Behold, my list of reordered hipster goodness mixed with things that are deliberately non-hipster in order to reaffirm said hipsterness, topped off with, well, a bunch of things I just really happened to enjoy this year. I’ll let you figure out which picks fall into which category (Answers at the bottom!):
Top 5 (Hundred) Songs
5. “Rain” by Bishop Allen – Why is it that I instantly rip on any movie that feels the slightest bit unoriginal, yet I’ll happily listen to 3-minute pop songs about “rain” again and again and again? Does that mean I’m not a complete A-hole? Or maybe that makes me more of an A-hole? Man, I am complicated.
4. “The Underdog” by Spoon – Was never a big Spoon man before this year (meaning, I didn’t literally play the spoons), but I greatly enjoyed Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. Wasn’t too big on that Jason Lee movie this song inspired, though.
3. “Sunndal Song” by Apples In Stereo – Not much to say about this track other than it’s super catchy, it’s super likable, and eff the music blogs for not at least giving Apples In Stereo some love on their Songs of the Year lists.
2. “Australia” by The Shins – “Garden State” sequel, anyone? Starring the two leads from “Cruel Intentions 2″?
1. “374 Wave Backwards to Massachusetts” by Hallelujah The Hills – The thing I miss most about doing the daily “Listen Up” feature was finding random, hidden gems like this one; what I miss least about the feature was coming up with a different New Pornographers joke twice a week. More like… OLD… Pornographers…… See?
Honorable Mentions:
“A Bottle of Buckie” by Ted Leo
“Climbing The Walls” by They Might Be Giants
“Good Day” by Jukebox the Ghost
“The Year Before The Year 2000″ by Les Savy Fav
“Weird Fishes / Arpeggi” by Radiohead
“Fireworks” by Animal Collective
“It Won’t Be Long” by The Hives
“Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse” by Of Montreal
“Melody Day” by Caribou
“O Valencia!” by The Decemberists**
And what the hell, Favorite Albums, for the record:
5. Les Savy Fav – Let’s Stay Friends
4. LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver
3. Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer
2. Feist – The Reminder
1. Radiohead - In Rainbows
Top 5 Movies, bearing in mind I haven’t seen “Knocked Up” or like thirteen of the fifteen Oscar movies that just came out these past two weeks:
5. Hot Fuzz – Just a straight-up, super enjoyable comedy that wasn’t made by Judd Apatow or Will Ferrell. Though if someone tells me in the comments that Simon Pegg is actually Will Ferrell, I’ll be like 3% surprised.
4. The King of Kong – The nerdy dude running around telling everyone “Donkey Kong kill screen coming up” was easily the hardest I laughed at a movie all year, excluding everything that happened in “Rise of the Silver Surfer.”
3. Ratatouille – The last ten minutes of this film were the happiest I have ever been sitting in a movie theater. I hope I grow up to be the world’s richest man so I can just give all my money to Brad Bird, who deserves it more than any other human.
2. No Country For Old Men – Can we coin the term “Tommy Lee Jones” for an actor who stars in one awesome movie, wins an Oscar, does absolute garbage for the next fourteen years, then suddenly stars in two frickin’ amazing films in the same year? For example, “Cuba Gooding Jr. is totally pulling a Tommy Lee Jones, minus the second part!”
1. Superbad – This movie was so damn good, instead of calling it “Superbad,” it should be called “Goodperbad“. I know that’s an unwieldy title, but just trust me on this one.
Honorable Mention: “American Gangster,” plus a bunch of movies I haven’t seen yet.
Top 5 TV Shows:
5. The Office – My own little secret. You people should really check this show out.
4. Planet Earth – Quite possibly the best fantasy film ever made; those CGI’d sequences of lions attacking elephants and monkeys diving underwater to grab fish were reeeeeeediculous.
3. 30 Rock – May have surpassed “The Office” in terms of laugh lines per episode, which is no small feat. Well, it’s a small feat when “The Office” isn’t airing new episodes, but whatever.
2. Lost – Remember when we kept complaining in Season Two that nothing was happening week after week? Don’t we all feel like jerks now?
1. The Sopranos – Finale arguments aside, the second to last episode of this series was the most tense episode of television I’ve ever watched. I just thank God Patsy survived. Oh, sh*t, sorry – spoiler alert.
* And the answer was: everything falls into that first category. So if you had “reordered hipster goodness” in your office pool, congratulations!
Feedback and your own best ofs are welcome in the comments.
