Favorite 2008 Stuff! Favorite 2008 Stuff!

Movies
1. The Dark Knight
2. Bigger Faster Stronger*
3. Shine a Light
4. Step Brothers
5. The Onion Movie
6. Rachel Getting Married
7. Role Models
8. Iron Man
9. Pineapple Express
10. Paranoid Park
Notes: Still haven't seen potential contenders Wendy and Lucy, Milk, Revolutionary Road, Synedoche, New York, and a zillion others.

DVDs
1. The Dark Knight
2. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
3. Mad Men: Season 1
4. Bigger Faster Stronger*
5. No Country for Old Men
6. My Kid Could Paint That
7. Shine a Light
8. Step Brothers
9. The Onion Movie
10. Iron Man
Notes: Burn After Reading and Man on Wire were disappointing.

Albums
1. Paul Westerberg, 49:00
2. The Baseball Project, Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails
3. The Dirtbombs, We Have You Surrounded
4. Mudhoney, The Lucky Ones
5. Beck, Modern Guilt
6. RTX, JJ Got Live RaTX
7. Flight of the Conchords, Flight of the Conchords
8. The Raconteurs, Consolers of the Lonely
9. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
10. Neil Hamburger, Neil Hamburger Sings Country Winners
Notes: I tried to like TV on the Radio's Dear Science, but couldn't.

Reiusses
1. The Replacements, Pleased to Meet Me
2. Mudhoney, Superfuzz Bigmuff: Deluxe Edition
3. Detroit Cobras, The Original Recordings: Singles and Unreleased 1995-1997
Notes: Rhino's seven other Replacements reissues were killer too.

Books
1. Dash Shaw, Bottomless Belly Button
Notes: That's the only worthwhile 2008 book I actually read in 2008. Otherwise, I mostly read older graphic novels (including Watchmen and various Batman titles) and baseball books (the best of which were Robert Whiting's You Gotta Have Wa and The Samurai Way of Baseball, and Michael Lewis' Moneyball).

Now I'm gonna hibernate 'til spring training.

Happy 60th, Scrabble™!

On Tuesday, my favorite board game hit the big six-oh.

Tonight I made this scan of of our portable board, the snap-in tiles in situ from our most recent match -- on August 8 of this year, while camping in Olympic National Park, I beat Eliza 282-248. Not too shabby, as my best-ever score is 323.

So killer is Scrabble™ that it inspired the killer book Word Freak, the killer documentary Word Wars, and Scrabulous, which hit the big oh-three this year (I haven't actually played it, so I'm not sure if it's indeed killer as well)...

Uh oh, Kwijybo on the loose!

Bubblegum Card of the Week: KISS

Is this thing still going?

Anyway, I wish I hadn't got rid of these. View 'em all here.

We Hardly Knew Ye: Bettie Page

Va-va-voom.

'68 Comeback!

It was 40 years ago today, December 3, 1968, that Elvis's comeback special aired on NBC.

After years of shooting corny Hollywood musicals while drifting off the charts and into irrelevance, Elvis returned to the stage for his first live performance in seven years. He tore it up.

With his kickass performance of numbers old and new, from the opening "Trouble/ Guitar Man" medley to the spellbinding finale of "If I Can Dream," Elvis reclaimed his throne as the king of rock 'n' roll. As he said after "All Shook Up," to nobody in particular, "It's been a long time, baby."

Alright, so the production numbers were kind of dumb, but Elvis was never cooler than on that night, rocking out in his black leather suit.