Though we should clarify that “Best Of” isn’t actually the best. The best would imply that we rigorously pit media forms against each other in a no-holds barred cage match of supremacy. This is quite different from our actual “yo, what’d you like?” methodology, so we’ve renamed it to Virtual Fools Favorites 2008. I like the alliteration, Kevin likes the precision, and we both like you in green. It goes with your eyes. Join us, won’t you?

Website/Blog

Kevin – One of the best new websites that I know of is Cinedelica, a blog about cult films run by the Modculture Media Group.  Cinedelica is a UK blog that regularly posts news and reviews relating to cult films.  The site is very useful to me, since I import a good deal of films from amazon.co.uk.  [Word to the wise: in this year of indeterminable financial ruin, the dollar has somehow grown strong against the British pound—a.k.a., there has never been a better time to buy DVDs from overseas.  This holds for the Euro and the Austrailian dollar, last time I checked.  But if you are keen on importing from Japan, you are S.O.L.]  Anyway, Cinedelica has very good sense and has helped guide to me to films that I would have otherwise missed.  Their updates are short, their taste strong. Give them a whirl.

Jeff Gerstmann from Giant Bomb

Bobby – Last November, we wrote a story about the unfortunate fate of my favorite game reviewer Jeff Gerstmann. Fired from GameSpot, Jeff began writing little bits here and there, updating his personal blog, and eventually recorded a few episodes of the Arrow Pointing Down podcast with former GameSpot pal Ryan Davis. Within a week of Gerstmann’s firing, I discussed how awesome it would be for him to start his own new website with a bunch of ex-GameSpotters, and he did just that. Giant Bomb began as a blog and podcast, but in July launched with the great Whiskey Media back-end and has grown into a full fledged user-contributed site with great reviews, BS-less news, and some really stellar videos. Thumbs up, Giant Bomb.

Online Service 

Kevin – eMusic.  As much as Netflix has stepped it up this year, as much as I love buying the daily-deal albums on Amazon’s mp3 site, as much as I read Digg even though I pretend to loathe it, and as much as I think that Google is the bee’s knees (though will end up owning all our souls someday), I keep returning to eMusic.  
Simply the best way to legally get music if you like certain artists, record labels, and genres.  If you only or specifically like major label releases, jazz albums by Blue Note, classical albums by Deutsche Grammophone and The Beatles, you should not join eMusic.  If, however, you like lots of jazz artists who recorded for Prestige records (now part of the larger Concord music group), other classical labels, indie bands, weird foreign releases, and Creedence Clearwater Revival (who recorded for Fantasy records, now part of Concord), then you have no excuse but to join.  The controversy of the year on their part deals with their almost-acquisition of the best part of the Rolling Stones catalog (destributed by ABKCO, who also own Jodorowsky’s films and paradoxically have some past Beatles ties).  They posted all of the Stones albums up until around 1972, but had to take them down within two weeks because of further rights problems.  So far, the albums have not been re-acquired.

Bobby – I would have laughed in your face last year if you told me that I’d actually end up watching a lot of my TV on the Internet. If you told me I’d actually enjoy SNL, I would have done much the same. But online video service Hulu, a partnership between Fox and NBC, is where I catch all The Office episodes I miss, where I go to find SNL Digital Shorts from the previous night, and stuff to watch while I’m eating dinner or killing time on campus. I don’t use Hulu as much as I watch discs that come from Netflix, but I’ve been really impressed with the way it has turned out. I was worried it’d just be another bad website with poor organization, old content, and bad quality. Instead, Hulu focuses on a simple design, getting new shows online quickly, and a nice picture that streams well. I’m surprised that two old entrenched media companies have been able to cooperate on a venture that actually looks like progress. Here’s to hoping they keep it up in 2009.

Web Video

Kevin – Still don’t get especially jazzed about funny videos on the internet.  It just isn’t how I spend my time.  I watched a few, and here are some examples, but it isn’t part of the daily routine.  Corporate Shill Videos: SNL Digital Shorts, especially the Natalie Portman Rap.  Not Exclusively Web Videos: The Thanksgiving Rick Roll: amazing, dadaesque, though a testament to how bizarrely mainstreamed fringe subcultures have become since Web 2.0.  What I watched the most of: UK comedy shows cut into several portions, especially season 5 of Peep Show (now on DVD, though I was able to watch it a day or two after each episode aired thanks to intrepid sharers). 

