So I landed an invite to Google Wave last month (thanks to Ed Atwell), and I finally took a stab at using it for something. And boy, this is something that will change the world: it’s a bot that tells, and learns, “Yo Mama” jokes.

Google Wave makes it very easy to make bots in Java or Python. The documentation that I followed includes:

- The App Engine “getting started” guide

- The Google Wave Bots tutorial

After setting up Eclipse and using these guides, I had a simple bot up and running in a couple of hours (and my Java is rusty). The whole project took five hours.

Wave offers sample codes for very simple bots that will pipe up during your Waves. The trick here is that I wanted to save jokes as well as telling them – and idea I picked up from the game Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble. This seemed like the real hook: as people across Google Wave interact with the Yo Mama Bot, it’s learning and then dishing out new jokes.

And it was pretty easy to code, using Google’s almost dummy-proof data store feature. Basically you set up the class you want to persist (e.g. Joke), add tags to the properties you’re persisting, let the built-in Data Nucleus thing “enhance” the class, and you’re all good. The App Engine gives you a dashboard where you can see and edit all the saved data, as well as browse logs, look at traffic, and so forth.

That said, although Wave does most of the heavy lifting for me, I also ran into weird bugs. At first, everything my bot said was repeated – like, “Yo mama! Yo mama!” I made plenty my own mistakes, but this turned out to be a Google Wave bug; luckily, it was easy to find a workaround. I also made a small change that was supposed to improve performance and then, somehow during my build, managed to screw up the Joke class so that it wouldn’t persist anymore, which made me go, “WHA?” and led me to the simplest solution, which was just to rename the class and rebuild the whole thing. The “new” class was correctly enhanced and persisted, and the app ran again.

Other hassle here: you still can’t deploy and test the bots locally; you have to do it in Wave. So the bot I was sharing with my close pals kept crashing all day Saturday. Whoops!

But now it’s up and running and I’m pretty pleased with it. I just need to spread the word, to people who actually have Wave access. If you want to give it a whirl:

1. Add “yomama-bot@appspot.com” as a contact.
2. Add it to a wavelet.
3. It’ll say hi. And after that, type in a “Yo mama” joke to get one back, or just say “Oh yeah?” to hear one that it knows.

Don’t run anything too offensive – I record the names. (Google Wave does not, so far as I know, have anonymous users.)

What did I learn from this? One, a lot of “yo mama” jokes. Two, even though this is a simple example – that was fairly simple to build – it’s also powerful. You could run a sophisticated Java app on the app engine, use Google’s data store for your data layer, and really be in business. If you wanted to run a tabletop-esque game session on Wave, you could code any number of very powerful bots to enforce rules, persist characters, deliver content, or really anything you want. Apparently, Wave can also be embedded in other apps, which opens the door to bringing a sophisticated chat-type thing right into your game or app.

And of course, the nice thing about bots in Wave, as opposed to Twitter, is that you can invite them in to specific waves. You only see them when you need them. Gaming on Twitter appears to have stalled because seeing other people’s posts and autoupdates is lethally annoying. But Wave is fertile ground for bots, and I see a lot of potential here.

So I have this friend Matt, and we argue about music. We’ve always listened to music together – the Beatles, Pink Floyd, prog, jazz – and we’ve always had enough bands in common to start an argument about them. Matt is a more traditional rock snob, digging power pop and cult artists. He was collecting SmiLE demos before the kids in Brooklyn rediscovered the Beach Boys. Me, my tastes are not as defensible. Fringe artists, niche acts, and tons of bands I like purely as a matter of personal preference. I’ve got plenty of classics in my record collection, but also a bunch of bands I like because I like them – local acts, friend’s bands, artists I listen to because they cheer me up. My favorite band is XTC. I could try to argue why I think they’re the greatest band that ever lived – mount some case to get them into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame – but I know it’s not true.

We love to fight about new music. I’ll condense his argument for the sake of space: he hates it. It’s too hyped and too derivative, there are too many artists choking the stuff out and slapping it on MySpace, and the Internet – and especially publications like Pitchfork – are aiding and abetting the glut, because they need something to write about.

