Two men at a bar. The man on the left is overweight and has an open pack of cigarettes behind him; also a rocks glass with liquid. He stands with his back to the bar, leaning, legs crossed at the ankle, a cigarette balanced insouciantly between two fingers as smoke issues forth from his face like a floodgate. The man on the right is slim and wearing a smart coat plus striped scarf, some hard shoes just visible in the dim shadow of the bar stools. Because of the crop, we can’t see anyone to the left of the larger man, nor anyone to the right of the slim man. Still, by the way this latter is turning his head to the left, his back to the viewer, we can infer that he’s there at the bar with someone else, some companion, who has either paused long enough in conversation for this slim man to turn and look over his shoulder, or else has run to the head real quick or something. The larger man has a speech bubble that says, “This is my diet plan. Tobacco is an appetite suppressant. Or nicotine is.” In profile, we see the thin man’s expression, a bit smug, a bit patronizing. His bubble says, “Mmm. Is it working?” Smoke is sort of creeping along the floor of the bar, like false fog.

1. Modest Mouse - The Moon & Antarctica  (2000)
2. Broken Social Scene - You Forgot it in People  (2002)
3. Radiohead - In Rainbows  (2008)
4. A Silver Mt. Zion - Born into Trouble as the Sparks Fly Upward  (2001)
5. Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP  (2000)
6. Panda Bear - Person Pitch  (2007)
7. Liars - Drum’s Not Dead  (2006)
8. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot  (2002)
9. Animal Collective - Feels  (2005)
10. Battles - Mirrored  (2007)
- - -
Spoon - Gimmie Fiction  (2005)
Sigur Rós - ( )  (2002)
Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights  (2002)

1. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
2. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
3. Atlas Sound - Logos
4. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
5. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
- - -
St. Vincent - Actor

Song: Animal Collective - My Girls
Best of 2009 Mix

Previous years’ lists

A bar where the seats are all unicycle seats, and people can pedal while they drink. The pedals are hooked up by bicycle chain to small generators, and the power generated by the pedaling goes toward powering the bar’s lights, refrigeration, signage, etc. Would be the World’s First Human-Powered Bar. Might get called a “Biker Bar” but only in jest, like ironically. What would it be called? Maybe “Biker Bar,” actually.

A man crests a hill on a bicycle. The camera follows him over a series of precipitous drops and craggy boulders, it’s that sort of sped-up-motion style that we’ve seen a million times before. The man wears a white helmet w/ a red cross on it and a kind of deconstructed uniform—an amalgamation of the hi-tech breathable spandex suit worn by cyclists and some sort of postmodern ambulance driver. He wears a red armband with a white circle on it, inside of which is another red cross. The man stops, gazes at the surrounding wilderness—it’s a desert scene, the orange sun vibrates, a hawk alights on a cactus—then pulls a walkie talkie from his shoulder and says “Charlie two-eight Delta, this is Recon Three. I’ve got a visual.” He wipes the sweat from his brow and digs his foot into the pedal of the bike. A closeup of this reveals some serious footwear and a professional-looking bike: shock absorbers, mudflaps, multiple reflectors and switch-operated LEDs, a dial we understand to be an altimeter (!), a built-in air pump as well as a patch-kit, thick off-road tires with complicated tread patterns. He races off again and dirt flies against the camera lens, all of this serving to really pull the viewer into the scene. Cut to: In a jarring POV shot, we come upon a woman sprawled on the ground, a man peering over her all worried and helpless. He runs his hand through his hair repeatedly, sort of thing. Two bikes lay on their sides, glimmering in the sunlight. The woman seems barely conscious. The helpless man says, “Oh, thank God you’re here. My wife, she’s . . . ” and doesn’t even finish his sentence. Our hero nods and speaks again into the walkie talkie. “Carlie two eight Delta, I’ve established contact with the subject. I’m at” (here he looks at a large watch worn on the inside of his wrist) “six-five-two-five-whiskey, repeat six-five-two-five-whiskey.” We don’t know what this means but it doesn’t matter. It could be gibberish for all we know, only it sounds serious. He peers out at the surrounding, sun-baked landscape. Cut to: In the background and out of focus a helicopter pulls a stretcher up slowly, it twirls as it ascends, and our hero, pouring sweat and still panting from the rigor of his task, says to the camera, “In my line of work,” (he points to the armband with the medical cross on it) “I just can’t afford to have a migraine.” The screen says: Kevin Whiting, Bicycle Recon/Medic. He unsnaps his helmet and wipes a tremendous amount of sweat from his brow. “When I’m just puttering around town with my wife, or exploring some uncharted woods with my buddies, just no big deal, I might take an Aspirin or a Tylenol. But when lives are on the line, I trust [product name]. [Product name]” (repeated for emphasis) “is the only medication proven to be effective for twenty-four hours straight, so you can worry about what’s most important.” Here the walkie-talkie buzzes to life again: “Recon Three, we’ve got a young kid says his dad broke his leg somewhere along the Dakota Trail. Kid sounds pretty desperate. We’re gonna need you there stat. This one could be serious.” The man looks at the camera with a see-what-I-mean?-type look, which he conveys just by lifting his eyebrows and lowering his chin a bit. We notice, maybe for the first time, that Kevin is fit—lean and not conspicuously muscular. He is attractive, but not intimidating. A sort of glorified everyman. Someone we can relate to but also look up to. An achievable ideal. We watch him bound confidently away, over more rocks and fallen tree trunks, then disappear over a hill. The Product is superimposed on the screen along with legal copy and catch-phrase, which could be something like, “When lives are on the line, trust [product name].” Just an example. Could be anything. I’m not in copywriting. Fade to white or whatever.

