You all know how much we like Michael Cera here. But you don't need to see Juno, Helen Rittelmeyer saw it for us. Bookmark her blog now and say you were into Cigarette Smoking back when...

In the meantime, I found something to look forward to in '08.

So, one of the New Year's resolutions of this blog is to blog more. So, to that end, I got a digital camera thinking that the photographs I take would occasion a thought. Here goes. This underexposed beauty was taken at Brother Jimmy's near MSG - literally around the corner from the store I got the camera in.

I ask: What has happened to Pabst Blue Ribbon? Less than a decade ago Pabst had to close its Milwaukee operations and move to Texas. Then in 2001, at the lowest of the low, one bar in Portland, Oregon switches from a local brew to Pabst, and one barbershop in that same city starts to carry it.

Suddenly, I discovered a world in New York where bearded hipsters played Kings of Leon records at bars that offered "Blue Collar Tuesday" specials to those  (usually unbearded middle-aged souls) who showed their union cards. These bars invariably smell like urine. Now two years later, here it is being sold in a top flight sports-bar chain in NYC right next to Madison Square Garden.

I can't precisely explain how a product goes from iconicly boring brand, to being hip overnight, except to say that precisely because it was so iconicly boring - and cheap - PBR was a prime target for a cohort that has tried to rehabilitate mutton-chop facial hair and Southern Rock. Now that PBR is in places like Brother Jimmy's - an establishment whose only hipster cache is that until a year ago it occasionally played Ben Folds Five records while the patrons scarfed down buffalo wings and NBA playoff upsets -- I think it is safe to say that PBR will decline in status-value to hipsters. One beer brand that is particularly well suited to the next hipster renovation is Schaefer - just get a load of that perfectly down-market authentic can design. It just so happens, Schaefer was purchased by Pabst in 1999.

And it even has a perfect YouTube video.  

But if I had to guess, my bet is that young people begin rejecting the ironic embrace of long-defunct brands, and begin once again to ironicly embrace the almost-defunct projects of major corporate brands. Expect to see lots of Bud Ice at the hipest bars near you.  I close my eyes and hear the faint strains of a Feist CD and an idiot 24 yr. old in a mustache explaining that, "The ad guys at A.B. [that's Anheuser Busch] have wanted to dump the Ice for years man. They don't even know what they've got!"

Some of my friends and acquaintances in this business of content production put out end of year lists of albums (Peter Suderman, and Matt Yglesias occur to me.) At my advanced age of twenty-five, I find this task impossible. Maybe four years ago I would have had some idea. Now, I find I don't have time to listen to that much new music. If I think about the albums I've listened to this year- I find that only a few were released this year: Easy Tiger (an e.p. technically) by Ryan Adams and the Cardinals was okay. Old Crow Medicine Show's album, Big Iron World was a constant companion on my long car trips and I find it came out last summer.

I only bought the Kanye West album, Graduation (which tops Peter's list), in the last week of the year and I like it. I was always delighted when "Stronger" came on the radio. I like "Flashing Lights" too. But the pleasures of this album are slightly diminished by a thought which was embryonic earlier in the decade when OutKast was at the top of the hip-hop charts, that this is "safe-for-whites" hip-hop.  (More thoughts on that later)

 Only a few years ago I was the first person I knew to buy The Shins first album, Oh Inverted World. Now, I can't say that I've listened to Arcade Fire, or St. Vincent. I've let my music magazine subscriptions expire, so I can barely even tell you what they are supposed to sound like. The two last things I remember as being "cool" (to me) when they came out were The Yeah Yeah Yeahs first album (haven't heard their others), and The White Stripes.

Film, likewise. I saw "The Lives of Others" this year - which makes Peter's list also - and I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Technically it came out in 2006.

As we passed into 2008, it became time to print our predictions. I did this once before, and was only correct that in two predictions - that my writing would appear in a magazine, and that I would terribly wound and offend about 20% of the people I met.

As for political predictions, I have very few. I can make a case that Romney will win Iowa tomorrow and the nomination. I can make a case that Huckabee will win the nomination.  Same with Clinton and Obama. But in January of '06 I predicted the Republicans would hold onto the Senate.

I will predict that the salutory effects of "the surge" will begin to end. The surge will have only made it possible for conservatives to blame our next Democrat president for losing Iraq, the way some people still blame Democrats for "losing" Vietnam. It will also have made the narrative of the war sufficiently unclear and prevent the political elites of our nation from drawing any meaningful lessons from Iraq.

Other than that I expect death will continue to end every human life and the Mets will make the playoffs this year.

L.A. Weekly has an absolutely incredible article on the resurgence of gang violence in L.A. and around the nation, with a particular focus on Watts. One of my favorite pieces of journalism this year.