I’ve written for Pitchfork for seven years. I started at two reviews a week and I’ve steadily gone down to four reviews a year, but still, I stay in touch with the ‘Fork, and I contributed to the recent P2K Best Albums of the ’00s Feature, where I had to make a list of the Top 100 albums of the past decade. I also worked on the lists for the ‘70s, ‘80s, and the ‘90s, as well as the top songs from the ‘60s list. So I’ve spent a lot of time mulling over the last fifty years of popular and not-so-popular music, and how this decade stacks up.

And I think Matt has a point. New music is not as good as old music. For songs, it’s hard to beat the ‘60s; for albums, the ‘70s. The ‘80s go out as the most underappreciated decade – a whole span of time that used to be a punchline, when we think about growing up with Spandau Ballet videos on MTV and Huey Lewis on the radio, but that’s because we didn’t know about post-punk or college rock. (And who knew Scritti Politti or Talk Talk were actually so good?) The ‘90s, when I was in college and early adulthood, are pretty poor. So if I had to vote, I’d say the ‘00s were nothing special, but Christ, look at 1996. That year was enough to make you wish you didn’t have ears.

But dissing the whole decade is an easy, negative thing to do. I can agree with Matt that the count of original, essential bands today is low. But as a Pitchfork and Paste writer, part of my job was to find the gems that are coming out today. And looking at the top of my ‘00s albums list, I’m pretty happy with who I chose.

Except that once again, I chose albums that were off the beaten path. The top artists on my list are gifted and exciting. But they don’t have much in common. Guillemots are a fabulous, over-the-top pop band with a very English, Mercury Prize sound – they have yet to break big in the States – and their “Made-Up Love Song #43” may be my single favorite song of the decade. Its lyrics are so daft and its crescendo so consuming that as big, honest statements of love go, it’s pretty untoppable.

The only song that could challenge it is Max Tundra’s “Which Song” – a totally different pop gem, painstakingly constructed from more pieces than I can count, bursting with hooks, melodies, and countermelodies, but all assembled with an almost nebbishly precision. It’s joyous, too. “Made-Up Love Song #43” has that sensuous upright bass giving you a footrub; “Which Song” has a keyboard solo with an almost awkward, machine-like run of notes. I’ve listened to it probably hundreds of times this year and will never get sick of it.

In college, instead of digging grunge and college rock, I listened to a lot of jazz. Not even (or not always) cutting-edge stuff: I would walk around with my headphones listening to soft ECM comfort music, like Bill Frisell and the Dave Holland Quintet. I still listen to jazz and experimental music, but bands like Supersilent have caught my ear now, by combining a soothing austerity with an undeniable rigour. A combination of four distinct voices, nobody sounds likeSupersilent; even the members of Supersilent, working on their own projects, barely sound like Supersilent. I once flew out to San Francisco just to see their US debut. (Same weekend, they booked a gig in New York City and played for twice as long, but what the hell, the weather was nice out there.) 6 is an amazing album, carved out of completely improvised music but capturing and fully exploring a different mood and texture in each piece.

But my album of the year went to the artist I tracked most closely and spoke with most regularly, Doseone, who worked with Boom Bip on the album () (also referred to as “Circle”). () is a lo-fi indie hip-hop record by an MC and a DJ working early in their careers, who decided to try to cram a different genre into every track and see where it took them. There are a few flat-out jams and verbal pyrotechnics, and also sections of crackly static set behind cryptic but autobiographical spoken word. The closer, “Birdcatcher’s Oath,” is the loveliest piece DJ Shadow never produced. But also don’t miss the single, “Birdcatcher’s Return”:

Okay, obligatory journalistic ass-covering: I didn’t pick this album because I’ve spoken with Doseone. But the chance to interview him repeatedly this decade gave me more insight into his work. At first, I was too chicken to ask him what the albums meant. I made the mistake of not wanting to look stupid, when of course, looking stupid once in a while can get you all kinds of intel you never thought to ask for. By the time Doseone was working on his major albums with Subtle, he was on the phone with me for hours walking me through the mythology behind the records.

Nobody sounds like Doseone. Here are some other artists that nobody sounds like: Sufjan Stevens, with his magnificent Illinoise, which I ranked above Seven Swans, even though that quieter Episcopalian folk album is really my favorite. Nina Nastasia, the anti-Neko Case, writing hushed art folk from the swamps via the bathroom of her New York City apartment. Run to Ruin, like Supersilent’s 6, is a set of perfect and disparate settings that’s rigorous and really pretty. And the Books: they are the single most fascinating band I heard this decade, marrying found and played sounds, digital and analog sources, and snooty and silly intentions.

