Pithy Title Here

This is one of my favorite posts to write all year, because who doesn't love to write about things they love? It's a very indulgent blog post, saying at least as much about me as it does the artists I have picked. It's a snapshot of what moved me this year (though I try to provide some second opinions to prove I'm not nuts), rather than some definitive word. Hell, I still haven't listed to Lorde's album, which is apparently New Zealand's new gift to the world. So, what I'm saying: feel free to tell me ones I missed. Share what you loved. Go read other "Best of" lists out there. Amazing to see how American Songwriter handles things compared to Rolling Stone , for instance. If you walk away from a list like this with a new artist to check out, then you win. So enjoy! Onto the list...

I look forward to this every year. Since 2007, I've been putting together an annual mix of current (or current-ish) bands doing holiday songs. For me, this offers a nice departure from the stuff that crams onto you local all-Christmas radio station. Plus, we're starting to get some decent Hanukkah songs. Maybe in five years there will be enough for an all-Hanukkah mix. Anyway, I think this year's might be better than last year's installment , though nothing may ever reach the heights of the 2011 mix . As always, everything below is available from most purveyors of digital music. 1) Bad Religion - Angels We Have Heard on High - Dude. Bad Religion just put out a Christmas album. This is WHY I started making these mixes back in the day. If you aren't familiar with Bad Religion, suffice it to say, they probably won't be asked to perform in your church's social hall any time soon. They said they made this album for fun and top show that good songs are good s

It's tough to review a major music festival unless you are a major publication with the resources to send several writers to fan out among all the stages and see every minute of every act. I just spent three days of Labor Day weekend at Bumbershoot and, while I saw so much, it pales to what I couldn't make it to for various reasons. But here goes. First of all, one of the things I wrote about back in 2010 holds true: the ability to leave and return. When you live within a short bus ride from the Seattle Center, this is huge. You can eat some meals at home. You can take a break. It's divine. You're not stuck out in a field somewhere. You are in a city, and if you happen to call the city home (or one of the nearby hotels home), Bumbershoot is really generous by not trapping you inside the festival grounds. As for the music, this is what I caught my three days:

It's been some time since I blogged about a hike . As many places as I've hiked since moving to Seattle, I could probably bore you to death with stories of them all. Today, though, I headed out to Gothic Basin. Aside from the cool name (apparently named for a guy named Gothic, but whatever), things I've read about the hike were enticing. We don't want for beautiful scenery here in Washington, but some spots stand out. To get to this particular spot, though, you must work. A rule of hiking in the Cascades seems to be that the more you have to exert yourself, the more you get back in terms of views, solitude and more. As I sit here tonight, I'm not in nearly as bad shape as I was when I finished the Harper Creek hike I blogged back in 2009. But I'm still bruised, blistered and tired from a hike that easily ranks as one of the toughest I've completed. The Washington Trails Association has a fairly good writeup on the hike. However, I've learned tha

Traveling as much as I do, the reality is that meals happen in airports now and then. It's tough to eat well on the road, especially in the airport, which can sometimes be a wasteland of quickly reheated frozen entrees. That said, there is a trend of better food coming into airports. If you have an extended layover, there are even good options in some terminals. If you've got 90 minutes in Seattle, Anthony's is the place. Even Phoenix Sky Harbor, recently home to disgusting options in Terminal 4 has opened some full-kitchen places where you can get good Mexican food and more. But you don't always have 90 minutes. Fast food - or something quick - is often a necessity. That or you get to take your chances with whatever food your airline happens to be selling on your flight. From traveling around, here are some of my favorite bad-for-you-but-local options, many of which can offer a taste of the city where you are laying over. Fair warning: many of these could kill you.

A very close friend of mine ran the Los Angeles Marathon a few weeks back with a time of 4:08:48. Had he been in Boston today with that time, he’d probably have been somewhere between getting a medal and grabbing a recovery banana when things started to explode. In other words, way too flipping close. And sadly, many others were closer.  Had he been there, it also would have been his second day of surviving a terrorist attack. No doubt, some of the runners and spectators today were in New York on Sep. 11. My friend was, too. And so was I. The thing is, we talk about these sorts of things in terms of lives lost. In terms of people injured. The cold will look at property losses and dollar figures among these other grim stats. But can one truly say one attack is “worse” than another? I’m not so sure. Watching the footage was one thing. Watching it unfold in real time was another. We didn’t have Twitter in 2001, but today, even the distant could watch as events unfolde

I'm a big geek and have always loved subways, trains and the like. To the point that, if I'm traveling, I feel like riding the subway in a given city is somehow a "more real" experience of the city than many other things. It's how the proletariat gets around. Trains are an equalizer... the rich sit next to the poor and get the same place at the same time, subject to the same delays. Tonight, taking the San Francisco Bay Area's BART back to the Easy Bay from San Fran, I marveled at the Transbay Tube, a nearly 4-mile tunnel under San Francisco Bay that has dutifully withstood seismic events of all manner since 1974. The BART is a great system, but I've been fortunate enough to travel all over the place and had a hop on the local transit system in many places. As such, here's a completely biased, unscientific ranking of the world's best transit systems that I've managed to come across. By the way... Boston is disqualified from making this list

I've always been into music, but I'd judge 7th grade as being the year that I really started to CARE about music. That was the year that a girl in my middle school, after hearing me talk about my love of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, sent me home with a tape of Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine . Few moments are as defining. Not only because it got me into that band, but more that it was the moment that really got me to explore music. From that moment, I have had a constant hunger for new music. Before I started typing this blog, I was on Amazon listening to samples of an album I may just download today. That moment back in 7th grade was the moment the Grammy Awards started to piss me off. Before I had a real understanding of the music business (read: before I realized this was basically a way for people to get rich off of artists, who may or may not get rich), I used to vent about the INJUSTICE of the Grammys. How they rewarded shitty music when there was justsomuchbetterstu

So, the thing is... I don't get the flu shot. I used to. And someday, I may do so again. But, otherwise, the way I see it, I'm at the point in my lifetime where I'm feeling pretty good about avoiding the flu by being kind to my body. I don't want to get sick (like... really don't want to get sick), but I would rather roll the dice and build up the antibodies should I fall ill. I realize this is a terribly out-of-date way to approach preventing illness. I'm not one of those anti-vaccine people (by the way, the guy who started that whole thing about the MMR vaccine causing autism? Yeah, discredited and debunked .) Honestly, because of bad science, I can now walk down the street three blocks to the pharmacy and get a Whooping Cough vaccination because we have cases here in Washington that have stemmed from people not vaccinating their children. I like vaccinations. But not for the flu. Like I said, someday, when I fall into a higher risk category, when my b

Several years ago, on New Year's Eve, I made a resolution that I was going to run a 5k. For a variety of reasons, this has not happened. One of the primary reasons is that I don't particularly enjoy running. Those who know me have noticed I walk a little funny... on my toes, spring in my step, whatever you want to call it. The upshot of this is I have completely jacked calf muscles. The downside is that running has always been something of a challenge for me. For a long time, if I ran for more than 20 minutes, I got sharp pains inside my knee. It was insane. I never had it checked out or anything and, let me be clear, for the past eight years or so since I have been working out regularly, I have done every cardio machine in the gym, hit spin classes and more and never felt any pain. It's running. Then came the challenge. See, first of all, I live in Seattle, which means I am virtually surrounded by runners. Second, last fall, I was at a friend's wedding. This friend