The Best of 2011

As 2011 comes to a close it’s only appropriate for a “Best of” blog post to end the year. Not a “Best of” the blog (although that’d be awesome), but a best of the year in pop culture and to be honest with you, I don’t think 2011 was that great for entertainment. Below are a few bright spots in what I think was a rather disappointing year.


Best Movie of the Year that I saw- The Adjustment Bureau



A political figure (Matt Damon) is destined for greatness until he meets a woman (Emily Blunt) in a men’s bathroom who will throw him off track. The Adjustment Bureau, or angels behind the scenes that serve the world’s best interest, get him back on the righteous path (I didn’t notice the religious undertones until just now), but he can’t forget her. Matt Damon’s character eventually becomes aware of The Bureau and does everything he can to reunite with Blunt. That’s probably not the best endorsement for something that I’ve billed as the best movie of the year, but once you accept the plot (there are hats, doors, maps, etc.) you’ll notice that Damon and Blunt are truly fantastic together. Their on screen chemistry was off the charts. Blunt was also sneaky hot in that I don't remember her from anything else. I’m admittedly a sucker for movies that involve powerful political figures, but The Adjustment Bureau is a great film and I would recommend it to anyone.

I also enjoyed- Crazy, Stupid, Love, The Descendants, The Ides of March

I want to see- Drive, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Moneyball, The Artist


Best TV Show of the Year- Parks and Recreation



I used to watch every show on NBC’s Thursday night comedy lineup except for Parks and Recreation. For some reason Amy Poehler didn’t strike me as all that funny. However, two years ago a buddy at work repeatedly told me that Parks and Rec is the funniest show on television. It took about a year and a half, but I finally gave it a chance and it’s now one of my favorite shows of all time.

Here is Newsweek’s recap of what Parks and Rec did in 2011:

Parks and Recreation captures the spirit of optimism and hope, embodied by the dynamic and determined Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), who found herself tiptoeing into an illicit relationship with her boss, Ben (Adam Scott), and running for local political office. With wit and intelligence, Parks and Recreation painted a Springfieldian portrait of fictional small-town Americana—the Harvest Festival, anyone?—with incredible nuance, offering up a series of characters that are endearingly flawed and adorably sympathetic. In a season overflowing with “manxiety” comedy, there’s something refreshing about a show whose central relationship is between two female friends (Poehler and Rashida Jones), a will-they-won’t-they couple who unexpectedly tie the knot, an unrepentant libertarian (in Nick Offerman’s beloved Ron Swanson), and a protagonist who longs for the rewards of public service. Add in sex scandals, allusions to birthers, and Li’l Sebastian, and you have the makings of a show that’s perfection on a weekly basis. There’s a sweetness and energizing spirit to Parks and Recreation—and to Leslie herself—that sets it apart from the more darker, sarcastic shows in the current television landscape, offering an oasis that feels, remarkably, like coming home.

I also enjoyed- Friday Night Lights, Community, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Boardwalk Empire

I want to see- Homeland, Breaking Bad (Season 4)


Best Song of the Year

For help in determining the best song of the year I will consult three reputable sources. Entertainment Weekly, Billboard, and Rolling Stone because I’ve been out of tune with the music industry for a while. Plus I was recently in Texas and the only thing I’ve listened to since is Country.

Entertainment Weekly's Best Singles of 2011

1. Nicki Minaj -- "Super Bass"
2. Foster the People -- "Pumped Up Kicks"
3. The Throne feat. Frank Ocean -- "No Church in the Wild"
4. Lana Del Rey -- "Video Games"
5. Beyoncé -- "Countdown"
6. Wild Flag -- "Romance"
7. Britney Spears -- "I Wanna Go"
8. Colbie Caillat -- "Brighter Than the Sun"
9. Foo Fighters -- "Walk"
10. Kelly Clarkson -- "What Doesn't Kill You (Stronger)"

