Top 5 Halloween Albums

5. The Alkaline Trio "From Here to Infirmary" One of the best Alk3 albums, Dan Andriano said they set out to "tighten the screws" while recording this and they definitely accomplished that goal. Great harmonies from Matt Skiba and Dan all over this one, along with dark, almost depressing lyrics on every song and very tight track composition make this one of my favorite discs to listen to time and time again.


4. Tiger Army "Tiger Army II: Power of Moonlite" These guys make some awesome rockabilly! If you're not familiar with the genre, it's equal parts 50's guitar-rock and Misfits dark, punky simplicity. With tracks like "Power of Moonlite" and "Cupid's Victim" you can't really go wrong here.


3. AFI "Black Sails in the Sunset" One of the best punk bands of all time, Davey Havok finally gets vocal backup from Jade Puget and Hunter Burgan to create amazing choir choruses on this album. Foreboding lyrics, heavy riffs, and an overall dark feeling prevail throughout the album.


2. Misfits "Walk Among Us" Hands down, the best horror-core band in history. Danzing is on top of his game on this disc, his crooning on "Astro Zombies" set the standard for punk rock singers through today. The songs aren't terribly complex, the lyrics aren't miles deep, and the sound is solid. Plus the Misfits (the real Misfits - shut up, Jerry Only) played their last show on Halloween in the scariest place on earth: Detroit.

1. AFI "All Hallow's EP" This is easily one of my favorite discs of all time, Halloween theme aside.
A Fire Inside really hits the top of their game on this CD despite there being only 4 tracks (one of which, "Halloween" is a Misfits cover). But every song on this disc is absolutely amazing. "Fall Children" and "Totalimmortal" had a more profound impact on me than any two other songs by a single band.

No, The Misfits' "Halloween" does not make the list. Sorry, but it's only got one song (seriously, "Halloween II" sounds really similar) and it's not an especially great song so: NO!

Top 5 Reasons to Stay Current on Economic News

1. To get a leg up. Most Americans don't know their ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to economics, finance, or anything beyond personal accounting. Figure this stuff out (even just a little bit) and you can beat the crowd to a lot of investments.

2. To stay sharp. Exercise your grey matter outside of work, expand your mental horizons, and test your math, geography, and sociology skills - economics, properly applied, is little more than a combination of the three. Which brings us to...

3. To get a fresh perspective. If nothing else, you'll see things in a slightly different light. Your new views might not come with as rosy a tint, but if you don't like the reality of the situation, you're in a better place to change it after you can comprehend it.

4. To get a better idea of how things really work. Finance and economics tie pretty much everything else together - everyone is beholden to the almighty dollar. Would it kill you to have a better understanding of how the strings are moving the puppets? Doubtful. Knowledge is power, y'all.

5. Because the economy is affecting you, whether you follow it or not. This is the bottom line. You know what they say: Ignorance is bliss, but so is getting rich.

Rocking to: Alkaline Trio "Maybe I'll Catch Fire"

Web 2.0 - Are We Headed for Another Dot-Com Bubble & Burst?

You probably remember the dot-com bubble in the late 1990's. I was busy having acne and trading baseball cards at the time, but even I remember it happening. The crux of the issue: stocks of tech companies were inflated beyond their real values and when everyone figured this out, they sold their shares of the overvalued companies. Prices dropped quickly (supply and demand, folks) and a lot of people lost a lot of money.

Why were these companies overvalued in the first place? Media reporting had a lot to do with it and irrational actions by way too many investors drove the bubble to bust. There were also A LOT of questionable accounting practices going on behind the scenes, which made some stocks seem like a more reasonable investment. Crowd behavior was the big thing, though - people stopped looking at traditional investing tools like "Price to Earnings Ratios" and started qualifying stocks based on the product they promised to deliver. I'm sorry, but that is madness. The media didn't help, putting commentators that backed these companies front and center - after all, the dot-coms were paying for advertising space on their networks with all this new cash. Gotta love capitalism!

