#and while maybe a freiberger would do instead

[icryyoumercy]

once again facing the standard problem with writing tolkien fic

is there such a thing as a dual-purpose war and work horse, and if so, what would it be named in a world where there are none of the locations horse breeds are so often named after

if anyone knows things about horses, please advise?

[thedaveandkimmershow]

I don't know why the thought came to me—okay I sort of do. I just don't know why this time it went one step further than it usually does.

For context, it's a sunny summer day and Kimmer 'n I are driving on Denny toward Capitol Hill. I don't remember what we were talking about but it occurred to me just then as it sometimes does how we'd be hanging out with Scott on days like this.

Scott?

Yeah, Scott.

Maybe he wouldn't be hanging out with us this very day... but we'd share some of this summer even if he was still living in Omaha, Nebraska. Of course we'd talk shop because his ideas were always ahead of the technology of the day and, this year especially, the technology's gotten good. Like seriously.

Would he be satisfied with it?

Would he still somehow find a way to reach beyond it?

How would his creative powers have grown by now?

And so on.

These are pretty normal thoughts, by the way. Scott passed away over a decade ago, 2010, succumbing to ALS faster than we thought possible. The fact that he even had ALS took us by surprise.

And then he was gone.

It was perhaps our first time understanding together that we don't have the kind of time we think we have. After all, we only kind of kept touch with Scott after he set off for L.A. and then established his production company, Market Media, in his home town of Omaha. During that period, our lives gained serious momentum in the directions we all were individually traveling. Career. Family. That sort of thing. And as our lives raced forward, something like fifteen years passed by.

Oh sure we talked by phone a few times. A coupla emails here 'n there. I met up with him once in Omaha while I was with a PBS production moving through town.

But we never shared our lives again. Not like when we were younger, pursuing our careers, figuring out our personal lives in real time... together. Our lives never overlapped again the way friends do. Comparing notes. Sharing victories and losses. Friendsourcing challenges. Laughing. Feeling that fire. Continuing to blaze the path we've been blazing all this time.

Together.

Why?

Why did we allow all that to slip away?

Because we assumed there was time.

No kidding. We thought there was tons.

And so the other day we're on Denny on the way to Capitol Hill on a sunny summer day... and it occurs to me how we'd be hanging out with Scott on a day like this.

Well, maybe not today... but definitely sometime during this summer. Which gets me to thinking about the career we both pursued once upon a time, this career I'm living right now, this very minute. And yeah. These are normal thoughts whenever I get to thinking about Scott.

What's not normal, though, is this:

The absence of Scott from our lives is most likely my greatest regret.

It is.

He should be here with us, is my point. He should be here with us enjoying the life we were all pursuing, this course on which we set out a long time ago. We should all still be the same kind of passionate about our careers together. Enjoying the fruit of our efforts across this long and winding road.

Don't get me wrong. There are people close to us whose loss is staggering. Especially across the last coupla years.

Scott's different, though.

We lost him at the beginning. At the very start. And because of that, his absence represents a life we never contemplated. And thinking about What If?... represents a life we could've had. The one we naturally expected. The one we assumed would come to pass.

The one with our dear friend Scott in it.

I won't lie. It does feel like we got robbed. But good.

So yeah. That happened. These thoughts about regret.

As I was writing this, I couldn't remember exactly when it was Scott died so I tried looking it up online. Instead, I ran smack into the link for Scott's Facebook page featuring a highlighted pair of quotes of which I either was never aware... or had long since forgotten.

"Keep faith, Give hope."

—Scott von Freiberg

"If one advances confidently in the direction of their dreams, and endeavors to live the life which they have imagined, they will meet with success unexpected in common hours."

—Henry David Thoreau

The Thoreau quote was definitely Scott when we first met him. His vision ran well beyond what we and others considered possible. And he was all-in on that vision for his life. "Living the Dream", for example, was one of Scott's first mind-blowing film projects. It was to have, if I remember correctly, four or five individual segments of which one was to feature The Blue Angels. Unfortunately, "Living the Dream" as a film project never came to pass... but I'm convinced that title would absolutely have reflected Scott's life had it not been cut short.

He was just one of those people, you know?

In the end, it's left to us, living this life we began chasing way back when we were young. And it is my deepest regret that Scott's not with us to enjoy this life that, once upon a time...

Was only a dream.

