Now that the 00’s are wrapping up, people are writing Best Albums Of The Decade lists like crazy, and I almost added my own top albums list to that lengthy pile.  But then I thought there was no point explaining the greatness of MIA or Radiohead or Antony and the Johnsons or The Knife, when anyone who might even remotely care probably has strong opinions about them all already, anyway.

I decided instead to base my list around a bunch of albums that probably very few of you love.  Maybe because you’ve never heard of them, or because you’ve heard terrible things about them, because they were part of a now-neglected trend, or because they were overshadowed by other things that the artists did either before or after.  The list is a top 30, because I listed all the albums I thought would qualify and came up with 31.  I rounded down.  (Sorry, Handsome Furs!)

I’m presenting this list in three installments, because it’s kind of long. As always, I’d like to make my disclaimer that this list reflects what I myself listen to; I’m sure that someone else could–and should–make lists of neglected metal, gospel, or country records.  But this list is pretty pop-oriented.  That’s just how it is. more »

Now that the 00’s are wrapping up, people are writing Best Albums Of The Decade lists like crazy, and I almost added my top albums list to that lengthy pile.  But then I thought there was no point explaining the greatness of MIA or Radiohead or Antony and the Johnsons or The Knife, when anyone who might evern remotely care probably either loves or hates them all already.

I decided instead to base my list around a bunch of albums that probably very few of you love.  You may have never heard of them, you may have heard terrible things about them, or maybe they were just overshadowed by other things that the artists did either before or after.  The list is a top 30, because I listed all the albums I thought would qualify and came up with 31.  I rounded down.  (Sorry, Handsome Furs!)

I’ll be presenting this list in three installments, because it’s kind of long. As always, I’d like to make my disclaimer that this list reflects what I myself listen to; I’m sure that someone else could–and should–make lists of neglected metal, gospel, or country records.  But this list is pretty pop-oriented.  That’s just how it is.

more »

Providence is America’s fourth most stressful city, according to a list put out the other day by Forbes.  Well, the Providence-New Bedford-Fall River metro area is, at least.  The rankings were based on a variety of factors, including unemployment, cost of living, air quality, population density, median drop in home values, and number of sunny days per year.  Since the top three were Chicago, New York and LA (aka the three biggest cities in the country) I don’t think our #4 tie with Cleveland is such a bad placing, though I can’t help feeling that all those employed, clean air-breathing do-gooders in Mattapoisett skewed us in the wrong direction.

[via Twitter]

From Reuters: “Web site VirtualTourist.com has come up with a list of “The World’s Top 10 Ugliest Buildings and Monuments” according to their editors and readers. Reuters has not endorsed this list.

Some of these picks have all the charm of a bag of nails while others are just jaw-dropping in their complexity. Love them or hate them, the list is certainly entertaining,” said General manager Giampiero Ambrosi.

1. Boston City Hall; Boston, Massachusetts: While it was hip for it’s time, this concrete structure now gets routinely criticized for its dreary facade and incongruity with the rest of the city’s more genteel architecture. Luckily, it’s very close to more aesthetically pleasing attractions.

And now, as per the strict journalism correspondence course techniques that I regularly employ on this blog, I toss this over to our fine readers: what’s the ugliest building in Providence?

• Twilight Sentinel
• The Uncanny Valley
• Argument from Design
• Tachyons
• Stockholm Syndrome
• Photovoltaics
• Shadow Minister
• The Ninth Directorate
• Garagistes

I spent many terrible Friday nights as a child in a white basement with a dropped ceiling on a side street off Pocasset Avenue, writhing in agony at the smell of the calimari being eaten with terrible fervor by my mother and my Auntie Lala.

It was St. Bart’s Club, one of a number of restaurants I was always dragged to as a kid, kicking and screaming and hemming and hawing and stomping my feet and gnashing my picky seafood-hating teeth the whole way. Along with Marchetti’s and La Rosa and Twin Oaks and Chelo’s and that Tabor Franchi place off Atwood Avenue that everybody was really into for a while, St Bart’s was a place that my Italian-Cranstonian soul loathed with such passion that I swore I would never set foot in it again. Eventually, my complaining grew to the point that my family stopped going, and I haven’t heard it spoken of in at least ten years. more »

Projo has the details:

Human-rights violations around the world, from the ongoing genocide in Darfur to human trafficking in Eastern Europe, will be the focus of the third annual Brown University Human Rights Film Festival, running Thursday through Sunday.

The Devil Came on Horseback, a first-person account by a former U.S. Marine of Sudanese government-backed attacks on black Africans living in the Darfur region, will be the first film in the program at 6:45 p.m. Thursday in Sayles Hall. Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof, who wrote about events he witnessed in Darfur on several visits, will speak.

Thanks to Bookslut (and a total inability to focus on work today), I just found Musicthatmakesyoudumb and Booksthatmakeyoudumb, conceived by a CalTech student named Virgil Griffith. The two lists compare what kids say they like on Facebook with the average SAT scores of the schools they go to.

The book list is interesting though ultimately depressing. (Hint: If kids on your campus like books by black women, your school’s probably not ranked that high.) The music list isthe same–Lil Wayne and TI fans probably don’t go to very prestigious schools either, it turns out, and the only black people in the whole top 20 are animated.

