When I saw that friends and friends of friends were making their own decade lists, I could hardly believe mine eyes! I can barely handle the year list, and I have just been so many dang people all of these years, I wasn’t sure that I’d remember what was happening even two years ago. But with a little help of my going memory, Wikipedia, and my recent re-obsession with a particular Rilo Kiley album, I think I’ve got it all figured out. And, to make it easier, I’ve just listed my top-top, and then the rest are in no particular order (ok, maybe alphabetical – ilu, Wikipedia).
Segue!
TOP FILM!
Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (or, Amélie) – I mean, come on. I’m a girl of my age group, of my stylistic persuasion – what the fuck other movie am I going to choose here? I saw this movie just as I was truly figuring out who I was, in a sense. I wasn’t a girl, not yet a woman, and I’d just started getting into the things I’ve stayed into all of these years. This was also the first foreign film I ever saw, I think. (Though, I can basically watch it without captions at this point.) The film looks like heaven, the story and dialogue are beautiful, and everything about it is just so delightfully quirky and romantic and adorable. Gah, I’m gushing.
OTHERS:
obviously, my Tops of the Year
A fost sau n-a fost? (or, 12:08 East of Bucharest)
The Brothers Bloom
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Hairspray
In Bruges
C’est pas moi, je le jure! (or, It’s Not Me, I Swear!)
Juno
The King of Kong: A Fistfull of Quarters
Lake of Fire
Mrs. Ratcliffe’s Revolution
Romance & Cigarettes
Son of Rambow
There Will Be Blood
Waitress
TOP ALBUM!
Rilo Kiley, Take Offs and Landings – spoiler alert (from the first paragraph)! No joke, maybe one of my top albums of all times? Sure, this is pre-”Jenny Lewis must’ve gotten a vocal coach”, and a lot of my initial curiosity had to do with how banging the boy from Salute Your Shorts and Boy Meets World got, but come. on. The songs are perfectionnn. Heartfelt lyrics, pretty riffs, dreamy sounds. This was the first stuff I listened to upon entering my indie-folk-laden scene, and it’s because of this band that I never ever left it.
OTHERS*:
As I Lay Dying, Frail Words Collapse
Avril Lavigne, Let Go (girl, I was all about this album when it came out – don’t judge!)
The Brunettes, Mars Loves Venus
Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins, Rabbit Fur Coat
Killswitch Engage, Alive or Just Breathing
Ludacris, Chicken-n-Beer
Mitch Hedberg, Mitch All Together
Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
*NSYNC, No Strings Attached (BUT THE BACKSTREET BOYS ARE BETTER, JUST SO WE’RE CLEAR.)
Ratatouille, The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Rainer Maria, Long Knives Drawn
Regina Spektor, Soviet Kitsch
Saves the Day, Through Being Cool (this was released in 1999, but I didn’t have it until 2000 and it’s, most probably, my second favorite album of the decade – please let me have this!)
She & Him, Volume One
Taking Back Sunday, Tell All Your Friends
Todd Barry, Medium Energy
* (I chose these, mostly, because of their meaning to me at the time. A lot of this decade was spent listening to the same, like, six albums – most of them over thirty years old – so, I couldn’t really decide on my favorite-favorites that were actually released all of these years)
TOP OF THE TOPS!
Tina Fey – who effing else would be my top person of the (I hate this word) “aughts”? She is everything I want to be, but much more than I could ever be. She is beautiful, talented, funny, perfect. In the spine-tinglingly meaningful words of Berlin: “No more words.”
OTHERS:
The Coen Brothers
David Sedaris’s books
Diablo Cody
ELLEgirl magazine
Gilmore Girls
Gossip Girl (the book and television series)
Jenny Lewis
John Mayer Has a TV Show
LiveJournal
The Lonely Island
Mates of State
Neko Case
Pushing Daisies
Quentin Tarantino
Zooey Deschanel
This decade has been pretty nuts, you guys. I travelled, had my tongue pierced, kissed a boy for realsies for the first time (shut up, I’m a late bloomer), went to college and quit college and then went back to college, worked at about thirty jobs, broke a couple of hearts (one of them mine), lost my Granny Panny along with some amazing pets, and finally saw Star Wars.
But we’re going to be in the tens, man! Can we start dressing like this again?:
