Favorites from 2011 (aka, the 2011 Davie Awards)

I always post a "best of" for each year, where I rank my favorite movies, albums, TV shows, etc.  This year it became too much of a drag, and I put the whole thing off.  I've decided to just post some lists, without rankings--although you could view it as a rough, but not definitive, order--of some of my favorite media released in 2011, as well as some pre-2011 items that I experienced for the first time last year.  Enjoy.  Happy very belated 2012.


Music:

• Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will
• The Horrors - Skying
• Tom Waits - Bad as Me
• The War on Drugs - Slave Ambient
• The Black Keys - El Camino
• Low - C’Mon
• Wilco - The Whole Love
• Megafaun - Megafaun
• Foo Fighters - Wasting Light
• The Joy Formidable - The Big Roar
• Meat Puppets - Lollipop
• The Kills - Blood Pressures
• Real Estate - Days
• The Feelies - Here Before
• Wussy - Strawberry
• My Morning Jacket - Circuital
• Destroyer - Kaputt
• PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
• Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring for my Halo
• Radiohead - The King of Limbs
• Justice - Audio, Video, Disco
• Fleet Foxes -Helplessness Blues
• Bill Callahan - Apocalypse
• The Field -Looping State of Mind
• Deer Tick - Divine Providence
• Russian Circles - Empros
• The Strokes - Angles
• Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972
• Boris - Heavy Rocks
• Wire - Red Barked Tree
• Danger Mouse & Daniele Lupi - Rome
• TV on the Radio - Nine Types of Light
• Wye Oak - Civilian
• Mastodon - The Hunter
• We Were Promised Jetpacks - In the Pit of the Stomach
• Ladytron - Gravity the Seducer

Favorite Movies of 2011:

• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• Drive
• 13 Assasins
• Senna
• The Descendants
• Winter in Wartime
• Midnight in Paris
• The Muppets
• If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front
• Everything Must Go
• Paul
• Our Idiot Brother
• Horrible Bosses
• Conan O'Brien Can't Stop
• Forks Over Knives
• Bridesmaids

Favorite TV Shows:

• The Wire* - which obviously isn’t from 2011, but I finally watched it last year, so it deserves being mentioned, because it’s one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.
• Breaking Bad
• Game of Thrones
• Parks & Recreation
• Community
• Boardwalk Empire
• Louie
• Sherlock
• Homeland
• Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations / The Layover
• Top Gear
• 30 Rock
• Modern Family
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Favorite Books Of 2012:

• Bossypants by Tina Faye
• Zone One by Colton Whitehead
• Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me by Ian Morgan Cron

Ten Favorite Non-2011 Books I Read This Year:

• Your Money or Your Life
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
• No Logo
• Tender is the Night
• Cat’s Cradle
• A Confederacy of Dunces
• A Moveable Feast
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• The Great Shark Hunt
• The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

30 Favorite Non-2011 Movies I Saw For the First Time:

• Zodiac
• Chinatown
• The Thing
• Les Triplettes de Belleville
• L’Illusionniste
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
• Yojimbo
• The Corporation
• Le Samourai
• The Deer Hunter
• True Grit (2010)
• The Muppet Movie
• Mesrine: Killer Instinct
• Mesrine: Public Enemy #1
• Mystic River
• Insomnia
• Beer Wars
• Dog Day Afternoon
• Amelie
• All the President’s Men
• The French Connection
• The Conversation
• Why We Fight
• Crazy Heart
• Lemmy
• No End in Sight
• Raging Bull
• Blue Gold
• The Iron Giant

Checking Back In

I haven't written anything here in the past four or five months.  Every now and then I keep trying to push myself to get back into writing, but the motivation has been nonexistent.  At the very least, I thought I could check back in with the goals I made for myself at the beginning of the year and see how I'm fairing (not well):

1. Create and follow a budget. - Haven't created any kind of formal budget yet.  Just trying to keep unnecessary spending down.  We are tracking our spending on Mint.com, but we need to do more to keep our finances in order.
2. Continue exercising regularly -I'm doing a little better with this one.  I typically do some combination of yoga and bodyweight exercises (pushups, pullups, situps on the Bosu) three to four times a week, and cardio at least once a week.  I played some outdoor soccer in the spring and will be doing so again in the fall.  I would like to get the cardio to at least twice a week consistently.
3. Learn to cook more healthy recipes -Most of my cooking either involves the same few recipes repeatedly, or Jess giving me a recipe to cook.  I'd like to find more recipes on my own.
4. Write regularly - Nope.  Obviously.
5. Meditate at least once a week regularly - Not at all.
6. Get surgery on my gums and schedule a routine annual physical with a doctor - Finally had the gum surgery done in June and am making visits with the doctor.  It's about time.
7. Read at least 40 books - Not on target with this goal so far.  I've only finished fourteen books so far, although I am currently reading three or four different books at the moment.  Still, I need to step up the pace if I'm going to make this goal.
8. Visit Hawaii or the Pacific Northwest -There will be no Hawaii this year, but we are going to Oregon and Washington in the fall.  We also have bonus trips planned for Chicago and New England.
9. Pay off my student loan -I've been dragging my feet on this one and need to get moving.
10. Use my camera regularly -I've only done slightly better with this than I have with my goal of writing regularly.  I got a nice macro lens for my birthday that I haven't used much.  Jess did buy me a nice external flash for our anniversary that I have started using.  Took some great photos of our nephew last night.

 I hope that this will jump-start me into writing updates regularly again.  We'll see how it goes.

Shift in Focus & 2011 Resolutions

The idea of using this purely as a photo blog fizzled out last year, so I'm going to shift the focus and turn this into a more open blog.  I've wanted a fresh start from my old all-purpose personal blog, and I've decided to use this blog for that.


With that in mind, I'm going to re-post the resolutions I'm making for myself in 2011:

1. Create and follow a budget.
2. Continue exercising regularly - Increase the frequency of bodyweight exercises and yoga, and add aerobic exercises.
3. Learn to cook more healthy recipes.
4. Write regularly.
5. Meditate at least once a week regularly.
6. Get surgery on my gums and schedule a routine annual physical with a doctor - I've been dragging my feet on both of these for a few years now.  Time to start taking this seriously.
7. Read at least 40 books - Last year I read over thirty books, and I think I can do better this year.
8. Visit Hawaii or the Pacific Northwest - The wife and I are planning on going to Hawaii with her family this summer.  If that falls through we'd like to visit Oregon and Washington instead.  Either way I'll be visiting some of the few remaining states I've never been to before.
9. Pay off my student loan.
10. Use my camera regularly - A nice, vague goal to take more photos.