[aion-rsa]

E3 2021 Needs to Find a Way to Stay Relevant in Changing Times

https://ift.tt/3fNuMe3

The ESA has revealed that E3 2021 will run from June 12 to June 15 as an “all-virtual video game showcase that will be 100 percent free for attendees.” So far, the ESA is touting “early commitments from Nintendo, Xbox, Capcom, Konami, Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive, Warner Bros. Games, and Koch Media” with more possible presenters to come. 

Considering that the fate of E3 2021 was very much in doubt after last year’s event was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and companies everywhere hosted their own digital events as the ESA failed to organize the same, this announcement may be more than E3 fans could have hoped for. E3 shouldn’t be an in-person event quite yet, but a digital version of E3 featuring heavy hitters like Nintendo, Capcom, and Microsoft certainly feels like something close to that return to normalcy that so many of us crave. 

Just as there are questions about what normalcy means after the events of the last year and the circumstances which propelled them, though, E3’s organizers, fans, and presenters will have to answer some tough questions about how the event will stay relevant at a time when its greatest attribute often feels like the memory of what was. 

Make no mistake that E3 was in trouble even before the 2020 event was canceled due to circumstances beyond its organizers’ control. In recent years, studios like EA, PlayStation, Activision Blizzard, and even Nintendo (to a degree) decided to abandon their traditional E3 presentations in favor of their own dedicated shows and broadcasts. The reasons for their departures vary, but as Sony’s controversial (and largely underwhelming) 2018 E3 presentation showed, the pressure and costs of constructing a yearly presentation with competition undertones sometimes aren’t worth the potential payoff from a business perspective. 

The absence of those companies was certainly felt at E3 2019 which had its fans but its best-remembered moment was a Keanu Reeves cameo that has lost some luster since we’ve all played the game that was clearly not ready for the spotlight it was afforded at that show. 

Many of the companies that have left E3 have used the word “change” to justify their decision. Former Sony Worldwide Studios chairman Shawn Layden said in 2019 that “the world has changed, but E3 hasn’t necessarily changed with it.” In 2020, longtime E3 partner Geoff Keighley said that “the show does need to evolve.” Both Keighley and Layden noted their desire for E3 to look beyond the booths and show floor and find new ways to connect with fans, preferably digitally. 

While leaks suggest that the ESA’s own suggestions for change involve an emphasis on influencers, live gimmicks, and even potential paywalls for digital content, E3 2021 doesn’t currently seem to feature any of that. Based on what we know now, it might actually be that largely digital event that will move beyond the physical boundaries of E3s gone by that some have complained about and instead reach a global fanbase directly in their homes. E3 2021 has a chance to become the E3 that some former major presenters seemed to hope it would become years ago. 

However, the biggest potential problem with E3 2021 isn’t its changes but rather the expectations of the one group of people who seem most insistent that E3 doesn’t change: its vocal supporters. 

There’s no universal reason why fans love E3, but the most common reasons fans look forward to the show tend to involve key elements such as the surprise of big game reveals, the competitive nature of the show (and subsequent arguments over who “won”), and the feeling of celebrating all things gaming during a big-budget week that seems to bring everyone to the same place one way or another. 

There is no beloved element of E3s of the past that has become more outdated and dangerous than the expectations of the big reveal. A quick look at reactions to E3 2021 confirmation across social media reveals that fans are already hyping themselves up for the following games:

Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill sequels/remakes

Grand Theft Auto 6

Metroid Prime 4

Breath of the Wild 2

Starfield

The Elder Scrolls 6

Maybe some of those games will appear at the show in some capacity, but we’re once again in a situation where the absence of impossibility fuels unreasonable expectations which burrow their way into even cynical minds and become the standard. What’s worse is that the hype for these potential announcements is amplified in many cases by the belief that E3 2021 will be different from the various digital events that we saw throughout 2020 which were hyped to the moon in the days leading up to their premieres but rarely featured the kind of big announcements fans hoped they would. 

The fact that there’s a semi-popular belief that E3 2021 will be substantially different from recent events in that respect already suggests that not enough people have realized the situation the video game industry faces right now. As more and more games are delayed to 2022 and beyond, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on production schedules everywhere should be much clearer than it seems to be. Digital showcases weren’t underwhelming because they took place outside of E3; they were often underwhelming because studios were trying to figure out how to finish games from home while creating digital presentations from the same place. The elements that impacted the impact of those showcases are as prevalent as ever.

