One truly great thing about real friends in the real world is that they inject a joyful happenstance of anywhereness into your daily life.  A random phone call to say hi.  An unexpected email asking you to meet up for coffee.  An IM with a funny link.  Even a surprise running-into at the grocery store.  In the real world, you don’t contact your friends in one set location or way…you could potentially interact with them anywhere.  MyBlogLog brings this "joyful happenstance" or "anywhereness" equivalent to our online lives. 

Just as last.fm is revolutionizing how we listen to music by enabling us to externalize our listening habits, MyBlogLog is externalizing our reading habits by allowing us to lay some claim to sites as we frequent them.  Sort of a like a dog marking its territory or a street artist throwing up a sticker, when I have MyBlogLog turned on, I get to stamp my face (or Rivers Cuomo’s face in the case of my personal avatar) across each site that I encounter. 

To take the street artist metaphor further (for your benefit, I’ll forsake the doggy calling card metaphor), each time a street artist throws up a sticker or tags a wall, her notoriety (and brand) increases.  It’s the definition of guerrilla marketing and self-promotion.  Well, MyBlogLog enables that for online publishers.  Each time I read an article by other MyBlogLog users like Chad, Bradley, Scott, Eric, Matt, Jeremy, Marc, Susan, Yahoo!, Michael, or Richard, my "notrivers" avatar appears on the page instantly…and when people click on it they can make their way to my MyBlogLog profile page and eventually to my site.  And traffic is to a publisher what notoriety is to a street artist. 

MyBlogLog also appeals to the media junkie that lives inside most of us online publishers.  For example, once someone comes to my site via my avatar, they end up leaving their calling card on my site.  I can see that they’ve been there.  If it is someone influential, I might get all giddy and bubbly from personal pride ("wow, I attracted THAT person to my site?").  If it is a friend, I might be reminded to see what they’ve been publishing lately.  If I don’t recognize the latest smiling face in my sidebar, I might click on it to check them out and in the process end up discovering a great new source of content to follow.

Since I’ve been making lists, lists, lists for the last week or so, I’ll list my Top 5 Reasons Why I Love MyBlogLog and am Thrilled to See Them Join Yahoo!:

1. They are, first and foremost, a publishing tool.  And they have quite a twofer: they get ya traffic and help you analyze it too.
2. They are 100% distribution minded.  No bones about it, they are a service specifically designed to be portable.  They live and die by the way people integrate MyBlogLog services into their own sites.  It’s the growth of the service out on the open web that really matters.
3. They help me discover stuff too.  Not only do they drive traffic to my site and fulfill my publisher-minded dependency on traffic and stats, they fulfill my other primordial media need — the need to consume.  Lots of bad powerpoint presentations have pontificated the rise of the "pro-sumer" or the "virtuous circle" of consumer-publishers — I know I’ve created many of them — but MyBlogLog creates a tangible use case for this trend.  As I noted above, I love to use MyBlogLog to see who has been on my site and to go check out their sites, too.
4. They make me feel really cool when someone well known has stopped by.  As a publisher who is, shall we say, less than an "A"-lister, I love to see when a truly big name publisher has somehow stumbled onto my site.  Before MyBlogLog exploded onto the scene, I wouldn’t know if someone big-time came by unless they left a comment or linked back to me (like that’s going to happen).
5. They aren’t just for bloggers.  Name be d@mned, they also work on MySpace and most other sites that allow you to embed content.  This means that anyone looking to build an identity or gauge their "coolness" on MySpace (here’s mine) or other sites have a really powerful arrow in their quiver: they can see who’s reading their page.  We have a fun "product marketing" challenge ahead of ourselves here in terms of introducing this notion to this other (very massive) crowd, but the platform has done a pretty good job of marketing itself so far…

BONUS: The team is really great!  I’ve gotten the chance to meet various members of the team over the past few months and I’m thrilled to welcome them to Yahoo!  Congratulations guys!  And congrats to the teams at Yahoo! that made this happen.  MyBlogLog is such a fun and sticky service that I have to say it: Yahoo! and MyBlogLog is now peanut butter and jelly!

P.S., Sticker art photo by me.  Make sure you check it out on Flickr directly.  Lots of cool notes and comments on it.