Mark and Jeremy

Bobby – Unlike my colleague, I’ve actually found myself killing time on YouTube more often this year and using Tumblr to share finds with my friends. However, this year’s finalist for great web video comes from the fine folk at above-mentioned Giant Bomb. Thanks to the fine editing of Vinny Caravella and the group’s sense of humor, Giant Bomb’s original content is some of the best game-related material out there. whose “Video Thing” features are used for irreverent original material hardly related to games. So when it came time for Giant Bomb to explain the format of the new website, they did it in the form of a cheesy informercial. Watch it.

Purchase

Kevin – I mostly just bought a lot of DVDs this year.  I’ll say that the most fetishistic of them all was my purchase of the “James Bond Ultimate Collector’s Set,” which has almost all of the Bond films on over 40 discs.  The retail is $300 (price of the iPhone?), but thanks to Amazon’s goldbox deal of the day, the shitty economy, and some gift certs, I got it for less than $65.  The set is wonderful.  Dealing with UPS was another story….

Bobby – iPhone. Quote last year’s best-of: “That iPhone is pretty nifty, but its just a fancy phone.” With the release of the iPhone 3G and the new iPhone app store, I totally caved and bought an iPhone. It was rough the first go-round, but through some miracle Best Buy of all places was able to sell me my little 16GB white iPhone friend. Yeah, I’m bragging. Having the world at your finger-tips is totally underrated.

Game Played

Kevin – It certainly was not the best game I played all year (that would probably be Final Fantasy XII), but 2008 was the year in which I finally beat Diablo II!!! It only took me ten years. Granted, I played it way, way back and put it down for five years. After starting it up again, I promptly got about halfway through and got diverted. But 2008 (because of podcasts and not wanting to do too much work in any given day) was my year for Diablo II. I beat it as a Rogue. Not sure if I played the game in the most efficient of ways–I’ve never been too much of a “power gamer”–but it was very satisfying to see the horribly dated FMVs after smarting ol’diablo. One thing became clear: the Diablo control scheme (i.e. click on everything as quickly as possible) gets old after a few days.

Bobby – Would you believe I had never played Halo 2 until this spring? I actually hadn’t even spent quality time with the first Halo. But I wanted to play Halo 3, so I figured I’d give the trilogy a shot. The first game was exactly what I had expected: lots of running around in corridors, shootin’ dudes, and repeating the same tasks. Halo 3 was a nice looking Xbox 360 game, but was a letdown after the fun I had with Halo 2. It would be silly to do a full review of Halo 2, but I will say that I enjoyed the variation in environments and vehicles, actually found the plot interesting, and loved playing as the Arbiter.

Game

Kevin – Since I am a DSer and a PS2er, I didn’t play most of the big games.  One new title that I had fun with, though is mostly a continuation of the aesthetics of yesteryear, was Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia.  I wrote something a few months ago about how the solid titles in the Castlevania franchise have been basically the same over the last 10 years, to the point of only scientifically showing how it is possible to successfully cannibalize past games in the series and add an almost mathematically-determined amount of “newness” in order to create a fun, satisfyingly diverting product.  C: OoE is no exception.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia

Bobby – Second hardest category for me, since I played so many awesome games this year. While my Wii sat rotting away, my Xbox 360 and I frolicked through the Forest of Wonderful Times. We had fun with the Summer of Arcade, which gave us such gems as Braid, Geometry Wars Retro-Evolved 2, and Galaga Legions. We’ve almost beat Dr. Wily in Mega Man 9. We navigated the streets of Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto IV and roamed the wastelands of Fallout 3. We even kissed-and-made-up after it red-ringed after our first Rock Band 2 session. But it was a game I beat just last week that stands out as the best experience I had playing a game this year.

I agree!

Tip-toeing through the corridors of a derelict spaceship, the stellar (pun intended) Dead Space showed immense polish and understood what conventions from other genres it needed to work with while focusing on “strategic dismemberment” combat. Despite taking place all inside one spaceship, the environments were well varied. The story, while not mindblowing, was a great example of applying genre narrative conventions. It did away with the traditional HUD and menu, pulling them off the television screen and placing them actually on and in front of the game’s protagonist, which worked surprisingly well. I only wish it did more with the Zero-G rooms, but I’m willing to forgive it for being such a solid game. Not the best of the year, but definitely my favorite.