The highest-ranking album I blurbed for Pitchfork’s list was Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion. It’s probably the strongest indie record I’ve heard this year, outlasting say, Dirty Projector’s Bitte Orca (I’m more of a Rise Above fan) or Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest. But on my own list, it didn’t crack my top 25. It actually landed at 35, right behind, um, McLusky Does Dallas – and that’s why I won’t be posting more than my top 25 albums here; I get kinda arbitrary after that first set. Only these 25 albums really blew my mind.

(By the way, if you want to skip ahead, my top 25 is at the bottom of this post.)

And now here are some albums in my top 25 that didn’t come close to the top of the staff chart. Aloha’s That’s Your Fire is a wild but wispy ride, with free-ranging vibes and drums mixing it up around heartfelt love songs. That’s a perfect mix for me, but not everyone got that excited about it. Consonant was overshadowed by the reunion of frontman Clint Conloy’s main band, Mission of Burma – but you should really check out their first album; you’ll like it. Cassetteboy’s The Parker Tapes is barely on the radar next to other mash-up and sampler acts like, oh, say, the massively popular Girl Talk. But its 100 tracks are endlessly fascinating, and “Fly Me To New York,” which mocks 9/11 with samples of Frank Sinatra, is the most profane cut I heard. And David Sylvian keeps surprising people with how far he’s come from his glam- and art-pop days. Blemish isn’t as “fun” as say, Brilliant Trees, but it is his strongest and most personal statement. Oh, and Charlotte Hatherley is pretty much bubble-gum punk-rock, but she makes me hella happy.

This decade, I found the kind of bands that I like to listen to: unusual, sometimes austere, sometimes splendiferous acts that are artistically defensible – no Miley Cyrus here – but are also pretty personal. I listen to slow, spare music when I’m working, and happy music when I’m depressed. I like fast, jittery music and dark, somber music. This is a matter of hard-wiring, and not really a cultivated taste. I loved TV on the Radio five seconds into hearing Young Liars. I only started thinking about them when I sat down to write. Same for Deerhoof’s recent albums, although the fact that I dig Friend Opportunity for its progginess makes me wonder if it really has legs for anybody else. I’m sure history will be much kinder to Runner’s Four or Reveille.

I like to joke that I have the worst taste of anyone at Pitchfork. And it’s probably true! I’ve been exploring new music the whole decade, but I’ve slowed down a lot, listening to far less new stuff than I should, and writing reviews either of classic bands that I’ve loved for a while (Nina Simone, XTC), or new acts that just happened to catch my ear (Deleted Scenes, Sister Suvi). Basically, instead of listening to records I’m reporting on, I’m just listening to the ones I like.

But in the past decade, I’ve gotten better at separating what I like from what other people will like. I have better ears, and I have a better understanding of which acts have legs, which ones merely sound nice and which ones have something to offer. Sometimes my work as a writer draws on my tastes – and sometimes not. I don’t mind keeping them separate.

So, here’s my top 25:

1 Boom Bip and Doseone ()
2 Max Tundra Parallax Error Beheads You
3 Guillemots Through the Windowpane
4 Supersilent 6
5 Dirty Projectors Rise Above
6 Aloha That’s Your Fire
7 Sufjan Stevens Illinoise
8 Nina Nastasia Run to Ruin
9 Books The Lemon of Pink
10 TV on the Radio Young Liars
11 Panda Bear Person Pitch
12 Walkmen Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone
13 Cassetteboy The Parker Tapes
14 Max Tundra Mastered By Guy at the Exchange
15 Subtle for hero: for fool
16 David Sylvian Blemish
17 Spoon Kill the Moonlight
18 Deerhoof Friend Opportunity
19 Decemberists Castaways and Cutouts
20 King Gheedorah Take Me To Your Leader
21 TV on the Radio Return to Cookie Mountain
22 Fiery Furnaces Blueberry Boat
23 Charlotte Hatherley Grey Will Fade
24 Sufjan Stevens Seven Swans
25 Consonant s/t

I’m behind again. So again, call it a two-fer:

Power Fantasies – Are games – and comics – just “power fantasies”? Or rather, what does it take to be more? I compare the new Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 – which really is just a beat-’em-up, bash-’em-all – with Batman: Arkham Asylum, which, while still not rocket science, is a subtler, smarter and more engrossing experience.

