My Best Posts Of 2008

"It's been a long December and there's reason to believe/Maybe this year will be better than the last." --- Counting Crows

"Mark, you're seriously quoting Counting Crows lyrics in 2009? That's as lame as hell." --- Mark's brain

While I'm busy yelling at my brain, feel free to glance at this pseudo-Best Of Polivision over the last 12 months. Of course, every post is gold and should be treasured like a newborn child, but these are the best of the best, the cream of the crop, the posts with the mosts, the blogs that won't go to the dogs....I'll stop now.

Enjoy!

January 21: My look at the NFC Championship Game, written with my tears still staining my laptop's keyboard

January 28: Review of the latest Rambo movie. Wait, the Oscars DIDN'T award it Best Picture?!?! No Country For Old WHAT???

February 20: Ghostbusters vs. Back To The Future...Which Is The Better Franchise?

February 23: The 2008 Markademy Awards.

March 6: Two links, one to the awesome Garfield Without Garfield page, and one to a YouTube clip of two feuding newsmen. That news link is just a brilliant display of passive-aggression.

March 17: Listamania VII: The Top 13 Athletes Named 'Mark' Of My Lifetime

March 27: Arguably the best of my 'Hot! Live! Music!' posts just because the quality of the songs (including Train In Vain, Nowhere With You, Psycho Killer, Fireworks, etc.) is so high

March 31: My MLB season preview. Worth reading just for my comically-wrong World Series prediction.

April 12: My 'list of shame,' a.k.a. great movies I've somehow never been before. The worst part is, eight months later, only one film has been crossed off that list.

May 2: My summer movie preview. I think my favourite entry is the one for Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants II, as I clearly forgot the "must go see it to pay someone back" option. Either that or the one for Hancock, as I claimed there'd be an 80% chance I'd enjoy it, yet never actually went to see the movie.

May 13: My friend Mario and I go on (and on....and on) about the Survivor: Fans vs. Favorites season. That scene with Eliza, Jason and the "fucking stick" still cracks me up.

May 14: My debut on the Rogers Centre's Jumbotron

May 17: My parents' alleged encounter with U2 drummer Larry Mullen in Ireland. I questioned this more thoroughly than Homer questioned the head of the Kwik-E-Mart company.

May 20: The greatest comic book movies ever. After seeing this year's crop, The Dark Knight sits atop the 'Mint' section, Hellboy II goes into the 'Pretty Goods' and Punisher: War Zone goes in amongst the dregs.

May 24: Something so improbable happens at the ballpark that it causes me to scream 'Damn you, universe!' while shaking my fist. That's actually one of the funniest parts of the story, I'm not sure why I left it out of the original account. Also, notable for the introduction of the 'Jimmy Key' call.

May 28: Kyle and I team up to count down our personal favourite 15 LOST episodes ever. Holy cow, was I on a blogging roll in May or what?

June 13: I rip on Katherine Heigl, dream about Teri Hatcher (not what it sounds like...), praise Craig Ferguson and review Forgetting Sarah Marshall. You know what, I can live with Dark Knight not getting an Oscar nod if it means that "Dracula's Lament" is up for Best Original Song.

June 17: Ten top-ten lists. Basically, a bunch of ideas that I couldn't stretch into a whole post, so I just jammed them all into one post to celebrate Listamania X.

June 18: Kyle and I team up again to debate which of Tiger Woods' 14 major title wins were most impressive.

June 20: My Blue Jays midseason report card. Translation: Mark bitches about the Jays for 1000 words.

July 3: My attempt to explain the Blue Jays' shittiness with "The Casey Effect." This was also the first post to have a linked title, which I finally figured out how to do after, oh, four years of blogging.

July 10: My rant about Viagra's latest ad campaign. The Glass Joe joke is one of my personal favourites.

July 14: A weird collection of thoughts and jokes about Peter Pan and Tom Cruise, as well as the introduction of the 'obscure movie references that everyone still gets' game. Also, I didn't link to it, but in my July 15 post I semi-called Greg Norman to win the British Open, which he almost did. What a semi-great prediction!

