Best and Worst of 2008

The considerable glut of “best” and “worst” lists of 2008 has inspired me to create my own “best and worst of” list for the year that will be ending in a few short days. It’s not like one more list will crash the Internet or anything…OH NO, THE INTERNET WHAT HAVE I DONE!?!?!

Best Cheese of 2008:

While this year’s entries from Cheddar and Mozzarella are extremely compelling, I have to put my money on the sexy new project from a cheese that combines the best that both of these cheeses have to offer. Of course I am talking about Marble Cheese. Marble Cheese took the cheese scene by storm this year with a salty creaminess that left older cheeses checking their rear view mirrors.

There is no question that 2008 was the year of Marble Cheese. Mixing 21st century mash-up culture with classic cheese nutrition, Marble Cheese simultaneously pays homage to the storied history of cheese while plotting a course that will ensure that cheese remains the world’s number two milk-based food for years to come (second only to milk itself). Take that Yogurt, you pussy!

I personally have consumed, without fail, upwards of one pound of Marble Cheese per day over the past 365 days and I can tell you, I have never felt better. Thanks to Marble Cheese, my bowel movements are more satisfying, and I have plenty of Vitamin D and Calcium stockpiled for the winter.

There is no cheese that reflects the capital-C type Change that Obama promised than Marble. Marble Cheese is here to party. Marble Cheese is also the type of cheese you can take home and introduce to your parents. Marble Cheese is the future, and it’s no coincidence that “Marble Cheese” has become a synonym for “cool” among the hipper crowds this year.

An honorable mention goes to Swiss Cheese, for having fun holes in it that you can look through. Who among us hasn’t had the near-mystical experience that comes along with viewing the world through a cheesy, Swiss filter? If holes = fun, then Swiss Cheese is at least seventeen times as fun as donuts, which as we all know have only one measly hole.

This year’s most egregious example of Worst Cheese is clearly Blue Cheese. This evil and base cheese wants nothing more than to suck the life out of your party. Where Marble Cheese is the cheese of your children and your children’s children, Blue Cheese is squarely stuck in the outdated and foolish neoconservative ideology of the Bush Administration. Let us all band together to banish this ill-conceived cheese back to the udders from whence it came.

Worst Magazine of 2008:

Rolling Stone magazine. No question. After years of precipitous decline, Rolling Stone has finally taken the cyanide capsule and blasted off to a distant galaxy where conspiratorial, left wing politics coexist with a blinding love for all brothers named Jonas. At this point, Cat Fancy is a more credible source for music criticism than Rolling Stone. I will admit that my main reason for naming them Worst Magazine is their inclusion of the Jonas Brothers’ album A Little Bit Longer at number 40 on their year-end top 50 list.

While I haven’t listened to the Jonas Brothers’ new album, I have prepared a Venn Diagram illustrating my feelings on the subject, the intersection of which provides incontrovertible evidence of the gay suckiness of their new album.

Rolling Stone has for some reason labeled the Jonas Brothers as the saviours of Power Pop. That’s funny, because I always thought their existence was evidence of an all-time cultural low in that self-same genre. And anyway, who ever said that power pop needed saving? Last time I checked, Power Pop was doing just fine thank you very much, considering that it underlies nearly every top 40 rock song and provides the basis for modern emo.

Rolling Stone seems convinced that the Jonas Brothers are talented because, despite the fact that they are on Disney Records, they write most of their own music and play most of the instruments on their album. Playing and writing your own music isn’t a virtue in and of itself. At most, it’s merely one of the check boxes on the “Are you in an actual band?” checklist.

And anyway, no album belongs on a top 50 list if it contains such an indefensibly terrible and comically out-of-place rap part as the one on their single Burnin’ Up. Hey, do you know what would really spice this song up? If we let our fat, middle aged bodyguard intimidate everyone who’s listening to this song into dancing! That would be Marble Cheese!

BIG ROB'S RAP:Yeah, its burning up
In this place tonight
The brothers singing loud (and we're feeling right!)
Get up and dance (don't try and fight it!)
Naw, for real (and thats no lie!)
Stop, drop and roll (and touch the floor!)
(It keeps on burnin' up)
More and more!
I got JB with me, layin' it down
Come on boys
Let's bring the chorus around!

Big Bob requires you to dance! (or else)
He will tear you apart. (If you don’t comply)
And throw your desiccated limbs (into a trash compactor)

Okay, I made that last part up.

If anyone’s going to save power pop, it’s going to be Sudbury’s own Statues, who have been cranking out awesome albums at a feverish pace for the last few years now, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. And guess what? They play and write all their own music! *Swoon*

Also, I get it, Rolling Stone, you have a huge boner for Bob Dylan. You can shut up about it now. Geez, a guy writes one song about you and four decades later, you’re still hanging off his withered old sack like a sloth.

Best Concert of 2008:

Grizzly Bear, at Lollapalooza. I will admit I am extremely biased because I LOVE Grizzly Bear almost as much as Rolling Stone loves Bob Dylan’s crispy fried private parts, but this was the high point of the entire festival for me. According to my iPod, I’ve listened to their album Yellow House over 60 times now. I can’t remember what the set list was because I’ve always been horrible at remembering set lists, and I doubt it would have mattered anyways because I didn’t even recognize half of the material they played, but I was really close to the stage and the sound was excellent, and the way they perform together is truly spectacular in its understated way.

I also saw Radiohead at Lollapalooza, but that experience was largely marred by the presence of other people. The crowd talked disrespectfully during the quiet parts of songs (often drowning out the music), and the two people in front of me who I will call World’s Greatest Dad and his Stupid Bitch Daughter were an endless source of annoyance. World’s Greatest Dad kept putting his Stupid Bitch Daughter on his shoulders, and when he got tired of that, he’d let her down, turn around and secretly take a hit off the marijuana pipe that the British guy next to me was hauling on.

At one point, he turned to me during a song and literally said, “Is this awesome or what? If this isn’t awesome I don’t know what is!” I KNOW IT IS AWESOME THAT IS WHY I AM TRYING TO LISTEN TO IT AND NOT YOU REMARKING ON HOW AWESOME IT IS!

Stupid Bitch Daughter spent the majority of the concert texting her friends, presumably about how awesome the show was. I was so angry I wanted to smash her phone on the ground.

Worst Musical Performance of 2008:

Cameron and I went down to Toronto before the summer started and saw Miracle Fortress open for the Born Ruffians. Born Ruffians were awesome and so were Miracle Fortress, and it was an incredible show except for the fact that Slim Twig opened.

Slim Twig really really sucks and should not be allowed to play music in front of people. If you want to watch a show where someone makes screeching, formless guitar noises for half an hour straight, drowning out the rest of his band, and occasionally rabbles an incoherent, Hamburglar-like sentence into the microphone, and generally acts like an all-around asshole, then go see Slim Twig post haste.

Slim Twig’s band had a cello player, a super hot girl playing a Farfisa organ, and a drummer. In Slim Twig’s defense, I did get to mentally undress his keyboard player for a half an hour straight. When else will I get the opportunity to leer at an attractive female for an extended period of time while still appearing socially acceptable? Since then, I have not had such an opportunity. So, thank you for that, Mr. Twig. But please stop making poisonous music.

Anyway, thanks for reading and tune in next year for an equally comprehensive analysis of the year that was! *Whoosh* (that's the sound of the closing CGI graphic floating across your screen)