The end of the year means it is time for the annual “Best Of” lists. It was a good year in music with some of my favorite bands releasing new albums (The Shins, Iron and Wine, Rogue Wave), some new groups (Maps, St Vincent, Patrick Watson, Yeasayer), and some bands that are just new to me (The National, Great Lake Swimmers, Rilo Kiley). If some of these are new to you, take a listen to the sample mp3 I link to. The titles link to Amazon and purchasing the music helps support this site.

1. The Shepherd’s Dog, by Iron & Wine
Mp3: House by the Sea

2. Wincing the Night Away, by the Shins
Mp3: Girl Sailor

3. Ongiara, by Great Lake Swimmers
Mp3: Your Rocky Spine

4. Boxer, by The National
Mp3: Fake Empire

5. Close to Paradise, by Patrick Watson
Mp3: Close to Paradise

6. All Hour Cymbals, by Yeasayer
Mp3: 2080 (also my vote for best song of the year)

7. Asleep at Heaven’s Gate, by Rogue Wave
Mp3: Fantasies

8. We Can Create, by Maps
Mp3: Lost My Soul

9. Under the Blacklight, By Rilo Kiley
Mp3: Close Call

10. Marry Me, by St. Vincent
Mp3: Now. Now.

Honorable Mention:
In Rainbows, by Radiohead
Mp3: Bodysnatchers

Icky Thump, by The White Stripes
Mp3: Icky Thump

Neon Bible, by Arcade Fire
Mp3: Black Mirror

I’m Not There (Soundtrack)
Mp3: You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere

Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink, by Bodies of Water
Mp3: I Guess We’ll Forget the Sound, I Guess, I guess

Juiced, by The Cansecos
Mp3: Free download from website

Hopefully 2008 will be just as good as 2007. If you want to take a look back, here are my lists from former years: 2006, 2005 2004

I found this vintage Camel cigarette ad on Archive.org that I thought might bring a smile to your face as Christmas approaches. Cigarette ads are kind of fascinating to watch anyway, but the thought of giving them as a Christmas gift? Smokers are easy to shop for! Wow.

Friends at work and I kind of started a Christmas tradition where we celebrate Taco Johnukkah. For the last 8 business days before Christmas we eat lunch at Taco Johns. The holiday starts tomorrow (wednesday), so feel free to join in the festivities at your place of employment.

Be sure to check out www.tacojohnukkah.com for more details and menu recommendations!

If you have ever traveled through the midwest across states like Kansas or Nebraska it probably isn’t something you look forward to doing again. Call me crazy but I kind of like those long boring drives. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want to do it regularly, but when the trek is only for holidays I always find myself looking forward to the drive. There is something therapeutic about being behind the wheel for 8 hours or more. No distractions. Nowhere to go. Nothing but your thoughts. No excuses for not thinking about the things that are so easy to ignore when you are “plugged in.” By the time I arrive I am road weary but I also feel rebooted.

For Thanksgiving we drove home to Nebraska and I decided to make a timelapse of the drive. I strapped the camera to the dashboard and told the camera to take a picture every seven seconds. The result is what it would look like if you were driving at 25,000 miles per hour:

At church this morning a woman stood up and cried as she asked us to write letters to the members of our church in the military. It was a touching plea and if you have the opportunity I encourage you to do the same. It is a little hard to know what to say to someone you don’t know, but the support is surely appreciated. I am reminded of a letter I received as I was starting college. It was from a man I have never met. I dug it up and thought I would share it with you as we remember Veteran’s Day.

Dear Adrian,

The purpose of this letter is to express my appreciation for your friendship and for the efforts you are making in this new phase of your life. (The Air Force taught me to always start letters with “the purpose.”)

You face many choices during the next few years. Along with your parents and a host of other “old folks,” I offer my best wishes, my prayers and some “free advise” for the future.

First, you already know or you will soon learn how little effort it takes to stand-out in performance above most peers. Don’t let this lull you into mediocre efforts in job performance, human relations or your work for Christ. My fear is that we, as a society are promoting average accomplishments instead of proclaiming the virtue of excellence in everyday activities. So much for philosophy. On this work ethic let me share an incident which has helped me make some better decisions for the last 27 years.

In 1969, I was a young pilot sitting in a bar in Saigon with several awful tasting Vietnamese beers running through my bloodstream. Right out of the movies, this girl sits down, asks for a light and proceeds to smoke. Not tobacco, but it was marijuana. I had never had the opportunity to try marijuana, and after a bad day at the office getting shot at, it seemed like the right time to try it. I was within inches and seconds of lighting up when an overpowering thought invaded my alcohol dulled brain. “Would you want to read about this in the morning paper?” Following thoughts included: Would I want my family to know? How about my fellow officers who depend on me while flying wing? How about God? He already knew.

