TOPS OF OH-SEVEN (PART ONE)

I have to submit all my grades, like, now! I had better start making an unrelated list on my blog.

BEST ART BOOK
Chris Johanson, Please Listen I Have Something To Tell You About What Is

Ninety-eight percent of the time, I hate text in art. It's so embarrassing. In Chris Johanson's paintings, though, text is as essential as people and planets and buildings and geometric shapes. The letters themselves have a human quality, plaintive and and unsteady and yearning.

BEST DESIGN BOOK
Hand Job: A Catalog of Type

Hand-drawn is where it's at!

BEST MAGNETIC FIELDS SONG
"Girls in Their Summer Clothes" by Bruce Springsteen

BEST ANYTHING IN A MOVIE
Cate Blanchett in I'm Not There. Twitchy, contrary, willful, resistant, and foxiest-ever in that tight little mod suit and tousled hair.

BEST PHOTO BLOG
Documenting rock, art, queers, Portland, and life, Megan Holmes just gets better and better. Delicate and heavy at the same time.

BEST NEW NPR CONTRIBUTOR
Tie between Tobey and Hector.

BEST KARAOKE PERFORMANCES
This may have been the Golden Year of Karaoke. I will simply list the first that come to mind.
• TJO singing "Xanadu" at the Galaxy, post-Sister Spit
• That same night, Texta Queen's unearthly, yowling hellos on "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
• Douglas's aptly titled "Rump Shaker" bringing all of Chopsticks II to its feet
• C-Love and Winner's "Fast Car" at Chopsticks III, avec human beatboxing
• Nicole Georges' surreally Jacksonian soprano in "ABC," various venues
• Khaela's banging rendition of Rod Stewart's "You Wear It Well" (just last night!)
• Most anything with Yuri and Josh
• Carrie's impassioned "Same Auld Lang Syne" (R.I.P. Dan Fogelberg!)
• Julie Butterfield's jaw-dropping "Scenes from An Italian Restaurant" in Ryan & Holly's basement
• Janet's entire wigs-'n'-mustaches birthday affair

BEST DOG
Who could it be?

No way--it's Emmett!