My Top This and That of 2012

It’s been a tasking year actually, one which went by with me still not knowing how to drive a vehicle, still unable to be seen as the sane person I really am and yet to make headway on the path to marriage as verily pointed out to me lately by equally unmarried friends.

It almost happened, the third bit. But like I said, almost. All is well, hence I’d randomly take a look at other things that I enjoyed this year. Starting with:

Songs
Omo Pastor – Ajebutter 22
Too many witty lines on this one. ♫ And I’m N-T-A mo kan speak out. ♫ ” and ♫ You bring fire to my wood, o fe da’nà. ♫ are just a couple. And the beat!

Power Circle – MMG ft. Gunplay & Kendrick Lamar
The best thing about this song, even though he may have done a tidy verse, is that Rick Ross didn’t do more than he did on the song. I zone when Meek Mill’s verse comes on (dunno why) but overall, this was my morning devotion for the third quarter of the year.

Clique – Kanye West ft. Big Sean & Jay-Z
*bumps head to the beat while going ♫ Clique… Clique… Clique… Clique… Clique. ♫*

Shake It Out – Florence + The Machine
earpiece eargasms.

Braveheart – Lupe Fiasco
One of my favourite rappers on the beat of one of my favourite producers (the Runners). Odd combination on paper to me, but the track turned out a very good one.

Rich Forever – Rick Ross ft. John Legend
That part when the main beat comes on… better than whatever high alomo can get you to.

Higher – Big Sean ft. Mae, Pusha T & The Dream
The Dream murdered the hook. Pretty much why I put this song here.

Ihe Neme – 2 Face
A simply happy song. And funny part is, I still don’t have the song. Only just hear it often on others’ phones.

Breath of Life – Florence + The Machine
This song, is the highlight of watching Snow White and the toned down Thor. Powerful rendition to end a (stale) story we grew up hearing/reading/watching.

Tonight [Best You Ever Had] – John Legend ft. Ludacris
Song had a brother doing false-ettos in Lagos and Ilorin bath tubs. Not a jergens behaviour. 😦

2 Mussh – Reminisce
Beats so Legendury. Cheeky lyrics from Reminisce, lyrics toh ta ta! The remix too isn’t half bad.

Asylum – Slaughterhouse ft. Eminem
What I liked most about the song, the beat, verses… whole feel of the song went with the title, and it’s groovy (for someone who mostly hears rap music I guess). Basically what they did on the album, a good album.

Club Rock – Durella
♫ sweet sixteen wan-na have a good time… ♫ on a cool, lowkey beat. Tugbaski!

Others
Lines – Big Boi ft. A$AP Rocky & Phantogram
Goodbye – Slaughterhouse
Hard White [remix] – Yelawolf ft. T.I. & Slaughterhouse
Black Boy Fly – Kendrick Lamar
Come to Me – Sarkodie ft. D’banj
Oliver Twist – D’banj
Tony Montana – Naeto C
Leave Level – Owen Gee ft. M.I., eLDee, Waje, Isolate…
Sherane – Kendrick Lamar

And a special mention to Olamide for numerous, humorous songs he churned this year. Certainly my act of the year.

Go and find songs by Ms. Chief too. She try well-well!

Ah, sorry if you were expecting download links o. I mean… “say no to piracy” please.

Top Movies Seen This Year
Doesn’t have to be a movie released this year, in case you missed the “seen” above. And if you follow me on twitter, you would know that…

The Dark Knight
… was seen by me time and again, I didn’t need to have my eyes on the (laptop or phone’s) screen after a certain time of watching the movie. Yet, I’ll always get pumped up when the scene that culminates in Batman upending that long truck begins.

Great script, great delivery. Some say the theme’s too dark… well, what were you expecting? The train station Potter went when he ‘died’? Move.

The Dark Knight Rises
Bane turned out to be a puppet. And “His only crime… was that he loved me”, f*** outta here with that zoning Miss Tate! “Goodbye my friend… ” *smh*. A notch lower than The Dark Knight but goodness, the mere fact Hans Zimmer did the score makes TDKR 2012’s undisputed movie. *mutes every contrary opinion*.

P.S.: Christopher Nolan sha got a relative to play a waka pass role in the film. Well done.

The Avengers
Nothing more to say. Too bad it came out same year the Dark Knight rose. Still no explaining how Thor got to Earth from Asgard.

The Expendables 2
Doing a second part was pushing it by Stallone, but he pulled it off with the classic gong-hu flick… honouring us with the presence of Chuck Norris while at it. He better just enjoy the money hammered from the two films and not do a third. Aseju ni won n pe ‘yen.

3 Idiots
Funny, thoughtful. Probably the only Indian/Hindi movie I’ve seen and took serious.

Prometheus
The idea of the film is captivating, more so the fact that she went ahead to their home world rather than return to earth. Uber busy body behaviour though!

Project X
Too dope! If it happens in Nigeria, I suggest a house along Bourdillon. “And this, is.. Project X… yo!”

Inception
Yep, another 2010 movie. One my brother dismissed with a whiff back when it was released. Naïve. Do you still remember from how many levels Di Caprio’s character came up from after finding Saito?