So, are we headed for the same future with Facebook, Twitter, Google, and MySpace? I don't think so. And here's why:

1. It's too soon. As George Bush once said, "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." Eloquent, he is not, but he makes a relevant point: most investors are still feeling the pangs of loss from the first dot-com bubble to get roped in again.


2. The American recession is stopping it. In the first dot-com boom, venture capital was pretty easy to come by if you wanted to start a company with either an e- prefix or a .com suffix. These days, start-up money is tougher to come by and, as a result, fewer worthless ideas are being funded. Companies are also innovating faster both internally and laterally as a result of competition for both IP and the almighty dollar, which is closing a lot of gaps that new companies would be looking to fill. So, uh, again, Bush is behind this one. Sorry.

3. The "bubble" is small enough to sustain itself - for now. Web 2.0 companies fall into two categories - monsters of industry (Google, eBay, Yahoo!, etc) and companies that get acquired by monsters of industry. Since there are fewer "check out this hot stock tip" companies floating around, market speculation as a whole is lower, so there isn't enough unjustified investment for the whole deck of cards to collapse - for now.

4. These companies have real money. The dot-coms had mostly speculative value from their IPOs and no real income to justify their accounting statements. Most of the companies in question (notably Google) have cash reserves and income streams to back up their real buying power. This is a stark contrast to the IPO-based valuations of dot-com companies, which as we saw were largely erroneous. Erroneous! Erroneous on all counts! You take that back, Dorothy Mantooth is a saint!


Not that I'm endorsing a blind investment in these, or any other, companies. Always do your homework when it comes to investing, kids!

Extra Credit Reading (also: these are where I got a lot of the facts for this article, I try not to plagiarize.)
Random Walk Down Wall Street - timeless book
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
BBC's Take on Bubble2.0

Albums That Changed My Life: Dropkick Murphys "Sing Loud, Sing Proud"

1. I defy anyone to name an album with a better opening song. The chant of "Let's Go, Murphys" can be heard at every DKMs show and covering BC's fight song let them fly the Boston flag with that rare combination of class and toughness - Boston ain't no joke. And they put so much of their own spin on the classic lyrics that most people (most people I know) don't even know it's not an original.

2. This album has no bad songs on it. The closest is "Good Rats" which is kind of lame but still funny enough to let it slide. The ballads "Forever," "The Torch," and "Wild Rover" (which features Shane MacGowan of The Pogues) are a bold move on a punk album, but the Murphys lay them down like nobody else could. "Spicy McHaggis Jig" proves they're not above having a good time while they rock. And literally every other song on this album makes me want to punch holes in the wall - especially "The Gauntlet"

3. Dual vocals from Al Barr and Ken Casey will melt your face. Both great singers, Casey also tears it up on the bass. They trade off enough to keep it interesting and bring in the whole band for gang-vocal choruses. It's a unity album, it's pseudo-Oi!, it's Celtic, it rocks.

4. They're not egomaniacs, they're still the boys from the neighborhood - "Which Side Are You On" takes a heavily pro-union stance which they repeat in later albums ("Worker's Song" and "Warrior's Code" to name a few tracks). They stick to what they know - their Irish roots. "Rocky Road to Dublin" and "Legend of Finn Mac" prove that, and "Spicy McHaggis Jig" makes no bones about it.

5. It propelled them to a new level. "SL,SP" put them on the national map, got them a spot on the Warped Tour to support their follow-up "Blackout" and "The Gauntlet" is probably the best song on Epitaph's "Punk-O-Rama Vol. 6" compilation. "SL,SP" was the first album to feature Murphys' signature bagpipes and mandolin, in addition the standard punk rock drums-bass-and-two-guitars setup.

6. It sounds like rock and roll. Blistering guitar solos and driving backbeats give it that almost-live feel that's pretty tough to come by. And it was produced by the band themselves. Ken Casey took over production after Lars Fredickson, producer of "Do or Die" and "The Gang's All Here," left them to their own devices. Bottom Line: it sounds as great as possible.