Novelty Food/Beverage

Kevin – I came to it pretty late in the game, but Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Butter was one of the real winners of the year. Since pumpkins are delicious, and things that are spreadable tend to be delicious, their combination yielded a delicious product. Pumpkin Butter is basically just pureed, seasoned (cinnamon and nutmeg), and sugar’d pumpkin. But the proof is in the pudding…ergh, butter. I have been trying to cut back on novelty beverages, but one of the best was officially condemned this year. Yes, friends, Coors and their soul-less, conglomerate parent corporation have discontinued Sparks. Sparks, the fuel of parties, gaming sessions and club kids. Sparks, the legal alternative to “e.” Sparks is probably among the novelty beverages of the decade, but in 2008, it deserves to be the novelty beverage of the year.

Bobby – I’ve always admired Mountain Dew’s commitment to trying new variations and flavors. My all-time favorite still remains the first Pitch Black, but this summer’s “Dewmocracy” contest produced one that gave it a run for its money. Supernova was one of the three finalist picked to become the next in the permanent Dew lineup. I think my defunct Twitter account 140reviews describes it best: “The sweet strawberry flavor is handled with great subtly thanks to the neutralizing melon. A delicious Dew addition.”

Word/Phrase/Saying

Kevin – “using -’d instead of -ed”: Well, it ain’t exactly a word/phrase/saying, but my favorite ploy with language this year has center’d around “shortening” the “-ed” that ends words by replacing the “e” with a “‘”.  ”Hey, wait a minute, that doesn’t actually save any time or shorten your words in any significant way.” “Yep,” would be my reply.  This is an aesthetic choice. 

Bobby – Even more so than last year, I have really picked up on all the awful lingo from the DC area radio I listen to on podcast. This is especially true of 106.7 WFJK FM’s morning show the Junkies. Some of the best of their dictionary includes trifling, felted (to have nothing or to have lost everything), nubs (minimal or inferior), and cised (excited). My favorite, however, is a word they got from Washington Wizards sports commentator Steve Buckhantz: Dagger! As an expression of dismay, dagger can be used in exclamation or toned-down to be muttered under the breath. Its versatility is its charm.

Book

Bobby Did Not Read This

Kevin – I could go the sneaky route and place a book written by someone I know in this spot.  But instead of nepotism, a reveal.  As with Bobby, most of the books that I read in a given year–and there are a lot, the vast majority of which are related to school–were written in the 2000+ years leading up to this year.  One of the best from this year that I did manage to read was Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software by Christopher Kelty.  By no means perfect, but a fascinating stab at reading the people and cultural situation that made the “free software” movement possible.  As with other books on current, ever-changing technologies, it is doomed to be slightly “dated” even as it is freshly released and consumed.  But overall, Kelty does some really great things with a movement that I knew little about.

Bobby – I didn’t read a single book that came out this year. How’s that for a cop-out answer? That doesn’t mean I don’t read. On the contrary, I read way more on the Internet now than I ever did before. But when it comes down to it, the books I read are all for school and I rarely read in my free time. In the spring I finished the final Harry Potter book, this summer I read Ender’s Game for the first time and Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, and I just received the Tales of the Beedle Bard for Christmas. So, in conclusion, Breaking Dawn, the fourth book in the Twilight series, is the best novel ever written. I joke because I’m embarrassed.

Album

Exclamation Points

Kevin – The Bamboos Family Albums of 2008.  My favorite band that I discovered this year is The Bamboos.  I can say—without hesitation, pause, or uncertainty—that they are the best Austrailian deep funk band.  They are the funkiest thing to ever come out of Austrailia, period.  The Bamboos had three releases this year, each of which works toward creating a pretty full view of a young band with lots of directions ahead.  Listen!  Hear!! (technically released in the UK in 2007, but not really accessible in the US until 2008) is a tight live album that features a few medleys of famous tracks, several instrumental originals, and a few cuts featuring vocalist Kylie Auldist.  Kylie’s “solo” album (with The Bamboos backing) Just Say might be my favorite of the bunch.  I really can’t remember the last time that I’ve liked a female vocal album this much.  Their most recent album is Side Stepper, which might be the “weakest” of the bunch, but is still pretty stellar.  This album has a mix of guest tracks, group instrumentals, and tracks featuring Kylie.  All of these records are on the UK’s Tru Thoughts label and can be purchased at finer record shops like Dusty Groove America.
 

