Movie of the Year: Bellflower, a intensely beautiful movie that was stuck in my head for days, like a song. Many thanks to Back Alley Film Series for bringing this to a Charlotte theater!
Honorable Mention: Thor, X-men: First Class, Captain America. What can I say? I’m a sucker for movies based on Marvel Comics.

Worst Movie of the Year: I can honestly say I managed to avoid watching shitty movies this year so it would not be fair for me to name a “worst movie” based on other people’s reviews.

Song of the Year: Boris “Attention Please” (youtube linky linky)
Honorable Mention: Radiohead “The Daily Mail”, Beastie Boys “Say It”

Album of the Year: Omar Rodriguez Lopez “Telesterion”. Chances are, you don’t have the time nor money to buy every Omar Rodriguez Lopez solo album or side project. This double CD set collects 37 of his best tracks to save you that time and money.
Honorable Mention: Krallice “Diotima”, Radiohead “The King of Limbs”

Word of the Year: “Occupy.”

Software of the Year: Dropbox isn’t new this year but it is now my most-used 3rd party software. It is another small step towards what is surely the future of computing.
Honorable Mention: Grand Theft Auto 3 for iOS. GTA3 was the first game I ever watched on X-Box. Now it is available on your phone. That, my friends, is progress.
Hipstamatic Disposable – like Hipstamatic but more fun.

Hardware of the Year: Apple iPad. A game-changer and, almost a year after its release, still untouched in its field (10″ touchscreen tablets). I predict a version in 2011 that will have hardware specs that are good enough for me to rationalize buying one.
Honorable Mention: The Amazon Kindle Family. The Kindle Fire for showing burning Google with its “Open” marketing spiel, the Kindle Touch for upgrading the Kindle 3 while also dropping the price to the magic $99 mark, and the touchless/keyboardless Kindle for being cheaper than any good eReader you could have imagined 3 years ago.

MMA Fight of the Year: Frankie Edgar vs. Gray Maynard III at UFC 136. The last time someone other than Gray Maynard, Frankie Edgar, or BJ Penn fought for the UFC Lightweight belt was in December 2009. Thanks to this fight, we’ll finally get some new blood in the mix (Ben Henderson in Feb 2012). Also, if this fight didn’t convince Frankie’s haters to STFU, nothing will.
Honorable Mention: Shogun Rua vs Dan Henderson. Michael Chandler vs Eddie Alvarez.

TV Drama of the Year: Game of Thrones. Tough to pick because there were so many great shows this year but Game of Thrones was damn near flawless. Sex, violence, sad, tragic, funny, and fuck yes Peter Dinklage.
Honorable Mention: American Horror Story. Boardwalk Empire. And I must mention the fact that Sons of Anarchy more or less redeemed itself this season.

TV Comedy of the Year: Louie. Again.
Honorable Mention: Enlightened

Worst TV of the Year: True Blood was bad this season but I never really saw it as “good” in the first place. It was fun but not really good. It wasn’t nearly as fun this year and even less good than normal. I know a few people who stopped watching it, I can’t really blame them. Dexter, on the other hand, was a show I considered good up until last year’s Season 5. Season 6 started off so bad (thinner than normal paint-by-numbers cookie cutter characters, dialog seemingly written by highschool interns, now with bad special effects!) that I gave up after the first episode. From what I’ve heard, I didn’t miss a thing.

Movie of the Year: Avatar. This was easily the best CGI in a movie by far and the best 3D in a movie so far. Unless these 2 things become passé in a year, Avatar could end up being the Citizen Kane of CGI (a so-so movie that set a standard for all movies from that point on).
Honorable Mention: Moon.

Worst Movie of the Year: I didn’t bother seeing many shitty movies this year but the worst I saw was Terminator: Salvation.

Song of the Year: According to iTunes, my most played song of 2009 (that was released in 2009) was Mastodon – Oblivion.
Honorable Mention: The Mars Volta – Teflon

Album of the Year: Dangermouse and Sparklehorse – Dark Night of the Soul.
Honorable Mention: The Mars Volta – Octahedron, Kid Cudi – Man on the Moon: The End of The Day

Live Concert of the Year: Leonard Cohen at The Academy of Music in Philadelphia, PA. 3rd row center seats may have colored my opinion but this was a show I never thought I’d have a chance to see.
Honorable Mention: tie: NIN|JA 2009 in that big shed in Charlotte, NC and The Butthole Surfers at the Masquerade in Atlanta, GA. Again, these were shows I thought I’d never get to see (again, in the case of Jane’s Addiction): Jane’s Addiction and The Butthole Surfers toured (separately) this year with their original lineups.

Word of the Year: “heh”
Honorable Mention: “tweetup”

Software of the Year: Windows 7 – for being so good that people who pretend to hate Vista for no real reason aren’t able to hate Windows 7 for the same non-existent reason.
Honorable Mention: Android 2.0 – for giving at&t haters a little hope for a good phone. If Google would fix their contacts, I’d switch.

Hardware of the Year: iPhone 3Gs
Honorable Mention: Motorola Droid

MMA Fight of the Year: Fedor vs Brett Rogers. Fedor’s return and MMA on CBS, all in one night. Fedor, for the first time since Fujita clocked him in 2003, looked like he might lose the fight for a while. I think Fedor may have passed his prime but that just means that we can finally see him fight without knowing he won before it even begins.
Honorable Mention: Pretty much any fight with BJ Penn or Scott Smith in it.

TV Drama of the Year: Mad Men. Season 3 of Mad Men continued the trend of allowing me to call it “the best show on television” without hesitation.
Honorable Mention: Sons of Anarchy. I really liked the first season of this show but the 2nd season made the first look weak in comparison. There were more “oh shit” moments in this show than I could try to remember. It reminds me of back when The Sopranos was good.

TV Comedy of the Year: Curb Your Enthusiasm. Another great season of Curb plus the Seinfeld reunion I didn’t know I wanted.
Honorable Mention: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. SuperNews.