I’m a die-hard Kansas Jayhawks basketball fan. I have been since 1986, when I was eight years old and the sophomore Danny Manning-led ‘hawks lost in the Final Four. 1988 certainly helped my fanaticism, and with the arrival of Roy Williams in 1989, the Jayhawks became not only good but also really fun to watch. The most fun Roy Williams years were the earliest (Downtown Terry Brown for three!) and the last two (the class of 2003 with Kirk Hinrich, Drew Gooden and Nick Collison has to be the best recruiting class in KU history). The mid-nineties were a blast, even if a few of the most loaded teams of the decade underachieved in the postseason. Paul Pierce was in my graduating class (even though he left a year early), and I had a Modern Chinese History course with Raef LaFrentz. Even today, the Bill Self-led Jayhawks are still near the top. Just yesterday, I watched the #9-ranked sophomore-led team dismantle South Carolina on the road.

But I also went to a Lakers game yesterday.

And it was a lot of fun!

I’ve made it a personal sports-mission of mine to root against the big, corporate evil empires (Yankees, Cowboys, and yes the Lakers). While living in New York, I eschewed the Yankees. I’ve been a
half-interested fan of the fairly hapless KC Royals in baseball all of
my life, and they are the polar opposite of the high-rolling Yankees.

But what if I become a Lakers fan? Am I a total sell-out? The problem is, I actually like many of the players. I even went to high school with Lakers’ sixth man Maurice “Mo” Evans. And my high school wasn’t big…I had 42 people in my graduating class. Mo was two years behind me in school.

I’m not going to jump on the bandwagon yet…it was only one game. And I’m not sure that my schedule can allow for more than one sporting spectator hobby (KU fandom takes up enough time already!). But if last night was any indication, it could happen…

Oh, and the Lakers won over the Mavericks, 101-98, on a fun fourth quarter rally led by some killer slashing drives by Kobe and deadly three-balls from Luke Walton.

This is the last in a series.  I’m sure we’re all tired of reading/talking about 2006 by now.  But I would feel remiss listing my favorite albums of 2006 without also mentioning the best live shows that I saw.

So this time, with little introduction, here we go.  This list is purely from memory…so stay tuned to the comments section in case I remember a gem of a show that is currently hiding somewhere in the recesses of my mind.  Oh, yeah…and as I’ve done with the last two posts…since I wasn’t blogging in 2005, my favorite concert of 2005 — hands down — was Dizzee Rascal at Irving Plaza in NYC, which I saw with my brother and sister and my high-school-English-teaching brother-in-law Kelly’s high school literature class!

1. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Architecture in Helsinki @ Henry Fonda
The artists of two of the best all around albums of 2005 got together and put on one heck of a show at the Henry Fonda.  Architecture in Helsinki was about 300 times better live than I thought they’d be.  I assumed that they’d just be a fun quirky little band, which is pretty much how they sound on their albums.  Live, they had rhythm and groove — a very fun dance vibe.  Clap Your Hands were the tightest act I’ve seen all year.  And any indie band that inspires the whole crowd to dance rather than just do the indie-rock head-nod thing scores big points with me.

2. Hot Chip @ Troubadour
Continuing on the fun dance theme, Hot Chip just blew me away.  I was sitting in the balcony at the Troubadour…and the entire thing was bouncing up and down with the beat during the encore version of their hit "Over & Over".

3. Figurines @ Spaceland
I consciously try to see international bands that I like whenever I notice them coming through (the Figurines are Danish).  I went to this show by myself on a quiet Friday night just before Halloween.  And I’m glad that I did.  As I stated earlier, the Figurines’ album Skeleton was my second favorite album of the year.  And they were the perfect Spaceland act –  a straight-up indie rock band with energy and passion.

4. Beck @ Yahoo!
I would think that this show was possibly the most blogged about show of the year.  Rather than go into another (fully deserving) praise-fest of my employer and the web development community at large, I’ll just link to Bradley since he said it all much better than I ever could. 

5. The Elected @ The Echo
Molly has been driving around with a mix CD that her brother made for her probably two years ago.  The best song on the CD is called "Greetings in Braille", but neither of us knew who sang it (we could have probably searched for it…but well…we never did).  It has the memorable line: "And if you see me down at the liquor store, please don’t tell my dad.  And if you see my dad down at the liquor store, don’t tell me anything more."  Before the show, this funny little guy with a mustache was hanging out near Molly and me.  An hour later, he took the stage as the lead singer.  And on the second song into the set, he broke into "Greetings in Braille".  We were both floored…and we stayed that way throughout the show because it was that good.  Here’s my review from the day after the show.