Even if they weren’t, pre-pandemic E3s have made it increasingly clear that those mind-blowing reveals that defined E3s of the past are becoming much rarer. Leaks, quarterly expectations, and a constant news cycle mean we rarely see a game at E3 that we didn’t already know or strongly suspect was coming. When we do (such as the reveal of The Elder Scrolls 6) it’s often for a game that is so far away that it might as well not even be confirmed. Yet, we still have fans expecting to see those games even as developers do everything in their power to tell us that they’re years away. Even those who know better find themselves weighing what we do see against the games they really want to know more about.  

Read more

Games

Best Games to Play in 2021

By Chris Freiberg

Games

Best PC Games to Play in 2021

By Chris Freiberg

More importantly, the fact of the matter is that the video game industry is burdened by crunch culture and skyrocketing costs that often force employees to work unreasonable schedules to complete games that more often satisfy increasingly unreasonable ROI expectations than the vision of their creators or even the desire of fans. In that dangerous environment, we’ve built this monolith to gaming that seems bright to outsiders but is being propped up by the members of an overworked and sometimes unstable industry that must constantly find ways to satisfy a yearly expectation for the big new thing. 

Yet, there may be no weaker E3 tentpole than the idea of industry competition. It’s absolutely true that E3s of the past directly played into that competition element. The very first E3 was even highlighted by Sony’s surprise PlayStation release date and price announcements which essentially ended the Sega Saturn’s chances before they even got started. Subsequent years also saw companies take potshots at each other in an attempt to steal the biggest spotlight the gaming industry had. 

Now, though, we’ve got Microsoft and Nintendo working together, Sony putting PlayStation Studios games on Game Pass, and PC players laughing as they get more games than ever. It’s not that competition in the industry is gone so much as it is that companies really aren’t interested in continuing to take shots at competitors that they’re more willing to work with than ever before. What we’re often left with in the wake of E3 isn’t a debate over the best showing but a petulant justification for outdated fanboyism that rarely amounts to more than which console will get the special DLC hoodie in the next Assassin’s Creed.

That leaves us with the idea that E3 will live on as this event that gets people excited about the gaming industry and brings them together, which is honestly what E3 2021 is going to have to capitalize on if it’s going to battle against times that are slowly walking towards the door as E3 tries to keep the party going with stories of that time that went to the lake in college. 

You can assign E3 a fiscal value, but I can tell you what E3 is worth to you. I also can’t deny that even the worst E3 tends to be more exciting than the best digital showcase we saw in 2020. After a year of searching for hope and answers, I’m looking forward to a generally harmless event that makes millions of people feel good and feel a connection with each other. 

But in the same way that Blockbuster launched Blockbuster By Mail years after Netflix showed them what the future was going to be, I can’t help but feel that this year’s digital E3 showcase reeks more of necessity than the ability to read the room and truly innovate. What can E3 do with a host of presenters that already struggled to host their own digital showcases who must now scrape together enough new games to justify a spectacle? The show’s inability to innovate in years when it was positioned to do so raises serious doubt about its ability to innovate in areas that it’s intentionally avoided for years.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Maybe E3 2021 will be an effective enough stopgap and get us to E3 2022 when the novelty of being able to join crowds of people at a video game event (or watch those proceedings) will suddenly feel new again. However, E3 2021’s real job may be convincing us that this event has figured out something about digital presentations that has eluded some of the industry’s heaviest hitters so far.

If E3 2021 can capture that magical something that even mediocre E3s of the past have benefited from, then maybe it can overcome all of these hurdles. At the very least, it can delay the need to justify its place in a video game industry that keeps finding new ways to tell us that it needs to move on from the burden of our sometimes nostalgic ideas of what gaming was and what we want it to be. If it can’t, then those winds of change that we’ve been feeling more and more recently may blow over the empty halls of the L.A. Convention Center come June 2022 as we all realize that the tough answers to the questions of the future are rarely found in the past. 

The post E3 2021 Needs to Find a Way to Stay Relevant in Changing Times appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3wGCKvJ

[denmarkduringthefall-blog]

Long Study Tour With DIS

 An important part of the DIS program is that students really take advantage of studying in a different country; they want us to “use Europe as our classroom”. To fulfill this goal, DIS takes students on two trips throughout the semester. For my first trip, I spent three days in western Denmark. You can read about that trip if you click here. This post is about my week-long study trip through Germany and Switzerland. If you are extra curious about any of the sites I visited, you can click their name, I have linked most of them to their respective websites. 

