What was Great in 08

So it’s a month late for a “year end/best of” post. But here’s my list of the my personal Best of 2008.*

Music
In 2008 I got into a few artists that I only peripherally listened to in the years prior, here are the albums of those peeps that I listened to the most last year:

Cat Power…The Greatest
The Roots…Game Theory
The Fugees…The Score

I also started listening to more Lupe Fiasco, Talib Kweli, Dead Prez, Atmosphere, but more songs than albums stand out.

New music I really dug in ’08:
She & Him…Volume One
Sea Wolf…Leaves in the River
Chris Mills…Living in the Aftermath

Best soundtrack:
The Hottest State (even though it came out in 2007)


Concerts
Sadly I didn’t see much live music in 2008. So with that in mind, here are my winners.

The best show of ’08 that I didn’t attend
Outside lands Music festival August 22-24. The line-up looked awesome and I love San Francisco, wish I could have made it.

The best show I did attend
The Feist concert at Hammerstein Ballroom on April 30th. The simple and elegant shadow-puppetry wasn’t at all as lame as it might sound, it was in fact beautiful and she had an incredibility endearing stage presence. Also, I ended up singing the version of Inside + Out on this album for about four months of last year.

Movies

In the theatre
Tie between Rachel Getting Married and Slumdog Millionaire

Netflixed
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead and Lars and the Real Girl


Books
2008 was the year I decided to finish everything that George Orwell has ever written. Having already read a handful of his novels, the book of his I probably enjoyed the most in 2008 was Burmese Days and Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin was a good primer with interesting insight.

Personally
Without getting too personal, here are some of my personal bests of 08…

Best Moment
Hard to say exactly, but election night was pretty awesome and my solo bungee-jumping/waterfall-rappelling/rainforest zip-lining trip was really cool too.

Biggest accomplishment
Unfortunately it’s not anything I wrote (although I did have a big feature come out in May). I think it’s my relationship with my Little Sister. We were matched last January and I was a little trepidatious about how challenging hanging out with a 13-year-old would be, I’ve been surprised how much she likes and trusts me and how even though I’m under no disillusions about “changing” her life, I do feel like having me to hang out with is something she looks forward to.


*Note: Many of these things didn’t come out in 2008, but I discovered/rediscovered them during the year, so they still fit in my personal Best Of.