Billboard's 10 Best Songs of 2011

1. Nicki Minaj -- "Super Bass"
2. Adele -- "Someone Like You"
3. Britney Spears -- "Till the World Ends"
4. The Throne -- "N----s in Paris"
5. Kelly Rowland feat. Lil Wayne -- "Motivation"
6. Frank Ocean -- "Novacane"
7. Bon Iver -- "Holocene"
8. Lady Gaga -- "The Edge of Glory"
9. Chris Brown -- "Look at Me Now"
10. Adele -- "Rolling in the Deep"

Rolling Stone’s Top 10 Singles of 2011

1. Adele -- “Rolling in the Deep”
2. Jay-Z and Kanye West -- “Ni**as in Paris”
3. Britney Spears -- “Till the World Ends”
4. Foo Fighters -- “These Days”
5. Paul Simon -- “Rewrite”
6. Radiohead -- “Lotus Flower”
7. Lady Gaga -- “The Edge of Glory”
8. Beyonce -- “Countdown”
9. Lil Wayne feat. Cory Gunz -- “Six Foot Seven Foot”
10. The Decemberists -- “Don’t Carry it All”

I like Nicki Minaj, but I have a hard time giving the award to “Super Bass” after an 8 year old white girl performed it virtually on repeat for a month (this clip was everywhere). I’m not a fan of this Adele chick even though girls cream themselves to her. I can’t give the award to Jay-Z and Kanye after they decided to remove the letter “z” from the word crazy. I like the Foo Fighters song “These Days”, but I’ve only heard it 2-3 times. Feel free to judge me, but I think Lady Gaga was the artist of the year. She must be putting crack in her songs or something because they are catchy as hell. I actually enjoy most of her songs, so I’ll give “The Edge of Glory” my song of the year honors because it seems to be her most critically acclaimed hit of 2011.

I also enjoyed- Chris Young- “Home”, Kenny Chesney feat. Grace Potter- “You and Tequila”, Coldplay- “Paradise”


Best Book I read - “a visit from the goon squad” by Jennifer Egan



In case you’re keeping track at home this is two years in a row that my favorite book of the year has been written by a woman. I can’t point to 2-3 reasons why I enjoyed the book so much. I just did. I bought it because the back of the book said it was an inside look at the music industry. It’s not, but the writing is tremendous. It’s a hard book to sum up, so I found a review online and within the first paragraph the reviewer wrote, “This is a difficult book to summarize.” It’s basically about a big shot record producer who used to be in a punk rock band as a twentysomething and all the people around him at various points in his life. The book is not linear. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It jumps around from decade to decade. Each chapter is like its own story, but it’s tangentially related to the previous one. The discontinuity does not hinder the overall narrative. I would argue that it actually enhances it.

Here is a portion of the review from The Observer:

Goon Squad is a book about memory and kinship, time and narrative, continuity and disconnection, in which relationships shift and recombine kaleidoscopically. It is neither a novel nor a collection of short stories, but something in between: a series of chapters featuring interlocking characters at different points in their lives, whose individual voices combine to a create a symphonic work that uses its interconnected form to explore ideas about human interconnectedness. This is a difficult book to summarize, but a delight to read, gradually distilling a medley out of its polyphonic, sometimes deliberately cacophonous voices.

Everyone in the book is pushed around by time, circumstance and, occasionally, the ones they love, as Egan reveals with great elegance and economy the wobbly arcs of her characters' lives, their painful pasts and future disappointments. Characters who are marginal in one chapter become the focus of the next; the narrative alternates not only between first-person and third-person accounts, but – perhaps just because she can – Egan throws in a virtuosic second-person story as well, in which a suicidal young man tells his tale to a colloquial "you". She also shifts dramatically across times and places: punk teenagers in 1970s San Francisco become disillusioned adults in the suburbs of 1990s New York; their children grow up in an imagined, slightly dystopic future in the California desert, or attend a legendary concert at "The Footprint", where the Twin Towers used to be, sometime in the 2020s.

I also enjoyed- Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, and 20 Under 40: Stories From The New Yorker

*None of the books I mentioned were published in 2011, although 2 were published in 2010. I just read them in 2011.