Year-end Best-of Spectacular 2012!

Alright, kids, let's gather around for my 8th 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 2012 a good time even though a lot of stuff elsewhere in the world totally sucked. Let's do this!


Records
Last year, I lamented the fact that I'm not really on the zeitgeist of music anymore, and that appears to still be the case this year. I just looked at allmusic's Top 30 for the year and didn't know any of them. I'm an old man, what can I say

The albums I did buy were mostly looks backward, not forward - Led Zeppelin, Jack White, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, and Slint.

The Zeppelin release, Celebration Day, was a much-appreciated souvenir of the hard rock titans' 2007 one-off reunion show at London's O2 Arena. Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and second-generation drummer Jason Bonham succeeded mightily in putting on what Plant described as "a dynamic evening," picking the perfect mix of their legendary hits and heavy, bluesy album tracks. I highly recommend checking out the film as well. It was nice to get back into Zep again, not that I ever really got out.

The discs from White (Blunderbuss) and Billy Corgan's latest incarnation of the Pumpkins (Oceania) were both welcome additions to their discographies, as I wrote this summer, if perhaps inessential. The Soundgarden record, about which I did not get a chance to write, was similar. I mean, Chris Cornell, Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron, and Ben Shepherd, sound amazing, their technical proficiency a welcome sight, but King Animal doesn't hold my attention from a songwriting perspective the way the group's finest efforts still do. "Been Away Too long" is a killer single, though - if you get a chance, "Taree" might be the best track on the disc.

The only thing new-new I got this year is also the winner of this year's Best Record prize - Japandroids' Celebration Rock. While I really enjoyed the record, my buying it almost seemed like a requiem, like hey, this seems cool and current. It's a hell of a fun disc, with the most appropriate title one could imagine ("don't we have anything to live for?/of course we do!/we're drinkin'") and a set of balls-to-the-wall two-man rawk. It's not the strongest album of the year winner I've crowned, but it's fresh enough to beat the field in 2012.


Songs
As is customary let's give the award for Worst Song, but let's do it real quick-like, because this was a great year for pop singles and I do want to highlight that. I'm giving Worst Song of 2012 to "I Will Wait" by Mumford and Sons, but frankly it could have gone to any song they've ever done. I hate M&S with a visceral passion, something that is not helped by the fact that many of the people I know seem to really like them. Grr.

But let's look on the fun side. 2012 was characterized by three all-time great songs; released sequentially, I thought at times that each of them would claim the title of Best Song for the year.

First was AWOLNATION's brilliant jam "Not Your Fault" - I thought for sure Aaron Bruno's rocker had things sewn up before winter had ended. We rock it in my band, and its cracked-voice refrain is an absolute killer. But that was before...

Carly Rae Jepsen hit the scene with the delightful "Call Me Maybe". It's not groundbreaking - it's a lot like most teen pop (except Jepsen is 26), it's just...better. I still recall being roundly mocked this summer at a party because I had just gone and listened to it for the first time, which people were appalled by. My defense was: yes, I realize I was late to the song - that's why I made a point to correct that prior to this party by watching the video. Some people...

But still, the battle between those songs was rendered moot when a certain South Korean K-popper arrived with a certain phenomenon. I'm referring, of course, to PSY and the unstoppable hurricane that is "Gangnam Style".

The tipping point for "Gangnam Style" in this competition was when I came to the realization that, yes, AWOLNATION and Carly Rae Jepsen's efforts were great songs...but "Gangnam Style" is a force of nature. It's essentially its own self-contained pop culture, all in one three-and-a-half minute kinetic blur of a song and its deliriously joyous, 1.1-billion-times-viewed video. It's simply not something I'm capable of getting tired of. For the record, I believe this to be my three-year-old niece's choice for Best Song as well.

Congratulations to the runaway winner of Best Song for 2012: the one, the only, "Gangnam Style."


Films
Can I give this to the "Gangnam Style" video as well? I kid, I kid.

Here's a movie I didn't watch in 2012, and will never watch as long as I live: The Avengers. I simply will not forgive their decision that they absolutely, positively, had to film their dumb fight scenes near my house, something from which I got exactly zero benefit. In fact, I'm officially awarding Worst Movie of 2012 to: The Avengers. Well done!

Last year I suggested that maybe The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had a chance to beat out Contagion for the title. I really liked Dragon Tattoo - I'll give it the 2nd place slot, but I'm keeping Contagion as last year's champion.

