Gold Don't Come Off
It's the time of year when Best Of lists start to crop up in bunches, like mushrooms after a rain, or empty beer cans after an AC/DC concert. I'm a sucker for 'em myself... reading them and making my own. I'm always on the hunt for the next great TV show, the next killer rock and roll album, the next book that is going to wallop my heart and sweep me happily away.
Here's my own list of what was gold in 2020: the films, programs, reads, and rockers that kept me going through plague, election ugliness, and too many demoralizing losses. Maybe it's no surprise that a lot of my picks were heavy on the thrills and not too wrenching on the heart. I needed my stuff to carry me when I felt myself starting to flag. That's right: when there was only one set of footprints on the beach, it's because The Mandalorian was carrying me over the rough patch.
The Queen's Gambit (1983) - Walter Tevis
No, not the show... although that was grand too. But the book is simply the most electrifying -- the most relentlessly gripping -- novel I've picked up since I was turned on to David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet about a decade ago. As much as I loved the Netflix program (and I loved it very much) it can't capture the warlike, hallucinatory intensity of the chess matches as Tevis renders them in the novel. He writes with such command, such mastery... I was stunned by the clean, frictionless power of his combinations. Like:
"On the board there was danger everywhere. A person could not rest."
Or:
"She had flirted with alcohol for years. It was time to consummate the relationship."
I'm already looking forward to reading it again.
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (2018) - Patrick Radden Keefe
Look, I'm a True Crime junkie. No one familiar with my crazy-ass theory about Jaws and the Lady of the Dunes should be surprised by that. I pig out on every new season of Unsolved Mysteries like your cheap Uncle Brady binging at an all-you-can-eat buffet (you just know he's going up for five helpings).
Say Nothing flings the reader deep into an especially gripping cold case: the abduction of a single mother at the height of The Troubles. Keefe marches relentlessly towards the culprits of this maddening crime, and in the process introduces a dizzying carousel of bombers, torturers, martyrs, madmen, celebrities, and morally ambiguous cops. It's spellbinding work and ultimately plays out a bit like a real life episode of Foyle's War... with Keefe himself as the unlikely detective who impossibly pulls it all together with a reveal that feels as shocking as it was inevitable. You gotta have it.
The Mandalorian, Season 1 - 2 (2020) - Disney+
The best western series since Clint threw on the serape and shot his way through half of Italy. It's funny as hell and the action is routinely at Spielberg-directing-Radiers levels. As a guy who owned all the Kenner action figures as a kid, and the black plastic Darth Vader case to carry them around in, it feels so good to be happy about Star Wars again.
Wind of Change (2020) - Spotify
Oh, hi, Patrick Radden Keefe, we were just talking about you.
As is true of most investigative reporters, Keefe is always on the hunt for a story with a good hook. And a few years ago he came across a hook big enough to choke a shark. A rumor reached him, from a unnamed source with a long career in Intelligence, that the C.I.A. wrote the song "Winds of Change" and delivered it to the Scorpions, hoping for a hair metal hit that would topple the tottering Soviet Union. Have you ever heard anything crazier? (Besides my Jaws theory?) And be honest: how awesome would it be if it was true?
But as with Keefe's novel Say Nothing, the answer to the question (you're gonna love it) is only half the fun. It's the cast that makes it worth the ride, from the band manager with a sideline minting millions as a cocaine smuggler, to the government black hats who cheerfully used pop culture to kick the legs out from under hostile regimes, to the petty, jealous, talented, outrageous, and hard-rocking metalheads who burned up arenas and careers in the late 80s.
I couldn't get enough.
Monovision (2020) - Ray LaMontagne
I've spun this platter again and again since it came out. LaMontagne has been good for a long time, writing whiskey-smooth country-rock tunes perfectly engineered to take advantage of his husky soulman's voice, but on Monovision it all gels for a stone cold classic. He never whiffs, never overswings, just delivers one true, seemingly effortless track after another. I hear shades of Zeppelin III and PhyGraf, Peter & Gordon, a bit of John Denver, a shaving of Van Morrison, a lick of Kris Kristofferson... but mostly he's delivering something that is simply, satisfyingly Ray LaMontagne.
The Surprise Stones Drops (2020)
Apparently the Stones wrote "Living In A Ghost Town" before Covid-19 remade the world in the image of 28 Days Later, but for me it was the song that best summed up the surreal, apocalyptic lonesomeness of the year. That single alone would've been enough to remind everyone that The Rolling Stones still slay as hard as ever.
