The Adventures of Liana Finck

Liana Finck is gracious.

Soundscan Surprises, Week Ending 11/24

Back-catalog sales numbers of note from Nielsen SoundScan.

The definition of “back catalog” is: “at least 18 months old, have fallen below №100 on the Billboard 200 and do not have an active single on our radio.”

One of my favorite things during the holidays is discovering that other people have similar traditions to yours. It has the dual effect of making you feel known and affirmed and recognized but also totally clichéd and obvious. We’re all sort of the same! Families—they’re all kind of sweetly derivative! Doesn’t that feel nice and a little bit terrible?

Every year that I can remember, my family, conjoined with our family-friends-who-have-become-family, has a ceremonial Playing Of “Alice’s Restaurant,” the Arlo Guthrie song that I’m not going to try to explain to you if you don’t know it. You either know it or you don’t:

Other than that recording, which got a nice Thanksgiving bump, it’s Christmas all the way down:

Speaking of derivative, Martina McBride’s White Christmas is outselling Bing Crosby’s same.

A few exceptions: R.E.M. is celebrating the twenty-five year anniversary of the release of Out of Time with a reissue, Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger is also twenty-five, and Tori Amos’s Boys for Pele turns twenty. The death metal band Death released a vinyl reissue of their seventh and last studio album, The Sound of Perseverance. Finally, Drake is holding on. Drake, have you ever thought of making a Christmas album? If You’re Reading This, It’s Christmas. Just a thought.

Last but not least, Susan Boyle has a Christmas album!!!!!!!!!! It sold more copies last week than Journey’s Greatest Hits!!!!!!! Maybe there is good in the world????????

25. R.E.M. OUT OF TIME 3,895 copies

29. SOUNDGARDEN BADMOTORFINGER 3,635 copies

32. MCBRIDE*MARTINA WHITE CHRISTMAS 3,274 copies

33. CROSBY*BING WHITE CHRISTMAS 3,255 copies

34. AMOS*TORI BOYS FOR PELE (DELUXE)(2CD) 3,160 copies

45. BOYLE*SUSAN THE GIFT 2,906 copies

86. GUTHRIE*ARLO ALICE’S RESTAURANT 2,059 copies

132. DEATH SOUND OF PERSEVERANCE 1,574 copies

194. DRAKE IF YOU’RE READING THIS, IT’S 1,255 copies

(Previously.)

What gets you through the days now that your dreams are dead?

I had a dream the other night that things would be okay: We wouldn’t have this agony that plagues us through the day. We wouldn’t fear the future and we wouldn’t feel the pain of living in a union that we know we can’t sustain. We’d find a way to make things work and keep our dreams alive. It wouldn’t be that easy, but together we’d survive. I ran to email all my friends, excited and awake, but then I saw the Internet and realized my mistake.

Hey, here’s something from Gordon, a new one to me. Enjoy.

The gift that lasts the whole year long.

Did you miss any of our Holiday Dread series? Did you read them all? Well, catch up on the ones you skipped or relive the magic again. They’re all here! Enjoy.

• Holiday Dread: “When Are You Having Kids?”
• Holiday Dread: Sleep By Other People’s Rules
• Holiday Dread: The Desert
• Holiday Dread: Being A One-Plater
• Holiday Dread: Christmas Trees
• Holiday Dread: Making Thanksgiving Dinner
• Holiday Dread: Introspection
• Holiday Dread: Being The Mom
• Holiday Dread: Sleeping Arrangements
• Holiday Dread: Small Talk With White People
• Holiday Dread: Bottleneck Traffic On I-95
• Holiday Dread: Asshole Children
• Holiday Dread: Turkey at the Theater

★★★★ The color of the clear sky was ever so slightly tempered by haze, but airplanes were sharp, arresting white against it. Hoods, hats, and scarves were sufficient for the people who chose to use them, and not necessarily even required. It was easy, after school dropoff, to walk on past the subway and to make a comfortable shopping circuit of the calm supermarket and uncrowded bakery. Outside the apartment windows, the work crew was grinding down the surface of the neighbors’ balcony, sending billows of dust to catch the afternoon light. A dust smell rode in on the heater, and dust coated the wood on the back of the couch.

From Everything Changes, the Awl’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

You strange kinda cap, Capybara say. I like your furcoat any-way.

Where we go, ma?
Over the riv, ca.
Todo wha?
Todo nice.
Alla us?
Wee nice army, ca.

What see up top, bir?
The whole worl, cap.
How look?
Some nice, cap. Some not.
More nice, bir?
Countin us?
Countin us, bir.
More nice, cap.

