Merry Xmas, it's a distasteful collaboration

Okay, so Dave already beat me to name-checking the Onion's very funny list of obscene, absurd albs ("least essentials") from 2008. But I'm left with a question from the otherwise-semi-all-knowing women and men in the a/v control room: how in the motherfudge did Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis' Two Men with the Blues get omitted?

Listen. I am not wet behind the ears when it comes to the business of Willie albs. I know this guy'll pretty much roll tape with whoever the bleep can put together a few thousand clams and a session band [ed. note - wait, it's a live collection! live from the ever-bluesy Lincoln Center, baby!]. But nonetheless... this is the sort of thing that deserves at least some perfunctory remarks from the peanut gallery, non? Did everybody else decide just to bow their heads and zip their lips about it while I was out getting a Sun Drop?

See, here's an example of the New Me I was talking about previously. Old Me would say, "who knows what the future holds?" But New Me is not afraid to see the future, to know the future. There are three things I know for sure about 2009:

1. This alb cannot not be terrible, but will enjoy strong sales in Lane County, OR .
   
2. I will have to hear it at some point(s). I will eventually seek it out. In particular I will eventually need to know what "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It" sounds like avec trumpet (blues trumpet!)
   
3. Only the recession conditions will keep me from buying it for our friend Robes. (That and the fact that I still feel kinda bad about a live Bobby McFerrin slab I bought for him. If yr ever over at Robes' house, please ask him to play said slab for you.)

Oh, and if the prospects for this alb excite you, be sure to check out the Amazon customer reviews (here.) Hell, I think I'll chuck a few choice quotations in the damned comments section. It's Christmas, you know? Blues Christmas.

clumps

(so anyway i have a long nite ahead of work tonite so i thought i'd send out a relay.)

*goes without saying politico clump
Robert Kuttner on the current BHO conjuncture
Bidenland will be Laborland!

Joe Biden and Robert Kuttner are in their different modalities both sort-of "go-to" guys at this moment. God knows it's great to hear that Biden will be a major labor liaison in the WH. Meanwhile, Kuttner's timely and perspicacious book has rightfully won attention far and wide, and he has subsequently half-emerged even on the stodgy old Sunday Morning circuit as the farrest out left-liberal prognosticator.

*introducing some important blogs clump
Will and the Grits
Mc'CaterbaronvonBear produces fearful catalog
Elvira, embroideries.
here we encounter three figures with whom i've shared a lot of collegiate thundering, but with whom i've also done, let's face it, years of blogging going back prior to even the early prisonship days. (who else misses friendster, folks?) but seriously, here we have three evocative blogposts from three tried and true OG commenters. first, Wilbro re-engages the questions of Southern self-identity that plague the post-Faulkner, pro-Cracker Barrel (or "profauckobarro") impulse that defines so much of our crowd. secondly, recalcitrant blogger kyle mc'caterflare has delivered a terrific festoon of albs straight out of his personal wheelhouse, which is of course the horror-soundtrack milieu. thirdly, the ever-Elvira-like Elvira does outstanding work with primary texts and pedagogical anecdotes that come off with a kind of, uh, gravitas that say, your average pattyjoe clump-post doesn't. highest recommendations

*ooh, cinema! clump (featuring survey question)
gabba drops this (apparently British) cartoon The Snowman on me, and reminds me how I've been emo since way before i ever heard slint or whoever.
the a/v club on cool but unnecessary movie sequels
it's important to me that Weapon X is important to Ezra Klein.
so here's the big question...has anybody seen The Two Jakes (Chinatown sequel). i've heard it's alright - Nicholson directed it? - but i'm more than a little fearful of it, seeing how Chinatown is such hallowed ground...(seriously though, a survey question: name your three favorite sequels.)