The Best of 2008

Let's start with the event of the year: Sen. Barack Obama being elected as president! I knew that I'd see this happen during my lifetime, but I was never sure when. It's good to know that it occurred before I became 30. Now I'm 1 for 3 with presidential elections.

I enjoy making and reading these end-of-the-year lists since they often serve multiple purposes. The first is that they are a record of the American cultural zeitgeist. What did the critics enjoy and what did the general public enjoy? Where do I fall in this spectrum? Most hip-hop has been lacking this year. I don't follow the blues, jazz, country, metal, or R&B too closely or at all.

I think back to David Foster Wallace's introduction for the 2007 edition of the Best American Essays. He talked about Total Noise and Deciders (his caps) and what it meant to be a responsibly informed adult in the U.S. nowadays. He argued that it's impossible to read every published essay in the U.S. as a precursor to deciding on what's the "best." All any of us can hope to do is to be intelligent enough to know what we don't know and to approach such personal ignorance with a sense of humility so that we may begin to improve ourselves. Wallace's revelation echoes of Socrates, Mengzi, and the Buddha. I can only hope that I have been able to explore and map my own ignorance with these lists.

Movies
I haven't watched that many movies since August thanks to my job at the Daily Wildcat, but many of the movies I have watched have been great overall. However, there was a clear, definite winner.

Best movie: WALL-E
How brave is it of Pixar to take a chance on starting a movie with a 30-minute opening sequence with no dialogue? And with a big budget, "mainstream," animated film, no less. Beautiful animation, a story full of satire and playfulness, WALL-E boasts some great moments of humanity from characters made of pixels. I would even go so far and say that this movie is near flawless.

Next best movie: The Dark Knight
Another great movie that provides the new standard for superhero movies to come, and a good example of how make a better sequel. Christopher Nolan's version of Batman hits all the right notes: Bruce Wayne's conflict between his civilian life and his life as Batman; supervillains; gadgetry; and so on. Yet the movie transcends previous superhero movies in that the situations are grounded in situations that not only test Batman's sense of morality but also those in Batman's life such as Jim Gordon, Alfred Pennysworth, and Harvey Dent.

Best movie reissued this year: Chungking Express (Criterion Edition)
OK, so the special features aren't all that special, which is surprising since Criterion usually does a great job in this area. But the movie still holds up really well after all these years.

Other notable movies: Iron Man, Hellboy & the Golden Army,

Music
I've been trying to catch up on all the music released since the summer. Thankfully, many of the year's best albums have been spread throughout the seasons rather being unloaded during the fall and winter, which was the norm in recent years.

Albums (in no particular order)
- Hercules & Love Affair - Hercules & Love Affair
- Jamie Lidell - Jim
- Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III
- Lykke Li - Youth Novels
- M83 - Saturdays = Youth
- Quiet Village - Silent Movie
- Q-Tip - The Renaissance
- Santogold - Santogold
- She & Him - Volume One
- Sigur Ros - Incredibly Long Title
- Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

Songs (in no particular order)
- Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma
- Shelby Lynne - I Only Want To Be With You
- Santogold - L.E.S. Artistes
- The Roots - Rising Down
- Portishead - The Rip
- Estelle - American Boy (feat. Kanye West)
- Hercules & Love Affair - Blind
- Sigur Ros - Gobbledigook
- The Juan Maclean - Happy House

Happy House - The Juan Maclean

Books
This is somewhat new for me. I've always been lifelong voracious reader and the greater availability of a faster Internet connection has translated to many hours spent reading multiple online publications. Yet reading an article on a computer screen cannot compare to the tactile experience of reading something in my hands. The weight, texture, and even the smell of paper held in my hands is an experience that cannot be replicated with metal and electricity. (Sorry Kindle.) In spite of a shrinking publishing industry, a global economic depression in which we have yet to see the bottom and numerous cultural items that demand our attention, I don't think book reading will see a great decline in my lifetime. What may decline are the venues through which new writing may disappear, a different issue altogether. With that said, here are my book discoveries and delights of the year:

How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman
A great look into how doctors think, how they make mistakes in their thinking, and the consequences of these cognitive errors and assumptions.
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
A companion book to The Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan distills nutrition advice into 3 simple tenets while providing the layout of the battle (and collusion) between business and nutrition.
Usagi Yojimbo Volumes 1-8 by Stan Sakai
Following the adventures of a ronin rabbit, Stan Sakai's comic book series is tasty melange of heroism, history, culture, and mythology.
Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland
Bolland's recoloring of his collaboration with Moore adds to the tense, occasional banal atmosphere of the story. Great ending.
Doom Patrol Volumes 1-3 by Grant Morrison and various artists
People have talked about the deconstruction of the superhero, but few have carried it out to the same extent as Grant Morrison. "Fighting" a living painting was the most normal "villain" that the Doom Patrol faced in these volumes.
De/Compositions by W.D. Snodgrass
Speaking of deconstructions, a chance discovery at the university library yielded this collection of poems compiled and reinterpreted by Snodgrass. His versions of poems from renown poets demonstrate that the parts can indeed be greater than the whole. It also reveals the importance of editing.
Modern English Grammar by Bryan A. Gardner
Which brings me to this selection. Less repressive than Fowler but better than Follet, Gardner's approach to usage and grammar makes for a entertaining read, even if you don't care all that much about grammar. The mini-essays sprinkled throughout the text are interesting discussions into what makes English English. This book, and the following, proved invaluable during my time as the Daily Wildcat's copy chief.
On Writing Well (30th Anniversary Edition) by William Zinsser
A man who claims William Strunk and E.B. White as direct influences, Zinsser brings verve to his pages in his ongoing quest to perfect his writing. Reading his prose alone is a lesson well served on how to write simply and carefully.

