2010 in review!

I wish I had done this for past years, but I guess there’s no better time than the present to start!

Movies
Movies I saw in the theatre: Shutter Island, Alice in Wonderland, Toy Story 3, Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs the World, The Social Network, Tangled, Tron: Legacy 3D, Black Swan
Movie that made me cry the most: Toy Story 3
Favorite movie of the year: Black Swan
Still want to catch in the theatre: I Love You Phillip Morris, Blue Valentine
Waiting for Netflix: Love and Other Drugs, The Kids are All Right, Nowhere Boy, Paranormal Activity 2, Let Me In

Music
CDs I received/bought this year: She & Him - Volume 2
Concerts I attended: Julian Casablancas, Imogen Heap, She & Him
Favorite live performance of the year: Imogen Heap, although She & Him are very, very close behind

Travel
Places I visited this year: Las Vegas, Gatlinburg, Atlanta

Games
Games I received/bought this year: Final Fantasy XIII, Just Dance 2
Games I beat this year: Dragon Age: Origins
Older games that I tried to pick up again this year: Lost Odyssey, The Sims 3
Favorite console game of the year: Dragon Age: Origins
Favorite iPhone game of the year: Angry Birds

Dining
New local restaurants I tried this year: Bosco’s, Sweet Cece’s, Allium, McDougal’s, Grilled Cheese and Crab Cake Co., Chuy’s, Pizza Perfect, Diana’s, Pfunky Griddle, Five Guys, Swanky’s Taco Shop, Cafe Coco, Rita’s
Favorite new eatery of the year: Sweet Cece’s
Coolest new dining experience: Pfunky Griddle
Current food-related mayorships on foursquare: Cheeseburger Charley’s, Chick-fil-A, Little Caesar’s, Manny’s House of Pizza [recently lost SATCO and another Little Caesar's...]
Number of times I ate at Melting Pot: four

News
Biggest local news event of the year: the flood!
Where I was when the rains came: at the Sheraton Music City, attending MTAC

Clearly the theme for 2010 was “dinner and a movie”! Any other categories you can think of?

Next month should be fun! (Or: Ah, Procrastination!)

We are going to ignore the fact that I still haven’t written my Europe recaps. I’m about halfway done with Paris. (Which means, I’ve covered the first 2-3 days of the 14 day trip.)

Instead I’m going to talk about all the fun stuff I have planned next month! Which may not be all that interesting to you, but I feel like I’ve been neglecting my blog.

First up, on August 3, The Crystal Method is going to be in town performing at Limelight. I’ve never been there. Or even heard of it before I found out about this. But it should be a good show. Although, it doesn’t start till 10pm, so I’m fully prepared to be a zombie at work on Tuesday.

Here’s something cool that you don’t have to be local to enjoy: The MST3K crew (now known as Rifftrax) will be riffing “Plan 9 from Outer Space” on August 20. I first saw this movie at the Belcourt a few years ago, and I’ll be returning there to see them riff it LIVE. Yes, somehow they (along with Veronica Belmont, Lowtax, and Jonathan Coulton) are all going to be in Nashville for this one-time-only event. But! If you don’t live in Nashville or were not lucky enough to get the Belcourt tickets (they sold out in about an hour or so), they will be broadcasting it nationwide to about 400 theatres. So check Fandango. And if they happen to show any shots of the Belcourt crowd, look for me.

Then, if you are a long-time blog-reader (or a stalker who happened to read all 6 years of my blogging recently), you may remember a time when I was trying to get Nine Inch Nails tickets but they kept selling out too quickly. And then the next few local shows I had to miss because I had previous engagements. Well, NIN are performing just a few more shows EVER (supposedly but doubtful) in New York, LA, and Chicago. So, a few of us lucked out and got some Chicago tickets for the August 29 show. Yay, weekend in Chicago!

So that’s what I’ll be up to over the next month. And board game party at my place tomorrow for anyone who can make it!

Top Ten Movies, Take 2!

