Yep, pretty soon this millennium will finally be able to vote, play the lottery, get drafted, and apply for a credit card without a cosigner, wooooo! (Hate to be that guy, but remember that since there was no year 0, this century didn’t start until 2001.) That means it’s time to bid farewell to 2018 and hope for better things in the next year.

I’m bidding adieu in the same way that plenty of others do: reminiscing on the highs and lows that the last 365 days had to offer. Which means I have no choice but to get political. Hang the eff on, here we go!

…Just kidding. Considering the touchiness afoot, that would be a guaranteed disaster. If the phrase “united we stand, divided we fall” still holds water, then we were at terminal velocity on January 1 and the chute still hasn’t opened as of the waning days of December. Instead of diving into the touchier subjects that have enraged the world all year long, I’m gonna keep it light and disposable (while still occasionally going negative, ‘cause some bitches gotta be called out). As a writer, I am a media entertainer, so I’m sticking to my wheelhouse: the best, worst, and whatever else in media entertainment.

Like everyone, I don’t experience everything that happens in any given year, and I’ll be slow to get around to even a decent-sized chunk of it. I freely plead ignorance on things I haven’t been exposed to yet, so I’m qualifying everything to come as being out of everything that I have experienced (many holes exist, believe me, and once I “catch up,” the winners/losers may be a lot different down the line). But for right now, here’s a rundown of the year’s best, worst, and in-betweenst (I coined that word, it’s real now, and it’s mine) fun stuff in the world of media entertainment:

-Best Movie I Saw: Phantom Thread*

[runners up: BlacKkKlansman, The Incredibles 2]

-Worst Movie I Saw: Truth or Dare

[runners-up: The Hurricane Heist, Robin Hood]**

-Best Wow Movie Scene I Saw: Tom Cruise falling off the helicopter and snagging the payload in Mission: Impossible Fallout; half the theater surged out of their seats at that bit

-Biggest Movie Disappointment I Saw: Black Panther

-Best Thing I Watched on “TV”: John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous at Radio City***

[runner up: Mystery Science Theater 3000, whose Gauntlet episodes improved dramatically upon the mildly underwhelming original Netflix run from 2017]

-Best “TV” Scene I Saw: Mac’s dance scene in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia; a bit confounding the first time I watched it (as I awaited a punchline that never came), but revisited repeatedly to soak in its raw (but subtle) emotional chaos

[runner-up: Russell Crowe creating The John Oliver Koala Chlamydia Ward on Last Week Tonight]

-Biggest “TV” Void: Waiting for the final frickin’ episodes of Game of Thrones

-Best “TV” Surprise: NBC saving Brooklyn Nine-Nine from the brink of extinction. All chant: “Nine-Nine!”

-Best Album I Heard: Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe

[runners-up: 7 by Beach House, Grand Bargain! by Poster Children]

-Best Song I Heard: “Donnie Darko” by Let’s Eat Grandma

[runners-up: “This Is America” by Childish Gambino, “Street Swamp” by No Age]

-Worst Song I Heard: “I Love It” by Kanye West & Lil Pump

[runners-up: literally 96% of what charted in the Top 10 all year long, even all the ones I never heard; in fact, probably especially the ones I never heard]

-Best Video Game I Played: Rootin’ Tootin’ Cowboy Shootin’ II****

-Best Video Game I Played All the Way Through for the First Time This Year (not released in 2018): South Park: The Stick of Truth

[runners-up: Rise of the Tomb Raider, Titanfall 2]

-Best Book I Read: Air by Rosie Scott

[runners-up: Big Ship at the Edge of the Galaxy by Alex White, Kingdom Come by Jim Doran]

-Worst Thing I Read: Trump’s Twitter feed…just, like, all of it

-Best YouTube Video I Saw That’s Less Than 60 Seconds Long: Don’t Talk to Me Until I’ve Had My Coffee

-Best YouTube Video I Saw That’s More than 4 Minutes Long: “It’s Not a Moon” – Bad Lip Reading

-Most Entertaining News Story I Read: Track & Field Poop Mystery Solved

-Most Overrated Piece of Media I Experienced: God of War

[runner up: again, Black Panther]

* Technically a 2017 movie, but it didn’t open in my neck of the
woods until this year so I count it

** Didn’t even really hate either of the runners-up; they were both kinda watchable. Just really, really dumb. And since I’ve always loved Robin Hood media (including the solid BBC series from 2006 and one of my all-time favorite PC games, Sierra’s Conquests of the Longbow), it still stung even when expecting mediocrity and getting mediocrity

***
I put quotes around “TV” because it’ll never feel right to say
that original programming from the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime,
etc. is “television”

**** AKA, Red Dead Redemption II, and since it was a Christmas gift, I’ve only played it for about 7 or 8 hours as of now—I rarely buy games full-price, so I’ve played very few 2018 games so far. In fact, this is the only one I’ve even actually liked so far