Best of 2009

Like everyone else with a blog, I'm going to give you my 'best of the year'. Unlike everyone else, I'm not going to inflict pictures of my holidays or my new cat or when my kid started to walk or some other guff which would bore anyone not in my immediate circle of relations.
Nope, this year you get my faves of T.V., comics, and other ephemera. Isn't that nice of me?
Best T.V.- The Wire. Well, this year I sat down with the entire five season run of it, so it's the best for me, innit? So how good is it. Well, let's put it this way...

Say there's an alien civilization that deems itself the guardian of determining whether an emerging civilization should be allowed to thrive, or be wiped out on the merit of that civilization's cultural output. With me so far? So if a civilization's most popular T.v. show (or whatever visual medium that they have, like some holoviewer.) is, say, 'Rape for Breakfast' with Your Host, Zzyxklop Pootswallow, then this alien civilization pushes the 'world obliterator' button on their giant spaceship and blasts them to oblivion. Follow me? So this hypothetical bunch of cultural fascists looks in on our world, and this is what they see on our television...

-'Reality' shows consisting of shrieking, vaguely-attractive morons humiliating themselves for a shot of fame, and by fame I mean having the average person remember them by saying, "Um, Bimbo Starletta? Wasn't she that girl who went on that reality show, got voted off, had a home sex tape released, got photographed flashing her vag-yay-ya getting out of a car in a nightclub, punched her step-mom, made a cameo in that 'Reality Show Movie' movie, put her name on a line of crappy handbags sold at Wal-Mart, and was found dead in a hotel room choked to death on someone else's vomit? Or am I thinking of some other person?"

-'News' programs with about as much useful information as the back of a cereal box, the advantage going to the cereal box as it has some information in French (Well, here in Canada, anyway.) Really, the T.V. news' priorities are so screwed up that if the two main stories were, "Famous person has sex with other person who is not spouse", and "Meteor on collision course with Earth, All Doomed", which do you think would be the lead in? No, the other one, smarty.

-'Commentator's' like that yowling suburban dad-type on MSNBC, and that former 'morning radio zoo crew' fat guy on Fox, who's modeled his show on Peter Finch's performance in 'Network', only 'Network' was a vicious satire of television, and Finch's character was a crazy man having a meltdown on national television being cruelly exploited by his employers, and I'm not joking about Glenn Beck using Howard Beale as his inspiration, by the way...

You get the idea. So the aliens sigh, lift the trigger on their 'World Obliterator' button, and ominously dangle a finger over it. Just then, one alien grabs the other alien's hand (or tentacle, or pseudo-pod.) and says, "Hang on a moment, have a look at this." And they will see 'The Wire'. They will see not just another police procedural drama, but a social novel like 'Les Miserable' brought to T.V. They will see how a dysfunctional system, well, functions. They will see the civic government fail to live up to it's end of the social contract, and let it's constituents down. They will see how it's police get hamstringed by loopholes and bureaucracy. They will see it's working class increasingly marginalized and victimized. They will see how crime reform gets hamstrung and the reformers hung out to dry. They will see schools run like prisons, where a good day for a teacher is one where the kids don't slice each other up with razor blades. They will see demoralized politicians not only compromising every principle, but having to eat shit with a smile and a plea for more shit. They will see the media disenfranchised and cynical. They will see the drug dealers as complex, morally grey people, not just shadowy boogie men. And they will see Omar Little. Oh, yes.

Omar Little has to be one of the most amazing fictional creations in T.V. history. He's an outlaw in every sense of the word, being the literal embodiment of that Marlon Brando response to the question, 'What are you rebelling against?' A homeless gay thug, his very name causes the people of East Baltimore to run screaming in the opposite direction. (I suspect his queerness is more an act of rebellion than a biological imperative.) He takes an especial glee in robbing drug dealers. For me, his most memorable performance is his scene in a courtroom, dressed in the Omar Little idea of 'Business Wear'. He seems to delight in the legal staff's discomfort. And finally, he's the romanticised 'outlaw code' taken to it's logical conclusion.

So in summary, these imaginary aliens that I just made up will spare us based on our willingness to entertain, subvert and inform, all in the space of five seasons of what I think is the best T.V. series ever. So thank you, series creators David Simon and Ed Burns. Thank you for saving us from a hypothetical alien obliteration.
Favorite T.V. bits: The limey junior exec gets his foot chewed off by the wayward lawn mower in this season of Mad Men. Walt watching Jesse's girlfriend choke to death on her own vomit in Breaking Bad. (You get to watch Walt's humanity fade away as well. Eww.)

Favorite Movie: Inglorious Basterds. Duh.
Best Comic: R. Crumb's first fifty books of Genesis.

Best Consumer Purchase I Made That Helps Ensure Humanity's Survival Through These Difficult Economic Times: The Playstation 3. Though to be honest, the only games I've bought for it are games I've already got for my Xbox360, because they look so good in hi-def. Isn't that incredibly sad? I'm dead inside. Well, not quite, since it's better put to use as a dumping ground for all the movies and t.v. shows I don't want to keep on my computer, and well, it's got Blu-Ray. Once you go Blu-Ray, you don't go back. All I'm saying...
Odd Observation I've Made After Watching Too Much T.V. This Holiday Season: I just don't watch a lot of broadcast television, and haven't for a long time. That's not a brag, it's just that passive t.v. viewing is a habit I fell out of a long time ago. So the experience of watching it now for me is like being plunged into a ice-cold bathtub. For instance: I was shocked to discover the appalling amount of anti-depressants being hawked on television. And 'anti-depressant' supplements, which, I assume, are to give your Valium and Prozac an extra little kick. What freaks me out is the disclaimer that using these will increase your feelings of being suicidal. Sweet Jesus! All things being considered, I think I'll stay mildly bummed most of the time if the alternative is snuffing it owing to a chemical imbalance...

The runner-up, of course, is that blanket-thingy with arms in it because you're presumably too inconvenienced to pull the blanket covering you down to reach for the t.v. remote or a Hot Pocket. That's beyond satire. It's literally one step above some RonCo/KTel product that blinks your eyes for your or inhales oxygen and exhales carbon dioxide on your behalf.
Proof that 2010 is officially, 'The Future'. While we're not organizing a joint Soviet/U.S. space mission to Jupiter just yet, it seems we're one step closer to that one cliche of 'The Future'. I'm talking of course, of 'Sex Robots'. See here. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/10/roxxxy-sex-robot-photo-wo_n_417976.html Isn't science wonderful? (I've said this before, but it bears repeating: If I somehow got one of these as a joke, I'd have a nervous breakdown trying to figure out how to get rid of it! Imagine the cops talking to me- 'No, honestly, officer! I didn't have sex with it! No, I got it as a joke! No, I realize that someone thought it was a real dead hooker and that's why you're here, but I didn't even touch it! Look, swab the- Oh, God. Please shoot me.')