Sunday, Oct 29: Zurich

I overslept but managed to make it through the airport about half an hour before my flight boarded. Due to some issues with our plane, we ended up taking off almost two hours late anyway. When we finally landed in Zurich, we were too late to go to our first scheduled tour. Instead, we took a bus to our hotel. I always enjoy that first ride from the airport through a city, and this trip was no exception. Autumn is in full swing here and the orange and red trees looked lovely against Zurich’s old architecture. After dropping our stuff off at the hotel (probably the nicest place I’ll stay during all of my time in Europe) we went to the Swiss National Museum, which was designed to fit in with the medieval buildings in Zurich but was actually built in the late nineties.  Some of the exhibits were interesting, but they were all about Swiss history so, to be honest, I tired of them pretty quickly. The museum got a really cool modern extension in 2016. I really liked it. It was all concrete, set at odd angles and every once in a while there would be a perfectly circular window, reminiscent of a porthole, framing something nice outside of the museum. Here: the river, there: a stately old building. Again, I was wowed by all of the autumn leaves outside the windows, they made for some fantastic contrast against the dark, gray interior of the museum.

After that, I went for a stroll along the canal with some friends from my architecture studio. We walked through the city center, full of old architecture and narrow winding streets, until we stumbled upon Lindenhofplatz which is a park set up on a hill. It offers a really nice view of Zurich.

At that point we were getting pretty cold, so we managed to find a pub where we hung out and had a beer while we waited to meet the rest of our group for dinner at a traditional German restaurant.

Monday, Oct 30: Zurich

We had a breakfast buffet at our hotel where I drank probably five cups of coffee (and was still sleepy) then headed out at 7:30 for the Letzigrund Stadium. On our way there we stopped by MFO-Park. The park is a large plaza with almost no vegetation on ground level. No grass? Kinda strange for a park. Instead of a grassy area, the designers (Burkhardt+Partner and a landscape architect called Raderschallpartner) made a metal frame which looks a lot like the skeleton of a building. Then they added a bunch of different species of vines which will (eventually, hopefully) grow to cover the whole structure. There are also little "plazas" on the various different levels of the structure with wooden benches. There's even one on the top of the building, about four stories up. From this one, you can look across the top of the park/structure out and at the surrounding city. It was a really cool and unique design. I don't think I have seen anything like it on such a large scale.

Letizigrund is a new, multi-use soccer stadium in district 4 of Zurich. Apparently, district 4 used to be very industrial and was cut off from the rest of the city by the many many sets of train tracks. Now, like so many warehouse districts, it is becoming the hip area full of art galleries, concert venues, and new bars. The stadium was kinda cool but I think I may have been a little too tired to really appreciate it at the time. Our tour guide was a funny guy, he did not hesitate to tell us about some of the problems with the stadium.

Next, we went to Toni-Areal which was a milk factory before it was refurbished and transformed into a university for the arts. I loved the building. Designers retained much of the industrial feeling but added tons of big windows and garden terraces.

After the art school, we walked to the ImViadukt which is an elevated train track, that is still in use today but has been adapted for a few more uses besides travel at this point. One of the two tracks has been changed into an elevated walkway, and all of the spaces underneath the track have been walled up to create storefronts for shops and restaurants. Its pretty neat, and a great re-use (double use?) of a space most people might not think to utilize. I got lunch under the train tracks. There was a small market hall and I found a Japanese restaurant. I got a really tasty veggie steamed bun and some miso soup which was great to warm me up! We were really lucky to get lots of clear, sunny weather during this trip, but it was still October in Germany so it was pretty chilly anytime we went outside. 

After lunch, my little group walked along the top of the train tracks for a  bit. We went to the Freitag Flagship store which was cool. It was built by stacking shipping containers on top of each other, there is an observation deck at the top.

We wandered around that area a little more, then managed to figure out how to take the train back into the city center ( there are SO MANY different train lines in Zurich). 

We spent another couple hours walking around the old part of the city, along the edge of the canal, sketching a little and freezing our butts off. We went into Das Grossmünster, a large cathedral which had really cool "stained glass" windows made of thinly sliced agate. 

Eventually, we made our way to meet our group for dinner. We ate at a vegetarian buffet, which was super tasty. (Even the non-vegetarians enjoyed it). After dinner, we went to some thermal baths. This spa had a rooftop pool, which was fantastic. We got to look out at all of the city lights while relaxing in warm mountain spring water.

On our last night in Switzerland, our tour leaders asked us to make a drawing that illustrates our current understanding of Switzerland. The drawing above is sort of a response to that prompt in an abstract style. It includes the hills, train tracks, the canal, old buildings, and winding streets of Zurich. 

