I love to hear my dad talk about what he did after graduating from Stanford in 1969. This might sound like the introduction to a nauseating list of accomplishments, but for my father it’s quite the opposite.

After being kicked out of the Peace Corps for possessing hash brownies, he worked at a plastic bag factory feeding defective bags into an enormous machine which melted them down “for a second try.” He was fired in less than a month for failing to show up on Mondays and Fridays. He claims the long weekends were necessary to maintain his sanity.

Although he didn’t know how to drive a bus, he was a school bus driver for a brief period. He recalls quitting after one stormy night when, delivering a grade-school basketball team to their game, he nearly drove the bus into a canyon. “When we finally reached the school alive, I was so nervous I just stood outside the whole time, pacing and chain smoking.”

He worked as a door-to-door Pony Picture Salesman. Two little old ladies would go around neighborhoods with a pony, causing children to flock into the street. The ladies would take pictures of them with the pony, and weeks later my dad would show up to get the kids’ parents to shell out some cash for the evidence.

This is just a small selection from his humiliating resume. It seems there is nothing too degrading for him to fail at, no job too disgraceful for him to disgrace further. And he loves to talk about it. After all, he’s a writer. He’s just happy to have what really matters to him: great stories. — Art Director Hallie Bateman

Where do you put your disappointments? My mother tells me to put them in my bag of experience. From debt to divorce to death: “Well, put that in your bag of experience.” How do they all fit in there?

She never gave me the properties of the bag. Perhaps that is up to the holder. My bag of experience is a deep black color. You might mistake it for a shadow. Some days it grows heavy and I slouch with the weight of it as I drag it behind me. Other days the bag feels like a fantasy game “bag of holding” — a convenient, small sack with a pocket universe that holds entire years of tragedies, attics-full of mistakes, all the dead friends whose lives seemed to be bought cheaply by cancer or accident. And yet the bag remains magically light.

My daughter is just a kid with a Hello Kitty backpack of experience. But she has started packing it up with petty disturbances that seem large to her and a few Big Deals that we both lived through fine. The bag chaffs her shoulders and makes her cranky. I am confident that she will find a way to carry it comfortably. Most of us do. — Writer Jonathan Gourlay

When I was first getting interested in comedy “seriously” (as seriously as you can be at 13?), my dad bought me a George Carlin book. I said it was cool — only cooler if it were signed. A few days later, he presented me with a Jerry Seinfeld book. “It’s signed,” he said, and I flipped to the front eagerly! Not only was this book signed, Jerry knew about my theatrical aspirations because he had written “Keep up the good work, Alice.” I loved this book, and I brought it to summer camp with me. I was reading a passage aloud, and I shared the inscription with a friend. “Huh,” she said. “It’s weird that Seinfeld signed in pencil though.” That was weird. Almost as weird as how the S in Seinfeld looked exactly like the S in my dad’s signature. — Writer Alice Stanley

My dad is a finance guy and, like most finance guys, has been since he graduated from college. His stories have always reinforced a lot of stereotypes I’ve had that finance is a sort of boys’ club where the common denominators are greed and excess. But it does make for great storytelling. The best anecdote he tells takes place in the ’80s, when his broker took him and a couple coworkers out to lunch at the Bostonian Hotel, a ritzy place near Fanueil Hall where they convinced the broker to purchase an extremely expensive bottle of port.

The first time I heard my dad tell this story, years ago, the cost of the bottle was $5,000. The next time, it was $4,000. When I called him last weekend, the price had plummeted to a measily grand.

“I don’t want to exaggerate,” he says, now, suggesting that I try googling the cost of an 18th-century bottle of port. “But I remember it was the most expensive bottle on the menu.”

Originally, my dad said he had pressured the broker into getting the wine. Today, he says the broker had just gotten carried away after my father pointed to a bottle on the menu, noting that it was around during the American Revolution.

“I think he got fired shortly afterward.”

My dad explained that it was the ’80s — an era of excess, one I might not relate to in our current world, grounded in pragmatism. But I felt like his stories also used to be full of excess, in that they were bloated and exaggerated for effect. Those tales might’ve been taller, but they were funnier too.

Still, the punch line is the same:

“When we opened the bottle, I swear ghosts came out. It was like drinking history. But I couldn’t taste any difference. That bottle tasted like any other wine I’d ever had.” — Editor Kevin Nguyen

I was 15 years old and my mom was driving me home from school. Though ordinarily I wouldn’t have cared about cars one way or another, I’d gone to a car show the previous weekend with my father. So I stepped out of character and told my mom that someday I wanted to get a Nissan Z.

“You can’t get a Z,” my mom replied.

“Why?” I wondered, genuinely confused.

“When I was 18 and working as a cashier at JCPenny, a man came up to the counter and asked me if I wanted to travel across the country with him. I left right then and we drove across the country in his Nissan Z, having sex the whole way.”

I didn’t say a word for the rest of the drive. I do not own a Nissan Z. — Contributing Writer Ben Bateman

Illustration by Hallie Bateman

When I was a sophomore in high school, I was a horrible person. It is true what they say about fifteen-year-old girls. They are evil. This is one of the first posts from the DeadJournal I started in October 2003:

Sunday: Church. Chris, this annoying kid from sunday school, got a girl friend. Everyone hates him, because he a big jerk. BUt really im happy for him because hes not that bad-he just thinks hes beign funny soemtimes when he says really offensive stuff. anyway, he kept talkign abotu her…and all i kept thinkign is…either shes retarded or looks like a dead rat. thats so mean. im so mean. ive gotta stop beign mean. The home…dinner…cleaned room…i watched the matrix reloaded while doing english and some geometry glossary…i watch a lot of movies on the weekend by the way…if you cants tell…my dad alwasy rents me horror movies for the weekend….its a thing we do i guess….i didnt get it anyway. oh well, i kidna did, so i still cant wait to see the third one. im done i guess….nothign i can think of….hmmm..oh eyah, my mom baked something today that smelled liek christmas cookies and then i played my amy grant christmas cd and it was so nice…because i love christmas….the end! lol.

Meh…thats abotu all for now.

I was also an idiot. But also, an amateur philosopher? My thoughts about Brave New World from the same week:

Brave New World messes with my mind. And all I can think abotu the whole time is how they actually have to create society for people…how this is true today. HOw we can never have clothes that don’t wear out because millions of peoepl will starve because they work at clothing factories/designer places, etc. Why are we here? To just make jobs for people. Thats all. If cancer was cured…we’d die of hunger friends.

And yet, I can never bring myself to delete this journal of shame. — Writer Alice Stanley

After receiving an invitation to join Gmail in 2004, one of the first things I did was to ask my friends to engage in a possibly fraudulent internet marketing campaign. I emailed Alan and Sean and after quickly asking about their summer vacations, I launched into the real reason for the email: I needed them to sign up for some potentially scam-y service so I could get a free iPod. I didn’t even need an iPod — I bought one for myself the year before — but man, did I want a free one.

I was so earnest, so sure that Alan and Sean would be thankful for the opportunity. All they needed to do was get five friends to sign up and they too could receive free iPods! I didn’t know about pyramid schemes, but I definitely understood free Apple gear. Of course, I might have had more success if I didn’t mention how much trouble I had convincing AOL to cancel my free trial.

As far as I know, none of my friends ever signed up. I don’t blame them, it was probably too good to be true. Except that in 2004 Engadget did some research and apparently FreeiPods.com was legitimate. Damn you Sean and Alan! With your help I could have had a free iPod mini. — Contributing Writer Tim Lehman

I’ve had this same file for nearly a decade now. So far it’s survived every move and computer replacement. Right now it’s buried on an external hard drive, and I haven’t added to it for quite some time. It’s my file full of old poems I wrote. Most of my old writing I look back with a kind of maternal pity. “Oh dear, nice try,” I would say to my younger self.

But this poetry that I used to write, even now I look back with some awe at the lines I put together. The audaciousness! I don’t think I’d be half as good now if I tried. Yes, they’re thick with teenage concerns, but I still occasionally look upon them with wonder. I have a range of forms I’ve written in, but the ones that have aged the best (let’s not talk about my Sonnets) are the Eastern-influenced, 5-6 line pieces. Here’s one:

“the love of rogue vowels”
Inconstant words
wetted by
a pair of
wild tongues;
structure
sunk beneath
the love of rogue vowels.

— Writer Jordan Barber

As a kid, I was a mediocre soccer player. (Probably as an adult too but I haven’t the time, space or equipment to verify that.) Now that may surprise some of you who may think that the photo to the right oozes athleticism: The ninety-degree kick right out of Street Fighter. The pin wheeling arms. The stunned spectator in the background. But truly, I played soccer for nearly a decade and despite having my dad as the head coach every season, I never scored a goal. In fact, my closest attempt was an outright disaster. For whatever reason, I was on a fast break with not a single person between me and what should have been a very easy goal.

Now, as a goal-scoring virgin I wanted to be sure that I hit net and for me that meant getting as close to the goal without literally running the ball into it, although I would have been fine with the latter. The distance closed… 30 feet, 20 feet, 15 feet… and I grew nervous. What if I miss? What if I trip? As if on cue, I tripped just feet away from the goal — falling on my face — and the ball rolled innocuously out of bounds. Even more unfortunate, at the same moment, the goalie slid towards me to try and kick the ball out of the way. While he didn’t hit the ball, his cleats did manage to collide with my mouth. Bloody and embarrassed, I limped to the sidelines in tears. I couldn’t even enjoy the half-time orange slices. — Contributing Writer Jonathan San

As we learned from that Star Trek movie, death is an “undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.” Whatever. As an American, I don’t really care about other countries. No, I am drawn to the very discovered country, from which I have returned a long time ago: the past.

