AWKSD’s obligatory best of the year list, 2022

Here we are, yet again

I love the end of the year on the internet. Barely anyone is doing real work, media sites slow down their content churn, and arts/entertainment sites begin to put up their Best Of lists. During the last three weeks of December, the internet almost feels like a chill place to be (I mean, if you can stay off social media). 

I love end-of-year lists especially because they are simultaneously validating and pathetic. It’s nice to get recommendations from friends and trusted sites, but I’ve also never read a list that didn’t have the same energy as a nervous narcissist. Because while, yeah, it’s fun to direct people to new art, there’s always a “look how good my taste is” element. 

However, we’re also all humans who crave sequences, hierarchy, and categorization, and I’m no different. So let’s get listin’. 

MUSIC

Favorite album/concert: I immediately loved Drug Church when I heard their 2018 album Cheer. They had the punk rage that I lived for in high school, but their music felt more caustic, funnier, and adult in a way that few hardcore/punk bands can pull off without going full-blown beard-and-acoustic-guitar. 

This year, Drug Church released Hygiene, an album that has so consistently and thoroughly rocked me that even considering another album for my Best of 2022 would feel disingenuous. The album clocks in under 30 minutes, but it feels epic nonetheless, especially on songs like the anthemic and cryptically emotional “Detective Lieutenant”. 

The music is heavy for sure, and singer Patrick Kindlon possesses the same bottled-up rage as a Tim Robinson character on I Think You Should Leave, but somehow Hygiene rife with empathy. There’s lightness, vulnerability and anxiety in the music, which makes it feel like you’re with your closest friends, all relishing in the hardness of life because you’re all experiencing it together. 

I saw Drug Church at The Casbah when they came to San Diego—a tough decision because my other favorites IDLES and Fucked Up were also playing that same night at two other venues. I’m glad I picked Drug Church. That night, the band had brought a camera crew to film their performance, so to achieve cinematic excitement, Kindlon kept stoking the audience to mosh harder. Normally, this would scare the shit out of me, but I’ve never seen a frontperson conduct an audience with the same grace as Kindlon. We did what he said, moshed when he asked, and moved when he directed. It was a feat of controlled chaos. After leaving the show, my teacher brain kicked in and all I could think was “That was the best example of classroom management I’ve ever seen.” 

Next faves

High Vis - Blending:  Working class post-punk with dashes of psyche, Britpop and power-pop mixed in. This album, and especially the song “Trauma Bonds”, has been stuck on repeat in my headphones for the past few months. Big thanks to Jeff Terich/Treble for introducing me to this amazing band. 

Bartees Strange - Farm to Table: A textured, beautiful album full of disparate genres that somehow fit impeccably together. Each song is laced with kindness and tenderness, which, good lord, we need more of in the 2020s. 

Dehd - Blue Skies: This whole album was my jam for the entire summer. I want to be best friends with all three members of Dehd.

Soul Glo - Diaspora Problems: Completely unhinged hardcore. Punk hasn’t sounded this vicious since the early ‘80s, but unlike all those early hardcore bands, Soul Glo actually have a sense of humor (although you might have to look up the lyrics to understand what they’re saying). 

Author & Punisher - A&P mastermind Tristan Shone’s music keeps pushing deeper into industrial nightmarescapes, but on this year’s Krüller, he added a touch of sadness and—dare I say—beauty to his monsters.  

Most inspirational

Many people I know have gotten their shit together over the past two years. They’ve given up drinking, started families, and gotten in shape. Of course I’m happy for them, but as a nearly 40-year-old dirtbag, it sometimes feels like I’m standing on the mainland, watching everyone else row out to shiny Adult Island (which sounds a little like a porno store now that I think of it). 

I think this is why I find Viagra Boys so inspirational: Singer Sebastian Murphy is a dirtbag of the highest order. He exudes DGAF like sweat. His hedonism and self-confidence is an inspiration to dregs everywhere. It’s music that will make you feel good about feeling bad. Although this year’s Cave World album was just okay, I keep returning to songs like “Punk Rock Loser” for bars like this: 

I'm drenched in sweat when I wake up, need to hang up my sheets
Pour up a beer and walk out with my shoes on my feet
And I don't need nobody tell me how to dress
I look in the mirror and say, "Man, you're the best"

The big three

This year, Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny—the three biggest musicians in the world—put out very good albums. I especially liked Taylor Swift’s Midnights (the first Swift album I’ve gotten into). But at the end of the day, all this music kind of sounds the same. It’s meant to have the widest appeal imaginable, therefore created to be meme-fied, TikTok’d and co-opted by a screaming mass of teenagers. When AI-generated music becomes A Thing (if it isn’t already), it’ll sound exactly like this. 

BOOKS

It was a good reading year for me. I enjoyed most of the books I read, and a few were even life-changing. If you’re not reading fiction these days, I feel sorry for you. 

Favorite book(s) I read that came out in 2022

Tie: Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh / Sleepwalk by Dan Choan

No denying it—I’m a Moshfegh stan. I know a lot of people who were turned off by Lapvona—especially after her brilliant and lockdown-poignant My Year of Rest and Relaxation—but I thought it was thrilling. 