7. Seriously, you need seven reasons to love the hell out of this album? Fine: the coat of arms on the album cover is now probably the most bad-ass belt buckle you can buy. Lucky 13 makes them and if you buy me one, I'll write an article about whatever you want.

Web-Based Finance Management Tools - Mint and Buxfer

I signed up for Mint.com today to track all of my finances in one place. Now, you might ask yourself: why should I bother? All of my accounts let me track my balances online already.

For me, the answer was simple; because it turns out that Bank of America has the WORST online account support ever. I can never remember my 52-character login name and they refuse to send it to me via email, so it's actually easier for me to track my Bank of America debit card balance through Mint than through the BoA site. (Aside: I'll give BoA credit for their iPhone application. The app is fairly useful and includes a locating feature that interfaces with the iPhone's GPS to direct you to the nearest ATM or branch - it's been handy for me a few times)

If you're not familiar, Mint.com is a website for managing your personal finances. It's sort of like an online version of Quicken - if Quicken was a lot more automated and intuitive. Mint is awesome because it lets you login to your online account management systems through their site, and automatically syncs your balances onto your Mint dashboard. It lets you manage your credit, checking, saving, and investment accounts, as well as your automobile or home payments. It also lets you set up a budget to manage your finances on a very detailed level, including tagging expenses and setting up monthly recurring sub-accounts.

Mint.com is free to join, and they've got an iPhone application that's free as well. It recently got bought by Intuit, the company behind Quicken, QuickBooks, TurboTax, etc. All of the information you input into Mint is protected with bank-level security encryption. It doesn't let you move any money around, either - so even if your account was compromised, you wouldn't be liable to lose any money. Essentially, you can track all of your financial accounts at once, so the chances of fraud going unnoticed in any of them drops significantly. Mint is especially handy with the iPhone app and mobile alerts, so you can keep an eye on everything on the go. It took me about 15 minutes after registration to get my accounts sync'ed, download the iPhone app, and make my monthly budget.

With my Mint setup, I'm putting aside $600 per month. What to do with that? This month's stash is going toward tattoos, I can tell you that much.

I give Mint the First-Ever AYP Gorilla of Approval.

On a related note: I am in no way affiliated with the Gorilla Biscuits, nor do I purport to be.

Another pretty useful site is Buxfer.com, a site for tracking expenses between groups of people. I started using Buxfer with my old roommates in Boston (yo, Patrick and Jorge!) and it's been a boon to me ever since. To use Buxfer, you join the site and add transactions for your personal budget. Like Mint, you can set recurring transactions, automatically sync with your other online accounts, and tag entries. You can set reminders, like "thrift store re-stock day" or "pay the effing power bill this week." The only way it doesn't compare to Mint is visually - Mint's UI is very streamlined and sexy. Buxfer gets the job done very well, but it's not as fancy or automated. Chalk it up to personal preference.

You can also setup or join a group that shares expenses, which is wherein the real power of the site lies. You can split a transactions between any number of group members, or by dollar amounts. It's very useful for small groups - baseball teams, housing co-ops, school clubs, and so on.

For example: you and the rest of your band decide to record an album. But your bassist doesn't have the cash for his share of the recording time right now and your drummer already fronted the money for the CD cases. Instead of haggling over who owes how much and trying to keep track of who's paid who, you can put it all on Buxfer. You can split the recording costs between everyone, discount your drummer his buy-in for the cases, and your bassist can tell everyone when he'll have the money.

Buxfer is free to join but offers premium membership packages that allow you unlimited budgets, accounts, etc. They also have a free iPhone application that lets you view and edit transactions on the move. They've got a Mac Dashboard app, too.

So basically, if you're aloof when it comes to personal finance like I am, these websites will take some of the hassle out of organizing your money. Plus, (free) iPhone applications make it easy to keep one eye on your money and the other on the lookout for new guitars at the pawn shop.

Currently listening to: The Aggrolites "S/T"