Hard drive spelunking reveals this oldest file: a copy of a 1999 email written to my sister about a final-stage alcoholic whose house was a pile of beer cans (Victoria Bitter — that’s Australian for carbonated urine) and empty Ensure tubs (his only sustenance). This toothless, naked old poet and philosopher was sunk deep into his vinyl couch when I went to tell him that he ought to wipe the piss off his couch, put on some clothes, and get to work. The last shred of his dignity was besting me at quoting Shakespeare and Romantic poets – not a difficult task, despite my poetry MFA. “Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair,” he said as he kicked an empty at me. Then he went into a coughing jag that produced something yellow-green and vile. As that nasty Ensure goober melted into his white chest hair, I left. Turned my back on him. And I am closing the old file now. I still wonder if leaving him in that decrepit state in a decrepit house was the right, the wrong, or the only thing to do. Who knows? As the old man might croak: Conscience does make cowards of us all. — Writer Jonathan Gourlay

Buried in the depths of My Documents, I found a folder labeled “old,” full of short stories I had written in early high school, each cataloged into a folder with the month and year it was written. Here are some common trends throughout these documents:

• Almost every story is written in the first person.
• Each story features a male character — often the narrator — who is a cool loner of sorts because he smokes cigarettes.
• The loner always has a generic, Anglo names like Chris, Dan, or Brandon.
• Whenever sex comes up, it’s talked about nonchalantly, despite the fact that I hadn’t the faintest idea about sex when I wrote these stories.
• When characters aren’t pensively staring off into space or having dreams that are thinly veiled metaphors, they are declaring how they are being dramatically aloof in conversation. (“‘It’s still dark,’ he sighed. ‘And it’s still snowing.’”)
• Female characters are generally outgoing and witty, and always extremely curious about the introverted loner. For some reason they are all named after girls I have known.
• Every story ends with Chris/Dan/Brandon making out with this girl. Then he smokes a cigarette.

I will say that aside from a few stories that shift verb tenses halfway through, they were surprisingly strong on a grammatical level. So I suppose this is a nice reminder that in high school, I was consistent in my knowledge of grammar rules and how to be single forever. — Editor Kevin Nguyen

Illustration by Hallie Bateman

My junior year prom date was a cool senior named Tyler. We had a great time at the dance. Post-prom we had a couple parties to go to, but I crashed about an hour into the first party and passed out on the host’s floor. I told Tyler to go on without me; I was going to fall asleep right there. On Monday, everyone was talking about Tyler and how he got more drunk than he ever had and peed on someone who had been sleeping. Couple that with the fact that I had told everyone I fell asleep promptly after the dance and — voila! — I was for a short time known as The Girl Tyler Peed On. Luckily, the rumor mill was righted, and I became known as The Smart Girl Who Ditched Tyler Before He Could Pee on Her. Tyler is now in medical school at NYU. — Writer Alice Stanley

I got my first-ever case of food poisoning on the night of my senior Homecoming Dance. I’m not sure if it was the venison or the clams, but by the end of dinner I was sweaty, sallow, and feeling pretty bad. 

Naturally, the best place to go in a situation like that is a crowded gym floor with hundreds of people, blaring music, and enough artificial fog to choke on. After the DJ played Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Jump On It,” which I did repeatedly, I was ready to bolt for the bathroom.

But I couldn’t. I’d been elected to the Homecoming Court, so I had to get on stage for the announcement of the Homecoming King, which turned out to be… me! Yes, I know it’s supposed to be every high schooler’s dream, but all I cared about was finding a toilet, and fast. No luck: after the announcement, I had to do an interview with the school paper, pose for some photos, and of course dance with the queen, a girl about a third of my size who I’m sure she was wondering what was making me lurch around in such an uncoordinated fashion.  

Once Céline Dion had belted her final note, I muttered a quick thanks and ran for the bathroom. I found a stall just as my stomach gave out. But there, sitting amidst a cheap paper crown, a bouquet of supermarket flowers, and the half-digested remnants of my fancy restaurant dinner, I have to admit I did feel pretty good. — Assistant Editor Darryl Campbell

I’ve attended many miserable high school dances, but my sophomore Winter Ball ended with a silver lesson: don’t bite the bad apples, no matter how hard they glisten. My friend Liz had set me up with a friend.

“I know a guy,” she’d said. “He’s your type. Longish hair. Likes books and shit.”

That night, I wore a too-sparkly dress and curled my eyelashes delicately upwards like a question mark. My date wore a fitted blazer, black trousers, and a beanie that matched the color of his eyes. He was a gorgeous thing, and he smelled so damn good — like linens and tea olive blossoms and inoffensive cologne. It made the music sound better and my high heels wobbly. Usher blasted from the circular speaker on the ceiling as the rain audibly hit the roof. I smelled him again and thought, I can stand here smooshed up against this wall sober as a bird with a full bladder and my ears ringing for hours, so long as he stands here smelling like this the whole time.

But when the lights came up briefly at 10 p.m., the true sadness of my situation was revealed: I was dancing with a boy who couldn’t dance worth a shit, who was too drunk to remember my name, who didn’t even like books. He had a pocket of marijuana (which he kept sneaking outside to smoke) and breath that tasted like cat litter. Reconsidering the night, I pulled myself together and stomped home, where reruns of Maury and That’s So Raven awaited me with safety.

If anyone knows the name of that cologne he was wearing, I’d still like to know. — Contributing Writer Vanna Le

The night’s theme is a new Sting song, “We’ll Be Together.” Could we, like Sting and his lady, forget the weather just to be together? Are we in love like that? I’ve got pink mousse spiking my hair, a leather shoelace for a necklace, and serious stress acne. You’re ironically wearing a Salvation Army flower-print grandma dress and seriously wearing multiple layers of blue, purple, and black makeup. We leave the high school gym arm in arm and step into my ride — a Chevy minivan. To the max.

I slide my Siouxsie and the Banshees cassette into the player. I’m pretending to like them to impress you. Where am I taking you now? It’s a secret. I’m equal parts mysterious and skinny. I stop the car in the dark, empty parking lot of the Dominican priory. What’s going on? I don’t answer. I glare. I turn towards you and reach behind your bucket seat. Then I pull it out: the Nerf. It’s football time, baby. Right now. Right here. It’s happening.

You grudgingly catch one soft pass and demand to be driven home. Four apologetic poems later, you tell me to just give up. I retire the Nerf-move indefinitely. — Writer Jonathan Gourlay

Luke asked me to Prom in the most annoying way. He came to school early to post up all over campus 200 sheets of paper he had printed; each had a solo picture of him holding a soccer ball, because he liked soccer, with the text underneath: “JENNIFER WILL YOU GO TO PROM WITH ME.” There was no comma after Jennifer, and no question mark after the question. By second period, everyone had come up to me and asked if I was going to say yes, and murmured comments like, “Luke is so sweet! I can’t believe he printed all those and came to school early to post them all over campus,” and “If Jennifer says no, she’s a cold-hearted bitch.”

He came up to me during lunch period and simply asked, “So?” I wanted to punch him in the face right then, because he was acting very confident; his creepy ass knew my insecure ass too well and that I couldn’t possibly turn him down in front of an audience. I said, “Okay.”

I spent most of Prom night doing exactly three things: 1. Loving the tired theme, “Midnight Masquerade,” because it was easier to avoid Luke while hiding under a mask, 2. Constantly looking over my shoulder, and 3. Wishing I had a Marauder’s Map. Other activities included annoying other couples by being a third wheel, and purposely dancing extremely low to the floor not because I’m a slutty dancer, but because it was harder for Luke to see me that way. The hardest part was dancing low to the floor during a slow song. — Contributing Writer Jennifer Eum

I was rude and round in high school — not a first choice date (nor second, third, or fourth). By the end of senior year I was still dance-less. Nonetheless, with Prom on the horizon, I decided to damn the odds and go for it. I psyched myself up and asked Claire to Prom. She was a long-time crush of mine, and obligated to tolerate me because our best friends were dating. She said yes — reluctantly — and our Prom date was set.

My thought process from there is a mystery, but a week before Prom I called my friend Sam (who hung out with Claire after school), asked to speak to her, and told her that we weren’t going to Prom together.

“Why?” she asked, confused.

“I’m just not feelin’ it,” I said. If I had a better reason, I still can’t remember it.

I was barred from the group’s Prom dinner. Claire went with Brad, a loud junior in the throes of a breakup. I didn’t go. Instead, I climbed the town’s cellphone tower, watched cars shuffling through the streets, and felt like a dick. — Contributing Writer Ben Bateman

The night of my sophomore year Winter Dance, my date revealed her theretofore secret and really disgusting love of Fritos, so the evening wasn’t going well to begin with. We had done the usual thing of sitting on the bleachers and watching kids grind, interspersed with the occasional slow dance, which I could handle. The only challenge was finding away to keep my head away from hers to avoid the Frito smell emanating from her. (She didn’t just take down a personal bag of Fritos. We’re talking “Family Size” bag here).

Finally, my date convinced me to dance to one of the fast songs — Mystikal’s “Shake Ya Ass,” if memory serves. Things were going surprisingly well hip gyration — wise when all of a sudden came the noises—first, of a scuffle involving a large group of people, then the noises of a group of girls fighting, and finally the music was stopped by a statistics teacher shouting this gem of a line: “Did someone just throw a fucking scalpel?”

Someone had, in fact, thrown a scalpel. The fight had started between two girls, one of those spontaneous pushing matches that erupt when crowds reach critical mass. Then it turned pretty vicious. In fact, it was one of the worst fights I have ever seen, way more no-holds-barred than others. Apparently, then these girls’ dates started getting into it and one of the guys decided to pull out his handy scalpel and huck it in the middle of a crowded room.

