au revoir, oughts.

It's been a banner year for me, and as usual, as I come to the end of 2Cait9 I make the realization that I've been so caught up in the pure winningness that is my life these days that I've forgotten to keep track of whether the things I loved in this last year of the decade were actually released in the last year. I'm pretty sure most of them weren't. I'm gonna go by some 2009-specific stuff on iTunes now but here's a list of the Best of Everything, 2009, to keep you occupied.

Best move: Ottawa to Kingston.

Best non-moving-related decision: forsaking vegetarianism and eating a lot of bacon (and also, a bird).

Best private radio discovery: 98.9 The Drive. For real! hardly any commercials and they reintroduced Banditos by The Refreshments into my life. If only we could somehow convince their lobotomized idiot DJs to never, ever speak ("We call it essential alternative because we play music that is essentially alternative! EXTREME!").

Best public radio standby: Wire Tap with Jonathan Goldstein.

Best book set in the grainy, sepia toned streets of 1970s New York involving latchkey children and the 20000$ Pyramid: When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.


Best love-hate relationship: Q, with Jian Ghomeshi. (Seriously though, Moxy Fruvous was fucking awesome. This song was the best.)

Best terrifying dystopia: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

Best re-read: The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank.

Best Batman comic: All Star Batman and Robin, Volume 1, by Frank Miller and Jim Lee.

Best emo comic memoir: Funny Misshapen Body by Jeffrey Brown.

Best superficially stupid movie that is actually awesome and involves Muppets: Forgetting Sarah Marshall. (Oh Jason Segel, you have my heart.)

Best song that totally reaffirmed my faith in pop rock when it came out and then slowly, so slowly, made me want to gauge holes in my eardrums whenever I hear it: Help, I'm Alive by Metric.


Best musical rediscovery: Pavement.

Subsequent best song of all time discovery: Stereo by Pavement.

Best show: Plaskett at the Charles Bronson Centre. Or maybe, just maybe, the sheer anticipation of possessing orchestra level seats for Wilco at the NAC this winter. That might be better than all the shows in the world lined up in a row.

Best non-Plaskett album that actually came out in 2009: Hold Time by M. Ward.

Best friends: every last one of you.