So last night me and Jace go to eat at Cracker Barrell, because neither of us had eaten all day and it seemed like a great idea. Over dinner, he told me about the Christmas gift that he's recieved from his roommate (I think it was Drew). Anyway, his roommate gave him a copy of R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet, Chapters 1-12. He was like, "Dude, you have to see this. It is amazing." I was, to say the least, skeptical. R. Kelly? Didn't he piss on some 12-year-old on camera or something? Trapped in the Closet? I'd heard about the single being on the radio and it sounded totally stupid. But Jace was adamant about me watching this 43-minute music video-soap opera. He was so freaking insistent that I was like, okay dude, yeah. Jace has introduced me to some weird shit over the years, but nothing could have prepared me for this.

After we waddled out of Cracker Barrell, our abdomens distended from eating 15 pounds of lard (C.B. buys lard in 50-gallon drums, just F.Y.I.) we met up with Erin and retired to her place for the screening.

Trapped in the Closet is produced by the bizarrely named "Fuzzy Bunny Films." The opening screen reveals the title in big red letters Superman-style: the letters appear as if they are being wiped onto the screen by a windsheild wiper or something. I know I took intro to cinema, but I can't for the life of me tell you what that effect is called. I think a wipe is close enough, but the point is that it makes it look like a superhero action adventure (it even has the city's skyline in the background). Superhero action adventure is a little off, but it's just about as campy and hilarious. R. sings the words that people say as they lip-sync and the story involves more than a few cheating spouses, guns and ridiculously convoluted plot twists, as well as lines like, "Shit. Think. Shit. Think. Shit. Think." This could only be the work of a total madman, but it's completely genius. Watch it now.

I know that I just posted my ten favorite albums of 2005, but I may already have to revise it, becasue Dar Williams' My Better Self is really creeping up on me, and I listen to it, like, all the time. Especially the song "You Rise and Meet the Day," which I love.

We could pretend that we’re walking on petals and light, golden light
Flaunting our love like a dance step mastered, turning from left to right
But after all the colored lights are gone
Time will leave the ashes and the dawn
You rise and meet the day

I’m watching you go, it’s like spying on hope ever onward with more to burn
Giving your hands and your heart to the weave of the world, though it fights each turn
But you do not give up so easily
That’s how I know you won’t surrender me
You rise and meet the day
It’s all I need, it’s all I need to know, it’s all I need to know

And I love you all the time
I had always feared that some gloomy ingratitude would seize me
But you have held the dream like every morning finds
A way to hang the sun up in the sky
And now I think I have it too –
The greatest part I learned from you
You rise and meet the day

And I can see kids, maybe ours, maybe not, oh, I can hear what they’ll say
Laughing at pictures with the old-fashioned hats and the clothes that we’re wearing today
And they will know the true and humble power
Of love that made it through the darkest hour
You rise and meet the day
It’s all I need, it’s all I need to know, it’s all I need to know

About ten years ago, something of some merit happened. I, a 6th grader at Winder-Barrow Middle School, turned 12. It was on this occasion (or maybe a few days before) that Dad drove me to Best Buy in Athens and bought me a stereo. It had a five-disc changer and two tape decks and surround speakers and a remote and it was just about the best thing in the world.

Except for what went inside it. To fill those five slots, Dad also bought me five CDs, which included: Green Day, Dookie; Natalie Merchant, Tigerlily; Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill; (something else that I remembered a couple of weeks ago but can't now) and Dave Matthews Band, Under the Table and Dreaming.

That last was by far the most important album I could have purchased. It would be 7th grade before I discovered Nirvana and Soundgarden and Hole; in 8th grade I would go through my "ghetto" phase; in high school I finally came to appreciate the classic rock that I had grown up with via my parents. But all through those years, there was one band that I could say, without a doubt, was my favorite band.

Dave Matthews Band.

There. I said it. I loved DMB. I have been to six DMB concerts, the first of which I attended with my now boyfriend of three years and some mutual friends, although my boyfriend and I weren't really friends at the time, in fact, we barely knew each other. I owned (and still do) every Dave Matthews album that came out between 1994 and 2001; I was a member of the Dave Matthews Band fan club. I snuck into Georgia Theater as an underage to see Dave Matthews Cover Band. I owned tee shirts, window decals, posters; I wrote quotes from DMB songs everywhere: my school agenda, my AOL profile. Dave provided the soundtrack to the bulk of my teenage years.

So when did it become so wrong to like DMB? Or, more importantly, what changed my sensibilities? Why haven't I listened to the band that I called my favorite for so long in about four years?

Around my senior year of high school, I started to get the sense that Dave was "frat rock." When I would go to Athens, all the Greek cars had Dave stickers on them, which didn't really bother me so much as it made me aware that my favorite band was also a lot of other people's favorite band. I was still in a high-school frame of mind, and had no concept of what townies or Greeks or anyone in college was actually like.  

Then I came to UGA. Almost immediately, it became very clear to me that Greeks were exactly the type of people that I did not want to be. And they all liked Dave. Over the course of the next few months, though, even their interest waned. DBM became passe, even to the Greeks, who I considered uber-square conservative sheep who would grow up to be the chubby rude middle-aged women I hated serving in restaurants. I started hearing DMB songs on Peach 94.9 Lite Rock in doctors' offices, and I wondered, what the hell was I thinking? Was I actually listening to elevator music for most of my teen years?

Looking back, I don't think so. I think that, unlike many of my disaffected peers, I was just an exceptionally happy teen. I didn't experience anything close to angst; oh yeah, I had my awkward years and embarrassments, but I never felt like the world just didn't understand me. Instead, I felt like I wanted to dance all the time and as a well-provided-for middle-class white girl from a small suburban town, music with the message "Celebrate we will/'cause life is short/but sweet for certain" made perfect sense. I had boyfriends, I had lazy afternoons and sleepovers and vacations to the beach with my best friends, and for the kind of life it was, that was the kind of music that I connected with. I don't think I'm more shallow for it; I had my dark period coming, it just came later. And it was that dark period that distanced me from the music that I had embraced in those carefree years; I viewed it as completely shameful. I never mentioned the fact that I was once a die-hard Dave fan and my Dave CDs collected dust.

I listened to Under the Table and Dreaming tonight, and I heard something that I suspect I knew was there all along: an acknowledgment of the darkness, of the pain that life is fraught with. And a resolve to celebrate in spite of it, maybe because of it; and thanks for the bitterness that makes those times so much sweeter. It might sound cliche, but I think that's because it's true.

Twenty three/I’m so tired of life/Such a shame to throw it all away/The images grow darker still/Could I have been anyone other then me?...But then i’ll/Sing and dance and I’ll play for you tonight/The thrill of it all/Dark clouds may hang on me sometimes/But I’ll work it out..

Behold the splendour...

10. Sigur Ros, Takk

9. Mugison, Mugimama! Is This Monkey Music?

8. Little Brother, The Minstrel Show

7. DangerDoom, The Mouse and the Mask

6. My Morning Jacket, Z

5. New Pornographers, Twin Cinema

4. The Mars Volta, Frances the Mute

3. Sufjan Stevens, Illinois

2. Dungen, Ta Det Lugnt

1. M.I.A., Arular

Honorable mentions: Bell Orchestre--Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light, Pilotdrift--Watersphere, King of France--King of France, Wolf Parade--Apologies to the Queen Mary