In the end though, the only thing injured was my pride as I made out with Frito-breath after the dance and learned an important lesson regarding that timeless adolescent antagonism between dignity and “getting some.” – Contributing Writer Jeff Merrion

In middle school, there was a girl I really wanted to dance with. I don’t remember her name, and I don’t remember what she looked like. But I asked her for a dance, and she said only if the DJ played “All the Small Things” by Blink 182. In hindsight, more than a decade later, I realize this was her way of saying that she had no interest in dancing with me — “All the Small Things” is not a slow-dance song. I probably knew that then, but this didn’t stop me from requesting Blink 182 repeatedly until the DJ caved. So we danced. Then I requested “All the Small Things” again. I asked friends to request it, and eventually, the DJ got so fed up that he played it a second time. Then a third time. This got me three dances with the girl, and probably ensured that she would never ever go out with me.

If there is a lesson to this story, it’s that I have always been really annoying. — Editor Kevin Nguyen

Illustrations by Hallie Bateman

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Mirror Traffic

This record makes me feel old. I get inexplicably angry that people don’t seem to like it more. “What’s wrong with these kids,” I think. “Don’t they realize that no one else makes music like this?” I can’t understand why Pavement is canonized while Mirror Traffic, which is just as good as Terror Twilight or Wowee Zowee, passes mostly unnoticed through the culture.

Mirror Traffic is Malkmus’s best post-Pavement record. It shows him at his most energetic, on “Senator,” most reflective, on “No One Is (As I Are Be)”, and everywhere in between. His guitar work is sharp and eclectic, ranging from dreamy and melodic on “Asking Price” to fuzzy and punkish on “Tune Grief.” And his lyrics are as strange and funny as ever. “Forever 28″ contains some of his finest lines to date, as he sings, “such a buzzkill/yes I am/I kill momentum/when I can/there’s no parade I/cannot rain on with my poison eyes.” If you claim to like Pavement but can’t get into Mirror Traffic, well, then I have no idea what’s going on in your head.

Alright, glad I got that off my chest. Wait, one more thing: Malkmus is great in concert. Like, really, really good. That’s all. Now get off my lawn and go appreciate this album more. — Editor Nick Martens

Beyoncé – 4

Adele’s “Someone Like You” may be the ballad of the year (and deservedly so). But often over looked has been “1+1,” the first song on Beyoncé’s 4. It shows the same kind of tenderness as Adele’s single, but with a dimension of wisdom that reveals a new maturity in Beyoncé’s songwriting. 4 is a move from arena-pleasing pop to tempo-relaxed R&B that exhibits shades of ‘70s/‘80s soul. There’s no shortage of Beyonce flexing her vocal muscle throughout the album, but the best moments cut back on the instrumentation and production to find the singer at her most vulnerable. 4 is likely Beyoncé’s least accessible album to date, but patient listeners may find that a singer more than 21-years-old has more worthwhile things to express. — Editor Kevin Nguyen

Destroyer – Kaputt

Dan Bejar’s latest (and perhaps final?) record under the Destroyer moniker continues the band’s trope of cramming self-referential lyrics and liberal use of the syllables “la”, “dee”, and “dum” into miniature opuses of inscrutable free-association. What sets this album apart from the rest of the Destroyer catalogue is the soundscape that serves as the palette for Bejar’s mad loquacity. In a word, Kaputt is jazzy. Well, actually, smooth-jazzy. In a year where M83 and Bon Iver used the saxophone to add un-ironic flourishes to albums otherwise unconnected to such a suave sound, Destroyer embraces the instrument’s inherently swanky mood, and compliments it with subtle dashes of electronic, ambient, and new wave. What results is a mellow 50-minute glide, asking little of the listener to mellow out, slink into the the nearest lounge chair or backseat of a car driving at midnight, and open up to the suggestive embrace of the sax. — Contributing Writer Daniel Adler

Atlas Sound – Parallax

Bradford Cox’s output over the past five years reminds me of the Tim Tebow’s performance since week seven of the 2011 NFL season. Both do improbable things on such a consistent basis that their results no longer seem surprising, even though they should. Although perhaps Cox is more like the Broncos’ defense, since he’s actually talented.

Parallax is Cox’s sixth excellent album since 2007, which is simply ridiculous. And he does it without repeating himself. Parallax retains some of Cox’s signature dreamy haze, but also introduces a bright, acoustic-guitar-driven optimism to the mixture. Such a tonal shift might be a concern with a less skilled artist, but “Mona Lisa,” probably Cox’s sunniest song to date, puts those worries to rest in about twenty seconds.

I could gawk in disbelief at how someone could be so prolific and so good, but at this point I think it’s better not to question it. Bradford Cox releasing a new album full of beautiful music is my favorite annual tradition. — Nick

Eleanor Friedberger – Last Summer

I always assumed that the talented half of the brother-sister duo the Fiery Furnaces was Matt Friedberger, whose experimental and technical musicianship seemed to be the backbone of the band’s jerky prog pop. But it turns out I’ve always liked Eleanor more. Matt is in the midst of releasing eight solo LPs, each featuring a different instrument, that are successively harder to listen to. Meanwhile, Eleanor took the opposite approach with Last Summer, a nostalgic, singer-songwriter-y album composed of simple melodies, guitar and piano, and Eleanor’s colorful vocals. She comes across as flighty but endearing. “My Mistakes” finds Friedberger playfully stuffing as many syllables as she can into each line; In “Scenes from Bensonhurst,” she sings about compulsively checking her email. Last Summer may seem less ambitious than a Fiery Furnaces album, but it retains the same kind of precision and methodical musicianship. It’s just a lot warmer, and a lot more relaxed. — Kevin

Braids – Native Speaker

Watching Braids play “Lemonade” live is one of those concert experiences I’ll never forget. My attention perked up when I heard its fluttering opening notes, and then I just stood there, slack-jawed, enraptured, with shivers exploding through my body as the song poured over me. When it was over, I felt dazed.

Native Speaker opens with that track, followed by six other less ambitious songs, which mostly expand on concepts from “Lemonade.” That might not sound like a strong endorsement, but this is a young band’s first real effort. Besides, the inverted pyramid structure makes the album fantastic to play on repeat. You get to hear the song you’re most excited about first, followed by a calmer reflective period, and then, hey, there’s that amazing song again.

There may have been better crafted albums this year, but few reach a higher high, and none show more promise. — Nick

M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming

Anthony Gonzalez, the Frenchman behind M83, says that his albums serve as the soundtrack to imaginary movies. There’s a cinematic arc to the band’s impressively consistent double album, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, which continues M83’s shift from shoegazer electronics to sweeping ‘80s synths. Hurry Up brings to mind romantic neon-lit cityscapes and a fondness for slushy teenage angst.

Only M83 can close out a song with an un-ironic sax solo, as on “Midnight City,” the album’s first single and one of the year’s best songs. Even while doing his best David Gahan impression, Gonzalez is unabashedly sentimental. Maybe that’s why Hurry Up sounds fresh even though it’s deliberately nostalgic. So many albums, movies, and books today are self-consciously winking to themselves; M83 is boldly earnest and emotional. More than any other album this year, Hurry Up makes you remember that time in your life when you weren’t afraid to feel that way. — Kevin

The Field – Looping State of Mind

Alex Willner, who records as The Field, doesn’t do intros. He drops you right in the middle of one of his hypnotic electronic loops and tells you to get used to it. If you like what you hear, then you’re in luck, because you’re going to get a whole lot more of it.

As musician (and Bureau interviewee) Robert Ashely tweeted, “The thing about great repetitive music: If you can hear a loop 400 times in a song without getting bored, you can hear that song 400 times.” Looping State of Mind pulls off this trick perfectly. Willner’s loops somehow balance between propulsive and soothing, making it perfect background music for anything that requires an active mind.

But the album is more than just a soundtrack for work. When you give it your focus, you notice the level of craft present in every second of Willner’s music. Barely perceptible notes emerge from the background, sounds stutter in precise patterns, and emotional arcs reveal themselves. The energy of the album is so pure that it feels effortless, but the reality is just the opposite. — Nick

Shabazz Palaces – Black Up

In 2009, when Seattle-based duo Shabazz Palaces released its first two EPs, an indie hip-hop savvy friend of mine expressed disappointment in the group’s work. His grievance was that their mystical, tribal image belied the content of their lyrics, some of which centered around the standard hip-hop guns/girls/tough guy fare. Fast-forward to 2011 and the release of their full length Black Up and sure, frontman Palaceer Lazaro (neé Ishmael Butler) still talks tough and praises the female form. But I’d argue the rhymes are compelling, as they come cloaked in an unconventional mixture of metaphysical awe, mellow-as-hell carousal, and subtle wavering between existential fear and supreme self-assurance. And the backing sounds? Totally engaging. Songs swerve mid-track between echoey funk, industrial sci-fi electronics, and minimalist yet muscular beats. Black Up is the rare hip-hop album that’s as fitting for head-nodding as it is for spacing out. -Daniel

tUnE-yArDs – w h o k i l l

This album shares structural characteristics with Destroyer’s Kaputt, but the sound of the music couldn’t be any more different. While Kaputt charms with steady, murmuring seduction, w h o k i l l hits with a visceral and eclectic barrage of kitchen-sink sounds and cultural criticism. Like the work of Destroyer, w h o k i l l feels driven by a singular vision – in this case, the gaze of tUnE-yArDs’ (so hard to type!) frontwoman Merrill Garbus, who looks askance at the ways we treat our bodies, lovers, and countries. Looping, sampling, distortion, scat-rapping, cooing, and even some honest to god balladeering jostle amongst the crammed real estate of this album’s brief runtime. There’s even a fair amount of saxophone, but here it’s used in the service of afro-funk breakdowns and kaleidoscopic spasms. These sounds are slapped together without regard for anything as hierarchical as stylistic consistency within an album or even a single song. That would betray the feeling I think Garbus is trying to portray – namely, that we live in a beautiful yet flawed world populated by beautiful yet flawed people, all perched on the verge of a freakout – or perhaps we’re already in its midst. — Daniel

All photos taken Everyday Music in Seattle.

