It’s the end of the year so you can expect to hear Counting Crows ‘A Long December’, hear every radio station in the world playing Christmas music, and my favorite, the argument over whether we should say ’Merry Christmas’ or ’Happy Holidays’. Within every year there is a good and bad of everything, or what I would like to call the ’best’ and the ‘worst’. I split my ‘best’ and ‘worst’ into several categories like Food, Entertainment, etc. Let’s get rolling….
FOOD CATEGORY
Best Burger
Jack in the Box: I know they are fast food, this year however they introduced a new sirloin burger, you can pick grilled or regular onions, and what kind of cheese. For the price and the size of the burger this is a good deal, it does however get messy if you decide to eat this not sitting still….like driving.
Notables: Ruby Tuesday, In And Out Burger, Cookout
Worst Burger
Five Guys: Sorry, but I was really disappointed.
Best Steak
Big Texan Steak Ranch: While my friend nearly died attempting the 72oz steak challenge in an hour, I was having a delicious meal. The steak was flawless and comparable to a Morton steak that I had a couple of years ago. The big shocker here is that this steak and the whole meal was less than $40. If you’re ever in Amarillo, TX make a stop at the Big Texan, its about the only reason to be in Amarillo.
Worst Steak
Chilis: That was a mistake.
Best Pizza
New York: No, New York isn’t a pizza company, but I doubt you’ll find a bad slice of pizza there. Most every meal I had there was pizza based. The slices are huge (the way they should be) and cheap, like $1.50 cheap. Combine that with a Coke and you’re golden for the next few hours.
Notables: Pizza Hut (They brought back their stuffed crust). Hungry Howie’s
Worst Pizza
Papa John’s: Maybe I’m just sick of it.
ENTERTAINMENT
Best New Album
Fall Out Boy ‘Infinity on High’: I know this may not fit everyones taste for good music, but the album only has a couple of non-listenable tracks, that by itself is a rarity in today’s music world. The rest of the songs are straight upbeat and rockin’ (even though most of the time I have no idea what the song is about or what they are saying).
Notables: Ben’s Brother ‘Beta Male Fairytales’
Worst New Album
The Last Goodnight: Outside of their one single, ‘Pictures of You’ which is great, the album is horrible and deserves no place in my iTunes.
Notables: David Crowder Band ‘Remedy’ (cough…horrible…cough cough)
Best New Band
Ben’s Brother: We are all better off with these guys putting out albums. Their music isn’t too upbeat, but every song is different and full of meaning. You can tell they had most of the creative control of the songs, you can just feel the song as they play.
Notables: Andrew Barnes Band
Worst New Band
Mike Parker Band: I’ll probably catch crap for this one, but hear me out. I don’t mind a good cover band, I do however have a problem with a cover band that can’t even cover those songs very well. If you can’t rip somebody elses music well then there isn’t much hope for quality original material. Sorry, that’s just the way it is. I hope they surprise me with something in 2008. I like good music, no matter who plays it….and I hate bad music, no matter who plays it. Being a ‘Christian Worship Band’ or whatever doesn’t make bad music okay, it actually makes it worse. Here’s a quote from a very respectable man, maybe this will shed some perspective for you…
“After all, cover bands may be able to find a gig in some bar, somewhere, every night of the week. But no cover band ever changed the world.” -Pastor Steven Furtick (read entire blog)
By all means, I’ll give them Best New Album of 2008 or at least a slot in the Notables, that is if they figure out that quality is more important than hype.
Best New Movie
Superbad: I just saw this one so maybe that’s why it won, but seriously excessively funny if you can get past the f-word every 6 seconds.
Notables: Apocalypto, Transformers
Worst New Movie
I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry: There should’ve been something on the cover that said something like even though Adam Sandler and Kevin James are in this movie, it is by no means actually funny at any point. Could’ve done without the not so hidden ‘gay-is-ok’ message. What a waste.
POLITICS
Funniest Event
The New Congress: After several years of the media telling us that President Bush’s approval rating is horribly low around 30%, the new decmocratically controlled Congress eclipses his rating to hit somewhere around 20%. For some reason approval ratings aren’t brought up as much anymore.
Notables: Nick Mackey being apparently ‘qualified’ to be sheriff, even though he is not qualified to be a traffic cop…seriously.
Biggest Racist
Al Sharpton: It’s really hard to take him seriously about improving race relations when he spends the bulk of his time destroying people because they are white. I’m not sure who is stupider, Imus or Sharpton, but Imus has one critical flaw: he is white. Sorry Imus, only white cracker jokes for you.
Notables: Durham NC, Jesse Jackson, Every single person that descended on Jena, LA without knowing what really happened.
Most Overlooked Event
The Global Warming Hoax: Scientists are now starting to climb out of the woodwork saying they disagree with the IPCC, and most of that ‘opinion’ is based off of numbers and other such things. Al Gore has already told us this year in Australia that numbers aren’t that important. Huh, that’s just interesting.
Notables: UNCC’s Green Fee- the most unknown, misunderstood, secretive and all around disturbing piece of legislation I’ve ever run across from the SGA. Apparently you should only expect 1 email a semester to be answered.
Man of the Year
Pastor Steven Furtick: Hands down, you may not like him, but apparently God hasn’t asked your opinion on how successful Elevation Church can be.
The awards are in the mail, unless they got lost again this year, which is probably gonna happen.
Posted under
Music,
Movies,
Food,
Racism,
Religion,
Environment,
Sarcasm,
Government,
Politics,
Univ. of Charlotte