Tuesday, October 31: Ronchap, France and Weil am Rhein, Switzerland

We left our hotel by chartered bus bright and early Tuesday morning. Our first stop was the Chappelle du Ronchomp which is very famous among architects. Designed by Le Corbusier, the chapel is super site-specific and really beautiful. Le Corbusier was enchanted by the natural beauty of the mountainous landscape and wanted to work with it, rather than distract from it. He worked with light in some really fantastic ways, using lots of stained glass and soft building materials like wood and white-washed sprayed concrete. 

After the chapel, our bus took us to Vitra Campus. Vitra is a high-end furniture and lighting design company, Vitra campus includes their production halls, two design museums, and a showroom. Here is a link to the presentation that I made about it.  In 1981, there was a fire on the campus that destroyed practically every building on the campus. After that, Vitra decided to hire up-and-coming architects to design interesting buildings on their campus. They ended up with a Frank Gehry, a Zaha Hadid and lots of other works from now world-renowned architects.

The campus was awesome, especially the showroom  "Vitrahaus" and the enormous (like 4 stories tall) corkscrew slide. We had a lot of fun working our way through the showroom, testing out each of the different chair designs. It was also fun to be in Vitrahaus because the campus sits in this special spot right on the borders of Germany, Switzerland, and France. This means that you can see all three countries from the floor-to-ceiling windows of Vitrahaus. 

After Vitra, we headed to our hotel in Freiberg, Germany. This was a college town so my friends and I decided that we would try to go out for Halloween.

We found an Irish pub and spent most of the night there. We had bought wigs and other disguises the night before. I'm glad that I found some friends who appreciate Halloween as much as I do, even if most Europeans don’t. 

Wednesday, Nov 1: Basel

 Our first stop on Wednesday was the Beyeler Foundation, which had some fantastic art. I saw one performance art piece which I really liked. Maybe “saw” isn’t really the right word, because it took place in a very dark room. I think “experienced” is probably a more appropriate verb. Below I’m going to try (and probably fail) to recreate the experience for you from some notes I made in my journal afterwards. 

“After working your way through a small exhibition of dark, inky drawings, you turn a corner, then another, only to be confronted by a dark hallway. “Am I supposed to be here?” you think--but there are no signs that indicate you shouldn’t be. You work your way along the dark hallway, one hand on the wall to make sure you don’t lose your way. It just keeps getting darker, but you can hear music coming from the end of the hall so you push on. In time the wall you have been following falls away and you are forced to turn the corner. The room you enter is also very dark but its lit by a few barely-glowing lightbulbs, You can sense that there are other people in the room, but until your eyes adjust you can’t actually see any of them. Eventually, you realize that these people are performers. Each of them is making sounds which individually wouldn’t qualify as singing, but collectively form an acapella piece with no words. You walk into the center of the room and the music is coming from all around you, slowly building. Its beautiful, and when they finally fall silent you aren’t sure if you want to break the magic by applauding. You decide not to. You float out of the room and back down the hallway into the now overy-bright white museum.”

The piece was choreographed by a German artist called Tino Sehgal, who specializes in “constructed situations” (which feels like a pretty accurate label for the pice I saw). I was not the only member of my tour group who really liked this piece. If you ever get a chance to see one of his pieces, I absolutely recommend that you go for it. 

Afte the Beyeler Foundation, we took a train to the Kunstmuseum Basel, which houses the largest art collection in Switzerland. It recently got a modern addition, which is why we were there. The addition was cool, full of soft concrete and crisscrossing staircases. 

After the Kunstmuseum (Kunst means “art”) We headed back to Freiburg for one last site visit. We went to the Vauban neighborhood. I really liked Vauban because it is a neighborhood which was designed with environmental and social sustainability as top priorities. Vauban is full of greenery and is very walkable. There are almost as many parks as there are apartment buildings. All of the buildings produce some form of renewable energy and have some kind of rainwater-catchment system. On one edge of the neighborhood, an area which had been set aside for extra parking spaces has been turned into a huge community-run farm. It was seriously awesome to see a project like this succeeding. These are the kinds of areas I hope to see springing up in many more locations. 

Thursday, November 2: Cologne

The next morning we took a train from Freiburg to Cologne, Germany. We stayed right next to the central station and the Cologne Cathedral. Cologne had the most modern feel of all of the European cities I have visited so far (because most of the old buildings were bombed in WWII). After dropping our stuff off at our hostel, we walked over to the Kolumba Museum, which was designed by Peter Zumthor to fit into the ruins of a gothic church. There is a really cool area (open to the public) in which you can walk over some of these ruins on an elevated walkway. It was hard to get a good picture of this, but Zumthor played with natural light and the indoor-outdoor boundary by leaving some of the bricks out in the construction of the new walls. 

