2025 was a long and eventful year. In a word: Intense. Bad times are good for satire but not necessarily for the satirist. I used the Magritte painting as the featured image as a way to squeeze my Psychedelic Surgery post onto this list as lagniappe. I’m devious that way.
It’s my tenth annual exercise in egomania. For the fifth consecutive year, it’s a Top 40. It makes me feel like an early Seventies DJ spinning the hits.
The list is in chronological order. As a way to winnow down my output, I’ve excluded three of my regular features from consideration: Saturday Odds & Sods, Irksome Things, and the Friday Cocktail Hour.
On with the show, this is it:
1/07: HBO’s Yacht Rock
1/13: Ill Wind Blows Los Angeles No Good
1/23: Fascist Fellow Travelers
2/06: Gaza Is The New Greenland
2/17: America Goes From Nazi Punching To Nazi Coddling
2/20 Trump’s Improbable History, 19th Century Edition
2/24: Blame It On Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh & Barrett
3/09: Gore Vidal’s The Best Man
3/18: Exhuming McKinley
3/24: Trump’s Improbable History, 20th Century Edition
3/26: Ma, Ma, Where’s My Pa? Gone To The White House, Ha, Ha, Ha.
4/03: Assholery Is Not Strength
4/09: Quo Vadis On The Potomac
4/16: Contempt
4/22: The Van Hollen Mission & Memories Of Leo Ryan
4/30: We’re All Alright: My Normal Day At Jazz Fest
5/05: Birdbrain Of Alcatraz
5/12: Letter From New Orleans: Enter The Creole Pope, Exit The Unpopular Saint
6/05: Trolling Harvey Milk
6/26: The Strange Comeback Of Jim Crow
7/07: Malaka Of The Week: Joe Rogan
7/08: ICE Melts In MacArthur Park
7/15: Team Of Baby Starvers
7/21: The Bonfire Of The MAGA Vanities
7/24: Speaker Yellowbelly
8/07: Return Of The Bug Man
8/14: MAGA Flies Its Freak Show Flag
8/25: The Maxwell Scandals
9/02: Malaka Of The Week: Byron Donalds
9/23: Stephen Miller: MAGA Cerberus
10/06: The Adolescent Administration
10/14: Where Optimism Goes To Die
10/15: The I Love Hitler Club
10/27: Malaka Of The Week: Graham Platner
11/02: The Tingler (1959)
11/17: Crackpot Crackup?
12/01: The March Of Mendacity
12/09: Don’t Call Them Conservatives: Supreme Court Edition
12/16: Stifle, Donald
12/23: The Clownfish: Cajun Viking?
That concludes this journey through 2025. The last word goes to Frank Sinatra and Count Basie:
Have I told you lately how much I love Count Basie?