Top 25 Albums of the Decade – 20 to 16

To see what ranked 25-21, click here.

Top 25 Albums of the Decade – 25 to 21

The end of the decade is fast approaching, and while some publications are starting to publish their end-of-decade lists, it does feel like it sort of snuck up on us, didn’t it? It wasn’t like that when the 80s ended, but I guess after everyone blows their collective load on the end of a millennium (that, depending on who you listened to, was supposed to portend the end of times), the passing of a decade can seem passé. Maybe it’s just because we’ve never settled on what to call this decade (is it the Ohs? The Aughts?). It’s like they settled on the name for the new millennium (2K) and just gave up.

So if there’s no consensus on what to name the decade, I suppose it makes sense that there’s been no attempt to define the decade. You know, besides the fact that it’s too soon. Cause it’s never too soon to make definitive statements online that will almost immediately become wrong and outdated! In that spirit, allow me to present my top 25 albums of the decade, two months before the decade is over.

The rules for the list are simple: anything I’ve heard that was released between January 2000 and now is eligible. I had no rule against multiple albums from the same artist (as you’ll see). But, when I was deciding between albums on the bubble of the list, those challenging for spots 18-25, I went with albums from artists not already represented earlier in the list for varieties sake. So if an artist does have multiple albums on this list, you can be assured that those albums are really good. Also, I’ve decided to publish this list five at a time, which will hopefully make it easier to read and reduce the temptation to just skim. The danger is that I’ll end up taking two months to complete the whole thing, but I figure that would happen anyway.

The Fourth Annual Andy TV Awards – Best Shows

It’s been over a month since I started this thing, so I should probably get around to finishing it off with the two biggest awards. Of course, if you’ve been paying attention, you can reasonably predict how these two categories will go. For the preamble, including an explanation on what exactly the Andy TV Awards are, go here. Shows that received Emmy nominations in these two categories that I don’t watch, and thus had no chance of getting nominations here include House and Family Guy.

The Fourth Annual Andy TV Awards – Best Leading Actor

For the preamble, including an explanation on what exactly the Andy TV Awards are, go here. Shows that received Emmy nominations in these two categories that I don’t watch, and thus had no chance of getting nominations here include House, Two and a Half Men, Monk, The Mentalist, or all of the second season of The Big Bang Theory.

The Fourth Annual Andy TV Awards – Best Leading Actress

For the preamble, including an explanation on what exactly the Andy TV Awards are, go here. Shows that received Emmy nominations in these two categories that I don’t watch, and thus had no chance of getting nominations here are The Sarah Silverman Program, Samantha Who?, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Brothers & Sisters, Brothers & Sisters, and Saving Grace . So basically, almost all of them.

The Fourth Annual Andy TV Awards – Best Supporting Actor

For the preamble, including an explanation on what exactly the Andy TV Awards are, go here. Shows that received Emmy nominations in these two categories that I don’t watch, and thus had no chance of getting nominations here include Boston Legal and Two and a Half Men.

The Fourth Annual Andy TV Awards – Best Supporting Actress

For the preamble, including an explanation on what exactly the Andy TV Awards are, go here. Shows that received Emmy nominations in these two categories that I don’t watch, and thus had no chance of getting nominations here include Ugly Betty, Pushing Daisies, and 24.

The Fourth Annual Andy TV Awards

Since I don't have actual hardware, I'll pretend the Andy TV Awards look like this

I wrote what was probably my final Andy Movie Awards post earlier this year since I no longer have the time to see all the movies I used to, which is unfortunate. The bright side is that I have a lot more time to watch TV, leaving me more prepared for this year’s edition of the Andy TV Awards, just in time for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences to increase the amount of nominees to six per acting category and seven per best show award. To recap, the Andy Awards are my way of not only picking out the best in each field, but also the nominees. Too many posts around award time waste time picking from the group of flawed choices that the various award shows present. I’d rather pick from the best. Plus, it basically gives me a chance to post a series of lists, and I loves me some lists.

Ranking Pixar

Welcome to a new feature I’m hoping to develop in this blog, where I rank everything in particular artist/group’s catalogue from best to worst (or least best in some cases). This is different than a top 5/10/however long list, as those are based on exclusion. Half the fun of reading a top list is to see what doesn’t make it, which tends to take the focus away from the positioning of what does make it. For these posts, everything makes the list, so the discussion is then focused on where. This is an extension of what list obsessives tend to do whenever something new is released by the people we like: mentally place how it compares to everything else they’ve released.

And what better way to kick off this feature than a focus on the absolute best studio making movies today: Pixar Animation. They’ve had an unmatched run of success since the release of Toy Story in 1995, with their name becoming synonymous with quality. The release of a Pixar film is anticipated as much by movie geeks as it is by families looking for the latest distraction for their rugrats, with the releases instantly getting stamped as one of the best releases of the year. So deciding how their feature length films match up will be no mean feat. It’s probably no surprise when I say that I’m an unabashed Pixar fan (especially if you’ve read any of my reviews of their previous films), so be prepared for an onslaught of superlatives.