6. Belle & Sebastian (with the LA Philharmonic) & The Shins @ Hollywood Bowl
This was the most difficult show for me to rank.  Belle & Sebastian were absolutely wonderful.  The Shins were absolutely flat (I’m 1 out of 3 now in terms of enjoying the Shins).  But Belle & Sebastian — with the LA Philharmonic behind them — were just that crisp, poppy and entertaining!

7. Roman Numerals @ The Prospector
The Roman Numerals were the third KC-area band I saw this year.  My review of the show is here.  Thanks to my friends Brandi & Bob moving to LA from KC, I’ve been introduced to a really fantastic reborn KC music scene.  The other two KC-area bands were also quite entertaining: White Whale and Blackpool Lights.

8. Mates of State @ SXSW
I knew nothing about Mates of State going in.  I still don’t have any of their albums.  But as full as their sound was, I could have sworn that there were at least five musicians on stage…but, nope, there were only two — one keyboardist and one drummer!  If I make it back to SXSW for work this year, I hope that I can stick around for more of the music too.

Shows I really wish I hadn’t missed:
The Boy Least Likely To; Editors; and Long Winters — all @ Spaceland
Willie Nelson & Friends (Ryan Adams and Neko Case); Massive Attack & TV on the Radio — both @ The Hollywood Bowl

That’s it for ‘06. On to 2007!

I’m going to come right out and say it.  I’m really enjoying LA, as my 2006 in Music post yesterday hopefully made clear.  But when it comes to film, I miss New York.  Sure, just about everything screens in LA too…but New York had a few clear advantages over LA for me personally:

1. David Fear — one of my best friends in the world happens to be one of the primary film reviewers for Time Out NY and MSN Movies.  Not only do I dearly miss seeing him personally — he lived about 5 minutes from me in Brooklyn’s Park Slope — I miss hearing and reading his film recommendations.  From time to time I go to the Time Out NY site and read his reviews, but it just isn’t the same…I can’t argue back over a triple espresso at Gorilla.  Here’s his 2006 top 10 list.  I can’t wait to see Dave when I go to Sundance in a few weeks.  It’s been far too long.
2. Film Forum — the best art house theater in the US.  Period.
3. BAM Rose Cinemas — my second favorite place in NY to see shows.  It was about a 10 minute walk from my apartment.
4. Public transportation.
5. Weather.

And there are many other reasons to love movie-going in NYC — Tribeca Film Festival, NY Film Festival, and just look at this list of art house theaters.  Even the Times Square megaplexes were a bit of a guilty pleasure.  But I’m not LA-bashing.  LA is probably the second best city in the US for filmgoing.  And it has plenty of it’s own highlights too, for sure.  The problem is (see reason #4 above) it just takes a long time to get to any of them, making them only truly accessible on the weekends (see my experience trying to get to midweek screenings at the LA Film Festival earlier this year).  And there’s the weather "problem", too.  New York in February or in August is perfect for sitting in a two-and-a-half hour lost French masterpiece.  But in LA, well, it’s still 70 degrees and sunny outside!

So the reason I’m saying all of this is that I feel insecure with my filmgoing this year.  I’ve seen a frighteningly small number of foreign films and documentaries.  And there are a number of films showing up in other people’s top ten lists that I’ve been wanting to see but just haven’t yet: Volver, The Queen, Babel, L’Enfant, Jonestown: The Life & Death of People’s Temple, Old Joy, Children of Men, United 93, Letters from Iwo Jima, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, and Man Push Cart are but a few.  Looks like it might be time to reactivate my on-again/off-again relationship with Netflix.  So with these "handicaps" going against me, here are my favorite films from 2006, and to throw a bone to my NYC nostalgia, I’ll link to the Time Out NY review for each of these where it exists:

1. Half Nelson
I saw "Chalk" at the LA Film Fest this summer.  It was a mockumentary about teaching.  It was great to see a couple of teachers  go out and make a film.  But it sagged a bit in the middle and didn’t quite have that Christopher Guest mockumentary vibe.  I guess I expected the same thing with Half Nelson going in.  Boy was I wrong.  I’m going to echo my friend Dave’s assessment.  The year’s best film is a punch-you-in-the-gut story about one of the most complicated mentor-mentee relationships I’ve ever witnessed.  And it’s set in Brooklyn, which is just somehow appropriate given the meme of this article.