Tags: music, movies, politics, 2008, books

Powered by Qumana

At the Movies

Saw No Country For Old Men last week before heading back to Tucson. One of the best movies of 2007 and one of the best from the Coen brothers.

Some Recent Books on Food

Food and nutrition has been getting a lot of attention the last few years, and there have been many wonderful books that cover these topics from different angles. Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma has been getting a lot of attention since it came out last year. I’m ashamed to say I haven’t read it yet, but if it’s anything like his previous book The Botany of Desire, then it is well worth checking out.

I’ve been slowly reading and re-reading two books similar to Pollan’s book in that they deal with different aspects of food – Hungry Planet by Peter Menzel & Faith D’aluisio and What To Eat by Marion Nestle.

Hungry Planet was a project conducted by a writer wife and photographer husband team who traveled around the world and documented what people ate. They provide a photo of each family they followed along with a week’s worth of their food and how much was spent. Essays and photo essays on food, culture, politics, and other food-related matters are interspersed between the family profiles. Hungry Planet is a wonderful synthesis of pictures and words about one of the necessities of life.


Marion Nestle’s What To Eat tackles the problem of how to navigate through the supermarket, specialty food stores, and the confusion coming from the latest dietary advice and news, government policies, scientific studies, and food politics. Nestle talked to government officials, food industry leaders, food advertisers, journalists, food scientists – all in an attempt to make sense of what you and I encounter in the supermarket on a regular basis. At the end of each section of the book (or supermarket as she has organized it), Nestle offers her take on a particular issue and advice as to what you and I should do at the supermarket. Her goals are to help us make informed choices about food and nutrition and to have us give consideration to the food we eat. She succeeds in all of this admirably.


There is one section devoted to the problems surrounding farmed versus wild fish with salmon being the prime example. Many of the fish left in today’s oceans have been exposed to organic chemicals such as PCBs because of waste runoff originating from manufacturing companies. Organic chemicals tend to accumulate and stay within the fat stores of fish. This accumulation is compounded by the fact that carnivorous and omnivorous fish take in whatever organic chemicals were stored in their food, that is, other fish. So the higher a fish is on the food chain, the higher the levels of organic chemicals will be found in that fish.

Salmon are carnivores for the majority of their lives. When they are young, they start eating krill before moving on to small fish that would contain relatively low amounts of organic chemicals. Farmed salmon are fed fish meal and fish oil made from adult fish that are not normally sold at market as part of their diet. They eat and accumulate organic chemicals at the very start of their lives from adult fish that have relatively high amounts of organic chemicals. Also, the farmed salmon’s lifestyle and diet changes the composition of their body fat from a low amounts of total fat with a high percentage of omega-3 fatty acids to one that has high amounts of total body fat comprised of a higher percentage of saturated fat and a lower percentage of omega-3 fatty acids. In addition to being farm-raised, the matter of where the salmon came from plays a part its health. A team of researchers sampled numerous salmon, farm and wild, from different parts of the world for their organic chemical accumulation. They found that wild salmon from the Americas tended to have much lower amounts of organic chemicals than their farmed counterparts in Europe. So whenever we want to eat salmon or any other fish, we should consider the following: where it came from, farm or wild, its place in the food chain, how much fat it contains, and whether it has been listed on a state advisory.

Much of what Nestle discusses has been covered in my nutrition classes and much has not. Hungry Planet deals with food culture and the effects of markets on food – topics that are lacking in my classes thus far. While Nestle spells out clearly what the average shopper should be aware of and do, Menzel and D’aluisio aren’t as explicit in their message, but they do lead you to certain conclusions about the global economy, food, politics, and culture. I recommend these books to anyone who is even remotely curious about food and nutrition, that is, everyone needs to read these books.

Next on the “To Read” List:

• The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
• Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket by Brian Halwell
• The United States of Arugula by David Kamp

Today’s Supplements:

• Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser for its portrayal of the US’s fast food history, culture, and business. There have been many positive changes in the industry thanks in part to this book.
• Super Size Me by Morgan Spurlock if you want to see the effects of a lifelong relationship with fast food compressed into a month.
• FreeRice because you want to test your vocabulary while simultaneously donating food to those in need.