The Automatik

I’m not going to lie and say this wasn’t a shitty year on many levels. Besides all the personal strife, there weren’t enough good albums released for my taste (but then again the bulk of my record purchases are to fill out the back catalogue of artists who are either dead or no longer releasing anything of merit). And sadly, I didn’t get to see nearly as many films last year as I wanted so my list won’t be as thorough as usual (so don’t go bitching at me because Vanilla Sky and Sexy Beast aren’t there). But here you have the lists in all their nonsensical glory.

Top Ten Films of 2001 (in order)

1. Ghost World, dir. Terry Zwigoff
2. Memento, dir. Christopher Nolan
3. The Royal Tenenbaums, dir. Wes Anderson
4. Enemy at the Gates, dir. Jean-Jacques Annaud
5. Hedwig and the Angry Inch, dir. John Cameron Mitchell
6. A.I., dir. Steven Spielberg
7. The Deep End, dir. David Siegel
8. Novocaine, dir. David Atkins
9. From Hell, dir. The Hughes Brothers
10. Before Night Falls, dir. Julian Schnabel

Top Ten Albums of 2001, in alphabetical order (these are not just new releases; these are the ones that defined my life, for better or for worse)

1. Air, 10,000 Hz. Legend
2. The Beach Boys, Pet Sounds
3. Jason Falkner, Can You Still Feel?
4. Foetus, Flow
5. Hedwig and the Angry Inch�Original Cast Recording
6. The Monkees, Listen to the Band Box Set
7. Radiohead, Amnesiac
8. Sloan, Between the Bridges/Pretty Together
9. The Strokes, Is This It?
10. Weezer, The Green Album

Top Ten Best Things About 2001

1. Foetus at the Shim Sham
2. Air in Austin, TX
3. “Glitter” at the Shim Sham, Saturday nights
4. Hedwig and the Angry Inch at the Shim Sham (do we see a pattern here? But Flynn DeMarco was FABU! And adorable.)
5. David Cross at The Howlin’ Wolf
6. Finding out who your true friends are
7. The return of Pulp! (Oh, Jarvis, how we missed thee!)
8. Sloan, who have lit a fire under my ass like no one else could
9. Losing those last twenty years of dead weight
10. The birth of Number 20

Top Ten Worst Things About 2001

1. Ratboy�because selfishness, coke bloat, and alcoholism are not a fetching combination
2. September 11 and the aftermath
3. Alcoholics
4. Bi-sex-ual cats
5. Stalkers
6. Fake friends
7. Psychotic neighbors
8. Celebrity culture (so they DO grow them in a Petri dish!)
9. The current state of popular music (Mudvayne! P. Diddy! Limp Bizkit! Britney! American Hi Fi!)
10. Ignorant, no-class, wanna-be groupies who claim they like cute and trendy bands for the music. Uh-huh. That’s like when guys claim read Playboy for the articles. Hey, you know, I’m as into eye candy as anyone else, but when the way the band members look and speculations on their sexual prowess become more important than those songs you skip on their album, well, I think Lester Bangs is doing the frug in his grave. Ahem.