Best of 2020

Welp. 2020 is officially over. This was by far one of the strangest and trying years I have experienced. While most of our plans to travel, attend concerts and weddings, coach lacrosse and enjoy time with family and friends were interrupted, I still found ways to make 2020 the best I could for me. I was able to transform my fitness by exercising every day since April 1st. I watched more TV shows than ever before, and continued to enjoy podcasts, music, movies and YouTube videos. I had a successful year of blogging, writing about my monthly challenges that I began back in April. I ended up blogging 14 times and even though I did not produce any new vlogs, I did kick my video editing into gear, finishing up 10 videos since November 24th. Here are my “best” lists from 2020.

You can find my best lists from the previous 6 years here: 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014

Best Moment: In 2020 I ran my first marathon, biked over 1500 miles, completed 20K pushups, crunches and squats, but there was no greater moment than on December 4th when we got a new puppy! Cheddar is officially a part of the family. Such a loving, snuggly, sweet boy who makes us so happy every day. Watch the video of the night we picked him up

Best Vacation: Vacation is great, unfortunately we didn’t go anywhere in 2020 because of Covid. We had plans to go to Arizona, New York, California, and some other spots, but instead we were only able to drive to South Haven, Michigan. Still a solid trip!

Best TV Show: I watched more TV this year than ever before. My favorite show was Westworld (HBO), closely followed up by Barry (HBO), Avatar: The Last Airbender (Netflix), and The Last Dance (Netflix).

The rest of the TV shows I watched: American Horror Story Season 9, Arrested Development, Band of Brothers, Big Mouth, Chernobyl, DAVE (Lil Dicky), East Bound & Down, End of the F***ing World, Euphoria, Fargo, Hollywood, The Leftovers, The Night Of, Outer Banks, The Outsider, Ozark Season 3, The Queen’s Gambit, The Righteous Gemstones, Safe, Sex Education, True Detective, Vice Principals, Waco, Wild Wild Country, YOU.

Best Movie (Theaters): We saw Bombshell on January 1st with Sarah and Colin. It’s based on a true story about Fox News and the sicko dude who ran it at the top. Classic case of a man abusing power and making women do sick things… made me angry. Movie theaters pretty much closed in the middle of March and didn’t open back up.

Best New Movie I Saw: Parasite, which also happened to win the Academy Award for best picture of 2019. We watched a ton of movies at home this year including 60+ spooky movies in October.

Best Documentary: I watched a decent amount of documentaries this year, but none was better than the three-part Netflix documentary, Don’t F*** with Cats. The story of hunting an internet killer.

Other docs I watched that you should check out: Three Identical Strangers (Hulu), The Game Changers (Netflix), Taylor Swift: Miss Americana (Netflix), McMillons (Hulu / HBO), Tiger King (netflix), The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (amazon), Iron Cowboy: The Story of the 50-50-50 (amazon), Dirtbag (amazon), Shred America (amazon), Meru (amazon)

Best Album: My best album of 2020 was a surprise to me, but I absolutely loved it, especially when running. Machine Gun Kelly - Tickets to My Downfall. Gave me serious 2000s alternative punk vibes with a few Blink-182-esque songs; makes sense with Travis Barker on drums.

Runners Up: Dominic Fike - What Could Possibly Go Wrong, Taylor Swift - Folklore, Porridge Radio - Every Bad

Click the photo of each album below to give them a listen on YouTube.

Best Songs: I tried to keep up with new music releases throughout this year and added music to a playlist in real time instead of searching at the end of the year. This resulted in a playlist of over 300 songs which was a bit much. I trimmed this down to just 113. Here are the best 113 songs by 113 artists I chose for the year 2020. You can listen to them all now by checking out the Spotify or Amazon Playlist below.
Spotify Playlist / Amazon Playlist

If you don’t stream, here are my favorite 15 tracks from 2020:

Rain on Me - Lady Gaga
title track - Machine Gun Kelly
Feel You - My Morning Jacket
Sweet - Porridge Radio
Lazy - Surfaces
Borderline - Tame Impala
Fire - Waxahatchee

Boomer - Bartees Strange
Deep in Love - Bonnie Light Horseman
Home - Caribou
Everybody’s Alright - De Lux
Cancel Me - Dominic Fike
Whats Poppin (Remix) - Jack Harlow
Come & Go - Juice Wrld
how will i rest in peace if i’m buried by a highway? - KennyHoopla

Best Music Video: “I don’t cook, I don’t clean, but let me tell you how I got this ring.” The year of female rappers going hard. Don’t watch this one with your kids! WAP by Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion.

