I’m usually not one for year end “Best of” lists- I will often browse the selections of my favorite critics but that’s about the extent of my engagement with them. But this year I, like many others around the world, consumed a ridiculous amount of entertainment and I leaned away from my usual fare and more towards genres that I normally wouldn’t invest a lot of time or attention.
The most notable thing I noticed was that music was nowhere on my list. It was shocking to me when I realized I didn’t listen to a lot of music this year, and certainly nothing new. But whether I’m writing or listening to music it has never been a form of escape for me, it’s more of a way to bring into focus my thoughts and feelings. This was a year where I needed blurry and dull edges around everything; when things came into focus they felt too painful or scary. So I didn’t listen to a lot of music and what I did listen to was older and familiar enough to simply be background music, that didn’t make me feel anything.
So without further ado, here are my favorites of 2020. Please share yours in the comments!
Social Media moments:
Kimberly Jones went viral earlier this year during the BLM protests for her sobering, impassioned, and utterly true assessment of what America means to the people protesting in the streets. If I tell you that she compares the struggle of Black Americans to a Monopoly game it might seem trivializing, but keep in mind that the game of Monopoly is the quintessential representation of our capitalist society. Wealth breeds wealth. Poverty breeds poverty. There are no do-overs, and one person can quickly attain all the wealth of the other players.
Transcript here.
Honorable mention:
These two videos back to back really encapsulate 2020 in my mind. I don’t have much to add to this video because it speaks for itself. The not knowing whether to laugh or cry is all me, but I did try hard to find the humor in this year.
Transcript:
Okay, excuse my looks I’m just, you know, in the middle of hitting rock bottom. But I found my goal list that I made in December for my goals for 2020. Okay, tell me this is not hilarious. Alright, make more money, I’ve been unemployed since March. Travel more. Lose weight. Be more social! Cry less. I wrote “cry less.” I’ve cried every single day of this whole pandemic. Um… spend more time with…. (laughs) This is not funny, but I wrote spend more time with my grandma and she died. Not funny. Not funny.
Let’s all raise a glass to Robyn Schall (and go follow her on Twitter @RobynSchall).
Movies:
This is an interesting one because there were just so many released this year via different streaming services rather than theaters. I noticed while perusing other lists that aside from The Invisible Man and I’ve Been Thinking of Ending Things, I hadn’t seen most of the movies that were hits this year. I did enjoy The Invisible Man, but I didn’t think it was great. I’m clearly outnumbered in that opinion, but I found it formulaic and anti-climactic. Ending Things, however, really started to annoy me about halfway through with the tediousness of it all. I’m normally a fan of Charlie Kaufman but I felt like I wasted a lot of time trying to get through the film only to be underwhelmed and a little grumpy. I did happen to find at least one other critic, Roxana Hadadi of AVClub.com, who summarized it thusly in her yearly wrap:
“Impenetrable” comes to mind. Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking Of Ending Things holds the frustrating distinction of being driven by a plainly obvious narrative twist while also surrounding it in tedious opacity, and the result is a deeply trying film convinced of its singularity. Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons could have never left for that trip to visit his parents and that would have been fine by me.
But my cinematic criticism should be taken with a grain of salt, because my favorite movie of the year? Palm Springs.
A modern day nod to Groundhog Day, there is something intangibly sweet about this movie in a way other romantic comedies usually strive for but end up missing. Starring Andy Samberg as Nyles and Cristin Milioti as Sarah, this felt like a comedic take on 2020, though it likely wasn’t intended to be so.
Sarah and Nyles wake up every day and find themselves stuck on the wedding day of Sarah’s sister. Nyles, as the boyfriend of a bridesmaid, is insignificant to the wedding party while Sarah is connected to it as family.
There is a certain freedom in knowing that no matter what happens today, you get a do-over when you wake up tomorrow, which will still be today. But what happens if there’s no tomorrow? How long does it take to lose track of yourself, your connections, even your flaws and mistakes, and what if some of those are all trapped in the same day that you have to keep reliving?
Podcast
You're Wrong About, hosted by Michael Hobbes and Sarah Marshall, explores in depth the things we think we know from past news stories. For example, one of my favorite episodes explores the death of Kitty Genovese. You probably remember this as a tragic tale of a New York City woman being brutally and slowly murdered while her neighbors ignored her screams and cries for help.
Her death became a symbol of “urban apathy” to the nation, but what if there’s more to the story? What if her neighbors did call the police? What if she was part of a marginalized community that feared the police as much as they feared a homicidal man on a rampage?
The “urban apathy” narrative was convenient and it played on the fears of the nation at that time, but the true story is far more disturbing as it tells the tale of Americans and how we wish for easy answers to complex questions because the reality is often too hard to accept.
Honorable Mention: Armchair Expert, hosted by Dax Shepard and Monica Padman.
I was an early adapter to podcasts, long before they dominated the media landscape. Back then there were a lot of podcasts but my subs were pretty basic: WTF with Marc Maron, now considered to be the father of podcasts, Savage Lovecast with Dan Savage, offering sex and relationship advice, This American Life, which is of course a staple in broadcasting, etc.
