file under: whoknows whatpop (pt. iii)

hopefully by now, the exercise looks familiar to those interested in playing along at home. i know it's juvenile, but whenever it's brought up with friends, their answers always surprise me. i therefore want to pose further questions. have i no shame?

the impossible topic this time around is favorite albums. define that last term however you want - i'll accept whatever constraints you lay out there. greatest hits packages? box sets? homemade mixtape? 's all good, cuzzo.

some of my own choices actually surprised me a little bit this time. in order to verify those unexpected answers, i re-listened to and re-evaluated some older favorites and found them slipping down the list (some completely out of the top 10 for the very first time ever!).

i've also noticed that nostalgia has begun to play a huge role for me in this ongoing game. have my boundaries been set? have my tastes calcified? have my plates really fused, so to speak? it was inevitable, i guess.

so without further ado, the 10 albums i think of as my favorites at this early morning hour (in rough but definitely not absolute order):

01) sonic youth - goo
02) the stooges - fun house
03) horace andy - skylarking
04) guided by voices - bee thousand
05) king tubby - essential dub

06) the clash - combat rock
07) mf doom - operation: doomsday!
08) run-d.m.c. - run-d.m.c.
09) yo la tengo - i can hear the heart beating as one
10) erase errata - other animals

what are yours?

[next week: food-related!]

file under: whoknows whatpop (pt. ii)

as mentioned earlier, thinking and talking about favorite things amongst friends has produced some surprising (and, at times, revealing) answers.

what's odd is that i'm finding it a bit of an awkward subject to broach as often as i'd like to. i mean, i wouldn't mind knowing everyone's favorite movie, or song, or album, or book. but in reality, i've only asked one co-worker about such things, and i was so painfully conscious of my forced off-handedness that i decided to avoid the topic with other people. not everyone cottons to the nerdy stuff, after all.

but still, it's hard not to engage in such list-making activities, once the seed has been planted.

and it is with that admission in mind that i bring up favorite books.

now, i'm not as well-read as some, but i've spent many a day curled up on the sofa with a book tented over my face (often snoring my brains out). but at some point, the pleasure derived from reading a good book started to wane, and in its place came the vague sensation of being emotionally manipulated. i therefore started reading more non-fiction than fiction about 10 years ago. that transition will most likely turn up in the second half of my top ten, which might go something like this (in a very rough but not absolute order):

1) gravity's rainbow, by thomas pynchon
2) on the road, by jack kerouac
3) nine stories, by j.d. salinger
4) alice's adventures in wonderland and through the looking glass, by lewis carroll
5) city of glass, by paul auster

6) leaves of grass, by walt whitman
7) introduction to zen buddhism, by d.t. suzuki
8) the golden bough, by james frazer
9) bend sinister, by vladimir nabokov
10) cometbus #45, by aaron cometbus

so what are yours?

[next week: albums!]

file under: who knows what pop culture lurks in the hearts of men?

a recent little compilation project i've been working on (inspired entirely by an annual compilation project N has been conducting for an impressive 6 years now) has me thinking about favorites.

no matter how well you might know somebody, the songs or books or films they hold closest to their hearts can still be, when revealed, quite surprising. some of that clearly has to do with the ridiculousness of picking a favorite of anything - for most of us, there are just too many factors involved (that don't necessarily lend themselves to easy comparison, of course) to really come up with a satisfying answer.

but still: we can't help but build our lists. it's actually, factually an indicator of obsessive-compulsive disorder! yikes.

after thinking about all this on the subway ride home from work, i abruptly asked N what her favorite movie was. her answer surprised us both (i had guessed lolita, but was wrong - i'm betting that it's a contender for favorite book instead). that kind of surprise seems to go hand-in-hand with such questions; it definitely accompanied the majority of answers to my query about people's favorite song of all time.

a little later, i even went so far as to badger a well-respected culture worker (who happened to be on the phone with N at the time) with the same question. what is his favorite movie? hopefully, he'll get back to us on that.

while drifting off to sleep at about 10am, i started to formalize a top 5 (or at least a first approximation thereof), although a top 10 might be needed to get all of the crucial ones in there. does it matter what those movies are? why am i even bothering to jot them down?

fucking lists.

as of this moment, arguments could be made for:

01) my own private idaho
02) the big lebowski
03) fitzcarraldo
04) rockers
05) beat street

while the second 5 might come down to:

06) cry baby
07) american movie
08) orfeu negro
09) river's edge
10) mulholland drive

so what are yours?

[maybe we'll do one for books next week.]