Things That Rocked Popkin in The Year 2007

In true Alex Popkin fashion I had been kicking this blog around since Matt came out with his awesome Top 10 Albums list...and seemed destined to never materialize.

Well only 1 day into the year 2008 and already talking about re-living '07 sounds about as fun as re-living 9th grade Earth Science....regardless, i do feel the need to tell the world a few things that rocked my fucking socks off in 2007 and some things i could have done without.

TV
Flight of the Conchords
undoubtably, most everthing on this list won't come as any surprise to my closest friends just because as most friends go, they tend to have shared interests which makes it their respective duties to keep each other in the loop on the funniest, greatest stuff out in the world.

If there was ever anything worth championing in 2007 it was HBO's Flight of the Conchords. What I believe to have been the funniest new TV show of the year....FOTC is more Spinal Tap meets the Monkees than Tenacious D. FOTC absolutley MASTERS the awkward moment and has become THE go-to show for quoting.


LOST Season 3 Finale
the brilliance of show continues to amaze me. dont ever buy into the hype that poor ratings reflect poor storylines and substance. Mainstream americas need for lafftrack bullshit 30-minute shows like "The New Adventures of Old Elaine Benes" is the reason for the ratings drop.This is the reason all LOST fans are immediately kindred spirits....we know what you are missing. As a non-LOST fan you are in amazing position to have 3 full seasons of DVD's you can tear through non-stop no 6-month waits....this is the equivalent of
Scrooge McDuck diving into his pool of gold coins, only if if Scrooge was a crackhead and the coins were crack rock.

Know this and know it without a trace of hyperbole: The season 3 finale has was one of the most incredible/satisfying show twists in TV history.

Quick Mentions:
Codemonkeys ( on G4): out of the family guy, Aqua Teen adult swim humor mold...Codemonkeys is an awesome cartoon about a small mid 80's video game programming company that is actually animated like an 8-bit Nintendo game.....reallly underrated show.

Mohegan Sun's Sports Tonight (Comcast Sports Net) - quickly becoming my favorite Boston Sports Talkshow. I started watching last year after Celtics games and the chemistry of Gary Tanguay and Greg Dickerson and their rotating guests instantly made me a fan of the show....Its probably the most informative non-radio talk show about Boston sports but they also have the most amazing, often hilarious recurring pro athlete guests like Jon Papelbon and Vince Wilfork.

Cinema

Children of Men
The only movie in which I can say truly moved me this year was "Children of Men.

Bleak near future setting where the human race mysteriously has stopped procreating? Check.

Relatable everyman anti-hero thrust with a nigh-impossible task escorting the first pregnant woman across Europe ? Check.

Breakthrough cinematic work, including some terrifyingly "Private Ryan" style action sequances? Check

Michael Caine as a wise and noble loveable old pothead? Double Check.

Great great movie. Also of special note, when you watch this on DVD, make sure you watch the featurette about the "Car Attack" scene. It featured a 10-minute, one-take camera shot where a camera harness was specially built to give a 360-degree shot from inside the car and made for one of the more gripping scenes I've ever seen. Also on the dvd is a making of maybe the most realistic baby-birth scene ever created......and its all done with Computer Graphics....truly remarkable.

Music

The Avett Brothers

Divine intervention brought this band to my doorstop. I keep an episode of Conan on my DVR just to have whenever the mood strikes me....one day I was lucky enough to catch a performance of "Paranoia in B-Flat Major." It was intense, passionate...something you rarely get on Late Night TV show performances..... And I needed more.

Wikipedia says:

The Avett Brothers combine old-time country, bluegrass, punk, pop melodies, folk, rock and roll, honky tonk and ragtime to produce a sound described by The Washington Post as "post civil-war modern rock", or by other reviewers as "grungegrass".

The group themselves eschews labels, feeling that "none would do the music the justice. It's simply left up to each person to extract his or her own account from the Avett's music."

That being said, What do i think they sound like? I would have call them an ever-changing mix of The Violent Femmes, Neil Young, Pearl Jam and The O'Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack.

Songs to cop: "Matrimony", "Colorshow", "Go To Sleep", "Will You Come Again"

Its bluesy, banjo infused ROCK music and its awesome....it may not ever be the next big thing....but there is NOTHING out there that sounds like it.

Silverchair - "Those Theiving Birds"/"Straight Lines"
Let me preface this entry by telling you that there isnt an trace of one fucking neutron of an atom from the 16 year old, Frogstomp days of Silverchair In fact, there may be no greater example of evolving musical skills than that of lead singer Daniel Johns. This is completely evident on their new album "Young Modern." At first listen, i had the Aural-equivalent of a "spit-take." (not the good kind)

I was visibly perturbed by the direction their new album had taken.

