My Middle Ten For 2011

The older I get the humbler my pleasures seem to be. This morning when I woke up the greatest feeling I got about it being a new year is that finally all the Top Ten lists of 2011 will stop. I used to be a sucker for these things, top ten movies, records, books, top ten pictures, influential people, events, etc. I used them to measure my hipness and to gain lists of further things I needed to check out. But that was all back then when there were about a dozen, two score tops, of the things. Now everyone's not only got an opinion but the means to broadcast it to the world. We're saturated with best of lists, and the result is cultural inflation; look hard enough and just about everything makes it to somebody or other's list. I don't know how many best of music lists I've scanned in the last month or so, but I can tell you there is an incredible absence of overlap in them. If that's good or bad in your calculus I don't know or care, really, but it reminds me of Lester Bangs's prediction that "we will never agree on anything like we agreed on Elvis," or something like that. 

Thus, you'll get no best of list from me. Only dead fish go with the flow, right? But the flow flows still, doesn't it, and as a fellow blogger, it would be horribly remiss of me if I didn't offer some kind of list at this time of the year. And so I offer you what follows below, a list of the exact middle ten on my holistic best of the year list (I mean figuring out your top ten of anything and then justifying the order of them doesn't take much gumption, does it?, but calculating the middle ten of every best of experience of the year, well now, that takes some genius, and I know such effort and accomplishment is what brings you expectantly to this blog).

I came up with the idea of a holistic best of list a couple years ago, when I realized that life is not compartmentalized into movies, records, books, events, experiences--it's all knit together in some grand latticework of life, innit? So, quite simply, what I do is catalog my entire year's life constantly--any experience that has any positive impact (no need to catalog the negative ones; they loiter with no effort on my part) on me at the time gets logged onto my virtual hard drive--i.e., my memory. Periodically throughout the year I sift through this particular file, deleting what turned out to be mirages of bestness or ones that proved to be wholly fleeting, while also adding those that lingered, slowburning, not qualifying at the time to be considered a best, but whose impact over time proved to be undeniable. Anway, enough of the science. This year (this morning, actually, because you can't really construct your year's best of list until the year is actually over) I took the time not only to count but also order my best of list. It turned out I had 438 best experiences this year. Not bad, not great. What follows are numbers 215-224. Read on and you'll get a decent approximation of how averagely best my 2011 was, which (this middle list) is a lot more accurate a representation of me and 2011 than anybody else's probably fudged-a little-to-make-it-seem-holier-than-it-really-is top ten list. Extremes are fickle; the middle is where we live, whether we like it or not. Read, ponder, and have a fair to middling 2012 you can look back on with contentment.

215. The "bear claw" croissant bought at the Monticello-Green BP station and consumed on my way to work, October 23. A breakfast staple when I'm working mornings, this particular croissant seemed perfect--moist and not too flaky. For some reason I was able to pay for the delicacy--along with the daily paper and my coffee--with exact change, the banter with my second favorite cashier there was wittier than most days, and I not only got to make a right on red while masticating the croissant, but also then made the following left hand turn unimpeded, which is a rare occurrence. All in all, a great croissant experience.

216. In the middle of a movie-going spree, before viewing Moneyball, I saw for the third time the trailer for some wacky woman private eye comedy thriller coming sometime soon (not yet, I don't think) which convinced me that all the good parts of the movie were in that trailer, so I needn't waste time and money going to see the movie when it does come out, but which, at about 3 minutes, was still pretty entertaining and provided me with enough knowledge that I could easily feign having seen it in case co-workers some day are engaged in a giggly discussion of the movie or in case it winds up on a majority of best of lists next December.

217. That late afternoon nap on March 6. Sometimes I wonder if I've ever completely awakened from it. Glorious.

218. Sitting in a bar listening to a band play but watching intently a marathon of The Big Bang Theory on a big screen TV above the bar. Even without the sound on, and too far away to read the closed captioning, I was able to get the gist (and some of the nuances) of the show during the band's relatively short set. For a man without a TV, having a working knowledge of yet another TV show is always a good thing. Funnier than I had assumed, that Big Bang.

219. Ironically, my annual July 2 "half the year's gone" party. About half the people I invited showed up, which is good because I had dropped the second 12 pack of beer I had bought and all the bottles broke. We grooved to new albums by Paul Simon, Darryl Hall, and Sam.

220. The chuckle I got from hearing co-worker say, after rounding a corner and being bumped into by a customer, "Good thing I'm sturdy," and then spending a few hours contemplating what a great, and much underrated, word "sturdy" is.

221. Hearing my 12-year-old nephew say, while walking stiffly into the house covered in mud from a soccer game, "I'm in need of a major shower."

222. The interaction I had with a customer when I made note of the book he was buying (either one by David Mitchell, David Foster Wallace, or David Brinkley--I can't remember the exact one, just that it was one of the three Davids in my pantheon). "Oh God," I gushed, "I love this book." To which he replied, without a British accent, btw, "It's for my nutzo brother. It's the only thing he wants in hospital."

223. The new Tom Waits song, "New Year's Eve." We've heard it all before, Tom, but it sure feels nice. Nice like slipping into your favorite pair of Long John bottoms on the first cold day in December, especially if you've washed them since the last time you wore them in early March.

224. Discovering this great picture of Bob Dylan, avec moustache, which I had never seen before: