The Best of 2004

While languishing in the netherworld of blogging hiatus, I felt the need to do a best of 2004 list. So, here it is:

Best Book—fiction (read this year): Tough, but Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood will take the honor this year. I’ll write more about it later in a Books That Haunt post, but wow! It’s a novel that will get inside your head and stay there.

Best Book—non-fiction (read this year): This one is a tought decision as well, but the book that unsettled me (and affected my thinking) the most was Arthur Hunt’s The Vanishing Word: The Veneration of Visual Imagery in the Postmodern World. You can read my review here.

Best Football Game: Hands down, the Tennessee–Florida gut wrencher that showed that this might be a bit more than just a rebuilding year for the Vols.

Best Movie: I suppose only films I saw in the cinema count here, and as I can only think of six I saw on the big screen all year, my choices are limited. On artisic merit, however, I’ll have to give this award to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. If you’re looking for an evangelistic tool, you’d best stick with word of God—but Mel has indeed crafted a stirring film.

Best New TV Show: House, M.D. What better than a smart-aleck physician/Sherlock Holmes combo? This doctor show really makes ER look like the soap opera that it really is. Gene Edward Veith concurs.

Best New “Killer App”: I would say Firefox, but it doesn’t really feel new to me since I’ve been using it (in beta) for two years now. So the next big idea in my purview would have to be Grouper, as I’ve written about before.

Best Music Album: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, by U2. Yep, it’s that good.

Best Running Shoe: For me, it’s the Asics GT-2100—a shoe that I believe is finally ending my shin splint woes.

Best Quote (campaign 2004): “and we’re going to California and Texas and New York. And we’re going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan. And then we’re going to Washington, D.C., to take back the White House. Yeeeeeeaaaaaaaghhh!” — Howard Dean, former Democratic Presidential candidate.

Best Quote (overall): My wife: “Jared…come in here a minute…does this look like a line to you?” (Referring to the indicator on a home pregnancy test stick.)

Best TruePravda Post: I’ll leave that for you to decide—just pilfer through the archives to your right.

Best New Sound Heard in the Bridges Household: Waaa! Waaa! Waaa!

Happy New Year!