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.

Turn Out the Lights

As an avid TV junkie I’m sad to report that we lost one of the best television shows going last Friday. After five seasons NBC’s Friday Night Lights came to a close. As disappointing as it is that the series is now over it’s amazing that it lasted as long as it did, especially if you consider that it started as a book then became a movie and was then adapted for television. Seriously, how many ideas are successful in all three formats?

I’ll be the first to admit that I was a Friday Night Lights doubter from day one. I didn’t enjoy the movie when I originally saw it in theaters (I liked it a lot better the 2nd time, but probably because of the TV show connections), sports related TV shows never work, and after watching five minutes of an early episode it just came across as the most overdramatized show in the history of television with all the last second finishes, etc. One of my college roommates was a big fan from the get go and I used to rip on him all the time for it (my apologies Kess).

However, throughout the course of the next few years I heard more and more positive reviews and decided to give the show a try mainly because I could watch the first two seasons online thanks to my Netflix account. It didn’t take long for me to get hooked. I soon started DVR’ing the new episodes and I watched all the way through the series finale.

Friday Night Lights probably won’t go down as one of the best television shows in history (it finally picked up an Emmy nomination for Best Drama Series), but I think it was wildly underrated and underappreciated.

Here are a handful of reasons why I think the show worked:

1.) It wasn’t about football- If you only watched the previews you would think that the show was mainly about a football team and their games every week, but in reality the football itself was largely secondary. In most episodes football scenes were limited to 5-6 minutes at max. The show was really about the football loving town of Dillon, Texas and the Taylor family’s participation in it. It was about relationships, growing up, getting back on the right track, learning through failure, worrying about your future, and family.

For example, the coach/quarterback relationship was amplified because the quarterback dated the coach’s daughter. Things like that made the plot more about real life as opposed to just football.

2.) There were likeable, flawed characters-

Eric Taylor- One of the reasons I decided to give the show a try (aside from the added level of convenience provided by Netflix) was because of Kyle Chandler, who played the main character and head football coach Eric Taylor. I have enjoyed Taylor’s work ever since he played the lead character, Gary Hobson, on CBS’ Early Edition. That was one of the first night time dramas that I ever watched. On the show Chandler’s character ran a bar in Chicago and got tomorrow’s newspaper today, so he would spend most of his time helping people avoid tragedies, etc.

On Friday Night Lights Chandler was the young, upstart coach who was considered an offensive mastermind (another reason I took to his character). He also served as the moral majority for his family, his football players, and sometimes even the town. He always knew what to say, how to say it, and when to say it. That said, he was nothing without his wife, Tami.



Tami Taylor- Connie Britton, who played Michael J. Fox’s initial love interest on Spin City before Heather Locklear showed up, was one of the few carry overs from the movie (the man who played Buddy Garrity is another). She played opposite Billy Bob Thornton in the film, but her chemistry with Chandler was off the charts. On the show she played a guidance counselor turned principal turned back to guidance counselor and she largely served those roles outside of her job. Tami Taylor was always helping kids get in college, work through problems at home, and she said “Ya’ll” about 4463837 times per episode. She was also sneaky hot. Her tangible connection with her husband drove the show. The way they made things work from problem to problem and hurdle to hurdle is probably one of the biggest takeaways from the show.

Tim Riggins



I would argue that Tim Riggins, played by Taylor Kitsch, is one of the greatest most well liked television characters of all time. Female viewers loved him because he’s a stud and male viewers loved him for his I don’t give a fuck attitude. He essentially just boozed his face off, dominated football games, and hooked up with any girl that he wanted to. He was also loyal to a fault, down to earth, and respectful. What I loved most about Riggins is that he referred to others by the number that they wore in football (“Last game 7.” “Seven’s back in town?”) and everytime he was at a party he said something to the effect of, “Let’s make some memories.” Let me be the first (probably not the first) and certainly not the last to say that it’s going to be very odd to see him play any other role in the future.

3.) Hot chicks- You can’t go wrong with eye candy and Friday Night Lights certainly didn’t disappoint. Aimee Teegarden, Adrianne Palicki, and Minka Kelly made the show a whole lot more aesthetically pleasing to watch.








4.) Theme music- If I’ve said it once I’ve said it 1000 times. Friday Night Lights had the best opening theme song of any television show that I’ve ever seen. Basically the show would just start with a scene or two for 4-5 minutes, a level of drama would build, and then boom. Opening music. It got me every time.




5.) Not afraid to usher in a new class- Television shows about highschool always fall into the same trap. If they are successful, and that’s a big if, they go out of their way to avoid the logical progression of time. If the main characters are juniors in high school in Season 1 they should be in college by Season 3. Most shows don’t do this though because by Season 3 their stars are recognizable and have contributed significantly to the success of the show. They feel compelled to keep them around as long as possible because starting over is an incredibly leap of faith not to mention virtually unheard of.

The core group of characters on Friday Night Lights began Season 1 as sophomores in highschool. Season 4 began with a new core group of young actors and they gradually faded the old characters out of the plot. By sticking to a feasible timeline Friday Night Lights earned some major bonus points in my eyes. It should be noted that I think they were able to do this because, like I’ve said, the relationship between Eric and Tami Taylor is what drove the show.


While those points all contributed to the show’s success there must be a reason why the show was cancelled. What led to Friday Night Lights’ downfall?

1.) To be blunt, nobody watched. I think NBC made a big mistake by feeling obligated to air the show on Friday nights just because of the show’s name. No one, with a life, watches television on Friday nights. In that respect, this show was almost set up to fail from the get go. I would contend that if the show aired on Tuesday or Wednesday it would almost certainly be preparing for Season 6.

2.) The show was incredibly dramatic. If you were a fan of the show you almost took it with a grain of salt. You knew going into it that certain plot lines, game highlights, etc. would be wayyy over the top, but the good far outweighed the bad. That said, I think the Dillon Panthers and West Dillon Lions combined for about 32 last second wins over the course of 5 seasons.

3.) Some of the plot lines were just brutal. For example: Landry and Tyra killing that guy in Season 2. Jason Street trying to become an agent, flip houses, etc.