Best of 2019

Another 365 days down, another year of life in the past. In the year 2019, Rachel and I continued our wedding ways, traveled across the country and across the world. I attended concerts every single month once again, returned to the final four with the varsity cats, and spent time listening to podcasts, watching movies, TV shows, and YouTube videos. Another slower year on the blogging end, I only blogged only 11 times, and have zero vlogs out so far from 2019 (although I filmed for the year and released one 2018 vlog). Here are my “best” lists from 2019.

You can find my best lists from the previous 5 years here: 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014

Best Moment: 3rd in state for lacrosse. We made it to the semi-finals for the second time in three years. We once again faced off against New Trier, and ended up losing a very close game 6-8, but now that lacrosse is a state sanctioned sport, there was a 3rd place game. On the other side of the bracket, Glenbard West had lost to Warren, so we ended up playing Glenbard West on June 1st in the 3rd place game. We played a great game and won 16-7 to claim 3rd place. We received a trophy and medals and everything. Very cool. On top of that we finished the year with a record setting: 3 all-state players, 2 Academic All-Americans, and our first All-American in school history. What a year! Read all about it on my blog all about the 2019 semi-final cats.

Best Vacation: Rachel planned a trip to London and Croatia for us in August. We flew from Chicago to London, spent 2 1/2 days there, exploring the whole city by foot, and then spent 12 days in Croatia. We rented a car and toured throughout the whole country, staying in 4 cities. Zagreb (the capital), Zadar, Split, and Dubrovnik. An absolutely beautiful country and amazing two-week vacation.

Runner up: A trip we took to Northern California for a wedding in late June. We also spent a couple days in San Francisco. I walked among the giant redwood trees, explored the pacific coast, rode across the Golden Gate bridge, and chilled at a local park with a view of San Fran.

Best TV Show: Rachel and I watched more movies together this year than TV shows, but here are my top 4 TV shows that were new to me in 2019. Kidding, End of the F***ing World, Atypical & Bandersnatch - Black Mirror.

Best Movie (Theaters): I only saw two movies in theaters this year, both with Rachel. While Joker was good in it’s own right, I have to give the top movie to Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse, for its creativity, storyline, and unique editing to make it look like a comic book. We saw this action packed film back in January.

Best New Movie I Saw: I watched a bunch of movies in 2019, including 60 in October for Spooky Movie Season. All three of my top new movies actually came out in 2018, but I did not see them until 2019. All three movies kept me on the edge of my seat and I highly recommend them if you are looking for a sci-fi thriller. Bird Box, Annihilation, A Quiet Place.

Best Documentaries: In 2019 I saw a bunch of documentaries including: Finding Vivian Maier, Ted Bundy Tapes, Fyre Fest, Oasis: Supersonic, Woodstock, Travis Scott Astroworld, & Tickled. But my top documentaries in 2019 go to Free Solo and Won’t You Be My Neighbor.

Free Solo - is about Alex Honnold, the first person to ever free solo climb El Capitan. It was shot by photographer Jimmy Chin. This documentary be found via Nat Geo or DVD.
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? - is a documentary on Mr. Rogers, the neighbor he was to everyone and the things he had to overcome in his life. This can be found on HBO or DVD. See the trailers for these below.

Best Album: My best album of the year goes to Robert Ellis and his album Texas Piano Man. I was able to catch his show in Chicago at Old Town School of Folk Music back in March. Ian O’Neil, who opened for the Texas Piano Man takes home honorable mention for his album Ten Years of It. I also had a great time listening to Deer Tick’s new album Mayonnaise and Cage the Elephant’s Social Cues. I was able to catch all of these artists live in 2019! Click the photo of the album below if you want to hear great music.

