Thomas Mahoney

I was simply going to nominate Santos, Ian’s dog, as Animal of the Year. But then I realized no such award exists, let alone a committee to determine the winner, so I’m just declaring it.

Before you send in vicious emails disputing the award, maybe you should look at what Santos does to clothing.

And if you still doubt it, why don’t you tell Santos yourself. This is the face he’ll give you:

I can’t wait to see him next week running around Brooklyn and terrorizing other semi-domesticated animals.

I clearly remember the day I got my first Apple Computer. I was in elementary school, about a year before I was old enough to go into the computer lab. My dad came home with an Apple IIe. He had been given it free as part of a promotion by a bank where he had just opened up some kind of account. I’m 100% sure this is not the reason he opened the account; I can imagine him walking out of the bank, carrying the box, probably hating it but just wanting to leave, so not making too much of a fuss.

I messed around with it enough to figure out Logo (a derivative of the Lisp programming language) and how to install text-based RPGs and sports games. More important, it opened up my young mind — previously focused solely on baseball and archaeology (yeah, weird) — up to the possibilities of computing and other hardcore nerd stuff that I probably wouldn’t be talking about if not for the fact that I can kick pretty much all of your asses.

Fast-forward some twenty years into the future, and I’ve got an iPhone waiting in a box and the absurd dream of owning (read: PWNING) the $88,190 version of the Xserve (2 quad-core processors, 32gb RAM, 5tb storage, et cetera, blargh). In honor of one of the few corporations I’ve ever bowed down to and for my own personal stroll through tech memory lane, I present the model numbers and photos of the forbidden fruit computers that fell off the Tree of Knowledge and into my eager hands.

Apple IIe

Mac Classic II

Mac Powerbook 1400

Mac G3 tower

Mac G4 Titanium Powerbook

iMac G5

iPhone

Xserve (someone make this happen!)

I’ve received the great honor of being nominated for a Shorty Award — here is the actual page.

I’m not one to campaign for such recognition, but I will openly state if you nominate me for #pwned, #goesoff, or simply #, I’ll send you a digital high five.

How often do you hear an album and absolutely need to tell someone about it, as if the life of your mother and father depended on converting at least one flesh-and-blood human to a true believer? Maybe never. If you love music, this probably happens once or twice a month when you’re a teenager, and proceeds to fade into a once or twice a year phenomenon as you grow older. For me, tonight is the tipping point for such an album.

I’ve openly mentioned Dr. Z several times in the past few months, but tonight, I need to unleash. “Three Parts To My Soul,” the trio’s only album, released in 1971, is far from essential. But for several of the people I know reading this, it absolutely crushes.

In the late 90s, when I was in college, I was fortunate enough to work in a somewhat cool record store — Newbury Comics — and was subsequently exposed to a ton of music beyond my immediate punk/hardcore/metal interests. For whatever reason, I found myself attracted to free jazz and prog rock, and Dr. Z represents the height of the latter genre. For fans of early Genesis, Pink Floyd, Yes, Return to Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra, King Crimson, et al, “Three Parts To My Soul” will be a welcome revelation. If you love J.R.R. Tolkien, virtuouso keyboards, drum solos a la Billy Cobham, uncontrollable guitar progressions, and absolutely fucking ridiculous lyics/vocals, you’re truly in for a treat.

For a full recap, visit the allmusic description of the band/album. Oh, and if you want the album itself, visit ChrisGoesRock, read the review, and scroll down to the ShareBee link.

As I posted earlier via the Trademark Recordings site:

And it would be criminal not to mention our discovery of the year was the epic 1971 prog masterpiece by Dr. Z, “Three Parts To My Soul.” Any album featuring a 5 minute drum solo halfway through track 2 after the phrase, “I was born / In the Middle Earth” leading into an angry chorus of “Three parts to my soul / Spirtus, manes et umbra” goes off.

Also, I would be a jerk if I didn’t mention that Camerin recommended this album to me. For the second year in a row, he successfully turned me on to exactly one band. In 2007, he converted me into a Le Orme fan, specifically due to its album “Felona e Sorona,” which I still feel even more strongly about (if you have any doubts, listen to side A on vinyl, specifically when “L’Equilibrion” breaks into pre-cocaine/gangsta rap jam “Sorona.”)

Prog rock is one of those things you probably hate unless you like Dungeons & Dragons and/or play an instrument. Growing up as a punk rock kid, I was supposed to hate it. But to me, it’s as anti-establishment as playing three chords at 100 watts and 100 mph. To me, it proves the theory that the extremes of any given spectrum are basically the same. And extreme ideals/conditions often, for better or worse, foster incredible results.

Get into it.

Boredom and stupidity breed brilliance: http://stupidlicenseplates.blogspot.com

(Much thanks to Casper Adams and Shintaro Suzuki).

Is Psycho Matt just a young Kris Kringle? You decide:

According to TIME Magazine and Yahoo!, the top 10 searches of the year were:

1.) Britney Spears (editor’s note: slut!)
2.) WWE (editor’s note: Ben Boudreau is pumped!)
3.) Barack Obama (editor’s note: teeth of Horus rule the divine)
4.) Miley Cyrus (editor’s note: slut!)
5.) RuneScape (editor’s note: AS IF! WoW pwns you forever!)
6.) Jessica Alba (editor’s note: slut!)
7.) Naruto (editor’s note: huh? NERD ALERT!)
8.) Lindsay Lohan (editor’s note: slut!)
9.) Angelina Jolie (editor’s note: slut!)
10.) American Idol (editor’s note: see also “teenage homoeroticism”)

I’d like to respectfully disagree with this list. Through my own research, analytics, and other covert means, I’ve discovered the top 10 alternative/hipster/fuck-up/weirdo (i.e. “real people”) searches were:

1.) Bestiality (editor’s note: term synonymous with “child pornography,” “two girls one cup,” “hot 3way sexcapades,” and other searches that blow up your parents’ computer and get the FBI watching)
2.) Come and get some (editor’s note: see also “play a riff” if at a Wolf Eyes show in the greater Los Angeles basin)
3.) Thomas Mahoney ruler of the internet and all multiverses
4.) Celtics 131 Lakers 92
5.) Psycho Matt Model Ryan Gay Homosexual Meltdown Party
6.) Crystal Meth
7.) Warcraft funeral
8.) Sasha Grey (editor’s note: unlike whores listed above, NOT a slut due to interest in existential and post-modern theory, not to mention fan of dark poetry broadcast by the likes of Joy Division, et al)
9.) Laser cats (editor’s note: see also “Dirty Dave’s cat nuking everyone and admitting via mimicry that he is indeed the drummer on Dr. Z’s epic prog album “Three Parts To My Soul”) / “Say hi to your mother for me”
10a.) Spiders on drugs (editor’s note: see also “Gary Vaynerchuk“)
10b.) Twitter ain’t shit but Obama and iPhones

If you have any doubts about the validity or impartial nature of this list, please consider there was no mention of “going off” or of getting “RickRoll’d.” Care to disagree with the list? You know how to contact me. Come and get some, turkey.

I rest my case.