Year-End Best-of Spectacular 2011!

Alright, kids, let's gather around for my 7th Annual Year-End Best-Of Spectacular! As usual, we'll be reviewing the year in funness, naming winners in the categories of Best Record, Best Song, Best Movie, Best TV Show, a Wildcard category, and all the other things that made 2011 slightly dissimilar from preceding years. Let's do this!


Records
Last year I said I'd reconsider my selection of Them Crooked Vultures' self-titled debut as 2010's best, pending listens to the new LCD Soundsystem and Arcade Fire discs. The LCD disc, This Is Happening, was a major disappointment for me - I could barely listen through it straight through even once. Arcade Fire, however, pulled through, and as I wrote in a quickie post earlier this year, I'm going back and retroactively awarding the 2010 championship to their third record, The Suburbs, even though it's not as good as Funeral, an album with the misfortune of coming out the same year as the White Stripes' Elephant.

In other news, I'm old.

I just looked at the Top Albums of the Year according to Spin magazine, which used to be my #1 bellwether for what was going on in music and culture. This year, out of the top 20 records for 2011, I've heard of...four. That's heard of, not heard, and none of the four I recognized is their selection at #1, which is an album by an artist called Fucked Up. The four I have heard of are:

- Das Racist, who I only know because of that Pizza Hut / Taco Bell novelty song from like 5 years ago and now have stuck in my head.

- Bon Iver, who I saw once on Conan or something and who sucked, and who isn't even a dude named Bon Iver.

- Stephen Malkmus, who, let's face it, his best days are decades behind him.

- The chronically and outrageously overrated PJ Harvey.

ANYWAY, it seems that my days of being on the pulse of modern music might be behind me - I spent more time in 2011 listening to classics from decades before I got in the game. The music I did pick up was from artists mostly already established in my collection:

- A couple of returns to form turned in by Foo Fighters (Wasting Light) and newly minted Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Beastie Boys (Hot Sauce Committee Part Two). Both earned solid marks from me - Dave Grohl and company put out their rockingest disc in quite some time while the Beasties proved that there's really no one else like them around. Good stuff.

- The Deluxe Edition 20th anniversary reissue of my all-time favorite album, Nirvana's Nevermind. I've already bought this album like different three times and had most of the outtakes and B-sides thanks to Napster and various compilations, but it was still fun to get back into Nirvanamania, and the Smart Studios sessions and BBC Sessions tracks made it worth my while.

- My winner of Best Record for 2011 is El Camino by Akron's own Black Keys. As has been the trend for the past three couple of years, this award ends up being a bit of a Lifetime Achievement Award, as the duo of Dan Auerbach and Pat Carney have quickly ascended my list since mid-2010, but the driving El Camino is their best record and a deserving winner. Big it up for the Black Keys!


Songs
As per tradition, I'll gleefully award Worst Song before getting to anything I actually liked. I took a Sporcle where the goal was to name all the Top 10 hits of 2011, and I knocked out six of them.

I really wanted to give Worst Song to Taio Cruz's "Dynamite," because holy mackerel do I ever hate hearing that fucking song, but it turns out it was released in May 2010, which doesn't explain why I still hear it five times every time I go to the gym.

Adele's aggressively oversung "Someone Like You" made a run for the title as well, but my eardrums don't appear to have literally shattered, so I'll spare Adele the ignominy.

The "winner" is Maroon 5 featuring Christina Aguilera with "Moves Like Jagger," a song so vapid and inane I can't believe it's the work of what was once apparently an actual rock band. Apparently this song has sold over 5 million copies and also inexplicably garnered a Grammy nod. It also gets Worst Song here on TFB. Congrats!

As far as novelty hits go, Rebecca Black's "Friday" and Weird Al's "Party in the CIA" took care of business. So did, for that matter, Lonely Island's "Jack Sparrow." Now back to the good part!

Beastie Boys' collaboration with NaS, "Too Many Rappers," was a hell of a good song and the obvious highlight of their most recent disc. The Foo Fighters record didn't necessarily have an ace track, just consistent quality. Leadoff track "Lonely Boy" from the Black Keys record was killer - trust me, you've already heard it on about 500 TV and movie promos.

