“Swan Fungus.” What’s the first word(s) that came to mind. Is it “music?” Is it “mix tape?” Is it “Manic Sociopath Dreamboy?” Or is it “lists.” If your answer was the latter, you’d be more right than any of us would think.
See, I’ve only compiled 342 mix tapes since starting this blog back in 2005. All but nine of those have been posted on Sunday nights as part of a recurring feature. Compare that to the amount of lists I’ve written in the same time span, 373, and suddenly those mix tapes don’t seem all that impressive. More than anything (except for album downloads, but those are just excuses for me not to have to think of an original idea to write about) this blog is about lists. It makes perfect sense, right? The list is the journalist trope most-commonly associated with laziness. What is a blog but a lazy writer’s idea of a hobby? What is a blogger if not an unemployed (or unemployable…which I am…have you READ those Adventures In Dating stories!?) journalist? Wait a minute, who am I? WHAT AM I DOING HERE!?
Ahem.
Since every other lazy journalist — both print and online — uses the month of December to pen half-assed Year-End lists, why shouldn’t I follow in their footsteps? After all, what’s lazier than taking someone else’s idea and copying it?
Sorry. I’m posing a lot of questions today.
As every other publication dedicates December blog/print space to Year-End lists, so do I. Just like last year. And the year before that. And the year before that. Why? Because once Thanksgiving dinner ends it’s the job of every writer to start expressing their opinions on the year gone by, annoying their audience with hindsight-enriched wistfulness, nostalgia for what could be considered the present day, and even some good old-fashioned navel-gazing. On each Friday this month, I’ll post a different Swan Fungus Year-End list. If you’re an old-timer you already know how this works. If you’re new here I’ll lay it out for you:
Friday December 6th, 2013: The Top Ten Top Ten Lists Of 2013
Friday December 13th, 2013: The Top Ten Negative Reader Comments Of 2013
Friday December 20th, 2013: The Top Ten Beers Of 2013
Friday December 27th, 2013: The Top 100 Albums Of 2013
So what did I blog the most about in 2013? Food and music, of course! It’s no wonder most of this list is populated by eats, drinks, and tunes. Long gone (apparently) are the days when I would write scathing misogynistic lists that would incur the wrath of bored feminists. I’ve calmed down. I’m 30. I guess that’s what happens. You stop hating women and start…trying to get along with them?
Ahem. Anyway. Here are my ten favorite Top 10 lists of 2013:
Honorable Mention: The Top Ten Ennio Morricone Film Scores
10. A Top Ten Of Los Angeles Appetizers – You could call this a pre-cursor to my 25 Meals list, a new feature that ranks the twenty-five best restaurants in Los Angeles at a given time. Since writing this list in May, I’ve had “Death By Duck” on three separate occasions, Animal’s Bone Marrow once, several orders of Jicama Spring Rolls from Viet Noodle, and Mozza’s grilled octopus once. So I guess if I had to re-write the list today those would be the top of the list. Maybe the jamon wrapped dates from Manchego would round out a top 5. So good.
09. Ranking The Studio Albums Of Low – Did you know Jeff Tweedy produced the new Low album? It’s a Jeff Tweedy production. Jeff Tweedy. Jeff Tweedy. I say fuck that guy! He sucks! I mean…for fuck’s sake…there’s a sticker on the front cover of THE INVISIBLE WAY boasting the name of the producer AND it’s printed on the back cover below the track listing. Hell, it doesn’t even say Alan or Mimi’s name(s) on the front of back of their own record! Fuck Jeff Tweedy! It’s his fault THE INVISIBLE WAY sucks!!!!
08. The Top Ten Swans Albums – Ok, maybe I’m just happy about this list because yesterday I listened to three “new arrivals” in my record collection: FILTH, COP, and PUBLIC CASTRATION IS A GOOD IDEA. By the way, how hard is it to find BODY TO BODY JOB TO JOB on vinyl. I’ve never ever seen one before. You can buy ’em from about $35 on Discogs, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a clean copy. I need that record. It’s one of the most depressing albums, period, ever recorded.
