Albums
Dropkick Murphys - "The Meanest of Times": I can't imagine any Battle of the Bands format the Murphys wouldn't win ... and I'm not only imagining formats where the band members have to do shots of whiskey chased with Guinness between songs, where success is measured by the vivacity of the mosh pit, where the bands play in front of a soused crowd of laborers in the sweaty basement of a union hall, etc...
Tim Armstrong - "A Poet's Life" : I don't know if Armstrong is more than thirty years old but, even if not, he might want to take Mencken's quip to heart. As much as I like this album, the title makes me cringe. Once you get past his "I'm a poet and a sex-drugs-and-rock-n-rolling party man" posing, there's no denying the wickedly danceable ska-inflected groovealiciousness.
Books (Read for the First Time Regardless of Year Published)
Kim Stanley Robinson - "Sixty Days and Counting"
Nolan Dalla - "One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey 'The Kid' Ungar, The World's Greatest Poker Player"
Max Brooks - "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War"
Richard Dawkins - "The God Delusion"
Richard McEwan - "Atonement: A Novel"
Richard Harris - "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason": Did we need both "The God Delusion" and "The End of Faith"? Evidently, yes.
China Mieville - "Perdido Street Station"
Richard K. Morgan - "Altered Carbon: A Takeshi Kovacs Novel"
Movies
The Bourne Ultimatum
Michael Clayton
Live Free or Die Hard
Eastern Promises
A more macho list of manly-men movies would be hard to imagine. I'm really not trying to exclude female filmmakers (nor authors, nor musicians) ... but, wow, take the Y chromosone out and you're not left with much here. Although, I actually thought China Mieville was a woman until I saw his picture in the back of "Perdido Street Station".
