7th Annual Year-End Awards!

I’m really late on this one (sorry!) but here it is! I decided to do a slight change and instead of “Best of” I’m using “Favorite” b/c hey, tastes differ and I’m not trying to argue the merits of each of the things I picked, just what I personally felt.

Favorite Movie of the Year: Toy Story 3

1st Runner-Up: Despicable Me

2nd Runner-Up: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

It was a tight race for my favorite movie b/c I really enjoyed certain aspects of each movie. Despicable Me was more quotable, and I love the minions (I even bought 3 stuffed minions, lol) but Toy Story just resonated with me. As many of you know, I’m a collector, and one of the things I collect and display are my toys. I’ve never gotten rid of any of my old toys, for various reasons. And the ending to the movie just really made me think.

-As for Harry Potter, it was just awesome, and stayed really true to the book, which was a refreshing change from the last few movies.

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Favorite CD/album of the Year: David Crowder Band- Church Music

1st Runner-Up: David Crowder Band- A Collision or (3+4=7)

2nd Runner-Up: Chris Tomlin- Hello Love

This was the year of the David Crowder Band for me. I downloaded like 5 of their albums this year. It was a tight call between “Church Music” and “A Collision or (3+4=7)” b/c “A Collision” had a great flow to it as an entire album. But “Church Music” just had some of the best individual songs, including what I consider to be one of the greatest Hard Rock Christian songs ever- “God Almighty, None Compares.” The lead singer’s voice kind of reminds me of one of my other favorite bands- Our Lady Peace in some of their songs, so that’s a big plus for me. They just have well-written and powerful songs, that sets them apart from other artists (let alone just other Christian artists). Those two albums were definitely the highest in my iPod rotation this year.

-Chris Tomlin’s album was just a great worship album. It’s definitely a great follow-up to his two previous solid albums. These are songs we’ll be singing for awhile.

-Now some of you may look at my favorite CDs and be wondering where all my “usual kind of music” is. I did download a bunch of albums from some of my favorite artists, but none of them really stood out to me. I purchased three Weezer albums (two new ones and the Pinkerton special edition)- they were solid but nothing spectacular. I got the new Lostprophets and Linkin Park albums- both bands are known for angst, but their first 2-3 albums had no profanity in it whatsoever and they got their emotions and point across, so I was disappointed in their latest offerings b/c they resorted to using profanity in a few of their songs, which I didn’t feel was necessary. The new Alter Bridge is pretty solid, but I got it towards the end of the year, so I wasn’t able to get enough listens in to justify placing it any higher.

Also, just overall I have not been listening to as much secular music as I have in the past. I just haven’t been “feeling it.” When I put on my iPod, I just have a desire to listen to worship music and praise God, or just listen to stuff with uplifting lyrics. I’ll still pop on stuff like Foo Fighters every once in awhile, but I’ve pretty much stopped listening to the harder/angrier stuff I used to always listen to b/c I just have no desire to hear it anymore. I haven’t listened to Disturbed in forever. Honestly, I haven’t even listened to more than 3-4 Metallica and/or Judas Priest songs a few times in the past YEAR, and they were a couple of my favorite bands.

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Favorite Book of the Year: The Bible

1st Runner-Up: Carol Kornacki- A Soul for Sale

2nd Runner-Up: Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

I put the Bible as my favorite book of the year, b/c it was this year that I finally finished reading through the entire Bible (it took me a couple of years). So I was proud of that accomplishment and just happy to have a better understanding of God’s word. I already purchased a new Bible in October and am now re-reading through it in different translation to try and get even more out of it and it’s been great so far and I look forward to continuing this journey.

-Carol Kornacki’s book was just a powerful testimony. It’s pretty much her life story, which I’ve heard in pretty good detail over the years since I was young, and it’s still one that captivates me. She’s one of my favorite speakers, and it was cool to read some of the stories she’s told us over the years in even greater depth. I highly recommend this book if you want proof on how God can change your life for the better if you surrender to His will, no matter how “terrible” a person you may be feel you are.

-Percy Jackson was my “fun read” for the year. I try to get a few of those in every year, but I didn’t get to read much this year. As it is, it took me like 7-8 months to get through this book b/c I didn’t have a lot of time. But it was a fun book and much better than the movie version that we saw on the flight back from Florida.