Like many others, I enjoy the music of the Christmas season. I think particularly of "O' Holy Night" being sung at my parish. I remember caroling in high school - even doing a mean "Carol of the Bells" with a select choir. I also think of my 7'' record of Jimmy Eat World covering the song, "Last Christmas." I like dancing around the living room with my ladyfriend as we play Harry Connick Jr.'s Christmas music.

But I recently read that Trans-Siberian Orchestra has sold over five million records of Christmas music. This is frightening. For those that don't know TSO - they are a group of metal heads who have turned their attention to Christmas music - adding in electric guitars and electric violins. It is terrifying.

Christmas traditionally presents to us the image of Christ as the Child born in the cave.  It is the great scandal of the Incarnation; that the Redeemer of the world would be born in a lowly manger.

But have you heard TSO's version of "Carol of the Bells?"  Sure, it is not a sacred Christmas song. But the climax of the song puts me into another mood altogether. It is the soundtrack to Christmas as re-interpreted by Quentin Tarantino. I imagine baby Jesus levitating above the manger and making some eastern martial arts pose with his baby fingers, and with a look into the camera, blowing away Herod's army. The sequel will be set in Rome - look out!

It's that blasphemous.

So please, America, stop encouraging Trans-Siberian Orchestra.  

Every once in a while, it seems my readers like to look into my personal life. So here is something:

Some people think it is late to be doing this. But right now I'm putting up the Christmas tree in my mother's house. While I do it, I usually play a music DVD, like Ben Folds Five Sessions at the West 54th - which remains the best video document of my favorite band ever. (Here is the one sample I could find on YouTube) This year, I'm watching the last season of The Wire - On Demand.

This tree-lifting is usually a solitary effort. Although not always. I remember one year, in high school days, my girlfriend was helping me with the tree. I dated her for more than half my time in Brewster High. That feels like a decade when you are that age. I remember figuring out the fraction of my life that I had spent as her boyfriend. It was significant. She was very sweet to me and she was my first love. If you can have a first love at that age.

At that time I had started taking dance classes - ballroom and swing - and my girlfriend was not my partner. My dance partner had a boyfriend of her own but we were growing close. A little jolt of jealousy can help a relationship. Sustained jealousy rots it.

Anyway, I remember the way she bent herself around the tree and the look of concentration on her face - getting the lights just right. I went outside to get a breath of the cold winter air and then, in the dark of the entrance hallway, I looked at her in the Christmas lights. I was about to call to her, but it wasn't her name on my lips. So I said nothing. I thought I was in danger of breaking her heart. She was very pretty that day. I remember that image of her and my tree came to me years later when in New York City, I bumped into her. (Yes, sometimes in a city of 8 million people you do run into your one ex-girlfriend.) My two friends lingered behind the two of us as we walked through the Village and found a cafe. She was pretty that day - the last time I walked with her.

A few weeks after that Christmas, I stayed home from school, sick. I called her that afternoon and we broke up. After many hand-written letters, I started dating my dance partner that November. On a more recent Christmas, she got a present from a young man. On the following St. Valentine's Day that present revealed an engagement ring. They got married this year, I heard.

For some reason, while I was putting up the tree tonight, I thought to myself, "This has been the best year of my life." And then I heard this Fionn Regan song, and everything you read here occurred to me.

I've lost touch with that girl since. Almost everyone I know has. But I bet this was the best year of her life too.

So, I'll be leaving Washington today on a week-long trip to Cairo, where I will cover the convention of the ruling "party," the NDP. Should be fun. Travel, especially the type that involves 10-hour flights and long waits at the airport, allows me to catch up on some reading. A friend has insisted that I'll love David Foster Wallace, and so I'll be reading "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never do Again" while I wait in Dulles. If I like it, I'll try to pick up a copy of Infinite Jest in Arabic.

But when I'm traveling or on vacation I  prefer to reread novels that are sentimental favorites or non-fiction works that are important to me. As I pack up my carry-on (no toothpaste!), I thought I'd force my airplane reading selections on you. First up will be the seventh volume of Frederick Copleston's eminent History of Philosophy, the one covering the Post-Kantian Idealists, to Marx, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. 

Next up, the only novel on my list. Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis. I know, you are freaking out. But I actually found the book extremely moving. Maybe I'm a sucker, but I felt that Ellis' last novel, whose main character is Bret Easton Ellis  himself actually redeemed Ellis, the writer, from his own ego and his own excesses.

On the way back I'll be reading some Biblical theology: Mary in the Mystery of the Covenant by Ignace de La Potterie, SJ (my second Jesuit). Potteries's exegesis of the Marian passages of Scripture are just astonishing in their level of detail. Especially helpful is his discussion of John 6:41-47, in which the theologian explains and diagrams both the Concentric and Parallel Structures that Biblical authors employed in composing scripture.  

