Comes the beer refreshing

December 27, 2014 7:44 AM

Never Better is The Awl’s goodbye to 2014. The most recent one is Last Year's Punch by Dan Nosowitz. Another notable one is Good Things of 2014, a complete list. Including:

* Derby
* Frostie
* Lucy
* Holly
* Chris P
* Hero
* Debbie
* Malala winning the Peace Prize

Another great one is Dear Kids by (our own) Paul Ford.

posted by Potomac Avenue (7 comments total)

I really like Dear Kids (and thought about posting it!). Made me feel a little better about things.
posted by Glinn at 7:54 AM on December 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

I like the freezing of a bit of the holiday punch for use in the next year. It's good for continuity.
posted by Renoroc at 8:09 AM on December 27, 2014

I assume one of these is a dog?

One is always a dog, who somehow against all odds learns to Do a Thing.
posted by clvrmnky at 8:31 AM on December 27, 2014

The punch that we drank this year, the punch I helped make, has a tiny bit of the punch from 1996, when I was ten years old and not allowed to drink it, and every year since.

Love it.
posted by Splunge at 8:49 AM on December 27, 2014

I clicked on the essay My Best Self Now is My Worst Self Later on the Awl, thinking it would be along the lines of something I hold dear to my heart, that living is essentially a never ending quest to become less shitty than you currently are, with the side effect that looking at the past brings with it embarrassment/shame at remembering who you were and the things that you wish you had known better not to do, or at least known how to do things better than you did.

It's... not that. Not directly. It's more about being embarrassed by pictures that don't look very good on Instagram. Great title, wasted opportunity, sadly.

yes, I'm obviously reading more into it than I should, and yes, I'm projecting.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:04 PM on December 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

Oh, Lord. All she had to say was "I went through a two-month period of being plagued by the Hamm’s Beer jingle" and it started playing in my head. I think I can overwrite it with "Everything is awesome!" from the Lego movie, but if that doesn't work I'ma hafta break out something by Tim Minchin or Jonathan Coulton.
posted by ssr_of_V at 8:23 PM on December 28, 2014

Dear ssr_of_V,

"Mahna Mahna"
posted by DigDoug at 4:18 AM on December 29, 2014 [1 favorite]