Where to, Monk?
Don know, cap. Where wan be?
See over-thatway rainbo?
Ya, cap.
Monk, les go.

This is the second in a scientifically accurate series about capybaras making the world a nicer place. The first installment is here.

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Can you check my math here?

I’ve been working on a theorem the past few days and I think it’s finally ready for peer review. Will you look it over for me?

It goes like this: 1 David Krumholtz as the elf in Tim Allen’s The Santa Clause plus one Oscar Isaac (any) equals 1 Jake Johnson of Fox’s “New Girl.”

Take a peek at my work…

See what I did there? It feels true to me no matter how I see them. Moving, emoting, creasing their mouths blankly in the background of other people’s work. Doesn’t matter! These boys have skulls, hairs, and vibes that are entwined.

And I get it, the first time you see the equation on a page it might not seem 100% evident, but maybe looking at it in another order would help:

Anything? It’s clear as a bell for me, man. One actor, a versatile acclaim daddi. The other, a brassy character. Their son, living.

Let’s take it from the rear and start with the finish:

See what I’m saying?

Anyway I’m not a mathematician, I might’ve not carried a one or PEMDASed at some point—let me know if it checks out.

You won’t believe who has it.

Someone made this point yesterday, but given that a prolific user of social media has a popular tweet this morning it is worth repeating: The untrammeled spirit of the Internet is narcissism, bigotry and lies. Does this mean that this specific prolific user of social media is in fact the untrammeled spirit of the Internet? I will not make a definitive ruling but I think the thing speaks for itself.

As to whether or not this man’s continuing stream of consciousness, broadcast to an audience that cannot turn away, is either a cunning plan to distract you from his more unsavory and destructive schemes for the world or simply an illustration of how his impetuousness and lack of impulse control render him critically unfit for the massive authority he is about to acquire, allow me to offer a third possibility: Perhaps he himself is a prisoner of the same social media addiction that enslaves so many of us these days. He may, in fact, be its most prominent victim, since while many of us fall prey to its charms simply for the quick ego rush of a few hearts and RTs, his reward has been the leadership of the free world. You can see how it might be a problem. As one of the ancient philosophers, probably Socrates, once said: Χωρίς τη σάλτσα ένας άνθρωπος έχει χαθεί αλλά ο ίδιος άνθρωπος να χαθείτε στη σάλτσα. It’s difficult to disagree.

In any event, it’s probably a good time to review Balk’s Three Laws:

Balk’s First Law: Everything you hate about the Internet is actually everything you hate about people.

Balk’s Second Law: The worst thing is knowing what everyone thinks about anything.

Balk’s Third Law: If you think the Internet is terrible now, just wait a while.

If you have spent any time on the Internet of late the precision of these laws has been so indisputable as to render them commonplace. They are at this point nearly clichés, assertions that once seemed as if they were exaggerated for effect but are now if anything understated in their acknowledgment of the horrors we encounter each time we find ourselves online. (Balk’s Third Law is the most frightening law because each time someone says “How much worse could it get?” the answer is very swiftly apparent.) I have no positive solutions to offer you at this point; I am simply looking for credit. And maybe an apology from everyone who said I was too bleak. There is very little else left in this world to hope for, reward-wise.

Millennials send in the army.

Rainy and warm? Looks like spring came early this year! Enjoy it, because I have a feeling the winter we’re about to get is going to be one for the books, except at the end of it there won’t be books anymore. Say, did you see the bit about how democracy has had its day and now everyone’s ready for anything else? If you’re the worrying type there’s plenty to be concerned about, but if you work on the Internet let me just point you to this: “[R]esearchers calculated that 43 percent of older Americans believed it was illegitimate for the military to take over if the government were incompetent or failing to do its job, but only 19 percent of millennials agreed. The same generational divide showed up in Europe, where 53 percent of older people thought a military takeover would be illegitimate, while only 36 percent of millennials agreed.” That’s right: Millennials love trophies, living with their parents, and military coups. Your first post of the day writes itself!

Anyway, here’s a disco-y remix of Róisín Murphy’s “Whatever” from Take Her Up To Monto, which is still one of my favorite records from this terrible year. Please do enjoy.

★★★ The question of what the day’s temperature might be was forgotten in the face of the forecast app’s declaration that sunset would be at 4:30. The leaves on the ground were crisp but the air was not. Great wings of cirrus spread on the sky above and behind gray cumulus. The sunward sides of all things were brilliant and hard-looking, which did nothing to check the darkness swelling everywhere else.