Finally, to politics, I'll be toting along my beat up edition of James Burnham's The Machiavellians, probably the most important book in shaping the way I think about politics. I have to thank Kevin Michael Grace for generously sending it to me a little over a year ago.  It's a second edition copy from 1943 and is full of pencil marks from its previous owner(s).

Other than that, I'll take a stack of the last month's men's magazines: Men's Vogue, Esquire, Details and GQ. Unfortunately, the TSA will make me check the bag containing my most valuable travel accessory.

Esquire has collected the worst video resumes on the web in order to help you avoid making some of the classic mistakes.

I actually disagree with their judgement on "Johnson," whose video resume seems to recommend him well for his job as a video game scriptwriter. I think "romantic" is a quality I'd be looking for as an H.R. person at Sony's video game group.

Am I right?

I couldn't get to this during the week but the travails of John Fitzgerald have delighted me to no end.

Here are the links.

If I wanted to make an absolutely devastating case against our modern democratic, meritocratic capitalist culture, I'd use John Fitzgerald as my first and last piece of evidence. Just to prove a point here, under "Skills" he lists the fact that he has 62% face resemblance to Billy Zane (pictured above). Poor fellow.

Previously, I said: Don't be the guy who  "thinks Wes Anderson films are "too precious" and overrated." I take it back now. I'll explain why. 

In anticipation of his latest flick, The Darjeeling Limited (reviewed ably by Suderman here) the Onion A.V. Club took two days to publish two important lists. 16 Films Without Which Wes Anderson Couldn't Have Happened. And 10 Films That Couldn't Have Happened Without Wes Anderson.

There are problems almost immediately. Leading off the former list is The Graduate. Name a modern filmmaker who doesn't bow down to this dead idol? You can't.

Mike Nichols' seminal comedy of disaffected youth echoes through all five of his [Anderson's] features—for its groundbreaking use of pop songs on the soundtrack, for its impeccable widescreen compositions, and for its tale of a young man of privilege crippled by uncertainty and melancholy

And these influences are all so important to Anderson specifically- why? Pop songs - how novel! Impeccable widescreen compositions (what about PTA or every other modern director not named Kevin Smith). Uncertainty and melancholy: sounds like what every member of the creative class is selling - since this is precisely the unchallenging crap that people who measure their taste by the length of their Criterion Collection shelf like to buy. 

The list of films that Anderson enabled is even scarier. Napolean Dynamite is the cinematic equivalent to Orbit gum - an attractive ad campaign, but the flavor lasts 8 seconds when you actually taste the product. Garden State - yeah, I dug the part with the flaming arrow too! Effective use of The Shins in that one and it was just so powerful and cathartic when the three leads screamed into th...ZZZzzzzz. Next!

The Squid and the Whale is the only decent member on the list of films that Anderson made possible. Of course that film wasn't so much influenced by Anderson's twee style. Instead it grew out of the increased name recognition for Noah Baumbach after he received co-screenwriting credits on The Life Aquatic. It was Baumbach's best autobiographical film since Kicking and Screaming. Better because he allowed the material to actually disturb the audience. He didn't frame the frightening performance of Jeff Daniels in multi-colored balloons and set it at 375th street in a plasticized Manhattan. Anderson's repulsive father figures are harmless, belching cartoons who deep down love their sons. Baumbach's fictionalized father is a monster who comically refers to Kafka as one of his literary predecessors, and in between Knicks games ignores his children and says to his female student, "Put me in your mouth." It may stack the deck, but it's a fair bit more interesting Royal Tannenbaum "tearing it up" with identicaly dressed grandkids.

Speaking of men's magazines, I noticed Esquire has put online it's famous 1966 profile of Frank Sinatra. Of course, the subject never granted an interview - but that wasn't going to stop Gay Talese:

Yet it would have been unwise for anyone to anticipate his reaction, for he is a wholly unpredictable man of many moods and great dimension, a man who responds instantaneously to instinct -- suddenly, dramatically, wildly he responds, and nobody can predict what will follow. A young lady named Jane Hoag, a reporter at Life's Los Angeles bureau who had attended the same school as Sinatra's daughter, Nancy, had once been invited to a party at Mrs. Sinatra's California home at which Frank Sinatra, who maintains very cordial relations with his former wife, acted as host. Early in the party Miss Hoag, while leaning against a table, accidentally with her elbow knocked over one of a pair of alabaster birds to the floor, smashing it to pieces. Suddenly, Miss Hoag recalled, Sinatra's daughter cried, "Oh, that was one of my mother's favorite . . ." -- but before she could complete the sentence, Sinatra glared at her, cutting her off, and while forty other guests in the room all stared in silence, Sinatra walked over, quickly with his finger flicked the other alabaster bird off the table, smashing it to pieces, and then put an arm gently around Jane Hoag and said, in a way that put her completely at ease, "That's okay, kid."

Very cool.  

