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Here are my reviews of the best of everything of 2003, a year in which I moved from New York to Los Angeles, met the best girl in the entire world by editing one of her articles for Lunchboxing, and listened to a lot of good music. Best Movie: Lost in Translation. There's a movie I want to see that I haven't seen yet, maybe because it hasn't been made. The main characters are a confused guy and a 1960s-looking beautiful girl, and she teaches him things he tries not to think about but knows he has to eventually discover, and it takes place around the same time of year that Holden Caulfield goes home from Pencey Prep in Catcher in the Rye, and it takes place in J.D. Salinger's version of New York. There's an incredible soundtrack that's kind of like the Velvet Underground, with lots of sweet old songs like the ones in Woody Allen movies, and there are lots of things in it that make you laugh and cry, not because the characters are making funny or sad mistakes, but because they're doing exactly what you always knew they do. Most movies end with the people doing what you know they really wouldn't do, even in the best of all best-case scenarios. Of the movies that have actually been made, none I've seen comes closer to the one I'm imagining than Lost in Translation. Best Song: I can't choose between songs. But here are some songs that I absolutely love, and why I think they're so good. I started with the artist, then named the great song or songs they released this year: The Postal Service -- "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight," "Such Great Heights," "Nothing Better." These are three of the first four songs on the Postal Service's Give Up. I started out this year falling in love with a group called Rilo Kiley, and their singer, Jenny Lewis, is in The Postal Service with two guys I had barely heard of: Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and Jimmy Tamborello of DNTEL. Anyway, I'm glad I decided to check this out. The first two songs are beautiful long-distance love songs. The first is about losing touch with someone to such an extent that you feel separate from them even when you're finally together. The second is more hopeful, and sweetly romantic. Gibbard took a lot of shit from critics who said the lyrics were like the lyrics of an N*Sync song. It's sad that these critics have never felt the kind of generous, longing feelings Gibbard has for the girl in the song. "Nothing Better," is, to me, an almost perfect song, simultaneously moving and campy. I'm not the first to note that it sounds like an indie update of The Human League's "Don't You Want Me." I think the Postal Service deserves more credit than anyone for bringing back the best aspects of '80s techno pop this year. "Nothing Better" and a yearning cover of Phil Collins' "Against All Odds," established them as the lead architects of the revival. Outkast -- "Hey Ya." The best pop songs make very complicated situations seem simple. Think about Marvin Gaye's "Heard it Through the Grapevine": Here's a song trying to explain the layers of distress of a guy who's found out through a third-party -- and probably a fourth, fifth and sixth -- that his girl doesn't want him anymore. See? Complicated. But everyone understands Marvin Gaye's pain on the first listen. "Hey Ya" totally breaks my making-things-simple rule. On its face it seems like a song about nothing, but each new listen offers another layer of joy, pain, ambivalence, and confusion. "Oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why oh, are we so in denial when we know we're not happy here?" sings Andre 3000, giving his relationship the kiss-off before going into swinging bachelor mode with brilliantly random catch phrases like "Shake it like a Polaroid picture," and "Don't want to meet your Daddy/Just want you in my Caddy." But we kind of sense he's not happy there either. The Roots feat. Cody Chesnutt -- "The Seed 2.0." It just rocks. It's about impregnating other women "behind my lover's back," which is so off-the-charts amoral it's hilarious. The part where Chesnutt vows to name his baby girl "Rock and Roll" is great too. This is the only song of the year I have a love so much, and so instinctually, that I can't even begin to explain in writing what makes it so good. Phoenix -- "So Young." This apparently came out a few years ago, but was revived by the Lost in Translation Soundtrack. Another '80s-ish song. Because the band is French, I like to think the whole Euro synth thing never went out of style and that they don't know they're being nostalgic. The hook says something without saying anything, which has a certain je ne sais quoi: "I guess I couldn't live without the things/That make my life what it is." Best city: Stockholm, Sweden. Went for 10 days in May. This place is heaven. Drinking Vanilla Skies, eating sushi right out of the icy Baltic, the people are beautiful. There was even a great inlet to jog muddy laps around. I wandered into a high school graduation party late one night and it was like the DJ read my mind and guessed what I wanted to hear before I even heard it. Best Places to Go: Everyone I know in San Francisco hates the Beauty Bar on 19th and Mission, but one night in June I had a ridiculously good time there having a dance-off with Lunchboxing's own Stephen Cody. I also drank a lot of a drink called a Key Lime Pie, which is kind of like the Vanilla Skies I was drinking in Sweden. After the dance contest it was really hot so I took off my shirt and walked around smoking, trying to be ironically frat bro-ish, and someone I'd never met completely got it and yelled, "UC SANTA BARBARA!" 
Lunchboxing's Tim Molloy and Jamie Flam act frat bro-ish outside the Beauty Bar in San Francisco. I lost my out-of-state driver's license earlier this year, so once or twice I was shut out of bars and clubs, but the doorman at the Beauty Bar said I could come in after I promised to write something positive about the place. Here you go. I have no idea why my friends hate it there, by the way. Worst Places to Go: Recently I went to Gold's Gym in Santa Barbara, Calif., while in town for my job. They charged me $12, which I finally agreed to because I was feeling really out of shape. Then it turned out they didn't have anywhere I could put my wallet. (Most gyms have where you can lock up small valuables like keys and wallets for a quarter.) So I had to pay another $5 for a lock. At the end of my one-hour trip to Gold's I asked for a towel and they charged me a $1 rental fee. A rental fee for towels? What? That's like a burrito place charging for salsa. (See below.) Did I add a Worst of 2003 section to this mostly positive article just so I could say bad things about Gold's Gym? Yes I did. But then I realized that a Worst list would allow me one last chance at reforming the... Worst Petition Drive: Earlier this year Lunchboxing launched a petition to stop New York City restaurant Burritoville to stop the morally repellent practice of charging for salsa. Not a lot of signatures so far. Please click here to give this another shot, and we'll submit the petition sometime in 2004. |
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