You didn’t think I was going to let this year come to a close without some sort of retrospective and completely subjective list, did you?
Best Movie I Saw: United 93 Paul Greengrass has enough artistic maturity to get out of the way and let the events of the hijacking unfold without embellishment or gauzy revisionism. An important film both for its historical accuracy and intellectual honesty.
Best Book I Read: Case Histories by Kate Atkinson I really like Kate Atkinson’s dry wit–you Brits do dry and witty with so much more style than we Americans. The book isn’t a great mystery, but it’s a great character study.
Best Song I Heard: “Stars above Us” by Saint Etienne. This song got my groove on for much of the past summer. It makes you smile, but not in a dopey sort of way. It makes you want to throw your own roof party and invite all your hip, urbane friends. I still can’t figure out how this band flew under my radar for so long.
Best Album I Purchased in its Entirety: Fox Confessor Brings the Flood by Neko Case Gorgeous voice. Gorgeous arrangements. Neko’s work with the New Pornographers is impressive, but this album conclusively demonstrates that she is more than a power-pop chanteuse. Country music couldn’t figure her out, but so much better for the rest of us.
Best TV Show I Watched: The Wire I enjoyed both Battlestar Galactica and The Office, but this season’s run of The Wire was stunning. Its devastating tale of Baltimore’s barely functioning civic institutions (schools, city hall, and the police), told by a cast of bureaucrats, cops, assassins, and politicos, was as compelling as any well-written novel.
So there you have it. 2006 as seen through my personal pop culture lens.
My hopes for the new year remain the same. Still need to finish the book. Still need to kiss a pretty girl. But mostly, I’m just waiting to see what one more spin around the sun will bring.
It’s snowing pretty heavily as I write this. I hope 2007 brings you something grand. Thanks for putting up with me.
Just a new year thank you for your blog. I enjoy your writing and wit. I am a mom to a 12 year old with a different type of MD and came upon your blog while searching around for internet role models for him.
Hope your dreams come true in 2007.
Happy New Year to you. Steve and I look forward to spending more time on the 19th Floor. The view is grand. Clearly the pretty girls have yet to discover it.