The Twelve Days of Gheorghemas: Day 11

On the eleventh day of Gheorghemas, Big Gheorghe gave to me...

Eleven Months of Blog Posts
Ten (ish) Gifts for Gheorghies
Nine Lists of Top 10 Things
Eight Wins Worth Noting
Seven Traits for Winning
Six Facts O'Ghoogling
Five Lasting Images
Four Things to Think About
Three catastrophe 'staches
The Finest Holiday Duet in History
And One Hell of a bloggy Par-ty

One of my favorite Gheorghemas activities, after the unveiling of the picture of Baby Teejus, is sitting down with a bit of wassail (in this case a Summit Oatmeal Stout), and a good playlist (the Pitchfork Best Songs of 2012 on Spotify) and reading through the year's posts. (You would NOT believe how much crap we post in a 12-month period. It's amazing the network hasn't cancelled us yet. Thank God for that small, yet vocal, group of influential women that dig our scene.)

Without fail, this annual exercise produces a mix of laughter, mild disgust, and genuine admiration for the work this extremely motley crew produced over the preceding annum. And so, without further ado, the Best of Gheorghe: The Blog 2012:

January was dominated by posts about the dreadful and completely unlikeable Washington Wizards and the equally dreadful but much more fan-friendly William & Mary Tribe. In the midst of that bleak blogscape, Dave managed to tear off an appreciation of Talking Heads' 'Once in a Lifetime' that both informed and engaged. And made us wistfully recall a time when he was a serial lizard murderer.

We also celebrated Squirrel Appreciation Day, which reminds me to remind you to mark January 21 on your calendars to celebrate this year's events. Mark, I take a size medium in most surf t-shirts.

Marcus Thornton gave us the first amazing moment of his career.

Lord in Heaven, I'd almost forgotten about the picture that accompanied our BCS Championship Game preview. I think it's the hat that does it for me.

Dave also gave us an appreciation of the digital first down line and, on January 3, provided the blogosphere's first 2012 Year in Review. So he peaked early. Which, yep.

In February, Teej rubbed electronic shoulders with a former Washington Bullet, which presaged the greatest moment on G:TB history by less than a month. Tracy Murray is a good sport.

We were all more than a little shocked when Clarence dropped a pissy (though probably warranted) rant about the Grammys. So out of character for this character.

Less than a week later, Clarence weighed in again (you'd better damn believe that pun is intended) with another lengthy (though not particularly girthy) Grantland review. The combined effort must have winded him, because I'm fairly sure he never wrote anything else all year long.

Mark waited until March to give us his first post of the year, but it was a good one, complete with a dope - as the kids say - playlist from his wedding.

On Monday, March 5, we told a story 19 years in the making. And even though our words and pictures were pretty good, they didn't do justice to the Night Gheorghe met Gheorghe. We'll do it again, if only to make sure Mark can make it this time. (And TR may have clinched the Oscar for Best Performance as a Recovering Urinatee.)

The most coherent post of Gheorghe: The Week was KQ and Shlara's retrospective of the Washington Bullets' criminally underrated 'You the Man' video.

We celebrated Rick Reilly. Really. (Skip the fact that the thing we celebrated was 9 years old. It was worth celebrating.)

We also celebrated vaginas. In a far less creepy way than we normally do.

Dennis posted! About babies, Catcher in the Rye, and The Shins. Hope he doesn't post again in 2013, or he'll be Octodad.

Our first post about conference realignment, the death of the CAA, and W&M's eventual move to the Patriot League surfaced late in the month. The Teej jumped in with Breaking News that turned out to be more wrong than a picture of a crocheted vagina on a Muslim kids blog.

TR turning heel on Joe Namath foreshadowed a shitshow of a Jets season.

Finally, Zman remained the internet's leading expert on the Jack Urbon/Ghostface legal kerfuffle.

Phew, March came in like a lion and tore that motherfucker up all month long. I don't expect it to keep up.

Three themes dominated April: squirrels, baseball, and art.

Our first picture of Tim Kurkjian's underwear accompanied our review of major league baseball's marketing slogans, which were predictably lame. Not so Clarence (who may have been Igor at the time) and Marls' preview of the Mets' 2012 campaign. Certainly, they'd agree that the preview was far more entertaining than the season.

Dave gave us his definitive list (and really, with Dave, is there any other kind of list?) of Seven Movies That Are Better Than The Book, and while he omitted 'The Green Mile', he turned in a solid effort. I can't wait for the film version.

