Roundup

Worst Book of the Year: Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Best Book of the Year (Young Adult): Special Topics in Calamity Physics *

Best Film of the Year: I have a two year old and do not see movies any more. Sooo, I guess, Tai Shan doing somersaults? Was that this year?

Photo That Sums Up What I Do Instead of See Movies: This one.

Best Album that You Literally Can’t Stop Listening To But Then at About the Thirtieth Straight Time Through the Album You Start to Get Annoyed at What Originally Seemed Like Funny Quirks in Her Songwriting But Now Seem Like Obvious Weaknesses and You’ve Been Skipping Over That “Let’s Play Dress Up” Cover of Handle Me With Care the Past Fifteen Times Anyway But Then You Don’t Listen to it for a While and Then You Do Again and Amazingly It’s Completely Fresh Again and The Overall Experience is Like when the Palomino Got Sucked Into the Black Hole in the Film The Black Hole, Went Through What Looked Like Heaven and Hell (Appropriate For This Album, I Guess) and Came Out The Other Side and You Looked At Your Dad and Said, “What Happened?” and he Shrugged and Said, “They Just Went Through the Black Hole” of 2006: Rabbit Fur Coat, Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins

Best Gawker Post of 2006: Team Party Crash’s Spy Book Launch: I look forward to rereading it in 2008’s “Gawker: The Funny Months”.**

Eeriest Dead People Coincidence of 2006: Former US Leader Gerald Rudolph Ford and Former Iraqi Leader Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti died more or less around the same time! (What the--?!!?? How did that happen?!?!?!??) ***

Best Four Things That Are No Longer Planets of 2006: (1) Pluto; (2) Star Jones; (3) Al Roker; (4) Katie Couric****

Best Sandwich Until You Pay $9.50 For It And Then It’s Just OK of 2006: Meatloaf sandwich at ’wichcraft.

Worst Way to End 2006/Start 2007: Seeing Dick Clark kissing on his wife. (Imagine there’s no such thing as Dick Clark. Now imagine running into some guy that looks like Dick Clark. Now imagine that guy kissing on someone who is about as grotesque but is female.
I totally saw that.)*****


THAT IS ALL. NOTHING ELSE HAPPENED IN 2006.


* N.B. on the promotional website, if you Ctrl+A the page, on the bottom right it says “aasdfsadf” which is computerese for “I typed some random characters with my left hand and didn’t bother to edit it out”; in an eerie coincidence, this is how the book was written (her right hand was busy patting herself on the back).

** I read Gawker religiously in three-day bursts that occur about every ten weeks, but among that subset, this joked on my face the hardest and reaffirmed my suspicion: even if I were participating in the things that make the city great and fun, I still probably wouldn’t know what I was doing. (Plus it introduced me to the practice of looking at Nikola Tamindzic’s photos at work in a very small Firefox window in the corner of my desktop with my mouse hovering over the “close” button, a totally fun practice.)

*** Also: Ford had a secretary named Saddam who warned him not to pardon Nixon and Hussein had no link to al-Qaeda but was a dick. (James Brown died too, but this was not eerie or a coincidence. Although they did have his body on display at the Apollo, which is kind of eerie, except that the eeriness is trumped by the awesomeness, except it probably means I’ll be on display in Gary Gygax’s attic or something.)

**** Number four applies only to CBS Promotional Photos. Otherwise, still a planet.

***** Sorry about the stroke or whatever, but pass the torch already; I know Seacrest has this in the bag, but for your consideration, my favorite Eternal Teenager is Dr. Z. Look at that punim. And every year his wife could wear a new giant hat and salute us for our bravery. I REALLY NEED TO BE SALUTED FOR MY BRAVERY MORE THIS YEAR, PLEASE.

Um, update, 1/03/07: Please do not salute my bravery. I am the least brave person of all time.