Well, friends, another year has come and gone and it’s time to write 2012 into the history books. Obviously, a lot of things happened, from the death of Japanese golfer Yoshiro Hayashi to that awesome sandwich I had yesterday for lunch, so it’s pretty difficult to just nail down specific people, places and events as the best of any particular year. However, we’re pretty awesome at what we do, so it’s a lot easier for us than regular mortals, as evidenced by last year’s award-winning list.
Basically, I sent out a list in the beginning of December and I asked my fellow UPROXX bros to nominate people and stuff that they thought was rather important this year. But what I actually attached to the email was my uncle’s J-Date profile picture, so they all got mad at me and refused to talk to me anymore, and my team of incredible fact checkers and researchers just picked all of this year’s winners at random. Fortunately for all of us, it turns out that these winners were all dead on.
In all seriousness, we argued for days on end over which celebs, politicians, athletes, events and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover models deserved to be recognized for their efforts in pop culture in 2012, and we’re finally confident enough to release this incredible list of the people who we’d love to have a beer and chill with. As always, feel free to disagree and nominate your own, more qualified people in the comments.
When I first started working on this project, I couldn’t, for the life of me, lock down one male celebrity who had simply been the most awesome at everything he did in 2012. Last year was easy, because Louis CK was endlessly awesome. Fortunately, as I was about to simply give up and award this title to some doctor who cured a disease or something, Cajun Boy reminded me that Bill Murray is alive and well.
Specifically, Murray won this year’s greatest honor because he just seems like a spectacular guy, from his awesome Late Night entrance to surprising the staff at Murray’s Cheese Store to crashing a random kickball game. Hell, my favorite Murray Moment occurred when Kelly Lynch revealed to the AV Club that Bill and his brothers call her husband any time they’re watching Road House and her sex scene comes on.
We shouldn’t need a reason for this. Bill Murray is the man… of the year.
Honorable Mention: Robert Downey Jr., because he should always be mentioned for his achievements in awesomeness and Marvel’s The Avengers was the balls.
This wasn’t very hard at all. Sure, there were other women who achieved plenty this year, but did you watch the Parks and Rec Halloween episode? Not only was that episode an example of perfect television, from Gerry’s fart attack to Tom’s Rent-a-Swag, but Poehler’s acting when Ben proposed to Leslie was incredible.
It’ll be a shame when P&R is done, because Poehler really helped create something special. Granted, every actor and writer that works on that show deserves to be showered with praise (and better ratings would be nice), but Poehler’s the glue. She’s just so damn charming and wonderful.
Honorable Mention: Tina Fey, because everything she does is also wonderful.
Let’s see – he plays Ron Swanson, arguably the best and most underrated TV character of the last decade; he crafts large objects like canoes and tables from wood by hand; he has the best mustache in America; he married his perfect woman, and together they provide TV’s best divorced maniacs; and he joined Twitter just to say that it basically sucks.
There is no runner-up. No honorable mention. Nick Offerman is a man.
“Is this a joke?” I’m sure most people are asking that question. Yes, it started two years ago as a joke, between Vince from FilmDrunk and myself. We just couldn’t accept that someone so bland and uncharismatic as Tatum could literally dance his way to success, as a mumbly douche in forgettable movies like Step Up and She’s the Man.
But then something just… happened. As I wrote in my Worst Movies of 2012 feature for FilmDrunk, The Vow was par for the course for Tatum. Yet it made $196 million worldwide. Then Magic Mike was released and our joke disappeared. It was replaced by an honest, sincere appreciation for a guy who was really trying to prove himself. Vince and I both loved Magic Mike, and a lot of people ignored us and thought it was just part of the gag. But it was a great movie and Tatum was great in it.
We certainly weren’t alone, because this little movie based loosely on Tatum’s own career as a male stripper that cost just $7 million to make grossed $167 million. In all, Tatum starred in three movies that grossed more than $150 million this year – 21 Jump Street topped the list at $201 million because it was awesome – and now he has his eyes set on adding producer, writer and director to his IMDB profile.
