Hey, the Pitchfork lists turned out pretty well! I now have a list of albums to buy when I'm in the mood to buy indie-rock albums! The Arcade Fire album kind of sounds to me like the midpoint between Bright Eyes and the Pixies, which means it's not quite as good as Bright Eyes but still pretty good. (I mostly don't get the Pixies. [Or the Fall. Or Pavement.])

Also, I just got my first Pazz & Jop ballot! I'm in the club now! What's up fools! Seriously, this is something I've wanted to contribute to for more than ten years now, so it's a big thing for me.

I'm a bit sad to see the end of list season, so here's one final list:

Top Ten Baltimore Celebrities of 2004

1: Carmelo Anthony. I feel a weird sort of kinship to Carmelo because he's from Baltimore and went to Syracuse and is wicked tall. However, he's ridiculously good at basketball and black and younger than me and also two inches shorter, so maybe we're really not all that much alike. But! He lead his team to the playoffs this year, which is more than Lebron can say. And he played on the Olympic team, which I think was a good thing to do, even if the team did insanely badly. He endorses Adidas, the only sneaker company that makes non-fugly sneakers in my size. He reps Baltimore in his ads. He brawled with a whole bunch of dudes in a nightclub by himself when one of them spat in his girlfriend's face. And he appeared in a local DVD called Stop Snitching, made by one drug dealer and aimed at another drug dealer. Hardcore! Plus Bun B stated his best verse of the year with "We goin' hard in the paint like Carmelo."

2: Michael Phelps. Also from Baltimore! Also very tall! Won more medals than anyone else in the Olympics ever, even though he couldn't beat that one Australian guy. And he eats breakfast a lot at Pete's Grill, a diner about ten blocks from my house where I keep meaning to go.

3: David Simon. I don't have cable, so I don't watch The Wire, but everyone else loves it. I just started renting the first season, and wow! It's really good! I probably prefer Homicide, which Simon also made, and which I've been enjoying on DVD all year even if it fell the fuck off around season 5.

4: Rod Lee. B-more club music is blowing up! Hipsters like it! Swizz Beats bites it! You can hear it in the background on The Wire sometimes! If B-more club is going to blow up nationwide the way crunk did, it'll need a Lil Jon figure, and Rod Lee is about the closest thing to that. It helps that he makes better tracks than anyone else.

5: Sam Cassell. Played in his first all-star game, helped take the Timberwolves to the Western Conference finals, looks really, really weird, like a baby alien pterodactyl or something.

6: Barbara Mikulski. She's the senior female Democrat in the Senate, and she made a really decent speech at the Democratic Convention. She won her election easily this year against a giant creepy Republican millionaire. Mostly, though, I just like it that there's someone in the Senate with a ridiculously thick Baltimore accent.

7: John Waters. He made a movie this year! I didn't see it. He put out a Christmas album! I haven't heard it. But, you know, I like John Waters.

8: Elijah Cummings. He's my Congressman, he won his election this year, and he's one of the guys from the beginning of Fahrenheit 911 who told Al Gore that he should have won.

9. David Byrne. I have no idea what he's done this year, but the reissue of The Name of This Band is the Talking Heads is hot. Look, this list is hard! I can't think of that many people!

10. Comp. His album still isn't out, and he got cut from the Ghostface album, but he did appear in Def Jam: Fight for NY wearing a T-Shirt that said Baltimore in the Sopranos font where the R is a gun.