This museum was small, but I was okay with that. It had a nice mix of contemporary works and historical roman-catholic art. 

After the museum, we visited the Cologne Cathedral, which was nothing short of astounding (especially considering that the enormous building was built before cranes were a thing). It’s HUGE but still very intricate. It was built in the gothic style and though it was originally made out of light colored stone, it is now almost black with soot and pollution from the industrial era (we all agreed that it looks better black, anyway).

Thursday evening, my friends and I strolled along the Rhine River, which was especially lovely at sunset. We stumbled upon a fair where we ate kettle corn and played silly games. Good clean fun. 

Friday, November 3: Essen

We squeezed in two last site visits before our flight back to Copenhagen. The first of these was Brother Klaus Filed Chapel which was built as a sacred space for the farmers who live in Mechernich-Wachendorf, Germany. It is a small and simple structure which you can only reach by walking through some farm fields. Zumthor, the designer, paid a lot of attention to the materials he used. He had local farmers help him with the construction. 112 tree trunks from the surrounding countryside were set up in a teepee formation before having 24 layers of concrete poured over them. The trees were then set ablaze and slow-burned for almost two weeks. This fired the concrete and left a charred space inside the structure which is textured like tree bark. Some light comes through glass orbs embedded in the walls, but most of it comes from a large opening in the top of the chapel. This opening references the story of Brother Klaus (a 15th-century mystic who is special to German farmers) who, so his story goes, saw a starburst while in the womb.  I really liked this chapel. It was nice to see what a uniquely beautiful structure can be created using simple, local materials. 

Above: Photos of the field chapel

Below: A serial vision (drawing exercise) of views approaching the chapel

After the chapel, we went to the Ruhr Museum and the Red Dot Design Museum in Essen. The buildings used to be a coal washing plant, but now they have been repurposed. The Ruhr Museum is dedicated to the natural and cultural history of the area and the Red Dot Design Museum showcases products which have won the prestigious Red Dot design award. I really liked the Red Dot Museum. As a big fan of clever design, it was fun to take a look at the various objects, but I also thought that curators did a really good job in redesigning the space to display these products. The building is a World Heritage Site, so designers could not remove most of the machinery in the building. Instead of letting this space go to waste, designers built elevated walkways which wind through the machinery. They use the machinery itself as a place to display the Red Dot products. I thought that this was cool because instead of trying to hide or ignore the machinery, it encourages visitors to investigate the site as well as the exhibition. 

[stokan]

The 20 Best Things of 2016

Fun fact: Many good things actually happened in the year 2016. It’s true! It wasn't all death and Trump, although as you’ll see, those two factors hang heavy over even the best of things. But just like every year, 2016 still managed to produce its fair share of great art, cultural triumphs, and viral delights. Leaving out, obviously, things from 2016 that it seems like I’ll probably love but have yet to experience (OJ: Made in America, Search Party, 20th Century Women, Fences, etc.), and TV shows I’ve already written about in years past (OITNB, Transparent, You're the Worst, Veep, etc) here are my top 20 favorite things from 2016, listed in no particular order:

1. Beyonce - “Formation” video

How upset old white people were about this should give you some idea of just how great it is.

When I was growing up, the biggest music video from the biggest female pop star of the day involved her dancing around suggestively in a Catholic school girl outfit. Trump may have won the election, but progress still remains undefeated.

2. Kendrick Lamar’s Grammys Performance

(Of course this isn't anywhere on the internet for me to link to. Because Neil Portnow.)

Kendrick’s performance was the performance that Kayne always thinks he is giving. It’s a performance that made everyone else who took the stage on Music’s Biggest Night seem like talent show contestants.

I don’t want to tell artists how to use their fame, but this is how they should use their fame.

3. Last Week Tonight - #MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain

SPOILER ALERT: He didn't make Donald Drumpf again. In fact the viral success of this piece and lack of any resultant effect on Trump whatsoever does raise some big questions about the effectiveness of comedy in actually changing anyone’s mind about anything in 2016. But yet, like death from a thousand paper cuts, it definitely drew a little blood. And even though I really wish John Oliver had stuck with guns and only referred to Trump as Drumpf for the rest of the year, it was still a more thorough and effective attack ad than anything the Clinton campaign managed to put together, and that was basically their whole job. John Oliver can never be president, but the world is going to be a better place as long as he keeps trying to help decide who will be.

Also, says everything about 2016 that this piece now feels like it came out ten thousand years ago.