Only they also hit us with "Scarlet" -- a lost track from the Goats Head Soup recordings with guest guitarist Jimmy Page letting us know what a Zeppelin-Stones supergroup would've sounded like. And "Criss-Cross," a blooze thrasher that sounds both vintage and absolutely fresh at the same time. Epic.
Humankind: A Hopeful History (2020) - Rutger Bregman
How about a book as comforting, hopeful, and cheering as a fire in the hearth on a winter night? Humankind thoroughly takes apart all our most negative and nihilistic ideas about ourselves, revealing humanity as it is: a species of silly, affectionate, loyal, horny monkeys who relish doing difficult things together and take ridiculous risks not just for their loved ones but for total strangers. Bregman wipes out some of the worst pop science myths on record (goodbye, Broken Windows theory; seeya, Stanford Prison Experiment) with a combination of impeccable research and irresistible storytelling.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) - Netflix
Sorkin is a descendant of the Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder school of drama... he lives to explore big themes about society and justice, corruption and fairness, and here he does it one brilliantly imagined scene at a time, in a tale populated with furiously bright, passionate, verbose characters. It doesn't hurt that he's got dudes like Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Mark Rylance, and Michael Keaton, striking sparks off one another like steel hitting slate.
Cobra Kai, Season 1 - 2 (2018 - 2020) - Netflix
We appear to have entered the Netflix portion of the list. You can't be surprised this Star Wars lovin', Scorpions-curious child of the 80s loved the shit out of Cobra Kai. It's just as sincere, corny, and karate choppy as the movies that preceded it, with a whole level of wry self-awareness that only enriches the mix. And it's full of delightfully disturbing ideas. Waitaminute, is Danny LaRusso a culturally appropriating creep? Is it possible karate isn't actually the solution to all of one's emotional, interpersonal, and psychological problems? Is there something sort of pathetic about a nearly fifty-year-old man obsessing over the local annual karate tournament? Was REO Speedwagon wildly underrated? Cobra Kai is a joy, but tread carefully: it'll shake your faith in the moral purity of the crane kick.
The Crown, Season 4 (2020) - Netflix
Emmys all around! An Emmy for Olivia Coleman for her portrait of the Queen as a steely, glacial, emotionally closed off woman, doing her damndest to become the perfect symbolic figurehead by obliterating her own humanity. An Emmy for Emma Corrin who resurrects Princess Diana with a mesmerizing accuracy and heart-rending vulnerability. An Emmy for Gillian Anderson's stony, brittle, aloof, and casually cruel Margaret Thatcher. An Emmy for Gillian Anderson's mind-bogglingly huge wigs. An Emmy for the Queen's adorable corgis!
Do you need to watch the other three seasons to check out this one, their best to date? Only if you want! For me, this is was The Crown at its royal greatest.
That covers the best of the best for this pop culture creature... although there was plenty more out there that ought not to be missed. Joe Abercrombie's The Trouble With Peace marks him as the John LeCarre of epic fantasy. He's one of the very best to ever work in the castles and creatures genre. I thought about American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins every day for months after I finished it (don't @ me). Let Him Go continues the undeniably great second act of Kevin Costner's career... it fits with his work on Yellowstone as neatly as a Colt slides into a gunslinger's holster. While you're checking out The Crown and Cobra Kai on Netflix, throw Criminal: UK in your queue. Every episode gives a great actor (David Tenant, Kit Harrington, Sharon Horgan, etc.) a chance to brilliantly break bad. And speaking of Breaking Bad, I finally caught El Camino this year, and it was like discovering two untouchably great episodes of the original series. It was a thrill very akin to hearing those rediscovered tracks from Goats Head Soup. It's a common consensus that 2020 was a garbage year... but amid it all, there was still good stuff to lift one up and help one through. Hope you found some of it yourself.
Oh and hey, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Locke & Key: ... in Pale Battalions Go... #3 dropped this Wednesday, and can be found in comic stores everywhere. It's the last in the run and also opens the door to the forthcoming Sandman Universe/Locke & Key crossover. I hope you check it out. At the very least, it'll hold you over until we get more of the show on Netflix. After all, Season Two is getting closer every day, and who could say what might come after that?
I've chewed your ear enough (chewed your ear? Nibbled your eyeballs?). Thanks for subscribing to this newsletter. I'd be glad if it brought you at least a little happiness. Wishing you all a bit of winter wonderland this holiday season. We'll see each other -- and hope for better -- in 2021, huh?