2. Forgiven
#2 and I’m already cheating.  This film didn’t come out widely this year.  In fact, it hasn’t come out yet at all.  But it was the best thing I saw at Sundance in 2006, so I’m listing it here.  As I noted in my post-Sundance wrap-up, the 10 minute scene that transpired about 2/3 of the way through the film is the most tense 10 minutes of film I think I’ve ever seen.  A collision of race, class and politics, Forgiven is a near-perfect modern day Greek tragedy.

3. Our Daily Bread
Ok, yes, another cheat.  Our Daily Bread did not see a release in 2006 either.  I saw it at the LA Film Festival.  This 92-minute Austrian documentary did not have one word of dialogue the entire time.  It simply captured, with all of the sanitized horror, the process of industrial food production.  I never got around to blogging a review about it.  I think it was too chilling.  I will never look at a plate of beef, chicken, bacon, salmon or red peppers the same way again.  And I love bacon.

4. Brick
I actually saw Brick at Sundance in 2005.  It was the best feature I saw at the festival that year (the best overall film I saw at Sundance in 2005 was David LaChapelle’s Rize).  I’m a huge fan of vintage noir novels and films.  First-time director Rian Johnson’s film sucks in the language and feel of a vintage private dick pic and mainlines it into a California high school setting.  The schtick could have easily become annoying.  But it didn’t at all.  Brick is a highly entertaining high-school whodunnit with a nostalgic nod to Sam Spade and the gang.  And Joseph Gordon-Levitt is wonderful as the cool-headed private eye.

5. The Departed
I would be shocked if you are reading this blog and haven’t yet seen The Departed.  It is, after all, the "big picture" of the year…and will likely finally land Scorsese in Oscar-land for best picture and best director.  The big question is, can Leo win for best actor?

6. 13 Tzameti
This Georgian (the former Soviet country, not the southern US state) thriller is one of three films I saw at the 2006 Sundance festival to make my 2006 top 10 list.  Here’s my original post-Sundance review.  Don’t see this one if you have a weak stomach.  And as I noted in my Sundance review, the less you know about this one going in, the better.

7. Inside Man
Clive Owen had quite a year.  He’s the star of Children of Men, which I haven’t seen but many critics are listing as the year’s best film.  And he was great in Inside Man.  Director Spike Lee changed his style and subject matter considerably with this film, going for a well-constructed classic bank heist story rather than a heavy-handed social commentary.  But he still did what he does best.  He absolutely channeled New York City.  For those of us wanting a little Big Apple fix, it was a perfect one-two punch.

8. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Yes, it is probably film-critic blasphemy to list Borat above the classically chilling WWII French Resistance masterpiece Army of Shadows, but I believe that the success of Sasha Baron-Cohen’s film is itself a cultural resistance of no small kind.  His outright cultural critiques aside — obvious commentaries on the Southern establishment, frat-boy misogyny, and over-the-top patriotism — his crowning achievement surely must be that he got millions of Americans to watch and laugh at a scene that basically amounts to a fully nude male sex scene.  "Very nice!"

9. Army of Shadows
This 1969 classic French masterpiece had never screened in the USA until this year.  To me, it seemed to be the French equivalent of The Godfather (with a sprinkling of Heat), albeit with a political bent more biting than anything in the contemporary American experience.  They don’t make films like this anymore.  Truly.

10. The Proposition 
The Proposition is my third Sundance film to make the list (actually, it is my fifth as Half Nelson was at Sundance though I didn’t see it, and Brick was at Sundance 2005).  Mr Dark himself, rocker Nick Cave, wrote the screenplay for The Proposition.   And as I noted  in my post-Sundance review, his Australian Outback "western" out-McCarthied Cormac McCarthy himself.

Honorable mention
11. An Inconvenient Truth — Less a film and more a piecing together of Al Gore’s lectures on global warming, this documentary deserves mention in equal part for significantly raising awareness of a dire issue and for resurrecting a very passionate man that most had left for political dead.

