Wolmania - Friday, December 31, 2021

This is it - the last Wolmania of the year. We've lived, we've laughed, we've loved. We've linked, we've ranked, we've recommended, we've lovingly republished other people's work without permission and done our best to at least credit the original photographer. We've scrambled at the last minute to come up with pithy little paragraphs to start and end with every week. We've had, at best, middling success with that. We've sporadically reminded you that this newsletter is free. We've vacillated between the authorial "I" and the authorial "we". And we've tried desperately to come up with new ways to say "anyway, here's some stuff".

Anyway. Here's some stuff:

Item 1: a link

James Hormel Used His Spam Fortune to Cement a Place in Gay History

Hormel died this year after a bold life pushing for LGBTQ rights. A fascinating, inspirational story that proves the adage “you know you’re doing the right thing when James Inhofe is on the other side”.

Item 2: a list

Stretching the format a bit, here’s a list of some 2021 bests:

Year-End Awards

Best film I saw in theaters:

• Dune

Best film I saw at home:

• The Power of the Dog / The Velvet Underground

Best new TV show:

• Hacks (HBO Max)

Best returning TV show:

• Succession (HBO Max)

Best old TV:

• Columbo (Peacock / DVD box set)

Best thing to look at while drinking coffee:

• Apple TV landscape drone flyover screensavers

Best new album:

• Olivia Rodrigo - Sour

Best old album:

• The Cars - Heartbeat City

Best new(ish) book:

• I didn’t read any books published in 2021 but I really liked 2020’s Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu, which I read this year.

Best old book:

• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Best new podcast:

• Nice Try

Best returning podcast:

• The Watch

Best old podcast I started listening to this year:

• R U Talkin' RHCP RE: ME? / U Talkin’ Talking Heads 2 My Talking Head (and U Talkin’ U2 To Me?) (and  R U Talkin' R.E.M. Re: Me?) (and of course Youey Talkin’ Huey 2ey Me?)

Best video game:

• Maquette: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/maquette/

Best unnecessary but defensible purchase:

• 14” MacBook Pro (https://amzn.to/3JreLXD)

Best completely gratuitous purchase:

• Elgato Stream Deck Mini (https://amzn.to/3HlZaGV)

Item 3: a media recommendation

I remember watching Super Dave Osborn as a kid and understanding maybe 30% of why it was funny (basically just the parts where he was critically injured). I certainly didn’t realize he was a comic character played by Albert Brooks’s brother. He went on to do lots of things (well, actually, he didn’t, he kind of just did Super Dave stuff for a long time and then he was a hilarious regular on Curb Your Enthusiasm). He died last year and they rushed to start putting together this shamelessly biased celebration of a unique comedic life. It’s only 85 minutes, just watch it. You’ll probably like it.

Item 4: a photograph

See ya!

Thanks for reading. See you next year!