The Rise of Ugh-Meck – I wrote about this topic here in January; here are some more thoughts, which are now informed by the game project I’ve been working on (which I still need to write about, but I also need to finish it).

Three other things to announce.

- I’m working on this new magazine called Kill Screen with mastermind publisher Jamin Brophy-Warren and faboo designer Anthony Smyrski. The whole thing’s almost ready to go to press and thanks to Kickstarter, it’s funded. Impossibly badass. We have a great slate of art and text for issue one, which I’ll post more about later.

- I’m in the new Onion AV Club Inventory book, which hits stores Tuesday. The advance copy is terrific – great writing on every pop topic under the sun, and with illustrations. The one that went with my “tragic masturbation scenes” list was a total hoot.

- A comic book script that I wrote was accepted for Terminal Press’ Zombie Bomb anthology, edited by Adam Miller and the awesome Rich Woodall. The story’s called “My Little Zombie,” and it’ll run in Volume Two. This is the first piece of fiction I’ve written that’s been accepted by anyone. It feels really cool. If you’re at the Baltimore Comic Con this weekend, Woodall’s bringing a sample book with some fantastic art and stories from the book, so be sure to check that out!

See, this is why I like fall – everybody gets stuff going. I just posted links to a bunch of great projects that involve some of my favorite people in the world, and I get to be involved in all of them. Next time I start whining about the recession or how there’s nothing on television, I’m going to reread this post.

Interviewers usually act like they know exactly what they’re doing. All their dead ends and fumbles are neatly wiped away, leaving the subject to be the one who sounds like a dope. This may give you the impression that the interviewer you’re reading is some kind of rational, all-knowing master of the subject. But interviewers goof up too.

I thought I’d print an excerpt from my recent Dirty Projectors interview. This got cut from the final piece, and it’s not exactly embarrassing, but it’s an interesting moment where I asked a weird question, and the subject wasn’t sure what to do with it (or didn’t want to do anything with it at all), and halfway through I kind of forgot why I asked it as well. But I do like the last part of his quote here, and I wish I’d shoehorned that back into the final version.

Pitchfork: In terms of the line-up, it’s becoming a very sexy band.

DL: (Laughs) I guess I like the idea of like, music that’s overdetermined, you know what I mean? And I like the idea of all of the things we’re talking about coming from all of these messages or whatever being delivered by everyone you see on stage, in this collective way.

Pitchfork: But have you thought about – I’m thinking of a press photo where you’re sitting on a blanket in the park with a guitar, and Amber and Angel are sitting on both sides of you, and it’s this very ‘60s image.

DL: Except there’s that jug of Poland Springs right next to us. (Laughs) Well, the ‘60s were sexy. Yeah. No, I mean, first and foremost, the girls are great musicians. And they’re friends of mine, and that’s really what it’s about. I like the idea of like, feelings having persuasive representatives or whatever, but you know, having a bunch of sexy girls in the band – (laughs) – I don’t know. I think it’s sort of awkward in a way. It’s like this theater, it’s an unintended sort of aspect. I mean I’m totally cool with it, but, I don’t think any of us think about it very much.

Pitchfork: And I don’t mean to diminish anyone’s talent. You could go out in leather pants, too.

DL: Yeah, I’ve definitely thought about the whole leather pants thing. (Laughs) Or you know, a leather shirt, as well.

I think most music often is pretty sexy, whether you’re talking about Wagner or Zeppelin or something. It’s one of the elements – music is somewhere between conversation and intercourse. (Laughs) So, if we’re nailing that part of it, I guess that’s cool.

By the way: I posed basically the same question to Max Tundra and got a terrific response, so check that out too. Honestly, after seeing ‘em both live, I couldn’t say which band’s sexier!