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”

The idea of Christmas is way better than the actual event, right? The idea of Christmas: twinkle lights and Reese’s trees! The event: cleaning for relatives and arguing with my family about how wasteful wrapping paper is. So, why, although I know this, do I still feel warmth when I see It’s a Wonderful Life? Hear a Salvation Army bell? Because I refuse to accept what Christmas truly is to give myself a sincere hope for the future year, for the state of the world, no matter how cheesy and incorrect I know the sentiment to be.

This is why “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is my favorite holiday jam. The song was originally performed by Judy Garland’s character in Meet Me In St. Louis to comfort her little sister in the face of impending family drama. To me, this song perfectly captures the “I’m nostalgic and I know it — but for the sake of my mental health” attitude that comes with December 25th.

The original gets me every time. Garland’s performance is so tragic. Knowing that she attempted suicide not long after this film was made makes the song all the more heartbreaking.

I hate this cover—why is it all sexy, mysterious? EW—WHY A JAZZ SAX? I did enjoy the only comment though. Plus, check out 0:54 for sudden creepy eyes!

— Writer Alice Stanley

“Christmas Time is Here”

“I think there must be something wrong with me,” Charlie Brown muses in his eponymous special. “Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.” Not optimistic, but it’s a common experience, especially when confronted with the season’s garish soundtrack. Christmas music is a forced march towards joy, the dream that treacle and major chords can make the coldest, darkest part of the year the happiest. The only respite from this jingle parade is the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s reserved “Christmas Time is Here.”

It’s melancholy and slow, the gentle melody overshadowed by the children harmonizing it. The lyrics tenderly describe a winter landscape, but don’t give the listener a place in it. On repeat it slips into the background. Nobody sings along. This song is a fireside, not a party, and it’s the only Christmas song that legitimizes the holiday as I’ve come to know it: walking through the decorated world and not knowing quite what to do with it.

Best Version: The untouchable 1965 original.

Worst Version: This delicate, jazzy song could be ruined in so many different ways, but Gatsby’s American Dream’s drum machine percussion, hyper-nasal vocals, and hastily chopped-in choir samples leave nothing to love. It’s that rare gem of a punk track that generates more anger than it expresses.

— Contributing Writer Ben Bateman

“Good King Wenceslas”

At Christmas time in Lutheran grade school, I was forced to wear white robes, march before strangers, and sing while carrying a live-flame. Midwestern adults enjoy spending Christmas Eve surrounded by little children with candles, yelping about virgins and frankincense. It’s a beautiful spectacle. Singing these brainwash carols today, I still feel like a boy dripping hot wax on his hands during the high bits of “Angels We Have Heard on High.”

My choir buddy Stevie and I had a debate concerning the lyrics to “Good King Wenceslas.” I insisted that the “fresh laid snow” was “firm and deep” while he claimed it was “deep and crisp.” We sung GKW in a voice like Speedy Gonzales’ slow cousin and it sounded dirty, especially the orgasmic: “Fu-u-el.” I would sing “firm and deep and virgin.” He would laugh. We’d get in trouble. By the time we got to “the rude wind’s wild lament” we were making fart noises underneath our choir robes.

To me, GKW is a joyful song about friendship and subverting authority. Especially sung in an offensive accent and sprinkled with flatulence and dirty lyrics.

The Best Version of GKW: Mel Torme jazzes up GKW so the song is actually bearable, even hep.

The Best Thing Done to the Worst version of GKW: Nothing captures the way I feel about GKW like these guys dancing to the Manheim Steamroller’s horrible ’80s synth version.

— Writer Jonathan Gourlay

“Sussex Carol”

If you look forward to the moment when every store and shopping mall starts piping Christmas carols through its PA system, you were probably never in band or choir. I joined band when I was ten: I have probably played “Silent Night” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” a few hundred times by now, and a young adulthood’s worth of playing Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride” made me very good at making horse whinny noises on my trumpet.

So that leeched the cheer out of all the well-known Christmas carols out there, and a lot of the lesser-known ones, too. The ones I still like tend to be simple and very traditional; no big orchestral flourishes a la Barbra Streisand’s “Jingle Bells,” no kitschy “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.” My favorite is the “Sussex Carol,” and specifically this version, which features the choir of King’s College, Cambridge:

Contrast that to the King’s Singers/Mormon Tabernacle Choir version here:

The only way this version could burst with more Christmas cheer is if Santa flew down from the North Pole for the grand finale. Poinsettias all over the stage, a mic’ed-up choir within a choir, a key change every 20 seconds, bell ringers wearing tinsel—it’s all a little too much for me. — Assistant Editor Darryl Campbell

“The First Noel”

Does “Kidnap the Sandy Claws” count as a Christmas tune? No? I guess I like a Christmas song the best when I can’t really tell it’s Christmas music at all. Holiday songs are such a musical free-for-all; when Bing Crosby, Miley Cyrus, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir are allowed to cover the same song, the soul is sucked right out of those Jesus-exalting lyrics.

This may be why I’m partial to someone like Annie Lennox singing “The First Noel.” I was interested to see how a self-described agnostic would explain creating an Christmas album, so I watched an interview with Annie talking about the album. To her, most of the songs are nostalgic or recall a time and place in her childhood. I don’t know what “The First Noel” is actually about, and I doubt Annie has much religious interest in it. That’s fine with me.

Ella Fitzgerald does a great job as well:

Anyone who is able to listen through the Tobymac and Owl City rendition earns my respect:

— Writer Jordan Barber

“Angels We Have Heard on High”

This isn’t actually my favorite Christmas carol, but Gourlay stole my pick. (And by “stole,” I mean, “turned in on time, unlike me.”) I was locked in on “Good King Wenceslas,” so when I had to go looking for a second choice, I was stumped. That’s when I had a (pretty obvious) revelation: all Christmas carols stink. I like GKW because my grandfather sings it every year in a big booming voice, so it reminds me of my childhood Christmases, also known as “the only good Christmases.” But I would never enjoy it otherwise. So instead I picked “Angels We Have Heard on High,” which is my mom’s favorite Christmas carol because her mom used to sing it. Second-hand nostalgia is the best I can do.

If you like “Angels We Have Heard on High,” it’s probably because the “Glooooooo-o-o-o-oooooo-o-o-o-ooooooria” bit sounds nice when sung by a good singer, which you could say about millions of other songs. But whatever, it’s better than most of the crap you hear in commercials, and my mom likes it. Good enough for me.

The song was originally French, so the best version is gonna be by a French woman with pipes. So while it sure looks like Mireille Mathieu’s voice is dubbed into this clip, I love the way she comes in and totally dominates the little kid with the ridiculous haircut:

It’s impossible to nail down a “worst” version of this song since so many are ridiculously fucking terrible, but the lettering that appears around 1:40 into this video gives it a comedic edge most lack:

– Editor Nick Martens

Illustration by Hallie Bateman

“Take Me Over” by Cut Copy

Does the sound of music change during the summer, or do we change in how we take it in? Must be us — when you’re wearing shorts and a tank, it’s hard to act hard. Music that sounds happy triggers the sense memory of how awesome being out of school was as a kid; a feeling of ultimate possibility and adventure. It’s a sunny state of mind that Cut Copy perfectly reflects on “Take Me Over”. After a brief, shimmery intro, it hits you like a bouncier “Land Down Under.” Don’t let that throw you; go with it. Beneath the veneer is a beat ready for banging out on picnic tabletops, complete with disco snares and bongo drums. The lyrics alternately evoke a nighttime safari and a tropical paradise, and they both sound like places you want to be. Add to that the typical Cut Copy layers of fluttery vocal cooing and flickering synth lines, and your barbecue dance party is dee-jayed. — Contributing Writer Joe Berkowitz

“Donald Trump” by Mac Miller

It’s summer! Time to go outside and do whatever you want — barbeques, driving around with the windows rolled down, excessive drinking, etc. So it’s time to turn on your music and annoy everyone else around you. It’s time for some summer anthems.

Fittingly, Mac Miller’s “Donald Trump” is about doing whatever the fuck you want and doing it with class, like getting high and riding around in a Cutlass and taking over the world, flipping off everyone else along the way. That’s a little laughable because a Cutlass is a terrible vehicle, but when you’re “on your Donald Trump shit” it doesn’t matter; you’ll win anyway. — Writer Jordan Barber

“Banana Ripple” by Junior Boys

Junior Boys tracks have always sounded like indoor songs. The duo softens the harsh beeps and beats of their production by taking melodic hints from R&B, but it’s always felt like a pasty-white sort of sexiness. “Banana Ripple” sounds like Junior Boys with a tan. The interplay between the bouncing blips and wavy synths lift Jeremy Greenspan’s falsetto to sunny new heights. The song is over nine minutes long, but with all of its false endings, “Banana Ripple” seems like it could play on forever. And you’ll wish it could. — Editor Kevin Nguyen

“Thunder on the Mountain” by Wanda Jackson

What’s a summer? A confused jumble of heat, itchiness, and the oppressive need to be doing something. Summer makes me feel like a damp blanket tumbling in a hot dryer who is also supposed to be working on a novel. Nothing captures the propulsive but directionless need to be a-doin’ like Wanda Jackson’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “Thunder on the Mountain.” The song was produced by Jack White to celebrate Dylan and Jackson’s collective 144th birthday. It sounds as if Jackson threw the verses up in the air Dada-style and sung them as they hit the ground. So what if she scrapped the verse that rhymes “sons of bitches” with “orphanages”? (Too sacrilegious?) This woman has been ferocious and every synonym of ferocious for over fifty years. Her take rolls and tumbles and enunciates in a way that Dylan doesn’t attempt much any more. The pointless insistence of “Thunder on the Mountain” make it the perfect song to accompany my favorite summer activity: sitting in a dark, temperature controlled room wondering how to age gracefully while everyone else is at the beach living forever. — Contributing Writer Jonathan Gourlay

“Alien Observer” by Grouper

For most of our young lives, summer exists as three months between spring and fall semesters. Past and future crowd a sudden freedom in which everything seems possible, but temporary. So we sleep until 2 p.m., stop wearing shoes, drive long distances at night and experiment with drugs just to locate and lose ourselves before school starts again. The days are long, the summer is short, and like Grouper’s mesmerizing songs they are best described by the iTunes label “unknown”. Liz Harris’s new double album A|A is surreal and blurry and the perfect backdrop for a lengthy, revelatory drug trip. The title track “Alien Observer” is a great summer jam, especially if you spend the summer being hypnotized at the bottom of the ocean by a giant, quiet cloud of jellyfish. And hey, while you’re down there you might as well listen to both albums all the way through. — Art Director Hallie Bateman

“Tomboy” by Panda Bear

I’m not the biggest fan of the sun; that’s why I live in Seattle (cf. my entry in our “Archnemeses ” staff list). So I don’t really celebrate when summer rolls around, and the songs that define the season for me are not bright, upbeat, or poppy.

