infobong.com

I got back from Tulsa last night. This is the first New Year's Eve I've spent in Austin, and its in the 70s. It feels a little strange running around town in sandals, especially when it was 24F when I left town last week.

Looking at Pitchfork's year-end record roundup, I wish I could list my favorite records of the year, but I just didn't buy all that many records, and what few records I bought were mostly used LPs from years ago. The record that came out this year that I wish I had is M83's Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts but I'm too lazy and too cheap to pick it up. My favorite song this year is "Slow Response" by Trans Am, and it was released in 2000. Its hardly even a song, I suppose, if the only vocal I can understand is "Sweet, sweet crack cocaine."

The weirdest musical moment of the year for me has to be the use of The Kinks' "Picture Book" in commercials for Hewlett-Packard digital photography products. Unless the folks at HP are way hipper than me and I'm missing a layer of irony, this has to be one of the most inappropriate appropriations of a pop song since Reagan used "Born in the USA" as the theme song for his 1984 re-election bid. The song mocks the use of photography to commodify moments in people's personal lives, right? I'll bet Ray Davies is laughing all the way to the bank.