12. Casino Royale — The best Bond film in years…maybe ever?

Oh, and just to throw this out there, since I wasn’t blogging in 2005…my favorite film of 2005 was The Squid and the Whale (which was another Sundance entry but I didn’t catch it there).

If you’ll be at Sundance 2007, let me know!  Hopefully I’ll get an early jumpstart on my 2007 list.

I love "best of" lists.  And since I’m such an avid consumer of music, film and media in general, I always feel inadequate when reading a publication’s official year-end "best of" list.  After all, how can I possibly increase the size of my consumption palate to equal that of an expert who is paid to consume and review.  I can’t.  But I can at least offer my survey of the things I did enjoy.

With that, I’m starting with music.  For starters, reviewing the music I loved in 2006 is the easiest place to start.  With the magic of iTunes, I’m able to simply create a Smart Playlist for all music with "Date Added in the range of 1/1/2006 - 12/31/2006".  My last.fm profile is also a useful reference, though it is a bit corrupt as my wife and I share a computer at home so my listening patterns tend to be a bit skewed there.  But both of these tools make reviewing the year in music much easier than attempting to recall all of the films I saw over the last year (in 2007 I think I will start using delicious to tag reviews of each movie I see).  And remembering my favorite concerts, even though I save ticket stubs when I can, is even more difficult.

Looking back, there was a ton of great music in 2006.  While compiling this list, I’ve learned that an album ingrains itself in the cultural locker of my brain much more intensely if it is something that I listen to while driving as compared to something that I listen to while working or at home (this is a new one for me as, having moved to LA in mid-2005 from NYC, I hadn’t driven with music in a long time).  This had the unintended consequence of skewing my list to invariably harder and more up-tempo music than I would have anticipated.  For example, I’m a huge M. Ward fan — his 2005 album Transistor Radio was one of my favorites of 2005 — but I just didn’t listen to his new album Post-War very much this year as it isn’t exactly driving music.   

While on the subject of 2005, as an added bonus I’ll state that my favorite album of 2005 was Bright Eyes — I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning.  This album was absolutely cathartic to me during my final few months in NYC, and it got the slight nod other 2005 favorites including Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s self-titled debut (which spent a good month in constant car CD player rotation after I moved to LA) and The Game — The Documentary (how could I move to LA and not throw some love to South Central?).

One small disclaimer: My list below includes my favorites from among the new albums that I personally acquired in 2006.   So please don’t call "foul" if you notice that an album below actually came out in 2005 (or earlier).

With that, here’s my list:

1. The Boy Least Likely To — The Best Party Ever
I’m actually bit surprised that this album is at the top of my list.  But I just love it.  It stayed in my car CD player for a good 6 weeks or so straight during the summer.  The indie-pop songs are incredibly simple but fun.  And I just don’t grow tired of it.  Period.  Belle and Sebastian’s Dear Castastrophe Waitress may have been my favorite album of 2004.  And they will show up on my top concerts of 2006 list after putting on a killer show at the Hollywood Bowl this year.  But I grew tired of their 2006 album The Life Pursuit almost immediately.  The Boy Least Likely To clearly replaced them in my listening rotation.  In fact, my biggest musical regret of 2006 is skipping their concert at Spaceland — especially because I went on to get rear-ended by a drunk driver that night when I could have been standing with a Bohemia listening to "I See Spiders When I Close My Eyes", one of the best pop songs of the year.

2. Figurines — Skeleton
Another mainstay in my Mazda.  And I did happen to catch these guys at Spaceland this past fall.  This Danish act unapologetically channels two great early 2000s kings, Built to Spill and Modest Mouse, and churns them into a wonderful sound that is all their own.

3. Yeah Yeah Yeah’s — Show Your Bones
In 2006, I fully embraced my move to LA and bought a surfboard.  This summer, I spent at least one weekend day each week in the water, attempting to not get absolutely pummeled.  This album was my soundtrack.  It will forever remind me of driving with windows open to Manhattan Beach / El Porto with my board on top of my car, board shorts on, and a smile on my sunglasses-wearing face.

