(I still have a handful of movies to see, so I'll have to update this)

1. Moon
2. Where The Wild Things Are
3. The Fantastic Mr. Fox
4. Coraline
5. Ponyo
6. Up
7. In The Loop
8. The Brothers Bloom
9. 500 Days of Summer
10. Away We Go
11. District 9
12. Inglourious Basterds
13. A Serious Man
14. Up In The Air
15. Observe and Report

• Toy Story 3
• Arrested Development
• Inception
• Iron Man 2
• The Green Hornet
• Paul
• Black Swan
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
• Harry Potter 7a
• Kick-Ass

I decided to finally read/watch a bunch of giant, important works of art that I have avoided. Everything I consume this year will be epic.

(parenthesis means maybe)

• Moby Dick
• Atlas Shrugged
• Ulysses
• (War & Peace)
• (Crime & Punishment)
• The Road
• One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Citizen Kane
• The Godfather Trilogy
• Seven Samurai (and several other Kurosawa films)
• Aguirre: The Wrath of God
• Lawrence of Arabia
• Once Upon A T...

• Band: Radiohead
• Musician: Spencer Krug
• Song: In The Back Seat by The Arcade Fire
• Album: Funeral by The Arcade Fire
• Film Score Composer: Michael Giacchino
• Movie: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Sci-fi Movie: Moon
• Comedy: Sideways
• Horror movie: 28 Days Later
• Action movie: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• Superhero movie: The Incredibles
• Documentary: The King of Kong
• Chick Flick: Enchanted
• Sports Movie: The W...

• A.V. Club's Best films of the decade lis...
• Wired: Top Scientific Breakthroughs of '...
• A.V. Club's best comedy albums of the de...
• Stereogum: The 12 Best Late Night TV per...
• Rotten Tomatoes Best of the Decade!
• slashfilm: the 10 best movie trailers of...
• Amazon.com Editors' Picks: Top 100 Books...
• Pitchfork's Best Albums of 2009
• Pitchfork's Worst Album Covers of 2009
• Pitchfork's P2K: The Decade in musi...

its not the end of the year yet, so this is subject to change, but here's how it stands so far.

• Album: Merriweather Post Pavillion - Animal Collective
• Song: Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear
• Music Video: Not sure yet. I need to do more research.
• Instrument: tie between Banjo and Omnichord
• Musician: Spencer Krug. A fantastic LP w/ Sunset Rubdown, a good LP with Swan Lake, and two good EPs as Moonface
• Movie: Moon
• A...

because I am afraid they will suck and retroactively ruin my childhood

• The Brave Little Toaster
• The Pokey Little Puppy
• An American Tail
• An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West
• Homeward Bound
• Darkwing Duck
• TaleSpin
• DuckTales
• Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers
• Alvin and the Chipmunks
• tether ball
• four square
• The Goonies
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the movie)
• Home Alone
• Earthworm Jim
• Oregon Trail
• Star Trek Voyager and TNG
• Marri...

Instruments

• Celesta
• Theremin
• Omnichord
• Drums
• Banjo
• Coronet or Trumpet
• Violin
• Mandolin
• Sitar
• Pedal steel guitar (I own one. I just have to fix it)
• Melodica

Accessories

• a looping pedal
• a keyboard amplifier
• bass distortion/fuzz pedal
• a guitar strap painted by Trista
• a condenser mic
• wire brushes (for drums)

• dogs
• Star Wars
• "organic" things
• Derek Jeter
• sliced bread (sorry. all lists of overrated things must include this)
• Led Zeppelin
• Nirvana
• Mozart
• pornograhy
• coffee
• sunny, cloudless days (the kind that prompt people to say "what a beautiful day")
• champagne
• soda
• Family Guy
• sports (especially football)
• peace signs
• Twitter & Facebook (I use both)
• Gone With The Wind
• Candy Land
• The Simpsons
• TV On The Radio
• Rocky Horror Picture ...

I'm at 72%

[the bold ones are the ones I want to see the most]

1. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
2. The Godfather (1972)
3. The Godfather: Part II (1974)
4. Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo. (1966)
5. Pulp Fiction (1994)
6. Schindler's List (1993)
7. 12 Angry Men (1957)
8. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
9. The Dark Knight (2008) 419,910
10. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
11. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of t...

These are some of the things I want Congress and our new president to accomplish in the next 4 years.

• a reduction in Executive power
• end the war in Iraq
• begin to end the war on drugs
• end the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy
• stop trying to be the world's police force
• lead the world by example
• shut down Guantanamo Bay
• repeal the USA PATRIOT Act
• revive the Freedom of Information Act
• preserve Roe v. ...