I picked the title track off Panda Bear’s latest album because it reminds me of videogames. Specifically, it brings back memories of summers I spent with the blinds shut, playing RPGs until four in the morning. I don’t care how antisocial that sounds; I savor those thoughts. And since I work summers now and find the heat oppressive, nostalgia is all I’ve got.

To be clear, I don’t think “Tomboy” sounds like a videogame track (though the wavering opening chord would make a totally badass fight theme). I think this song, and all of Panda Bear’s solo music actually, sounds like nostalgia itself. Not that it feels old or dated, but rather it evokes the emotional sensation of longing for a fondly remembered past. Which I plan on doing frequently this summer as I sweat in an office chair in front of a computer screen. — Editor Nick Martens

“Rider” by Okkervil River

To me, the ultimate summer song has to be something you can listen to while chewing bubble gum and skateboarding and drinking a mint julep and putting on sunscreen and slapping a mosquito and maybe busting out the twist or the mashed potato — all at the same time. Okkervil River’s “Rider” comes pretty darn close to meeting all of those requirements. It’s good for hanging out of car windows, it’s good for mixing lemonade in a friend’s cramped and sticky kitchen, it’s good for holing up in your room and closing the blinds to the sun and heat, it’s good for night bike rides, and most of all, it’s good for throwing up your hands and shouting along when Will Sheff sneaks in that old familiar refrain, “rock, rockaway beach.” – Illustrator Yael Levy

“Look at Me Now” by Chris Brown (feat. Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes)

The heat and vacations of summer lead to less clothing and strangers seeing more of your skin. Strutting your stuff at the pool takes confidence, and who better to teach you how to think highly of yourself than Chris Brown? Brown is so fresh, he even had to write a song about. “Look at Me Now” is a fun summer jam with a slow, heavy beat that anyone can keep up with punctured with verses of very fast rapping. This song is a single from Brown’s album F.A.M.E., but he’s overshadowed by Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes. Since Chris Brown can’t rap, he sets the listener’s expectations low with a funny-but-poorly-delivered first verse, then hands it over to the pros. Busta Rhymes is so crisp with his delivery, you can hear every syllable, but he’s so fast you’ll look like an idiot if you try to show that you know words. Lil Wayne shines in the third verse and you just have to smile as he curses at you and your friends because you had no idea English could sound like that and still be understood.

“Look at Me Now” is fun to dance to, the verses are still engaging after multiple listens, and the chorus is easy to sing along with. Oh, and if you’re feeling a little down on yourself in a swimsuit, just remember you’re fresher than a motherfucker… and you never have to live a day as Chris Brown. — Writer Caitlin Boersma

“Gangsta” by tUnE-YaRdS

The thrill of listening to “Gangsta” is the sense that the song may at any moment completely fall apart and crumble into a dissonant heap. Propelled by clattering drum beat and an exuberant bass line, the song is built with one joyous, cacophonous layer on top of another. Then the song actually does collapse into a series of brass notes and voice-as-sirens. It’s a loud, chaotic bricolage of noise and, like all songs of summer should be, bitchingly catchy.

“Gangsta” reminds me of a rougher, deconstructed version of M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes.” Both songs are mischievous and rousing with a hint of violence. In fact, they each incorporate gunshots — or their vocal equivalent — into the mix, but tUnE-YaRdS sounds like she’s having more fun. Which is good, because we’re having fun listening to her play. — Contributing Writer Tim Lehman

“Houseboat Babies” by Reptar

Remember Reptar from the Rugrats? He was the green dinosaur. Some band in Georgia took it as their name and has managed to put out some great electro-pop tunes.

Their song “Houseboat Babies” doesn’t seem to have anything to do babies on houseboats, but it’s a great summer song. It’s a bright and breezy song about fun and sexy life moments. “Can you feel it?” shouts the band during the chorus. Yes, I can feel it, whatever it is; that summer feeling, maybe. — Jordan Barber

“My Terrible Friend” by the Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Summer is a time for hookups that may or may not make it past Labor Day. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are able to capture in their sound both the excitement of suddenly having someone worth losing, and the wistfulness of realizing you might have to let them go. Their name may be too precious by half, but TPOBPAH work hard enough to be forgiven for it. A heightened keyboard riff drives “My Terrible Friend” along, while skittering percussion shakes away beneath ethereal background vocals. The overall effect sounds like sneaking away from a party with someone because time is precious. If John Hughes were still alive and making movies about high school love, he would totally use this song on the soundtrack. — Joe Berkowitz

“Hair” by Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga’s songs have always sounded like pop Frankenstein — a series of catchy hooks sewn together and shocked to life by studio production magic. Even Gaga’s best song, “Bad Romance,” sounds like three or four different songs in a random order. But “Hair” is perhaps the most cohesive sounding Lady Gaga song yet. It’s not the best track off Born This Way, but it’s definitely the most fun. “Hair” is a bombastic anthem about hairdos as a form of self-expression — a stupid but entirely likable message — but Gaga is more digestible when she’s not being pretentious (“Born This Way,” “Judas”). Even the ‘90s sounds, like the soft piano notes, “oh ohs” in the chorus, trills from a jazz saxophone, seem comfortable among an aggressively modern production. — Kevin Nguyen

If you’re an Rdio user, you can listen to the songs mentioned on our playlist. Also, see our favorite songs of last summer.

Illustration by Yael Levy

I’ve talked about my very first website before, but my second site was the first with a real audience. And naturally, it was a Pokemon fansite.

Pokemon Online, as I had unimaginatively titled it, was made up entirely of static pages, managed with Microsoft FrontPage 98. This was about two or three years before platforms like Blogger would make dynamic sites a possibility for non-programmers and/or 11 year olds. And despite the technical hurdles of running a site in those days, I can’t help but admire the ambition of my fifth-grade self — the site covered the Gameboy games, N64 games, collectible card game, collectible toys, the television show based on the game, the films based on the television show based on the game, and so on. It was an era before reliable analytics, so I can’t say for sure just how successful the site was (not that I would have understood what a pageview was anyway). But I received a handful of emails daily with fan art and episode summaries, so I felt pretty confident that people were reading.

And yet, even at the height of Pokemon’s popularity, I was always sheepish about telling people about the site. Not even my friends knew I ran Pokemon Online after school. Which, actually, isn’t too different from today. Sure, in a crowd of techie, internet-y people I talk about The Bygone Bureau. But in most circles, I’m reluctant about declaring my authorship of a blog. The difference is that when I was in fifth grade, having a website was uncool — nobody did that; now it’s like “dude, everyone has a blog so shut up about it.”

But Pokemon Online taught me a lot about the web at a time when I was impressionable. Today, I work for the internet, so I have to thank Pokemon for that, and for inspiring two of the most popular things I’ve written. — Editor Kevin Nguyen

When I was probably eleven and my little brother was probably eight, we made a comic book. “Hallie’s Pokemon Adventures” is about twenty pages long and goes like this: Ash gets Pikachu from Professor Oak. Ash declares that they are “a match made in heaven” after they fart at the same time. They set off into the tall grass where Pikachu is immediately torn to shreds. Ash collects his scattered body parts and brings them to a Pokemon Center to be “fixed up.” Once he is better, they eat a celebratory dinner during which Ash chokes on a rat skull. He runs to a girl standing nearby (Misty) and sputters in her face, asking for help. She punches him in the stomach and he vomits on her face, then steals her bicycle. She catches up with him and calls him a “filthy jerk” and he throws her bike in the river. The rest of the story is basically about Misty’s violent quest for revenge, which ends abruptly when Ash captures her in a pokeball. — Art Director Hallie Bateman

I was, I have to admit, pretty into Pokemon, but by the grace of one year I was saved from full-blown, life-long Pokemania. I played the hell out of my copy of Red in sixth grade, and I sheepishly cop to watching the cartoon, though I knew even at the time it was pretty bad. But what pulled me in most strongly was the calculating, capitalist clutch of the Pokemon card game. Turning the game’s ethos, “gotta catch ‘em all,” into tangible products for parents to throw money at must surely be counted as one of the great business moves in modern history.

My interest in the childish fad grinded against growing concepts of adolescence as I entered middle school in seventh grade. By then I was in deep, to the point of having a regular Pokemon card haunt – a little nerd shop by the ice arena where I practiced hockey that sold Japanese cards, which were obviously cooler because obviously. Anyway, a rich friend at school had somehow procured a prized Charizard card, an extremely rare, ridiculously overpowered piece of cardboard that went for $25 at the time. He either gave it to me, I bought it from him, or I traded for it, I don’t remember, but somehow, I got it. I was the Pokemon master.

