Spencer TuckermanI first tried the “favorite stuff of the year” format in 2020 and I’m bringing it back. Here’s some stuff I discovered, rediscovered, or liked a lot in 2022:
Motor City Pizza Co. - 5 Cheese Bread
I may be overrating this because it was the first thing I could kind of taste while recovering from Covid but I think it’s the best frozen food ever invented. It’s cheesy bread that also includes something the box describes as “parmesan cheese sauce.” Yeah, brother. Have seen at: Walmart, Target, Costco.
Alek Manoah Mic’d Up at the 2022 MLB All-Star Game
During a baseball game that doesn’t really matter, broadcasters can play around. For this year’s All-Star game FOX stuck a microphone on Blue Jays pitcher Alek Manoah while he was on the mound and magic ensued. You can watch the inning here but I’d also recommend reading Joe Posnanski’s write-up on the moment, which captures everything I found special about it.
New TV shows
Television has become the dominant form of entertainment in our society and I hate it. There’s so much of it, it’s a huge time commitment, and nobody knows how to edit anymore. It kills me that people will spend 15 hours watching a season of TV and conclude it’s mediocre. You know how many movies I can watch in that same time frame?! I do carve out time for some TV shows. I’m gonna knock them all out in this section since there aren’t many:
- The Bear: New from FX. Perfectly paced. The best kind of anxiety. A tightly compressed package of wonderful acting, editing, and writing. The best TV soundtrack of the year.
- The Rehearsal: New from HBO. Nathan Fielder continues to break the limitations of television itself. I don’t know if he will be able to top it in the next season and I almost don’t think he should try. Either way, Season 1 is a masterpiece.
- Severance: New from Apple TV+. I was immensely skeptical when I saw the trailers but the aesthetic is able to keep this thing afloat before the writing absolutely explodes down the stretch. The best season finale I’ve seen in years. It rewards your attention.
- The Resort: New from Peacock. Maybe not great, per se. But it’s a lot of fun and is made by roughly a dozen people whose work I really like. Stuff like this actually does make me think I should casually watch more TV in between all the movies.
Signals Midwest and Downhaul in concert
I saw an all-time favorite and a new fascination in a rare show in Cincinnati, a city with the worst live indie music scene in the country. It felt good to be back at concerts in 2022, damaging my hearing and paying a lot of money for Coors Light.
New brands from the Cavs and Guardians
My NBA team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, rolled out a rebrand and some fresh jerseys. I genuinely think they’re my favorite in all of professional sports. (Bonus: The City Edition uniform is awesome, too.) My MLB team, meanwhile, changed its whole name. Despite all the hand-wringing involved, I think they pulled it off. The new Guardians stuff looks good and the team had one of the most exciting seasons I can remember. I am not on speaking terms with my NFL team.
Linkee
I’m not much of a board/card game fan, but this one looked fun. And it is!
Panic’s Playdate
I ordered this thing in July 2021, paid way too much, and then waited 18 months for it to arrive. It got here just before the end of 2022 and, I’ve gotta say, it was worth the wait. It feels like a high-class version of those games we used to play on our graphing calculators during study hall in high school.
Coffee table books
Books about the National Parks or Bong Joon-ho adorn my house. It’s unclear why I’ve done this.
Notion
I don’t think I’m a disorganized person, but I’m not often organized in the ‘calendars and to-do lists’ way. Notion might change that. Something about the sandbox freedom works for me. I planned a week-long vacation to California using it and I think I’m going to do it again every time I leave town.
Comedy specials
There’s sort of a running joke about standup comedy in 2022 that says everything is more about being “Important” than simply funny. I can recognize this trend but I don’t watch enough to feel negatively impacted by it. I really liked two comedy specials in 2022 and they occupy two opposite ends of this spectrum. Jarrod Carmichael: Rothaniel is kind of your classic prestige comedy special, wading in complicated waters and poking through one’s past with humor. On the other hand Stavros Halkias - Live at the Lodge Room is 53 minutes of belly laughs. Both are really great.
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2022 Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll
Man, I am a sucker for this junk. Sight and Sound magazine polls a ton of critics (more than 1,600 this year) in an attempt to capture film canon. This only happens once per decade and it leads to a bloodbath of discourse. I haven’t seen a lot of stuff on here, and other choices I vehemently disagree with, but it’s really cool to see modern masterpieces like In The Mood For Love and Mulholland Drive officially crowned as classics alongside stalwarts like Citizen Kane and The Godfather.
Peak Design Tech Pouch
There are few better feelings than buying something that has a specific function and discovering it does that function flawlessly. In an attempt to wrangle all the cables and battery banks and hard drives and headphones kicking around in my backpack, I bought a pouch to give them all a dedicated home. It was $60 (not cheap) and I think it’s worth twice that. Perfect purchase.
Printing and framing stuff
You can upload a photo to Framebridge and they’ll frame it and send it to you in a very handsome box. A splashy gift! Or you can upload a photo to Nations Photo Lab and they’ll send you a nice print you can frame yourself. An economical gift! I did both this year. So much of my life is digital now. It’s cool to hold something in my hands.
Fujifilm X100T
Back in March (on a whim after watching a YouTube video) I got on eBay and impulse purchased a digital camera made in 2015 for $625. Some guy shipped it to me from Turkey. It felt reckless. It was reckless. And yet I’ve used the thing all year while eBay prices for the camera have climbed near $1,000. I could sell it and turn a handsome profit if I wanted. I feel like the Wolf of Wall Street.
Title cards
I’ve had a fascination for a long time, probably dating back to my days on Tumblr. I finally decided it’s something I should collect, so I’ve been saving some of my favorites on here.
jeen-yuhs
What a perfect (and complicated) year for a Kanye West documentary to drop. One of my favorite artists of all time is in complete collapse, which has been equally sad and infuriating to watch unfold. jeen-yuhs, a Netflix documentary series on Kanye’s career, does end in an episode that futilely tries to make sense of the madness (before it got even worse). However, don’t let the fruitless finale scare you off. The first two episodes in the three-part series are absolutely jaw-dropping documentary filmmaking. I can’t believe someone had a camera on Kanye in the early 2000s as he tried to make his dreams a reality. It’s incredible and only makes his recent era more depressing.
TikTok
I know. I avoided it for so long, but it got me in its grasp in 2022. Amidst the vast ocean of complete nonsense (which, to be clear, I am watching) there’s a lot of people making really cool stuff.
Some random faves: @geederrick (cool thoughts on music), @3dfiti (he makes 3D-printed “graffiti”), @corndogwilly (Michael Stevens, aka Vsauce, is still one of the most engaging science creators in the world), @gio1ne (the app was designed for dancing and this guy is the only one who can make me stop scrolling to watch it), @mrjackio (a genius motion designer), @theyellowbutton (music recommendations!), and @b_turner50 (this guy makes my interest in smart home tech seem quaint).
California
I visited California for the first time since I was a baby. My goodness, I cannot believe I’m just over here living in Ohio.