Your Year in Review Quizo Update

Hello, good morning, and a hearty first-email-of-2008-how-the-fuck-are-ya to all the folks out there in Quizo land. I hope everyone's holiday - pick and choose whichever you may or may not have celebrated - was as filled with awesomeness as mine was. We're back tonight for the first time in three weeks and I hope y'all are rested up and ready to game it up - I came up with the speed round on Friday night and it is fan-freaking-tastic. I've been threatening to do this one for a long time and now I'm finally pulling the trigger. It's going to be great.

As it is the beginning of a new year, I am going to fully embrace the zeitgeist and present a quick "Best Of" for 2007. All entries are entirely subjective. In the event that you should disagree with any of my choices, please refer to the Palestra Jon Rule.

VIDEO GAME OF THE YEAR: A lot of choices, to be sure. Bioshock is creepy and beautiful; Rock Band is, well, it's goddamn Rock Band; Halo 3 I played once and regarded as just as phenomenally stupid as its predecessors but sure is pretty; in the end, though, the choice is fairly obvious: Portal. Why? Any game that has a psychotic, pathological liar artificial intelligence telling you "any contact will result in an unsatisfactory mark on your official testing record, followed by death" has to be it. Absolutely the most fun thirty bucks can buy. Remember: the cake is a lie.

BOOK OF THE YEAR: I read so many goddamn books in a given calendar year - and limiting ourselves to strictly regular books here, not comics, we're talking about a hundred-something on average - it's tough to narrow down a list, much less remember everything I actually read. In trying to compile even a top ten list one book kept jumping to the front of my mind, which more than anything I think means it probably should rank at the top: William Gibson's "Spook Country." Over his last few books the mad prophet of the future has matured into a deliberative surgeon cutting into the present, stripping away the outer layer of meaningless crap that covers everything to show you what the world is really like. Plus Gibson is one of the few writers who actually makes ME feel inadequate; his prose is so pristine and delicate it will - to steal a phrase of his - make your teeth hurt. That has to count for something.

ALBUM OF THE YEAR: This one is less tough since in the entirety of 2007 I bought precisely two new albums, and as much as I love Kylie Minogue "X" is certainly not her strongest effort. "Magic," Bruce Springsteen, der.

TV SHOW OF THE YEAR: Fuck you, David Chase. Fuck you sideways. Combine that gigantic Charlie Foxtrot with 24 going completely off the rails almost from the beginning, Lost bungling its first 6-8 episodes, the inexplicably-popular Heroes continuing to be one of the worst television shows I've ever seen; and 30 Rock, despite it's constant hilarity, being sort of all over the map, the straight-up best show on television was - and still is - Battlestar Galactica. I've said it before and I'll say it again: you are stupid for not watching it. Weeks or months or years from now you will watch it and say, "oh my god, this show is incredible, I can't believe how stupid I was for not watching it," and I will agree that yes, it was pretty fucking stupid of you. WATCH THIS GODDAMN SHOW.

COMIC BOOK OF THE YEAR: Dear Mr. Lucas - please read The Sinestro Corps War to learn how to make space opera awesome. It has everything your crappy Star Wars prequels lack: interesting characters, great dialogue, a compelling villain (several of them, in fact), and a plot you don't have to excavate out of a Mayan ruin to understand. Basically it will knock your socks off for every page from beginning to end. Short of reading this fantastic story - basically the only good comic published in what was a shockingly dismal year for the medium across the board - please never make anything ever again. Signed, The World.

MOVIE OF THE YEAR: Seeing a lot of great movies over the last year makes this a tough choice, but the problem is I still haven't seen a whole bunch of the big "prestige" movies yet. In terms of provisional choices, though, I actually ended up with a tie between Gone Baby Gone and, in what came as a shock even to me, Eastern Promises. Odds are you haven't seen either of these movies yet (few people have). I've talked about Gone Baby Gone before, which you'll now probably have to wait for the DVD (February 12) to see if you haven't already, but I got the Eastern Promises DVD over the holidays and holy shit it's incredible. I mean, WOW. I don't know when David Cronenberg became an actual mature filmmaker but Jesus Christ on a flaming pogo stick this is an absolutely flawless film. It is top to bottom perfect. You will not be disappointed.

All are of course welcome to discuss any surely-farcical deviations from the above, but remember the rule.

I'll see you tonight, then.

JLK