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Favorite Video Game of the Year: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

1st Runner-Up: LEGO Batman

2nd Runner-Up: Super Mario Bros. Wii

Didn’t get as much video game playing in this year as I would have liked (Legend of Zelda is still just sitting there, mostly untouched… d’oh). But I did play a few fun games this year. I FINALLY got around to playing Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and I absolutely loved it. The controls took me a little bit of time to get a hang of, but once I did I was having a blast using all the force powers. I’ve been dying to download the extra levels and was hoping the price on them would go down (they’re currently $10 each and there are two) since the second game came out, but that hasn’t happened yet. Hopefully, I’ll get to that sooner than later.

-LEGO Batman almost claimed the #1 spot. I’m still actually playing through it! It’s such a long game, with so many things to unlock. The replay value on this game is ridiculous. I love the amount of characters in it and using the different special attacks each of the characters have. It took all the cool parts from LEGO Star Wars and improved upon it. The only downside is that I have the game for the PS2, and the colors on it just seem really dark to me. I know there is a lot of black in the game, but it just really makes the levels hard to view at times. I was forced to play in the dark so I make things out, which thankfully helped a lot. But other than that, it’s been a really fun game.

-Super Mario Bros Wii is another fun game, especially when you play with more than one person. I’ve done a lot on my own, but it was really fun to go through it with Jordan. We’ve gotten up to the 6th World so far, and I look forward to going through the rest. It’s just a great flashback to the great Mario games of the past.

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Favorite TV Show of the Year: How I Met Your Mother

1st Runner-Up: Modern Family

2nd Runner-Up: Man v. Food

This was a tough one for me to decide on. I really enjoyed Modern Family this year, there were so many hilarious moments and all the characters are fun to watch and compare to my own family. But HIMYM was a show I had been looking forward to catching up on for awhile. I had heard so many good things about it, and had caught like 2 or 3 episodes on TV here and there and had enjoyed them. So this year, I joined Netflix and the first thing I did was put HIMYM seasons on it. Right now we’re on the 4th season, and both Ariana and I are loving it. I think it’s the perfect successor to Friends but for our generation. So many of the gags are things people my age (in their late 20’s-early 30’s) will really relate to.

-Man v. Food is another fun show, but for a totally different reason. Adam Richmond is an entertaining host, but the real star of the show is the food. Me & Ariana have a little checklist of many of the places he has gone that we’d love to hit eventually. We’ve discussed going on a “fat-cation” many times to visit a bunch of those places, which I’m sure will happen one day, lol.

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Favorite Concert of the Year:Our Lady Peace @ Massey Hall

1st Runner-Up: Hillsong United (during Battlecry) @ Izod Center

2nd Runner-Up: Reel Big Fish @ Irving Plaza

Back in March, Ariana, Stevo and I had the opportunity to go to Toronto to visit our friend Rachael and see Our Lady Peace perform on back to back nights at the famous Massey Hall for two amazing concerts. The first night OLP played their album “Clumsy” in its entirety, followed by a greatest hits set. The second night OLP played “Spiritual Machines” in it’s entirety, also followed by a greatest hits set.

We had great seats both nights. It’s funny b/c going into the shows I was more psyched for the “Clumsy” night and thought that would be the better of the two shows. But OLP felt a bit off during the “Clumsy” portion of that evening. I think it was a combination of a lack of energy from the crowd and maybe having played out a bunch of the songs from Clumsy over the years. The greatest hits portion of that night really kicked it up though. Then the night of Spiritual Machines just blew me away. I had forgotten how many great songs that album had on it, and how rare it was to hear some of them live. Combining that with a very energized and lively home-town crowd really made it a special evening.

-The Hillsong concert was part of a Christian weekend event called Battlecry. It was a powerful weekend with a lot of great testimony, sermons and worship. Hillsong was the main act for the first evening and they put on a great show. There was some issues at first though b/c our church’s seats were on the top level and the speakers at the Izod Center went bad in our section, so we could barely hear a lot of what was going on for most of the night. I took it upon myself to try to speak with someone to either get things fixed or move us to better seats. It took a lot of legwork and talking to different people, but I was able to get a few of us into like the 5th row of the arena, so we were really close to the band when they came out. So that was pretty cool, b/c I was able to “save the day” for a few members of our group.