Back in 2004, I made top 10 lists of my favorite movies. Clearly, I have seen quite a few movies in the past five years, so I thought I’d update the lists to see how everything has moved around.

Live action comedies: 1. The Princess Bride 2. Office Space 3. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 4. Monty Python and the Holy Grail 5. When Harry Met Sally 6. Napoleon Dynamite 7. Mallrats 8. Dumb and Dumber 9. Beetlejuice 10. Empire Records

Live action non-comedies: 1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 2. Almost Famous 3. Garden State 4. Roman Holiday 5. American Beauty 6. Requiem for a Dream 7. Moulin Rouge 8. Across the Universe 9. What Dreams May Come 10. Lord of the Rings

Animated: 1. The Little Mermaid 2. WALL-E* 3. Lilo & Stitch 4. Sleeping Beauty 5. Aladdin 6. The Lion King 7. Finding Nemo 8. Cinderella 9. Toy Story 10. Monsters, Inc.

Movies I might put on the list, but I’ve only seen them one time: Juno, Once, Beauty and the Beast, Gone with the Wind, The Notebook, and Interstella 5555. (Hint: This means I wouldn’t mind having them on DVD.)

You can see that comedies and animated films didn’t change alot, but the dramas did. Probably because I watch way more of them.

*Clearly, this has disrupted my car naming, since Ariel was my first car and Lilo was my second. I guess I’m going to have to name my next one EVE instead of Aurora.

What’s your favorite horror movie?

So we’re having a little Halloween get-together on Friday night, and I was thinking about renting a couple horror movies to have on in the background. Any suggestions? Ben owns ALL of the Friday the 13th movies already, and it looks like Night of the Living Dead is currently on On Demand. However, I have two copies of Iron Man that Blockbuster Total Access sent me (don’t ask why I have two) that I could exchange for some free rentals (since I haven’t used my October rentals yet), so I’m open to anything.

We went out to the Belcourt Theatre last night.

They were showing “Plan 9 From Outer Space” for free outside in the parking lot. Since we had heard that it was pretty much the worst movie ever made but had never seen it, we decided it might be entertaining.

It was hilarious.

I checked to see if Mystery Science Theatre had ever shown it, but IMDB said there was too much dialog in the movie for them to have used it. However, it doesn’t really need MST3K, considering it’s hilarious all on it’s own. See it if you haven’t.

Random stuff…

Anyone who has talked to me lately knows that I’ve been sucked into the obsession that is Guitar Hero. I’ve been playing for about two weeks now and am progressing. When I first started, I couldn’t get through the first song on easy, and today I just beat “Bark at the Moon” on medium (and the medium level as a whole) and the first five songs on hard. It was a big accomplishment for me to get through “Infected” on hard, simply because it is the song that really introduces you to quickly moving your hand up and down on the frets. I didn’t do it well, but for awhile I had the rhythm going with a 4x multiplier.

Also, if you hadn’t heard, the Wii was announced to be coming out on November 19th for $249. That misses the window for my birthday party (which will either be the 11th or the 18th depending on if Sabrina is coming up or not), so we may have to have an encore party a few weeks after (so you should buy me Wii-motes for my birthday).

Ben and I are going to go to Atlanta this weekend. We’ll be going to the see Tom Petty and The Strokes on Friday night and to Anime Weekend Atlanta all day on Saturday. We were going to go see “The Science of Sleep” as well (the new Michael Gondry movie), but apparently it’s only in limited release this weekend. We did, however, go to see “The Last Kiss” last weekend, and it was good. I wanted to absolutely murder a few of the characters. But good.

I’ve added every picture of us taken that I could find in the cosplay section.

I finally found one of us with the red mage we ran into on Saturday:

We went and saw Silent Hill on Monday night. It was okay. Not the best thing in the world, but decent. I was mainly disappointed in how non-scary it was. I can’t even play the games, they scare me so bad, but I never once felt scared during the movie and only mildly creeped out about once or twice. The direction was pretty good, however. They definitely got the look of the town and camera angles down.

My review of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy film.