Moving on to this year, there are three movies that I am very interested to see that I think have a reasonable shot at claiming the Best Movie title for 2012. They are Steven Spielberg's historical epic Lincoln, the latest Bond adventure Skyfall, and the Wachowskis (with Tom Tykwer)'s enigmatic Cloud Atlas. We shall see how these turn out, but I'm looking forward to each of them.

This leaves only a select few movies that I did check out at the theaters, all of which I liked in different ways. First up was The Hunger Games, based on Suzanne Collins' best-selling books. Not being a teenage girl, I hadn't read the books, but I was pleasantly surprised at how gripping the film was. I'm looking forward to the sequels.

Checked out the 3D re-release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and it's still a mess. 21 Jump Street started off with a remarkably funny 45 minutes and trailed off in the second half, as so many action-comedies do. The Dictator was funny, but no Borat.

I finally got a chance to see Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, which was of course excellent and very intense. Jamie Foxx's performance was outstanding in the title role, and the movie had Tarantino's usual blend of clever dialogue and bloody action. I'd rank it a notch below his true masterpieces like Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, but still squarely among the year's best.

Ridley Scott's Prometheus, a sort-of prequel to the Alien franchise, delivered on some but not all of its promise. Visually, it was as stunning and inventive a film as you will ever see. Really an amazing piece of filmmaking. The story, though, left a little to be desired - too many unanswered (and unasked) questions, too many scientists not acting like scientists. Still, a worthy entry in the sci-fi genre.

The latest reboot of the Spider-Man franchise, The Amazing Spider-Man, was a really good movie with one fatal flaw: it was a remake of a movie that came out just 10 years ago. Apparently, Marvel had to make this movie or relinquish the rights to the character, but it was hard to get past the familiarity I had with the backstory.

The year's other humongous superhero blockbuster was, of course, the final chapter in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises. It was, of course, very good, as all of the trilogy were, but I think I'd award it 3rd place among the three. That's not really a knock on the movie, whose lack of Batman was offset by a clever ending and a fascinating villain, but the previous two (especially The Dark Knight with Heath Ledger's Joker) set such a high standard for the franchise.

The TFB award for Best Movie in 2012 goes to Argo, a movie that starts out on the day right after my birthday (like, the day I actually started, not just a birthday) and is just a textbook example on how to make a thriller movie. Ben Affleck's story of the "Canadian Caper," where CIA agent Tony Mendez (Affleck) sneaks five Americans out of Iran during the hostage crisis, has suspense, humor, drama, action - everything you go to see a dramatic picture for. It doesn't get much better than Argo, TFB's Best Movie of 2012.


Television
So...I don't think I like TV shows as much as most people, I'm starting to realize. Here's my evidence:

- I canceled my cable in April and haven't really thought about it much since.

- Nena watches several highly-acclaimed TV programs that I observe while they're in the background, and I can't get even vaguely interested in them. This includes Mad Men, which you literally would have to pay me to watch.

- I couldn't get into Breaking Bad after about a season and a half and abandoned it, and everyone loves that show. I dunno, I thought it was good, just wasn't super-interested.

- On that same note, pretty much the same goes for Battlestar Galactica. Who knows, I might have been into it if not for the Laura Roslin character.

But the winner for Best TV Show for 2012 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: H9RD
It'd been almost five years since I last played in a band, but this year I was finally able to form a group in Cleveland, after my purchase of a cheap $300 kit from Nena's cousin. We're currently called "Hard 9," though the preferred stylization is H9RD. We play covers of hard rock songs from the '70's through today, and I love it. There really is a lot of joy to be had in bashing out your favorite songs and just making a lot of noise. I even sing one song, "Bad Moon Rising," from behind the kit, and since our bassist can play drums, sometimes we switch it up and I take over frontman duties. We also recently had a coworker join us and basically spent the entire time semi-playing while watching him hammer out these crazy solos. Things are looking good for my fledgling outfit - I'm hoping we can play our first show in 2013. After all it can't be that hard a sell to a bar. "We'll play for free and bring several dozen people." Rock on.


Wild Card #2: The OC
No, not Orange County - I mean my new home, Ohio City. Yes, after five terrific years in Downtown Cleveland, I moved myself into Nena's house just 3.5 miles away. Did I mention that this place has Nena, my aforementioned band, and is one of the nation's most highly-regarded beer districts? Yeah, I'll be OK here.


Here's to a great 2013 for everyone!