07. The Top Ten Halloween Costume Ideas For 2013 – I thought I had some really good Halloween costume ideas this year. Hell, for the first time in years I actually took my own advice and dressed up as a sexy ghost. I think that’s the mark of a successful list: when it’s so good I actually choose to take my own advice. Next year I might have to try and put together a stupid sexy Flanders costume. Or maybe some other costume that’s really just an obscure Simpsons reference. Maybe next year the entire list will be obscure Simpsons reference costumes. A rake! Grandpa Simpson with matching handprints on his ass (from when Grover Cleveland spanked him on two non-consecutive occasions)! Krudler, the racehorse owned by Krusty and Bette Midler! The possibilities are endless. Well…technically I’d say the possibilities end with season…eight? Nine? TEN!?
06. Ten iPhone Apps I Unconditionally Endores – Okay, so my plan to launch my own Swan Fungus iPhone app failed. It’s not my fault. The little Middle Eastern girl who offered to program it for me decided once and for all to stop sending me pictures of her naked and go back to college somewhere on the East Coast. I can’t say I blame her. Turning the tables on me and blogging about her adventures dating me, then promising to create an iPhone app for me probably wasn’t the best post-collegiate plan she had. That said, I was really looking forward to having my own app in the iTunes store.
05. The Top Ten Townes Van Zandt Songs – Because let’s face it, Townes was one of the two best lyricists of his time (Sincerely, L. Cohen). And I feel like I don’t read enough about just how much of a genius he was. Sure, you can watch Chelsea Wolfe talk all about how cool he was, or read interviews where people namedrop Townes, but how often do you get to see a list detailing WHY his work is so important and what makes it so captivating. Like This. I wish I’d written that. By now I think I’ve copied about half of it in my various love letters to Townes through the years.
04. The Top Ten Albums Of 1973 – Isn’t it fun to pick arbitrary years and figure out what its best albums were? I think I’ve done it with 1971 and 1983 previously, but this year I added 1973 because I found myself listening to CYBORG (Klaus Schulze), HEART FOOD (Judee Sill) and DREAMIES (Bill Holt) all in a span of 24 or 48 hours. Crazy how that happens, right?
03. A Top Ten Of Drunken Vegas Eats – And do I ever know how to drunk-eat in Vegas. Is “drunk-eat” a Webster’s recognized word yet? If not, it should be. Maybe I’ll devote 2014 to making “drunk-eat” happen. In 2013 I made my first trip to Hash House A Go Go, which would definitely make this list if I re-wrote it today. I also made several trips to America this year. God, I love that place. You know what I need to find in 2014? Ten places in LA where you can get french fries with gravy. Or cheese fries with gravy. The only place I can think of that serves ’em is Big Wangs. If anyone else knows of another eatery that serves french fries with gravy in LA, by all means let me know right now.
02. On Disturbing Films – I can’t believe I caught flack for this because 7 of the 10 films I ranked were French. Oh well! I just re-watched MEN BEHIND THE SUN with Elissa and it was just as brutal the second time around. I’ve still got to get her through TIRESIA and IN A GLASS CAGE, which might make the list if I had to re-write it today. Nothing in 2013 that I saw really moved me in the way these films did. And as for the guy who commented about how A SERBIAN FILM wasn’t on the list…well, yeah, okay. That’s like saying GUINEA PIG isn’t on the list. Some things are just too obvious, you know?
01. The Top Ten Condiments – There’s nothing like taking an easy-to-write list and fucking it up, which is exactly what I did here. The list was apparently so abbhorant that someone on a BBS forum far, far across the Internet used my Sriracha obsession as evidence that I have bad taste, in general. “What else would you expect from someone who drowns all their food in sriracha?” the dumbfuck wrote about me, because I hyperbolically mentioned that I “destroy” pho, bahn mi and spring rolls with the stuff, or apply “more than just a dollop” to eggs, noodles, and burgers. Leave it to mongoloid Internet trolls to read one paragraph on an eight-year-old blog and use it to size up the author.
Ash – Oh Yeah [MP3]