Do not see it. Well, I mean, you can if you want to, if you’d like to witness such a travesty for your own eyes. But I’d rather spare you.

If you’ve never read any of the books, heard the radio show, seen the BBC TV series, played the computer game, etc., you won’t get the movie. At all.

If you have, the movie won’t live up to any of it. At all.

Sure, there were a few times I laughed, but it was when I was remembering that particular part of the book and how funny it was there. The movie had none of the spirit of Douglas Adams in it. It mostly consisted of jokes that weren’t at all explained if you hadn’t read the book (like the need for a towel), silly special effects (like the Heart of Gold turning into a ball of yarn), and meaningless subplots that Adams would have never put in his books (like the fact that the entire movie revolved around a romance between Arthur and Trillian).

I’m pretty sure I laughed more watching the TV series and it wasn’t even good. It was just funny because of how bad it was. This new film wasn’t even funny in that respect; it was just sad. At least the TV series put Zaphod’s second head next to his other one.

I saw the movie with Ben, who had never read any of the books or anything. And now he never wants to either. He’s scared they’ll be as bad as the movie. I tried to defend them and say that the books explain everything the movie didn’t, but I’m pretty sure he lost what little desire he had to ever read them.

Overall, I was highly disappointed in the movie. Here’s to hoping they don’t make The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

I have discovered Blockbuster’s secret.

Okay, so remember when I was raving about Blockbuster’s movie pass a few months ago. I take it all back.

I had the humilating experiencing of returning movies today that I had had for three months. The conversation went something like this:

Blockbuster employee: Can I help you?
Me: Yeah, I need to cancel my movie pass.
Employee: Okay. Why is that?
Me: Well, I’ve had these movies since November…
Employee: (laughing) Well, I hope they were good ones.
Me: Well, yeah, they’re both Kevin Smith movies, so…
Employee: (after looking up my account on the computer and laughing again) Yeah, you’ve had them since November 15.
Me: Yeah…I could have bought them several times over by now.
Employee: Did you at least watch them a whole bunch?
Me: (obviously embarrassed) Well, no…actually, I never really got around to watching them at all…
Employee: (incredulously) At all?
Me: Well, no…I mean, I moved, and I don’t know..
Employee: Well, I canceled it for you. Have a good day!
Me: Yeah…

Blockbuster’s Movie Pass thing is great.

Basically, for $24.99 a month, you can check out two movies at a time, bring them back whenever, and get two more. Except they were having a special when I got it, so it was only $14.99. Considering the cost to rent one DVD is nearly $4, this paid for itself the first time I brought back movies to get two more.

I just got back from renting Seven (which I’ve been really wanting to see for a long time) and Jacob’s Ladder. Gonna be a fun night.

Updates..

I went to the mall today for my lunch break and got in line at Sbarro’s. In front of me was a guy with long scraggly hair and messy clothes. He looked homeless, but I couldn’t really tell. Anyway, so I’m standing in line and he turns around, looks at me, and says, “Hi.” Now, I’m a polite person, so I said hello back. He asked me how I was, what kind of pizza I was getting, and various other things, and all the while I’m thinking to myself, “Please don’t ask me for money.” Especially since I have $10 (well, $5 now) to last me until I get paid next Wednesday.

Then it was the guy’s turn in line, and he asked the guy behind the counter if they could spare some pizza. Yep, homeless. I was right. They gave him a couple slices and he went on his way. So I ordered my usual pepperoni slice and a breadstick, went and ate, then walked around the mall a bit.

On my way out, I hear a voice say, “So how was your pizza?” I look up and there’s the homeless guy again. I said, “Good,” while hoping he wasn’t planning on following me to my car.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked. I shook my head.

“Nope.” Please don’t follow me to my car. He didn’t. I got out of there as quickly as I could.

I dunno. I was a little creeped out. Well, I wasn’t until he started talking to me outside. I felt followed or something.

Anyway, I went and saw Garden State a couple days ago. Good movie. I had been really looking forward to it coming out, and it definitely lived up to my expectations.

