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Britta Persson: "Cliffhanger"

I've been thinking about my favorite things in 2008, and while I'm not 100% there yet, I think Britta Persson's Kill Hollywood Me may be my favorite album of 2008. And "Cliffhanger," the first track, is fantastic seventies pop-rock.

(I also love the title track.)

Endings

Michael Bywater's "My Dad had the best death" (via Andy):

We brought his bed downstairs towards the end, and there he lay, fading peaceably in his own sitting room, surrounded by his dogs and grandchildren and cats and people coming in and out.

I say "peaceably", but there were episodes of purest tyranny. My sister had given him one of those wireless dingdong doorbells to summon her, and he exercised it to the limit. But although he had been denunciatory, condemning her to me, and me to her, and his doctors (who had actually called everything perfectly) to anyone who'd listen, once he was on his deathbed he became affable and loving.

Right until the end, when it just dwindled to a tiny white spot, like an old television, before going out entirely with an inaudible plink, his personality was entire.

The Biggest Dog in the World

Recently I've become a little obsessed with finding photos of the largest dog in the world. Here's my favorite [1]:

[1] Who is, by the way, not the largest dog in the world, but just a very large dog. He's no Hercules.

A Rave Christmas

I like the Raveonettes best in small doses, and--oddly enough, or not--I have a real fondness for their Christmas-themed songs.

There's just something about the nostalgia in their sound that, for me, works really well with songs about the holidays, the end of the year, Christmas, &c.

Anyway, all of which is to say that I'm enjoying their Wishing You a Rave Christmas EP, and, in particular, the ambiguously-punctuated "Come on Santa", which you can hear here.