Day: December 31, 2009

Happy New Year!

So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it’s the hardest to do anything with. That’s about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what. Now try How and Why. – Margaret Atwood, “Happy Endings”

2009: My year in media

These are the books I read in 2009 — just shy of my hoped-for 50-book minimum. Reading the twelve books of Gene Wolfe’s so-called Solar Cycle slowed me down a little. Beyond the Wolfe (which I think I’m going to have to read again at some point), some of my favorite reads this year were Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert’s Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?, Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea, Lorrie Moore’s Birds of America, Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon, Audrey Niffenegger The Time Traveler’s Wife, and Scott Westerfeld’s Midnighter trilogy. I don’t know what, if anything, that says about my reading habits and preferences. There were a couple of small disappointments in the list, but I don’t think I read a single bad book this year.

These are the movies I saw this year. Some of the highlights, in the order I saw them, were:

Honorable mentions include Doubt, Speed Racer (yes, really), Away We Go, The Man From Earth, and George Romero’s zombie ouevre, which I finally got around to watching all of this year. (I think it’s a toss-up between Dawn and Day of the Dead as my favorite.)

Surrogates and Lady in the Water were easily the worst movies I saw this year. (Excluding The Room, but I had Rifftrax to get me through that painful experience.) And at least Surrogates is tied up in fond memories of the Vegas Capfest.

I listened to a whole lot of music in 2009. You can see the evidence of that in my monthly mix CDs. That’s 223 songs altogether. Is it any wonder I had trouble putting together a “best of the year” mix?

I’m not even going to talk about the television I watched in 2009. Well, not yet anyway.

December songs

The month (and year) wouldn’t be complete without another mix of music. Here’s what December sounded like for me (minus the Christmas carols, of course):

  1. “Both Sides Now” by Rachael Yamagata
  2. “9 Crimes” by Damien Rice
  3. “Jim Cain” by Bill Callahan
  4. “Coast of Carolina” by Telekinesis
  5. “Black Is the Color” by the Dry Spells
  6. “Kettering” by the Antlers
  7. “Do the Ballpoint!” by the Rifftones
  8. “I’m a Vampire” by Future Bible Heroes
  9. “Fidelity” by Regina Spektor
  10. “Biologically Blue” by Greg Trooper & the Flatirons
  11. “Ruby” by Kaiser Chiefs
  12. “Spinnin'” by Speech Debelle
  13. “To Lose Someone” by Taken by Trees
  14. “Run This Town” by Jay-Z (feat. Rihanna & Kanye West)
  15. “Blow Away” by A Fine Frenzy

Respoiled

In my continuing efforts to recycle material you’ve already seen either on my Twitter feed or on my Facebook wall, here are my entries in the #spoilersdamnit thread started by Bill Corbett:

At Grandpa Joe’s insistence, Charlie enters detox for his fizzy lifting drinking problem.

Rose Budd (nee Walinski) is finally arrested for the vicious murder of Charles Foster Kane.

Dumbledore is an anagram for “Lord Emu Bed.” Think about it.

Soylent Green is fattening.

In the end, Clarence gets his wings — and swoops down to pick off the helpless citizens of Bedford Falls one by one.

The Blue Fairy finally turns Torgo into a real boy.