Well, what do you know... December 31st? That came fast. And while we have sort of a theme here at ye olde SpoCOOL -- some call it an agenda -- we don't see any reason not to end the year with a random list of things you may or may not have missed. That's just how kind we are!
Here are a few recommendations from 2013...
You might have gone sour on Bowie somewhere around Let's Dance, but you kinda suck if you're not loving on his latest, The Next Day. Plus you have Kingsbury Manx's Bronze Age, Camera Obscura's Desire Lines, and -- almost literally good god! -- Sébastien Tellier's Confection. Fire up Rdio or Spotify and queue them all up right now.
With that said, you're not going to beat Euros Childs's song and video, «Tête à Tête».
The album, Situation Comedy, which is awesome, is even available as donation-ware!
For reading, Sherill Tippins's Inside the Dream Palace -- a history of Chelsea Hotel -- is excellent. (Grab it for Kindle.) And while technically released last year, Breon Mitchell's new translation of Kafka's The Trial is about as trippy as a book can come. (Pick up Mark Harman's translation of The Castle while you're at it.)
Run and grab The World's End from iTunes; our favorite movie this year. And we're unappologetic comic-book fans, so grab Man of Steel and Wolverine too.
In fact, for an actual comic-book, run over to Comixology to pick up Scott Snyder and Sean Murphy's The Wake. There are also twenty collected editions of Fables waiting for you.
Pair all of this with the Abyss '13, our favorite beer of the year. Although Firestone Walker's Double DBA might be right on par with it.
For coffee, we really were into DOMA's Santa's Little Helper, and are equally happy to see Manners stepping up as a great new roaster. Really, to us there are DOMA and Manners around these parts; then there's the rest.
Our favorite fake(?) Twitter accounts this year were the tag-team of South Hill Steve and Jerry in the 509. That was the peak, and they're sadly both shut down. The random accounts that have cropped up lately have been of a... negligible... standard. (But we will gladly take recommendations!)
Restaurants, we agree with you there.
And please, to counter the use of the letter «z», we ask all pizza places to start serving «pissas».
And so on and so forth. 2013; not a bad year. Run down to the Bartlett to check out Helado Negro tonight -- it should be a great show.
See you next year!