Best whatever of 2011

Best saying – tie: “Harsh toke” and “Ruff Puff”

Best phrase: “I'm wet.”

Best ice cream: Enough with the weird sweet and savory fusion garbage already.

Best financial decision: Making that jump from commercial banking to a not-for-profit credit union.

Best insect: Not whatever we find crawling out of our floor boards, thats for damn sure.

Best color: Overcast is the new red

Best show attended: “Don't fuckin' call us twee” Aberdeen's guitarist John Girgus sabotaging the band's reunion with some upstaging angry guitar and interfering with the rest of the band's instrumentation at Cafe Du Nord bringing frontwoman Beth Arzy to tears after a barely 20 minute set at the SFPop Fest.

Best shoes: $15 kicks purchased from ROSS

2011: The Best Year for Positive Crises

I feel like this year was a hard year for almost everyone around the globe. From couples breaking up to soldiers killing soldiers, natural disasters, financial crises and so on, people are upset and the system is breaking down. However, I think it's the best to see it as a positive crisis.

If we break it down in numerology, 2011 is 20 minus 11 and that equals 9. 9 in the Tarot is the number that represents a positive crisis. A positive crisis is the mistake or the accident that makes us realize ourselves and the truth for a new construction. 20 in the tarot is Judgement and 11 is Justice. The card Judgement represents how we can unify our inner self, our opposites, the conflict. To look in to ourselves and see what is wrong and to resolve it. 11, the Justice card, represents the idea of perfection. 2011 then is to perfect the judgement of our individual self and the world around us through this positive crisis and disaster. A beautiful disaster. I believe that breakdowns are the brink of breakthroughs. It's not something we really wish for, I don't think anybody does, I definitely don't wish for it, but it happens just like life happens, and when it does we ideally need to greet it and welcome it. Like the 9th month of pregnancy, something is about to be born. Like the water of pregnancy breaks, these breakdowns can be the best thing that can happen to us, or else we won't be born. It is opening our eyes and our eyes are opening to the truth, the truth that we have been blinded from through anesthetics of the media, politics, social formalities and conformities. We are waking up from this dream and we are getting ready to make something.

Best music video: Spice Girls, “Wannabe”

Best viral video: Heidi the cross eyed opossum

Best hamburger: Jimmy Buffet, “Cheeseburger in Paradise”

Best Chinese food: Simply Asia “just add water”

Best ice cream: Anything Blue Bell (Texas represent)

Best outfit: Rameses

Best joke: Haley Joel Osmond

Best city: DUBAI

Best apartment: 3WOLF

Best juice: Faustino's late night beet carrot ginger apple at Mr. Kiwi's

Best sex: TRANSGENDER

Best financial decision: food stamps

Best insect: Kafka

Best color: glow in the dark

Best show attended: Dog Leather at Silent Barn

Best book: Life by Keith Richards

Best magazine: 'SUP DUH

Best ad- Immortality Workshops

Best visual art- The staircase of Imperial Armani at 5th Ave and 55th St

Best internet- Mental

Best country- Atlantis

Best phrase- DUH

Best jock movie and music genre- Space Jam

Best curse word- JESUS

Best scam- “James Franco sells the Idea of Art“

Best movie: Tabloid, Melancholia, Tree of Life

Best music video: Friends, “I'm His Girl“, Total Slacker, “Secret VHS Collection” (with Jessica Reid grabbing at her underwear from this really funny angle)

Best viral video: When everybody put “Come On Eileen” on their Facebook profile because Hurricane Irene was approaching.

Best Chinese food: EVERYDAY Chinese Food across the street from 915 Wyckoff.

Best ice cream: Jimmy Fallon's Late Night Snack (the Ben & Jerry's with potato chips)

Best outfit: Jordan Bernstein's pink wig, glitter antennae, red sweater dress covered in black arrow zig zags, and rollerskates when he played in PC Worship on Halloween.

Best joke: I forgot how it goes but the punchline is “Damn near rectum!”

