Someone Call The Guiness Book of Records

I'm on the verge of setting a personal record for most consecutive days wearing my L.L. Bean duck boots! During the past two weeks, I've worn them all but two days, and considering the number of disgusting puddles outside, where one can't tell exactly how deep they are until stepping in the gray slushy muck, I'll wear them through the weekend. That's easily the most I've ever worn winter boots in one month.

As a city, we may threaten another record -- the greatest amount of snowfall in one winter. The Globe reports today that Boston has had 38.3 inches of snow in January, the third-snowiest January ever, and 60.3 inches so far this winter. The seasonal record is 107.6 inches, from 1995-96. (All of the official totals are recorded at Logan airport.) While shoveling out my Subaru last night from the latest storm, which was a healthy nine inches or so, and searching for places to put the snow, I thought we should go for the record. After seeing so much of it, why not shoot for something historical? It won't take too much more. We've come this far!

Eight years ago, I never would've expected that one day I'd like my duck boots well enough to wear them this often. Then again, I never would've expected they'd be so popular. Wait long enough and a fashion cycle eventually spins your way, I suppose. In fact, I've noticed them, particularly in the lighter-toned version that I own, shown above, on more women than men the past week. One of my female friends who also wears them said she found my pair slimmer than hers and suggested that maybe I had the women's version and she had the men's, and that we should trade. I'll take this a compliment.

The Social Network's Social Value

"The Social Network" was such an excellent movie because it made Mark Zuckerberg's character, played by Jesse Eisenberg, so despicable. Typically, a major-studio movie would glorify Zuckerberg's entrepreneurial upheaval of the business world and social norms and celebrate him as a shrewd outsider too young and confident to play by the rules, making us all the better. But this one, directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, who deserve lots of credit, didn't leave me enamored with Zuckerberg -- in fact, it was the opposite -- nor did it inspire me to start my own business and try to emulate his success. Mainly, it left me puzzled as to how he has become successful: What's the combination of skill, luck, motivation, greed and cruelty?

Fincher and Sorkin acknowledge Zuckerberg doesn't fit the classically popular, upwardly mobile type: He's short, thin, messily dressed, mildly attractive and Jewish, instead of tall, muscular, fashionable, handsome and a WASP-- the Harvard ideal of privilege, represented by the Winklevoss brothers whom he uses as his launching pad and quickly laps on the race to success. However, only within a certain stratum of Harvard society, a small fraction of a small fraction, is Zuckerberg an outsider; he's not actually one. He grew up in Westchester County, has upper-middle-class professional parents, and went to Harvard. There are only a small number of people in the U.S. -- probably somewhere in the low five figures, including me -- who fit this profile. It's a helpful launching pad to have.

The movie's other great provocation is questioning whether Facebook's social network has any social value. Fincher shows that the Web site dismantles the exclusivity of the social clubs that proliferate at Harvard, putting the misfits in charge. Aside from this again all being somewhat relative, Fincher also wonders if this has any deeper meaning. Even Zuckerberg's character tells his friend Eduardo Saverin, played by Andrew Garfield, when Saverin closes their bank account, briefly threatening the business, that it was an idiotic move because the only reason anyone is online using Facebook is because his friends are online using Facebook. There's no rationale beyond a circular inner one where everyone is merely checking up on their friends' photos, relationship statuses, and other generally frivolous recent activity. Remove one card and the rest vanish.

Facebook has been credited as one of the social media Tunisian citizens used during the past month to topple their oppressive, corrupt president -- a powerful shot at Arab autocracies -- and the site/business create important connections within social circles, business and politics that couldn't have happened five years ago. But only a minuscule amount of Facebook's use falls into this meaningful category. The rest is, again, chasing after photos, relationship statuses and other generally frivolous recent activity. Such a distinction matters when Facebook is becoming one of the U.S.'s most important and highest-profile companies, with an estimated value of $50 billion, based on Goldman Sachs' recent investment (twice the value the producers of "The Social Network" gave in the film's closing credits, only about six months ago). This value easily surpasses those of old-guard media companies, such as Time Warner, but also makes me wonder why it's worth so much when nothing tangible is being created.

Is Facebook's rise a powerful symbol of the 21st-century economy's rise or the strongest example of how this economy is too vapid to sustain itself? Since watching the movie on a plane two weeks ago, I've still signed on to Facebook, though with somewhat less frequency and a slight twinge each time I do so.

