Yearly Top 10 list

My friend Jonathan collects and compiles people's top 10s for every year. I just submitted my (very overdue) tops for 2006.

So, here 2 random awesome things about 2006.

1) Eisley.

Their 2005 release "Room Noises" is like the soundtrack to my SOUL. The band is a family: a bunch of (very young) siblings and a cousin or two and maybe someone's friend (?). Their songs, sung in a reedy, sweet soprano by one (or two?) of the sisters, speak strongly to the little girl in my heart who likes to paste plastic rhinestones onto her cell phone and then pretend it's a magical amulet that will grant her passage to a war-torn, sorcerous world where giant, melancholy squid roam the land. Check out especially "Trolley Wood" and "Brightly Wound" on this album for surreal, magical-realist, pop-tinged pleasure.

I awoke the dawn
Saw horses growing out the lawn
I glimpsed a bat with butterfly wings
Oh what marvelous things

2) Ugly Betty

There is no television show on earth (except maybe Sesame Street) with a more gracious, generous, forgiving, optimistic view of the world. And the wonder of it is, "Ugly Betty" manages this grace and optimism without ever once losing its irony or humor. There is no treacle, here, no preciousness. It's just solid awesome. All that, *and* enthusiastic participation in the great and bizarre plot-twisting traditions of soaps and telenovelas!