As we wrapped up 2024 — the “sucko” year of all time — these were a few of my favorite things. I’m not presumptuous enough to claim that they’re the best. They’re just my favorites.
Favorite movie: “Hit Man” from director Richard Linklater. This movie had me smiling and on the edge of my seat all the way through. Glen Powell, who snuck up on audiences in “Top Gun: Maverick” and burst into full-blown heartthrob stud-dom in “Twisters,” is ridiculously entertaining as a nerdy small-college professor who moonlights for the New Orleans Police Department.
In a pinch, he is called upon to impersonate a hitman for hire. He pulls it off and finds that he’s not only good at it, he actually enjoys it. Pretty soon, it’s a non-stop parade of cuckolded husbands and angry business partners, until he comes upon a battered wife (Adria Arjona), for whom he immediately falls hard. What ensues is a suspenseful rom-com, a sexy thriller, and not so much a whodunit as a how are they going to try to do it.
Netflix, in a display of decidedly finite wisdom, released this in theaters for one week, then dumped it out to streaming. It’s not “Oppenheimer,” but it’s a thoroughly enjoyable movie experience and I highly recommend it.
Favorite book: “The Wide Wide Sea” by Hampton Sides. It would probably be an $800 answer on “Jeopardy” to say, “He accidentally discovered Hawaii while on his way to look for the Northwest Passage,” to which the question would be “Who is Capt. Cook?”
You could just as easily say “This white guy brought venereal disease and death to a tropical paradise he happened to stumble across.” Same correct question.
I have always said (somewhat pretentiously) that 99% of what I read is non-fiction, so there might have been some great novels this year, but I wouldn’t know first-hand. A Hall of Fame college football coach (and a lover of non-fiction) once told me that “the stuff that actually happened is more interesting than anything somebody could make up.”
That certainly applies to Cook. As seafarers went, he was probably too old to go on his final voyage. However, influential people (including Lord Sandwich) leaned on him to go to the west end of North America to try to find a way to get from the Pacific to the Atlantic without having to go around the bottom of South America.
And, he set out, sailing past South Africa, Australia, and finally into the South Pacific. One amazing thing is that this multi-year voyage coincided almost exactly with the American Revolution, of which he did not know. He went to Tonga and Tahiti, where he had an uncharacteristically bad experience with Natives.
From there, he set sail toward what is now Oregon, expecting it to be a straight shot through the Pacific Ocean. For the best of luck for him — and the worst of luck for the indigenous people — he came upon a group of islands that appeared on no map and of which there was no mention in oral histories or otherwise.
He dubbed it The Sandwich Islands, in honor of his benefactor. Upon disembarking, his men set out to plunder the natural resources of the place, while the crew’s syphilitic members brought a plague to the populace.
Cook almost met his fate when his ship was nearly crushed by glacial ice north of Alaska. After failing to find a mythical Northwest Passage, he headed back toward England, but decided to stop by Hawaii on the way home. It didn’t end well.
To this day, a white obelisk is in Cook’s honor on a small piece of land on the Big Island, near where he died. To the ire of many Natives, the land actually belongs to Great Britain and is guarded by the Royal Navy. That’s crazy.
Favorite TV: Someone once said that a person’s IQ is inversely proportional to the amount of TV they watch. If that’s true, I’m whatever is below an imbecile. I watch way too much TV, but there is so much good stuff out there.
I really liked the first four seasons of “Slow Horses,” a sometimes-hilarious spy drama from England. It stars Oscar winner Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb, a way-past-his-prime MI5 agent in charge of a motley band of agency rejects. He’s also horribly flatulent. One time, while sitting in a car with a smug bad guy, Lamb lets one go and, upon smelling it, said, “God, I hope that doesn’t get into the groundwater.”
That’s my son’s favorite TV line of the year.
I’m currently watching “Black Doves,” another British spy thing. I only mention it because I have to tell you this. Do you know that Keira Knightley is still not 40 years old? How’s that possible?! It turns out that she was 17 when she made “Love Actually” and 16 in “Bend It Like Beckham.” Yikes!
Favorite music: “What Now” by Brittany Howard. I loved her in Alabama Shakes and her voice is still money.
Favorite question: A friend texted me and asked, “Which is worse, Donald Trump getting elected again or Arizona State making the College Football Playoffs?”
I’m thinking…
This article appears in Jan 2-8, 2025.