I totally love lists (obviously). One of the few things I truly enjoy about the holiday season is all the "Best Of" lists floating around - I hunt them down like Elmer Fudd hunts wabbits - but in a purely non-OCD kind of way. Mostly I love lists because they provide so many opportunities to indulge in my favorite pastime: deriding the taste of others! And so in the spirit of giving, I made my own Best Of 2008 list. I chose categories according to whim, and ignored all publication/release dates. The space-time continuum means nothing to me - if I read/saw/heard it for the first time in 2008, it's eligible for awesomeness. Feel free to disdain as you please.
Best Essay: Up and Then Down, Nick Paumgarten, The New Yorker - No surprises here; my love for Nick P. never wavers, and elevator rides have never been the same. Runner up: The Greatest Story Ever Told, Chris R., Yale Daily News - Men everywhere are still gasping and squirming; I almost peed my pants laughing.
Best Song: Someone Great, LCD Soundsystem - The only song of 2008, and I liked it way before I wanted James Murphy to be my friend. Runner up: N/A - I wasn't kidding about this being the only song of 2008.
Best Overall Musical Performance: Devendra Banhart - I hated Devendra Banhart, until I started to love him. I can supply no rational explanation for this; it was just his moment. Runner up: Amy Winehouse - Criminal overuse of liquid eyeliner aside, I honestly like the entire Back to Black album, and I am not ashamed to admit it.
Best Fiction: The End of the Affair and The Quiet American, Graham Greene - I didn't read all that much fiction this year, but I finished these books back to back and loved them equally, confirming yet again my strange love for dead white male quasi-imperialist British authors. Runner up: The last three stories in Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri - she is definitely getting repetitious, but sometimes the product is still really good.
Best Non-Fiction: Between Past and Future, Hannah Arendt - Arendt took this one without really trying. No one is surprised, I'm sure. Runner up: It's got to be a tie between The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon Wood, and Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz.
Best Movie: Reprise - I'm sure I will regret loving this movie, kind of like I regret loving Garden State and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But some things are just too apt, and Reprise is just one of those things. Runner up: There Will Be Blood - Truly awesome, and I mean that in the biblical sense.
Best Actor: David Boreanaz - OMG, no I am not kidding, have you seen Bones?! Angel can act! Well, sort of...at least, he can act in a way that doesn't involve breathing heavily and brooding. It's a total relief. Runner up: Neil Patrick Harris - Historically surpasses all levels of amazing on How I Met Your Mother, and Dr. Horrible takes it to a whole other level. Angel may have won in the end, but you still have my heart, NPH.
Best TV Show: Wonderfalls - No contest, the talking animals win, don't even try. Runner up: How I Met Your Mother - See ode to NPH above.
And now I'm spent. List may be amended, as other random pointlessness occurs to me.