2013 will indeed be the year of C-Tates.
(Side note to Tatum, as I know he’s reading this: He was my original pick for Man of the Year, but he lost major cool points for his restaurant not being open when I visited New Orleans recently. Not cool, C-Tates. NOT COOL.)
You can roll your eyes or chins all you want, but it’s true. TLC’s celebration of white trash, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, was a ratings Truckosaurus this year, as it even rolled over the Republican National Convention during the campaign. Look, we don’t have to like Mama or Honey Boo Boo or even their three-thumbed kid. But we have to at least recognize the impact that it had on our lives and Mountain Dew sales in 2012.
Honey Boo Boo will eventually disappear and something even more remarkably worse will take her place. Such is TV and the most despicable people on the planet – the executives at TLC.
Chris Brown is famous because teenage girls and the perennially out-of-touch Grammy committee think that he’s a talented singer. If you’re not a fan of pop music, then chances are you still know who he is because of his infamous domestic assault on Rihanna. And then you probably remember him again from his hissy fit on Good Morning America after he didn’t like a question about how he beat up a girl. Or maybe from when he dressed as Osama Bin Laden on Halloween. And so on.
Jenny Johnson is Twitter famous, which means she had several hundred thousand followers because people think she’s hilarious. The problem with Twitter, though, is that if you make enough jokes directed at Chris Brown, then he and his army known as Team Breezy will take notice. That’s how Johnson became famous famous in 2012, because she kept pressing Brown about his domestic violence issues, and he responded as we would have expected.
After telling Johnson that he would defecate on her retina, Brown “deleted” his Twitter. Of course, he’s back now, still doing his thing and completely oblivious to reality, thanks to the worship heaped on him by Team Breezy. Oh, and he’s dating Rihanna again, which is just great.
This was undoubtedly the year of the Bro. And it won’t slow down anytime soon, not with Bro culture spreading rapidly across the globe. Pop your collars and make the sorority girls holler, because the Bro is just getting warmed up.
Honorable Mention: Buttchug. Seriously, 2012 would have been pretty lame if I hadn’t added buttchug to my vernacular. Alas, it was a contribution from the Bro community, just providing further evidence of the incredible Bro movement.
As I pointed out in my Biggest Sports Moments of 2012 feature at With Leather, we’ve had enough of Ryan Lochte. Yes, he is a gold medalist who made his country proud at the 2012 Summer Olympics, but that kind of gas will only drive the Hummer so far. Lochte lost us when he declared his desire to be an actor, despite the fact that he can barely speak. Oh, and he buddied up with The Situation, which is just… unacceptable.
But Lochte’s shining moment came when he coined the term “JEAH” and trademarked it, because, you know, we all desperately want to get a piece of that action. We still don’t know what it means, and therefore we won’t ever accept it as an actual word.
As a person who cannot stand politics and hates politicians, Texts from Hillary was a very welcomed escape from typical election year nonsense. It also made Hill-dawg seem like a normal person after years of coming off as a shrewd, calculating minotaur. So that was kind of cool.
Honorable Mention: Ecce Homo, Grumpy Cat, Dog Shaming.
When your year ends with news that Charlie Sheen is paying off your back taxes, it’s safe to say that you’ve had a bad 2012. I can’t even count off the top of my head how many times Lindsay Lohan was arrested or appeared in court this year, nor can I keep track of how many times she allegedly stole something or hit someone with her car.
All I know is that even with her money problems, she better have sent Amanda Bynes some Omaha Steaks for stealing the batsh*t signal spotlight away from her for a few weeks.
As previously mentioned, I hate politics and am like an ostrich at the beach when election season rolls around. But good lord, when did politicians stop hiring qualified speech writers and people who could review those speeches for anything that might be considered, well, bad? Look, I know that there were people who thought this speech was the most horrible thing ever and I know there were also people who agreed with it. And I understand both arguments.