Welcome to Ahmedabad

On Dec. 26, I'd never heard of Ahmedabad, but on Dec. 29, I was in the back of a car, driving there, mainly because the city's airport offered the most reasonably priced flight to Delhi two friends and I could find. Turns out Ahmedabad has nearly four million people, is India's fastest-growing city and is one of the world's fastest growing cities. And after spending three days there, I think I know more about the city than anyone in the U.S. who isn't Indian-American or an India specialist, which is only a tiny fraction of this country and a generally astounding thought.

At an event the World Economic Forum hosted last fall, a professor noted that not only are developing countries growing at a rate to compete with the U.S. globally, but they each have many cities we've never heard of that rank among the world's fastest-growing. Sure, everyone knows about Dubai, Mumbai and Shanghai, as they're now international capitals of finance, but closely trailing them are ... Sana'a, Ahmedabad, Karachi, Abuja and so on. This has major implications for global politics, commerce, urban development and human rights.

While walking and driving around Ahmedabad, I couldn't stop thinking, This is what the Indian middle class, hundreds of millions deep, looks like. People dress well, drive nice cars and, as superficial a judgment as this is, look comfortable. Buildings are being built everywhere. Pleasant neighborhoods abound. Business is good and the doors are open, and there are billboards everywhere plastered with the governor's face, promoting the state's economy in a vaguely autocratic way. (The governor is also vaguely autocratic. He and his political party are tied to the religious cleansing of the city's Muslims in 2002.)

The airport's new international terminal is about to open, even though the only direct international flight from Ahmedabad is to Muscat. (I'd love to know who's on that plane and why.) Everything at the airport is glass and ostentatious -- I saw the biggest grass lawn of the whole trip there -- and at least for now, totally unnecessary, which enhances the vaguely autocratic feeling. We were about two levels of repression and a bit more oil money, of which there's already quite a bit in Ahmedabad, away from a laughably gaudy, egocentric strongman state.

Traveling to Ahmedabad on one's first trip to India is akin to visiting Charlotte or Salt Lake City on one's first trip to the U.S. -- newly prosperous, growing and conservative, and while attractive, generally unexciting and not the place one would visit unless there to see family or do business. And that's what makes Ahmedabad so fascinating, especially considering it might, in our lifetime, join the list of global capitals, which can't be said of the other two. Lesson for the U.S.: Keep looking in the rearview mirror.

Oh, and the food there was excellent. Above are two photos taken in Ahmedabad.

If It's In The Times, It Must Be True

In his most recent "Hey, Mr. Critic" column, Sam Sifton, the Times' restaurant critic, lets the reading public in on a little secret of my Tribe's: Trayf isn't quite trayf when it's found in Chinese food! One reader asks for a recommendation of a restaurant where she can take her Kosher boyfriend for a night of illicit rule-breaking. Sifton, who I believe is Jewish, replies, "If you want to skate close to the edge, where the ice is thin and crackly, Chinese is probably your best bet." He then quotes a former food critic for the Daily News, who says, "The Chinese cut their food into small pieces before it's cooked, disguising the nonkosher foods...My late cousin Daniel, who kept kosher, along with many other otherwise observant people I have known, happily ate roast pork fried rice and egg foo yung. 'What I can't see won't hurt me,' was Danny's attitude."

Funny enough: This joke is commonly accepted and has a long-running history! My family makes it often and even semi-abides by it. The joke also appears in "Portnoy's Complaint," that touchstone of rebellious Jewish culture. That this shows up in the Times' copy is proof that for all its worldly aspirations, the Times is actually a hometown paper. Where else but New York, where the Jewish population is the world's largest and Jewish culture the most ingrained, would this be part of the paper, understood by the readership and considered a not-foreign topic of conversation?

If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home By Now

All advertising is, by its nature, a misleadingly scrubbed version of reality. Adobe Photoshop, in particular, allows you to get away with a lot, most especially when it comes to architectural renderings and real estate ads. Look carefully at each one and you'll notice that a building's surroundings are always much greener, more pleasant and more exciting than they are in real life. I don't think I've ever seen so many egregious examples until traveling to Delhi.

