My Favorite Albums of All Time

It seems like toddlers are in a permanent state of inebriation. Their drunken actions are excused simply by the fact of their youth. They are difficult to control, to keep track of, because they are always going around, looking for new things or finding new things to explain and figure out. Like drunk people, sometimes they find something that catches their interest, and once something else grabs their attention, the previous adventure is immediately forgotten, lost as a distant memory. Forgetting about the past, they live in the present and cannot worry about the future or the consequences of their actions.

Like drunkards.
We drink to forget, to fill our lives with a placebo vibrance so that we dull our worries about our future. Except that in children, this is okay. It is understandable because they have not learned to Worry, to think about Consequences. Eventually they will learn that things come with Repercussions, that a wigged-out old nerd named Newton decreed every Action with an appropriate Reaction. Until then, however, their naivete is their golden ticket from punitive judgment, their permission slip for a field trip to be carefree, signed tacitly by the World as their legal guardian. For when we grow up, there is no one else but ourselves to hold us accountable. We ingrain in our souls the shackles of Responsibility and Morality, forgetting our carefree memories of a happier time, and there is no permission slip or waiver to remind us of our follies.

Or we drink. We escape. Alcohol becomes our telescope into the stars, where everything twinkles merrily, and the celestial bodies have nothing to do with our Earthly problems. While Newton proclaimed us grounded, Galileo let us look out into a world not our own, a vicarious and precarious glance into an Other.

But a child always looks through this lens, always sees with the utmost clarity the Nature of Things. And their questions are pure, questions asked with alacrity from drunk astronomers, to which oftentimes there are no tangible answers, only more questions.

But we're stuck in an unfair, unanswerable world, where Growing Up means blurring our vision, where Age equals Responsibility, where Maturity comes only with Morality and Accountability, where telescopes are put away and alcoholism is a disease, where we can't get the signature to go on our field trip, where Time goes forward, uncaring, unstopping, where children must Grow Up and Grown-Ups must Remain Up.

And scariest of all, where Chuck Norris awaits.




On a lighter note, I started the second part of this entry back in the early days of January, with the idea of recapping my favorite films of the year. Then I thought that movie reviews were too long, and that generally, few people watch the movies I watch. So I decided that I would recap all the albums of my life, ranking them accordingly.

Since this will obviously cause rifts and clamors of argument over my opinion, I offer this caveat: These are my personal favorite albums of all time, not the objective greatest. I will list my reasons accordingly, but please keep that in mind.

With that said, I shall begin, two at a time, starting with the honorable mentions and numbers 10 and 9

Honorable mentions:

15. Norah Jones - Come Away With Me (2002)
14. Death Cab for Cutie - Plans (2005)
13. Avril Lavigne - Let Go (2002)
12. Motion City Soundtrack - Commit This to Memory (2005)
11. The Killers - Hot Fuss (2005)

10. Sarina Paris - Sarina Paris (2001)
Notable Songs: Look at Us, Just About Enough, So I Wait
Sarina Paris makes my #10 mainly because her music is insanely catchy. I am a huge fan of pop-like sounds and melodies and though her lyrics are lacking, it is more than made up in her stylishly synthetic and pulsating voice. Her songs exude energy and the dance beats that constitute the majority of her music combined with techno-voice are the perfect union of pop/electronica. You would be hard-pressed to find a better example of beat-driven pop music.

9. Stars - Heart (2003), Set Yourself on Fire (2004), In Our Bedroom After the War (2007)
Notable Songs: Heart, Calendar Girl, The Night Starts Here, Personal, The Big Fight
I grouped these albums together because they all have similar sounds. You can almost look at them as one big album released by the very talented Canadian indie band Stars. Actually, After the War has a bit of a more melancholy sound and moves a bit slower than the first two, but it's still very similar in theme and tone. To me, these three particular albums represent a three-act story. Act 1, Heart, establishes the tone and the characters involved. It introduces you to the interesting sounds and wonderfully conversational lyrics of the band. Act 2, Set Yourself on Fire, continues the story and almost builds up to the pinnacle, Calendar Girl, and the third Act, After the War, is like the sad resolution. Calendar Girl and Heart are honestly among two of my favorite songs of all time. I have to thank Winnie for introducing me to Stars. They pretty much embody my current preference in music, sad lyrics, sad melodies and both male and female vocalists.

More to come later!

Time on Red Bull

It's 4:15AM, and I'm still awake. This post will probably the one An Vy reads first, since she will have probably caught her eye on her name at the top. So I guess I should make this one good? ;)

So it's 4:15AM, and I find myself idly refreshing Facebook. I'm adding new friends from the right module on the Newsfeed page. You know, the one under the "People You May Know" headline.

That's how lame I am. I want to sleep so badly, but my schedule's all messed up now. I watched a movie yesterday night (morning) and it kept me awake until half past 5 in the morning. It was well worth it though, considering how much I had wanted to see it in theaters last year, but never got around to it.

