Robert Mentzer’s certified finest of 2018
I keep a cultural journal throughout the year where I list some favorite things, and then in December I make a blog post and share it and hope to have some good conversations about music, books, podcasts and things, and this is that blog post.
Music
Eminem’s album Kamikaze is not particularly good and certainly not one of my favorites of the year, but I did experience a little moment of generational solidarity listening to his disses against the young generation of sing-rappers, the Posts Malone and Lils Xan and so on, where I was like: Yes, these young kids can’t even rap, the children today are wrong about what is good. I am an old man now. Which is fine.
It is in that context, then, that my runaway favorite album of the year, Daytona by Pusha T, connects with me. Push is not really classicist or an aesthetic conservative, but his sound cuts against a lot of trends, it is rap music, both a throwback and not a throwback. Ideal. I loved this record and still can’t get enough of it, and I also love that it is 7 songs and 21 minutes long.
I happened to be on a week of vacation when Drake dropped “Duppy Freestyle” and Push responded with “The Story of Adidon,” which meant I read approximately 1 million takes on the beef, and it was the best. My own: Part of what made “Adidon” so effective was that it contained both a completely fair and grounded critique about Drake hiding/denying his child, and also a gross/misogynist one (about how the mother has performed in porn), and listeners could take up and respond to whichever one they wanted. To me, though, the real savagery is in the precision of this line near the opening of the track: “Even though you’re multi [platinum], I see that your soul don’t look alive.” That is 100% true of Drake, and that is the deeper critique that he really can’t come back from.
Other albums I loved:
Songs:
My favorite song of 2018 was “High Horse” by Kacey Musgraves. I love it.
Some others:
- “All the Stars” by Kendrick Lamar and SZA
- “thank u, next” by Arianna Grande
- “Apes**t” by Beyoncé and Jay-Z
- “4th Dimension” by Kids See Ghosts. Kind of just the sample.
- “Say Something” by Justin Timberlake. Look, I know album was bad, and the lyrics to this song are very dumb, but I’m sorry this video is cool as hell.
- “Ocean to Ocean” by Pitbull, a.k.a. “Africa by Toto by Pitbull,” which is good, I do not recognize the W*ezer cover but this one I like.
Podcasts
I listened to three great fiction podcasts this year, and I know there are more of these and I want still more. Fiction podcasts, radio dramas are good. My favorites:
Heavyweight is my favorite podcast. The episode “Rob” is super funny and everyone would enjoy it.
Decoder Ring is a great work of cultural criticism, I loved the one about laugh tracks and the celebrated “The Incanabula Papers” episode, and actually all of them.
It was a World Cup year! The We Came to Win podcast was a great friend in the lead-up.
The episode “Analysis, parapraxis, Elvis,” of the Revisionist History podcast: Why couldn’t Elvis ever, ever remember the words to this one specific song? It turns out, there is a reason.
The new Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend feels nostalgic for me as a onetime fan who has not watched a TV talk show of any kind in years. I laughed a lot during the Will Ferrell episode.
I guess my favorite of the panel shows was The Weeds, also like the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast and an old fav in the Slate Culture Gabfest. I am always happy when Reply All is in my feed. Many of my other 2018 podcast favorites appear on many year-end lists, sorry to be unoriginal but it is my truth:
- 30 for 30, “Bikram”
- Slow Burn
- Caliphate
- Serial. The stories this season tells are small, in a way, but through incredibly rigorous reporting the sum of the series is a really complex portrait of class, race and the criminal justice system.
- The City
Also Forrest and I listen to Wow in the World while we hike, and it is consistently terrific.
Television
I did not watch very much television. This is fine. There is a lot of great television I would probably enjoy, but life is about making choices and I feel I’ve been generally happier since opting to mostly sit out our peak TV era.
(Except Atlanta. Atlanta’s second season was the world’s best television series again, to me. Also The Good Place rules.)
But I do have Netflix, and I think the best Netflix thing I watched was probably Ali Wong’s filthy, smart Hard Knock Wife. I found Dave Chappelle’s two specials fascinating, even spellbinding, though sure they were frustrating too. The Bojack Horseman episode “Free Churro” is devastating and excellently pulled off. And I will say I personally enjoyed and learned a great deal from the Vox explainer show on cricket.
Movies
Somewhat to my own surprise I saw several excellent movies in 2018. You don’t need me to tell you about Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians. But how about Paddington 2? Paddington 2 is great. I loved The Death of Stalin, Sorry to Bother You, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. I kind of enjoyed Isle of Dogs! Movies are back, baby!!
Books
I read some good ones. I read the second book in the Neapolitan novels, am using willpower to pace myself to one per year. Really liked the Alaska book Coming Into the Country by John McPhee, and found in these two pages an incredible, self-contained short story. I was impressed by Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, which came out a couple of years ago but which I read this year.
My favorite 2018 book was Boom Town. Boom Town — to be precise, that would be Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis — is a goddamned delight. Wayne Coyne! Russell Westbrook! The land rush of 1889!
Other favorite 2018 books:
- Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. I just couldn’t believe how much nothing ever worked at Theranos, like at no point did any of its tech do any of what Elizabeth Holmes said, it’s astounding.
- God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State
- How Democracies Die
- A Terrible Country
- Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. (Have just started listening to it, >20% in, already excellent.)