12.22.2007

Best of '07: Things I found on the internet

I spend a lot of time on the internet. Probably about 18 hours a day, including work and personal stuff. That means I see a lot of worthless crap, and a lot of awesome stuff. A few awesome things I found this year (while I further procrastinate on my list of best albums):

Best Blogs that I found this year:

This Recording

This Recording is what all blogs wish they were (and what I think all blogs should be). No one really uses multimedia stuff to their advantage like these folks. The combination of awesome images, links to interesting things, witty commentary, and good music make this the best blog I've ever read, period. Admittedly, there are multiple authors and all of that, but This Recording reads like a radio show transcript and a hypertext novel in which everything in the world is connected somehow through camp and off-kilter style.


The Park Bench

The Park Bench is a blog for nerdy ladies, about nerdy (and sometimes lady-oriented) things. Their definition of "nerdy woman" means everything from the non-Cosmo-reading variety (me) to the kinds of girls you see on Spike TV talking about video games (not me). The blog contains gems such as this on a regularly basis:

And finally, manishly funny Tina Fey has been named one of the most influential women of 2007 by MSN. Yeah, suck on that, science. Why don't you go play with your glow in the dark cats while we turn our backs on evolution to spite you?


I actually found this one (surprise surprise) because they named Michael Cera "Nerd Man of the Month" and were one of the first blogs to review Juno earlier this month.

Best Podcast:

La Blogotheque's Take Away Shows are clearly the best thing to have happened to internet music videos ever. Each one is so insanely beautiful and intimate. The whole project reminds me of why I like music so much--because it gives you the opportunity to feel another person up close, expressed through their art, and feel them as they make themselves vulnerable to you. Obviously not all music is that way, which is why Brittney Spears will never appear in a Take Away Show, but it should be, because it reminds us all of how real we can be to one another. The Take Away Shows bring you face to face with the people whose musical gifts move you. They take you into their living rooms, their neighborhood streets, and into the personal space you must inhabit to look deep into someone's eyes and fall in love. Thank you, Vincent Moon for sharing with us the greatest gift a filmmaker can ever share with an audience.

Best Book found on the internet that was published this year:

I've been promising for some time to write about Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives. I have way too much to say to include it in this post, but I will say it is the best piece of literature that I have found on the internet, for sure. Actually, I think I found it in the New Yorker, but online. That counts, right? The Savage Detectives is a Latin American On the Road of sorts, detailing the ways in which revolutionary sentiments, love, lust, and rage translate into travel and historical narratives that capture memory from a variety of different angles. The first section is an autobiographical diary of a set of events. The second section is a series of vignettes from the perspectives of characters in the first section, remembering months, years, and decades later what impact the events had on them. The third section is more of the first, but falls deeper and deeper into distraction. While the first section presents a series of events that the second section totally disputes, the third pretty neatly ties everything back together. The whole thing is fresh and intelligent, and I'm so glad to have read it.

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