Brad Barrish

Those indier-than-thou kids at Pitchfork have posted their top 50 albums, singles and reissues of 2004. I haven't even heard of at least half of the stuff and I don't feel bad about it. Not one bit.

I just wanted to wish everyone happy holidays and a peaceful new year. As a little gift to you, I am making my year-end, 2-CD mix available to you for download (look to your right). The caveat is that they come in two rather large chunks, so if you have a dial-up connection you're out of luck. The first file contains the cover art as well as a readme text file. I decided to go with MP3s, if for no other reason most of the digital music players don't support AAC and some people may not have iTunes installed on their computers. Shame on you. Because of space limitations, the files are recorded at 128 kbps, so the sound quality isn't fantastic, but it's certainly listenable. Enjoy the music and thank you to everyone that keeps visiting the site, or at least reading the posts via RSS.

Susan Mernit was kind enough to post an excellent article written by Mark Pesce that explains BitTorrent and why the movie industry has recently sealed their fate. It's lengthy, but if you're interested in this sort of thing, it's worth a read.

I haven't listened to it yet, but someone has gone and done a mash-up of the Beatles and The Beastie Boys.

For as long as I have lived in Los Angeles, I don't think I have ever seen the Hollywood sign as close as I did today. I looked out of a window at work and this is what I saw.

NME is reporting that PJ Harvey is calling it quits. What gives? Just cuz Uh Huh Her sucked, doesn't mean she should throw in the towel.

If you're looking to get away with murder, you may not want to email your victim. [via Boing Boing]

Patrick and I spent some quality time together today for a special photo shoot. His mum wanted some photos at the last minute, so I obliged.

I received an email this morning from the Matt Pond PA mailing list letting me know they covered "Holiday Road." The song was posted (in streaming form) on their Myspace.com profile. I recorded a quick MP3 of the stream so you can share it with your granny.

UPDATE: In my valiant efforts to get the song to you, dear readers, I inadvertently forgot to tell you that this is a cover of Lindsy Buckingham's song made famous by National Lampoon's Vacation. [Thanks for the nudge, Honkybitch]

In today's L.A. Times there's an interesting article on mind-enhancing drugs. No, not the illicit variety, but ones that you could pick up at your pharmacy.