4. La La Land

Hey, remember joy? And love? And having hopes and dreams? Well La La Land sure does! The best and worst thing you can say about it is that it’s a pre-Trump movie. Maybe the last one ever in fact. But for my money, Damien Chazelle’s quest to Make Musicals Great Again is exactly the tonic we need right now. And it seems fitting the Oscars after the death of Debbie Reynolds are going to be headlined by a colorful and happiness-inducing musical about show business, complete with its own dream ballet. Sometimes the best way to reinvent an art form is to just do it the same way its always been done, only better and at the right time.

5. Olympic Swimming

When the Olympics began I barely cared. I was raised on the Olympics, but in 2016 there’s so much else going on it felt like maybe time has passed the Olympics by. And then the swimming started. And Ledecky destroyed all challengers. And Phelps proved that calling him the greatest swimmer of all time is still underrating him. And Simone Manuel made history. And Lochte Lochted. And Anthony Ervin spun an all-time Olympic athlete backstory into Olympic gold. And for a week there was nothing in the world more compelling than watch people swim laps in a pool.

So turns out the Olympics are the Michael Phelps of sporting events - the second you think they’ve slipped a bit is when they have you right where they want you.

6. LVL Up - “Pain”

Point: Rock and roll is dead

Counterpoint: “Pain” by LVL Up

7. Stranger Things

I hate the 80s. I hate supernatural shows and horror-based shows and “genre” shows in general. I hate homage as the starting place for a work of art. I hate culture’s obsession with nostalgia and youth. And yet I loved Stranger Things. It felt like nothing else on TV while feeling like so many other things all at once. It’s the show Lost wishes it could have been, and what JJ Abrams wishes he had made instead of Super 8.

Also: I hate that there’s going to be a season two. I hate that dialogue around the show seemed so #TeamBarb when clearly any sane right-thinking person is #TeamNancy all the way. I preemptively hate all the imitators Stranger Things is going to spawn. And I hate the Stranger Things backlash that’s inevitably coming and coming hard. But right now, in this moment, let’s all embrace a wonderful television ride and not worry about the demigorgons in the woods coming to put slugs in its mouth.

#KeepHawkinsWeird

8. Flossie Dickey

Sometimes you find true love where you least expect it. Like in an interview with a 110-year woman at a nursing home.

9. Sam Donsky on The Ringer

(Speaking of soul mates…)

In the age of Trump it’s more important than ever that we have writers brave enough to ask the tough questions. Like: Who would win the Oscar for Best Baby? What is the best night any celebrity has ever had at Madison Square Garden? And why does David Benioff always thank his wife by her full name?

From analyzing the Kim/Kayne/Taylor tapes like they're the Zapruder film, to asking 74 questions about a film no one saw or liked, 2016 was the year Sam Donsky officially made himself into this generation’s Woodward and Bernstein, if Woodward and Bernstein were mostly known for dissecting dumb pop culture on the internet. We may never fully understand why Trump won, but, also, what’s up with Chris Pratt’s vests?

10. Black-ish - “Hope”

A perfect piece of writing and a perfect argument for the continued existence of network TV.

That being said though, 40 years ago this would be a classic TV episode people would talk about for generations. Now, it didn't even get nominated for an Emmy. Maybe network TV is just beyond saving.

11. The People vs. OJ Simpson

It’s almost a cliche at this point to point out how many societal issues the OJ Simpson case touched on, but watching this miniseries unfold was a great reminder that looking at the the past is usually the best vehicle for exploring the present. To choose just one example, the scene where the jurors argue over what to watch on TV is a perfect encapsulation of how something like a Trump victory could some day be possible. And if Marcia Clark isn't a perfect Hillary Clinton avatar then I don’t know who is. My only complaints about a perfect eight hours of television are that it wasn't longer and that Sarah Paulson and Courtney B. Vance aren't eligible for Oscars.

12. Samantha Bee’s Donald Trump Conspiracy Theory

Look, I don't want to say that Full Frontal with Samantha Bee is the best and most important show on TV. That is has the best joke writers in the business. That it has the righteous anger and indignation that this year called for. That it’s going to be our guiding light for the next four years. And that it’s proof that giving The Daily Show to Trevor Noah was one of the dumbest decisions in recent television history. All I’m saying is that some people are saying that, and who am I to disagree? If I was going to make claims that outlandish, I guess the first pieces of evidence I would direct you to are this already iconic Donald Trump conspiracy and the show’s Harriet Tubman segment. But I’m not one to make accusations about things using facts and evidence. I’m no expert; I’m just a guy. A guy standing in front of samanthabee.com asking it to to love him.