So I forgot to update last week. If you follow my column through my blog, this is like a double feature! Check ‘em out:

The Undeniable Case for Pink Floyd: Rock Band

Now that Harmonix Music Systems has shipped The Beatles: Rock Band, they have nowhere to go but down. PR guy John Drake says they spent 17 months on research and development for the game, investing more personnel than they’d ever sunk into a single title. Who else deserves that kind of treatment? Led Zeppelin? U2? Herman and the Hermits?

My money’s on Pink Floyd. Not only could they move enough copies to make it worth everyone’s while: they would also push the music game genre in directions that even the Beatles couldn’t muster.

Tell Me a Story: Corvus Elrod and the Honeycomb Engine

Elrod raises a classic problem of how to make an interactive narrative in games. Those of us who look for a good story with our gameplay will keep pushing for more subtlety and freedom in the choices we make. But if you take away the rules, you don’t have a game – you have something closer to improvised theater, or campfire storytelling, or at worst, a student drama club exercise. Creativity’s great, but how do you judge it? And what about the players who don’t want to tap their imaginations? I can only guess what would’ve happened when I played D&D as a kid, if we didn’t have rules to keep us in line. We would’ve spent the whole night just punching each other in the face.

This spring I had the privilege of writing the one-sheet for David Sylvian’s new album, Manafon. It shipped on Tuesday, and you can learn more about it, hear clips, and read my write-up on the official site. You can also hear opening track “Small Metal Gods” in the YouTube clip above. It’s incredibly beautiful, plus the planes in the video made my kid laugh.

It’s a really beautiful album – and it’s challenging. But the reviews I’m reading so far are mostly positive. This one by Jason Bivins at Dusted Magazine is a really good, thoughtful read.

While you’re on the album site, don’t miss the trailer for Amplified Gesture, a documentary featuring the artists who worked on the album and other recent Sylvian projects. Free improv may be an austere high-brow art, but it’s also a very human, personal and intimate way to communicate, and that comes out in these interviews. They’re totally fascinating even if this kind of music isn’t your bag. I hope this gets more screenings.

This was a good year for Sylvian’s label, which also released the Mercury-nominated and utterly gorgeous English pop group Sweet Billy Pilgrim. Here’s a clip, “Truth Only Smiles,” from that album. It is really good:

Oh wow, I almost forgot to post this stuff from last week.

“The Superjoke” – My new Edge Column, about how The Mighty Boosh, Blueberry Garden and game as a whole can make the left and right lobes of your brain rub happily together.

The Beatles: Rock Band – My review for Pitchfork. Lots of folks were curious if this review heralds more game coverage at the ‘Fork. Boy, I would love to see (and contribute to) that. Also: big thanks to Tom Clancy for hosting the party that I talk about in the review, where we played through pretty much the whole game ’til late at night and had a hell of a lot of fun.

The Brainy Gamer Confab – Michael Abbott, Manveer Heir and I hold down the fifth installment of this excellent set of podcasts, and listening to it now, I didn’t ramble as much as I thought I did. Also, I was glad to hear so many people on the Confab still remember The Path. For all its shortcomings, I don’t think we’re through talking about it – and I want to put it right back on the radar at the end of the year.

I’m hard at work at this week’s column right now. I have one written but I don’t know if it’s … special enough. So wish me luck.

By the way, I continue to post to Twitter, and every week or so I shoout out a bunch of one-tweet reviews of comic books. I might post some of them here for posterity. After starting out with 800-1000 word record reviews, it’s fun to sum up a comic in a single 140-character tweet. But some of the books I’ve been reading deserve a little more attention, so maybe I’ll come back to the blog for those.

So I had to cover the new chiptunes album Kind of Bloop, a Mario-meets-Miles revision of the iconic jazz LP. I had my own thoughts and rants, and then I realized, I should get a comment from someone. Who could comment on a novelty project like this? Well, who else but Dr. Demento?

That’s in this week’s Edge Online column. Check it out!

Side note: a number of people have written up the project, but almost nobody has really reviewed it. I didn’t write a full record review, but I tried to bring some critical judgment to it, specifically to say that no, this isn’t blasphemy (see also John Zorn’s Spy vs. Spy if you think for even a second this is radical); but at the same time, taking this route doesn’t automatically make it great. “All Blues” is much stronger than the other four tracks, and no coincidence, it’s also the least faithful to the Miles jazz milieu. But I’ll also fess up to a prejudice: I’m just not sold on the whole “wow, 8-bit art, chiptunes!” movement. I’d still rather hear artists who use chiptunes and 8-bit-style beeps and bloops as just one tiny element in their arsenal, like the eyeglass screwdriver at the bottom of their toolbox.