There’s a guy lying on the couch. His eyes are closed but we can tell since he’s got a speech bubble that he’s awake. His wife has just walked in the door with a bag of groceries or a briefcase, something that suggests accomplishment, and she’s saying, “Still working on the novel?” and he’s saying, “Mmm hmm.”

What if you filmed a movie in black and white, maybe a WWI movie or something old, but you filmed it in COLOR only you just built all the sets and costumes in black and white. You’d have to shoot only on cloudy days and everyone would have to wear makeup and it would be hard, but it would be totally, totally worth it.

Just about every time I used the bathroom at my old job, which is, in four years, probably about (4 x (5 x 50)) x 1.5 = 1,500 times, I used the middle of the three urinals. That middle urinal was like my urinal, like nothing could keep me from my urinal. Not even the guy who told me that most consider it bad etiquette, or else just wrong, to use the middle of three urinals, since it forces the next guy who comes in to pee in the one immediately adjacent to yours. Because hold on for a second. It’s socially acceptable for men to shower together (like in a locker room situation), it’s fine for them to listen to each other’s tile-floor-amplified bowel movements, but it’s not cool for them to pee next to one another with a 3/4-inch-thick metal divider between? We need two metal dividers plus an intermediary urinal? I’m just not buying it. I’m not.

What’s super weird, though, and but sort of actually helps prove my point, in a way, are the dudes who’ll walk in and not only say hello to you but will also totally start up a conversation. It’s like, SERIOUSLY? I’m holding my penis right now; do you honestly think I want to tell you about my weekend? Because I don’t. I actually didn’t really care to discuss my weekends with most of these people ever, is another good point, but kind of off subject. Anyway, the urinal to the right was the ADA-prescribed kiddie one, and some people I asked said that yeah, if someone was already using the far left one, they’d use the kiddie urinal rather than the middle, so as to avoid having to pee right next to someone. I mean, maybe I’m inviting these urinal chats by always taking the middle one, like that’s secret code for “Come! Chat with me! Ask me did I catch the Mariner game last night!” Who knows. Also, I don’t know if this is weird, but if I ever had to go number two there, I’d bring my book into the stall so I could get some reading done. Two birds, you know?

Tradition has it that only way to crunch a leaf, really, is to step on it. The ideal crunching leaf is singular and, obviously, dry, and it sits on asphalt or pavement (as opposed to, say, grass, which gives too much). This all goes without saying, probably. There are a few additional factors, though, that can substantially affect your leaf-crunching experience; all of which, unfortunately, are beyond your control. In a way, though, the rarity of the perfect crunching leaf only adds to the satisfaction of finding one, in the same way Christmas’s once-a-year-only policy keeps it fresh and special.

1. Shape of the leaf: The perfect crunching leaf is elliptical and anywhere from two and a half to three and a half times longer than it is wide (not including stem).

2. Curl of the leaf: Curl is one of the most important factors in whether or not a leaf has serious crunch potential. The ideal leaf has a medial curl which forms an arc roughly the shape of a half egg.

3. Placement on the pavement: Your leaf should be lying on its side with its back facing away from you, i.e. in the same direction you are walking.

If you’re fortunate enough to spot the perfect crunching leaf in your path, plan your steps several yards ahead so you can crunch it without breaking stride. The best crunches are usually performed nonchalantly, like it’s no big deal. Strike the leaf firmly but not forcefully (any extra air forced downward by your accelerated step may displace the leaf before you strike it) with the front portion of your shoe or sandal — anywhere between the end of your arch and the middle of your toes.

The resulting crunch should be wholly satisfying. A perfectly crunched leaf is one of the true joys of nature.