Best Songs: Just like in 2018, I went big with songs in 2019. This year I nearly doubled the songs from 2018 and pulled 119 songs by 119 artists for the Year 2019. You can listen to them all now in a row by checking out the Spotify Playlist below.
Spotify Playlist

If you don’t have spotify, here are 16 of my favorite of the 119 songs I included:

thank u, next - Ariana Grande
Not - Big Thief
bury a friend, Billie Eilish
Ready to Let Go - Cage the Elephant
Let Love Run the Game - Daniel Norgren
Bluesboy - Deer Tick
Our Debt is Sealed, True Love Knows Fear - Ian O’Neil

Uh Huh - Jade Bird
Jubilee - Jake Xerxes Fussell
Truth Hurts - Lizzo
Gloria - The Lumineers
Green Fuzz - Naked Giants
Nobody Smokes Anymore - Robert Ellis
Seventeen - Sharon Van Etten
Oh Mama - Twin Peaks
Might Be Right - White Reaper

Best Music Video: of the year goes to Ariana Grande’s thank u, next. Loved the creativity of basing the video on four classic rom-com movies. This music video includes scenes re-enacted from: Mean Girls, Bring It On, Legally Blonde, and my favorite, 13 Going on 30.

Best Concert: Another year of making it out to at least one concert every month in 2019. Taking me to 25 straight months of concerts and 34 of the last 36. Concerts in 2019 totaled 18 shows. You can read all about my 2019 concert experience here. The show that topped them all this year was from my favorite band, Deer Tick. A legendary show with a front row view. Experience this Deer Tick show by clicking the photo below.

Best Podcasts: I went all in on podcasts in 2019. I came out with four blog posts about 40 new podcasts that I got in to this year. Taking me to 80 podcasts I listen to regularly. I took my top podcast from the four blog posts I made this year for my top of 2019. Check them out here: Dr. Death, Joe Rogan, Happy Face, Spittin’ Chiclets.

Best Jcubed Video: Just like last year, most videos I made this year were music related. I didn’t get to any old Jcubed videos like I wanted…. so I guess we’ll go with Vlog 21 I guess? Not sure it even counts but let’s roll with it.

Best Lacrosse Video: Flashback to first ever Adrian College NCAA lacrosse game…. Go Cats 2019 coming soon…

Best YouTube Channel: I give the best YouTube channel in 2019 to Nelk. A group of 25 year olds from Canada. They make hilarious prank videos every Monday and have really stepped up the quality of their edits lately. Steve Will Do It, 9-0 Shooter (RIP), Jessie, and Kyle. Their prank videos have become pretty long, almost like a TV show, but each video is worth a watch. Check out a couple of my favorites below.

Philip DeFranco, a news channel I’ve watched daily for the last few years takes our runner up this year.

Best Video: PewDiePie makes a “congratulations” video for large Indian company, T-Series, who nearly beat him to the 100 million subscribe punch. It is satire, sarcastic and amazing.

Runner Up: The Polar Vortex on January 29th. The 2nd coldest day ever in Chicago, getting down to -21 degrees, and windchills down to negative 50 degrees. I ventured out. Check out the awesome video I found below on Arctic Chicago.

That concludes my 2019 and all the “best” things from it. Let’s make 2020 an awesome year!

See ya then

Josh

Spooky Movie Season

I own a decent amount of movies, like over 1000. So at the beginning of October, when I went through and pulled all of my spooky movies out of my collection, I asked “the people” if they thought I could get through them all. Many doubted, just a few had hope, and some said it couldn’t be done.

I spent basically all of my free time in the month of October watching over 60 of what I deem to be “spooky” movies. Some a little scary, others full of suspense, some even a little funny, but all based along the horror/scary/halloween movie genre.

Now that it is the 31st of October, 2019 aka All Hallow’s Eve, aka Halloween, I present you with this blog.

Instead of breaking down each movie as I’ve done with my actor of the month blogs in the past (Russell Crowe, Emma Stone, Jim Carrey), I’ve decided to compile a list of my top 5 best “SpOoKy” moovies and my bottom 5 worst “sPoOkY” moovies. You can see the full list of movies I watched in the image below, and make sure you let me know which spooky movies I am missing out on at the end.

Let’s get right into it with the bottom of the barrel films.

