Just finished reading Live from New York, an oral history of Saturday Night Live. Haven’t watched the show regularly in a long time, but the book reminded me how much I loved this show throughout most of my life. Every era has some great stuff, but as far as the book goes, the most interesting stories are (unsurprisingly) from the first five (best) seasons. Still, there’s some really fascinating stuff about Norm MacDonald’s “Weekend Update” and Janeane Garofalo’s bad experience with the show. The least interesting stuff is in the last chunk of the book—the Will Ferrel/Tracy Morgan/etc. years. While I enjoy a lot of that period of the show, most of them are pretty boring people comapred to Bill Murray or Phil Hartman. I’d love to see the book updated, since it’s ten years old now. Really fun read, and much, much better than the Simpsons oral history.

2011 was a year in which I consumed a lot less film, comics, television, and music than I have in years past. I made no real attempt to “catch up” in the last few weeks, so as a result, the following lists may have an incomplete feeling. Regardless, these were my favorites.

note: I only read one 2011 book in 2011 (Supergods by Grant Morrison—it’s good), so that explains the lack of a book section.

FILM

1. Hugo (dir. Martin Scorsese)

2. Midnight in Paris (dir. Woody Allen)

3. Tabloid (dir. Errol Morris)

4. Drive (dir. Nicholas Winding Refn)

5. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (dir. Rupert Wyatt)

Honorable Mentions- The Adventures of Tintin, Super 8, Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, The Captains, The Muppets, Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

Worst movie of the year- Larry Crowne (dir. Tom Hanks)

COMICS

1. The Unwritten by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

2. Batman, Inc. by Grant Morrison, Chris Burnham, et al.

3. Hellblazer by Peter Milligan, Giuseppe Camuncoli, et al.

4. Echo/Rachel Rising by Terry Moore

5. Daredevil by Mark Waid, Paolo Rivera, and Marcos Martin

Honorable Mentions- Action Comics, Spaceman, iZombie, Morning Glories, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Wolverine and the X-Men, Usagi Yojimbo, RASL, Justice League Dark, X-Men: Schism, FF, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Faith, Planet of the Apes

Worst Comic of the Year- Fear Itself by Matt Fraction and Stuart Immonen (feel my disdain in three different posts!)

TELEVISION

1. Community

2. Game of Thrones

3. Parks and Recreation

4. Beavis and Butt-head

5. Curb Your Enthusiasm

Honorable mentions- 30 Rock, The Simpsons (These are the only seven shows I watched with any regularity, though I’d heartily recommend this past season of all of them.)

MUSIC

1. Watch the Throne by Jay-Z and Kanye West

2. Alone III: The Pinkerton Years by Rivers Cuomo

3. Belong by The Pains of Being Pure At Heart

4. EP/Camp by Childish Gambino

5. The King is Dead by The Decemberists

Honorable mentions- Milk by The Lunatic, Hey, There’s Tommy! Hey, Tommy… Where’s Mom and Dad? by Humming Bird, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds (self-titled), Castor, The Twin by Dessa, Take Care by Drake, Suck it and See by Arctic Monkeys, Submarine by Alex Turner

I’m the king. Christmas present highlights-

-I always get some Star Wars crap, but Star Wars Operation is gonna be dope. Also, I’ve wanted to read The Making of Star Wars for a while now, and Shadow Games, despite having a terrible cover, is about Dash Rendar from Shadows of the Empire, his first significant appearance since, and, because he’s one of my favorite expanded universe characters, that makes it worth reading. The calendars are also pretty cool.

-The original Planet of the Apes novel, as well as the animated series Return to the Planet of the Apes.

-I Am Better than Your Kids by Maddox- Wasn’t a huge fan of his first book, but I’ve flipped through this, and it’s already the funniest thing he’s written in ages (though I find he’s almost always still a good source for amusement).

-Chas: The Knowledge- a minor Hellblazer storyline. Should be fun.

-Roger Ebert’s memoir Life Itself.

-Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonder Struck- I loved Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, so I’m expecting greatness.

-The Autobiography of Mark Twain and The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain- Mostly unread (by me) work by the king.

-Orbiter by Warren Ellis and Colleen Doran- Already read this—it’s pretty amazing. Full write-up coming soon.

-The Time Machine Did It by prolific Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder- If the first chapter is any indication this is pure Swartzwelder craziness. Every other line is a joke and pretty much all of them land.

-The Visible Man by Chuck Klosterman- Although I prefer his non-fiction, I did really like Downtown Owl, so I’m looking forward to Klosterman’s second novel.

-Community season 2- My favorite current sitcom’s (so far) best season. Started listening to the commentaries- they are fun and informative, but I wish Dan Harmon was on every one like he was for season one.

-Habibi by Craig Thompson- Can’t wait to dig into this beast. Love Blankets to death, and I’ve heard this is better.

