antimeria

Because Eamonn asked about podcasts he should check out, here are five I listen to:

1. Stuff You Should Know. A podcast about random cool things, like ninja and crazy government experiments.
2. Uhh Yeah Dude. A news and comedy podcast by two guys in LA. Jonathan is a vegan and recovering rasta, and Seth has some neatness issues and watches a lot of TV. It reminds me vaguely of Car Talk, if Click and Clack talked about jerking off.
3. Fresh Produce. Essentially a radio show, with a mix of deep cuts and current hits and remixes. Pain in the ass to find on iTunes, though.
4. Savage Love. A lot of people probably know this one already, but other people’s sex questions are funny.
5. This American Life. Pretty sure everyone knows about this show, but it’s still worth mentioning.

Anything else I should be listening to?

I realize I haven’t actually written much about music lately, but here’s a list of concerts I’m excited for:

1. Dan Deacon at Ottobar
2. Cymbals Eat Guitars at Rock n Roll Hotel
3. Miike Snow and Delorean (mostly Delorean) at 9:30 Club
4. Gang Gang Dance at Ottobar
5. Japandroids and Love is All at Rock n Roll Hotel

It’s late December, so it’s time for the deluge of “best albums of 2009″ posts. But since a lot of the albums I keep on repeat find their way to my end-of-year “best of” lists, I’m wanted to try a different approach–one that combines music wankery, listing  and graphs into one big nerdgasm. Onward!

My initial plan was to just take the high counts from my Last.fm charts for the last year. However, I realized that this would unfairly punish short and/or recently-released albums. Furthermore, that doesn’t really describe “obsession” as I’m used to it–the kind of constant repetition that drives my girlfriend insane (see also: Hercules and Love Affair, In Ghost Colours). So I decided to use the yearly chart as a jumping-off point, but only count the first two months after an LP initially appeared on my weekly charts. I then divided the total play count by number of tracks, and finally came up with an average for the eight-week span. The list, eight-week average and graph are after the jump. And, please–no complaints about the methodology. This isn’t 538.

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Normally, I do the rather-arbitrary “choose 10 (or, last year, 25) albums and rank them” thing about now. But thanks to a slow week at work, my innate graphic geekiness, and Microsoft Excel, you’ll be getting science. So…get ready.

Show Yr Work Update: My fifteen “most-obsessed-over” albums have 11.2 tracks on average, with a standard deviation of only 1.265.

Oh my goodness, it is Friday the 13th. It’s also Caroline’s birthday. Anyway, here are five things that I’ve been watching in the new age of high-definition DVR:

1. Californication. I’ve only watched a few episodes, but it’s growing on me. I get to enjoy Duchovny’s droll insouciance without the X-Files craziness that scares the crap out of me.
2. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I’ve really been meaning to watch this show for a long time, but I kept forgetting. Now I never have to remember when it’s on.
3. Showtime in general. I didn’t expect much from movie channels, but when they have Wall-E on repeat? They got me for these three free months, at least.
4. Mythbusters. Not really new, but high-speed explosion shots in HD are outstanding.
5. Sports. Again, not a new thing, but the switch to HD is stunning. I even watched some of the playoffs, which I hadn’t done regularly in years.