My pick for 2011 Best Song was LCD Soundsystem's "Dance Yrself Clean," a remarkably inventive and slamming track on an otherwise disappointing disc. Congratulations to LCD Soundsystem!


Films
It's really a shame that The Room came out in 2003, because the two times I saw Tommy Wiseau's comically bad melodrama were among the most enjoyable theatergoing experiences I had in 2011..

The only one of the Top 10 grossing films of the year that I saw was the last Pirates movie, which was almost impossibly awful. I saw it on an aeroplane for free, by the way. There were a couple of other movies from the year I wanted to check out but haven't gotten to yet, most notably David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

I did see:

- The Adjustment Bureau, which was lame.

- 30 Minutes or Less, which was funny but didn't play up the comedy angle enough.

- Super 8, which was well-made and charming, but the whole vanity angle with JJ Abrams and Steven Spielberg reliving their filmmaking youths didn't really resonate fully with me.

- Horrible Bosses, the funniest movie I saw this year, with great performances from the three protagonists (Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, and Jason Bateman), even better ones from the three villains (Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Spacey, and Colin Farrell), and

Interruption: I have the Cavaliers game on in the background and that goddamn Taio Cruz song is playing over the loudspeaker in the Q. GO AWAY.

a hilarious script.

The TFB award for Best Movie in 2011 goes to Steven Soderbergh's Contagion, a tense, tightly-scripted medical epidemic thriller that made Outbreak look like amateur hour. Contagion was simply one of those movies where you never even think to look at your watch. Plus, I read that the scientific accuracy was high, which is always a big plus with me. Well done, Contagion!


Television
Three shows for me this year:
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Breaking Bad, and Parks and Recreation. I just started in on Breaking Bad, and I have high hopes for it, but it doesn't have enough at-bats to qualify, just five episodes in.

I also checked out a few episodes of Community and Modern Family upon the recommendations of TFB'ers whose opinions I value, and...hey, guys, at least I tried.

So...we choose between two very dissimilar comedies for the coveted prize. Parks and Rec has taken the mockumentary style pioneered by The Office and beaten Michael Scott (well, not anymore) and the Dunder Mifflin crew at their own game. In fact, when I do watch Parks and Rec on Thursdays, I just turn off the TV once it's over and The Office comes on. It's clearly the highlight of the networks' comedy schedule (no matter how many Emmys 30 Rock wins because the voters identify with a show about TV), has the deepest bench of any show (Community also has a lot of characters, but I don't like even one of them), and the greatest comedic character on TV in the incomparable Ron Swanson. A banner year for Parks and Rec, a show with no signs of waning.

But the winner for Best TV Show for 2011 here on TFB is It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I watched every single episode from the first six seasons and absolutely never got tired of it. For some reason, this show absolutely slays me - I feel like even friends who are enthusiastic proponents aren't quite as into it as I am. It's my favorite show going, and cognizant of being swept up in the moment by a program, I'm trying not to overstate its place in history. But I must say, it has a legitimate chance to settle in behind Seinfeld as my second-favorite comedy ever. Nice work, Sunny!


Wild Card: Traveling
We all know I'm generally not real fond of traveling, but that was the story of me in 2011. I spent 81 nights away from my apartment this year, counting only work and not personal trips. I went to San Francisco, Milwaukee, Ft. Myers, Chicago, France, Germany, Norway, Tennessee, and West Virginia like 1000 times. I had an apartment in West Virginia. I learned how to play the banjo. Lots of miles for Francis this year, hopefully a few more nights at home in 2012.

Athletics
2011 marked another strong entry into my perpetual adolescence, as a surprising durability has kept me in the game for two years straight. Yeah, I had a broken wrist for a while, but I logged almost 800 miles running, participated in nine races (including a marathon), and played on softball and basketball teams. I also learned how to play Dance Dance Revolution, and even though any 14-year-old with a pulse can crush me at it, I got at least a little better.


Here's to a great 2012 for everyone!