If you ran into me 20 minutes later, you might have said something like: "Geez, Alex....you look upset....whats wrong?"

and I would have responded: "ahh....its-.its...its nothing....actually, I just got the new Silverchair, and...well.....its really..... wierd."

So how did two songs make the list that rocked me? Well, "Those Theiving Birds" is nothing short of a masterfully crafted rock-opus of "operatic" proportions. Its akin to what Green Day did with the 8-minute "Jesus of Surburbia" only its Silverchair channelling their inner Andrew Lloyd Webber.....if you let it in....the song will reward you....me and scott joke all the time about what would actually be happing in this song if this were made into a musical....maybe someday you and I could share the same good natured laughs.....

The song "Straight Lines" is the only traditional track on the album...it sounds like the one song that the producers were begging them to include cuz they needed a hit on what would have otherwise been lableld "a experimental fringe music".....I'll tell you what, those greedy producers were right. the song is a flat out hit, and if you have 99 cents to burn on Itunes, you would be doing yourself a favor.

The Internet

Best Week Ever

I would have to call this the pulse of the popculture blogosphere. Without a doubt, the best collection of lists, commentary, anecdotes, recaps, links, videos, and photos with anything that has to do with PopCulture....it really changes what we qualify as popculture....worldnews, sports....everything is here in blog form from leaked trailers. The writers are every bit the comic nerd, sports obsessed, gossip crazed cynics that I could ever hope to accurately rip off.....i mean.....EMULATE....

If Best Week Ever is Alec Baldwin in the blog world, The Honest Male Perspective is whoever the least successful Baldwin is.

They invented the hilarious "Reverse Fred Savage Theory" which describes the phenomena of awkward, not very attractive child stars who sprout into very attractive adults (Patrick Dempsey, Jerry O'Connell)

But My favorite feature of Best Week Ever is without question "Celebrity Math"

Quick Mentions:

Smodcast: Kevin Smith's free podcast has swept THMP bloggers (except matty i think) into a frenzy of laughs and overall delight. The converstational 50 minute podcasts are often very dirty, and slow paced and full of misinformation....but it really accurately captures the kind of rambling talks everybody has with their friends. The laughter is genuine, the friendship is genuine and the smodcast always delivers a moment that causes me to erupt into laughter at inopportune times (the workplace, the eliptical machine.)

Things I could have done without in 2007:

Spider-Man 3 (movie and videogame): we never were privvy to a Jim Dudley blog-bashing extravaganza like I was pushing for.....but c'mon the movie just reeked of half-assedness...the first 30 minutes of the movie was good....but it was clear Venom was just tossed in there to sell more toys when Sam Raimi A)didnt want Venom in the movie and B) didnt understand the character in the first place....sucks that thos fat cat movie execs forced him to do it. The video game wasn't bad on the whole, but after the groundbreaking Spidey 2 game as a road map, you'd think a next-gen Spidey game would be eezy peezy lemon squeezy.....not so....the game-makers slacked off, figured we could stomach a half-assed game that was IDENTICAl to the old one. what a ball-buster.

Gamez N' Flix (DVD/Game Internet Rental): with a fresh XBOX 360 console , i was eager to start developing my videogame personality....i'd also never been involved in Netflix or Blockbuster and would have tested them out soon enough....i chose gamez'nflix because i knew one thing: i needed both games AND flicks. the trial subscription went well...i was treated like a king with quick-turnaround deliveries.....when i got to my first month of paid service, the selection was better but i discovered a couple thigns 1) i never could guarentee that i'd be getting a movie or game on any delivery 2) you couldnt select TV shows on a disc-by-disc basis 3) i just didnt like the pressure of feeling that i had to make every rental a GREAT one...(also, Scotty B scorned them after the customer service reps fucked with him over some customer servicy shit....scott vowed to take the company down brick by brick.....i think it was all talk)

Fantasy Sports: this one is all about the bitterness. you put work into creating a team...you follow them...make your moves with the savvyness of a Wall Street Businessman....you play with a code of ethics....try to remain humble....and it always seems like stuff that is beyond your control happens to you to keep you down....be it injury (Chase Utley) a blown save on the last inning of the last game (Houston Stree in one leauge, Manny Corpas in another simultaneously screwing me) that costs you a championship....i like that the world at large is an unscripted one.....but just once I want to finish at number 1. just once.

Barry Bonds: the record is still Hanks. please just go away.

I dont know why I dont have more stuff to rip on.....maybe it will come to me later, or maybe i've just Ctrl+Alt+Deleted that shit out my mainframe.

Th-th-th-thats all folks, have a happy new year!