Billboards for new apartment buildings are everywhere in Delhi, as are new buildings, which isn't much of a surprise considering how fast the city's population and built environment are growing. The most fascinating detail of the construction is the juxtaposition between the modern elegance of the buildings -- balconies, gated entrances, nice construction materials -- and the piles of bricks, sand, bits of trash, dilapidated buildings, roadside vendors, and generally chaotic streets that surround them. The construction process is also intriguing: The friend who hosted me said construction workers live in the buildings as they're built, which must be punishingly cold in Delhi's winter, and overall, the buildings look like they're in an unfinished state right until the moment they're not.

In short, there are no green lawns or palm trees around any new buildings, as the above photo, taken in one of Delhi's nicer residential neighborhoods, would suggest. In fact, there are very few lawns or open spaces in general in the city, though maybe I simply missed those parts of town. This ad -- and many of the others I saw -- suggest Delhi is in love with Corbusian, modernist towers in the park, though I found everything there to be too much of a jumble to be described by one aesthetic. As for those lawns, everyone can dream, though Delhi would sure be much less distinct and appealing if they came.

Thanks to whoever invented the most overused slogan in real estate advertising for this post's title. I wonder if he or she was able to trademark it.

All The '80s Britpop Records You Never Listen To

Wild Nothing's debut record, "Gemini," floats in from stage left with a cascading keyboard, ethereally hovers for 45 minutes, and then calmly flies away, stage right. Few records are as easy to wrap your arms around, but it's simplicity is misleading, as few records are so well composed and enjoyable. Listening to it is like chasing a butterfly through a field -- you're always a step behind, smiling and trying to understand it while its beautifully colored wings elusively flutter, willing to run after it all day long. I've chased it (aka listened to the album) over and over through the fall and early winter and never wanted to stop.

Sure, the record is an amalgamation of nearly every Britpop record released circa 1984-1989, but that means it's a history lesson as well as a great time, no? One of my friends says "Gemini" reminds him of Interpol when it emerged in 2002 with a fully formed debut record so mature and perfectly in place that it was clear they'd already hit their peak and wouldn't be able to evolve further or surpass it with future albums. Maybe so, but when the result is this good, there's no need to quibble. "Gemini" is easily my favorite record this year. Above is a video someone made to the wonderful first song, "Live in Dreams."

Anyway, on to a few other records I liked this year:

* The Radio Dept. -- "Clinging to a Scheme": This is the corollary to "Gemini" -- another record greatly influenced by '80s Britpop, but a little more mysterious, political and inaccessible. though excellent. Hopefully the shroud lifts when they come to the U.S. next month for their first true American tour. They play the Middle East on Feb. 4, which is shaping up to be quite the Boston hipster's dilemma. Also that night: Robyn at the House of Blues (more on her below) and Best Coast and Wavves at the Paradise.

* Beach House -- "Zebra": Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally, the band's leaders, can do little wrong. Each record of theirs is better than the previous one and they've accomplished what few band can: Let their sound evolve without betraying who they are. Someone played the entire album at an end-of-year party at the GSD and I thought, This record is most appropriate one possible for this crowd.

* The Walkmen -- "Lisbon": Nine years ago, when everyone, me included, was infatuated with every band coming out of New York, you would've won a lot of money if you bet that the Walkmen would be the band that was the most relevant and still making the best music in 2010. There seemed to be many other more worthy competitors at the time, but they've earned it by making good music over and over again. Even after five albums in, Hamilton Leithauser's disaffection with the record industry and the scene in general is charming. When he sings "You're one of us or one of them," with a little sneer and a little smile at the first song's end, I can't help smiling too. They deserve the money they earn.

* Mountain Man -- "Made the Harbor": Included more because their rise says great things about the state of indie rock, though their record, which sounds much like the soundtrack to "O, Brother Where Art Thou," is very good. If three women from Bennington, Vt., singing folk songs acapella or with minimal guitar accompaniments, can succeed, the indie scene can incorporate anything. The days of a litmus test are gone. I saw a great show featuring Mountain Man last summer, at the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northamption, Mass. They opened for Twin Sister and Bear in Heaven, two hyped Brooklyn bands, who were also very good. The variety in all three bands' music was wonderful.

Finally, the best song of 2010 was easily "Dancing on My Own," by Robyn. So danceable, so strong and so smart. I'd include her first record of the year on this list, but it wasn't exactly a record, more a collection of singles. It was nonetheless great.