2009 was a weird year. Look at sports: Brett Favre’s "I used to find his flip-flopping annoying but now I think his balls are humungous" 12-4 season to Tom Brady’s “does he even care?” 10-6; the NBA finals didn’t involve Kobe vs. King James but rather Kobe vs… Dwight Howard and Hedo Turkoglu? And A-Rod managed to not smoke the pole in the post-season while the Red Sox got spanked? Yes, 2009 was odd.
Before I dive into my Top 10 for music, I'll start with the Etcetera topics of the year I think are worthy of Paulies inclusion. For instance, the coolest thing to happen in 2009? Beatles Rock Band, by a landslide. The fact that Harmonix was supported every step of the way by Paul, Ringo, the widows, the Martins, Dhani Harrison is extraordinary given that it is after all, just a video game. I'm not a video game person, so every sentence I've written about the game I've wound up erasing for sounding too fifth grade ("It's wicked cool when you play 'Revolution' for the sixth time and Ringo yells, 'take 6!' beforehand," and so on). So instead I've listed two videos that I think illustrate the Big Deal-ness of the game and its brilliant advertising campaign.
BOOKS: So with the economy still sucking and wars still going on and bad news still being the bulk of news, there exists a window of opportunity for escapism books to really thrive, or maybe to be more specific, really trashy and poorly written books that you can easily read in a day. And so we've had a great year for hilarious memoirs, whether they're intended to be hilarious or not. (The numbers for Brooke Shields and Carrie Fisher talking about postpartum depression and hitting the sauce are kind of astounding.) Bookshelves are filled with [mostly] true stories that'll make you feel better about your own life. (Artie Lange's Too Fat to Fish was a late 2008 release, but it's paperback came out in 2009 so I'm just going to let that slide for the sake of including it here.) But the best memoir of 2009 was definitely not Sarah Palin or Elizabeth Hawes writing about wanting to bone Camus, but rather, it's Jodie Sweetin of Full House's tell-all, UnSweetined. Here's a "taste" (to use terminology fashioned by those who put things up their nose that don't belong there): "Looking back, I think I liked the control. I was always the driver, the host; it was always my show. With people waiting to party, I went into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of Jack Daniels is one hand, a bottle of champagne under my arm, and a big plate of coke in my other hand for all my guests. The crowd went wild. Standing ovation. Just how I liked it."
TELEVISION: You know it's a weird year for TV when everyone you know has something to say about an MTV reality show and it's not 1994. And while I have nothing to add to the already on-going Paulies discussion on Jersey Shore, another 2009 TV oddity was this summer's late-night changeover. There was much head scratching and worry over Conan O'Brien taking over The Tonight Show and Jimmy Fallon inheriting Late Night. The worry came from fans fretting that Conan would dumb down his style and all his musical guests would be overweight pop-country acts. The head scratching was the result of choosing Jimmy Fallon for the 12:35 slot. I'm a religious watcher of both, a Conan superfan that showed up at Rockefeller Center around 12:30pm for a 5pm taping of Late Night in 2003. (Needless to say, NBC's recent wrongdoings and Leno's inability to retire like he said he would have created a level of anger and distress in me I could devote a whole new blog to.) Anyway, Conan at 11:35 has been fabulous; the Twitter skits, the return of Andy Richter to the couch, it's all brilliant. As for Jimmy Fallon, I believe in him. Yes, I believe in him despite his complete inability to interview people who he hasn't already partied with. (His interviews with Jason Schwartzmann, Artie Lange, and even the loathsome Kate Hudson are great, but give him Ringo or even Matthew Broderick and he tanks.) However, despite all this, I think he's talented enough to be on TV five nights a week. He has a solid head writer in the hilarious A.D. Miles and his natural talent is plentiful enough to balance out his awkwardness:
And sadly, it looks like this will be the last year that the Paulies will include discussion of Flight of the Conchords. So why not dance to "Sugar Lumps" one more time?
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2 comments:
Good call in including Flight of the Conchords -- I think every Paulies reader will miss them dearly, as we miss Arrested Development and the British Office. Otherwise, Kate, what do you make of this Conan article on the Daily Bast -- I thought it was pretty provocative: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-01-13/good-riddance/?cid=hp:beastoriginalsC1
Well, it's not nearly as provocative as this bizarre debate I got involved in on Facebook last night where a girl called Conan a misogynist. (I honestly think she had him confused with Letterman, but I digress.)
I think that article is lacking because it doesn't include any concrete examples of how Conan changed for the worse after taking the reigns at the Tonight Show. He has the fact that the numbers dropped by 700,000 but that number was much higher when Leno took over Carson's spot.
My reaction to the suggestion that Conan is worse-off for not doing politcal humor is that there are lots of people (smart people even, i.e, Kim Thoreson) who do not care at all about politics. Maybe Conan was being intelligent by appealing to an existing demographic of people who don't want to hear about Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi on a regular basis. Instead of political humor, he had puppies dressed up like cats. I think that kind of simple, silly escapsim humor is brilliant.
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