Nowadays everyone who is anyone has a podcast, and unfortunately they are mostly made up of famous people talking to other famous people. Armchair Expert mostly falls in to that category, but the honesty and vulnerability of the hosts and guests make it a more refreshing experience.
Shepard openly struggles with different thoughts, including his place in the world, coming to grips with the fact that as a tall, blond, handsome white man he has been incredibly privileged, to the fact that although he is heterosexual he is more enamored and obsessed with the male body than female, to the fact that his wife (Kristen Bell) out earns him and has been far more successful.
His vulnerability and troubled past make the interviews more insightful than most; he often unwittingly projects his own feelings and hang ups on others, and the guests are quick to call him out on that while also being vulnerable and open themselves. It makes for a much more illustrative experience than the classic famous person interviewing famous person podcast.
Series
The Good Place was an awesome experiment by director, producer, and writer Mike Schur, of Parks and Rec, The Office, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine fame.
He had built his credibility as a hit maker to ask for a four season project where he had full creative control and NBC agreed to it. What followed was a wickedly funny and deeply thoughtful meditation on what it means to be a good person.
Kristen Bell stars as Eleanor Shellstrop, a selfish, scrappy, apathetic woman who dies in a grocery store parking lot. Ted Danson is Michael, the architect of the neighborhood she’ll live in in The Good Place, which isn’t really Heaven as we think of it, but pretty close to it.
Eleanor realizes almost immediately that she doesn’t belong in the Good Place but is terrified of being sent to the Bad Place if that mistake is discovered. Her soulmate, Chidi (played to perfection by William Jackson Harper) was a professor of Ethics and spent his life asking the big and small…. and minute questions about what it means to be Good. He agrees to teach her Ethics and Moral Philosophy in order to save Eleanor from being exposed, but by doing so he puts himself in danger.
The story takes quite a few twists and turns that would be spoilers if you haven’t watched it, but I can’t recommend this show enough. Despite the delicious (and timely, on-point) comedy, or perhaps because of it, the show demands that we look inward at our own motivations and decisions.
MotherForking Shirtballs, this show is the best.
Books
The Memory Police, written by Yōko Ogawa, was written in 1994 but was not available (translated) to American audiences until 2019. (Both of my picks for this year are older than 2020).
The unnamed narrator lives on an unnamed island where memories become illegal and then disappear. On random mornings, residents of the island wake up to have no connection to any given thing. There is a quite stoic ceremony following every memory lost- the residents of the island gather to set aflame piles of the memories in question. One day the narrator wakes up to find that the river behind her house is filled with rose petals. Roses no longer mean anything to her- their scent, to the extent that one may still exist, evokes nothing.
And so the townsfolk gather with all of their rose bushes and toss them into a great bonfire. At each bonfire the narrator tries to remember what the now-obsolete thing is, but by the next morning she won’t even remember the name of, say, roses.
Life continues to go on as normal for most of the island residents but there are a few who are not able to forget roses or birds or perfume. The memory police do random raids on houses that they suspect of holding on to memories and those who still have memories are arrested and taken to an unknown location, with an unknown fate.
I read this book in April and am still haunted by it. The surreal sadness narrated by a young woman who accepts her fate and accepts it as normal, as simply as we accept the trees changing color in Fall, is chilling and tragic.
Honorable mention:
God Help the Child, by the legend Toni Morrison.
Last year, before Toni Morrison passed, I wanted to re-read all of her books. She was one of my favorite authors in the early aughts but I hadn’t kept up with her for many years. I ended up instead reading her later works before going back. I was halfway through Home when she passed.
I read God Help the Child in one sitting back in February, then reread it again in July. I can’t pinpoint why this book, of all Morrison’s great works, sat so heavy on my soul. Perhaps it was Bride not only accepting but accentuating her identity, maybe it was the way Booker and Bride seem so at odds, almost mysteries to each other. I can’t articulate why this book seemed to weave into my own life, but when Bride was punched in the face (rightfully so, IMO) I felt it in mine, and I can literally see the image of her, dressed in perfect white, lying on pavement with a mouthful of blood as though it’s my own memory.
Pastime
Remember back in March when we all thought it was a great time to take up new hobbies or develop new talents? Yeah…. that didn’t happen. I’m too young to be curmudgeonly but here I am. I rolled my eyes at those people because I already do everything I want to do. Play guitar, cook, write, organize, clean, read, stay active, etc. As an introvert I’ve actually quite loved our new normal, with the exception of missing my family like crazy.
But my wife and I stumbled on to the best pastime ever this year after our original favorite pastime had to go by the wayside due to weather.
In 2020 we learned that after a really long and stressful day, getting stoned and watching old Reading Rainbow episodes is just good, wholesome fun even if you’re 40. Just as he was when I was in elementary school, LeVar Burton is my favorite person on the planet this winter.
So, what are your favorites of this year?