Best city: Indianapolis

Best apartment: The residential portion of the Outpost

Best hair product: Vaseline

Best financial decision: Getting a monthly, dawg.

Best insect: worm

Best color: imperial purple

Best show attended: Nonhorse under Peter Edward's sound responsive orbs at the Silent Barn funeral, Dog Leather at Silent Barn, Death Grips at Market Hotel (they left their guillotine there), Ashcan Orchestra at Death By Audio, Sleep at Terminal 5, Guardian Alien/Hair Jail at the Wallet, Dustin Wong at Clocktower Gallery, Smhoak Mosheein at Secret Project Robot 2, Shams at Vibes HQ, GDFX at 285 Kent

Best book: House of Holes by Nicholson Baker

Best magazine: Pop Magazine with Marina Abramovic on the cover.

Best New Yorker Cover: Halloween

Best visual art: Cory Arcangel at the Whitney, Carsten Höller's slide and upside-down glasses at New Museum, sneaking into a party in the penthouse of New Museum, Marco Brambilla’s 3D film Civilization playing in a cathedral during the Festival of Ideas for the New City, PS1 Art Book Fair 2011 especially Certain Distinctions, The 2nd Showpaper “Community Serviced” newsboxes (all the dramatic happenings with the first batch were So 2010), Jesse Hlebo's 1st solo show at Printed Matter when Lucas and Rob A. A. Lowe played, the Printed Matter Christmas Party, when that woman gave birth in the tiny gallery next to Little Skip's and nobody was alerted to it, the rise and fall of Cinders 2. Gabrielle Bell and Lizz Hickey's dual comic release party at Desert Island with special appearance by Michel Gondry.

Best internet: BAND NAME THREAD

Best country: Lebanon

Best phrase: “Cold world,” “What, no hello?”

Best shoes: I got a pair of black steel-toed “snakeskin” boots with silver zippers up the side from a church on Myrtle Avenue for FREE, and after they turned down my money, they blessed me.

Best curse word: “Ya piece of shit,” “Randos”

Best sandwich: Lemon pepper chicken at TK's Deli at Myrtle-Broadway, the #2 bahn mi at Sau Voi (which also sells casettes, porn DVDs, and lacey bras near the Clocktower Gallery in Lower Manhattan), the reuben from This Little Piggy Had Roast Beef on Ave A.

Best Twitters: @joesomar, @shitgirlssay, @isit2012, @sserpent, @ricleichtung when he used to talk about chipotle all the time, @mountainlex especially when we were sending each other our Google Voice transcriptions, @newtleigh, @mountain_goats, @zodiacfacts (why lie?).

Best Hunting Twitters: @predatorhunting, @huntingNfishing, @hank_shaw (he has the best attitude), @huntinglife, @outdoordivas (these girls love to party), @towngun, @stogiesnfishin (me too!), @activelyhunting (a relatively inactive twitter, but a great one).

Keith Gray, Writer

Best Performance with a Temple in the Way

The Wordless Music Orchestra performed an arrangement of William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops DLP 1.1 in the Temple of Dendur at the Met Museum. It’s an amazing space for a show. The back-history around the piece is maybe well known, and perfect in its way. Basinski rediscovers his analog recordings from the '80s, and they play continuously on his rooftop in 2001 as he watches the World Trade Center smolder. The tapes are badly deteriorated and in places the iron oxide is stripped from the tape reel. Silence punches through. Absence overtakes the strings, horns, snare and glockenspiel. It’s a short refrain–about 6 seconds long–recurring in a shattered loop. It’s 40 minutes of this, little flourishes in tempo and then longer gaps of silence as the piece decays. The performance ends and no one makes a noise. There’s more than 2 minutes of silence before anyone starts to applaud. I’ve never seen anything like that. Everyone is exhausted and reeling like tapes stripped clear.

Basinski’s piece starts at 57:30.

Spinnaface & Michael Jackson were pretty huge hits!