I’ve always been rather proud of that particular decision that night because I knew that I did not want to read about the incident. Now, I have made some bad decisions in the last 27 years, but I’ve had to twist or rationalize to get past that same question that haunts me when confronted with a “right/wrong” decision. In retrospect, I wonder if presidents Nixon and Clinton would have decided differently in the Watergate or Jennifer Flowers cases if they had known what would be spattered on the front pages. Of course the newspaper is just a symbol that caused me to stop and think. God was the author of that bit of insight, and I’m ashamed that I have not always made the right decisions since that night.

With the promise of Christ’s forgiveness, I can now go forward with the tools for making some better judgement calls (decisions in the future). I ask athat you pray for my son, Alan and me; pray that God may give me wisdom and that he may grant Alan maturity and some insight on good decision making.

I’m looking forward to your visit “home” sometime in the future. In the meantime I hope to enjoy my new-found friendship with your dad and family. I always talk to much, but I am a trained listener if you ever need one. Your friend and brother in Christ.

The photo on the right is one of maybe three photos that I am really proud of. Part of it is that I think it is just a great moment, but I think it is probably because I am so emotionally connected to it. It was taken during a parade in Grand Island, Nebraska on a wonderful autumn weekend spent visiting friends and family. It was one of the first rolls of film shot for my college photography class. I was nearly bursting with excitement for that class and couldn’t wait to take pictures with my new Pentax ZX5n. I remember breaking away from my friends and walking down the street looking for something to take a photo of. Then all of a sudden this moment happened in front of me. It was surreal. I remember being literally scared as I took the photo. This was it! I only took one shot but I knew it was a good one. I think I was shaking as I walked away from that scene. I have never had that feeling since.

Since I snapped the picture almost ten years ago I have probably spent more time working with this image than any other image in my collection but I have never had it framed. I just couldn’t get it exactly right. At school I remember spending many frustrating hours in the darkroom working on enlargements. I nearly went broke dodging and burning and cropping and enlarging before I finally had a print that was acceptable. Years later, before I had access to a good film scanner I scanned the prints and began Photoshopping. Looking back at those files it is embarrassing to see how heavy-handed I was.

So this weekend I went back to this image to see if I can “remaster” it. I decided to ditch my earlier digital scans taken from prints and rescan the original negative. I dug the negative out and was relieved that it was still in good shape. I got a good scan and brought it into Photoshop. I have struggled with cropping the image before and decided not to crop it this time. I tried to be very subtle in my dodging and burning. In the past I tried to push the contrast so that every detail was as defined as possible. This time I held back and left things alone so that it would look more natural. Interestingly, this “final” print probably took less time than any of my earlier attempts because I didn’t try to make it something that it wasn’t. It feels good to finally be satisfied with the print and be able to let it live in my archive instead of my to-do list.

My last post of the video of Rian eating bugs for Halloween is getting good reactions from people so I thought maybe you would want to learn how to make chocolate covered larva for your kids. Here is a tutorial I saw on YouTube that gives you all the juicy details…

Before we went trick-or-treating I had a special chocolate-covered treat for my son, Rian. He made it through a cricket and a larva before… well… see for yourself. Here is a YouTube video:

I checked my YouTube stats yesterday and was surprised to see that my timelapse construction movie has been viewed over 25,000 times. That is enough to motivate me to start getting more of my timelapse movies online. Here is a link to my YouTube page, and below is another construction video that shows some cranes dancing around:

I either buy music on iTunes or at independently owned record stores. If I am in Denver I visit Twist and Shout. If I am in visiting Lincoln, Nebraska I stop at Recycled Sounds. Here in Greeley I enjoy The Finest. You probably have a pretty good idea of what these stores are like. The walls are covered in concert posters. The walls are lined with old vinyl stuffed into cardboard boxes. An eclectic blend of music plays over the sound system. There is an intimidating alternative-looking guy at the counter. They all seem to have that smell of incense. I could probably buy most of the same music anywhere else: Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target or even the grocery store. It just wouln’t be the same. It would feel cheap. It wouldn’t be any fun. Buying music is fun when it is tied to a memorable experience. Searching through a stack of LPs feels like a treasure hunt. It is fun to take a risk and take the recommendation of that intimidating chick behind the counter. It is nice to have the memory of hearing a song for the first time in a dusty old record shop. You don’t get that fuzzy feeling from dropping $17.00 at a Circuit City.

The funny thing is that the record store is my second choice for where to buy music. The majority of my music purchases happen on iTunes. It is convenient. It is automatically synced with my iPod. I can “discover” a band through an mp3 blog and instantly sample and purchase some songs. I can buy single songs or a whole album. It is still an experience even if it is nothing like the record store.

Since I am on the topic of music, maybe you would like to know what I have been listening to over the past couple weeks. Here are some bands that have been getting repeat listenings with links to The Hype Machine where you can download some mp3′s

Yeasayer – Check out “2080″ if you haven’t heard it.
Phoenix – I started listening to them based on a recommendation from Wes Anderson.
Sea Wolf – “Black Dirt” is a great track.