July 20: My half-review, half-orgasm of The Dark Knight.

July 21: I play the "who can think up the best one-liner" game with myself in regards to the Madonna/A-Rod relationship.

July 25: Highlights of my busy week covering the MLS All-Star Game.

July 26: A priceless Sesame Street clip, plus the result of the epic 'Tom Cruise vs. Kevin Costner' worse acting poll and a great comments section about another poll regarding who the next Batman villains should be.

July 27: The Alterna-Emmys. Man, I'm still in disbelief that Michael Emerson didn't win.

August 4: Memories of Kyle & Carrie's wedding. A framed version of this post will be my gift to them on their fifth anniversary. An unframed version will be their fourth anniversary gift. A scrawled summary on the back of an envelope will be the third anniversary gift. They won't get anything for the second anniversary. And they'll have to give me a gift for their first anniversary. That's just how I roll.

August 6: Yet another 'random stuff' post.

August 13: One of my personal favourites. I love any post where I'm able to make my points through clever links. The title is "Cheating On My Girlfriend."

August 16: My dad's birthday! Not that that has anything to do with the post....it's actually a review of a Radiohead concert.

August 19: I make sarcastic comments about a strange collection of wedding photos found on the internet. Arguably the oddest topic for a post ever.

August 28: Kyle and I team up to discuss the Summer Olympics

August 29: Reviews of Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Tropic Thunder and (the infamous) Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants sequel.

September 7: Ostensibly it's a post about what five movies I planned to see the Toronto International Film Festival (months later, I've seen two of them!), but what got the most response was a memory of the old Masonville miniature golf course.

September 9: A post about the Spider-Man Broadway musical, featuring songs by Bono and the Edge. I still cannot believe this is actually happening.

September 13: My version of what the first Saturday Night Live skit of the season should have been like. Or, not 'should have been,' I guess, since their actual skit (the Palin-Clinton press conference) was awesome, much like every Tina Fey-as-Palin bit during the season.

September 17: Another edition of Good Commercial/Bad Commercial, wherein I discuss....er, good commercials and bad commercials.

September 19: My adventures at a Jays game, and my quest to find the perfect number for my throwback jersey.

September 23: Kyle and I team up to recap/review the Emmy Awards. The highlight might actually be a YouTube clip I included of Neil Patrick Harris and Jason Segal singing 'Confrontation' from Les Miserables.

September 26: EVEN MORE random nonsense.

October 1: My unbelievable predictions about the baseball playoffs. Arguably one of the proudest moments of my life, right up there with beating the Simpsons arcade game and having a professor personally deliver an essay to me because "it was just so good."

October 7: Tales of alternate casting in films and TV shows.

October 9: My post about the Canadian election, which (between Blogger and Facebook) was probably my most commented-on piece ever. I think people were more fired up by my post than by the actual election.

October 18: A whole bunch of movie reviews, all in one big-ass post.

November 1: Kyle and I team up to deliver an NFL midseason report. Best part: I seriously suggest Aaron Rodgers for the MVP award. This was well before Green Bay completely fell apart.

November 5: My version of the Guy Fawkes poem, adapted for Barack Obama's election. It was pretty good considering it was written in literally a minute.

November 12: I rip on the casting call for a stereotype-filled ESPN commercial about American college students.

November 21: Listamania! I devote this whole thing to mocking Ashlee Simpson's name for her child. Man, I'm cold-blooded.

December 9: Movie reviews of Happy-Go-Lucky, Punisher: War Zone, Quantum Of Solace, RockNRolla, and Zack And Miri Make A Porno

December....the multi-part 'best music of our lives' team-up between myself, Kyle and Misha listing our favourite albums of the past 27-29 years.
Part one (1979-1989)
Part two (1990-1999)
Part three (2000-2004, Misha joins in)
Part four (2005-2008)
Stat wrap-up