Dryvetyme Onlyne

Why do I just have an amalgamation here? Why am I not composing just one, single, solitary list that describes the best & brightest in 2006? Well, it this simple — WAY too many things happened this year to limit myself to just 5, 10, or even 20 things. Thus, I have brought together my favorite albums & movies of 2006, the best concerts I attended this year, and some of the more notable events in international & domestic politics and pop culture from the year that was in 2006.

So, if you don’t like my lists, then make your own! Otherwise — ENJOY!

Top Five Albums of the Year (in order):
1) TV On The Radio — Return to Cookie Mountain
2) The Hold Steady — Boys & Girls in America
3) Cat Power — The Greatest
4) The Decemberists — The Crane Wife
5) Morrissey — Ringleader of the Tormentors

Why are those my favorite albums of the year? It’s because they either a) provide new twists & fresh energy to familiar styles, or b) they run roughshod over traditional genres, representing a wide variety of sounds & doing so with depth. Whether with their unmistakeable voices (Chan Marshall, Morrissey, or Craig Finn) or with their overall musicality (TVOTR & The Decemberists), these 5 records truly represent the BEST of 2006.

Other Great Music from 2006 (in a vague order resembling personal preference):
Danielson — Ships
Joanna Newsom — Ys
Belle & Sebastian — The Life Pursuit
Neko Case — Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
mewithoutYou — Brother, Sister
Yo La Tengo — I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
Tom Waits — Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards
Johnny Cash — American V: A Hundred Highways & Personal File
Arctic Monkeys — Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
Thom Yorke — The Eraser
Norma Jean — Redeemer
Mastodon — Blood Mountain
Sufjan Stevens — R. E. M. — And I Feel Fine…. — The Best of the I.R.S. Years: 1982-1987
Underoath — Define The Great Line
Wilco — Kicking Television: Live in Chicago
Glenn Kotche — Mobile
Band Of Horses — Everything All The Time
Jenny Lewis w/ The Watson Twins — Rabbit Fur Coat
Zao — The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here
Starflyer 59 — My Island

Movies That I Greatly Enjoyed (also in a vague order resembling personal preference):
Little Miss Sunshine
The Departed
Blood Diamond
V For Vendetta
Babel
The Good Shepherd
The Fountain
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
The Devil Wears Prada
Thank You For Smoking
Prairie Home Companion
Marie Antoinette

Concert-Going:
1) Arctic Monkeys — June 8th — Warehouse Live! — Houston, TX
2) Band Of Horses — June 24th — Walter’s On Washington — Houston, TX
3) Danielson — July 6th — Walter’s On Washington — Houston, TX
4) Bloc Party — August 9th — Warehouse Live! — Houston, TX
5) Death Cab For Cutie — November 30th — The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts — Houston, TX
6) Maylene & The Sons Of Disaster — December 20th — Walter’s On Washington — Houston, TX

Other News:
1)The Conviction of Enron’s Kenneth Lay & Jeff Skilling for Fraud, Insider Trading, and other abuses of their company’s finances;
2) The Democrats winning back the House of Representatives & Senate in the November Mid-Term Elections;
3) The resignation of Donald Rumsfeld from his position as Secretary of Defense;
4) The Iraq Study Group releases its report on what the US might/could/should do next, yet few politicians (on both sides of the aisle) in this lame-duck couple of months before January 20, 2007 do a damn thing about it, not to mention President Bush’s near over-the-top dismissal of the Group’s proposals;
5) Kofi Annan perpetually pressuring the West to pay SOME kind of attention to the multiple crises in Africa: Sudan/Darfur, Somalia, AIDS, & more;
6) The 34-Day Border War between Hezbollah (NOT Lebanon) & Israel from July 11 to August 15;
7) The rise to political prominence of Senator Barack Obama of Illinois & President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran; The death of former President Gerald Ford on December 26th at the age of 93;
9) The rise of a new kind of political activism amongst evangelical Christians — environmental concerns, domestic poverty issues, global humanitarian issues (Darfur, sub-Saharan Africa in general), & more;
10) The Death of James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, on December 25th at the age of 63;
11) MySpace & YouTube threaten to take over the world (& everyone’s spare time);
12) David Stern bringing a synthetic basketball to active NBA play withOUT ever talking to the players;
13) The release of the Playstation III from Sony (to militant & aggressive throngs of parents & their spoiled children) & the Wii from Nintendo (to militant & aggressive controllers thrown by gamers with poor grip);
14) The release of Final Fantasy XII from SquareEnix (PS2; Peter Pan-ish 20-something nerds around the world rejoice), Tiger Woods 2007 from EA Sports (PS3; Peter Pan-ish 20-something jocks around the world rejoice), and Guitar Hero (PS2; Peter Pan-ish 20-somethings & Irrelevant-to-their-teenaged-children 40-something fathers in all of their collective air guitaring rejoice)