Tim Mitchell Thought the Best and Worst About Everything This Year [Bye-Bye 2011]...

Tim Mitchell tried his best to work within the format that we gave him for our year-end list but it didn’t work out so well. But being fierce nerds, we know that sometimes you have to go’on ahead an let a square peg be a square peg. So here’s Tim Mitchell’s picks for best and worst of everything in all of its contrarian glory.  Best/Worst Book of the Year: KILLING LINCOLN, by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard. Why It’s The Worst: Because O’Reilly, a self-proclaimed devotee of Lincoln, finally gets around to co-authoring a book about the Civil War president and then proceeds to get facts wrong–many, many, many facts wrong. Why It’s The Best: Who else can screw up the facts in a historical book, make the bestseller list regardless of how bad it is, and then reflexively blame the “liberal” media for his own intellectual ineptitude? (That is, who else other than Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michele Malkin, Sarah Palin, Andrew Breitbart, etc.) Keep it classy, O’Reilly. Honorable Mention: THE SNOW ANGEL, by Glenn Beck and Nicole Baart. Yep, the guy who promotes one paranoid, unfounded conspiracy theory after another has also co-authored a heart-warming family Christmas drama. It’s like finding out that Senator Joseph McCarthy liked to paint adorable pictures of kittens, puppies and teddy bears in his spare time.   Best/Worst Movie of the Year: JACK AND JILL Why It’s The Worst: There is not enough room anywhere for me to explain why I think JACK AND JILL is the worst movie of 2011 — actually, the fact that Al Pacino is in this movie and he never gets a single opportunity to go full Scarface on Sandler is proof enough. Why It’s The Best: It’s the best example from 2011...

Best of 2011: Songs! [FaN Cheers]

Ernesssa says: I thought for sure that I’d be on the Adele 21 bandwagon this year. What a strong album! I loved just about every track to distraction and for a while there that album stayed on a loop. But then two songs stumbled into the public zeitgeist and somehow managed to eclipse my love for 21. The first was an electro-ditty called A REAL HERO by College ft. Electric Youth. Though formally released in 2009, most of us non music-supervisors didn’t hear this song until it provided near-perfect and rather bone-chilling background music for the phenomenal movie, DRIVE. My other favorite song of the year — the one I hope to hear whenever I turn on an alternative rock channel — is YOUNG BLOOD by The Naked and Famous. Even though the band is from New Zealand, and the song was released in Summer 2010, somehow I feel it perfectly captures being a dreamer in LA right now. So although Adele’s ONE AND ONLY is technically my favorite song released this year, A REAL HERO and YOUNG BLOOD are my favorite songs of the year. Sadly, A REAL HERO here doesn’t have an official video, but you can check out the video for YOUNG BLOOD below:   And here are rest of our picks for favorite songs of the year. Weirdly enough, as popular as her album was, no one else picked Adele as her or his favorite song of the year either. A couple of other bizarre notes : though we had more agreement about our least favorite songs than ever before (one of which is once again Jersey Joe’s favorite song of the year — he chose TIK TOK by Ke$ha in 2010), we all choose different favorite songs of the year. Also, though solo artists reigned...

The Best of Times/The Worst of Times 2011 [FaN Remembers]

Ernessa says: Well, I’ve written a lot about my least favorite moments of the year. I invite you to check out my “How to Be Sad” blog for reference. My favorite moment of the year was hands down taking a three-day trip to Martha’s Vineyard with my bestie, Monique. It was ostensibly a business trip for me (I was giving a reading along with two other wonderful authors for a book event), but it really became a good excuse to talk and hang out with my best friend for the longest period of continuous time that we’ve had together since college. We saw movies, we ate great food, we attended a fabulous Vineyard party, and we talked and talked and talked… What amazed me was that we never ran out of things to say. On the drive back to her house I realized that this time would be listed as my favorite moment of the year. And is there anything better than realizing you’re in a favorite moment while you’re actually in it? I don’t think so. And here’s what our other bloggers had to say about their favorite and least favorite moments of the year.  Least Favorite: The passing of my dear little female cat Glitter. She was less than two years old and died of Feline Leukemia passed down from her mother. We miss her dearly. Favorite: Getting Engaged to my man Levi. I love you babe, and hopefully before too long we will be able to legally wed throughout this country let alone in our home state of California. We are aiming to wed in Spring of 2013! Zack Bunker from Tall Glass of Shame and Runway Rundown   Least favorite HANDS DOWN was my boyfriend breaking up with me. Most...