But don’t worry, this won’t turn into Grumpy Old Dahlen’s column – I have more fun ideas ahead. Though it’ll be hard to top Dr. Demento.

My kid and I play pinball, and I get whomped.

It happened a month ago, at the comic book shop. He spotted a Simpsons pinball machine and took a shine to it, and I thought, “Let’s see what happens.” See, my kid’s four, and at that age, every day’s a turning point. He’s still little and baby-faced, but he’s learning to make faces at us – and the rack of life is just starting to stretch his skinny, gangly limbs. He’s not cynical yet, and he doesn’t have a mean bone in his body – or a competitive one. His world has no winners or losers: there are plenty of bugs, robots and ice cream cones to go around.

At least, that’s what he thought until I gave him two quarters, a folding chair to stand on, and help pulling the spring on that first ball.

Big thanks to the inimitable Tom Bissell for giving this a read and giving me terrific edits and suggestions. One lesson I’ll take away with me: I wrote that my kid was “sharp as a tack,” and realizing it was a cliche, I changed that to “tack-sharp.” Tom pointed out that I was really just dodging a cliche instead of eliminating it, and so I took that out. Getting cute is never the answer.

This column is still going gangbusters, and I’m extremely grateful to everyone who’s given me a kind word or a link. (Check out the latest installment of the excellent Experience Points podcast - they riff off my Mars column!) I have a really fun interview and topic for next week’s column, so watch for that – but I also want to widen the discussion, get more input from readers and bring more people in to talk over issues and just kinda banter. Friends from the brainysphere will be tapped more and more.

I also want to do more of the personal thing, of course. In fact, my kid and I are hitting Funspot over at Weirs Beach – just an hour away from us – and I’m planning to do an end-of-the-season thing about that.

Also: recently I talked about starting a game project. I’m taking a breather this week to explore different idea, but I got one mechanic basically working and might frame a game around it as a prototype. I’m still serious about doing a developer diary and will post that here if I get moving on it. For the first time all year, I feel like I have steady writing work and a few actual free nights to think about stuff like this, so I’ll be taking advantage of that for sure …

When you’ve justed posted an article or launched a new column (like I have), nothing’s more exciting than seeing it get linked from other websites. Even before I started this gig, I would regularly comb the weekly round-ups of gaming links, which all tend to fall on the weekend. And it occurred to me, hey, why not round up all the links to all those round-ups here – so that anyone who wants to keep tabs on the gaming blogs will know what to bookmark?

Each of these roundups has taste and voice, and surprisingly little overlap. Here we go:

Insult Swordfighting, Friday Afternoon Tidbits (Friday) – Mitch Krpata’s round-up, with great notes on his choices. Also an easy way to keep tabs on his Boston Phoenix reviews and his awesome round-ups of gaming forum nonsense.

Chewing Pixels, The Week in Links (Friday) – Simon Parkin actually leans to non-gaming topics, which makes this even more of a must-read.

Critical Distance, This Week in Videogame Blogging (Sunday) – Critical Distance has become the hub for what we lovingly call “the Brainysphere” (previously mapped here). The weekly link round-ups and other features will keep you plugged in – and just as important, can help you join in, ’cause the best thing about this particular community is how well it welcomes strangers.

Rock Paper Shotgun, The Sunday Papers (Sunday) – Well, you probably knew how great this is.

Kotaku.com.au, The Sunday Supplement (Sunday) – Terse and impeccable, Kotaku’s Oz branch editor David Wildgoose’s round-up hits you with five great links, every week.

Erik Hanson and the Video Games and Human Values Initiative, Context Clues (Monday) – Hanson’s round-ups are monsters in length and brainy heft. This will wake you up on a Monday.

What did I miss?

UPDATE: Wow, how dumb – GameSetWatch’s links, which are daily when Simon’s in town, are one of the best round-ups you can find on the ‘net. But I can’t see a category tag that I can point you to, so just subscribe to the whole blog – it’s pretty much all good.