The Best of 2021
It's time to rank shit
You gotta love it when people rank stuff. You just have to. I read all of them—The NYT’s Best Books of 2021, The New Yorker’s Best TV Shows of 2021, Vulture’s Best Albums of 2021, The Ringer’s Best Performances (?) of 2021. Even in podcast form, it’s somewhat thrilling to hear people rank stuff—instead of scrolling to see what comes in at the top, I must wait and listen in breathless anticipation. The thrill of low-lift, high-volume audio…
And what a year it’s been! So many things to rank. You could rank your favorite movies, your favorite podcasts, your favorite Yassified socialist politicians, your favorite DAOs (Krause House, of course, followed by David), your favorite NYC tastemaker Google Doc gift guides, your favorite dumb newsletters (we won’t be upset!). But I’ve chosen to list out my favorites today. Here are my rankings, for good measure—here’s the best of 2021.
3. Tom Franco
My man is straight chillin. He had a great year. He didn’t stir up too much trouble, and it looks like he has impeccable skin.
I know he’s ranked a bit high, but he gets by on virtue of just being a guy being a dude. But, yeah, his lack of flashiness gets him ranked a bit lower than the rest.
2. Matthew Francis Nolan
Matthew Francis Nolan was the second-best of 2021. I don’t know where he is right now, but back in the day, he crushed it. No one had any idea there was a third Nolan brother—and who knew he was this tight!
1. Vijay Chokalingam
Well, here’s Mindy Kaling’s brother—the unequivocal best of the year. Slay, king. Your book went fleeky mode, and revealed surprising truths about the world along the way!
The Kaling family structure hews pretty close to mine: South Indian immigrants, an older sister and a younger brother. This seems like a cautionary tale. Unfortunately, since Mindy veered too far off the path (was funny, became wildly successful in entertainment, now has multiple tv shows), my man Vijay had to overcorrect (became racist, wanted to be black so bad he wrote a book about it, seems nuts). Not sure what’s going on here overall, but I’ll leave it to their family. Congrats, Vijay—you won 2021!
Ritam’s Footnote
I just finished the Beatles documentary this morning (I watched episode 3 from 7am - 9:30am in bed like a genius). I thought it was a heartfelt and lovely portrait of some of the funniest and most interesting guys ever. I’d like to take this opportunity to rank my favorite Beatles.
1. Michael Lindsay-Hogg
My favorite part of the Beatles documentary was all the times this heretofore unknown Beatle with an annoying voice and no sense of humor would step in to tell the lovable lads what to do.