2008 was more or less a dreadful year, but it wasn’t at all boring. Here’s a look back at stuff (other than politics, the economy, the gas prices, my swollen gall bladder) that made 2008 interesting:
January 2008
1) Spark is a Diamond: spunky dance-rock band from Philly with a singer whose voice sounds like she’s on a diet of steel wool and rubbing alcohol.
2) Cartoon Dump: a troupe of comic actors parodying kids shows and crappy cartoons. Makes me pine for days of small, comic plays like Coed Prison Sluts.
3) Mah na mah na vindication. For a while I was wrapped up in some web debates about the appearance of the mah na mah na creatures on Sesame Street. Most said they were only on the Muppets, but eventually the truth came to light. They appeared on Sesame Street prior to the Muppet Show.
4) USAvich Bunny Cartoons, were some of the most creative and well done cartoons I’ve seen in a long time. There’s from Japan, but they don’t look like anime. Funny, and loaded with the type of slapstick goodness that made the Looney Tunes and Ren and Stimpy so great.
5) Lasagna Cat is a series of live action remakes of Garfield comic strips. Most Lasagna Cat episodes immediately dissolve into a psychedelic trainwreck, but that’s what made it all so special.
6) The Giants Win the Superbowl. I’m not an immense sports fan, but for some reason I got wrapped up in the playoffs and Superbowl featuring local-team, the East Rutherford Giants. Part of the fun was that they were underdogs, and also that Carl from the Aquateen Hunger Force was rooting for them.
February 2008
1) The RPM Challenge! Record an album in one month. The fruits of my labor came in the form of my space-core opus The Secret Lives of Satellites, Probes and Rovers, which you can download and/or listen to for free.
March 2008
1) Zero Punctuation saves me money. Zero Punctuation is a series of video game reviews presented in a comic, rapid-fire cartoon style. The reviews are often hilarious, but most importantly they’re completely honest. In the past I’ve bought quite a few video games that were absolute rubbish or unplayable by a casual gamer like myself (who pretty much only enjoys games featuring rodents with guns). Zero Punctuation saved me about $300 this year by pointing out what shit video games can be, and thus preventing me from buying them. Portal and Ratchet & Clank were my favorite games of the year, in spite of the fact that both came out in 2007.
2) Torchwood. In spite of a few scenes that had me hitting the fast forward button (the “johnny cakes” scenes), Torchwood was quite enjoyable. Not as great as Doctor Who, but quality TV sci-fi none the less. Here’s Owen transforming into Papa Lazarou, which will only make sense if you’re from Great Britain or watched a lot of British TV.
April 2008
1) Buying Giant Artworks. Yeah, I bought the woman on the left. Yeah, I don’t have an 11′ ceiling.
2) ShamWow infomercials were about as entertaining as commercials get. Perhaps you caught the commercial while watching Rock of Love 2?
3) Another Season of the Peep Show. There’s a lot of great British TV lately, and thankfully all of it shows up on YouTube. No waiting for BBC American or DVDs. Peep Show might be the funniest TV show ever… if not it’s in the top 10. So says my brain.
May 2008
1) Stewie the Walking Anteater. What is cuter that an anteater walking on its hind legs?
2) Machine Girl was absurd and gory. I’ll take a Japanese school girl with a machine gun arm over Rose McGowan with a machine gun leg any day.
3) My Obsession with the Saturn Sky. The American car companies are all tanking and taking billions of our tax dollars — all because I didn’t buy a Saturn Sky. I came so close to buying one. What stopped me? I read some reviews that they weren’t comfortable, and then my renewed interest in my 7 year-old Honda, once I realized I was getting 33 MPG during the height of the great oil price flim-flam of 2008.
June 2008
1) TV Funhouse finally comes to DVD. A classic kids show parody for adults from the Clinton years. About once a year I would email Doug asking him when the show would be released, so I’m glad it has so I can stop harassing him.
2) Ohio Vacation. Yes! I drove 900 or so miles to Cincinnati during the height of the high gas prices, to stay at my friends Roy’s house, to check out the brood XIV cicadas. Along the way I got a picture of the world’s largest Horseshoe Crab, shopped at a Circle K (as in “trouble’s afoot), shopped at a WalMart for the first time (the car needed new tires, what can I say), and I discovered Gold Star chilly, which is freaking awesome.
