As demanded by my daughter, the jokes stop here. For today, at least.

Maya's been nagging me the last few days to "stop always making jokes" and we've effectively agreed to a one-day moratorium on my silliness.  Granted, the terms of this brief cease-fire are squishy.  She can't really define what a joke is, but she knows it when she sees it.  Kinda like the Supreme Court and obscenity.  So in the interest of honoring our agreement, I'll post a few quick shots at some new albums I've had in rotation.  If you find anything funny herein, don't tell my daughter.

The debut from LA band Local Natives came out a number of months ago, but I just got around to picking it up.  If you like the sort of lush sound that made Grizzly Bear such a breakthrough act, you'll certainly hear the apt comparisons in what Local Natives offers.  They sound like what I always thought bands would sound like if you took the performance and the need for original shtick off the bill.  My rating for "Gorilla Manor" is a very pleasant B-minus.  No epic standouts, but well worth a mention because the band is so chuck full o' talent.

Like too many people, I am a fan of Outkast.  And while I generally couldn't have cared less, I heard about the extended period of time that it took Big Boi (the less flashy half of that duo) to put together his recent solo release.  We're talking years.  The result is especially surprising not because it's good.  But because there's so little depth there.  Lots of sexy tawk.  Most of it pretty damn juvenile.  The thought of cutting and remixing all of this over and over constitutes some incredibly dull staying power (if you know what I mean).  So I have to lower my rating to a missionary-style B-minus.  The beats are good, the sound can be juicy.  But the spontaneity is pure high school, if you take into account how long we've been waiting for something to happen.

The opposite type of output comes from Wolf Parade, in terms of quickly prolific releases (please veer away from the sexy in following my train of thought in this refrain).  These Quebecois doods crank out the new stuff faster than the paint dries on their past projects.  I'm not dismissive - this is a good roadtrip album if you're talking over the top of it in the car with someone you actually enjoy rambling along with.  But it's a thin sort of paint that doesn't really stick to much.  My rating is an appreciative but still looking for the really tasty hook C.  If you're jonesing like me for the upcoming release from their fellow Canucks, Arcade Fire, this will probably help get you through the next few weeks, though.

Hope your backlog of pop culture worth mentioning is also lessened today.  Rock on.

A story about much more than toys, conceived and told with childlike glee

Piling on the accolades for "Toy Story 3" may seem like a waste of good adjectives.  Touching.  Heartfelt.  Family-riffic.  But I won't dispute that they all apply.  My rating after seeing it Saturday with kids and other adults in tow - a deserved full A.  It is, without a doubt in my mind, a perfect movie.  Aside from all the obvious emotional and intellectual plaudits, I must add a few that might get lost in the mix of blubbering and self-identification experienced by kids and adults alike.  Foremost, the storytelling is brilliant in its efficiency.  A few lines of dialogue and well-crafted animation sequences here accomplish more than even the most masterful filmmaker could muster (the scene where Mrs. Potato Head uses her detached eye to see that the toys being taken to the dump was a tragic mistake is what earned this compliment from me).  And secondly, the animation has improved to the degree where the facial features of the "human" characters are more expressive than real actors.  I mean that.  "Toy Story 3" introduces Bonnie, a beautifully creative young girl, and re-introduces Andy, the boy who is now headed off to college and whose decisions of what to do with the toys in that light form the cohesion in the storyline of the movie.  Giving anything away would be infinitely lame.  Harping on the intensity of certain scenes for very young children would be unfair given the overall arc of the film.  But missing this movie, would be the real shame.  It's just that damn good.

On a very different level, the new album from art rock weirdo Ariel Pink (and his backing band, Haunted Graffiti) is a hard thing to recommend.  It's dressed up, formerly low-fidelity artiness.  You need to be a major music geek to even care about this dood's ascendancy.  But if you appreciate challenging new music that inspires conversation and strongly held opinions, this album will whet an appetite.  I even recommend a pairing with the decidedly hard to pigeonhole funk parade debut album by Janelle Monae discovered from the orbit of Outkast around Atlanta.  Both "Before Today" and "The Archandroid" earn the same rating from me - slightly uneasy C-pluses.  Someday I may like them.  But for now, it feels like music appreciation by way of a long forced march through unfamiliar terrain.  If you have entirely different opinions of both albums, I won't be surprised in the least.

Hope your own playthings give you many more years of pleasure going forward from today.  Rock on.