The Bloggy Awards 2010

K, so 2010 is nearly over, a month to go, so Im going to bet that everything decent thats going to happen this year has pretty much happened. So I figure I'd do a top 5 of the year for various categories. The awards I will term 'The Bloggies' and will obviously be highly prestigious

So the top stuff of the year according to me is:

Album of the Year
1. Pershing - Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin (I heard it in 2010)
2. Sigh No More - Mumford and Sons
3. Infinite Arms - Band of Horses
4. Five Ghosts - Stars
5. Passive Me Aggressive You - Naked and Famous


Song of the Year
1. Empire State of Mind - Jay Z
2. Young Blood - Naked and Famous
3. NW Apt - Band of Horses
4. Sweet Disposition - Temper Trap
5. Back in the Saddle - Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin


Movie of the Year
1. The Social Network
2. The Town
3. The Expendables
4. Inception
5. The Other Guys


TV Show of the Year
1. The Big Bang Theory
2. The Mentalist
3. Survivor Heroes vs Villains
4. Teen Mom
5. How I met your Mother


Book of the Year (I don't read many)
1. Scott Pilgrim Series - Brian Lee O'Malley
2. Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom
3. Have a Little Faith - Mitch Albom


Video Game of the Year (I dont play many)
1. Super Mario Brothers - Wii
2. Pokemon Gold - DS
3. Mario Kart - DS

Calvin and Hobbes

Ok, we'll start with a small history lesson. I first saw Calvin and Hobbes when I was around 8 or 9 years old and my Canadian friend round the corner had some comics. Of course we had the bunk bed sleepovers going, and between playing original gameboy and trading cards I got to read my first Calvin and Hobbes.
Calvin and Hobbes is written by Bill Watterson is are named after John Calvin, a 16th century french theologian and Thomas Hobbes, a 17th century English philosopher The comic series provides glimpses at the modern world through the eyes of a boy and his 'come to life' tiger.


Its quite an escape when you pick one up, and for me its got those back to childhood nostalgic touches about it too.
Bill Watterson was a clever writer and was able to capture the exuberance of childhood and mix it with stories that kids and adults would enjoy. The drawing is great also and some of the books have colour and I think those are the best. Just by one expression you can grasp exactly what he's trying to tell you.
Some of his best work is when Calvin's imagination takes over and he becomes one of his alter ego's Spaceman Spiff (my blog pic), Stupendous Man or Tracer Bullet.
Maybe my favourite strips ever are when Calvin and Hobbes explore a regular cardboard box and are transported to various adventures. In one strip the box or 'transmogrifier' is used to change them into any form or shape they choose, to which Hobbes remarks 'Its amazing what they can do with cardboard boxes these days!'


I own all the books I think, and its hard to choose my favourite, but I've listed a few below. i would highly recommend getting your hands on one for Xmas or just for a lazy Sunday afternoon.


Happy reading


Scientific Progess Goes Boink
The Indispensible Calvin and Hobbes
Its A Magical World
Theres Treasure Everywhere

A list of who I would be in certain groups

So, we are all part of certain circles, teams, groups, clicks etc. its a natural way of life. And we all have a feeling about ourselves and how we fit within certain groups, we may even act very differently depending which group we are in at the time.
I know I'm probably quite different when I'm in my work circles to when I'm in my 'watching the Warriors while having a few beers circle'.
And as kids we all played out our favourtite characters from movies, tv, books etc, and when you were playing you wanted to be the character that you wanted to be most like! Do you remember those days - you'd proabably also spend most of lunch break arguing about who gets to be who.

So anyway, here is a list of the characters that I would be in groups

The Smurfs - Jokey Smurf
Friends - Ross
Sesame Street - Mr Snufelupagus
Full House - Uncle Jessy
CSI Miami -Horatio Caine
Charlie Brown - Woodstock
Calvin and Hobbes - Calvin
Seinfeld - Kramer
Simpsons - Ned Flanders
Pokemon - Charmeleon
Samurai Pizza Cats - The one dressed in white
South park - Stan
Star Wars - R2D2
Step by Step - Cody
Captain Planet - The guy who does Fire
The Justice League - Batman

Go team!

