stuff that sucked and soared in 2007

soared - tekkonkinkreet
beautiful, touching anime with a dark side. i think it came out in 2006, but we discovered it this year walking through the aisles of blockbuster. paprika was superb as well, but with more psychedelia and less heart.

soared - the shins "wincing the night away"
best album of 2007 in my book. it never left my playlist since doug introduced me to them right after the new album was released. having gone back and listened to their previous efforts this album was easily their best to-date. their live performance wasn't quite as good when we caught them at kcrw's evening becomes eclectic, but it wasn't nearly as bad as say, lily allen's performance was that evening.

sucked - windows mobile-based phones
maybe mobile 6 is better, but what an absolute piece of garbage 5 was. i could tolerate my palm treo 700w for all of 2 days and the Q i had was little better. symbian is a million times better.

soared - radiohead's "in rainbow"
versatile album that ranged from sophisticated breakbeats to gorgeous, wistful tracks like "reckoner" and "faust arp". oh yeah, and it was *free* to those who did not want to pay as radiohead tried to advance the music industry economic model (along with prince, saul williams and others this past year)

sucked - beowulf
not even pseudo-naked angelina jolie could save this stinker. the real 3-D was cool, but got old quick as you realized the plot was wafer thin.

soared - interface flor
need a cool rug but don't want to pay through the nose? interface flor let's you create yer own rugs by using their carpet tiles which cost about 10-18 bucks. i did 1/2 our garage and our dining room rug for around 400 bucks. just a decent 5x8 would have put us back about $700.

sucked - home warranties
who buys this stuff? this is the 3rd time i've had one that came with a home purchase and they make it impossible to actually make a claim. and then when you finally break through, it takes forever to get something authorized. pretty lousy business model when you're whole premise is to make it as difficult as possible to please your customers. the web-based submission form for my current provider doesn't even work. bleccch.

soared - cleveland browns
my brownies finally pulled off a solid, winning season going 10-6 while missing the playoffs by a whisker. for a team where very little was expected, what a pleasant surprise to see the boys in orange crank out a good season for once.