Then, in short order, I lost it. I was admiring the card in class when a teacher confiscated it. She turned it into a bit of a spectacle, reading the card’s text to all the students.

Now, these weren’t really mean, bullying, or judgemental kids. One of them turned to me and asked, earnestly, “was that a good card?”

“Yeah,” I said, “the best.”

I meant it as a boast, but soon after the words left my mouth, they felt silly. How could I take pride in owning something so trivial? Even though nobody teased me, for some reason I was ashamed, and I knew I needed to change. I got the card back at the end of the day, but by then it had already begun its slow fade from all-powerful monster to ink on cardboard. — Editor Nick Martens

At least once a day, I tell my teenage students to put away their cell phones. The school’s policy on phones prohibits the kids from using their devices until school gets out at 3:20. The threat of confiscation is usually enough to prevent abuse of the rule, but lately I have encountered a new enemy — Angry Birds.

Now, you’d think that as a child of the late 1990s, my experience with that era’s addictive handheld game, Pokemon, would soften my stance on the digital distractedness of today’s plugged-in youth. Sure, I remember the blue and red cartridges peeking out of the tops of Game Boy Colors (Game Boys Color? great name for a chillwave duo!) in the grips of my peers during break, lunch, and even class time. But, you see, I was a closet Pokemon player. In public I scolded my peers for playing such an inane game — why waste your time (and allowance) when Chrono Cross and Tony Hawk 2 were just coming out?! But curiosity got the best of me, and in the summer I discreetly bought Pokemon Blue and beat it during a family trip to Maine. I had to admit, it was a pretty awesome game, and I totally memorized all 150 Pokemon. Back at school, I nearly blew my cover when I let it slip that I had “caught ‘em all”. Luckily, no one noticed.

These days Angry Birds rules the roost, but the kids don’t seem as concerned over whether it is more or less cool than any other game. So they all play it. During school. When they’re not supposed to. I tell myself that when I rebuke them for playing video games, it’s in the service of maintaining a distraction-free learning environment. But I’m really just repeating my hypocrisy, over a decade later. What they don’t know is I already beat Angry Birds last year, before it even became popular. — Contributing Writer Daniel Adler

One year can be enough to open a generation gap. Consider this: Pokemon launched in the United States in September of 1998, when I was just starting high school. My class had seen the worst of the schoolyard bartering crackdowns—first Magic cards, then Pogs, then the great leap into digital with Tamagotchi in 1997. But as I left middle school and pre-adolescence behind (I officially became a teenager the summer before high school), my attention turned from the abstract competition of collectible card games and the metonymic violence of Pog-slamming to the much less figurative world of Quake, laser tag, and high school dating. At best, Pokemon was a punchline on The Simpsons (“Battling Seizure Robots”). Which means that, on some level, the cultural distance between me and someone that’s four months my junior is in some respects much larger than the cultural distance between me and my parents. Now that’s scary. — Assistant Editor Darryl Campbell

When the first Pokemon hatched in 1996 I was shacked up in Philadelphia with a frizzy-haired girl and a smooth-haired dachshund. I had facial hair and paid taxes and all that. So fuck you, Pokemon generation. From hell’s heart (a multiplex playing Clash of the Titans and Tron) I stab at thee. “Not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter but has its cunning duplicate in mind.” And so this curse: may all that made your childhood dear be puked up in technicolor and muddy 3-D on multiple platforms. What once fueled your imagination shall now dampen it. Pikachu shall be the name of an ugly rash only middle-aged men contract. And your precious Pokemon will be seen in cunning duplicate on a thousand screens, only lesser, sadder, and stripped of all vitality. Jeff Bridges will narrate. — Contributing Writer Jonathan Gourlay

Photo by winterwined

Daniel D’Addario

Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett

The swift-moving Union Atlantic features a cast of characters straight from a Bronte novel — the rakish, secretive gentleman; the ingénue with a lot to learn; the spooky old lady. And yet it’s also perfectly modern, a document of the varieties of greed and desire that brought about the financial crisis of the 2000s. One character turns a regional bank into a global financial-services corporation; others fall victim, in all the familiar ways, to economics micro- and macro-.

Their reactions to economic crisis are what set Union Atlantic apart. The novel, by short-story writer Adam Haslett, is as tightly constructed as any short — each character’s actions affect other characters, which is far less Babel than it sounds. Too, the gay affairs and communing with ghosts and financial gamesmanship are all significantly less lurid than they might be in less steady hands. Union Atlantic got a lot of praise for dissecting the 2000s, but what makes that summation of a decade work is not the talking points — as it sometimes seemed in Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom — but the subtler sense that everything had become connected, financially and emotionally. It is all very tenuous, but that it works at all is remarkable.

Elliot Allagash by Simon Rich

Elliot Allagash bears no similarity to any high school narrative I’ve ever even heard of, which is precisely its charm. The novel combines the vicarious enjoyment of rich-kid narratives like Gossip Girl or the society pages with old-school James Bond villainy. The titular Elliot is a schoolboy, rich beyond imagining, who takes on a classmate as a Svengali project.

Simon Rich clearly knows the New York prep-school scene whereof he writes — while the twists and turns of the narrative break free of the homecoming/prom rut, the actions of his characters always feel right. Elliot, in particular, is a deliriously funny and yet always believable comic creation — it takes quite a bit of work to make a high-schooler who drinks expensive liquor and plots for social domination into a flesh-and-blood being, but through a few well-chosen moments, Rich makes him human. Seymour, the protagonist, is largely reactive, but that feels real too — when you’re in the room with someone as convincing, in all senses of the word, as Elliot, you follow him as far as he’ll take you.

The Publisher by Alan Brinkley

This superlative biography of Henry Luce reveals the sort of mind one must have to create a magazine that defines the zeitgeist. Brinkley was a master of the high-concept: Time, Fortune, Life – these are not niche publications. Nor were they ever: as conceived, Time digested the news for millions of Americans and set the tone of discussion with its lofty, often quirky manner of circumlocution. At one point, Luce, an elitist, striving Yale alumnus raised in China, moved Time Inc. to Cleveland to save money, but its place at the geographic center of American life seems fitting.

That Luce’s publications are now more niche than they ever were is left unremarked-upon, which is fitting. Luce was a master of his moment whose moment passed more quickly than might have been suspected. Perhaps he knew that before anyone else: as The Publisher nears its conclusion, the always-isolated Luce grows increasingly more private, a Charles Foster Kane without the excess. It must be lonely, contacting everyone in America each week.

Kevin Nguyen

Dear Burglar,

I’d like to thank you for two things. First, for forcing me to learn how to spell burglar. I’ve been spelling it burgular, maybe because I usually mispronounce the word as berg-AH-ler. But more importantly, thank you for climbing through the window of my apartment and stealing the Kindle sitting on my desk. Now that you’ve taken my primary reading device, I don’t have to think about books anymore. God, reading was such a nuisance; you probably agree. It takes so long and wastes so much time — time that could be spent messing with other people’s stuff.

But if you succumb to the literary temptations of my Kindle, here are a few book suggestions:

Room by Emma Donoghue

A mother and her son are trapped in a room, and have been for the past five years. Why are they there? Will they ever get out? The hook is a bit like Old Boy, but with a less fucked up ending. (You haven’t seen Old Boy? Don’t worry, I own it. Feel free to break in and steal that whenever you please.)

Most impressive is Donoghue’s ability to write from the perspective of five-year-old Jack, portrayed with an endearing naiveté that makes him sympathetic but never frustrating. He knows nothing outside of the bedroom’s four walls. For Jack, the room is home; for his mother, it’s a prison. Room is a powerful story about the parent-child bond wrapped in the pages of the most engaging novel I’ve read in years — I finished all 336 pages of this book in less than a day. Room will, somewhat fittingly, keep you trapped in your own bedroom.

Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever by Justin Taylor

Unlike Tao Lin, Justin Taylor is able to write about disaffected youth without making them appear anemic. Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever is a near-perfect collection of short stories about ambiguous relationships and the frustration of shapeless, aimless lives.

Taylor gets chuckles from small ironies (one story features a protagonist who plays Tetris until the world ends), but the stories’ darker themes are revealed with understatement. The book’s best, “Tennessee” (which you can read at Harper Perennial’s Fifty-Two Stories), ends with a girl asking the narrator to sleep with her before she leaves for Israel. “I don’t want to die a virgin,” she says. Theodore Wheeler, writing for The Millions, puts it best:

Unlike their grandparents, this generation of Jews isn’t afraid of dying in the Holocaust or a Pogrom — they fear car bombs and terrorist attacks. By the end, the plot anxieties of “Tennessee” aren’t really resolved, but the philosophical points are at least connected by the impending sexual act, exemplifying how the fear of apocalypse is passed on.

This generation may be different, but the fears are the same.

Wilson by Daniel Clowes

OK, you can’t actually read this on the Kindle because it’s a comic book. (My girlfriend bought it for me, and since you’ve taken everything I owned of monetary value, please take the things I own that have burdened me with sentimental value.)

Wilson is an exercise in restraint: each page, drawn in a different style, is a self-contained six- or seven-panel strip that ends with a punch line, mimicking the setup of serialized newspaper “funnies.” Yet Clowes isn’t criticizing the format of Garfield and Doonesbury, but taking those constraints and stringing them into a cohesive, surprisingly affecting narrative about a self-destructive, bitter grouch.

You might recognize Clowes’s name from his other highly praised comics Ghost World or Daniel Boring, but Wilson might be his best yet.

