My Favorite Things of the Millennial Decade

The beginning of this inaugural decade to the new millennium found me deep in the Florida Everglades with 80,000 other fans of the band Phish. The next 10 years, of course, was anything but a concert. From stolen elections and terrorist attacks to devastating hurricanes and bubble collapses, this Millennial Decade will definitely be a much studied one in the future.

However, there were some good things that our culture produced this decade. Below are my favorite things, compartmentalized for ease of navigation (note: I have not watched every TV show or movie, read every book or listened to every new album of the 2000s. This list – and not a very comprehensive one at that – is comprised of TV shows, movies and books that I enjoyed, from what I remember, over the past 10 years).

I purposefully did not include music because I don’t regularly listen to new music.

Would love to hear your thoughts on what was your favorite (these are in no particular order):

TV Shows:
The Wire
The Sopranos
Arrested Development
The West Wing
Mad Men
Six Feet Under
Lost
Friday Night Lights
Curb Your Enthusiasm
The Office
30 Rock
South Park (while yes, it didn’t start in the 0s, but man, the show is consistently funny)

Movies:
The Royal Tenenbaums
Wall E
Kill Bill
Amelie
The Piano Teacher
Cache
Y Tu Mama Tambien
Lord of the Rings
Gladiator
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Donnie Darko
The Dark Knight
Requiem For a Dream
The Wrestler
Monster’s Ball
American Psycho
Memento
Hotel Rwanda
Star Wars episode III
The Pianist
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Books:
Fiction
Harry Potter series – J.K Rowling
The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
The Reluctant Fundamentalist – Mohsin Hamid
Rumo – Walter Moers (along w/The 13 and ½ Lives of Captain BlueBear, as well as The City of Dreaming Books
The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
Lamb – Christopher Moore
Tree of Smoke – Denis Johnson

Nonfiction
The Night of the Gun – David Carr
The Nine – Jeffrey Toobin
The Assault on Reason – Al Gore
The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins
Schulz – David Michaelis
American Lion – Jon Meachem
The Lucifer Effect – Philip Zimbardo
The Black Swan – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Fast Food Nation – Eric Schlosser
The First Word – Christine Kenneally
A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson
The Black Hole Wars – Leonard Susskind
Freakonomics – Steven D. Levitt and Steven J. Dubner
The World Without Us – Alan Weisman
Naked – David Sedaris
Running With Scissors – Augesten Burroughs
John Adams – David McCullough
1776 – David McCullough
Moneyball – Michael Lewis
The Blind Side – Michael Lewis
The Last Night of the Yankees Dynasty – Buster Olney
This Is Your Brain On Music – Daniel Levitan