4. The Elected — Me First
Now that I’m in LA, it is only fitting for me to have one LA band in the top 5, right?  The Elected are the clear winners of this award (though I’m just starting to listen to the Silversun Pickups a bit too).  Molly and I saw The Elected at The Echo this spring and they were wonderful.  "Ah," you say, "but Sun, Sun, Sun was their 2006 album."  Yes, it was.  And it is a pretty good album.  But I also purchased Me First this year, which they released in 2004.  And it is a fabulous album.  In a time when my favorite alt-country band of the late 1990s, Wilco, has gone on to become one of the top-grossing major label "indie" bands, The Elected picks up where Tweedy and company left off after A.M.  If you only listen to one song by this band, please listen to "Greetings in Braille".  The Elected’s frontman, Blake Sennett, is also a member of Rilo Kiley (who’s own frontwoman, Jenny Lewis, released her own solo album this year — Rabbit Fur Coat — which made my honorable mention list).

5.  The Hold Steady — Boys and Girls in America
If The Elected pick up where Wilco left off after A.M., then The Hold Steady pick up where Wilco turned away from straight-up rock’n'roll after completing Being There.   Rounding out my top 5 of 2006,  The Hold Steady’s collection of straight forward rock songs about drunken high school parties is as mature in sound and songwriting as the lyrics are entertainingly immature (one song features a repeating chorus of "I’m gonna walk around and drink some more") .  If you want a true driving album, this is one that can keep you going — just don’t act out the lyrics while behind the wheel.

6. Cat Power — The Greatest
So I have to have at least one down-tempo album in my top 10, right?  This is it, hands down.  Just absolutely beautiful.

7. The Rakes — Capture/Release
Blame the Arctic Monkeys.  All of the hype over that band caused me to start listening to them.  And then Yahoo! Music Unlimited, which I was using avidly for awhile in early 2006, recommended British bands The Rakes and The Editors to me.  And both of them ended up in my year-end album list even though the Arctic Monkeys did not (the Arctic Monkeys’ single "Bigger Boys and Stolen Sweethearts" is a classic nonetheless).  I actually may prefer The Rakes’ EP Retreat, which I listened to avidly while waiting for the full album, but I’ll give them credit for adding a few additional good tracks to the full length effort.  If this were 2005, the British scene would have seen Art Brut’s album Bang Bang Rock and Roll in this place, and it probably would have made my top 5.  But don’t fret, Rakes, #6 ain’t bad either.

8. Destroyer — Rubies
You can only imagine my pleasure when I got to track #2 of this fantastic album and heard a chorus of "the kids they were all right…".  But they had me even before that.  Imagine Billy Corgan fronting a poppier Sparklehorse and you start to get the picture of this bizarre but catchy little band.

9. The Futureheads — News and Tributes
Disclaimer: I pretty much can’t stand The Futureheads debut album.  With annoyingly trendy songs like "Le Garage" and "Robot", they turned me off immediately.  But News and Tributes did a 180 on me.  It is less poppy, less trendy, and more toned down.  "Skip to the End" is a 2006 classic.  This was another surfing album for me…and one that stayed in heavy rotation in my car’s CD player.

10. Mastadon — Blood Mountain
I rallied a group of friends to see Austin, TX, based The Sword at Spaceland earlier this year.  I was intrigued by the rise of indie-rockers playing true heavy metal.  Though it was a fun concert, the Sword’s album is just so-so.  The same can’t be said of Mastadon’s Blood Mountain.  This is the real deal.  And it was one of my favorite albums to listen to at work in 2006, where my listening tastes skew to the harder stuff.

Honorable Mention: 11-20
These albums didn’t make my top 10 but certainly cracked my listening rotation this year and are worth listening to.

11. Hot Chip — The Warning
12. Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins — Rabbit Fur Coat
13. Ghostface Killah — Fishscale
14. Bruce Springsteen — We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
15. Danielson — Ships
16. Editors — The Back Room
17. Wolfmother — Wolfmother
18. Decemberists — The Crane Wife*
19. TV on the Radio — Return to Cookie Mountain*
20. Band of Horses — Everything All the Time*

*I’ve really been enjoying these over the last couple of weeks but haven’t had them long enough to state that they are definitively great, otherwise they may have been higher on the list.

Got any tips for me?  As I said in my lead-in, there’s no way I can keep up with the full world of music in 2006.  But if you found anything particularly wonderful, please let me know.