Year-end round up

Here is a smattering of the things I found important this year...

Notable deaths:
Coretta Scott King, first lady of the civil rights movement
Betty Friedan, first lady of feminism
Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter
Don Knotts, comedic actor
Wilson Pickett, musical genius
Lou Rawls, see above
Ed Bradley, preeminent newsman
Slobodan Milosevic, mean, scary mass murderer
Jack Palance, veteran actor, general badass (did you see the time he did one-arm pushups during the Oscars?)
Robert Altman, genius director

My top albums of the year:
1. "St. Elsewhere," Gnarls Barkley
2. "The Greatest," Cat Power
3. "The Information," Beck
4. "Rabbit Fur Coat," Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins
5. "American V: A Hundred Highways," Johnny Cash
6. "Life Pursuit," Belle & Sebastian
7. "Return To Cookie Mountain," TV On The Radio

My top movies of the year (WARNING: I, for some reason, did not see a lot of movies this year, so my list is a little shallow):
1. "Little Miss Sunshine"
2. "Hustle & Flow" (yeah, i know it came out last year, but i didn't see it until this year, so get over it.)
3. "Stranger Than Fiction"
4. "The Science of Sleep"
5. "Talladega Nights"
6. "A Prairie Home Companion"

Some books I read this year:
"To Kill a Mockingbird," Harper Lee
"The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat," Oliver Sacks
"Wicked," Gregory Maguire
"The Valkyries," Paulo Coelho
"Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life," Amy Krouse Rosenthal
"A Heartbreaking Work of a Staggering Genius," Dave Eggers

A list of random things that changed my life this year:
- moving to a new city/state
- changing jobs for the first time since graduating college
- meeting the trivia gang
- C.S.
- many of my friends getting married/pregnant
- learning it does get better, no matter how shitty it might seem
- no longer being really good at what i do/climbing the new job learning curve
- R. Thomas 24-hour Vegetarian Restaurant Greatness
- missing my friends so much it hurts
- theatre