Darryl Campbell

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach

Think of space travel like an alcohol: a lot of things go in, the impurities get filtered out, and what comes out is highly potent and (hopefully) transcendent in some way. What we usually hear about is the end result. Mary Roach, however, is interested in the dregs, all of the unglamorous stuff that makes the Right Stuff possible. From interviewing the participants of NASA psychological studies to finding out what goes into the creation of space food, Roach has a gift for making everything from aerodynamics to internal medicine perfectly understandable. The only thing I had trouble following was a poop joke that went slightly off the rails. This is a compliment.

By the end of the book, it becomes clear that Packing for Mars is not simply a NASA version of Ripley’s Believe it or Not. Instead, in just over three hundred pages, she’s catalogued much of the human experience, from pigheaded stubbornness to unexpected ingenuity, but most of all, “the backhanded nobility in excessive, impractical outlays of cash prompted by nothing loftier than a species joining hands and saying ‘I bet we can do this.’ ” If that’s what it means to put people in space, then I’m all for it.

The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt

What does the philosopher Rainier Maria Rilke have to do with trains? What does George Bush have in common with Lewis Carroll’s version of Humpty Dumpty from Alice in Wonderland? And how does being a short-order cook encourage the life of the mind?

These questions are not obvious ones. But they are the kind of questions raised by someone who spent his life sorting through the history of modern Europe — both personally and professionally. Tony Judt was a historian who wrote first about French intellectuals (Sartre, Camus) and then about the history of Europe as a whole; his Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 was short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize in 2006.

After Judt was paralyzed from the neck down due to ALS (better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), he opted not to do the easy thing — which in his words would be “to lie down with a whiskey and watch old movies” — but to write. Thus The Memory Chalet.

The essays within are wide-ranging: some discuss contemporary debates in education and politics, others are personal reflections about the sexual revolution and Judt’s youthful flirtations with Marxism and Zionism. But there’s more to each of them than simple navel-gazing: not surprising, since Judt made a living out of putting together the fragments of history into coherent pictures. And so when he talks about his failing command over his own vocal organs, he also has as much to say about how political correctness has led to a kind of political insecurity and the rise of the talking head, for instance.

Like the best literature, Judt’s memoir encourages its readers to do something that they’re not accustomed to, which in this case is to rediscover “not just the means by which we live together but part of what living together means.”

Nick Martens

The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris

I’m one of those obsessive spoiler-phobes everyone hates. I don’t like to know anything about a story before I start reading it. But for this book, I discovered something even better than going in spoiler-free: being completely misled. From a chat between me and Kevin earlier this year:

Nick: Have you heard anything about Joshua Ferris’s new book? Considering making that my next read.
Kevin: I hear it’s funny.
Nick: Good enough for me.

This book isn’t funny at all. In Ferris’s stellar first effort, Then We Came to the End, he uses structural pyrotechnics – a first-person plural narrator (“we”) – and a vibrant tonal palliate – from humor to mania to listlessness to melancholy – as he creates his comic critique of modern office life. His follow-up, The Unnamed is far more restrained, both technically and emotionally. It’s about a man with an unknown, unusual disease, and it follows him and his family as they struggle with it over his lifetime. It’s a sad book that pretty much only gets sadder and sadder until its very last line.

I don’t want to say too much about the premise, and not just because I don’t like spoilers. The book is called The Unnamed after all, and the hook of the early chapters is learning what exactly the main character’s condition entails. And when you do learn what it is, and as you realize how devastating something so simple could be, you’ll see why Ferris reeled in the literary acrobatics this time around. Because he contains all his creative energy in the central conceit, the characters feel more grounded and real, and the narrative flows naturally and believably. It’s amazing how much Ferris’s style mellowed after only one book, and at this rate his next one will be downright comatose, but The Unnamed hits quite a sweet spot.

The Big Short by Michael Lewis

I tried to follow along as all the money in the world went away. I tried so hard to figure out what the fuck was happening and how exactly it was possible. But no matter how many Paul Krugman columns I read or This American Life specials I listened to, I could never put the whole puzzle together.

The problem was that all my sources were mainstream writers, and they knew they had to make the obscure economic mechanisms at the core of the collapse accessible to their readers. And though they made an effort, they inevitably resorted to summary or metaphor when describing Credit Default Swaps or Mortgage-backed Securities or whatever weird acronym was just slightly too complex for the average NPR listener.

But Lewis doesn’t back away. Even if he has to explain the wiring of some of these monetary time bombs several times over, he makes a point to hammer the details into his readers’ heads. Because even though the story eventually became much larger, the real lesson of the collapse can only be learned through understanding the arrogance and recklessness of the financial industry.

Sending that message is Lewis’s only goal in The Big Short, and he is uniquely qualified to accomplish it. His Liar’s Poker shows his aptitude for revealing Wall Street’s dark side, while the The Blind Side demonstrates that he can pull America’s heartstrings. And so Lewis turns the story of hopelessly convoluted asset trading into a narrative of gamblers and underdogs. Then he somehow does it without sacrificing too much technical nuance. The result is a book that finally explained the collapse to me in a way that made sense. As I was reading The Big Short, by myself in my studio apartment, several times I literally shouted “oh shit!” out loud as another piece of the puzzle, something I knew mattered but didn’t quite know why, snapped into place. It may seem odd to derive pleasure from understanding these terrible things that broke the world, but this was a tremendously satisfying read.

Photo by Andross

Releasing three EPs in a year is ambitious, but the scope of Robyn’s songwriting is simple: to craft smart, self-conscious dance pop. Body Talk, which culls the best material from all three Body Talk EPs, is like a greatest hits of 2010’s most memorable beats and melodies — they just all happen to be by Robyn.

It also happens to be exactly the kind of pop music we need right now. I don’t think Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Ke$ha are necessarily bad, but their songs are frighteningly impersonal. I’m not willing to make the leap and call Robyn a serious feminist, but Robyn knows how to sing about love and heartbreak intelligently, without sacrificing the pop hooks that make you self-conscious about your iTunes play counts.

I deliberated for an embarrassingly long time trying to decide whether Robyn or Sufjan Stevens deserved the number one spot. The Age of Adz is difficult masterpiece, and arguably the future of music. Body Talk, on the other hand, is a nearly flawless refinement of pop music as it sounds today. And though The Age of Adz will sound better than Body Talk twenty years from today, it’s 2010 right now and I fucking love Robyn.

1. Robyn – Body Talk
2. Sufjan Stevens – The Age of Adz
3. LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening
4. Lower Dens – Twin Hand Movement
5. Hot Chip – One Life Stand
6. Best Coast – Crazy for You
7. The Walkmen – Lisbon
8. Phantogram – Eyelid Movies
9. Foals – Total Life Forever
10. The Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

Nick Martens

It’s almost like I didn’t want to believe in it. Before Halcyon Digest leaked, I kept talking about how the album made me nervous. As impressive as Deerhunter frontman’s Bradford Cox’s output has been, it didn’t seem possible that anyone could produce so much good music in so little time. Microcastle was my favorite album of 2008, his solo project Atlas Sound’s Logos was one of last year’s strongest, and now I had to buy into another Deerhunter release? Isn’t this dude touring constantly? And doesn’t he have some sort of weird condition that probably leaves him exhausted? He can’t keep this up, can he?

Well, fuck, I guess he can. This is Cox’s best music to date, and by a pretty wide margin at that. That’s the biggest surprise, since it’s not like his earlier stuff was chopped liver. The first few times I listened to Halcyon, I thought it might suffer because no single track stood out as much as Microcastle’s stunning “Nothing Ever Happened.” But I came to realize that the new songs don’t stand out because they’re all as good or better than the band’s previous bests. I’ve had about five favorite songs on this album already, and I’ll probably cycle through all 11 before it drops out of heavy rotation on my iTunes.

(You should take my word on this one because, as the chat transcript at the bottom of this feature shows, I was kind of excited about the new LCD Soundsystem record when it came out. If you told me in May that I’d like another album this year more than that one, I never would have believed you. And yet here we are.)

1. Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest
2. LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening
3. Beach House – Teen Dream
4. Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles
5. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
6. No Age – Everything in Between
7. Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
8. Eluvium – Similes
9. The Books – The Way Out
10. Sufjan Stevens – The Age of Adz

Daniel Adler

Without really meaning to, this year I sought out music I found dependable. Almost every album in my top ten either fulfilled the expectations set by a band’s excellent previous albums (Deerhunter, The Walkmen), illustrated logical stylistic maturation (Sufjan Stevens, Owen Pallett), or proved the individual artist could thrive outside of the group that made them famous (Jonsi, Big Boi).

Yet one album stands out as different. Phantogram’s Eyelid Movies captured my attention by taking the best parts of ’90s trip-hop and millennial J Dilla-esque beats, and mixing them with emotive singing traded between the male and female leads who make up the duo. Whether portraying hard-driving paranoia (“Running From the Cops”), sad breakdowns in interpersonal communication (“Mouthful of Diamonds”), or yearning balladry (“You Are the Ocean”), the album is equal parts catchy, powerful, and touching.

It was an easy year to follow well-established artists doing their thing, but Eyelid Movies is a reminder to keep an eye out for young bands synthesizing moving music from unexpected sources.

1. Sufjan Stevens – The Age of Adz
2. Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest
3. Phantogram – Eyelid Movies
4. Owen Pallett – Heartland
5. Here We Go Magic – Pigeons
6. Shugo Tokumaru – Port Entropy
7. Frightened Rabbit – The Winter of Mixed Drinks
8. Jonsi – Go
9. The Walkmen – Lisbon
10. Big Boi – Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty

Tim Lehman

Sleigh Bells came out of nowhere. I went from unaware and reading about them them on The Awl, to having Treats set to repeat on my iPod in the same 32 minutes it took to listen to the album. Their music, too, seems to have appeared fully-formed, barely influenced by anything that came before it. It’s abrasive and aggressive but never unpleasant, primordial but also space-age.

