Music

Boom Shadow by Nino Moschella
2nd album from the guy who I anticipate new work from the most. It’s a near-guarantee that I’ll love every piece of music that he puts out.

Good City for Dreamers by General Elektriks
It’s been a while since their last release, but he picks up right where he left off 6 years ago.

Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future by The Bird & the Bee
Easily the closest I get to pop in my listening habits, but I think I’m a sucker for Greg Kurstin’s production.

Runners Up: Carried Away by the People Under the Stairs, BLACKsumers’night by Maxwell, The Ecstatic by Mos Def

Movies

Star Trek by the J.J. Abrams
After the new Batman movies and this, I’m hoping that folks are figuring out how to properly handle summer blockbusters.

In The Loop by Armando Iannucci
Hands down the best use of swearing in the last decade. Even better than the TV series.

The Informant! by Steven Soderbergh
My favorite thing about this movie is that this guy really exists.

Runners Up: Moon, Good Hair

Books

Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
I remember the author from one of my favorite super-hero graphic novels back in ’88, but I’m glad to see that 20 years later he’s done his first self-written graphic novel.

Nothing
I didn’t realize it until I started this list, but what the hell has happened to me?! I apparently stopped reading this year. Asterios Polyp is the only book that I can remember reading the whole thing. I mean, I read a few things that were published before 2009 which don’t count, but still…

Man… I better clean up my act.

David Cross stars with Will Arnett & Spike Jonze in UK Pilot

Doing another sitcom is a weird thing to do when “the sitcom framework really [feels] like a drag on [your] energy and sensibility.” But it’s cool. I don’t mind.

American Todd Margaret (David Cross) bluffs his way into an apparently great job opportunity, heading up the sales team in his employer’s London office. All he has to do is sell several thousand energy drinks before his boss visits him in a week. Simple. Apart from the fact that he knows nothing about British culture and nothing about sales. This is further complicated when he lies continuously to cover his ignorance and spectacularly fails to impress Alice the first beautiful girl he meets. Dave his British co-worker, soon takes full advantage of Todd’s situation and chaos ensues.

1/1000th of Wikipedia Bound As A Book

When I was a kid, I used to have dreams about binding books this big (seriously). My pops has these *huge* pharmaceutical books and I wondered that if the bindings could be that big for his books, what would the limit be. Turns out that it’s pretty big.

DUPES

DUPE #1: Exiled Cuban Blogger Dupes Castro’s Son. I love this story. I now want to add Claudia Cartagena to the stable of imaginary characters (Mabbie & my protégé, Le Prince) that I hang out with.

DUPE #2: Bolivian TV News Airs LOST scene as Flight 447′s last moment. Silly TV people. Don’t you know that LOST Island (right next to Torture Island) is in the Pacific Ocean and *not* the Atlantic Ocean that 447 crashed in?

Sorry I’m Late

Great stop motion video project that reminds me of the Her Morning Elegance video. Make sure to check out the “Making Of” video.

Things That Can Go In My House

No more need for power-strips.

I like this faucet because it looks great, but more importantly, it’s probably easy to clean.

Walk This Way

GOOD Magazine’s guide for reducing your water footprint. I need me some low-flow toilets. FYI: Getting local WA State apples in Seattle doesn’t use as much water because of the lack of transportation.

Measuring the Design Process

The best thing to come out of web-design icon Doug Bowman’s resignation from Google is this well thought out article by Scott Stevenson. Doug on his departure:

Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that.

This particular point set off Mr. Stevenson to put into words concepts that I’ve always been aware of, but have always struggled to articulate as well as he did in his post:

The most contentious point between software engineering culture and visual design culture is the question of whether important things can be always seen in absolutes. The engineering approach values measurable, reproducible results which can be represented in a graph or a checklist. Unit tests and benchmarks illustrate progress. [...] Visual design is often the polar opposite of engineering: trading hard edges for subjective decisions based on gut feelings and personal experiences. It’s messy, unpredictable, and notoriously hard to measure. The apparently erratic behavior of artists drives engineers bananas. Their decisions seem arbitrary and risk everything with no guaranteed benefit.

Through out my career, I’ve regularly been in similar environments; and one of my biggest problems has been figuring out how to hurdle that divide. I feel that part of my role is as a visual taste maker. You might test to find the most crowd pleasing shade of blue at the first pass, but I might come up with a blue that might not be your instant choice, yet will grow on you when taken in holistically. Like Henry Ford said, “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a better horse.” There is a point with visual design where logic starts to breakdown in ways that only experience can answer.

Hand Sewn Vinyl Atari Cartridges

These are huge!

Small Talk: Twitter Powered Weather Visualization

The coolest way to find out that the weather is shit in Seattle. The site uses Twitter status messages in various vicinities to draft a picture of not only how crappy it is outside, but what people think of it. Make sure to use a modern browser.

