Through a Freshman's Eyes: "Batman Begins" Edition

When I heard my Blackhawks had won the NFL Draft lottery, I was briefly taken aback when I learned the crown jewel of this year's class, Connor Bedard, was born in July 2005. It also means this year’s high school graduates and incoming college freshmen weren’t alive to see the first half of the 2000s. It’s hard to fathom that someone born five years after Y2K can now play Lotto or enlist in the military. 

With that said, if you are graduating, or have graduated, high school this month…

…Gmail and YouTube have always existed.

…King Charles III has always been married to Camilla.

…Prince Harry has never done Nazi cosplay.

…there has never been sectarian violence in Ireland.

…you always knew W. Mark Felt was Deep Throat. 

…you’ve never seen any Ukrainians wear orange.

…it has always been possible to clone dogs.

…Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings have never anchored a network news broadcast.

…Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were never married.

…Pink Floyd has never played live.

…Rich Hill has always played baseball.

…you have never attended a Montreal Expos baseball game.

…the New York Yankees have never blown a 3-0 series lead in the ALCS.

…there has never been an ugly lockout that wiped out an entire season of the NHL.

…you don’t know what the phrase “malice at the palace” has to do with basketball.

…”The Office” and “Avatar: The Last Airbender” have always been on TV.

…”Family Guy” was never canceled and “Doctor Who” has never been off the air.

…Johnny Ramone, Russ Meyer, Scott Muni, Richard Avedon, Joyce Jillson, Rodney Dangerfield, Janet Leigh, Ken Caminiti, Christopher Reeve, Pierre Salinger, Ray Boone, Anthony Hecht, Steig Larsson, Yassir Arafat, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Cy Coleman, Ed Paschke, Dimebag Darrell, Johnny Oates, Jerry Orbach, Will Eisner, Virginia Mayo, Johnny Carson, Vicky LaMotta, John Vernon, Max Schmeling, Ossie Davis, Arthur Miller, Dick Weber, John Raitt, Hunter S. Thompson, John DeLorean, Barney Martin, Johnnie Cochran, Mitch Hedberg, Frank Perdue, Terry Schiavo, Pope John Paul II, Saul Bellow, Dale Messick, Debralee Scott, Prince Rainier III, Percy Heath, Herb Sargent, animator Joe Grant, Thurl Ravenscroft, Eddie Albert, Oscar Brown Jr., George Mikan, Anne Bancroft, Lane Smith, Paul Winchell, Shelby Foote, Luther Vandross, Admiral James Stockdale, James “Scotty” Doohan, Hildegarde, Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe, and Robert Moog have always been dead.

If I allegedly missed anything, here’s last year’s list.

(713)

That Wonderful Year in Music... 2005

As promised in November, here is my 2005 best-of list. Though some of the below albums are new to my ears, a large percentage of this list was the soundtrack of my sophomore and junior years of college. This list has a tad more upheaval compared my previous "year in music" do-overs, but the first edition was so riddled with albums that simply don't hold up --and for some reason, two 2004 releases-- that I couldn't let it be. (I even included Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway. WTF?)

Looking back, 2005 wasn't too shabby, though admittedly it's quite scattered. I don't recall any album being the consensus #1 among critics (2006 and 2011 had the same problem), which made for a very eclectic top ten. It was also the year indie-rock nudged itself into the mainstream, or at the very least earned the respect of people who tired of the latest Nickelback or Buckcherry single on mainstream radio. This was a good year for hidden gems; a lot of the albums mentioned below were ignored or quickly dismissed upon initial release but found new appreciation in the decade to come.

(NOTE: parentheses note previous ranking)