What I simply don’t understand is how politicians are just so careless in this Internet era when 90% of the population is carrying a camera and logged into Twitter at all times. It’s mind-boggling.
With all due respect to the other three U.S. women’s gymnasts, this is really all about Gabby Douglas and McKayla Maroney. Douglas won us over with her underdog story, as she had almost quit gymnastics several years ago because of the stress on her family. And of course there was her parents’ messy public divorce as they fought over Gabby’s earnings. But then, as she does, Oprah swooped in and rescued her and all was well.
As for McKayla, she brought us one of the biggest memes of 2012 with her “face”. Everywhere she went, she was asked to do her Bartman, and she complied like a good sport. That kid’s got pizzazz.
And there are the other three, whose names I don’t know. Good job, you three.
I don’t remember what the first Tweet from @Pontifex was, but I assume it was something like, “Hey, I’mma the Pope-a!” Anyway, news that the top Catholic dog joined Twitter inspired a great deal of hilarity, as fake tweets were fired off without hesitation. I bet he read all of them, too, as one of his lackeys was all, “It’s cool, Pope. They just hatin’ on U, playboy.” Damn kids and their giant hats and Twitters.
Honorable Mention: Jose Canseco, The Iron Sheik. Their strange Twitter feud is NSFW and quite hilarious.
This was my big curveball. We were pretty much set to once again confirm our love for either Alison Brie or Kate Upton (or both in my dreams), but I thought that was kind of boring. Then I remembered something while stumbling around the Tumblrs – people are really obsessed with Doctor Who, and much more notably Karen Gillan this year.
So then I looked her up to remind myself of why people were so bonkers over this girl, and my lawyer showed up with a fresh restraining order. That said, Hollywood needs to give us more Karen Gillan in 2013.
Yup, I’m still not ready to look at this magazine cover.
Honorable Mention: Kate Upton’s 2012 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue
Reminding us that there is some good in the otherwise terrible world that is the Internet, we learned the story of bus monitor Karen Klein back in June, as she had been bullied by children to the point of tears. One student on her bus caught the incident on video and what happened next was a seemingly selfless random person started a fundraiser for Klein, and anonymous donors raised more than $700,000 for her. With that money, she took a nice vacation and donated the rest to charity. She’s not a hero in the sense that she saved lives, obviously, but she could have just taken that money and run.
At the same time, though, proving that the terrible side of the Internet always wins, that guy who started the fundraiser tried to make the whole thing about him. Humanity will never win.
To date, Korean pop star Psy’s hit single, “Gangnam Style”, has racked up more than 1 billion views on YouTube, making it the most-watched video in the history of the Intertubes. From baseball parks to college campuses, people were doing the Gangnam Style dance, as Psy rose to stardom in the U.S. Of course, we later learned that Psy had previously written very anti-American songs, which created a great deal of irony about his newfound global fame, but who cares when that song is so damn catchy?
I don’t even know the lyrics and I can’t help but do the dance!
Seriously, let’s leave Gangnam Style in 2012, people. It ended with this parody attempt. That’s it. It’s over. Let it die.
Honorable Mention: Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call me Maybe”
It’s bad enough when one of my friends gets knocked up and then spends nine months plastering sonograms and pictures of a nursery on Facebook, but it’s even worse when all of my female friends post nonstop status updates about another couple’s baby, especially when they’ve never even met that couple. That’s what happened to so many of us when it was announced that Prince William and Kate had gotten freaky.
Why do we still care about these people? Do British people even care about them? Call me old-fashioned, but when it comes to British royalty, I’m still a little untrusting. Never forget – NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!
Sure, there were meth lab explosions, psycho fights over garlic knots, and dudes eating each other’s faces. But, I mean, if you’re going to pick the most Florida story of the year, it’s clearly going to be about the stripper who got a tattoo on her b-hole, right?
Honorable Mention: Bath salts zombie. Yeah, that was a crazy story, but cannibalism was all over the place this year. Butthole tattoos… those are one-of-a-kind.
