The Larf Awards 2024

 Welcome to the Larf awards! I’m going to write a bit about my favorite media from this year in each of the major mediums I engage with. For the most part I’m going to try and limit it to things that came out this year (as is tradition for year end lists) but if I didn’t consume enough new shit then I might bring out something old that I found out about for the first time this year.

The TV Show of the Year: Real Housewives of Salt Lake City

I don’t really watch much TV these days, as it’s a huge time investment for what is usually low quality programming. The only fictional TV shows I currently follow are Severance and White Lotus, neither of which had new seasons this year. I liked Succession too while it was on. I still think fictional TV can do it for me, and “prestige TV” still has some juice in it, but to have prestige TV you have to actually make something good. In the meantime, we have reality TV. The other shows I enjoyed this year are The Traitors and (as always) RuPaul’s Drag Race, but RHOSLC is what I feel most passionate about.

I suppose when a not-strictly-homosexual man says that he watches the Real Housewives, he has some explaining to do. My wife introduced me to Bravo-style reality TV way back in 2018, but it never clicked for me until the first two seasons of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. The idea of the show, as with all Real Housewives franchises, is that it follows the social and personal lives of several wealthy women in a particular city. These women are generally encouraged to start beef with each other, which simmers until they get drunk at a party or ‘girls trip’ and have a public screaming match.

What is fascinating about these shows is the bizarre world that these women live in. What do you worry about, what are your concerns when material matters are taken care of? Lisa & especially Meredith are obsessed with their public image. Mary is a collector of exceedingly ugly designer clothes that she pulls together into some of the worst fits money can buy. Jen Shah, likely striving to be in the same economic class as some of the other women, was arrested for fraud in the legendary second season. She is expected to get out of prison in 2027. The only woman who is particularly haunted by the mormonism of the region is Heather, who struggles to distance herself from the church she was indoctrinated into.

This year, we got the bombshell ending of season 4, where Monica is revealed to have been behind an instagram gossip account about the women on the show. This was considered to be a criminal betrayal by the group, and they actually banded together for the first time in their lives to defeat their common enemy. The ongoing season 5 introduced some new blood, and I am very much enjoying Bronwyn’s addition to the show.

If you’re still confused as to why I watch, then maybe it helps to understand that the editors and producers of the show have no love at all for these women. The women will often lie, and have their statements promptly fact checked by previously filmed footage. During the season-end reunions, the women have to sit through an hours-long filming session where they are made to answer demeaning and leading questions by Andy Cohen. All is designed to make sure these put-together women are taken apart to the highest possible degree. Pass the popcorn.

The Movie of the Year: Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

I watched this on the plane ride home from Europe. Martin Scorsese can be hit-or-miss for me, as his portrayals of the evil men of America often make them look kinda cool. The evil men in this movie are decidedly NOT IN ANY WAY COOL.

Oil was found under Osage Indian land, and by rights the Osage people became very wealthy. White men arrive in the area to drill, and some even learn the Osage language and marry into Osage families. That whole last bit is the insidious part. The protagonists of the movie are such men, who are the eponymous killers. Leonardo DiCaprio injects poison into his wife, while telling her it’s the medicine to cure her of the very disease he’s afflicting her with. Seeing this kind of evil portrayed was a lot for me, and I spent the next 20 minutes after the film ended just staring into space. It’s very powerful stuff and I don’t recommend it unless you’re prepared.

The Book(s) of the Year: The MANIAC & When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut

(reprinted from my “Books I Read 2024” post)

Lumping these books together because they are very similar in style and content. They’re fucking awesome. Generally, these novels are connected stories about the various scientists and mathematicians (Godel, Einstein, Von Neumann, Heisenberg, Ehrenfest, Bohr) who in the early 20th century blew apart everything we understand, and then created computers who can understand more than we ever could. Most of these scientists lost their minds in dramatic ways, and it’s all real. Incredible stories, and I feel like we do a huge disservice when we teach these thinkers’ concepts/advancements to students but not their biographies. I’m gonna be chewing on the contents of these books for a long time.

The Game of the Year: UFO 50

I’ve been having trouble enjoying video games as much as I used to. It’s pretty rare for one to grip me for an extended period of time, and I may get one good play session out of a new one but it’s a struggle for me to open a game a second time. So it is a small miracle that UFO 50, a game released this year, is my 2nd most played game on Steam ALL TIME.

The premise is that you found an old game console from the 80’s with 50 games. Each one is controlled with only the dpad and two face buttons, NES-style, and each game is made with pixel art in the same color palette. This collection contains just about every genre that can possibly be done with those limitations. There are metroidvanias, strategy games, action games, point n click adventure games, puzzle games, and even a roguelike deck builder. 

It’s easy to point out influences for some games, like Into The Breach -> Bug Hunter and Double Dragon -> Fist Hell, but others are pretty unique even by modern standards, or at least mix existing genres in unique ways. Devilition was one of the first games to really captivate me, which is about setting up a chain reaction of explosions to kill all the demons on a grid. Valbrace is a dungeon crawler with combat that I can only compare to Punch Out, and is my candidate for the game that needs a fleshed out stand alone title the most.

Almost every game is very polished and tight and has more going on that first appears. There are a few duds, like Combatants and Hot Foot, but the fact that there are so few is impressive as hell for a collection of 50 games. If you have ANY love for NES era games then you gotta pick this up.

The Album of the Year: Brat (duh)

Maybe I’m just an unapologetic Charli head but I feel like anyone choosing something else for AOTY is trying too hard. I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say that no album has dropped with such a resounding “instant classic” reception since To Pimp A Butterfly. After the disappointment that was Crash, Charli is so fucking back. The production is so much fun (AG Cook and the undersung Easyfun are the brains behind that bit), and Charli’s charisma remains unimpeachable. The worst song on the album is Mean Girls, and even that has the fucking piano breakdown in it. If you don’t like this album, you probably don’t like parties or dancing, which is understandable but kinda lame on your part.

Some people have said that Brat Summer ended when Charli made the infamous tweet that “Kamala is brat”, but if that sways you then you probably didn’t like the album much to begin with. Charli is pretty obviously apolitical and just wants to have a good time. Brat doesn’t make me think about Kamala. If it makes me think at all, it’s because it’s giving me space to prepare for the next banger.