Peter Gabriel, too.

Bobby – This is the most difficult category for me. Not because music is my favorite form of media, but rather it’s the thing I consumed the most of. Between eMusic, Amazon MP3, and the new music service Lala, I’ve amassed a lot of music this year. So what were some of my favorites of the year? MGMT – Oracular Spectacular, Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes, Deerhunter – Microcastle, Panic at the Disco – Pretty Odd (my most listened album), British Sea Power – Do You Like Rock Music?, Girl Talk – Feed the Animals, and Kanye West – 808s & Heartbreak. While all great albums, there were two debut albums that really captured my attention: Los Campesinos’ Hold On Now, Youngster… and Vampire Weekend’s self titled. So I sat down to listen to each one last time and came to the conclusion that it’s the variety of styles in Vampire Week pop-rock album full of hits. With afro-pop beats and catchy guitar riffs, it’s the kind of album where you can tap your toes, bob your head, dance around, or just rock out. Plus, which other album this album asked the question we’ve all had on our minds: “who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?”

Television Show

Tracy Jordan!

Kevin – I really came to like 30 Rock this year.  For some reason, I had not had the time to check it out until recently, but it is uniformly great.  I’m a big fan of Fey’s writing style and feel that her sketch/improv background really shows though at times.  The other show that I’ve started to dig as of late is Spaced.  Sure, it is old, and isn’t quite as good as I’d hop’d it would be (realistic expectations from a Hot Fuzz fan), but it was almost incapable of not being special.  Ostensibly the story of two 20somethings who pretend to be married in order to get a deal on an apartment, Spaced comes to be so much more.  While the stories sometimes hit emotional depth, they are mostly set pieces for references to external bits of pop culture, visual homages to favorite films, or stylistic experiments in TV form.  With that in mind, the show contains the best representation of a dance club rave that I have ever seen.  This show is almost suspiciously cultish.

The Lovely Joan Halloway

Bobby – Coming from AMC, which I didn’t know made original programming, and starring nobody I had ever heard of except Zoey Bartlet from The West Wing, Mad Men was a huge surprise. I’ve only finished the first season, but hope to make my way through the second over the holidays. If you haven’t heard of it, Mad Men is about a Madison Avenue advertising firm in the 1960s. While I was originally seduced by the allure of the witty banter of cigarette-smoking Scotch-drinking suits like Don Draper http://www.hulu.com/watch/40972/saturday-night-live-don-drapers-guide, I grew a fondness for the many characters (especially Joan Holloway http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/cast/jholloway) and the subtleties of the writing. 

Film

Kevin – In Bruges (dir. Martin McDonagh) – Saw this relatively early in the year, but have since had a chance to see it again, though on the “small” screen.  McDonagh is a famous playwright who also happens to have done an academy award winning short film.  In Bruges is his first feature.  Two hit men are forced to lay-low in Bruges, Belgium owing to the mistaken murder of a young boy.  Ray (Colin Farrell) is restless and bored with this forced vacation, while Ken (Brendan Gleeson) is charmed by the art, architecture, and ambiance of the place.  

Without giving too much away, Ray manages to find trouble (falling in love with a woman who turns out to be a sketchy drug-dealer, in whose name he punches a vocal Canadian) while Ken fails at a clean-up job, prompting boss Harry Waters (Ralph Fiennes) to travel to the Continent to take care of matters himself.  The film is impeccably written and acted.  Though it shines because of dialog, it makes full use of Bruges and is as cinematic as it is theatrical.  The film proves that Colin Farrell CAN act (I was never totally sure, myself), introduces McDonagh’s full talent, and is by turns hilarious and grimly grotesque.  This film gets my highest recommendation.

Bobby – On the surface, my favorite movie of the year seems like a mash-up of genres and story that shouldn’t work. It was a technically astounding cinematographic work of science-fiction romantic-comedy starring two lead characters in socially reversed roles with an environmentalist message. And all of this from the people that brought you Finding Nemo? The first half-hour is devoid of any real dialogue, and yet Pixar managed to bring to life the robots Wall-E and EVE better than most live-action characters.