Best Concert: It was a very strange year for concerts. Just halfway through March, the day I was supposed to see Tallest Man on Earth at Old Town School of Folk Music, concerts were cancelled. We didn’t know it at the time, but they would never come back in 2020. While I snuck in a couple shows in January and February, and there were many virtual online shows, it just wasn’t the same. Of the four shows I was able to make it to in 2002, Black Keys at Aragon took the cake. White Reaper opened up as Jmon and I caught the rock show at the Aragon Ballroom. Click the video below to check it out.

Best Podcasts: Listening to podcasts took a hit for a few months when I was not commuting to work every day, but I still pulled out three new podcast blogs this year, taking me over 100 total. Here are some of the new great new ones I found. Dolly Parton’s America, Crime Junkie, Seeing White

Best Jcubed Video: I had a big push of video editing in the last two months of the year. In fact, I finally finished the last five episodes of the 2014 series, The Road to Rado, and released a few more videos. I was hoping Big Chili Cookoff 2 would be finished, but stay tuned in early 2021 for that one!

Best Lacrosse Video: Coronavirus led me to make my first lacrosse stick trick video in 9 years. A little bit rusty, but still fun!

Best YouTube Channel: I have to give the channel of the year to Jeff Wittek and his barbershop. Here was his episode with last years best YouTube channel, The Nelk Boys. Solid comedy skits with awkward interviews while giving people haircuts.

Best Video: How Chicago looked for the last 9 months of the year, empty. Quality drone footage.

That closes up a pretty tough 2020 and all my “best” things from it. Here’s to hoping 2021 to be a better year than 2020!

See ya then

Josh

Loyal Ladies

On Thursday October 6th of 2016 I finished Stranger Things by powering through the last 4 episodes before work. Phenomenal show, highly suggested you watch! It is on Netflix, about childhood, aliens, the 1980s, and only 8 episodes, so go watch now! I can't wait for season 2. That night for dinner we had leftovers and I worked on re-editing the lax highlight I made for a kid. Still trying to figure the ins and outs of this new program, FCPX.

Update as of 10/18 - Holy cow I am back! It feels so good to be editing videos again and I have definitley found my editing program. There will be a new piece to the blogs, and it is called a vlog. Videos of my life and events from the past week. I am not trying to make this a vlog where I just talk to the camera the entire time, in fact I don't really do that at all in this first one, but instead me telling a story of how my days are spent. This first week isn't great, but I will be working on my editing skills with each edit and hopefully it will get me to doing more videos (there is quite the stack of videos from the past 6 months to get through). Enjoy

Friday October 7th was a work from home. Some serious activity was going on outside of our apartment. Obama in the building? Or should I say alley? There were a plentiful amount of police in our alley, blocking off the streets, and eventually a long parade of police vehicles followed by 10 black SUVs with American flags on the front made its way down our back alley between the buildings. Police were monitoring the alley, turning people back and sending them from the direction the parade would be coming. They also took out all of our trash bins, I guess in case of any hidden explosives? With all of this and the helicopters overhead, I think it's safe to say that someone important, probably the president may be in town? Later in the day I found out he came back to do early voting. Thanks Obama!

Later that evening Beth and Grace made their way over. I met them halfway from the L, oh Beth has been blogging it up. Read here! After chatting for a bit, I picked us up some Wing Stop to enjoy with Rach before heading out for the evening. Gotta love Wing Stop wings, they had some new korean spice flavor, solid. After we ate, we headed out to DOC wine bar. Our first time here despite being within 100 feet of the place on Clark. It was pretty chill. The song above (Loyal) played when we were there, and immediately became the theme to the night. After sampling the wine flights named Ferris Bueller (reds) and Risky Business (whites), we walked over to Headquarters, the beercade. In the meantime, the Cubs won game 1 of the first round of the playoffs. Once we got to HQ we were super satisfied as there were not that many people there. We immediately made our way to Q*Bert to shatter the record board, then played a ton of other games including but not limited to: Pacman, Ninja Turtles, Pinball, & Skiball. After a drink or two we headed out and started walking back home. Before getting home, we made a pit stop at AliveOne bar on Halsted. A fun little bar with a small dance room in the back with a live DJ. Yo DJ, spin that track. Grace dominated the dance floor and then we walked back home to call it a night.