BEST ALBUMS:
1. Come On Feel The Illinoise, Sufjan Stevens (1). On the surface, this is a twee-sounding, ballad-heavy concept album about my home state. Instead, the landmarks and footnotes that Stevens name-checks serve as a grounding point for the melancholy short stories that unspool herein. The Land of Lincoln is more than just a template, but everything about America personified in one state: the wanderlust of a 20-something deadbeat, a young man watching an older relative die, John Wayne Gacy shortly before his capture. The lyrics are earnest even when Stevens isn't on the level; even an opportunist lets his guard down once in a while.
2. Late Registration, Kanye West (12). Hip-hop circa 2005 was mostly about G-Unit and the proteges of Dr. Dre, and Yeezy fit into neither category. He was a Chicago native taken under the tutelage of Jay-Z, a hot prospect and critic's darling thrown into the national spotlight when he called out President Bush during a hurricane relief telethon. That outburst seems quaint in the wake of more recent antics, but West's desire to polarize has always been there. He would be another egomaniac running off the mouth if his music wasn't so. Damn. Good. The lyrics are innately clever, and producer Jon Brion gives the beats a melodic feel.
3. Twin Cinema, The New Pornographers (2). The bright, hook-laded formula and democratic approach to songwriting that worked on the Pornographers' first two albums continues through their third effort. This time around, the aesthetic remains sunshine and lollipops even when the tempo slows down. The band at times sounds leaderless, but that's hardly a flaw: the combined talents to Daniel Bejar, Neko Case, and AC Newman are merely throwing ingredients into a delectable stew of sound.
4. LCD Soundsystem, LCD Soundsystem
5. Feels, Animal Collective
6. Get Behind Me Satan, The White Stripes (3)
7. The Woods Sleater-Kinney (9)
8. Seperation Sunday, The Hold Steady
9. Gimme Fiction, Spoon
10. Extraordinary Machine, Fiona Apple. To quote Pitchfork: "This isn't about hipster cred: Fiona Apple's not actually cool; she's embarrassingly earnest." The notoriously reticent and prickly Apple went six years between her second album and third, challenging herself as if time was no object. Where Jon Brion (see #2) failed to match the fussy, artsy aspects of Apple's work --hence the delay-- new producer Mike Elizondo opens her work up. She is not a commercial artist but an auteur, and she doesn't care what you think about that.

11. Guero, Beck (11)
12. I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, Bright Eyes (13)
13. Picaresque, The Decemberists
14. Celebration Castle, Ponys
15. Wolfmother, Wolfmother (7). A band that ultimately collapsed on the weight of its own novelty, this Australian trio worshiped Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin but also owed a debt to The White Stripes and Queens of the Stone Age. The end result is proto-metal mashed with stoner metal, personified by the hit single "Woman." Even when their influences start to muddle together, Wolfmother's blunt sonic force makes you wish they really were around in 1972... or more than two albums.
16. Z, My Morning Jacket
17. Alligator, The National
18. The Alternative to Love, Brendan Benson (15)
19. Silent Alarm, Bloc Party (14)
20. Employment, Kaiser Chiefs (5). If She Wants Revenge wanted to be our generation's Joy Division, then this Scottish quintet aspired to be The Jam 2.0. The opening 1-2 punch of "Everyday I Love You Less and Less" and "Predict a Riot" are smashing singles, and the rest of this debut album is just as raucous and delightfully snotty as anything released in the golden age of punk and new wave.

Best Jazz Album: Suspicious Activity?, The Bad Plus. (8) Are they a rock band that plays jazz, or vice versa? When you compose and perform one-of-a-kind songs like the intense "Anthem for the Earnest," that tiny red line barely even matters.

BEST SINGLES:
"Landed," Ben Folds
"Monster Hospital," Metric
"Feel Good Inc," Gorillaz
"Holding Me Up," The Dandy Warhols
"The Sun Comes Through," Kelley Stoltz
"Perfect Situation," Weezer
"Sugar, We're Going Down," Fall Out Boy
"Little Sister," Queens of the Stone Age
"Do You Want To?" Franz Ferdinand
"Goodnight Goodnight," Hot Hot Heat
"Eleanor," Low Millions
"Hide and Seek," Imogen Heap

BEST VIDEOS:
1. "Trapped in the Closet," R. Kelly. The event video of the decade, and symbolic of the Chicago-based R&B singer's indulgence and complete lack of self-awareness.
2. "Triumph of a Heart," Bjork. The original YouTube cat video?
3. "Evil," Interpol. A puppet (or is he a ghost?) lingers over the aftermath of a car accident in this goofy yet affecting video.
4. "The Denial Twist," The White Stripes. Parodying an awkward moment on Conan O'Brien's show in 2003, the talk show great is thrown into an almost nightmarish journey in this Michel Gondry-directed effort.
5. "At The Bottom of Everything," Bright Eyes. If I had to choose between the cute-but-mawkish clip for "First Day Of My Life" or this, I'd go with the latter, a wacky clip that evokes the emergency landing from "Garden State" and expands upon the idea.

