonder what those Icelanders are singing about.

3. Kid A - Radiohead
This was the first album I downloaded before its official release date, way back in 2000. I remember listening to it for the first time and thinking it was so weirdly different from OK Computer (which was so weirdly different from The Bends, which was so weirdly different from Pablo Honey). Back then there was just no telling what Radiohead would do next, and I think musically Kid A has proven to be their most experimental album. I think it has aged well because of that, but also because it has songs that are really great, no matter what instruments they're played on.

2. Real Gone - Tom Waits
My friend Andrew turned me on to this album. The first time I heard it was on my headphones while walking the dogs and kid (my preferred method for listening to new music). I still can't describe the sound I encountered (just go listen to Top of the Hill), but I knew one thing immediately: I had never heard anything even remotely like this before. By the third or fourth song I knew that I really liked it; by the middle of the album, I knew I was going to have to buy a copy; and by the end I had a feeling that I was going to be listening to a lot more Tom Waits in the future.

1. Illinois - Sufjan Stevens
Long-time readers may remember that I went a little bit nuts for this album, starting way back in July 2005. Since then I've explored a lot of other music of very different styles, but when I come back to Illinois those opening notes still give me chills.

(+1): Embryonic - The Flaming Lips
I debated about whether or not to include this. Right now, I think I actually like this better than Yoshimi, but I feel like it's too soon to make a definitive judgment. If I still feel the same way about it a year or two from now I may add it to my top ten of the decade retroactively.

Last week it occurred to me that we are nearly at the end of a decade, and I had a novel idea. I thought it might be fun to look back at the best works of music, literature, and film of the past ten years, assembled in a list-style format that rank them in order of my personal preference. I'll call it the best of the aughts (that's the '00s)

It's such a great idea that you can expect other people will be copying me once they see this.

Stay tuned for the lists.

Erika bought me Michael Chabon's new book of personal essays, Manhood for Amateurs. The second essay in the book, "Wiliam and I," includes a story I heard Chabon tell on Fresh Air that made me want to read the book.

The handy thing about being a father is that the historic standard is so pitifully low. One day a few years back I took my youngest son to the market around the corner from our house in Berkeley, California, a town where, in my estimation, fathers generally do a passable job, with some fathers having been known to go a little overboard. I was holding my twenty-month-old in one arm and unloading the shopping cart onto the checkout counter with the other. I don't remember what I was thinking about at the time, but it is as likely to have been the original 1979 jingle for Honey Nut Cheerios or nothing at all as it was the needs, demands, or ineffable wonder of my son. I wasn't quite sure why the woman in line behind us—when I became aware of her—kept beaming so fondly in our direction. She had on rainbow leggings, and I thought she might be a little bit crazy and therefore fond of everyone.

"You are such a good dad," she said finally. "I can tell."

I looked at my son. He was chewing on the paper coating of a wire twist tie. A choking hazard, without a doubt; the wire could have pierced his lip or tongue. His hairstyle tended to the cartoonier pole of the Woodstock-Einstein continuum. His face was probably a tad on the smudgy side. Dirty, even. One might have been tempted to employ the word crust.

"Oh, this isn't my child," I told her. "I found him in the back."

Actually, I thanked her. I went off with my boy in one arm and a bag of groceries in the other, and when we got home I put a plastic bowl filled with Honey Nut Cheerios in front of him and checked my e-mail. I was a really good dad.

This is so very true. After Daniel was born I took him with me to the grocery store a few times and it seemed like people were constantly commenting on what an extraordinary dad I was just for being in public with my son and not doing him any visible harm.

Chabon goes on to talk about the double-standard for parents in a way that I'm sure all the moms out there will appreciate.

I don't know what a woman needs to do to impel a perfect stranger to inform her in the grocery store that she is a really good mom. Perhaps perform an emergency tracheotomy with a Bic pen on her eldest child while simultaneously nursing her infant and buying two weeks' worth of healthy but appealing breaktime snacks for the entire cast of Lion King, Jr. In a grocery store, no mother is good or bad; she is just a mother, shopping for her family. If she wipes her kid's nose or tear-stained cheeks, if she holds her kid tight, entertains her kid's nonsensical claims, buys her kid the organic non-GMO whole-grain version of Honey NutCheerios, it adds no useful data to our assessment of her. Such an act is statistically insignificant. Good mothering is not measurable in a discrete instant, in an hour spent rubbing a baby's gassy belly, in the braiding of a tangled mass of morning hair.Good mothering is a long-term pattern, a lifelong trend of behaviors most of which go unobserved at the time by anyone, least of all the mother herself. We do not judge mothers by snapshots but by years of images painstakingly accumulated from the orbiting satellite of memory. Once a year, maybe, and on certain fatal birthdays, and at our weddings or her funeral, we might collate all the available data, analyze it, and offer our irrefutable judgment: good mother.

I could quote the whole essay here, it's so good, but I probably shouldn't. Anyway, you can read it for yourself here.

I love Robert Reich because he presents simple, elegant solutions for our economic problems. Listen to how he would prevent the need for future bank bailouts.

It's a lot easier than you would expect.

I've just tried out Google's new music search. Very impressive. This may be my new way of linking to songs from my blog. I tried out a few different titles, some popular and some fairly obscure, and I was able to get positive results from almost all of them (still no dice for "Enthusiasm for Life Defeats Internal Existential Fear," though).

So here's a little sample of some great music I've been listening to lately.

Brother Ali - The Travelers I'm not usually that into hip-hop, so it takes something really extraordinary to grab my attention. This does the job.

Brother Ali - Babygirl Another great song by Ali. This one breaks my heart.

The Flaming Lips - Worm Mountain This is still my favorite song off Embryonic. If you haven't heard it yet, what's wrong with you?

Moby - Wait for Me The title track from Moby's best album in years.