Rise and shine. I woke up early the next morning on Saturday October 8th at 7:15am and drove back to Napes to coach the squad. After a 2 hour practice I made it back to the city around noon. I jogged a quick mile over to the farmer's market to meet up with Rach, Beth, and Grace. We walked about the zoo, saw some animals, including a crazy tongue flicking cow, ate a large popcorn, I jumped over a table, and we enjoyed a lovely sunny fall day. I know I say it every time I go to a zoo now that I am an adult, but some of these animals look so darn sad. Especially the large Lions and Jaguars that just pace back and forth looking out at the humans. Poor guys.

After a beautiful walk back, we were at our apartment where I took a quick power nap then woke up and made some delicious burgers for dinner. Sure I cut the onion entirely too large, but it was still delicious. Rachel made this amazing Apple strudel pie thing in the crockpot for dessert. It was honestly so tasty served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, I had like 3 bowls of it before we headed out. We surely need to make it for the next party we attend. Yum. Beth and Grace are still here despite saying they may leave. Around 8 we Ubered it over to Brian's new place. My second Uber (from my phone) ever. His place was pretty dope! The ceilings were like 10 feet high and his kitchen sink was huge. Megan was out of town, so it was just Brian and their dog Crede. The gummy I had earlier was starting to kick in as SNL came on. It was a pretty funny episode providing laughs for us all as we indulged in a few select brews. I guess it wasn't funny enough though since Rach, Grace, Beth, and I were all asleep on the couch by the end of the show. Thanks to Brian for the lovely photo. We cabbed it home and went to bed. Fun night.

The morning of Sunday October 9th started with some Marathon watching. It was the 2016 Chicago Marathon, and our friends Aly and Torie were running this year. I went out early and saw the leaders of the marathon pacing at that 5 minute mile. Crazy fast. Rach and Beth joined me to cheer on Aly and Torie. Both were doing amazing and kicked butt that day. Torie's 7th marathon, finishing in 4:54:01 and Aly's 2nd, finishing in 4:17:52. Awesome work ladies. Maybe I'll try to enter the lottery and run next year? Always gets me in the mood after watching friends and strangers putting in work. Props to Beth for getting this great shot of Torie seeing Rachel.

I headed out to Concordia Chicago around 11 to watch my Cats go 3-0 in a fallball tournament. The boys looked good, almost mid season form. Excited to see what the spring holds. I drove back to the city and hung out with Rachel at home. Beth and Grace had headed back to the burbs via train at this point. Rachel made us a salad for lunch and then a bit later made us a super tasty apple and chicken pasta dish for dinner. We put up our two couches on the list of craigs. Kinda tired of leather, if anyone is interested holla at yaboy before they're gone! That night we watched the second presidential debate which in my opinion was extremely boring. I am tired of watching the two argue and Trump never answering any questions. Like the entire internet says though, Ken Bone, the man in the red sweater who asked one of the final audience questions, won the debate.

Monday October 10th was a rough one. I kept waking up in the middle of the night, having to use the bathroom. I didn't feel well at all so I took a sick day and watched a few episodes of the show The Sixties on netflix. Highly recommend for anyone interested in the history of big events in the 1960s. Tom Hanks is a director or producer or whatever as well, well produced sir! This made me think that I want to start learning more about our Nation's recent history. I feel like they don't teach it at all in high school and I really have no idea. Who's with me!?

The next day on October 11th, Tuesday I drove to the burbs after dropping Rachel off at work and did laundry at my parents. Later I had 18 kids at cats fall ball (the most yet), a kid hurdled a box net, and I worked late. I got home around 10 and had fish and rice for dinner made by Rachel. She really is the best always making nice meals for us. Love you Rachie! The Cubs also pulled off a miraculous 6-5 win that night to advance to the national league finals. Chicago! Our neighbors put up a great little sign.

Wednesday October 12th was a simple day that involved me finishing the book 11.22.63 by Stephen King. I had finally gotten through all 30 discs of this book on tape and really enjoyed it. I am going to go ahead and say this is the longest book I have listened to. It is about the assassination of JFK, time travel, and what would have happened if it didn't happen. Exciting story that I would recommend you all to read (or listen like I do). After I finished work I had a Cats meeting and then slept at my parents. I fell asleep in my childhood bedroom with the lights on while doing laundry. Must have been tired.