Other new movies I’ve seen lately (because of Ben’s quest to get to me see them) are The Dark Crystal (which I actually bought, since there was some unknown force that seemed to want me to not see this movie), Thumb Wars and Thumbtanic (okay, that one wasn’t on Ben’s list…we were just feeling silly at Blockbuster one night), An Evening with Kevin Smith, Animal House (yeah, I’m a loser who had never seen it), and we started to watch The Man Who Knew Too Little yesterday but I was so tired, I passed out.

Ah, finally got my car back. It’s about time. I really hate relying on other people for rides. It irks me.

But now, for some reason, my cable is out. Which caused me to miss the last two episodes of “Last Comic Standing.” Grr. I guess I will have to catch the reruns on Comedy Central tomorrow. Although John won, so I’m not too upset about not being able to vote. I would have voted for him anyway. Cable guy is coming tomorrow to check out what’s wrong.

Let’s see. Ben has been making me watch a ton of movies lately, since he seems to think I haven’t ever seen anything. So, here’s what I’ve seen in the past few weeks:
The Blues Brothers: Funny.
Punch Drunk Love: Weird. Need to see again.
The Devil’s Advocate: Liked this one.
Kung Pow: Very funny. “I implore you to reconsider.”
Go: Really liked this one. Need to buy it.

Hmm. Not much else going on. Been playing a lot of Worms World Party lately. My Mastercard somehow got upgraded to diamond status. Lydia is insane (she is climbing the drawers in the kitchen as I write this). Will probably have another board game party at the end of the month.

Ah, the weekend…

Thursday I went and saw Spiderman 2. I really enjoyed it. I don’t know if I thought it was better than the first one, but for a sequel, it was definitely great.

I also bought Butterfly Effect on Tuesday when it came out. I really liked it too. The DVD includes the director’s cut with an alternate ending. I had never seen the movie before and we were watching the director’s cut first and when the movie ended, Ben (who had seen it before) was like, “That’s not right! That’s not how it ends!” So then we had to watch the theatrical ending. I don’t know which I prefer.

Went to Bailey’s last night and had some drinks. We tried their white pizza, which has olive oil, garlic mozzarella, parmesan and monterrey jack cheese, sliced tomatoes, and fresh chopped parsley on it. It was very very good (minus the tomatoes - I let Ben eat those).

Not much else going on. Work is still going well and stuff.

Okay, I’m more awake now.

Let’s see…what’s been going on?

Well, I got that data entry job that I had an interview for a week ago. So that’s pretty cool. I have income again! Yay! It’s going really well so far.

Hmm…movies I have seen recently:
Amelie: Really enjoyed this one. I loved the colors.
School of Rock: Extremely funny. Really liked it.
Kissing a Fool: Pretty good. Funny.
Rounders: Interesting. Decent movie.

I’m going to watch Interview with a Vampire for the first time (*gasp*) tonight.

Let’s see….I still suck at chess. I don’t like wine. I love the park. Yeah, that about sums up my week.

I’ve been trying to come up with numbered top ten lists of my favorite movies.

This is not easy. It changes almost daily. Plus, you just can’t compare some movies to others.

Anyway, this is what I have so far:

Live action comedies: 1. Office Space 2. The Princess Bride 3. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 4. Monty Python and the Holy Grail 5. When Harry Met Sally 6. Mallrats 7. Pirates of the Caribbean 8. Pretty Woman 9. Dumb and Dumber 10. Empire Records

Live action non-comedies: 1. Moulin Rouge 2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 3. Lord of the Rings 4. American Beauty 5. Vanilla Sky 6. Fight Club 7. Pleasantville 8. Almost Famous 9. Requiem for a Dream 10. Kill Bill

Animated: 1. The Little Mermaid 2. Lilo & Stitch 3. Sleeping Beauty 4. Aladdin 5. The Lion King 6. Finding Nemo 7. Cinderella 8. Toy Story 9. Shrek 10. Monsters, Inc.

