In a blatent rip-off of my dear friend Sara Rose, here are the bests of the year just gone by:

Best Movie: How the hell should I know? We haven't been to an actual grown-up movie in theaters since I foolishly blogged about how many movies we'd managed to see, way back some time in February. My favorite of the three we'd seen at that time was P.S. I Love You, so let's give it to that, I guess.

Best TV Show: How the hell should I know? We only get local channels on cable, and that's only because switching to local channels was actually cheaper & easier than having cable disconnected altogether. Michelle and I are currently working our way through The West Wing, one NetFlix DVD at a time. (We're currently up to season 3). So, that's right, in Nickelworld, the best TV show of 2008 is one that's been off the air since 2006. Ian's is even worse; his favorite, Friends, has been off since '04.

Best Book: OK, now we're cookin'! We actually did read several books as a family this year, mostly as a way to kill time on extremely long drives. The runaway favorite was Peter Mayle's A Year In Provence, largely because of the France-loving tendancies among certain members who shall remain nameless, and the descriptions-of-delicious-food loving tendancies among the rest of us.

Best Price Collapse: Gas prices. Sorry, housing and stock market... maybe next depression.

Best Vacation: Gotta be our New York trip for Boaz's first birthday in May. Highlights, a la Emma:

• About the stiff wind on the "Broccoli" bridge, across which she was carried snuggling inside my coat: "Iss not cold for me. Iss cold for yoo!"
• About a mid-harbor landmark: (singing and dancing EVERY time) "Iss da Statue ovva Liver-TEEEE!"
• In the Poconos, about a deer we glimpsed after a fortuitous wrong turn, who promptly fled into the forest: (nodding sagely) "He needs to go fin' his mommy."
• About New York in general: "Iss nice. Iss gotta Poconos behin' dere."

Best Neighborhood Calamity: The extremely local flooding on our street is always fun, and we had not just one but two seperate incidents of cars being driven through a wall into a local business establishment, but I'm going to have to give it to the tree in front of our house, which spontaneously collapsed while we watched on Easter morning into the middle of a normally crowded intersection. Thank you, tree, for not collapsing on our house or causing a 10-car pileup.

Best Gift: One of the reasons I am so in love with my wife is that she has that rarest of all abilities— she knows how to get me the gift, not that society tells her she ought to get me, but that I actually want. This year for Valentine's day, it was a real honest-to-God four-drawer steel filing cabinet. I love you, honey!

Best Viral Internet Video: Tina Fey as Sarah Palin... take your pick. (Although my friend Vanessa as Sarah Palin was pretty awesome too.)