Bottom 5 Worst “sPoOkY” moovies

#5. Disturbia (2007) - You know, I used to really like this movie and thought it was good, but it is just so cheesy and takes forever to develop. Shia LaBeouf spies on his neighbors when being on house arrest, and finds out one of them is super creepy! Decent spookiness level in the second half of the movie, but stick to the original, Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) instead.

#4. The Crucible (1996) - The acting is pretty good with Daniel Day-Lewis as John Proctor & Winona Ryder as Abigail Williams in this movie. The story line, The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 was solid, there just wasn’t enough action for me. The book by Arthur Miller is probably a better option for this one.

#3. Bedazzled (2000) - This was actually the first spooky movie of the season that Rachel and I watched. It has a somewhat similar plot to The Butterfly Effect (2004), which we watched immediately after. Anyway, it involves Brendan Fraser selling his soul to the devil, Elizabeth Hurley, in exchange for seven wishes. Although you can’t usually go wrong with Brendan Fraser, and Elizabeth Hurley is quite the good looking devil, I would have to say this film is a pass during spooky movie season.

#2. Scream 3 (2000) - As if the first two movies weren’t good enough, they had to go and extend the series into a trilogy. We’ve already seen this movie with this plot, and the third proved to not be necessary as it was a movie about the movie about the first two movies. What!? Although it was great seeing where the parody Scary Movie (2000) franchise came from, I vote a no for this one.

#1. Freddy vs Jason (2003) - You may have noticed that none of the other Freddy Krueger or Jason movies were on this list. I know, that was my first mistake, but for some reason, I only own this one…. I know, my bad. In this movie, the two iconic horror villains meet face to face in an often “unrealistic” battle in a race to kill as many kids as they can. Lots of teens were sacrificed in the making of this film. I would avoid this film in the franchise and watch the other versions.

Now that you know which spooky movies to avoid, let’s get into which movies you should be watching first!

Top 5 Best “SpOoKy” moovies

#5. Scream (1996) - Wow. I cannot believe that I had gone my whole life without seeing the original Scream. I used to dress up as the killer for Halloween back in the day. Scream lived up to its name by being the only movie that made Rachel actually scream out loud, helping edge itself into the top list. As you may know, the plot involves high school students who try to escape phone calls, stabbings, and more from a killer in the now famous scream mask. Watch it!

#4. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) - The only animated movie to make the list. In this stop-motion film produced by Tim Burton, Jack Skellington of Halloweentown stumbles upon Christmastown and brings a little bit of Halloween to Christmas. Lots of sign-along songs in this classic that will get you coming back for more. This is Halloween, This is Halloween….and if you haven’t seen the movie, you need to go do that.

#3. The Shining (1980) - Jack Nicholson plays Jack Torrance, the author and now caretaker of the Overlook Hotel in Colorado. He brings along his wife Wendy, and son Danny along with him to watch the hotel over the winter season, only to discover the dark secrets and haunting past to the hotel. Lots of unsettling and iconic scenes in this movie with great character development and spooky vibes. Can’t go wrong with a film directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on a Stephen King novel!

#2. The Exorcist (1973) - The oldest movie on the list, and one of the spookiest. I actually had never seen this movie until I watched it and was super spooked. Although some of it may seem unrealistic now, the performance by the little girl Regan was exceptional and unnerving. A little girl becomes possessed by the devil and it is up to the priests and church to save her. They even say this is based on true events, and to think the soundtrack, acting, and storyline are nearly 50 years old makes it even better. A must watch this spooky season.

#1. Get Out (2017) - The newest movie on the list, and one of the most thrilling! Written & directed by Jordan Peele, this movie is based around an interracial couple and meeting your girlfriend’s family for the first time. The emotional qualities of the characters, the spooky soundtrack, and the constant plot twists and turns make this movie exceptional. It has the perfect amount of scary, jumpy moments to go along with a riveting story line that leave you with a lasting spooky impression. This is a must see and my number one SpOoKy Moovie.

I hope you enjoyed this spooky blog, are able to watch some spooky movies, and be sure to let me know what spooky movies I missed out on this Halloween season!

Happy Halloween!

Josh