10 for '08...

…being a semi-random (well it is in alphabetical order…more or less… so it’s not as random as it might otherwise be) list of 10 pop culture people and things that warmed the cockles of Neverending Rainbow’s jaded heart in 2008.

CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION

The original…and still the best…CSI was firing on all cylinders from the tragic death of Warrick that opened the season to the inexorable feeling of loss as Gil Grissom prepared to take his leave.

GEOFF JOHNS

This super-hero comic book fan’s hero was a writer…a writer who brought amazing, utterly engaging life to some of my favorite four-color adolescent power fantasies :-)

JON STEWART & STEPHEN COLBERT

The Daily Show and The Colbert Report were consistently entertaining and insightful companions throughout the seemingly endless political campaigns that informed life here in the States

NEW MUSIC FROM SOME OF MY FAVORITE FOLKS

Any year that features great new music from music making folks I unabashedly adore…Cassandra Wilson (the sublime Loverly), Emmylou Harris (the beautifully-realized All I Intended to Be), Tracy Chapman (the charming Our Bright Future...see below), and Willie Nelson & Wynton Marsalis (the accomplished and delightful Two Men with the Blues)…is more than all right in my book.

PUSHING DAISIES

I’m not really surprised that this quirky and whimsical show didn’t find a large enough audience to survive…it was, probably, one of those shows that either you liked or you didn’t with very few people in-between…but I am happy that it got a chance to exist at all.

SUPER-HERO MOVIES

A good year for the fanboys with the grim but amazing Dark Knight and the slam-bam wizardry of Iron Man heating up the box office in such a big way. Kudos as well to flawed by still sometimes very interesting offerings such as Hancock, Wanted, and Incredible Hulk (and we shall let things like Punisher War Journal and The Spirit slip into obscurity without comment.)

THE SOUP

The Soup is perhaps the one good reason for the E Network to exist. Joel McHale and his merry pranksters take a biting and often hilarious blowtorch to all of the silliness of pop culture in a fast-paced weekly half-hour.

THE WIRE

Yeah, I’m late to the party but thanks to the good folks at Netflix I’ve gotten completely caught up in the gritty streets of Baltimore as explored on this amazing show (a crime drama worthy of being brought into the conversation alongside classics like Homicide, Hill Street Blues, and The Sopranos.) Santa didn’t hook me up with the complete series box set (admittedly I was THAT good this year :-) but I’ll keep pestering him.

TINA FEY

Tina Fey’s dead-on impersonation of Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin was a godsend to Saturday Night Live…and to all of the rest of us as well. Combine that with the fact that her sitcom 30 Rock has become a consistently funny shows on network TV and we just have to take off our hats to the remarkable Ms. Fey.

YOUNG SOUL SINGERS FROM THE UK

Amy Winehouse spent most of the year in tabloid hell but the baton of great soul music…retro but not in a navel-gazing, nostalgia-worshipping way…from enormously talented young women from the United Kingdom was ably picked up by Duffy (with the stunning Rockferry) and Adele (the powerful and passionate 19) and it was a good thing indeed.

* * * * *

Here's hoping your 2009 is filled with an abundance of love, light, and laughter.

This is Tracy Chapman's simply charming "Sing for You":

Trav'lin' Light

The first time I remember hearing Queen Latifah she was rapping with sass and unabashed confidence on All Hail the Queen and I was smitten at once. I was smitten all over again the first time I heard her sing as part of her stellar turn in the underappreciated 1998 movie Living Out Loud. Her first CD of pop and jazz singing, The Dana Owens Album, was a treat and now she’s back with another tasty outing on a collection of classic jazz, pop, and blues tunes.

Trav’lin’ Light kicks off with a fine cover of Phoebe Snow’s “Poetry Man” and then slides smoothly into the rueful “Georgia Rose”, a bluesy ballad featuring some very distinctive, very accomplished harmonica by the ever-amazing Stevie Wonder. The immortal Toots Thielemans adds sweet harmonica harmony to the lilting “Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars.”

Latifah is just as home in the down home blues of “Don’t Cry Baby” as she is with the big band swing of Peggy Lee’s “I Love Being Here with You” and the propulsive jazz of “I’m Gonna Live Till I Die”. She is elegantly sublime on the title tune aided and abetted with some nice piano work by Joe Sample and appropriately saucy on her take on Nina Simone’s frisky “I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl”.

10cc’s dream pop hit “I’m Not in Love” is effectively transformed into a big soul ballad while Smokey Robinson’s “What Love Has Joined Together” is presented as a grand mid-tempo jam and she steps right into the funky, sassy spirit of the Pointer Sisters’ “How Long (Betcha Got a Chick on the Side)”. “Gone Away”, co-written by Donny Hathaway and Curtis Mayfield, is another sweetly soaring soul ballad that the Queen knocks out of the park.

The disc ends with “I Know Where I’ve Been”, Latifah’s uplifting showstopper from the movie Hairspray .

Trav’lin’ Light is a wonderful little disc that is destined to spend a great deal of time in my CD player. (See video snippets of some of the songs below.)