List 2

Well, six months on, and here's what I'm watching/reading/listening to these days...

- More horrible pop
-'exotica' and easy listening jazz
- Anything with Charlie Brooker in it
- The thick of it
- Gore Vidal books
- Finaly read David Foster Wallace's Infinite jest
- Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice
- Covers and lots of them...
- Robert Kirkman's Invincible
- Wonky Pop
- The Big Bang Theory
(It's not great, but it's so fucking nerdy...)

The second golden age...

Further rustling through my comics collection turned up the gems I became more interested in in the home stretch towards college, when beer money eclipsed comics for a few years. Vertigo was a weird mix of more adult-oriented material. When Alan Moore and Frank Miller revolutionised comics in 1986, Marvel did nothing, but DC decided to recruit some more Brits from 2000AD and it's competitors. The British comics scene took much more advantage of the total lack of interest from serious critics to move towards more underground and weirder stuff. Not being taken seriously meant doing whatever you felt like. Consequently the comics were tackling big issues, lacked meaningful censorship and attracted better writers. Vertigo imported these guys wholesale and set up the comics version of HBO, a well-funded mainstream home for non-mainstream material with a high emphasis on quality over quantity. Around '97 or '98 I was bored with the x-men and decided on a whim to subscribe to the four hottest vertigo/dc titles of the moment. I followed Hellblazer, Preacher, Hitman and The Invisibles. Consequently I got sucked into a mind-expanding world of shocking violence and evil occult shit. I specifically picked up the Invisibles because of a wizard magazine list of the weirdest things in the comic. If I hadn't done that I never would have gotten out of the x-ghetto, and would probably have lost all interest in comics forever.

End of the year lists

Since it's the season for it, I'll put my own list out there. Shorter and to the point though. I saw almost none of the must see films, certainly listened to no must-listen albums, or played any of the video games I ought to have played this year, but I watched a lot of TV, bad and good, and there are programs that tell me what I've missed.
A short list of things I enjoyed too much this year, though they might be far older:

-Venture Bros.
-The Mabinoginion
-Mad Men
-30 Rock
-All Star Superman
-That Mitchell and Webb Look
-Plants vs. Zombies
-The Walking Dead
-Community
-Lady Gaga
-Nouvelle Vague
-2666, by Roberto Bolano
-Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace
-Listening to terrible pop music while driving
-Writing more and reading less
-Procrastinating