![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
The Best-Written Top 10 Albums Of 2009 List On The Internet
Posted in![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif){kind=small}
bestweekever on 2009.12.30 at 17:00
I’ve been planning to write my Top 10 Albums of 2009 list for some time now, but whenever I write about music I enjoy, I come off sounding alternatively like a gushing schoolgirl and a total douchebag, or some unholy combination of the two, which I would call a “douchegirl” except that you’d be like “is that a girl made of douche?” and I’d have to explain it, and it’d just waste more time than it saved.
So for this year’s 10 Best Albums of 2009 list, rather than be intimidated by the grandiose prose of my online music brethren, I’ve decided to compile an even better-written list than everyone else’s by accompanying the album choices not with rambly writeups, but with passages from assorted literary masterpieces.
If the excerpts end up applying to the albums, I assure you it’s completely incidental, but can you argue with the greatness of the writing? The answer is that you cannot. So here it is — The Best-Written Top 10 Albums Of 2009 List On The Internet:
10. The Flaming Lips – Embryonic
On the table was an empty glass and a glass half-full of brandy and soda. I took them both out to the kitchen and poured the half-full glass down the sink. I turned off the gas in the dining-room, kicked off my slippers sitting on the bed, and got into bed. This was Brett that I had felt like crying about. Then I thought of her walking up the street and stepping into the car, as I had last seen her, and of course in a little while I felt like hell again. It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night is another thing.
9. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his cook’s uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace was said over the short commons. The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered each other, and winked at Oliver; while his next neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:
‘Please, sir, I want some more.’
8. The Juan MacLean – The Future Will Come
It was a monstrous big river down there — sometimes a mile and a half wide; we run nights, and laid up and hid daytimes; soon as night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied up — nearly always in the dead water under a towhead; and then cut young cottonwoods and willows, and hid the raft with them. Then we set out the lines. Next we slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off; then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee deep, and watched the daylight come. Not a sound anywheres — perfectly still — just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bullfrogs a-cluttering, maybe.
7. St. Vincent – Actor
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that.
6. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart
Just as in the clock the result of the complex action of innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely the slow and regular movement of the hand marking the time, so the result of all the complex human activities of these 160,000 Russian and French – of all their passions, hopes, regrets, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear and enthusiasm – was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the battle of the three Emperors, as it was called; that is to say, a slow movement of the hand on the dial of human history.
5. Girls – Album
“I knows what you thinking.” Dilsey said. “And they aint going to be no luck in saying that name, lessen you going to set up with him while he cries.”
“They aint no luck on this place,” Roskus said. “I seen it at first but when they changed his name I knowed it.”
“Hush your mouth” Dilsey said. She pulled the covers up. It smelled like T. P. “You all shut up now, till he get to sleep.”
4. Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career
She was really good. All you had to do was touch her. And when she turned around, her pretty little butt twitched so nice and all. She knocked me out. I mean it. I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they’re not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.
3. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
“What a mine they’ve dug there! And they’re making the most of it! Yes, they are making the most of it! They’ve wept over it and grown used to it. Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!”
He sank into thought.
“And what if I am wrong,” he cried suddenly after a moment’s thought. “What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind — then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it’s all as it should be.”
2. Dinosaur Jr. – Farm
“No one’s trying to kill you,” Clevinger cried.
“Then why are they shooting at me?” Yossarian asked.
“They’re shooting at everyone,” Clevinger answered. “They’re trying to kill everyone.”
“And what difference does that make?”
Clevinger was already on the way, half out of his chair with emotion, his eyes moist and his lips quivering and pale. There were many principles in which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy.
1. Passion Pit – Manners
STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
—INTROIBO AD ALTARE DEI.
Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely:
—Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!
Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest.
Honorable Mentions: Dan Deacon – Bromst; Wild Beasts – Two Dancers; Bat For Lashes – Two Suns; Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca; Islands – Vapours
Favorite albums of 2009? Leave ‘em in the comments.
Airplane Food (âr’plān’ ˈfüd)
This same concept — something that’s been made fun of so much, you can’t make fun of it anymore regardless of your experience — applies in all kinds of situations, from eating airline food to doctors making you wait forever, to people in gyms being so cut you need to work out before you work out there, to women taking a long time in the bathroom, to George W. Bush messing up words. The things get overly made fun of because they’re so prevalent, and yet, this prevalence eventually protects them from being made fun of once the observation becomes so accepted, there’s no longer any reason to bring it up. This isn’t to say that Bush didn’t continue messing up words long after it was fashionable comic material, or that he didn’t still deserve it, just that at some point in the arc of , everyone just accepts
I’ve been on a Law and Order binge this holiday season. As every human with eyes and couches knows, this entails watching roughly more hours of Law and Order per day than there are hours in a given day for more days than there are days, and it’s such a common occurrence in humanity, I don’t even feel the need to acknowledge this practice as unusual or even really noteworthy.
Truth #1: If a recognizable actor or actress is in the episode, they did it. 
Truth #2: If they arrest or try a suspect with too much time left in the episode, that person obviously didn’t do it.
Universal Truth #3: The last couple seasons of SVU have been effing crazy.
A world without The Tyra Banks Show is like Christmas with Santa’s cold body waiting under the tree: Devoid of all happiness and celebration. When the show began in 2005, it seemed the nation was skeptic. How could Tyra Banks, supermodel, carry her own talk show? What we were to learn over the past 4 years is the answer: With hilarity, brazenness, and a genuine voice that, even in its most inappropriate or silly times, never wavered. 
Which is why this news is most surprising. With Oprah ending her 215-year reign as the Queen of All Media next year, we were sure — certain – that Tyra would be just the girl to fill in Oprah’s Hermes crocodile canoes (shoes). And then this news…
It’s the Christmas/New Year’s half-assed work weeks, and that can only mean one thing: TV Marathons. Yes, that is literally the only thing it means. What is another thing it means? Nothing, is the answer. I was just named #1 on the 2009 list of Best Logic Users. Thanks internet!
Good News, fellas: Susan Sarandon’s 
