In last week's Box Office Power Rankings, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button finished two points ahead of Marley and Me. They were third and first, respectively, in overall box office, and one point apart in the per-theater standings.

As 2008 exited, withered and old and tired, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was birthed into theaters, fully formed as a Best Picture favorite. Among the major contenders, it's the only conventional Oscar bait to have been given a wide release at this point. (Ignore The Dark Knight and WALL·E, which are first and foremost popular movies that just happened to garner a lot of passionate praise, and hence Oscar potential after they were released.)

My 2008 album begins in Utah and ends in (or near) hell. Whether you think the distance between the starting point and the destination is a lot of territory or not much, we do get to travel pretty far afield. There's sunny California with the Botticellis, lovely inner-city Baltimore with DoMaJe, Iraq with the estimable Danny Elfman, and someplace sublimely absurd with Flight of the Conchords.

Rodney Blackwell insists that he did not make the difference.

"It wasn't me, I'm telling you," he said last month.

We are discussing Kone Centre, the planned 18- to 20-story building with approximately 130,000 square feet that will change Moline's skyline, ensures that 375 Kone employees will remain in the Quad Cities for 15 years, and completes - with an exclamation point - the major components of the Bass Street Landing initiative that was supposed to be finished in 2003.