No top 10 list??

I don't think I'm going to have time to make up an end-of-the-year top 10 list this year. To be honest, since most of the mass media artifacts out there are no longer aimed at me (I'm too old and too nostalgic), these lists are no longer as fun as they used to be. At least half of my posts this year were about "old" songs or movie or books, and I suspect that ratio will increase this year.

But I will take a quick look at the things I liked in 2008. I think of myself as someone who doesn't watch much TV (except for old movies on TCM or FMC), but a surprising number of my memorable media moments this year were from television shows: Mad Men, Rome, Swingtown, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, The Middleman, Jericho, and Pushing Daisies. I'm sorry that Pushing Daisies has been cancelled, but honestly, the quality has gone way down this season. The arc story has gotten needlessly complicated, and icky-creepy to boot, with the return of Chuck's long-dead father being a jump-the-shark moment as far as I'm concerned. I'll miss the cast (especially the angelic Kristin Chenoweth, pictured) and the gorgeous and whimsical set design, but I harbor some animosity for Bryan Fuller, the show's creator, for smothering the light (though admittedly somewhat creepy) tone of the first season with silly and unmotivated soap-opera agonies--I never believed for a moment that Chuck would really want to bring her father back--and I kept wanting them to let the wonderful aunts in on the piemaker's secret.

I'm sad to read about Jeremy Piven's odd medical meltdown this season; after scoring a major critical success on Broadway in Speed-the-Plow, he left the show in a matter of weeks after claiming he had been feeling ill for some time. His doctor said he had mercury poisoning (from too much sushi), and I have no reason to doubt that as a plausible scenario, but the press surrounding the incident, including a remark from David Mamet that Piven was apparently looking for a new career as a thermometer, makes me suspect some diva-style behavior from my favorite sexmonkey.

I seem to have quit going to movies this year; the last time we went to a theater was to see Mamma Mia last summer. I'm not saying that movie put me off all movies forever, but there has been very little out that has made me want to get off my ass out of my comfy home and mingle with loud moviegoers. I'm still keeping up with the films I really want to see via Netflix and the library, but I hope I never completely lose the attraction to seeing movies on the big screen, at least partly because popcorn at home is never as good as popcorn at the multiplex.

Maybe I'll have more to say in a day or two about music and books, but honestly, as I was looking over my past posts, I see I've had a tendency to promise to write about certain subjects later, then never following through. So who knows...