Also, aside from the whole race issue, it turns out the co-eds all listen to the same music. Griffith says in the faq that “There were 3,164 distinct favorite books, but only 1,455 distinct favorite musics. College students have far more diverse tastes in books than they do in music.” Which is, you know, kind of a letdown. That’s 1,455 favorite “musics”–bands, genres, and answers like “I like anything but country”–coming from top 10 lists at 1,352 different schools across the whole country. The list data isn’t perfect–Facebook lists the top music at SAT-challenged Dallas school Paul Quinn as “I Dont Have A Particular Genre Of Music…i Listen To Wateva!” That can’t be the #1 answer at a school that has 280 people in its network. A little breakdown after the jump: more »

According to Providence Business News, Forbes magazine has ranked our quaint little burg the tenth most miserable city in America. Based on a number of factors, including weather, tax rates, crime and unemployment, they ranked the 150 largest metropolises in the country. Detroit, of course, emerged triumphant, with some truly great cities also cracking the top ten: Chicago, New York, Philadelphia. Seriously though, we’re more miserable than Baltimore? Haven’t the editors of Forbes ever watched “The Wire?”

This is it, our 1,000th post! And I’m going to use it to thank all of our readers and commentators so far, and to thank all of our amazing writers who make this possible.  That is all!

Some stats to commemorate this historical occasion:

• Days: 98
• Posts: 1,000
• Page-views last month: 38,199 (and growing)
• Contributors: 22
• Most viewed post: A Very Special Jersey Girls Holiday (Over 650 pageviews that day.)
• Most commented on post: An Open Letter To Gloria Steinem by Ariel Werner This post set off a firestorm of comments, probably 300 total spread across a dozen blogs that linked to it.

75 Or Less, the hardest working label in showbiz, has finally put up its writers top shit of ‘07. As an occasional contributor, my top 5 is decidedly middle-of-the-road as far as indie rock goes, (I still don’t get Battles) but hey, Black Kids! Give me something for that!
75 Or Less Writers Best Whatever Of 2007

I’m a nostalgia fiend, and would love to be the one to put together this month-by-month recap. I guess that’s incentive to not sell the site out to Gothamist for at least a year.

This is Providence, so, needless to say, the threshold isn’t the highest. (Nonetheless, somehow our Xmas party failed to make the cut this time.)

DECEMBER: SNOW PARALYZES PROVIDENCE, FALLOUT CLOBBERS EXECUTIVE STAFFS

NOVEMBER: HERITAGE MUSEUM, DYNAMO HOUSE PROJECT MOVES AHEAD

OCTOBER: FEDS TELL HEAD START TO STOP

SEPTEMBER: TROUBLE FLARES IN CITY-FIRE UNION RELATIONSHIP

AUGUST: IN ONE MONTH, 29 SHOOTINGS

JULY: BUDGET OPTIMISM, TAX TRAUMA; THE RETURN OF BUDDY CIANCI JR.

JUNE: LIBRARY, CITY END STALEMATE

MAY: MASONIC TEMPLE OPENS AS A HOTEL

APRIL: SUB TAKES UNPLANNED DIVE

MARCH: RAPPERS WITH GANG TIES BARRED

FEBRUARY: PARKING WARS HEAT UP

JANUARY: CICILLINE IN CONTROL OF COUNCIL

Rules to live by: Distrust the Projo, and quote Spiro Agnew whenever possible.

One should be skeptical of all these damn lists, but given the Projo’s obsession with RI’s rankings along any of a million metrics — especially when we turn up low — don’t you think that this should make the paper:

US News and World Report just ranked Rhode Island’s public high schools 4th-best in the country.

**The link above is to an extensive “best high schools” report. I can’t find a link to the state-by-state rankings, but they’re in the hard copy from Nov 29th, which I had in my lap earlier today. Let me know if you can find it online.

Bit of a bummer.  I’m sure the Projo will have a field day, and take all the wrong lessons from it:

WASHINGTON (AP) – The U.S. Census Bureau says Michigan and Rhode Island were the only states that lost population in its latest estimate released today (Thursday).

The report covers the 12 months ending in July.

The Census estimates that Michigan’s population fell about 0.3% from last year’s 10.1 million — a drop of 30,500.

It says Rhode Island’s population fell 0.4%

God bless the internet for bringing this all right to my lap:

• Senate confirms ICE director Julie Meyers despite that pesky blackface incident. [ColorLines, AP]
• Vlad Putin kickin’ it with Japanese Judo Champ [Wonkette]
• Mike Huckabee comments on Britney Spears’ barefoot-n-preggers lil’ sister. [Political Punch]
• Top 10 Hottest Videos of 2007. [Alternet]
• The Committee to Elect Friedrich Nietzsche brings you Immanuel Kant: Wrong for America:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M-cmNdiFuI&eurl=http://leftpalate.com/]

We’re going to be posting some year-end lists from a variety of local musicians, writers, artists, and just plain good folk over the next few days. This first list comes from Mark Macdougall, label boss over at 75 Or Less records. Here’s his top music stuff of ‘07, in no particular order, even though that’s what I asked for but I guess he can’t be bothered by the rules. His list, after the jump… more »