Tag: lists
-
Quotes of the moment
An ongoing series “Memory comes in to fill the spaces of whatever isn’t there. … Memory has a way of growing things, of improving them. The hardships get harder, the good times get better, and the whole damn arc of a life takes on a mystic glow that only memory can give it.” – Josh…
-
Favorite Films of 2004
I’m creating my annual movie lists retroactively. See all of them. As a freshman/sophomore in high school, this year provided me several memorable theater experiences, including the last great M. Night Shyamalan movie, some surprisingly excellent sequels, and a romance that inspired one of my very first blog posts. But chief among these theatrical outings…
-
Podcasts of the moment
I won’t do this quite as often as Media of the Moment, but I think it’s interesting to check in every once in a while with my podcast lineup and habits, since they do change over time for various reasons. What hasn’t changed since my last dispatch: I listen to too many podcasts, and/but I’m…
-
5 tips for planning a wedding
Wedding season has got me thinking about what I learned from my own experience putting together a wedding six years ago. Here’s what I got. Pick four things to really care about. Wedding planning is chock-full of choices, but you can’t care about everything equally unless you want to have a mental breakdown. Pick four…
-
Favorite Films of 2005
I started making annual top-10 movie lists in 2007, so I’ve been going backwards from there to create lists for each year retroactively. See all my best-of lists. I really enjoyed kicking off my back-in-time film rankings series with the 2006 slate. Most of my indelible memories from this moviegoing year involved the late, lamented…
-
Favorite Films of 2006
My annual top-10 movie lists begin in 2007, so I thought it would be fun to start going backwards from there and create lists for each year retroactively. First up is 2006, which is now 15 years ago and a notable year for me in several ways: it’s when I graduated high school, went on…
-
My favorite ‘Boomtown’ moments
After writing my paean to Boomtown, the cry of the masses rang out from sea to shining sea with a resounding message: “More Boomtown content!!!” I live to serve. During my latest rewatch, I took note of the moments that have stuck with me in the almost 20 years since the series debuted. I considered…
-
Top 5 Taylor Swift songs
Why not. 5. “Blank Space” – 1989 4. “You Need to Calm Down” – Lover 3. “I Forgot That You Existed” – Lover 2. “We Are Never Getting Back Together” – Red 1. “Shake It Off” – 1989
-
Favorite Films of 2020
Along with all the other lamentable things that happened (or didn’t happen) this year due to COVID-19, I mourn the movies I missed out on seeing on the big screen. The last time I was in a theater was in late February to see Little Women, which ended up being my favorite film of 2019.…
-
Favorite Books of 2020
In his year-end summary of reading, Seth Godin wrote: “Books are an extraordinary device, transitioning through time and space, moving from person to person and leaving behind insight and connection. I’m grateful every single day for the privilege of being able to read (and to write).” I read 18 books in 2020. For some people…
-
2020 in review
See other year in review posts. Me and Little Man gathering snowballs, here at the end of all things 2020: A lot of bad things happened in the world this year, but in my own little world there was mostly just good. Chiefly because I’m blessed to have a COVID-proof job that has let me…
-
Top 10 songs from Disney musicals
A friend of mine recently posted: “Let’s stir up some controversy: What are your thoughts on The Lion King?” I replied that a certain song on that soundtrack was a top-5 Disney song, and it wasn’t “Circle of Life” or “Hakuna Matata”. That inspired me to consider how I would actually rank the best Disney…
-
Obi-What Can I Be
I took the Statistical “Which Character” Personality Quiz from the Open-Source Psychometrics Project, which they describe as a “slightly more scientific but still silly” version of those Buzzfeed “Which Character Are You?” tests I mostly avoid. Here are my top five results, with the percentage of overlap in perceived personality traits: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars…
-
What practical lessons have you learned from movies?
A while back I started keeping a list of things I’ve learned from movies. Not grand philosophical lessons about life and love and all that, but practical, everyday stuff. Stuff I’ve integrated into my life specifically because I saw it in a movie. I thought I should share what I’ve accumulated thus far, assuming that…
-
Favorite Films of 2019
Having already conquered my list of favorite films of the 2010s, I found this list much easier to assemble. I knew my movie watching would take a hit when my son was born last February, and it did, though not as much as I expected. My logbook tells me I watched 63 films in 2019, which…
-
Favorite Books of 2019
Compared to 72 books in 2018, I read a relatively paltry 24 in 2019. Between work, a new house, and a new baby, I just didn’t have the mental bandwidth to stick with as many books for extended periods. This resulted in a little more fluff than usual, including several Queer Eye-adjacent memoirs and tons…
-
2019 in review
See other year in review posts. This year in review is a little shorter than the last few, primarily because it consists of whatever I could do outside of work, having and raising a baby, and buying and managing a house—all of which took most of my time and energy. But here, roughly in chronological…
-
Favorite Albums of the 2010s
See also: my favorite books, TV shows, and films of the 2010s. Listed alphabetically by artist, here are the albums from the last 10 years that sustained and entertained me: Abigail Washburn, City of Refuge. Favorite track: “City of Refuge” The Book of Mormon Original Broadway Cast Recording. Favorite track: “You And Me (But Mostly…