Best of 2007

Because this is will be an easy column to write (so gimmicky), I now present The Barney Show’s Best of 2007. This is all completely off the cuff and will most likely be scorned by everyone. That’s ok with me. If you actually value my opinion, you have bigger problems than my choice of best action sequence or whatever I decide in this episode. And without further ado, here are the awards:

Best 1st 5 Minutes of a Movie: “We Own the Night”
This movie starts off with Eva Mendes’s titties being shown while she fingers herself. Not that this was a bad movie, but I think if The Godfather started off this way, it would have to be considered going downhill. And I think I just increased the chance that someone will rent this movie about 500% by letting them know this.

Best Action Scenes of the Year:
3. Matt Damon flipping cars off parking garages in “The Bourne Ultimatum”
2. Bruce Willis fighting a F-16 with a mack truck in “Live Free or Die Hard”
1. The entire last 20 minutes of “The Kingdom”. Jamie Foxx basically goes to war with an entire Saudi neighborhood. At the end it had me saying, “Holy Shit.”

Best Comedy of the Year – “Superbad”
This one wins by default, since I haven’t seen the other two ones that could compete with it, “Knocked Up” and “Walk Hard.” But Superbad might have been the funniest movie I’ve ever seen. I’ll have to watch it multiple times on DVD to let you know.

Movie Title that Made Me Laugh – “The Great Debaters”
It takes skill to laugh at a movie about debate teams, yet I pulled it off. Tell me your first reaction to hearing that this was an actual movie wasn’t something along the lines of, “I wonder if the name ‘The Master Debaters’ ever came up?” Because if you say no, I would respond with, “Bullshit my good sir. You are lying.” I’d even respond in a debating way. Possibly even say that you are a cunning linguist. By the way, I’m not 13.

I would give best movie of the year to “American Gangster” but since I didn’t see “No Country for Old Men” or any other movie that could compete for it yet, I don’t think I can just give that award away by default.

Now that we’ve wrapped up movies, let’s move on to music. I think I bought about 10 albums this year, so I am in no way qualified to give out awards. But if you think that’s going to stop me, you’re wrong.

Best Verse – Andre 3000, “Storytelling Pt. 4”
This verse was so good I bought a DJ Drama album just for this verse. He absolutely rips it:“I started off starving/now they got me out here Brett Farveing/seeing if I still got it”. Just pure genius. It’s also worth noting that the only reason I heard this song was it was played on Hot 97 by a Jewish DJ. That’s right, apparently they have a Jewish DJ on Hot 97 Sunday mornings. What is the world coming to?
Also worth noting, that both Andre 3000s and Big Boi’s versus on UGK’s single were also contenders for verse of the year. Not a bad year for Outkast considering they didn’t put out anything on their own.

Worst Song – This was a tough category to make a decision on. There were an abundance of awful songs this year. If I have to make a choice, I’ll go with the Superman song because not only was the song itself awful, it had an awful dance to go along with it. The only good part was that it led me to avoid ever putting anything more than 5 cents on Texas solely because I saw their entire bench doing this dance during a tv timeout. Please note that I’m giving this award out without listening to anything off Bow Wow’s and Omario’s “Faceoff” album. I’m avoiding that thing like syphilis.

Album’s that exceeded expectations:Since I’ve given up on getting classic hip hop albums, here are the album’s that didn’t suck in 2007:
Jay-Z – “American Gangster”. I’ve done a full review of this before, but it’s one of Hov’s better albums. Bonus points for him having Larry Johnson in a video.
Kanye West – “Graduation”. Kanye’s worst album still is better than 99% of the rest out there.
UGK – A surprisingly good album. It was a double album so there is some filler, but for the most part a solid album that I’m still bumping every now and then. RIP Pimp C.
Young Jeezy – This might have actually been released in 2006, but I can’t research this at 35,000 feet. Anyway, you know exactly what you’re getting with a Jeezy album: good beats, good ad libs, and not much else. But if that’s all you expect, you’ll be ok. And if anyone wants to get me the greatest present ever, they’d buy me a USDA t-shirt.

Finally, on to sports. I’m not giving out any MVP’s or anything that references on the field performances.

Biggest Clusterfuck – This was a hard one to decide, but in the end, I’d have to go with Isiah Thomas over Ookie. The thing that put Isiah over the top is that he’s shamed an entire city. Mr. Mexico just shamed himself and possibly Arthur Blank.

Best Moment of the Year – The announcer doing the Tony Yayo “I Can’t Feel My Face” dance to “Jump Around” during a Wisconsin football game. I still can’t believe this actually happened and that my mind didn’t make this up.

Best Rivalry – Deshawn Stevenson vs. Drew Gooden. These two are having a contest to determine who can grow a longer beard. It wouldn’t surprise me if they have $100,000 on this. The NBA, where six figure bets on facial hair happens.
(This girl I work with is a part time sports reporter for a small internet site. She doesn’t follow the NBA at all and got assigned to a Wizards game a week or so ago. She asked me for some background into the teams. I gave her the info and then asked her for a favor: if she could ask Deshawn how his contest with Mr. Gooden was going. She looked at me like I had 16 heads. She didn’t ask this question. Any rivalry that gets my co-workers more concerned about my well being is a winner in my book.)
(And if this girl doesn’t get me better information than “Chris Duhon is a cool guy,” I might try and get her fired. Though that would be my luck: finally getting access to someone that can ask my types of questions and being ignored in order to find out the burning questions like who’s cute or laid back on the Bulls. And if you’re going to do that, at least come back and say Joakim Noah’s cute so I can laugh my ass off at you.)

That leads us to favorite sports related exchange with a co-worker:
Talking with that girl about the Wizards-Bulls game gets second place:
Girl: “Why do people not like Joakim Noah?”
Me: “Ummm…(thinking of a nice way of putting it), he’s a douchebag.”
Joakim Noah ladies and gentleman, where being called a douche is me being nice.

The winner goes to my response to a lady who considers herself a Broncos fan. We were discussing their addition of Dre Bly (let’s just ignore the fact that I’m discussing Dre freakin’ Bly with coworkers):
Lady: “Why do they need another cornerback. They already have Champ Bailey.”
Me: “Well, you need two cornerbacks…and your other starter got shot.”
The bad thing is that I had to hold myself back from adding, “Too soon?” on to that statement.

I think that’s all the awards I have for now. To all the winners, you’ll receive your award (an empty bottle of Jack with The Barney Show 2007 engraved on it). I’d throw away all Oscars, Grammys and Emmys if I were you.