• form a band and make an album with Trista
• help Trista finish her stop-motion film
• be quicker to admit when I'm wrong.
• save up lots of money for CSU Monterey Bay
• learn a new musical instrument
• get better at the cello
• finally get my driver's license
• go on a road trip to Canada with Trista!

i can't think of anything else

My Top 10:

1. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
2. The Wrestler
3. Wall-E
4. The Dark Knight
5. The Fall
6. Milk
7. Son of Rambow
8. Slumdog Millionaire
9. Pineapple Express
10. In Bruges

Honorable Mentions:

1. Iron Man
2. Man On Wire
3. Let The Right One In
4. Vicky Christina Barcelona
5. Timecrimes
6. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
7. Burn After Reading
8. Quantum of Solace
9. Australia
10. Tropic Thunder
11. Be Kind Rewind
12. JCVD

Bigggest Disappointments:

1. Happy-Go-Lucky
2. Revolutionary Road
3. M...

• Where the Wild Things Are (10/16)
• This Side of the Truth (9/25)
• Up (5/29)
• Coraline (2/6)
• Big Fan
• The Fantastic Mr. Fox (9/13)
• Whatever Works (7/1)
• Funny People (7/31)
• Moon (6/12)
• The Time Traveler's Wife (8/14)
• The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
• 500 Days of Summer (7/17)
• Anvil! The Story of Anvil (4/10)
• Away We Go (6/5)
• Mr. Nobody
• The Lovely Bones (12/11)
• Thirst
• The Brother's Bloom
• Watchmen (3/6...

2008 sucked compared to 2007, so in order to decide whether 2007 was unusually good or if 2008 just sucked, I decided to go back in time to 2006:

1. Little Miss Sunshine
2. Children of Men
3. Pan's Labyrinth
4. Volver
5. Stranger Than Fiction
6. The Prestige
7. The Illusionist
8. The Departed
9. The Pursuit of Happyness
10. Tideland
11. Little Children
12. The Descent
13. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhst...

• Legos
• watching the following movies on repeat: The Princess Bride (which I had no idea was a comedy), The Secret of NIHM, E.T., The Temple of Doom, Return of the Jedi
• having imaginary sword fights, during which I would reveal, to my opponents surprise, that I wasn't left handed.
• climbing all the trees in town
• picking flowers in the back yard to obtain fireballs
• picking mushrooms to grow large
• finding fe...

• finding neverland (the entire movie turns me into a little baby)
• big fish
• ray (the funeral and when he learns to use his ears)
• american history x
• eternal sunshine of the spotless mind (always a different part)
• the diving bell and the butterfly
• amélie (Bretodeau's box of memories and the blind man)
• the pursuit of happyness
• i am sam
• ratatouille (Peter O'Toole's flashback made me tear up INSTANTLY)
• la vita è...

I can't believe I am the featured person on Listography! What does that mean? How did it happen? How long does it last?

I can't handle the pressure.

Okay. To make this post not a total waste, here are some good videos I found recently:

• newscasters making "lip slips"
• newscasters getting really angry
• the dangers of being a reporter
• time-lapse of a gecko being eaten by ant...
• crazy video of a starling swarm...

• I am MySpace friends with a sattellite called (G.L.A.S.T.)
• my favorite channel was TechTV (R.I.P.)
• now I watch Revision 3 podcasts
• while talking on the phone earlier, I completed my 4x4 rubik's cube. Three times.
• If you point to a color, I can tell you its approximate hexidecimal value
• I read the webcomic XKCD.
• I understand most of the references
• Out of all the books I have read this year, 4 were science...

• I use Windows, not Linux. I have an Ubuntu installation CD, however...but I have too many Windows-only music applications to switch.
• I have never played Dungeons & Dragons, though I know how.
• I have never played and never will play Magic: The Gathering
• I don't know Python script.
• I am good at sports.
• I have a girlfriend.
• My girlfriend is hot
• And she's not a nerd. (She is becoming one though. She can solv...

I saw list like this earlier, but they had it all wrong. It included The Polar Express, which is actually a horror movie, and Finding Nemo at #1

Here are the real top 10 CGI films.

1. Wall-E
2. Toy Story 2
3. Monsters Inc.
4. The Incredibles
5. Toy Story 1
6. Ratatouille
7. Monster House
8. A Bug's Life
9. Shrek 1
10. Finding Nemo

(Ice Age was on here, but it just got bumped off because I saw Wall-E)

1. Trista
2. Octopi
3. Cats
4. Owls
5. Jellies
6. Pygmy goats
7. Pygmy anything, actually
8. Deer
9. Sparrows

1. Ico
2. Okami
3. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
4. Mario 64
5. Final Fantasy Tactics
6. Vagrant Story
7. Valkyrie Profile
8. Earthbound
9. Xenogears

1. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - David Fincher + Brad Pitt. This will be the best film of the year.
2. Synecdoche, New York - Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut starring Philip Seymour Hoffman.
3. Let The Right One In - a Swedish coming-of-age vampire movie that is supposed to be really really really good.
4. Happy-Go-Lucky - this looks really cute, and I've heard really good things.
5. Blindness- director ...

