John’s Top Ten TV Shows of 2020

Once I realized I’d have to hunker down this year, I saw it as an opportunity to binge watch a bunch of old shows. For me that included watching every episode of Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, the first season of Cheers, the first two seasons of Halt and Catch Fire and most of Viva La Bam for reasons unknown. Also, I caught up with HBO’s Watchmen. The problem is I forgot to watch new shows.

If I have the time, I’ll always pick a movie over a TV show. Which means a show has to really grab my attention to get me to watch it. Even more to finish it. Honestly, it was hard to come up with a top ten, but I’m happy with the results. Plus, now that I’m done with this list I can go back to watching Viva La Bam.

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Sean’s Top 10 TV Shows of 2020

I started out 2020 hopeful that I could make some big changes to better my life… I was so stupid back then. One of the things I tried and actually have stuck with was “cutting the cord,” meaning I cancelled my cable and went down to just Internet and broadcast TV. That was enough for the Super Bowl and the Oscars, then COVID happen and every production in the world shut down, including live sports, and it couldn’t have been easier to keep saving $50 a month. That said, it’s frustrating that you still can’t easily stream everything and we are definitely well passed the streaming service saturation point. Like, Quibi lived and died all within a few months in 2020. Remember poor Quibi? A bad idea launched at exactly the wrong time. No one can compete with YouTube!

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John’s Top Ten Albums of 2020

Oh boy, not really in the mood to do this right now. If future generations are reading this a bunch of domestic terrorists stormed the Capitol building the other day. Christ man, what’s wrong this country? You don’t have to read this now if you don’t want to. I don’t want to write it now. Maybe you can check back in when things are ever better. If they’re ever better. Ugh.

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Sean’s Top 10 Albums of 2020

Welcome to 2021, or as I prefer to call it, #TwentyRipAndRun! Let’s talk about 2020. When people reflect on last year, I bet the focus will be on the tragedy: hundreds of thousands of lives lost, millions more changed forever, plus the substantial cultural loss caused by countless venues and restaurants closing. What may be forgotten was how weird it was to live through the COVID-19 pandemic. How the uncertainty of a new normal made March seem 100 days long… And then the whole summer seem to be like two weeks. Being home all the time was (and still is) really messed up, even for homebodies like me. Music should be the media least impacted at all by the pandemic, but my listening habits still changed. When I’m home all the time – not in an office, not commuting, not going to shows – it turns out I listen to music less. When it’s just as easy to watch E.R. clips on YouTube, I get a lot less cool. So I’m looking forward to that vaccine and things getting better.

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Colin’s Top Ten Albums of 2020

2020 sucked and we all know it. So there’s not much reason to belabor the point now that the year is over. Still, there was some good stuff to come out of 2020 in the form of the music, movies, TV, and video games that we were able to enjoy while huddled in our homes all year. We’re starting our Top Ten lists a little later than usual this year, due to our need to catch up with a lot of movies (since movies basically didn’t come out in theaters last year). While it feels a little self-flagellating to extend 2020 any longer, hey, at least the media appearing in our Top Tens will provide us with things to remember from 2020 while the rest of it I’m sure will be easy to forget.

As for music, I thought 2020 was both a very good year for music as well as one where I was able to stay pretty on top of music throughout the year. This was mainly because I was just stuck at home all day and had nothing better to do, and similarly was working an at-home job that allowed me to listen to music all day. The year was filled with a lot of artists I already knew and loved releasing albums that either met or exceeded the expectations I had for them, so if you know my taste in music, this list is probably going to be a little boring. But let’s get going anyway… Continue reading →

John’s Favorite Horror Movies of the 2010s (Part 5) – The Final Chapter

We’re finally at the finish line! The Big 10! The Best of the Best! The oh-my-god-i’m-so-tired-of-doing-these-lists-please-make-it-stop! Are these the best? For now. I didn’t get a chance to revisit as many horror films as I’d hoped. Or even watch other horror movies I’ve heard are great but haven’t seen. There’s so damn many.

Again the order of these films was based on no metric. I went by my gut. One observation is we’re getting into a lot of horror movies I’ve already written about on this blog. If I can’t shut up about these movies I must like ‘em. So without further ado…

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John’s Favorite Horror Movies of the 2010s (Part 4)

We’re down to the top twenty and you know what I just realized? I forgot Attack the Block. All this recent news about Joe Cornish wanting to make a sequel with John Boyega and I totally spaced (no pun intended) on that film. I used Letterboxd to put together my list and apparently they don’t consider that film horror. I do. Then again that’s been the struggle.

What is a horror movie? I’m almost done with this list and I still don’t know. Maybe I’ll know next week when I finish this whole experiment? Also, I forgot Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers. Fuck!

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