our little lucy lu is becoming less and less little by the day. it’s hard to believe, but today she turns 5. as cliché as it sounds, it really does seem like yesterday that we were driving to the hospital in paducah preparing to meet her for the first time.

this isn’t the first time i’ve blogged about conversations on real time with bill maher. in spite of having regular (weekly, probably) disagreements with some of maher’s positions, it’s one of my favorite shows because of the blend of maher’s humor and the show’s candid conversations.

another couple months have passed by, so it’s time to once again bring you two in review. i’ve talked before about how music tends to come in waves. 2012 has begun with a wave that hasn’t crested. the last couple months have produced an incredible amount of great music. the bad news is that has forced me to leave a lot of great music off this list. the potential good news (i say potential because i might not have time to do it) is that i’m considering creating a b-sides styles mix of the stuff that didn’t make this mix. so, i hope you enjoy.

here’s the lineup for the march/april edition of two in review:

a couple days ago, max brantley, on the arkansas blog, posted a list of city employees organized by place of residency (little rock or non-little rock). the most skewed numbers toward non-little rock residents—confirming brantley’s suspicions—were police and fire employees.

non-little rock fire department employees outnumber little rock employees by an almost 3 to 1 margin (295 to 110). despite the margin being more narrow, the far more troubling numbers, to me, are non-little rock police employees who outnumber little rock employees by more than 100 (365 to 252).

i recently began a new blog series called ’10 spot’ in which i’d be crafting lists of the top 10 songs from artists of my choosing. here’s a little back story about how this began from my original post:

several weeks ago, brandi carlile announced she’d be releasing her 4th (studio) album, bear creek, on june 5. last summer, while seeing her in kansas city, i grabbed a live recording of raise hell, a track that will be included on the new release. while that was a bit of a tease of her new work, we now have something much better.

several weeks ago, my friend bryan stormed (when large men walk briskly, the term “stormed” is usually appropriate…) into my office and laid down a musical challenge: “top 10 black keys songs by the end of the day. go!”.

so, throughout the course of the day, i whittled down my original off-the-top-of-my-head list of about 32 to my final 10. at the end of the day, we compared and contrasted our lists. (bryan’s is here.)

and, of course, good times were had by all.