Fugazi's Ian MacKaye gave us the G:TB Quote of the Alltime:

"I was cleaning my room once and I was listening to Led Zeppelin. Robert Plant was going on and on about all of these seemingly adult kind of things and I realized he was eighteen when he did that record—I was probably twenty-nine years old at the time—and I just thought, “Oh my god, I’m twenty-nine years old and I never became an adult.” Here’s Robert Plant and he’s eighteen and he’s singing about having his own apartment and running around town. To me, he seemed so adult. I called my dad and I said, “Dad, I’m kinda freaking out over here. I’m twenty-nine years old and I’m starting to realize that I’m a man, but I never made that transition.” And he said, “Well, I’ll tell you two things. First off, I see you as a man, as an adult man. You’re not a kid. And the second thing is that I can’t see myself as a man.” He was sixty at the time and he hadn’t come to terms with it either. It was nice and terrible at the same time to realize that that transition is a difficult one."

Clarence and I went back to back with posts about ukelele music and poetry. Badass ukelele music and poetry.

Thankfully, Mark redeemed the month with a long think piece about the NFL Draft. Footbaw!

Honestly, May was a pretty dismal month, both in terms of the quality of our output and the subject matter. The world lost both MCA, Maurice Sendak, and Chuck Brown (Duck Dunn, too), and we shared our sadness.

The CAA blew up, too, and while our initial assessment of W&M's athletic administration was probably overly simplistic and too harsh (if you think I feel bad about dissing Terry Driscoll after chatting with him about the subject at length, you're right - this is why I would make a terrible journalist), we're still nursing a post-heyday hangover. So, too, is #caahoops, apparently.

I cannot fucking believe I forgot about this picture when I did the Best Sports Photos of the Year.

The Teej inadvertantly killed Igor by celebrating America. And Whitney. I miss those guys.

At least we drew the month to a close in style, as TR recapped the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, featuring Fat Anthony Kiedis.

June saw us drop a mere 20 posts, the fewest of any month since December 2007. Nice work, lads.

Despite the lack of quantity, I submit to you that the (relative, because, c'mon, it's us we're talking about) quality was impressive - even the filler. Topics ranged from the serious (the use of the term 'hero' to describe military men and women and a tribute to a friend of mine who passed far too early) to the silly (pictures of my feet made a triumphant return), stopping at a burrito-making robot and an appreciation for LeBron's first title. Importantly, we also debuted the 'questionable mascot sexuality' tag. Huge SEO.

Mark started the month with a great read on the Thunder/Spurs Western Conference final, complete with albino James Harden photo, and finished it with a typically solid NBA Draft post. I'm far more happy about the fact that he recently acknowledged that I was right about Draymond Green. Blind squirrel, nut.

I usurped Clarence's role as resident music critic, reviewing Rhett Miller at Jammin' Java and the excellent and highly-recommended Big Easy Express.

We also continued to shake our heads in increasingly dumbfounded amazement as the War on Vaginas escalated.

I'm pretty proud of our resilience. After what must've been an exhausting June, we soldiered on, cranking out 21 posts in July. Warriors, we, the Kellen Winslow, Jr. kind.

Fully five of those posts celebrated, in one form or another, the event of the Gheorghian social season. It was a glorious mess, full of foreign accents, silliness, awkward social interactions, and barely remembered late night grease. Wait, that was just Greg's part. In actual fact, Doofus Wedding was one of the most heartfelt celebrations of love and friendship this grizzled correspondent has ever attended.

One of the more unexpected events of the year occurred in the week before the wedding festivities, when Clarence professed his admiration for Mike Love. This ranks just slightly below Wayne Lapierre being found to have a heart on the list of unlikely happenstances.

In more prosaic news, Dave got a dog. If you haven't read the story of the interaction between Dave, his dog, two garbage cans, and three lesbians, I insist you stop what you're doing and click this link. It might be the single most guffaw-inducing moment in G:TB history.

Summer Dave put his free time to additional good use, proving the existence of the Higgs Boson by...interviewing it. Bet those CERN pointyheads feel pretty stupid about spending all that money on the Large Hadron Collider now.

Speaking of the Collider (which we only did 4 times this year - we're clearly going to need to devote more resources to the project in 2012, if the fucking Republicans in Congress can get their act together and resolve our budget issues), it gave us one of the year's best typographical errors.

