Deep-Sixing Our 2014 Top 10 Lists

Some readers were not entirely thrilled by our year-end top 10 lists, if you can imagine that. Culture writer Isaac Simpson's “10 Best L.A. Street Art Murals of 2014” left reader Melissa “Zippy” Downing digging up some weighty history to prove us wrong. She called it “utterly insane that in your Top L.A. Mural Recap of 2014 (re: copy-and-paste submission from a 'team' of Instagram 'experts'), the once-in-a-lifetime collaboration between French hyperrealist MTO and five members of UTI, L.A.'s longest-running active graf crew, painted on the facade of the first hotel in Los Angeles history to allow African-American tenants, was omitted.“

Although several readers were thrilled to see Dark Comedy, Ty Segall and others on the L.A. Weekly staff's list of “The 10 Best Albums of 2014 by L.A. Artists,” Jeff Laufer, of rockbandsofLA.com, says he “listened attentively to your Top 10 L.A. artists, and being a fellow music journalist here in the crooked city of Los Angeles, I found that those artists chosen were truly not the best music. Rather, it seemed as though the writers chose music not for their merit but for their obscurity.” (Well, Skrillex has 19 million Facebook likes and YG has 3 million, but OK.) Others simply wished we'd added a few bands: “L.A. band Miner released Into the Morning this year, and it's AWESOME!!” wrote joyadanceflow. And KevaRosenberg simply said, “Fartbarf, Dirty Power.”

0x000AThe Interview's Other Fallout

Forgotten in the media focus on Amy Pascal's emails, the movie chains that refused to show The Interview and Sony's decision (later reversed) not to release the movie are thousands of little-guy Sony employees who got screwed by the hackers. Writes Steve Clarke, “I am the parent of a low-level Sony employee I love with a depth beyond mere patriotism. … My child's personal information may be out there for criminals to make use of. My child may have gone through fears those outside the eye of the storm know nothing about. … When the rest of you are done arguing about this event, you'll start to see it for what it really is: a new way of waging war. Turning our privacy inside out. Turning us against each other. Turning everyone on the information superhighway into roadkill, agency by agency, corporation by corporation, individual by individual. This is not about 'art.' This is about the Art of War. And as comfortable as our slumber may be, we will soon awaken to the fact we are at war. One if by land. Two if by sea. How many if by smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop and mainframe?“

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