As you can probably tell, I mostly asked for books, and I look forward to a great deal of reading.

Parks and Recreation- “End of the World”

This show gets better and better. This episode may be my favorite. Tom’s party (“I am a party scientist. Welcome to my Laboratory.”), Leslie/Ben stuff, and April and Andy’s spontaneous trip to the Grand Canyon (not to mention the hilarious Burt Maclin/Janet Snakehole “action movie” with Jerry playing the villain). Season four was off to a slow start, but this episode has justified most of that slowness.

The Twilight Zone- “Night of the Meek” (1960)

“A word to the wise, to all the children of the twentieth century, whether their concern be pediatrics or geriatrics, whether they crawl on hands and knees and wear diapers or walk with a cane and comb their beards. There’s a wondrous magic to Christmas and there’s a special power reserved for little people. In short, there’s nothing mightier than the meek.”

Art Carney plays a department store Santa Claus named Henry Corwin who gets fired for being drunk on the job (though not before delivering an eloquent speech about the commercialization of Christmas). He finds a magical bag which will produce anyone’s heart’s desire. Henry spends the rest of the episode giving out gifts to homeless people and children, bringing holiday cheer to those who need it. This classic Christmas story, written by Rod Serling (who, at the end of the episode, delivers that wonderful monologue quoted above), follows the familiar Twilight Zone arc of redemption through some supernatural means. It’s not one of the series’s highs, but it is a gripping and emotional holiday episode, one that should be thought of as one of TV’s finest Christmas moments.

Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest (Michael Rapaport; 2011)

As a historical document of A Tribe Called Quest, Beats, Rhymes & Life does a great job telling the story of the first three albums (People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, The Low End Theory, and Midnight Marauders) and of giving a solid overview of the Native Tongues movement. The group’s last two albums (Beats, Rhymes & Life and The Love Movement) are glossed over in order to give more time over their contentious 2008 reunion tour. I would have liked a little more coverage of the break up, as well as more details on those final albums (their collaboration with J. Dilla on Beats, especially), but Q-Tip and Phife’s on again off again friendship certainly makes for compelling viewing, even if all of their disputes come off as rather childish on both ends. The film ends on a hopeful note with Tribe reuniting again in the summer of 2010, seemingly a lot happier to be spending time with each other than they were in ‘08. If you like A Tribe Called Quest, there’s much to learn and be entertained by here, and if you don’t like A Tribe Called Quest, what’s wrong with you?

Sebastian O by Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell (Vertigo; 1993)

The back cover synopsis for the trade paperback collection of Sebastian O gives the reader a pretty good idea what they’re in for:

“Gentle reader, we implore your indulgence! Do you dare deny yourselves the opportunity to amaze your jaded sensibilities in a manner to which—we dare fancy—they have never before been thrilled? Stay but a moment, and discover between these covers a tale of dandyism, vice, and revenge unique in the annals of graphical entertainments: SEBASTIAN O, a Romance unequaled in wit and espirit, with enough decadent asides to generate the most agreeable of frissons in every civilized peruser!

Buy quickly, now! And repair to your scented boudoirs, newly armed with this volume of madness and mauve, there to enjoy its sweet diversions in surroundings befitting your unquestionably high status and shameful criminal appetites. Be assured that the actions set forth herein by Messrs. GRANT MORRISON and STEVE YEOWELL are without equal in both originality and craftsmanship, and that the perverse narrative machinations from which they spring are incontrovertibly the flowering of a morbid and Plutonian genius.

God save the Queen… for someone must!”

Sebastian O is perhaps Grant Morrison’s first in a long line of work celebrating the hedonism he became legendary for through much of the ’90s. It’s an obvious precursor to The Invisibles (which also features the art of Steve Yeowell), especially that series second storyline “Arcadia.”

The book takes place in a technologically (but not culturally) advanced Victorian England. Sebastian O has long been imprisoned for a great many charges of indecency as the founder of the secret sex society known as the Club de Paradis Artifieiel, a haven for those who relish in false pleasures, those created out of boredom or wealth. When Sebastian breaks out of prison, he hunts down the other members of the club to figure out why he alone had been severely punished when the club was discovered and dissolved by the authorities.

Sebastian’s old colleagues include a helpful lesbian named George, the kindly, but still deplorable pedophile Abbe, and his suspected nemesis, Lord Theo Lavender. Sebastian himself is a pretty loathsome character, but like all Morrison protagonists from this period, he’s pretty charming and likable, despite his perversions and selfishness.

For a largely minor work, Sebastian O surprisingly predicts all of Morrison’s fascinations with the nature of reality, Victorian dandies, odd sexual proclivities, and righteous amorality found in much of his work in the ’90s and early ’00s. A slight, but satisfying work for Morrison die-hards like myself.