Via @DrGrist

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1. Watching for the ads.
2. Where they been at?
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It’s becoming more common for shows and movies to create character Twitter accounts. Glee, for example, has a whole bunch of them set up, but they aren’t particularly good: lots of repeated jokes, extreme sporadic entries, no real interaction with the events of the plot or deeper development of the characters beyond their tics.  I think feeds like these will work best if they’re treated like webisodes, a way of offering more, quality original content that expands a universe, and can be produced at no cost other than the time of the person who is tasked with updating them. But that means taking them seriously. Just because a product doesn’t require major production costs doesn’t mean it should look and read cheap.

Although I’m not sure how it’d work for movies, it’s a great idea for TV–I know I’d follow Community twits. Also, a few webcomics have been doing this for a while; Achewood had blogs¹ by several characters, and Questionable Content‘s characters are on Twitter.

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2. Television rules the nation.
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Fabric. Is there some in my stash or lurking somewhere on the internet that I simply can’t live without? Have I been obsessing about a particular event for which a stunt dress is necessary? Have I been thinking about a particular theme, like stripes or eyelet or giant florals? Do I have a new cardigan in a weird color (yes, I’m looking at you, Land’s End) that needs a mate?

Visualization. Where will I wear this dress? Who will be there? Will I wear it once, or over and over again? Will I blog it?

Shoes. Which ones? Do I already own them? Would this dress require shoes that do not, in fact, actually exist? (E.g., every pair of boots I’ve ever wanted.) Do I have a pair of shoes in a weird color that I need to make a dress to match? Am I looking for an excuse to buy a new pair of shoes in a weird color? (Lather, rinse, repeat for “Coat” and “Bag”.)

Style blogs like the Sartorialist extol a personal kind of style, but time and thought goes into creating an apparently effortless, unique-snowflake look.

HT: Kottke

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1. The National – High Violet
2. LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening
3. Delorean – Subiza
4. The New Pornographers – Together
5. The Hold Steady – Heaven is Whenever
   

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Every Calvin and Hobbes, from start to finish, complete with searchable text.

HT: Rands’ Twitter

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3. I have been called unstable, but not unsustainable.

I’m not optimistic about the rest of the album at this point, but I’ll withhold final judgment until May. Gotta stay positive.

Update: Ed sent me a few live versions of a few other tracks, which I liked better. This isn’t that surprising–most of my problems with the two tracks posted above are related to production. We shall see on May 4, I guess.

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3. Acid Pimps Pocketknife Say, “Talons, Dear.”

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?

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3. A Golden Age.

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

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2. 5. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
3. Fuck up the party before it even starts.

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.

1. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz! (2.36 plays per week)
   Far and away the winner. Only a single week went by where I didn’t play the entire album at least once.
2. Neko Case - Middle Cyclone (1.63 PPW)
   This was, incidentally, the only album on Ed’s list that I’d heard.
3. St. Vincent – Actor (1.55 PPW)
   
4. Fever Ray – Fever Ray (1.49 PPW)
   I thought this would be higher.
5. The Dead Weather – Horehound (1.43 PPW)
   
6. Matt and Kim – Grand (1.42 PPW)
   I believe this is a textbook example of “burning out,” though I’ve come back to it recently.
7. Dan Deacon – Bromst (1.28 PPW)
8. Bat for Lashes – Two Suns (1.26 PPW)
9. Handsome Furs – Face Control (1.24 PPW)
   I didn’t think this would rank so highly–I didn’t like it as much as, say, Dragonslayer–which, incidentally, didn’t make the list. It’s got some catchy tracks, though.
10. Jay Reatard – Watch Me Fall (1.13 PPW)
    Another album I burned out on.
11. Metric – Fantasies (0.98 PPW)
    
12. School of Seven Bells – Alpinisms (0.88 PPW)
13. Yo La Tengo – Popular Songs (0.63 PPW)
    This should probably be higher, as I have no data for a week in September. I believe I may have failed to scrobble some tracks.
14. The xx – xx (0.52 PPW)
    The biggest surprise, as this is my sixth-most-listened-to LP of the last year, despite being a fall release. However, on reflection it makes sense–although I always thought it was pleasant, it took a while for this album to grow on me. It’s now far and away my most-listened-to album of the last three months.
15. Pink Mountaintops – Outside Love (0.13 PPW)
    This was confusing, given its 4th-place standing on my Last.fm chart. However, while I was looking up other albums, I came upon a week where I apparently played 150 songs from this album. I suspect I left my iPod running on repeat (The same thing happened with the new Vivian Girls album).

Long story short, this certainly didn’t produce a list of the best albums of the year by any means, and it really just told me what I already knew–I play a new album incessantly for a short time, then switch to a different one. Moreover, Caroline’s right–it’s hideously ironic to spend the majority of an afternoon analyzing my obsession with music. Looks like I’ll have to do a traditional “best albums of 2009″ post after all.

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2. My 2009 albums of the year.
3. 20. Hot Chip – Made in the Dark

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

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