The album’s brevity works to its advantage. If it was any longer, it would leave listeners exhausted rather than invigorated. As it is, it’s over almost as soon as it begins — a handful of three-minute guitar hooks that don’t leave you wishing for anything more.

1. Sleigh Bells – Treats
2. LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening
3. The National – High Violet
4. Hot Chip – One Life Stand
5. The Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
6. Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest
7. Beach House – Teen Dream
8. No Age – Everything in Between
9. Janelle Monae – The ArchAndroid
10. Los Campesinos – Romance is Boring

David Tveite

I like a tune I can dance to as much as the next guy, but sometimes that just isn’t enough. Sometimes I need something I can drive to while being a complete dick to everyone else on the road. Something I can play in the background while hitting someone with a bat in order to resolve some kind of minor personal dispute. Something I can put on at 3:30 a.m. while I weep bitterly over my umpteenth beer. In 2008, Titus Andronicus fulfilled these needs in a way few bands ever could with their first full-length caterwaul, The Airing of Grievances.

The New Jersey quintet returned this year with The Monitor, a more accomplished and equally cathartic album wrapped loosely around a Civil War concept that is almost impossible to explain in a way that makes any sense. It manages to fit together somehow. The record gives way from raucous bar rock with Springsteenian hooks to dramatic readings of Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman (in a cameo from The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn) without ever seeming to slow down.

While the band hasn’t lost any of the blister or bluster of their debut, this album shows a broader emotional range than Grievances, which basically spat nails all the way through. The Monitor has a handful of eight-minute epics that are almost exhausting in scope, capable of everything from the adolescent rage of “Titus Andronicus Forever” to a startlingly beautiful ballad “To Old Friends and New.” Frontman Patrick Stickles brings the kind of emotional rawness and sincerity to all of this that you can only achieve when you’re screaming your lungs out.

Oh yeah, and it’s loud. Did I mention that?

1. Titus Andronicus – The Monitor
2. LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening
3. The Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
4. Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest
5. Jeremy Messersmith – The Reluctant Graveyard
6. The Besnard Lakes – The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night
7. Janelle Monae – The ArchAndroid
8. Broken Social Scene – Forgiveness Rock Record
9. Brasstronaut – Mt. Chimaera
10. Free Energy – Stuck on Nothing

Jordan Barber

I have a soft spot for dream pop. Goldfrapp’s Head First nearly made my list and Blonde Redhead fills out the tenth spot. So I suppose my choice for favorite album this year isn’t surprising, but to rebut this point: I spent less time considering this pick (maybe a minute?) than in any other year.

“Norway” and “Zebra” were the initial, easy hooks into Beach House’s Teen Dream. That worked on me for a while, but on the third or fourth album listen. I realized it was the understated songs like “Real Love” and “Lover of Mine” that compelled me to play the album again and again. Victoria Legrand’s smokey, gruff voice is perfect for the album’s melancholy mood.

I saw Beach House in concert later in the year: the set featured shabby rotating diamonds and disco balls. The diamond surfaces occasionally reflected beams of dull light through the hazy air. It was exactly as I imagined it would be, because no other album this year created an atmosphere so easily felt.

1. Beach House – Teen Dream
2. Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles
3. Joanna Newsom – Have One on Me
4. Robyn – Body Talk
5. The Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
6. Sleigh Bells – Treats 
7. Delorean – Subiza
8. HEALTH – Disco2
9. Surfer Blood – Astro Coast
10. Blonde Redhead – Penny Sparkle

Album of the Year

This is GChat conversation between editors Kevin Nguyen and Nick Martens, on the day LCD Soundsystem’s This is Happening leaked.

Nick: This album is unbelievable
Nick: Early prediction: “I Can Change” and “All I Want” are going to be the top songs
Nick: They’re back-to-back in the middle of the album, like “Someone Great” and “All My Friends”
Nick: Although this song “Pow Pow” is pretty epic. Kind of in the “Losing My Edge” mold
Nick: 2nd prediction: y’know how some people use Amnesiac as a test of whether you’re a “real” Radiohead fan or not?
Nick: “Somebody’s Calling Me” is gonna be that for LCD
Kevin: I don’t think there’s going to be a James Murphy fanboy acid test until he has, like, seven albums out.
Nick: You haven’t heard this song yet
Nick: It’s pretty abrasive
Nick: (and this is technically the 4th LCD album if you count that Nike thing, which I do)
Kevin: “Drunk Girls” feels like an annoying interruption in this album.
Nick: Yeah, you’re kinda right. I still like the “oh, oh, oh” part
Kevin: It’s just that everything else is so much better. And more patient.
Kevin: And not called “Drunk Girls.”
Kevin: Actually, that’s a great song title.
Nick: Yeah. That, “One Touch,” and “Somebody’s Calling Me” are the only songs I don’t instantly adore
Nick: and I think I’ll come around on the other two
Nick: (“All I Want” is a early front-runner, but I think it’ll drop off)
Nick: (I now think “You Wanted a Hit” will be the big song from this album)
Kevin: “Dance Yrself Clean” kind of sounds like that one big Cold War Kids song.
Nick: I really like both songs, so I’m okay with that
Nick: though the connection doesn’t jump out at me
Kevin: Yeah, I was trying to think all yesterday of what song it was reminding me of.
Nick: “Hang Me Out to Dry,” right?
Kevin: I think so.
Kevin: I probably like this LCD song better than it already.
Nick: Oh yeah, it’s a great song
Nick: (caps lock was originally on when I typed that comment. I should have stuck with it)

Talk about Almond Joyless. It never occurred to me to simply not eat the bad candies. My mouth would water for the Reese’s and Twix (the top tier), but I would shovel in Sweet Tarts and Sixletts in hopes that I could get to at least a Snickers by the end of the week. Of course, every year my jack-o-lantern candy bucket would begin to look disgusting to me. It became a symbol of all the nasty licorice and Russell Stover-brand marshmallow ghosts I forced myself to consume. I would lust after the candy less and less. By March I would finally have access to the cream of the crop — only to find it stale or feel like a freak for packing bat-decorated 100 Grand Bars in my pockets. I would toss it for my Easter haul. Repeat process. — Contributing Writer Alice Stanley

When I was six or seven, my family flew from Boston to California. For long flights, my dad usually bought me Twizzlers at the Hudson News at the airport, but since it was just after Halloween, he told me to bring something from my candy stash. I chose a box of Milk Duds.

There’s a reason they don’t sell Milk Duds at the airport. They’re impossibly chewy, arguably disgusting. When stale, Milk Duds are like chocolate-covered vikings that’ve come to pillage your mouth of all its worth — that worth being your teeth.

On that flight, a Milk Dud claimed one of my loose teeth. I was bleeding all over my seat, and my mother, embarrassed, dragged me to the lavatory. I rinsed my mouth of the caramel and blood and fished my tooth from the center of a chewed up Milk Dud.

You’d think that the six- or seven-year-old version of myself would have the common sense to stop eating the Milk Duds after that. But an insatiable boredom set in around hour three of the flight and I started chewing on the caramels again. This time, the Milk Duds took out a tooth that wasn’t quite ready to go. I bled everywhere.

I returned to the lavatory again, cleaned up, and hoped that my mother hadn’t thrown away my box of Milk Duds. But she had, and even six- or seven-year-old me understood that she had made a good call. — Editor Kevin Nguyen

When I was about six, I had a fairly rough Halloween. Not only had I been genuinely scared by a neighbor’s lifelike Frankenstein display, the combination of the rain and my frayed nerves meant a reduced candy haul. To compensate, my parents gave me the leftover candy at the end of the night. That meant a lot of candy, but of only one type: mini white chocolate bars. Which, at the time, I loved.

So much so, in fact, that I inhaled about twenty or thirty of the things — more white chocolate, by volume, than I’d ever eaten in one sitting, even more than the white chocolate Easter bunny I’d eaten half a year earlier.

After I finished the last one, I began to feel weird. Not nauseous or hyperactive, but a strange combination of overindulgence and disgust, probably not that dissimilar from the feeling that Adam felt after he ate from the tree of knowledge — a confectionary Original Sin, if you like. Maybe that’s going a bit far, but I did not eat white chocolate for almost 15 years after that Halloween. — Assistant Editor Darryl Campbell

When I think back, the first person who sparked my interest in English literature and language as a legitimate field of thought was my 7th grade language arts teacher, Ms. Whaley.

I was a pretty bad student in middle school, but not because my intentions were bad. I was one of those bouncing-off-the-walls-with-too-much-enthusiasm-for-anything-but-school sort of kids. This led to me being the only student in the “honors” program (for kids who cared even a little bit about learning) to not make the “honor roll” (for GPAs 3.0 and up).

Ms. Whaley was the one teacher I didn’t drive completely insane. She, in fact, seemed to like having a constant disruption in her classroom who never did homework. The one example I remember most clearly came when the class was working in groups of four. Instead of helping my group, I was listening to the neighboring foursome. I heard one of the kids try to overreach his young vocabulary, saying, “anec-DOT-ull.”

In my loudest voice, I shouted, “It’s anec-DOTE-ull, you fool!”

Ms. Whaley snapped at me, “Nick, come to my desk.”

I walked over with my head bowed, expecting a deserved reprimand. Ms. Whaley reached into her desk, pulled out a packet of Fun Dip, and handed it to me.

“Very good, Nick.”

Why an adult responsible for shaping young minds would reward such blatant smart-alecking I’ll never understand, but from that point forward I was sold on books, writing, grammar, and the rest of it.

I know that sounds pretty good, but the moral of the story is I owe my English degree, and all the student loan repayments that go with it, to Fun Dip. — Editor Nick Martens

Photo by Juushika Redgrave