A Totally Idiosyncratic, Justifiable to No One But Myself List of the Best Stuff of the Year Gone By
1. Travelling Bolstered by nearly 20 stops on the great Push the Cush Tour (including Annapolis MD, Philadelphia PA, Washington DC, Newport RI, Austin TX, and many places in New York and New Jersey), and highlighted by visits to my siblings, my nieces and my cousins, this was the year we also visited Arizona, New Hampshire, Saratoga and Cooperstown, and Kentucky. For someone who believes himself to be a homebody, there was a lot of time on the highway!
2. Marriage begins at 40. Our 40th wedding anniversary dinner happened just the way I hoped it would.
3. Lawrence of Silicon Valley. Working with Lawrence Levy on his memoir To Pixar and Beyond was stimulating and fun. Lawrence worked hard and cared deeply, and all his effort and intelligence is manifest in his excellent book.
4. Rebel Yowl. It was a bad year for the Confederate flag: down in South Carolina, down in Mississippi, off the license plates in Texas, out of Amazon. Actions long overdue.
5. Lloyd Leads. The US team was sleepwalking through the first couple of games of the Women’s World Cup tournament. The coach then made a dramatic decision: she would hold Abby Wambach, arguably the greatest player in the history of women’s soccer, and star Carli Lloyd. What a call. Lloyd charged through the rest of the tournament, driving the US team to victory. The highlight of her performance: a one-for-the-ages hat trick in the final, the only one by woman or man in World Cup history, including a magical mortar shot from midfield. Amazing.
6. Super! I really didn’t care whether Seattle or New England won the Super Bowl, but I cheered my head off when the game ended with a miraculous interception by Malcolm Brown. One for the ages.
7. Shoe leather. Best movie of the year: Spotlight. Journalists doing journalism. Well done.
8. Huuuuge. I wrote a couple of pretty good pieces during the year, but my favorite was the almost totally ignored piece about Trump: It Crawled Out of the Eighties.
9. First time for everything. My friends Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams put out their first album. Most excellent.
10. Arod Returns. I can’t explain why, but I have never been upset by most of Alex Rodriguez’s antics. In fact, I’ve been more of a fan. Nobody really had any idea of what would have happened when he returned to the Yanks from more than a year-long suspension, but what would have seemed most unlikely was what happened: he kept his head down, directed attention away from himself, mentored young players, and led the team in home runs. True, he ran out of gas in mid-August, but until then, he enjoyed a sunset year to remember.