13. David Bowie - “Lazarus” video

The ultimate mic drop.

They say Native Americans used to make use of every part of the buffalo. David Bowie was like that, only the buffalo was his life.

14. SNL

“Farewell Mr. Bunting”

Having enough trust in your audience and your vision to attempt this sketch is super inspiring. Getting people in 2016 to wait through two and a half minutes of build up in a viral video before it pays off feels like a miracle. And getting the feeling back in my face when I finally finish laughing at this is going to be really great.

“Black Jeopardy” This is what comedy can do when its at it’s best. It cuts to truths about America more clearly and cleanly than 1,000 think pieces ever could. Are comedy sketches eligible for the Nobel Prize in Literature now?

“Hillary Clinton/Hallelujah” And this is what comedy can do when it’s not comedy at all. When historians 200 years from now want to know what the days just after the election of Donald Trump felt like all they need to do is watch this. The best thing SNL has ever done.

15. Songs That Made Me Unsure Whether I Should Be Sad, Dance, Or Both

Christine and the Queens - “iT”

I have absolutely no idea what this song is about. All I know is it sounds like the feeling of being alive. Between this song and Marion Cotillard’s eyes the French really continue to have the whole beautiful sadness thing figured out.

Eleanor Freiberger - “My Mistakes” The best Rilo Kiley song of 2016. The world can change however it wants; as long as it keeps giving me new versions of the exact song I’m totally good.

Mike Posner - “Took a Pill in Ibiza” The exact opposite of me is an EDM-influenced song about taking drugs in a nightclub in Ibiza. Yet here we are. Turns out that existential melancholy translated into Douche from the original Neurotic Intellectual is still pretty damn relatable. And yes I realize this song came out in 2015, but this will always be the sound of 2016 to me.

16. Moonlight

Moonlight feels like a miracle. That a serious drama without any name stars about a poor, gay, black man coming of age could be made at all, yet alone breakthrough into the popular consciousness. That a cast this natural and flawless could be found, like an album where every song that comes on makes you go “no THIS one is my favorite!”. That there are two different sets of three actors so similar and so good that when I see them together doing press it hurts my brain because I can’t process that they were not ACTUALLY the same person at three different ages. That two people making small talk at a table in a diner could have a whole audience on the edge of their seats. That a no-name director with one prior little-seen credit could create the most powerful and well-made movie of the year. None of these things seems possible or plausible, and yet they're all true. This movie is a miracle. And its success gives me hope. To quote critic Dana Stevens, in the pitch-black year of Trump, Moonlight was a “crack in the wall that allowed light to shine through”.

17. Atlanta

In 2016, what even is TV? It’s basically anything now. And it’s everything. It’s whatever it wants to be. And no artist has yet risen to meet the challenge and possibility of our post-Louie world better than Donald Glover has. In 2016 Atlanta is TV, and TV is Atlanta. There are no rules. There is only what you can dream up.

What will season two of Atlanta be? It could be literally anything and no one would bat an eye.

18. Chance the Rapper - Coloring Book

Chance the Rapper is so millennial it hurts. Chance the Rapper definitely has strong feelings about safe spaces and Bernie Sanders. Chance the Rapper has never even considered doing something ironically. Chance the Rapper makes Lin-Manuel Miranda look like a cynical pessimist. Hell, Chance the Rapper named himself Chance the Rapper. And as a millennial, Chance the Rapper is the future.

And the future sounds amazing.

The future is like if Old Kanye had been raised on new Kanye and was actually good at rapping. (As the old saying goes: every generation gets the Late Registration it deserves) The future is like if Picasso painted with emojis. The future is earnestness being the new aggression. The future is Future being the past.

Hip-hop is dead, long live hip-hop.

19. “A Closer Look” on Late Night With Seth Meyers

I almost left this reoccurring segment off my list of the best of 2016 because it’s become such a constant part of my life that I assumed it had been around longer than just this year. Who knew when Jon Stewart retired that the new iteration of The Daily Show would be called Late Night With Seth Meyers? Or as I call it: Essential.

20. Revisionist History Podcast

Facts and knowledge really took a beating in 2016, but turns out both are still great if you just re-examine them rather then throw them out all together. Perhaps looking more deeply into our assumptions about the world can help us better understand human nature and the reality we all share. Who knew?

Of everything I experienced in 2016 this podcast is the thing I reference most frequently. I’m fun at parties.