Things I miss from the 90's

It's hard to believe the 90's ended more than 10 years ago. They were the formative years of my life, from 7 - 17 years old and held a lot of great times and cool things. I expect everyone says this about the decade they grew up in, but they were much simpler times than today. Mobile phones didn't really exist for most of the 90's, the internet was still a new and exciting thing (even on dial up speed) and Georgie Pie was still around for birthday parties!
I just thought I would have a nostalgic moment or two and look back and think about the things I grew up with and the things I miss from the 90's

Rollerblades - but mom I really want some!
The Chicago Bulls - they were the best team ever. I bet you had a bulls cap!
Action Figures
Super Soaker 50 - the green and yellow one that you had
Short Circuit lollies - so sour but you loved them
When you got cool toys in Happy meals and even at Service Stations
Playing outside
Sega Master System, graphics weren't flash but you didn't care, you had a Sega Master System with built in Alex the Kid!
Nintendo 64 - Groundbreaking gaming awesomeness - Goldeneye baby
Cassette Singles - You had to make an effort to get the music you loved
Reebok pumps
When Christmas was the most exciting time of the year
Mad Magazine
Collecting Basketball cards - so much pocket money spent on these
Iiiiin West Philadelphia born and raised.... you know the rest
Gak
90's pop rock bands - Collective Soul, Matchbox 20, Goo goo dolls, third eye blind
Staying up on Sunday night to listen to Rick Dees Weekly top 40
Stone Cold Steve Austin vs the Rock (before he was a movie star)!
Reading Goosebumps books - I hated reading but loved these books
Pop music was actually pop music. Remember the popularity of 90's Britney Spears
Home Alone 1 and 2
Slap Bands, yoyo's, chatter rings and knuckle bones
Wheres Wally - There he is
When the Simpsons episodes were worth watching
Disney Movies - The Lion King was the greatest movie, and there was no CGI digital animation

I have to do a seperate section on great TV shows that I miss from the 90's. So many of these I remember coming home from school to watch or getting up early to catch:
Doug
Animaniacs
Hey Arnold
Darkwing Duck
Pokemon
Kenan and Kel
Pete and Pete
Rockos modern life
Rugrats
Family Matters
Full House
Boy Meets World
Dinosaurs
Captain Planet
He-Man
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Clarissa Explains it All
Double Dare
Hangin with Mr Cooper
The Wonder Years
The Fresh Prince of Bel Air
Wishbone
Parker Lewis Can't Lose
Dawsons Creek
Home Improvement

Bring back the 90's!

Naked and Famous - Passive Me Agressive You

The Naked and Famous have just released their debut album this week, Passive Me Aggressive You. The album is already no.1 on itunes and most people have been exposed to their massive single 'Young Blood', my personal favourite track of the year.
I've given it a few runs through and am definitely digging it.The album opens with an older track - All of this, a driving beat with nice pop hooks. Second track Punching in a Dream delivers another stellar track along the same lines as Young Blood. Then we step into 'Frayed and the album takes a slightly different direction, less pop, a bit more eclectic than the singles, has its soft and then powerful moments, and I found this to be more of the tone of the entire album.
Sun is a beautiful building track that draws out some great tension and takes you along on a ride, and just keeps driving.
Other standouts for me have been No way - quiet then hard, and Girls like You which gives us a bit more pop near the end of the album.
All up its a album worthy of high praise. Its of a quality that would stand up against any band today, and they come from NZ.
Electro-indie pop gold.
Enjoy

50 Movies I think you must see before you die.

Ok, so in other words these are pretty much my 50 favourite films. In no particular order, just as they came to me.
Let me know if theres any that are missing that deserve greatness!