Honorable Mentions: "Off the Record," My Morning Jacket; "Vaka," Sigur Ros; "Believe," The Chemical Brothers.

Your thoughts?

Retrospective: Five Years of Aimless Ramblings

And now, the latest and greatest in all things Stu:

This month marks TV.com's unofficial fifth anniversary, and as such, the wooden jubilee of this blog. When I first joined the site on June 4th, 2005 I really had no idea what to expect of myself, or the episode guides that I edited, or even our new overlords at CNet. Our user profiles had a blog option that didn't exist at TV Tome, so my first entry was a dry run that merely served the purpose to introduce myself. I wrote two more of these before coming up with the weekly gimmick; if people wanted to know who I am and what I was up to, why not do it on a regular (read: semi-rigid) basis? I was skeptical about the new format, but at the same time I wanted to help out this new site.

For the last few weeks I wasn't sure what to do with my anniversary blog, but I knew for sure that I wanted to acknowledge the milestone in a special way. I was compelled at one point to write out a list of statistics, like the most frequent topic of the past half-decade (sports edging out current events, but barely) or the most frequent commenters (by my best estimate, a virtual six-way tie). I also considered a list of wacky fun facts; in five years I've only missed one week (it was in December 2005; I was on vacation), three Updates have been posted a day early (i.e. Monday) and six a day late. Otherwise, I've been fairly consistent about posting my latest missive on late Tuesday morning or early afternoon.

As the above links will tell you, the priorities in my life were far different than they are today. I was 20 years old and six credit hours away from earning my associates in arts at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, IL. At the beginning of 2005 I was intent on transferring to North Central College in nearby Naperville, chomping at the bit to earn my bachelor's in radio communications. In either March or April '05, one of my bosses at WDCB suggested that I look a little further from home; I spent Spring Break glancing at other schools' radio programs, and I realized that Illinois State not only had an equal-size reputation than NCC, but it was a lot cheaper. Alas, I missed the transfer deadline for Fall semester at ISU, so I spent one more term of sorts at COD. What does that have to do with TV.com, you ask? Well, I had to do something with my time before leaving for Normal.

To be frank, I'm too modest to take all the credit for what my weekly dispatches have become, and I couldn't have made it this far without the support of all the wonderful people that made this blog (and the site, of course) what it is today. I typed 6,432 posts at TV Tome and nearly 26,500 so far at TV.com, none of which would be possible if I didn't have somebody to debate with. Individually, I want to thank:

• TheDiamondDog, unofficially the most prolific blogger in TV.com history, and my oldest friend at the site;
• algetrig91 and bry456, whom I've been acquainted with since the TV Tome era and continue to contribute to TV.com to this day;
• ClevelandRocker, arguably the wittiest and most facetious user on this site, past or present;
• millerem99, for balancing my left-of-center ramblings with a well-informed moderate-right rebuttal;
• thecomedianky, who I met via my reviews on the old site and egged me into taking classes at the Second City Training Center;
• Tapeleg247 and jmarsh89, for our regular chats on AIM, YIM, and Facebook chat;
• Scopeless, who I met at TV.com and became my friend and collaborator at the Student Television Workshop at Illinois State University;
• mtjaws and jokipper, for their consistent dissections of my monthly music blogs;
• FlyingHellfish, fantasy commish extraordinaire;
• Darth_Revan45, for his strong opinions;
• BaronOne, whoaitsconner, and avmon, for their regular comments in the SNL forum;
• RealityFan2686 and Pulch23, for enduring all my abuse in said forum;
• mp34mp and Water78, whose banishments from TV.com I still question to this day;
• and to anyone else that I might've forgotten, thank you for everything you do, and keep up the good work.

I don't want to end this on a dour note, but right now my life is at a crossroads. About six weeks ago I lost my job; I'm sorry for not mentioning anything sooner, but it's not an easy subject to bring up. I don't want to get into all the gory details, but it wasn't a particularly fair situation and in some ways I'm still smarting over it. That doesn't mean I'm canoeing without a paddle, though; I registered for unemployment to pay the bills, I'm e-mailing resumes out at a steady rate, and just to have something to fall back on, I re-applied to be a substitute teacher for the 2010-11 school year. As my friends, please keep me in your thoughts.