Small World Awards 2009 – Odds and Sods
25 Dec 2009 1 Comment
in Awards Tags: Antichrist, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Facebook, Farmville, Pope, Rage Against The Machine, Twihards, Twilight, Zooey Deschanel
Ahh, 2009. Like 08, and 07 before it, you were an odd year; filled with wonder, oddity, crude behaviour and surprises. Anyway, as I really can’t be bothered summarising the decade, let’s do some meaningless awards for the year!
Drum roll.
Failure of the Year: Farmville on Facebook
(Look at these little avatars. Bastards.)
No, I don’t want to help you plough your imaginary fields, no I do not wish to become your neighbour and for God’s sake, start sending away some of these bloody lost animals that keep turning up ! Haven’t you ever heard of fencing??
Yes, so Farmville wins Failure of the Year. For those of you not in the know, it’s a simulation game that has you tending to your own virtual fields, doing a lot of boring stuff repeatedly and every Tom, Dick and Harry felt like they had to invite you to do it with them, too. Regardless of the amount of stupid requests it has brought on normal, sensible Facebook users, it has the audacity to convince people that they’re ‘gaming’, which is just a plain insult to actual ‘gamers’. Plus it’s the biggest waste of time I’ve ever seen, and is thus a worthy winner.
Upset of the Year: RATM Winning Christmas No.1
The excellent Facebook grass roots campaign to get Killing In The Name to the top of the UK charts started off as something of a novelty, then an exercise in audacity before turning into a serious contender for the xmas no.1 spot and sensationally ending as the eventual winner. But just for a minute, forget the band and forget the song, because the real triumph is the fact that one couple managed to get over half a million people to unite over a mutual hatred of X-Factor, and to a larger extent, the whole culture of insipid reality television. Simply awesome.
Shock of the Year: Charlotte Gainsbourg + Scissors = WTF
(I assume this was pre-mutilation.)
Lars Von Trier walked away with this one thanks to his film Antichrist for showing us just what can be done when you combine scissors and Charlotte Gainsbourg’s nether regions. And they say he’s misogynistic(!)
Villain of the Year: Simon Cowell
An obvious choice, for sure. But even in 2009, Cowell has managed to excel beyond his usual levels of villainy and general tosserness. First, when he heard of the RATM campaign, he dismissed it as juvenile and branded it as a personal attack against him, yet was perfectly happy to offer a congratulatory phone call to the couple who came up with the campaign once Killing In The Name won. What Cowell doesn’t realise is that he’s actually the most entertaining part of his own media empire, and it’s the crap that he releases that people have a problem with.
Douche of the Year: The Woman Who Knocked Over The Pope
It was a close run thing between her and the student caught urinating on the WW2 Memorial, but when you clamber over the barricades during one of the most important religious evenings on the calendar and knock an 82-year old man over, you, Madam have risen to another level of Douchedom unfathomable to most people. Well played!
Fox of the Year: Zooey Deschanel
Ok, so she might be an absolute cow in 500 Days Of Summer, but aren’t all women worthy of lusting after somewhat devilish? In reality, Zooey has the perfect combination of feeling like that amazing, fun girl next door and looking completely stunning in pretty much anything she wears. The thinking man’s woman of 2009.
Special Achievement of the Year: Twilight fans (or Twihards)
As we all know, the world is strictly divided between diehard Twilight fans, and everyone else. But this year, they’ve achieved something huge by simply making it impossible to make any sort of negative impact on the Twilight series. How? By extreme dedication. Every review of New Moon has it somewhere between average and awful, but that didn’t stop millions going to midnight showings, and it wont stop fans from doing the same when the third film is released. They don’t care what any of the rest of us think, and you’ll never make a dent on the series no matter how relevant your criticism. Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter what you say about the series, there’s too many of ‘em! You’ll never change anything! You’ll never be heard!
That’s all I can think of for now, why not check back for the best music, films and games of the year? You know you want to.