Tweetbook: Twitter user publishes his life in tweets

I don’t think that I tweet enough to get as thorough of a journal of my life (and thank the Maker™ for that), but I love the idea. I post too many shortened URLs for it to make any sense. Maybe one day…

Books

Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw
I think this is the largest graphic novel I’ve ever read, coming in at 720 pages. I kinda imagined that this was a book by Noah Baumbach in which Noah was able to grow beyond the rut he got in with Margot at the Wedding.

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
I grabbed this because I was particularly interested in Dane Cook’s parallels to Steve’s stand-up career (not really). And I’m a sucker for any tidbits I can find on the Jerk.

A Practical Guide To Racism by C. H. Dalton
The perfect book to keep by your side when you need to inflame the racial hatred that you’ve worked so hard to hide away.

Runners Up: Burma Chronicles by Guy Delisle, More Information Than You Require by John Hodgman, Blue Pills: A Positive Love Story by Frederik Peeters

Music

The Way I See It by Raphael Saadiq
Not as innovative as his first release, but still is probably tied for the best album out of the recent Motown revival along with…

JIM by Jamie Lidell
The first guy I know about to do the whole modern Motown sound came out with a close to perfect album. Every track is solid.

Metropolis: The Case Suite by Janelle Monáe
I have a strong feeling after hearing this album that she’s going to be huge, with crossover appeal to a number of audiences. She’s supposed to release another EP in Q1 of ’09.

Oracular Spectacular by MGMT
More rock like this, please.

Runners Up: Droppin’ Science Fiction by the Mighty Underdogs, Shine by Estelle, Doomtree by Doomtree, New Amerykah, Pt. 1 by Erykah Badu

Movies

Bigger Stronger Faster by the Chris Bell
I went into watching this movie against steroids in competition to now not knowing what to think. Might not be as superbly told as Man On Wire for a documentary, but it had more of an impact on me.

Let The Right One In by Tomas Alfredson
I thought about this movie for a couple days after watching it. The two 12-year-olds in this do just as good of a job as most of this years nominees.

The Dark Knight by Christopher Nowlan
A little bit of an obvious choice, but that doesn’t stop it from being hella good.

Runners Up: Slumdog Millionaire, Role Models, The Wackness

Earlier this year, I consolidated Dan Clowes’ 20-page entry for the Funny Pages into a single PDF file; and now I’ve gone back and complied single PDFs for all of the NYT Funny Pages’ past strips. Enjoy:

• Rutu Modan – The Murder of the Terminal Patient (16MB)
• Jason – Low Moon (17MB)
• Seth – GeorgeSprott (27MB)
• Megan Kelso – Watergate Sue (21MB)
• Dan Clowes – Mr. Wonderful (18MB)

NOTE: These are highly compressed, so there are slight visual artifacts. Their natural file size would be in the 40 – 80 MB range.

Books

Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan
Big time comic releases seem to be more sporadic these days in comparison to a couple of years ago, but this one fits the bill. Israelis with identity issues makes for good reading.

I Am America by Steven Colbert
Obvious one for me. I’m a sucker for anything that he does, as evidenced by viewing all 337 episodes of the Colbert Report (as of this writing).

Into Hot Air by Chris Elliott
It’s not as good as his last, but it’s still quite good. A cast of Chris Elliott, Kristen Dunst, Michael Moore, Martin Sheen, Tony Danza, and more set out to climb Everest.

Runners Up: Comedy By Numbers by Eric Hoffman and Gary Rudoren, Percy Gloom by Cathy Malkasian

Music

Armchair Apocrypha by Andrew Bird
I probably spent more time with this album than any other this year. Even better than his near perfect And the Mysterious Production of Eggs.

Please Clap Your Hands by the Bird & the Bee
It’s just an EP with 5 songs, but each is pop perfect. The production is great.

Alright, Still by Lily Allen
My guilty pleasure. This is probably the popiest album that I’ve ever fallen for. I very much doubt a sophmore album that matches this.

Runners Up: Back to Black by Amy Winehouse, Snow Beast by Luke Temple, Version by Mark Ronson, Once by Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová, the Reminder by Feist

Movies

No Country for Old Men by the Coen Bros.
TENSE. It’s everything I liked about Terminator 2 but with more humans.

Hot Fuzz by Edgar Wright
I think this is a perfect comedy. Conceptual jokes, low brow jokes, high brow jokes. They all hit.

There Will Be Blood by PT Anderson
Anybody who can make talking about milkshakes that dramatic deserves to be called the best actor in the world.

The Ten by David Wain
LOT’S of “A” jokes. Mostly “A-/B+” jokes.

Runners Up: King of Kong, This is England, Juno, Once, Michael Clayton