Thursday, January 12, 2006

Five For Fighting

I wrote one hundred posts last year. There will be no top ten highlights. I do not believe in Top Ten, or Holy Hundred, or Excellent Eleventeen. It's like saying so-and-so is the fastest sprinter in the world. No, he's not. He's really not. He's just the fastest competitor in the race or the round-robin or whatever. There's for sure some Ugandan dirt-farmer could absolutely kill Donovan Bailey or Maurice Green in the hundred yard dash—probably while dragging a pair of screaming water-buffalo with him, too. Anyways, wait for it—wait for the turn—there it is! My Subjective Seven Of the Year!

SS#1) Best Candy: Starburst, baby. You don't even know. So tidily squared away under neat waxy wrapping. Does synthetic flavour get any better than this? Times like these I realize just how wonderful it is to be part of the great consumerist society of money and idols we call North America. Isn't life juicy?

SS#2) Best Music Video: There was the usual brilliant selection of songs and pictures out there this year. Let's not pretend you weren't affected by that M83 business for "Don't Save Us From the Flames" and it's sister video, "Teen Angst". I loved the classic Watch the Band Play video from the White Rose Movement as they did "Love Is A Number". In fact, it was just narrowly edged out for best of the year. Such beautiful people, such timing between hand gestures and music, I'm not even kidding. That one blond guitarist has some killer hair. And I'm awarding Most Gratuitous Use Of The Concept "Twee" In A Music Video to the guys in Eskimo Disco for "Picture Perfect", a super-catchy single, too. Best video, though, is simple. And I don't even really like the song. U.N.K.L.E. killed all the visuals and storylines with their huge twist video for "Rabbit In Your Headlights", my hands-down subjectively best video of the year. Thom Yorke and DJ Shadow have crafted something simply out-of-control good.

SS#3) Worst Moment To Be A Penguin: Turns out, there is no "best" moment to be a penguin. Consider the egg freezing about thirty seconds after it's popped out of the mother. Boom! Consider the starvation trek neccessary to pop that egg out in the first place. Boom! Consider the skua-bird and the leopard seal, each looking for a tasty piece of penguin wing. BOOM! Consider that in the end, if you survive all these, yeah, you're going to die of cold. But you know what? They still look like they're having so much fun! Oh, you big lardy penguins!

SS#4) Best Film: There was none. I'll have no argument, here. You can talk about Batman Begins and, yeah, I loved it, too. You can talk about March Of The Penguins which was not really a documentary so much as Little House On The Prairie with weird flightless birds, and, yes, it was a good film, alright? But there was no best, not even subjectively. Where are the Wayans Brothers when you need them, right?

SS#5) Best Sunrise: I only saw one, so I'm going to say December 3, 8:31 AM. It was grey and watery and I read the newspaper.

SS#6) Best Moment In The Car: Back in August, when C ranted for a solid two minutes about the truck in front of us cutting us off. She employed just about every vile word she knew and then started laughing at herself and made me laugh, too.

SS#7) Best Song: This is not even possible, but just because, I will name Of Montreal's wonderful "The Repudiated Immortals" as the best single song of last year. I've listened to this song over a hundred times, easy. The first time I heard it I wanted to cry. Ridiculous that a mere two minutes of music could do that. Of Montreal are becoming a god to me.

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