June Recommendations

When I started doing these monthly recommendation posts, I planned on having them be supplements to my regular posts. Life has decided otherwise, and now they seem to be the main feature of this blog. So when you look at the main page of my blog, it seems like every other post is lead off with this thumbs up image. I’ll try to rectify this next month… by changing the image I use for the recommendation post. Hey, I’m a busy dude.

Top 10 Ugliest Jerseys in NBA History

Given that my lists on the ugliest hockey jerseys and ugliest baseball jerseys are my two most read posts, continuing the series was a no-brainer. Coinciding it with the end of the NBA Finals is decent timing on my part, but the truth is, I started working on this list months ago and gave up. The history of the NBA simply doesn’t get much attention, so the resources for finding some of these ugly jerseys was getting too difficult. It’s a league very much focused on the now, paying little attention to anything that happened before Magic and Larry, other than the obligatory nod to Dr. J, Russell’s Celtics, and Wilt. But I persevered, using the knowledge that people everywhere will click over to this blog, get pissed because I’m insulting their favourite team, and then never visit again.

To tell the truth, I could easily do ten butt-ugly jerseys from the mid-to-late 90s alone, and it would look pretty convincing. A basketball jersey should be a simple thing: choose a two-colour scheme (with maybe a third shade for accents), put a word mark across the chest, number on the stomach, number on the back, done. Sure, you could mess it up by choosing ugly colours, but more often (and especially throughout the mid-to-late 90s) what makes an ugly jersey is messing with this formula. There’s not a lot of real estate on a basketball jersey, so when teams try to push the limits, the results are usually gaudy monstrosities.

One note: given that there’s some repeat offenders, I’ve limited this list to one jersey per team. That way this whole list wouldn’t be all Detroit, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. Also, given the spotty info available out there on NBA history, some of my dates might be wrong. Feel free to point them out, just try not to think of me as stupid for making them (instead, rely on my opinions and prose to make your judgements on my intelligence).

Summer Movie Season 2009

May is over, and the summer movie season has already begun with the big releases of Star Trek, Terminator Salvation, and Up. It’s kinda like Christmas, in how it starts earlier every year. But this year I’m grateful, because they got the movies I most wanted to see out of the way early. I expect to be very busy of the next 3 months to, uhh… 20 or so years, and thus won’t have much opportunity to go to movies. Hollywood was nice enough to accommodate the birth of my first child with one of the worst looking summer movie seasons in years. But there’s still a few that I want to see, so I figure I’d list them here, and let you all volunteer to babysit or something later.

May Recommendations

It’s time for another instalment of me giving quick recommendations from assorted pop culture categories of things I’m currently into. These things may or may not be current, but are things that I’m currently enjoying (or have recently enjoyed) that I think you (the reader) might enjoy as well. Provided that you enjoy things that are awesome.

In the past, I’d write reviews of things that I wanted to recommend, but I don’t have as much time to write those reviews as I used to, so instead of deciding how good something is, or weighing pros and cons, and all those things a responsible reviewer does, I’m just gonna come right out and say “I like these things. They are worthwhile”, which is basically what anyone is looking for when reading a review anyway. And because blogging can (and should) be a two-way street, please feel free to leave a comment with any recommendations you’d think I’d be into.

TV Review: Skins – Volume Two

Skins Volume Two

Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Mike Bailey, April Pearson, Hannah Murray, Joseph Dempsie, Larissa Wilson, Dev Patel, Mitch Hewer, Kaya Scodelario, Aimee-Ffion Edwards

Series Creators: Bryan Elsley and Jamie Brittain

Top 5 Reasons Why I Probably Won’t Go See X-Men Origins: Wolverine

The crappy title doesn't help much either.

The unofficial Summer Movie season starts this weekend with the release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the fourth film in the X-Men movie franchise. As a big fan of comics growing up and a big fan of comic book movies, you’d think I’d be all over this one, especially since X-Men was always my favourite comic (I even bought the first two films on blu-ray today). But the truth is, from the time this film was announced, I was never more than lukewarm to the idea. Of course, it’d didn’t help that the last film in the series was a soul-crushing, steaming pile of monkey dung. But, this one is Ratner-less (directed by Gavin Hood), and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine was the best part of The Last Stand, plus it has Tim Riggins! But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get excited for this movie, as each new preview made it look worse. Yet, I resigned myself to the idea that I was going to see this anyway, even though I had no expectation for a good film.

But no longer! I decided that I didn’t have to subject myself to things I’m not going to like, and here’s the reasons why…