So If you didn't notice, I am trying out this whole Vlog thing. I am still doing my blog in entirety at this point, but maybe will make the transition. Anyone like a video aspect instead of all the text and photos? I am not comfortable at all talking to the camera yet, so maybe I will make it a double duty type of thing for now.

Video of the Week: Awesome timelapse all about Chicago. I hope to make something similar some day. Would be neat.

TV Show of the Week: Stranger Things - Like I said up above, if you haven't watched this new series yet. Catch the first season on Netflix right now. Aliens.

Book of the Week: 11.22.63 by Stephen King. The final day for JFK. Plus you can't go wrong with Stephen King. Read it!

See ya next week.

Josh

Light up My Sky

Tuesday November 4th, I finished off American Horror Story Season 2 and had some Wings and Rings with young Squid.

Remember Remember the 5th of November. Wednesday I picked up a new lax helmet and watched a few episodes of Archer.

On Thursday November 6 I hit up the library and found a few vinyl records for sale and scooped them up. I also found out that the CDs and DVDs will be moving upstairs, to make space for a teen hangout area, such an inconvenience. Ugh. Best library in America no more. That night, I picked up Rachel from work and we hit up the drive thru at McDonald's, which was absolutely delicious even though they shorted us a McChicken. Scums. $15 an hour for workers my booty.

Friday November 7, I hung up blinds in our place and after work, made some rice and corn for dinner. I then just relaxed and hit the hay early.

Saturday November 8, cleaned around the apartment, hanging up blinds, hanging up pictures, and fixing doors and other adult stuff. I then picked up Beth from the train station around 2pm. After chilling at our place for a little bit, Rachel, Beth, & I headed over to Brian's and picked him up. We then hit up an Oktoberfest party around 5 at Phil's place. Great beer, great brats, and great friends. A little bit of hammerslagen as well. Slamming nails into a tree stump. I was brutal at it.  Around 8:30 we headed out on foot to catch the Yellowcard concert.

Once we arrived to the Concord Theatre, aka Congress Theater, we got our tickets and headed in. To our fortune, we missed the opening band and most of the second act. Yellowcard came on around 9:30 and jammed out for a solid hour. They rocked the place, and I was screaming all the lyrics to every song, even though most of them were wrong, I'm not good with lyrics if you didn't know. They played Light up the sky, Lights & Sounds, Only One, Way away, Ocean Avenue, and some of their other jams, pretty much all of their hits. I'll post the set list below. Somehow the music carried my body toward the front during Ocean Avenue and I was one with the moshers, woah! I made it forward and back through the mosh pit a couple of times without being too damaged. I was also chanting "We Believe You Will Play Believe" for the whole concert. Despite many people around me agreeing with my words, it didn't work.

Set LIST

1. Convocation

2. Transmission Home

3. Crash the Gates

4. Lights and Sounds

5. Only One (Piano Intro)

6. Make Me So

7. Illuminate

8. Light Up the Sky

9. Awakening

10. The Deepest Well (with Matty Mullins)

11. One Bedroom

12. Way Away

13. Ocean Avenue

14. California

Since they didn't play their best song besides Light up the Sky, listen to it above! We walked back to the party after the concert ended and then headed back to Naperville. By far the shortest concert I have ever been to, but it was awesome and the energy level was super high. I remember jumping up and down for nearly every song and screaming lyrics at Beth, Brian, and Rach.

Sunday November 9th we woke up and headed out around 9 to catch the Naperville Marathon. Rachel's brother Phil was running it and we were going to cheer him on. Beth came with and we met up with Rachel's family and watched Phil run all 26.2 miles. Nice work Phil! After the Marathon we dropped Beth off at home and then headed to Gordon Biersch for some lunch. I had a tasty Marzen BBQ burger while telling stories of our engagement with Rachel to her family!

After lunch Rachel and I drove over to my brother and sister's in St Charles. We got there and visited with the cute little kids. Sophia was licking walls, crazy girl. Nikolas was pooping, sleeping, and crying like the baby he is. Had some Panda Express for dinner, then we drove back to the city and called it a night after an exhausting weekend.

Monday November 10th.

Beth made some tasty tomato cheese bread for dinner. Nothing else really happened. Check out this inspirational video about running.

Headed back to U of I next week. Get excited.

YaBoy

Josh