December 2011

“Hey, Mac OS Dictionary widget, I don’t remember exactly how to spell this word, but it’s something like this. Little help?”
“No. Fuck you.”

My top five albums of 2011:

5. Yuck
6. Colin Stetson
7. Mastodon
8. Low
9. Wolves in the Throne Room

Time will tell if Mastodon has done the impossible and written a song about a comic book character without sounding silly.

The “slideshow” pagination technique that web advertisers so adore makes year-end lists an absolute fucking nightmare to read. I give up.

Fucked Up’s David Comes to Life is about four times longer than it needs to be.

Childish Gambino’s Camp gets this year’s 180º award, taking me three listens to go from “This is smart and fun!” to “Actually, not really.”

Apparently the mistake I had been making with Battles’ Gloss Drop was listening to it sitting down.

50% of the 2011 music I bought was made by artists that were new to me.

My year-end 2011 smart playlist is the first that has needed an “Artist Name does not include Weychert” specification. yfrog.com/kgeotp

Only bought twenty 2011 albums (and EPs), and I’m listening to all of them today, starting right now. Follow along: last.fm/user/cowpiesur…

5:21 AM: After hours of torture from a hapless imbecile, the starter in the SUV outside my building gasps its dying breath. And I rejoice.

Hey, asshole! Remember when the ignition didn’t work the first six hundred times you tried it?

Purchase of a wah pedal should require a background check.

Dude next to me on the bus is reading espn.com, e-mailing, IMing three people, and talking on the phone while watching The Tree of Life.

My Top 3 #lastfm Artists: Ministry (29), Vince Guaraldi Trio (16) & Michael Gira (13) tweekly.fm/twitter/robweycher…

This thing where they make kitchen knives now with brightly colored blades? I’m not about that.

For something made up entirely of people who desperately want to belong to something, youth culture’s classifications sure do split hairs.

A reasonable person might wonder why they were able to see their 10:15 bus leave without them at 10:14.

Wish I could stay in Brooklyn for Christmas. This place is a ghost town and I could do with some time alone with the ghosts.

The entire show Fucked Up played in the round last month in NYC is now online. I was there and now you can be too: pitchfork.com/tv/special-pre…

There were at least two high profile odes to testosterone of the pull-the-superhuman-war-hero-out-of-retirement-for-a-suicide-rescue-mission variety in 1985: Rambo: First Blood Part II and Commando. Both traffic in the big, loud, and dumb of 1980s Cold War action tropes. But only Commando is actually fun, because it has the good sense not to take itself so seriously.

Each of Arnold’s one-liners in Commando is a winking acknowledgement that this is high octane escapism, a celebration of wanton… See more →

“You’re the one who’s making the mistake.”
“Yeah? What mistake?”
“Rambo.”

Has it really been ten years since @AndrewWk gave us I Get Wet? I’ve lost count of how many times that record has saved my life.

Making mistakes.

Among the music I added to my collection this year, thirty-six of the last fifty years are represented. Not bad.

Feeling very, very cynical today. About pretty much everything.

My Top 3 #lastfm Artists: Def Leppard (44), Faraquet (19) & A Silver Mt. Zion (19) tweekly.fm/twitter/robweycher…

Have you ever been in a public place and changed your walk’s rhythm to keep it from aligning with the shitty music that was playing?

Current status: youtu.be/pbTULjLtKP4

Death Star : Thermal Exhaust Port :: Apartment Building : Toilet

Breaking Bad is good. I like it. So why does watching it always feel like work?

Apparently the myth of the American sleepover is that its volume can rise above a whisper. This film tries so hard for understated adolescent authenticity that it forgets those first tentative steps into adulthood tend to be just as clumsily vibrant as they are furtively awkward. For a story that spans several nocturnal teenage gatherings on the last weekend of summer, it is remarkably – and fatally – sedate. I have no lack of patience… See more →

My Top 3 #lastfm Artists: 7Seconds (17), Drake (17) & Mogwai (14) tweekly.fm/twitter/robweycher…

Just said goodbye to the people of The Wonder Years for the second time in twenty years. I miss them already.

Sundays are for watching multiple videos of turtles copulating with shoes.

Tom Cruise and “Old Time Rock and Roll” deserve each other.

Finished with my annual afternoon of Pandora’s Christmas station. Very, very finished.

To be awake at 5:33 AM is to despise all of creation and pray for the abrupt end of humankind.

It’s rightly gone from the text, but I’d hate to deprive you of a groan, so: “There are enough talking points to overwhelm Georges Seurat.”

There is no “I” without “we”.

Sometimes you’re allowed to reward yourself disproportionate validation for small victories.

Surely no one was more disappointed by Sarah Palin’s absence from the 2012 presidential race than Stephen K. Bannon, the director of this two-hour campaign commercial.

The Undefeated is a chore. With “tell, don’t show” as its storytelling mantra, it chronicles Palin’s public works in her own words (using excerpts from her audiobook) and the words of the people who helped her. And there are so, so many words, all of them black or white,… See more →

David Bazan (ex Pedro the Lion) does an excellent cover of Low’s “Just Like Christmas”: avc.lu/sNRotO

Still dry heaving an hour after @ChamberMonster insisted I put cheese on her PB&J.

My Top 3 #lastfm Artists: Tubeway Army (28), Colin Stetson (28) & Louis C.K. (18) tweekly.fm/twitter/robweycher…

Laundry day. As usual, I forgot to put a fresh bath towel back on the rack until it was too late. Turns out a hand towel will do the trick.

Even more shocking than the allegations against Sandusky is that his lawyer lets him continue to dig his own grave. nyti.ms/u4Iq5Y

Les Paul is my friend and I love him dearly, but I’m beginning to think he is not a friend to my back.

With the right combo of key art and hack writing, you’ll have any movie figured out before you even see the trailer. trailers.apple.com/trailers/param…

If you haven’t seen Texts from Bennett yet, you’re missing out. textsfrombennett.tumblr.com

Using a relative timestamp on anything more than a day old is nonsense.

Ladies and gents, the reason I left the game industry: youtube.com/watch?v=4RLAE3… (Not a knock on Harmonix, just an impossible design challenge.)

So @casey_malone asks if I saw the @MovingImageNYC Henson exhibit and I find they’re showing a newish Svankmajer film tonight. Yay internet!