A sad week for LAist as they lose their trusted and amazing editor Tony Pierce to the LA Times, but what a blast his last week was. He shared his 25 Favorite CDs of 2007 and wrote a great review of just a good movie, No Country For Old Men. At UCLA, thousands of students celebrated the end of their quarter by running around campus in their undies (lots of photos in a two-part photo essay, one, two). That wasn't the only photo essay either: Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy friends and Star Trek actors all joined in at the Writers Strike and KROQ's Almost Acoustic Christmas brought two nights of amazing bands that included Avenged Sevenfold, Linkin Park (Part I), Modest Mouse, Muse, Spoon and The Killers (Part II). Not only is L.A. a great music town, it has just been named the best city for bookish types. For those who are looking for something a little more active, American Gladiators are back (yes!) and if that's not enough, how about a Christmas gift of action and adventure?

Phillyist is counting down to 2008 (and really enjoying it - yes, in that way!), leaving them exhausted, disoriented, and irritable.

Each Tuesday we will feature new music that should (or whatever) be on your radar.

Please Let Us Know What You Think About:

1. Justin Timberlake - Future Sex/Lovesounds (Deluxe Edition): One of the best pop albums of 2006 is back in the form of the super-fan deluxe edition. Is this exciting? We guess so. You get three new songs on the second CD, including a new version of "Sexy Back." Worth $17.99 - Nah. We'll just purchase the three new songs on iTunes for $2.98.

2. Westlife - Back Home: This Irish boy-band has sold over 36 million albums. Not one of them to me. They've had huge success over in the U.K. with fourteen #1 singles. They must be doing something right.

3. Mudvayne - By the People, for the People: Heavy metal. Bleh.

For more info on other CD releases, take the jump...

Tonight, for one night only, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts will be featuring two sneak previews of Dirty Country, a highly entertaining documentary about the underground world of raunchy music, directed by Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, founders and hosts of the Found Footage Festival, which sold out four shows at the Red Vic last month. Dirty Country, which won the Audience Award at this year's South By Southwest, is part of Yerba Buena's Red State Cinema: Rural Auteurs series.

We just screened the 70-minute flick today, and we were happy to discover that the documentary's main character, Larry Pierce (NSFW), lives just about an hour or so away from our home town, Indianapolis. (We hope he might be performing in the area when we're home for Christmas.) Pierce is a very endearing small-town, family man who loves performing his bawdy tunes for friends in his garage, while selling his tapes and CDs at truck stops and local record stores.

During the filming, Pierce was forced into early retirement after 30 years at his company, and his future seemed pretty bleak. But it turns out that in addition to being a favorite among truckers, Pierce has been considered a cult-classic among his peers. He now tours with bawdy-rock band -Itis and was featured on Howard Stern in January (he'll also be back on again next Wednesday, Nov. 14), and according to his MySpace page (NSFW), his next gig will be in New York City this month. Right on, Larry!

In Dirty Country, you'll also meet other awesome bawdy performers: Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts (the original party band), John Valby (our personal fave), and Blowfly, aka Clarence Reed, who's been providing quality dirty rap since 1960 (ok, they're all our faves).

Pictured above is Larry Pierce at the Nashville Film Festival. Check out the trailer! (NSFW)

Dirty Country | Yerba Buena Center for the Arts | 701 Mission St, SF | Sneak Preview Friday, November 9 at 7 and 9 p.m. | Call for ticket availability: (415) 978-ARTS (2787)

Nick Drake is the subject of Jeroen Berkvens's short documentary A Skin Too Few, which is playing the DocFest this week, and he's a tough guy to make a film about. He put out three records in his short career, only toured once, briefly, and was apparently never filmed or videotaped while performing. So the film does its best to create a portrait of a troubled young man through the power of his music, and through interviews with his actress sister Gabrielle Drake, as well as some of the folks who worked with him. What you end up with is a movie that's less document, and more of an impression, with lots of his songs playing over images of the wind blowing through the trees around the estate he grew up on. His songs are so powerful that it almost, almost works. Don't see this movie if you want to learn all the facts there are about Nick Drake, but do see it if you're already a fan and want a brief glimpse into the world that influenced him.

A Skin Too Few screens again at 5 p.m. tonight at the Roxie and on Wednesday at 7 p.m. and 9:15 p.m.

The Bay Area is home to many intriguing small businesses. Still, color us surprised that we've found in Juno Baby a local purveyor of high-quality children's educational products that manages to encapsulate what we like best in a company.

It's got the "mom & pop feel" of a local company. Juno Baby has a smaller, focused product base than like companies. And, yet, it can still stand shoulder to shoulder with the big boys like (Disney-owned) Baby Einstein and similar. The product strikes us as "honest," for lack of a better descriptor--its leverages Belinda Takahashi, Ph.D.'s expertise to arrange orchestral music rather than canned electronic tunes. Her husband, Adam Adelman, contributes his directorial know-how. They started the company based on their opinion that there was a lack of good, quality educational products for their own daughter.

Awards? They've got 'em -- tons of 'em, most recently two of the company's DVDs earned 2007 Parent's Choice Awards--which means that now all three of Juno Baby's DVDs have won this award. Impressive, to be sure, but the true test was sitting down, watching a number of the Juno baby videos and listening to the music CD with our toddler.

We (that's SFist Jer and his wife) agree that the music has more to it than other baby videos we've seen and most kid-oriented CDs we've listened to. We're not music experts ourselves, so we can't pin it down in technical terms. We can say that there are more, varied instruments and the singing patterns seem more varied as well. The characters participate in different parts of songs -- sometimes singing simultaneously, sometimes apart, often creating a rich, layered effect.

In our estimation, it isn't that Juno Baby is such a huge departure from the other quality kid's stuff out there. It's appealing because it's local and not oversaturated. Sure, the Baby Einstein (and similar) stuff looks great and has its cute touches, but it's EVERYWHERE--almost to the point where it seems mandated that your child MUST EXPERIENCE THIS PRODUCT. (Sub-message: OR YOU'RE NOT A GOOD PARENT).

So it's time for bloggers' powers to activate.

On the way into work, we were reading the Chron's Peter Hartlaub's highly enjoyable piece on used CDs and how they can reclaim one's cheesy musical past, something we could definitely relate to, when we looked at the accompanying photos of the cheesy musical past he is reclaiming. Shown are cds of Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell", Bon Jovi's "Slippery When Wet," and Guns N' Roses mighty "Use Your Illusion II." But it's not what he listed that got our goat, it's the captions. Because he has "Rebel Yell" coming out in 1990, "Slippery" in 1999 (!), and "Use Your Illusion II" as coming out in 1997.

Great googly moogly!

When we first bought it, we spent the entire weekend uploading our CDs on it. When we did that, we spent the better part of the next two weeks doing nothing but downloading songs for it (err, legally, of course). But we just can't stop. We must keep on adding music.

When not home, we spend our idle hours thinking up new songs to download. Or dreaming up sub-playlists we need to put together to make sense of the close to 1000 songs we have right now (and yes, it's only 1000 and we're sure a whole lot of you are thinking that's piffle, but the whole "my playlist is bigger than yours" thing is a rant for another time). How bad has it gotten? We have schematic diagrams and flow charts put together to organize all this. In our heads, we debate whether certain songs belong in this playlist or that playlist. Like does Pat Benatar's "Shadows of the Night" belong in our "Rockin'" playlist or our "Rockin' Metal" play list? We even have a notebook we've started carrying around with us to jot down songs that pop into our heads that would totally be download-worthy. And when we hear a cool song on the radio or in a bar, we make a mental note to figure out what it is so we can download it.