Today at Flavorpill, we took note of the top 20 New Year’s Eve TV episodes ever and pined after the film festival favorites that didn’t make it to theaters in 2010. We looked forward to the publication of Portraits in the Presence of Marina Abramovic, a book compiling photos from the artist’s recent MoMA performance piece. We relived the year in Mariah Carey. We gawked at this gorgeous infographic visualizing 2010′s domestic box office receipts and admired Lyuba Haleva’s hypnotic newspaper, flyer, and brochure collages. We facepalmed at the year’s most obvious scientific discoveries. We perused the great Paula Deen’s recipes for lucky foods to cook while ringing in 2011. Like everyone else on the Internet, we had some fun with the original, 1996 Space Jam website. And finally, we wished our readers a very happy New Year. Tomorrow Flavorwire will be counting down our top 10 posts of 2010, and then we’ll see you back here in January.

Like just about everyone else who has seen it, we loved Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work for its empathetic portrait of a controversial grand dame of comedy. Watching it, we couldn’t help imagining what life must be like for Jocelyn Pickett, Rivers’ assistant of 15 years. In the film, she’s more than just the lady who runs errands and keeps a schedule: She’s her boss’s constant companion, the one who soothes her frayed nerves and helps her make tough decisions. It was our admiration of Pickett that inspired us to celebrate our 10 favorite assistants in movies and TV.

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Today at Flavorpill, we watched a new Pixar Cars short. We reminisced about our favorite TV show openings. We liked the video for Lavender Diamond’s cover of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.” We imagined what Twilight would have been like if Lewis Carroll had written it. We lusted after Joshua DeMonte’s architectural jewelry. We were glad that Paula Deen survived getting whacked with a flying ham. We started in on the Thanksgiving pie a little early. We imagined being conscious for 23 years while doctors thought we were in a coma the whole time. We wondered how many Nabisco 100 Calorie Packs it would take to power the Williams sisters through one game. And finally we found it funny that rich people love Glee. Guess that explains why we haven’t been watching…

Indulge for a moment while we pretend we’re Joel McHale, and this is an episode of The Soup. Paula Deen made a brief appearance on The Today Show this morning to reveal her “picnic picks”, and after sputtering her 50th y’all of the segment, digressed into a strange childhood story about a goat named Thumper that would “wee wee” in his own beard. It’s rare that anything this funny happens on Today that doesn’t involve Willard Scott saying something inappropriate about one of his Smuckers jar ladies, so we thought you should see it for yourselves. Also: Paula’s hair looks really wild. Read More »