Salt
Heartless wife.

Chronicles of Riddick
Yes, another one from archives but one worthy to be redone “in 3D”.

Argo
Only read the synopsis and loved it. ( ._.)

Skyfall
A gay ex-agent being the pain in MI6’s asses. Such a twisted masterpiece.

Top Daydreams (Clean Version)
Driving to school in a particular person’s turbo engine ‘muscle’.

Paying for a certain hostel in Ilorin, and demolishing the whole structure. Then building something much better there.

Finally finishing a novel, which may well be deleted altogether. Writing can be a piss off profession at times. But then…

Being paid £400 per week as a writer for a publication online. Not sure why it’s never more than that figure since we’re talking daydreams here.

Reporting the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games live from Brazil, not once getting distracted.

Buying a controlling stake of Horlicks from Glaxo Smithkline. The world domination afterwards ehn… *makes mental note to daydream of that*.

Living happily and comfortably somewhere in Estonia.

A number of his friends getting appointed into a Federal Government’s cabinet, at least three of them. But not in this Jonathan administration of death!

Watching an Arsenal match live in the Emirates Stadium. Never did the bit of the match itself, can’t be going through same heart-racing bull crap experienced watching Arsenal in reality. Arsenal’s sanity’s much worse than mine.

Debuting for Kwara United at 27 and winning the league and CAF Champions League in the second season. Then becoming their all time leading goal scorer, winning the Nations Cup with Nigeria soon after and finishing third at a World Cup. How he had this daydream, when he’s not played a proper football match in years let alone a monkey-post ‘set’… is better left to me.

Acquiring three high performance laptops, each one with at least 8GB of RAM (one possibly clocking 16GB), and using them same time for work, pleasure and browsing the internet. Yes, he really is socially dead!

Meeting one alter-ego in a person. That ego, hopefully, won’t be me.

Top Daydreams (R-21 Version)
Two swords drawn, fighting what aren’t demons but certainly not angels in a Church… while Mass is being celebrated. The Mass goes on while he fights them because the congregation can’t see them fight while the officiating Priest pretends not to. I’m not sure but, the fight may have been over the Communion, a special kind of communion. I’d rather not delve further, yet.

Setting two, largest size Ghana Must Go bags full of one thousand naira notes on fire… :s

Selling souls for a living. (stopped work on it. Maybe will do next year).

Hearing a conference of religious clerics, christian and muslim, ask Him on judgement day, “Are you Christian or Muslim?” only for another section of clerics to ask “Are you male or female?”. Then I imagined hearing ‘Is that why we’re here’ in reply to… uhmm… I should stop now.

Hunting down all those who posted a “list” in that week list-blogging was the trend on twitter. That would be my list.

Top Lines of the Year
“hayteen an’ ah-bove… sheybi eez legah…” – D’banj in Sarkodie’s “Come to Me”.

“as enemies envy the green my n****s lawn mow.” – Wale in MMG’s “Power Circle”.

“Been around the world, twice to be exact.” – J. Cole in DJ Khaled’s “They Ready”.

“Bands emeka dance.” – Nigerians singing Juicy J’s song.

“Halle-Berry. Halle-lujah.” – Kendrick Lamar on A$AP Rocky’s “F**kin’ Problems”

“So I log on… to her internet. On a four-gee… wireless!” – D’banj on K-Switch’s “Sister Caro”.

“o ta! ta!” – Reminisce on “2 Mussh”.

“Ohh I’m in trouble… ” – Parker’s girl in Amazing Spiderman

“DESHI! DESHI! Basara Basara!” – The Dark Knight Rises

“I’ve a plan… ATTACK!” – Iron Man in “Marvel’s: The Avenger’s”

“There’s a midget in the oven!” – Cobb’s Jewish pal in “Project X”.

“You plebeian” – -___-

Top Goals
I wish I could talk about goals scored this year but I didn’t watch a lot of matches to be talking about this. But of course, Zlatan’s fourth in Sweden’s 4-2 over England remains a stinking goal.

And off the top of my head, the other top goals of 2012 I can think of include:

Robin van Persie’s goal at the Emirates against Everton, before the madness that saw him end up in the devil’s lair happened, is another.

Karim Benzema’s sweet volley from a very tight angle for Real Madrid last season. Can’t remember against what team but I do know that goal had similarly only been scored by Marco van Basten.

Papiss Cisse’s freak (second) goal at Stamford Bridge against Chelsea.

Not sure if this was in 2012, but I remember one of Demba Ba’s goals in Newcastle United’s 3-1 win at Swansea City, where he looped a curling effort over Michel Vorm. The technique oozing off that goal, midas stuff!

Sergio Agüero’s title clincher. Nothing special about how the goal was scored, just the massive impact it had.

Peter Crouch’s volley in Stoke City’s 1-1 draw at home to Manchester City.

Can’t think of any more but I’m sure CR7, Lionel Messi, Neymar and Radamel Falcao scored some cool ones too.