Technically, the “camerawork” in Wall-E is amazing. Not only were the environments highly detailed, but Pixar was able to create a virtual camera that behaved and depicted the image realistically without being photorealistic. No Country for Old Men’s director of photography Roger Deakins was brought in to accomplish give the virtual lens the focal depth, rack focus, distortion, and lighting of live-action cinema. The resulting movie had both great narrative and compelling visual design. Not only was Wall-E my favorite movie of the year, but it has become one of my all-time favorites. Put on your Sunday clothes, there’s lots of world out there!

5 Great Discoveries from 2008

Kevin’s Picks:

1) Trader Joe’s for non-$2-chuck “cheap” wines.  TD’s has actually got some pretty interesting $5 wines that aren’t part of their Charles Shaw vintage.  At the TD’s near by house, I can get a sometimes rotating selection of different varietals. 

2) Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream & Other Delights Re-Whipped (2006) – I bought this album only a few days ago and just now listened to it for the first time.  WOW.  Not every track is great–I found the new version of “Love Potion #9″ to be pretty bad–but on the whole, this album COOKS.  The production values are very high and everyone involved is clearly having fun.  The original versions of most of these songs sound very dated today, so the decision to introduce the tunes to new idioms was a good one.  Alpert himself was involved in the production of the record and even provided some new solos.  I will probably leave this in my car for weeks.  I can see it becoming part of my theme music.  Also, the cover of this album is awesome.

3) Hulu – Bobby mentioned it earlier.  It is where I go to watch the new episodes of The Office.  I didn’t know about the site until this summer.

4) Discovery of traces of ice/water on Mars.  I mean, that’s a pretty awesome discovery, ain’t it?

5) Sarah Palin.  I mean, she became some bizarre mixture of joke and figure of terror within a week.  Now the American people will have a chance to check in on her and her wacky antics with regularity.  Let’s just hope that she stays in Alaska for a while and doesn’t venture back toward D.C.

Bobby’s Picks:
1) Loose tea has been around for 2000+ years, but I’ve only discovered good tea this year. 

2) Downloading music instead of buying the CD. Buying my music online was going to require three things: no DRM, good bitrates, and prices cheaper than buying the piece of physical media. Between eMusic, Amazon, and Lala, I’ve become a full fledge iTunes using digital music format lover. 

3) The Wire – As mentioned in my TV entry, The Wire has quickly become one of my all-time favorites. My Netflix queue has been a constant stream of these DVDs for the past few months. Gotta love Bal’more.

4) Chocolate Soy Milk – It’s yummy! Who knew?!

5) Apple Macintosh Computers – Last Christmas I dropped my Dell laptop on a hard floor and broke the screen and hard drive. Come February, I decided to buy a MacBook Pro and really enjoyed the experience of using something different and new. Aside from the 6 weeks where my computer was at Apple for repair, I’ve really liked it! (I’m only partially bitter.)

2008 Will Go Down as the Year…

Kevin – So if 2007 was the year of the “bad idea,” then I’ve got to call 2008 the year of “we are soooo fucked.”  Sure, we got the best possible president out of 2008 and got a bunch of gold metals from Beijing, but we drove more wedges into the messy plane of the culture wars, destroyed the world economy, broke capitalism in general, will continue to ruin the world’s sources of oil, and lost lots of people’s jobs.  I’ll be optimistic for 2009, though.  There can’t possibly be as many downer announcements or happenings next year as there were this year.  It just isn’t possible.

Bobby – I always enjoyed history class—especially American History. But I’m actually pretty terrible with names and dates (could never be an Art History major). There are specific things that stand out in my mind from my 11th grade textbook, though. Pages burned into my brain. As the years go on, we obviously have more history to cram into these textbooks and I like to think about which events stay and which go, which years are remembered and which are forgotten. If I were to travel 100 years into the future and pick up a textbook, this would be “a year I actually remember.” We had both a woman and a black man as the front-runners for the Democratic presidential ticket, we historically elected Barack Obama, we saw gas prices surge and plummet, we witnessed the near collapse of the economy, serious fighting has broken in Gaza, and I have the feeling this is just the tip of the corrupt Illinois iceberg. Those are pretty textbook worthy things.