Set in the fictional medieval European village of Lapvona, the novel follows the Jude and his unwanted, red-headed son, Marick. One day, while playing out in the woods, Marick accidentally instigates the death of Lord Villiam’s son. As payback—or maybe just because the Lord is insane—Villiam demands that Marick be his new son. 

There are ‘80s sitcoms with less ridiculous set-ups, but few authors just go for it like Moshfegh. Lapvona is a grotesque ride full of gore, shit and semen, but what a ride. Villiam might be the funniest villain in literature, and his childish penchant to be entertained and entertaining can turn from pathetic to frightening in a few sentences. There are few mainstream authors that are as unafraid to be as unlikeable as Moshfegh—and able to do it beautifully, for that matter. 

*

Over the past few years, I’ve realized I’m not really a sci-fi guy. To me, hard sci-fi just seems like political wish fulfilment with stupid names, and even sci-fi lite just feels redundant of the technologically scary times we’re already living through. 

But Dan Chaon’s Sleepwalk is an exception. Set in some vaguely futuristic setting, the novel follows Will Bear, a man whose job—a Mike-from-Breaking-Bad-type fixer and occasional assassin—requires complete anonymity. He spends his days driving across a dystopian United States in an RV, utilizing countless identities and burner phones to complete his nefarious missions. He’s a man so buried in his aliases that he drifts through life in the figurative passenger seat.

But one day, he gets a call from someone who claims to be his biological daughter, which sends him on a wild, suspenseful journey that painfully—but often hilariously—reveals his true self.  

Like George Saunders, Chaon has an incredible talent for seamlessly incorporating genre elements in his writing, resulting in a work that feels simultaneously spectacular and human. The author also has found a singular voice with his main character, Will Bear—a Big Lebowski-esque Dude-type but with a talent for violence. If you’re an audiobook person, the audio version of this book is read by John Pirhalla, who gives Will a stoned, Southern California persona, and I lol’d so many times listening to him. Perfect delivery. 

Favorite book(s) I read that came out before 2022

Tie: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara / Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

The rumors are true: A Little Life will destroy you. This 700-page epic of human suffering is, hands-down, the most emotionally affecting novel that I’ve read. 

The story follows four male friends from college into late adulthood. At the center of the group is the disabled Jude St. Francis, an orphan who’s endured about every type of abuse imaginable. Their lives are dictated by caring for and protecting Jude—a task which becomes increasingly difficult as Jude yearns for agency of his own, damaged body (which he fulfills via self-harm). 

A Little Life is not an easy book to read, let alone recommend. But powerful art rarely is. Between the sadness and repulsion, there are moments of genuine love and affection, and those are the parts that will destroy you. Yanagihara’s novel is humanity distilled. If you don’t cry once while reading this book, are you even human? 

*

I wish I had read Geek Love in high school. It’s a frightening, grotesque, and super off-putting read—so of course, I’m going to love it. But I can only imagine the impact it’d have to read about the Binewskis—a family of self-made (in the literal sense) carnies—when my mind was a little softer. 

Not to say that I relate to the Binewski parents—who poisoned themselves with every toxin in an effort to create deformed and exploitable children—but which teenager can’t relate to outsiderness being its own prestige? What high schooler hasn’t felt like a freak at some point? The book is beyond fucked-up (I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to shake the Bag Man’s mid-coitus death out of my head), but the writing is sublime. Every sentence feels pored over, dissected, and put back together in a new and profound way. Apparently, Katherine Dunn spent nearly a decade editing this novel, and it shows. 

Here’s my entire reading list for 2022.

TV/MOVIES

Eh, you don’t really want to hear my thoughts on movies. I don’t even know what I like anymore. Movies and TV are just stimula for that feed my eyes these days. Plus, we’re all watching the same shit anyway. You really want to know my thoughts about Stranger Things’ new season? What about The Bear? Just like everyone else, I watched them so I could be socially relevant, but who cares. 

So here’s a very brief list. 

Favorite movies: 

Deadstream

Nope

Emily the Criminal

Speak No Evil (this is a new contender for hardest movie to watch for me)

X

Smile

Favorite TV: 

Barry

White Lotus

MacGruber (released in December 2021, but it still counts)

MISCELLANEOUS

Dumbest thing: AI art

Just like how cryptocurrency is rich people deciding they need their own money system, AI art is rich people dictating their own art scene. I’m not even interested in arguing if it’s art or not. Some of it’s cool, but so were MagicEyes. 

Dumbest thing 2: Twitter’s downfall

I don’t think Twitter will die, but it will never be the same after Elon Musk decided to buy it as part of some pathetic crusade to stroke his ego. Just another reason that rich people shouldn’t be allowed to do things. 

Dumbest thing 3: Consortium Holding’s San Diego takeover

I wrote about this a few months ago, but it’s still grinding my gears. All our good bars are being replaced by overpriced magnets for overpaid bros. Please cool it, CH.

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AWKWARD MOVIE NIGHT THIS WEEK! 

This Thursday, December 15, we’re going to watch Deadly Games (aka Dial Code Santa Claus) at the beautiful, new Digital Gym Cinema.

Deadly Games is a French film about a child who builds MacGyver-esque weapons and booby traps to defend his home against an invader dressed as Santa. If that sounds a lot like Home Alone, just know that Deadly Games predates Home Alone, and is way more stylish. I hope you join us for this holiday masterpiece.