Time for outside-work fun and general pop culture absorption was extra low this year, but what I loved in 2010, I loved hard. These are the things that made my heart sing over the past twelve months.

Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me



Is there any point in writing about any other album than Joanna's? This triple album is clearly the work of the bright star of young music makers today. The difference between her and everyone else on the playing field? Nothing about her work is derivative: not her sound, not her writing and certainly not her voice. Album of the year, for sure...probably would even call it album of the past few years! It's that good.

"Soft As Chalk"



Mountain Man - Made the Harbor



Old timey yet thoroughly modern.

I am busy at work on my top 50 albums of the year! I will most likely be posting those on the blog next week but I decided to go ahead and post my other best of lists of the year now. We still have a couple of weeks left in the year so the movies list will most likely change, as I plan on seeing about 10 more movies before the year is over so my top ten movies of the year will also be posted in the next couple of weeks. What I have for you today is my top dvds and blu-rays for the year, my top TV shows & video games, my favorite 7"s and soundtracks....It has been a really great year! Tons of stuff to keep my glued to my TV screen...

TOP TEN DVD RELEASES  OF THE YEAR...






TV CARNAGE: LET'S WORK IT OUT!











BEST OF SOUL TRAIN












EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE 2

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All you ravenous Mad Men fans out there (myself included) will be delighted to learn that the autobiography Roger Sterling was working on this season on the show will be published for real (well, kinda for real) next month! While this autobiography, entitled Sterling's Gold: Wit and Wisdom of an Adman, isn't guaranteed to give us the juicy details the one on the show did, it will no doubt be entertaining, as it is filled with the bons mots Roger is so famous for, such as "Remember, when God closes a door, he opens a dress." Truly stuff to live by! Find out more here.

In a hallmark episode of Mad Men Don Draper said, "Nostalgia -- it's delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, 'nostalgia' literally means 'the pain from an old wound.' It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels – around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved."

Of course, for all of you out there who, unlike me, don't voraciously follow the AMC series, Don was pitching an ad for a slide projector (nostalgia, indeed) to a potential client. However, I like to think that this quote speaks of yet another rotary mechanism with equal validity, both practically and emotionally speaking, though there may be some folks who'd argue the dingus as obsolete. Well, my record player is still alive and spinning, taking me to new places as often as it swings me back, right 'round, home-bound again like a flawlessly sound-tracked time machine. I can offer no better example of this cyclical sentimental journey than the summer season I spent aboard my little hi-fi this year enjoying an endless rotation summer jams beginning with the fresh sun-soaked (and smog-stained) sounds of Ariel Pink's Haunted Grafitti, what with the extremely timely June 7th release of Before Today on 4AD, and, now that summer is winding down, rounding out the season with a mess of Carolina beach music 7" singles culled from the belly of the 45's bargain bin at Amoeba Music in San Francisco.