And really, Pleasantville is technically a comedy, but I don’t want to put it on that list.

In addition, I can go to about 19 on my live action non-comedies list, but it’s really sketchy. Basically, I don’t know what I’m forgetting (and I’m sure I’m forgetting some), and I haven’t seen some movies in forever, so I really don’t know where they go on the scale. However, 11 through 19 on that list includes: Forrest Gump, American History X, Titanic, Chicago, Girl Interrupted, Gattaca, Minority Report, The Family Man, and Catch Me If You Can.

This will all change tomorrow.

I just finished watching Love Actually.

And I am so chick-flicked out at the moment. If you haven’t seen it, it is a romantic comedy. Well, actually it’s about ten romantic comedies all tied up into one. After it was over, I felt the need to take a shower to scrub all the sap off.

I mean, normally, I like romantic comedies. And not to say I didn’t like this one, but geez. How many happy endings can one movie have?

I feel the need to watch Fight Club or something.

Spring is here.

I know this because my left arm (and ONLY my left arm) is bright red. Aren’t sunburns great? And when this goes away, I will have a nicely tanned arm. If only the rest of me were so lucky to be hanging out of the car window for several hours in the middle of the day.

Anyway, I went and saw Hellboy last night. My friends made me. Umm, yeah. Please give me more Eternal Sunshine. Seriously. I’m really glad that I did not have to pay for this movie. I would be demanding my money back. It never fails to amaze me how my best friend and I have completely opposite tastes in movies. She hates Chicago and loves Sweet Home Alabama (not to mention her Star Trek obsession). Need I say more?

Not a whole lot else going on right now. Samantha, who is now six month pregnant, left for Alaska today. She went to the movies with us last night, so I got to see her before she left. Everyone is leaving. I’m not going to have any friends around come mid-May. This perhaps may be why I hope to move to Seattle.

I’ve been in search of a new wallet for awhile now. I’m seriously sick of carrying around a purse, since it basically just holds my huge wallet. I want something small that I can put in my pocket. Well, I went to Wal-Mart a week or two ago, and they had these thin black wallets with zodiac signs on them. Except, of course, they were out of Scorpio. So I go to every Wal-Mart in the Knoxville vicinity. Nothing. Now I’ve been to every Wal-Mart in the Clarksville vicinity. Still nothing. Grr. Capricorn wallets, on the other hand, seem to be in abundance. I guess I am going to have to give up this search, unless I find something online that I like.

I need sleep.

It’s been a busy (but fun) last few days, and it seems that trend will continue throughout the week.

I’m going to mail Tera off after I get off work today. Frustrating, but necessary since she won’t even turn on anymore.

I saw Eternal Sunshine again last Friday. May be going to see it again soon. Such a great movie!

Jewel concert is on Wednesday! Yay! I will be taking my stealth cam to practice for the APC concert. I will be in the tenth row at this concert, so hopefully I can get some decent shots.

Going to Clarksville for the weekend.

Brina is coming to visit the weekend of the 23rd. Going to have another board game party, hopefully.

I’ve got a paper and a java program due on the 22nd. I need to find some time to work on those.

Okay, now that I’m awake..

Eternal Sunshine was an excellent movie. Far better than anything I have seen in a long time, and perhaps destined to become a favorite. I want to go see it again. It was just so different from anything else I have ever seen. And it reminded me why Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet are both two of my favorite actors. Okay, I’m really not going to gush too much. You just need to go see it. It is worth that $8.

Something that was kind of cool was that I got recognized last night by someone that works at the theatre. He said to me, “You work in the CS department, right?” I don’t know if that makes me feel good or stalked. Good, I think.

I’m at work right now. I am covering for someone today plus my regular shift, so I will be sitting here for a nice seven hours, munching on Famous Amos cookies and some hot chocolate cause it’s freezing in here. I don’t know what I’m doing tonight.

Also, I would like to wish a happy birthday to Steve. He is 23 today.

I just got back from seeing Eternal Sunshine.

Go see it.

Now.