Sure, Ben Bernake won Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year”, but who should win our prestigious “Non Gender-Biased Dude of the Year” award for 2009?

Dave Eggers

Our pals at Deckfight pointed out our penchant for news involving Mr. McSweeney’s, but why not? The dude is a mensch.

Jason Schwartzman

Chalk it up to family ties, but his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, tapped him to design the newest issue of Zoetrope: All-Story.

Also of note:

• Could anybody other than Schwartzman play a character named Jonathan Ames written by Jonathan Ames on Bored to Death? We are going on a limb and saying no.

• Not a bad job showing off Band of Outsiders Fall, 2009 collection.

• The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

The people who run The Awl

In 2009 we learned to love no website nearly as much. Evidence? Yesterday, when they debuted “Listicle Without Commentary: The 30 Best Punk Songs Since 1979 Available on YouTube, In Order“, every other “punk best of” list seemed totally irrelevant and boring. Add to the fact that pretty much every headline they post is funnier than anything by The Onion, paired with content more biting than more “traditional” news outlets, and you have our favorite website of the year.

The commenters on HTMLGiant and BrooklynVegan

While the comments on HTMLGiant open up some great debates and have intelligent discussions, the usually angry thoughts of people who read Brooklynvegan have eaten up the time we once wasted reading “rants and raves” on Craigslist.

Stephen Elliott

He’s been around all this time, but in 2009, Elliott was everywhere. Putting out The Adderall Diaries, launching The Rumpus, reading at just about any place that would have him, and giving good interviews.

Carrie Brownstein

See, we said this wasn’t gender-biased. Carrie dominated music writing — read Best Music Writing 2009 — and her daily posts on Monitor Mix are close to brilliant. We still pine for Sleater-Kinney, but this will suffice.

Tao Lin.

Chalk it up to strategy, but Tao was just about everywhere this year. And like it or not, Shoplifting From American Apparel was really good. He’s even popular enough to be a personal friend of relevant hipster blogger Carles.

Beans.

Maybe all the blogging is the final knife in the dying, flannel-shirted zombie term “hipster”? Stuff Hipsters Hate, Hipster Runoff, and of course, the book deal darlings Look at this Fucking Hipster all gained pretty rabid followings, and in my opinion, for good reason. Getting past the subject matter, these blogs and Tumblrs are all pretty hilarious commentaries on culture, and gave us a love for a big dude named “Beans“.