With those, how about wrapping this post up with my top FM12 matches. You see the joy in this game is, you can save an entire match and watch (the key highlights or the entire match) later.

So some of the matches I saved are:

Arsenal 5-1 Manchester United
Unlike daddy Wenger, I didn’t ever sell Robin van Persie and in this match he got two goals and provided one of the goals in Aleksandr Kerzhakov’s hattrick.

All five goals were scored in the first 35 minutes (swerve) while Kyle Bartley got a straight red in the 38th. Still, those chumps could only get a goal back? Abeg WengerOut!! A hundred and forty thousand pounds sterling every week for the love of Bergkamp!

Arsenal 3-1 Real Madrid
This was the second leg semi final of the Champions Cup. After a goalless first half, Douglas Costa opened the scoring for Arsenal with one helluva volley before van Persie extended the lead on the hour mark.

Then Karim Benzema got a goal back for Madrid with two minutes to play. Another goal for them and they’d have gone through on away goals but my young prodigee Olivier Markoutz got the third in stoppage time.

Arsenal 3-2 Manchester City
Can’t remember if it was the League Cup or FA Cup final but in it, Arsenal came from two goals down to win 3-2 after extra time. Van Persie got two goals and Douglas Costa scored a sweet free kick in extra time.

England 13-0 Liechenstein
Mo spell won ni oruko mehn, tun fun manéja ni jara. No mercy.

Great Britain 4-3 Brazil
Humbly took the job as Great Britain’s manager to the Olympics and won all matches with relative ease till Brazil came along.

Having beat Spain in the semis, Brazil – complete with Neymar, Hulk, Pato, Sandro, my Douglas Costa and Ganso and others – led 2-0 by half time against my Team GB.

Then we got a penalty, and no thanks to forgetting to set my peference for penalty takers… Andy ponytail Caroll stepped up instead of Rooney. A “fuck my life!” moment, which last a few seconds only thankfully. Dude scored another goal sef. Miraculous.

Arsenal 4-2 Sillywhites
Having lost every match played against Tottenham (home and away) consecutively for two and half seasons, we met in the FA Cup final. Twice came from behind to end 90 minutes at 2-2 before Gervinho scored twice in extra time, with his glorified forehead (as both came from Arteta cornerkicks), to end the embarrassing run.

Arsenal 3-1 AS Roma
So happened after my first season, I finished sixth in the league and got knocked out of the UCL first round. Europa League jam me mehn and you must know, that Cup goes hard.

The minnows in it, migraine inducing inglorious basterds! Huffed and puffed to the last 16 and met Roma. Having scored a late second goal in the 4-2 first leg loss, Roma took the lead with a penalty right on the 45th minute from a non-existent foul… meaning Arsenal needed three goals to qualify.

60 minutes, 1-1 from the penalty spot. 75 minutes, 2-1. 90 minutes, still 2-1… OmO! Five minutes into stoppage time, still 2-1 and Ganso goes off injured. All hope lost, Wilshere throws a cross in with 97 minutes on the clock. Ball hits a Roma defender and rolls into the bottom corner.

Hysteria from me, from what the rest of the world refer to as just a simulation game. Dead people.

They: “No wonder Leke is how he is. How will he be close to ‘finding love’ when he’s analysing football manager like this? Reckless behaviour.”

Me: “By all means, please blame Ramsey!”

Top Shit to Look Forward To in 2013
Samsung’s Galaxy SIV
Still rumoured successor of the hugely successful SIII. Word is, the SIV’s processors will be ‘hexa-core’… power guzzling, smart ass monster… and that the screen will be “unbreakable” since it’d be made with plastic. Hopefully that won’t affect the display’s quality.

Eminem
Royce has said he’s in the studio, as has 50 Cent. And seeing as Yelawolf and Slaughterhouse have put out albums in 2012, his (executive) production responsibilities in 2013 (at the moment) seem light so he should have enough time to put out material.

Cruel Winter
Following the Kokomaster’s well documented feature in this year’s Cruel Summer album, Kanye should be G.O.O.D. enough to get our bros to do more hooks at least on a Cruel Winter album.

Another Mayan Calendar Concept
It’s never ending with us really, and I don’t mean life as we know it but speculations, rumours, did-you-hear talks and whatever else you may refer it as will remain with us.

Where would the fun be otherwise.

Detox
( ¬_¬)

Arsenal
I’d rather not elaborate. All I’ll say is, FM is not involved. 😐

Josep Guardiola
His sabbatical will be up at the end of this season and I wouldn’t mind if PSG got him. To be frank, Old Trafford seems a sure bet as his destination. Time will tell.

Finally Getting Disvirgined
^_^

FM14
😐

An Album from Timberlake
Otherwise… blame Jessica Biel!

CR7 Scoring 90+ Goals
If Messi can achieve what he has this year, Ororo can next year. He’s scored some 60 goals this year anyway, so a hundred in 2013… eez nuffin!

Graduation
We’re all looking forward to it here SO BAD, it’s almost on a self-destructive level. God keep us level headed as we get closer Lingua lords and ladies. Amen.

But if it does happen on the 21st… oh well, I lived.