The year 2012, as told through tweets I favorited

AFOS, which I finally upgraded from mono to stereo earlier this month, was occasionally mentioned on Twitter by other people in 2012, either to express their disappointment in iTunes dumping AFOS from its station list (another reason to dislike iTunes, but I can't really do anything about their decision to dump AFOS) or to praise my station for streaming movie themes they enjoyed hearing. Author Scott Pearson, a contributor to Simon & Schuster's Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Myriad Universes anthologies, did both:

The AFOS blog's new "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner" column received a few shout-outs and retweets on Twitter, mostly from staffers at Titmouse because I said a few nice things about the animation studio's collabos with Disney: Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja and the even more impressive--and anti-authoritarian--Motorcity. The latter action cartoon is a one-season wonder that looks remarkably like a big-budget animated feature film each week and is another unfortunate casualty in a TV landscape that hasn't been kind lately to true sci-fi like Motorcity. Alyssa Rosenberg posted a piece on ThinkProgress where she lamented the lack of true sci-fi shows on the currently-more-fantasy-oriented--and crap-oriented--Syfy. Motorcity, which was slept on by even the few TV critics out there who regularly cover animated shows, was exactly the kind of sci-fi show Rosenberg was clamoring for.

I favorited Motorcity writer George Krstic's tweet about my review of his "Power Trip" episode mainly because of the joke he cracked about himself and his colleagues:

Enough about me. What about the rest of 2012?

(Most year-end lists can make for boring and grueling reading. Reflecting on the past year by skimming through tweets I favorited is turning into an entertaining alternative from scrolling through endless year-end articles and think pieces.)

Quite a bit of fun resulted on Twitter from the much-hyped second season of Downton Abbey (I once tweeted, "Note to self: Don't forget to add #DowntonAbbey to the list of 'Shit White People Like That I Don't Understand the Appeal Of.'"):

Artists whom I've been giving heavy airplay to on AFOS got the chance to kick it with their idols:

There was 2 Broke Girls showrunner Michael Patrick King's stupid defense of the racist material that's being written for the Korean Long Duk Dong on the show, or as GQ writer Lauren Bans amusingly calls the openly gay King's brand of humor, "gaycism":

Ignorance came not just from sitcom joke writers but also from TV stars and, as usual, the far right:

There was Linsanity (and the inevitable and stupid racial slurs in response to the rise of the NBA's first Asian American star player):

There was also the fall of aging (and disappointingly homophobic) champ Manny Pacquiao:

There was the horrible death of Trayvon Martin, who was killed by a batshit crazy wannabe vigilante who frequently changes his looks as if he's a racist Latino Cher going through costume changes during a concert:

There were too many deaths of musicians whose work I dug, especially an MC whose rhymes I grew up listening to and reciting like they were a slightly stoned-sounding Pledge of Allegiance:

There was some movie called The Avengers:

There was also a tiny election:

The senseless massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, the latest of too many gun-related tragedies, reignited the debate over gun control in America. It also pointed to ugly truths about race:

The Newtown massacre elicited from the right some absurd comments, which were promptly torn apart by comedians on Twitter:

Newtown was one of many instances in 2012 that made us want to just lie in bed for an entire week and pull the covers over our heads, but luckily, comedians on Twitter were always there when we needed a good laugh:

Alright, this tweet was actually posted by Wedding Band and Good Guys star Jenny Wade back in 2010, but I didn't favorite it until last week. She's still right. America could especially improve upon the last item.