It was Dan in Real Life with Steve Carrell and Juliet Binoche (and Dane Cook too, but I'll comment on that in a second.) I loved the movie. It seemed like it could have been made 30 years ago and been considered a classic, but alas, it was made in this day and age. So, to a lot of people, it'll seem cliche and contrived. It will also seem fake and unrealistic, like a typical Hollywood film. But this movie was very down-to-earth, very low-key.

There were lots of flaws though, like the lack of depth of the family members (probably due to the short running time of the film). Also, the music was a bit unnecessary, though extremely well-written on their own. Sondre Lerche is an amazing musician. Moreover, the film was very contrived in its plot elements, the way the story unraveled. The writing must have been edited by a producer looking to make money, since the script obviously tried diligently to appeal to a large audience. This sacrifice was overall detracting in the direction of the film's story, but it was not as noticeable as some critics made it seem. Plus, the acting was wonderful, the chemistry between Carrel and Binoche surprisingly smooth, like chocolat (sorry, I had to...). As for the supporting cast, Dane Cook is a surprisingly not bad actor and is funnier when he's not cursing or making vulgar jokes like his stand-up. He's not a very good stand-up comedian, his jokes being stale at best, but his presence was welcoming, sharing the screen well with Carrell. The rest of his family could probably be considered one character for all the use they have in the plot's progression. They did, however, work well to show the amount of love in the family. The large size of the immediate family really was impressive in its goal to emphasize the ensemble nature of family love. Simply seeing them do things as a whole unit was heart-warming, if a bit unrealistic.


Overall though, the film's general tone was so warm that it easily balanced out all the obvious flaws. Had those flaws not existed, the film would rank among my all-time favorites. Yet, even as it is, Dan in Real Life makes my list for 2007.

Speaking of which, my Top 10 List of 2007 has been deleted from Yahoo. I mean, it's another one of those things that no one reads (not unlike the words you're reading right now), but the fact that I spent time on it just to have it deleted really annoys me. I have to do it all over again...

Now, on to the petty details of my day: I woke up this afternoon and did nothing worth noting...

Then, after a blissful conversation, I proceeded to go on Facebook. Much to my chagrin, I found that my dear friend Christian DeGuzman had bought two-thirds of my friends on the Friends for Sale application. I then engaged in a short FFS skirmish, buying back all my friends multiple times. Christian was a formidable opponent, and like any other formidable opponent, he agreed to a truce with me. We decided to split the "pets," as they are so dubbed. He kept a few, while I kept others. Then we agreed never to buy from each other again, so as to maintain a certain level of civility between two obviously upstanding members of the FFS community.

However, less than 5 minutes after the truce, I refresh my main page on FFS and find that someone else was buy friends from me. I found myself first embroiled in indignation, and then humor at my indignation. This humor quickly receded into determination to buy my friends back. This person was none other than Peterson Rooster Lim, Christian's roommate. How dare he? They were MY property, and he had no right buying them from me.

I quickly checked the cash amounts both of us had, and it looked like he and I were to battle until I ran out of money. And so, the epic war raged on.

After 15 minutes or so of buying back our mutual friends, I complained to Christian, who was happily building up his own collection without me as a hindrance. He first laughed it off, probably thinking I deserved as much for being greedy, but then, he came up with the perfect idea.

He told me to buy Kate Salazar, Peterson's girlfriend whom I was sure he coveted. At first, I was skeptical, worried that Peterson would buy my own girlfriend, but Christian quickly doused the flames of my doubt. Christian, being the good friend he was, had already tried to buy my girlfriend in order to stop me from starting a war with him, but, much to his surprise, he was unable to buy her because she was not his friend on Facebook. So, Christian told me, buying Kate would not bear any financial risk on my part.

So I bought her. Every time you buy a person on FFS, his or her value increases, so that the next time, the cost of buying the person is larger, sometimes significantly so for more expensive pets. The extra money goes as a profit to the owner of the pet. For example, say I buy Peterson for $560. If Christian wants him, he has to pay $580, with the extra $20 going to me as a profit. If I want to buy Peterson back, I have to pay $610, with Christian receiving $580 (the price he bought Peterson) plus a $30 profit.

After a while, Kate was the only one Peterson and I were vying for, since I just wanted her to profit from all his money and buy Christian and Sean back. Since I had bought a few more pets earlier that day, Peterson had the upper hand, eventually buying out Kate for more than I could buy back. I didn't mind that much, since I could now buy Sean. However, I forgot to buy Christian, and Christian was terribly angry with me. "You have to buy me back!" he told me aggressively online. "She's worth more than me!"

So after everyone signed off, I got more money (via a secret method I shall not reveal here, just in case). I then bought Kate, Christian and Sean. By this time, I had accumulated so much money I was able to by Wanda Lam and Tracey Tran, for $21k and $14k, respectively.

I don't want to keep them. I just want some people to buy them so I can make a few thousand dollars profit.

And now I'm blogging about it.