Gheorghe: The Nation fielded our first-ever Olympic team, and while we didn't medal, we did have the tallest flagbearer. In other Olympic news, we were among the first major news outlets to predict glory for Gabby "The Flying Squirrel" Douglass. Honestly, prescience like ours should be licensed to protect the innocent.

August is generally one of our lamer months, both as a society and a blog. In our consistency, we did not disappoint. Our August was a mishmash of filler (in one case, we just posted a bunch of the stuff we'd left lingering in drafts - I assume it was a statement on the ephemeral nature of art. Or just really lazy.), video clips, Doofus Honeymoon photos, and dumb fashion.

We did manage to continue to raise awareness of stupid male behavior, international version, as we highlighted the Pussy Riot story.

FOG:TB Marls heralded the great news of the Mars Curiosity Lander's challenge to the Large Hadron Collider's scientific supremacy.

Wan Joon Kim, y'all, the Gangsta Godfather.

Oh, and after years of idle threats, I quit the Redskins.

As ambivalent as our efforts may have been over the summer months, September was a revelation. We were entertaining as shit. By my count, 21 of the 27 posts were at least above average by our standards, an amazing batting average. Even some of the filler was high quality (Taylor Morris, once again) Hell, I don't even have space to highlight two fine college football posts from Mark. In fact, I recommend you peruse the entire month. But in the event you've only got half an hour to kill rather than an afternoon, you'll enjoy these posts:

One Man's Fan Free Agency Journey concluded with the selection of the New Orleans Saints as my new NFL rooting interest. It hasn't exactly been a success on the field. But I move on, stoic in my resolution.

Zman delivered another in a long line of excellent tennis posts, this time a requiem for Andy Roddick's career. He was fated to be an afterthought in the Federer/Nadal/Djokovic era, but he was a massive talent, and a seemingly good dude.

TR entertained with a story of a sporting odyssey, capped with a keeper of a photo. Almost certainly the highlight of the season for the Jets.

Bob Mould rocked, Snoop talked politics, and we learned how to execute a proper snot rocket.

We debuted Music Mondays with Shlara, to much critical acclaim. People liked it so much that we did it again a week later.

Wheelhouse Geoff gave us one of the better Ryder Cup previews you'll find anywhere on the dipshit side of the interwebs, and likely anywhere at all.

You guys remember when we didn't have the real NFL referees? Clarence does - his expert roundtable closed the month in style.

October, as you might imagine, was a bit of a letdown after September's rocket ride to glory.

The little guy was celebrated, as we championed Taylor Heinicke's Heisman campaign (he did win the much more prestigious Walter Payton award) and Adam Greenberg's Field of Dreams moment.

We had zMusic and zLaw, equal measures excellent. And zBills, which was nothing so much as a cry for help.

Shlara gave us a serious post on Lance Armstrong's inevitable exposure as a cheat, and a far-less-serious post in which she self-identified as a cougar. You don't get this kind of range anywhere else in the blogosphere.

While this post about FOG:TB Mike Litos' career move was a solid one, the comments are a great chronicle of the Gheorghe community's experience with Superstorm Sandy.

Our GOP friends were unwise enough to come at me in an election wager. And dumb enough across the nation to give Republicans a majority in the House. Not really dumb enough, actually, just gerrymandered enough.

Our Washington Wizards season preview was as awful as the team turns out to be. Foreshadowing, as it turns out. (Get it?)

And then there was November, in which we did the right thing as a nation, and returned Joe Biden to Washington. 

The Brothers Murray are American treasures and should be celebrated at every opportunity.

I'm pretty proud of the 'Nate Silver is a many splendored manbeast' metatag.

Dave's post-Sandy story was a great read.

In an upset, we were optimistic about the 2012-13 William & Mary hoops season. #1bid4wmtribe!

And in less of a surprise, Dave both defended his Scary Story Contest title and wrote about it using a completely different font than the one cleared for use by the G:TB Brand Management team.

We outed Clarence as a poet, enabling us to use the 'badass poetry' tag again. Also an upset.

We also outed Danimal as an athlete, raconteur, and prince among men.

Clarence closed the month with a post about booze. Another in a line of really surprising things.

We'll finish the year with 305 or so posts, and while it's a bit of a down year in terms of quantity, there was a lot to like. Apologies if I left out one of your favorites. This is hard goddamn work. Much love to the entire Community of Gheorghes. Feel free to excoriate me in the comments, and have a Gheorghey New Year.