2018 Recap: Worse Than Anticipated


Hello! This past year, I put on about 20lbs. However, I won my fantasy football league, so it kind of evens out. Suck it, Allen.

2018 was cool, I guess. I started playing a lot more Words with Friends. I'm currently playing a random lady who changed her display name to "Not Here to Chat" immediately after I dropped 28 points in my first move. She apparently did not want the smoke in the WWF game chat. No big deal.

I haven't written anything in a few weeks and it seems as though I am now awful at it. It took me about an hour to get to this point in the blog. Sad! I'm gonna try to write here more this year so I can one day be an internet personality and get paid a medium salary trying to be funny online. This is my dream and I am sticking to it!

Okay now let's recap the glorious year that wasn't: 2018.

I started off the new year on a high note: not remembering the ball dropping, kind of like when I went through puberty. All of a sudden, I was awake and the ball(s) had dropped. New year, same me.

Within two weeks, I had seen the Patriots win a playoff game and successfully pissed off local douchebag weatherman Kevin Lemanowicz. I'm not gonna get into my whole history of hating this dude, but basically, it started when I was in fourth grade and he put everyone else from my grade on TV except me. He sucks. I hate him and will never forgive him.

Little Tattletale Kevin can't take the smoke!
I originally thought my trolling of the dumbass weatherman cursed New England sports. The Patriots lost to Nick Foles and the Eagles in the Super Bowl. Gordon Hayward's ankle took a left at Albuquerque but his body took a right. The Bruins (I had to look this up because I don't care about hockey) apparently lost in the second round of the playoffs. Things weren't looking good.

UNTIL THE RED SOX CAME AND WON THE DAMN WORLD SERIES THANKS TO ME! You should remember how I called out JBJ, propelling him into Red Sox folklore forever. Chris Sale told me it was World Series or bust. We didn't bust. Roll Sox forever.

My favorite artist, Mac Miller, died of an accidental drug overdose. Fuck fentanyl. That shit sucked super hard and there is about a 0% chance I will ever come to grips with the fact that he's not a living human being anymore.

On a way more controversial note, XXXTentacion died, too. It seems like the same people now condemning R. Kelly on Twitter, while still listening to his music, are the same ones that couldn't understand separating art from the artist six months ago. Classic social justice warrior bullshit Twitter strikes again!

I developed a crippling addiction to a USB stick. This was not fun. I have a lot less money because of it. I'm currently about a week free from it but trying to quit this thing is actually like trying to quit crack: it's just not gonna happen.

As far as the blog goes, it was a subpar year at best. The most popular post of the year was my drunk review of the Capriccio Sangria. That really sums up what you think of me. I did not think that blog was well written and did not think it was funny but it got 1600+ clicks, so I ain't really complainin'.

A bunch of people from the Brockton/Boston music scene dropped crazy good music this year and it's wild to see them start to become real-life popular. I don't know how to link every single one but if you go to my page you can see which ones I've reposted/liked and go from there. Support local artists! https://soundcloud.com/aturke

I wrote an in-depth piece on James Foley, the journalist beheaded by ISIS in 2014. It was a lot of research and I will post it on here soon. Talking to some of his friends was a surreal experience. Journalists give their lives to tell stories no one else wants to. They're not the enemy of the people.

Final personal thing: I accepted a job at my internship for when I graduate from BU. Nottabigdeeeal. Cube life forever!

Enough about me, let's talk about some stories that were popular in 2018.

Okay I'm not sure if anyone else is brave enough to say this, but here I go. No one ate Tide Pods. That was a myth. There is no one on this Earth dumb enough to do that. It was a conspiracy created by old people to further discredit millennials and that is my take.

Yodel Kid (AKA Mason Ramsey da GAWD) went viral and it was the most pure thing to happen on the internet since Gavin had that lizard on his head. He is a lil superstar and I love him. I will hear no other opinions, thank you very much.

If you ever seriously debated "Yanny vs. Laurel" I hate you and hope bad things happen to you. Who cares? (Also, it was Laurel.)

That Trump guy is really good at getting people's panties in a bunch, eh? The prez' kept shootin' shots at people on Twitter all 2018. Sometimes it was funny, other times it wasn't clear if we were about to enter into a war. A day in the life of a citizen whose leader is a reality TV show host, I guess.

I TOTALLY forgot about the Winter Olympics, but they were pretty freakin' sweet. I remember watching them, thinking, “I could definitely do some of these sports!” I think I focused my statement on curling. My assumption was quickly disproven after I watched the US come back in a marathon match against Sweden to take home the gold. Total dirt dogs. I stayed up for an absurd amount of time watching that comeback and it could be the funniest thing I’ve done all year. It was like 4:30 in the morning and I was crushing Natty Ice, yelling at my computer screen about a sport I didn’t really care for six hours prior. Oh, the Olympics! There’s nothing quite like it.

Mass shootings were, again, a staple on the news. Parkland, Thousand Oaks, and Pittsburgh had everyone angry and at a loss for words. So many of these shootings happen and so little gets done; I’ve given up hope.

On a lighter note, everything that happened in music was awesome. There were so many good albums, so many artists coming up, and a surprising number of worthwhile rap beefs. Move over, crackhead from That’s So Raven and Soulja Boy! MGK was out there murdering Eminem! Jay-Z came out of the woodwork for a legendary verse on Meek’s album. It was great all around.

Pusha T’s Daytona is my pick for best album of the year. Not only is every second of every song perfect, but the album gave us a great beef. It ended with the hip-hop community finally seeing Drake as a baby-back bitch, which I was thrilled about. With that being said, I don’t want to write about Pusha’s lyrics because I am a semi-nerdy white dude and he is not. They wouldn’t have the same effect if you read them in my voice. I don’t think I could convey how good all of those lines were. Plus…the Kanye production? SHEESH! The cover art?? OH BOY!

If I had a bigger list it would be this:

1. Pusha T Daytona
2. Mac Miller Swimming
3. Mt. Joy Mt. Joy
4. Kids See Ghosts Kids See Ghosts
5. XXXTentacion ?
6. J. Cole KOD
7. Dave Matthews Band Come Tomorrow
8. Playboi Carti Die Lit
9. A$AP ROCKY TESTING
10. Flatbush Zombies Vacation in Hell

In all honesty, I did not watch as many movies as I should have. Maybe that’ll be a resolution in 2019 (probably not, way too lame). I did, however, watch an assload of things on Netflix and most of it was very good. My favorite thing was actually a Netflix original called Maniac. It starred Emma Stone and Jonah Hill. It was an absolute trip, hard to understand in the beginning but it made you a better person after you were done with it. I can’t even give you a synopsis of the plot without seeming like a crackhead, so just go watch it if you haven’t.

F is for Family and Bojack Horseman came back with phenomenal new seasons. Paradise PD isn’t that good yet but there is real potential for it to become very funny in the future. I’m Sorry got added to Netflix this year so I’ll count it here. Andrea Savage is hilarious. Disenchantment, from the creator of The Simpsons and Futurama, is awesome and I can’t wait for part two coming soon. Big Mouth got way too weird and I saw too many animated children's genitalia for me to want to watch season three. No show should make me feel like a pedophile. Wait, does this sound like I’m advertising for Netflix?

No? Okay, I’m done. I don’t think there’s anything else I want to talk about.

Buy a damn shirt, I have three of them on sale now. Support the cause!



Did you think I was gonna give you a cliché, “Here’s to a great 2019!” or some BS like that? Nope. Not doing it. Clichés are so last year. 

(Seriously though, thank you for reading my stuff. Especially if you're someone who I spam with links every time I write something that I think is funny. I appreciate you.) 


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