Kanye West's blog is awesome. He owns David Byrne in the visually-oriented-pop-musician blogs category. (Though, they are both tip top celeb blogs.) Kanye digs the Leica D-Lux - so do I. Also, if I had his cash, I might comission an artist to do portraits of the Jetsons, too. (Check out his pad in Interior Design magazine) Basically I think Kanye would like to hang out with me.

Fashion on FacebookSo Newsweek finally caught up to everyone else and did something about Facebook. I had avoided social networking sites until just a few months ago. For me it started in the same way it does for most people:  my best friend insisted that I must see a photo that he put on his myspace page. So I made up a Myspace page for myself in order to get access to his page. Eventually my page included a song by Whiskeytown. I started getting "friended" by all sorts of characters from my high school. But I hated how disorganized everything seemed to be. So, after discovering that nearly everyone that friended me on myspace also used Facebook, I switched over.

Here are some quick notes and observations. College-aged kids join in order to build their social network and have fun. College graduates do a little of that but also have immediate professional concerns. On my recent vacation, my ladyfriend's little brother's girlfriend (soon to enter college) took a couple of pictures in which I look like I spent the afternoon playing in the dryer before spending the evening playing with whiskey. Fun, yet not exactly the kind of thing I want all my peers and potential employers to see. No emergency, but I'm now determined to buy a fantastic digital camera so that I can accumulate enough photos to push hers way way down.

As for the Groups options - there are plenty. I'm a member of a group of people who expect that my girlfriend's little brother will die unnaturally and soon. I saw today that one of my friends no longer wishes to express his support for General Franco publicly. I started a group based on shared astonishment at Daniel Larison and his blog.  

Besides my admiration for Eunomia - people can learn that I root for the New York Mets, the New Jersey Devils and the Sydney Swans; that I'm interested in wine and tariffs; that I'm currently reading Scoop by Evelyn Waugh; that I really like Ryan Adams' latest album "Easy Tiger" and that I am willing to affiliate myself with people who claim they would "wear John Stockton shorts if it were socially acceptable."

There is an under-appreciated side to Facebook and its mass following. It is re-introducing some social stigmas and reversing the former web trend of anonymity. New York magazine long ago noted that young people were making a spectacle of themselves online. It's all so new and scary, they said. But in a way, there is something quaint about it.

For instance: Your status on Facebook can function as a big public promise ring. Don't flirt with that girl at the bar, she may check on your status and send a message to your mate. Where once a man could hide his wedding band, now his marriage may be as public to the entire net as it would have been in a small 19th century village.

This is a stunning reversal in many ways. Back when I sported a bizzare screen name on Prodigy, the internet was a landscape shaped by anonymity. We discovered that anonymity allows people to be cruder than they normally would be - more argumentative, more raunchy, more like a jackanapes. In some ways, chat rooms and online forums retain that character. But Facebook, Myspace and to a lesser degree blogs are making us all much (perhaps much too much) familiar. I wonder if it will make us more tame - and not just in matters of fidelity. After all, I want those pictures pushed down or crowded out and they aren't all that bad. It's just that they aren't part of what I would show someone at first - a first date or a first interview. Facebook, in many ways, makes your first impression for you. It also gives your first impression a kind of permanence and sterility by always being available and always being static. You can change your profile, for sure. But people don't experience those changes in the same way as they experience discovering something new in your personality. Online etiquette guides suggest you treat your Facebook page like a resume. The big difference is that your personal life is now as much a part of that resume as your previous jobs and education. The meritocratic urge to do all the right things that could appear on a resume certainly changed the behavior of a generation that is just getting out of the Ivy League schools it sought. Now that the drunken kissing photos, the allusions to marijuana, and other "interests" are part of our permanent record, I'm willing to bet a certain type of person will take as much care with their personal credentials as they have with their academic and professional career.

Using the 1986 Mets as my springboard, I have a casual little piece in The American Spectator today about our current sports scandals. I have to say, the funniest part about this story is the waiting game I had to play last night, to make sure A-Rod and Bonds didn't smash their records and ruin a few of my sentences with them. After watching my Mets beat up on the Brewers, I had to keep Sportscenter on in the background until midnight safely rolled around.

I know I was just a bit harsh on Transformers. There were all sorts of references to the original cartoon in the movie - but where was the song? Fortunately, Paul Thomas Anderson realized that any movie is better with "The Touch" and any movie is 100x better if it is sung by Marky Mark.

Speaking of Paul Thomas Anderson. I want to publicly renounce my opinion of Magnolia, formed when I was seventeen years old. (I know you've all been waiting for this.) It's really not "mind-blowing" or "amazing." Everyone drops the f-bomb as frequently as the screenwriter/director. The film emphatically does not deliver on the expectations set by it's incredible opening. It embraces the failure by covering the whole of downtown L.A. in frogs. And I'm supposed to be satisfied with one tear streaked smile at the end?