doodledee

Here are my 12th annual Best and Worst of the Year Awards. As always, they are limited in scope by what I could think of when I wrote this out.

Cereal of the Year (Sweetened) - Captain Crunch Oops Choco Donuts. I have no idea what chocolate donuts have to do with Captain Crunch, but his 'oops' is my 'hallelujah'.

Loss of the Year - My well-worn, perfectly soft choppers. I left them at Sally's last winter and never got them back. The runner-up would have to be Undeclared, the funniest new show in a long time that somehow got cancelled in 2002. Us older folks like to pretend we're still in college and Undeclared made that a little easier.

Cereal of the Year (Unsweetened) - Perennial favorite Raisin Bran takes it again.

Movie of the Year - Star Wars - Imax Edition. I forget the exact specs, but I think the screen is like 200 stories high and the sound system is powered by it's own nuclear reactor. It was the first time in a while I that I wet my pants in a movie theater. Runner-up will most likely be Two Towers, but I haven't seen it yet, so it'll just have to win next year.

Twins of the Year - The Dunn twins. They're just so damn cute. Runner-up goes to the Minnesota Twins, who are also cute, but not nearly cute enough to take the award from Sam and Jack.

Album of the Year - Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The album that almost didn't get released because their label thought it was a 'career-ender'. Well folks, it's anything but. It rocks, it jams, it's happy, it's sad, and it's beautiful. I remember reading a review that said "No one is too good for this album; it is better than all of us." That pretty much sums it up.

Dork of the Year (non work related) - Rick Kahn, who, with his fiery, rhetoric-fueled speech at the Wellstone memorial service, gave people a reason to be 'outraged' for months. D-o-r-k, you ain't got no alibi, you're stupid, yeah, yeah, you're stupid.

Doosh of Year - Gopher Mens Hockey winning a national championship. In overtime. In St. Paul. I don't care if you grew up playing hockey in Minnesota or if you just live here, it was impossible not to explode with pride as all our local boys - led by Johnny Pohl and Jordan Leopold - won it all.

All Talk of the Year - Finishing my TV stand.

Java Tool of the Year - Eclipse. The greatest IDE ever, and it's totally free. I knew we'd get there, but I had no idea it would take this long.

Disappointment of the Year - Macaroni and Cheese on a Stick at the State Fair. Powerfully lame, especially after all the hype. Runner-up is a tie between not getting into the Phish NYE show and Pawlenty winning.

Hoot of the Year - Waking up at all hours of the night and watching the US National team do pretty darn good in soccer's World Cup.

Here's to a mint 2003. I personally couldn't be more excited.