1. Wikipedia
2. Digg.com
3. IMDB
4. The A.V. Club
5. the Gilroy Public Library's site
6. Makezine blog
7. Pitchfork
8. Scientific American
9. The Totally Rad Show
10. Rotten Tomatoes
11. Cute Overload
12. Mixwit
13. Bad Astronomy
14. Onion News Network
15. metacritic
16. Kotaku
17. Boing Boing
18. Fire Joe Morgan
19. and, of course, Listography!

(I am copying this idea from trista)

• Get a job and make lots and lots of money!!
• Go to beach with Trista, a lot.
• Take Trista on lots of dates with my money from item #1
• Get better at the cello
• Finally take (and pass) English 1A so I get my AA degree.
• Not kill myself while Trista is on her big road trip to Atlanta
• Make paper mache masks with Trista!
• And attempt to make plaster masks
• Swim in the ocean
• See The...

Novels

• Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
• Youth In Revolt by C.D. Payne
• The Time Travelers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
• Blindness by Jose Saramago
• The Toy Collector by James Gunn
• The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
• Sock by Penn Jillette
• Arthur & George by Julian Barnes
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
• A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
• Up In The Air by Walter Kirn

Short Story Collections

• Hi...

• Speilberg's War of the Worlds (the family reunion, specifically.)
• AI: Artificial Intelligence
• Signs (the rest of the movie is over-rated too, but the ending is sooooo bad. M. Night Shyamalan is a moron)
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• The Day The Earth Stood Still ("stupid humans, if you don't stop blowing each other up with bombs, we are going to blow up your entire planet!")
• Forrest Gump
• Lord of the Ri...

• Where The Wild Things Are
• The Poky Little Puppy
• The Stinky Cheese Man
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar
• The Sleepy Book
• the Where's Waldo series
• James And The Giant Peach
• The Lorax
• The Little Engine That Could
• Corduroy

I can't think of any more.

1. NASCAR -- Cars racing around an oval track for basically an entire day. Great. The fans say that the more you watch it, the more subtleties you will pick up, but the same can be said about staring at a pile of poo.
2. Football -- They play for 5 seconds, then stop for 30. For 3 hours! Also, when anything exciting happens, there is about a 50% chance that it will be called back (and erased) because of ...

Presidents' last names that would be good first names:

• Jefferson
• Monroe
• Jackson
• Harrison
• Lincoln
• Grant
• Arthur (its okay so long as it's not abbreviated to Art)
• Cleveland
• McKinley
• Wilson
• Truman
• Nixon
• Carter

Presidents' last names that would NOT be good first names:

• Washington
• Adams (it's plural, which is strange)
• Van Buren (it's almost awesome, but not)
• Tyler (it is already a first name, but it sucks)
• Polk
• Taylor (i've never liked this name either. It's pretty mediocre.)
• Fillmore
• Pierce (ONLY Pierce Brosnan can pull it off)
• Buchanan (its badass, but if you say it over and over, it starts to sound gross. Like ...

(updated 03.09.10)

1. Shadow of the Colossus
2. Final Fantasy VII
3. Super Mario World
4. Pokemon Blue/Red
5. Mass Effect 2
6. Half-Life 2
7. Portal
8. Metal Gear Solid
9. Chrono Trigger
10. Final Fantasy VI
11. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
12. Fallout 3
13. Grand Theft Auto III
14. Space Channel 5
15. Yoshi's Island
16. Final Fantasy VIII
17. Final Fantasy IX
18. Call of Duty 4
19. Skies of Arcadia
20. Legend of Dragoon
21. Ape Escape
22. Advance Wars
23. MVP Baseball 2005
24. Chrono Cross
25. Tony Hawk's Pro Sk...

1. Robin Hood
2. The Rescuers
3. Pinocchio
4. Alice In Wonderland
5. The Emperor's New Groove

• a pilot
• a children's book writer
• a paleontologist
• a stunt double
• an android from the future
• a pirate
• a ninja
• a ninja-pirate
• a journalist
• a massage therapist
• a film-scorer
• an owner of a video store
• a librarian
• just a happy person

1. The Diving Bell And The Butterfly
2. No Country For Old Men
3. Zodiac
4. There Will Be Blood
5. Sunshine
6. The Darjeeling Limited
7. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
8. Sweeney Todd
9. Once
10. Ratatouille
11. Juno
12. The Orphanage
13. The Host
14. Knocked Up
15. Superbad
16. Eagle vs. Shark
17. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
18. Persepolis
19. The Lookout
20. Enchanted

(The Host was in a festival in 2006 but had its actual release in 2007)

Honorab...

1. October
2. November
3. December
4. September
5. January
6. August
7. February
8. April
9. May
10. June
11. March
12. July