So it’s my last week of work and for some reason, probably as a protest, Seattle temperatures are at like, Tempe AZ levels. Seriously, I woke up this morning at 6:00 and it was 76° out. By the time I left for work, two hours later, it was 82°. I mean, just the fact that I’m checking the temperature this often. It’s like how hot is it now? How about now? Anyway so how do we deal with this literally hellish heat, here in our 50ish° air-conditioned office? With an ice cream social, of course!

The first harbinger comes via e-mail at like 11:00 (outside temp: 92°), then an announcement bleats out over the inter-office intercom at 2:00 (96° and holding). It’s Ice Cream Time! And sure, I personally can’t eat the stuff due to a gastrointestinal intolerance to lactose, but it’s also my last week and I’ve got nothing to do, so I head over to the kitchen, figuring there’ll probably be cookies. Which there are, only not chocolate chip like I was hoping for. Nope. Just Oreos, and fake ones at that. But I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I grab a couple and continue on to see what else I can scavenge. I feel like a vegan lion at a kill, but I think, well, when life hands you lemons. I grab a cone and fill it with some strawberry slices, some crushed fake Oreos (There’s a bowl of crushed and a bowl of non-crushed. Nice.), a Reese’s PB Cup, maybe some other stuff, and then I drizzle on some butterscotch syrup and some caramel syrup too, because I just can’t decide. I do this right in front of this very attractive young lady who works maybe in accounting or something, just not really thinking about it, just kind of going about my business, damn the torpedos style. I also grab one more fake Oreo and put a dab-of-shampoo-sized dab of caramel syrup on it, and I eat that on my way back to my desk.

So some backstory here. I didn’t eat breakfast this morning because we really don’t have anything in the cupboards, and anyway I spent all of breakfast-time packing up my CDs and disassembling the CD rack and getting that all squared away for the move. So around 11:00 I start to feel some kind of hungry in me. Luckily I happen to have some sushi-like rolls that I made a couple nights before and left here in the office fridge, so I grab those to tide me over. As it turns out, though, four sushi-like rolls is a pretty filling nosh, and suddenly it’s like 2:15 (temp: 101°, no joke), post social, and I realize I still haven’t eaten lunch. I’m not about to heat my leftover spag while everyone’s all still getting their ice cream social on, though, so I wait until like 2:20 before heading back to the microwaves, Ziploc’d leftovers in hand.

Sprawled out on the kitchen counter like concubines are at least ten 70%-full half-gallon tubs of ice cream, slowwwly melting in the conditioned air. I think, Really? I think, Would somebody please tell me how much this is all costing the company? I mean, sure, not a lot, like, relatively speaking. But just, people are getting laid off, you know, and how many of us would have noticed if we’d just skipped this whole ice cream social thing. Not a one of us. Or if, you know, maybe only FIVE buckets of ice cream had been set out, instead of this killing field. Because yeah, it’s just sitting there melting and I’m just like: What a waste! What is this the polar ice caps? I think about this for one minute and eleven seconds as my spaghetti is being nuked. And while I’m thinking about it, I walk over and pop another fake Oreo into my mouth. But then who walks into the kitchen just as that fake Oreo is being stuffed between my lips? That same very attractive young lady from accounting. And I’m all, No! I haven’t been sitting here this whole time shoving fake Oreos into my mouth! I just came back in here, like just now, to reheat my leftover spag! Because I mean, sure, I’m getting married in a week, but does that mean I don’t want to look at least not unattractive, like not disgustingly gluttonous in the eyes of the fairer sex? Of course it doesn’t. So anyway she doesn’t even notice me, she just grabs something from the refridgerator or whatever and heads back to her work, which is almost worse, I think, and I grab another fake Oreo, and the microwave dings and I head back to my desk.

Oop! Another e-mail about the ice cream social!

Subject: It’s Melting!

Hi Staff,
The ice cream was melting so I had to put it on the top shelves of the freezer. Please help yourselves. I have left the toppings out for a bit.
Thank you to Operations for hosting such a lovely way for us to cool down…

The funniest part of this whole thing, though, is right when the ICS is announced on the intercom, this lady back in Production springs up out of her chair and starts talking excitedly to her cubicle neighbors, all, “Yeah! This seems like a great idea!” like in a you-don’t-have-to-tell-me-twice kind of voice, like of course she wants ice cream, like who wouldn’t. She’s still talking excitedly as she approaches my cube on her way to the kitchen and then she goes, being ironic, pretending like she actually doesn’t totally want ice cream, “You’ll have to FORCE me to COME!” She says it really loud and emphatic and the way it sounds is just really funny, trust me.