1 Batman the Dark Knight

2 Rocky

3 Zombieland

4 Office Space

5 The Shawshank Redemption

6 Hot Fuzz

7 Anchorman

8 Home Alone

9 Love Actually

10 You’ve Got Mail

11 Terminator 2

12 The Lion King

13 Zodiac

14 The Game

15 Happy Gilmore

16 Mystic River

17 Gone Baby Gone

18 Star Wars

19 The Empire Strikes Back

20 Return of the Jedi

21 Donnie Darko

22 The Untouchables

23 Ironman

24 Waynes World

25 Ace Ventura Pet Detective

26 Forest Gump

27 Die Hard

28 The Usual Suspects

29 The Nightmare before Christmas

30 The Matrix

31 Without Limits

32 The Santa Claus

33 The Jerk

34 O Brother Where art Thou

35 Super Troopers

36 Pulp Fiction

37 Dumb and Dumber

38 Finding Nemo

39 Cars

40 Zoolander

41 Nights in Rodanthe

42 Good Fellas

43 The Sixth Sense

44 Catch me if you can

45 Dirty Harry

46 I am Legend

47 Fright Night

48 The Breakfast Club

49 Big Fish

50 Juno

Band of Horses - Inifinite Arms

Just picked up the new album from Band of Horses this week called Infinite Arms. Having been a big fan of their first 2 albums I had built up a pretty high level of expectation. These expectations were raised when I caught a clip of one song 'NW Apt' off the album a few days prior to purchasing, so I was amped going into it (not always a good thing).

So I bought from JB Hifi and hurried back to the car to listen and was first greeted by a very low key song to open the album entitled 'Factory' which caught me a bit off guard as I was expecting a bit more oompf for the first song. Though 'Is there a ghost' was the opening track from Cease to Begin which started off slow but it certainly kicked in whereas Factory never gets momentum.

Moving on, the next 2 tracks are solid 'Compliments' (the single) and 'Laredo' then comes one of if not the best track 'Blue Beard' filled with cool melodies, still very chilled but has a classic BOH sound that is unmistakable. One of the beauties of this band is that when you hear their stuff you can't mistake them for anyone else.

From there the album keeps a very slow-medium pace, until Dilly which is a cool beach boys type country pop song. Then only at track 11 do we get to the kick @#!*% driving bass thumping NW Apt. The only song that raises the bar in terms of beats per minute and distorted guitar.

So like I said at the start, my hopes were up after Cease to Begin, which was pretty much flawless, so it was always gonna be hard to top that. Cease also had only 9 tracks (+ a less than 1 min track), Infinite Arms has 12, so if we were to shave off the 3 worst songs it does stack up better.
Unfortunately I don't think there is any song here that will really open them up in terms of singles. this being their major label debut I thought there would be something like that?
Anyway, in summary, too many slow songs, interest lacks in the 2nd half of the album, but enough here to keep me interested for a while. 3.5/5

Band of Horses will be playing the Powerstation on 3 August. Tickets on sale now!
Check out Blue Beard Live
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74OKIsePtgg

The Avengers

With the recent release of Iron Man 2 it got me again thinking about the Avengers Movie. For those who don't know the avengers are the Superhero Team that comprises some of the greatest Marvel characters around, some of which have had movies already.
So, to begin with we had the 'real' Hulk movie, starring Edward Norton which was released around 2 years ago, that was then followed by the highly acclaimed Iron Man, which may have been the biggest unexpected hit of the Summer 2008. Now more recently we've had the release of the second Iron Man movie, which I can say is also really good with a much stronger villain in this one. So thats two of our heroes, who will make up the rest? Well, just round the corner next year is the first Thor movie, Starring Chris Hemsworth - he's come a long way from Home and Away! And shortly after that, also next year is the Captain America movie. Called Captain America The First Avenger, which sounds as though it will lead right into the Avengers movie.
Over the years there has been a lot of different heroes making up the team, but here is the list for the movie:
Hulk
Iron Man
Thor
Captain America
Nick Fury
Whatever happens its going to be an epic 2012!

Best Albums Ever

http://www.besteveralbums.com/yearstats.php?y=201

I stumbled across this website in search for a good new album to listen to and I found some interesting ones here. So what they do is take stats from 1600 different album charts to give the greatest albums around.
They have a few diffferent categories, and you can look back to as far as the 1950's.
I don't necessarily agree that they've got the best albums there, but its interesting to read anyway.
Their current top 5 albums for 2010 are:
1. Teen Dream - Beach House
2. Contra - Vampire Weekend
3. Plastic Beach - Gorillaz
4. There is Love in You - Four Tet
5. Transference - Spoon