-The Reel Big Fish show was fun b/c it just took me back to the beginnings of my concert-going. It was a serious flashback to 1998. Jordan was able to hook me up with a VIP pass into the show (so I got in for free) and was able to go with my buddy Steve. We had actually both gone to see RBF back in 98 as well (separately, but met up at the show) and this time the band wound up playing a LOT of songs from their first three albums, so it was really cool b/c that’s their best known stuff.

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Awesome Moments of the Year: Our trip to Florida in August (Universal Studios for Harry Potter & TNA) and then the Star Wars Celebration V Convention.

1st Runner-Up: Trip to Toronto (for OLP concerts)

2nd Runner-Up: My Graduation!!

Honorable Mentions: 1) Young Adult Retreat in January

As I’m writing this, I’m realizing that I never finished (let alone posted) my blog for our Orlando vacation. So I’m not sure where to even begin. I had sooo much fun that week. It was every fanboy’s dream come true, and I got to share it with my beautiful wife, who enjoyed it just as much as I did.

The vacation started with us staying at the Doubletree at the Entrance to Universal Studios. It was a great spot b/c it was LITERALLY right at the entrance, so it wasn’t a far walk at all (so no need for car rental, parking, etc). On our first full day there we went to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and had a free breakfast at the Three Broomsticks (where I got to try Butterbeer). Then we went on the awesome Forbidden Journey ride. Waiting on the line itself was even cool b/c there was so much to look at and take in (b/c the line takes you all throughout Hogwarts).

Then we got to sort of fulfill a childhood dream, by going to a live taping of Family Feud. Steve Harvey was the new host, and he was pretty funny. Both Ariana and I had a great time at the taping (they taped two shows). It was interesting to see how things are edited for TV- as Harvey said himself “TV… it’s the fakest thing in the world.”

Immediately after the Family Feud taping we got in line for the TNA Hardcore Justice PPV (where it was taken over by the original ECW guys). There was some drama about getting in (too long to get into now, the short version is they gave out more VIP passes than they had space for, which led to a lot of people complaining, myself included), but eventually in the end, Ariana and I made our way into the show (40 minutes late, but we were able to see the best parts). So it was a good time in the end.

The rest of the beginning of the Orlando vacation consisted of going on a ton of rides between Universal and Islands of Adventure (and taking LOTS of pics) and going to two more free TNA shows (for 3 in total- the Monday night show as the best- so many quality matches, and we had great seats). Also, we found out a bunch of the wrestlers were staying at our hotel. We ran into Tommy Dreamer at Walgreens and wound up walking back with him to the hotel, and saw Desmond Wolfe (formerly Nigel McGuiness from ROH) outside a nearby bar. We also saw Jeremy Borash at the hotel. So that was pretty cool.

The second half of our vacation was in another part of Orlando (we moved to a hotel near Sea World) and we went to two days of the Star Wars Celebration V Convention. As a huge Star Wars geek, this was the ultimate experience. There was so much to look at and do. There were tons of people in costume (many looked extremely authentic) and a bunch of the stars from the movies had attended. I took a million pictures, lol. I even brought along my Anakin Skywalker Jedi costume and dressed in it on the second day (I know, sounds lame, but it was totally fun, and great for pictures with the other characters). In the end, I dubbed our vacation “Geek Week” b/c it was just the ultimate in geeky experiences. I don’t know if it would have been possible for me to have had more fun.

-Our trip to Toronto at the beginning of the year was really cool. With the exception of the long bus rides (which honestly weren’t that bad, b/c we had a lot of room, just sitting for too long is bad for my back), we had a great time. The main purpose in going to Toronto was going to see Our Lady Peace in back to back concerts at Massey Hall (which I mentioned above in Favorite concerts). But our friend Rachael lives up there, so we were able to visit (hadn’t seen her in awhile) and avoid hotel expenses at the same time. Our friend Steve joined us later on, for both shows. I had never been up to Canada before, so it was cool to explore the city of Toronto. It rained a lot that weekend, but luckily they have the underground passageways that connect most of the city, so we got around pretty decently. We also had a lot of good stuff to eat, including Peameal bacon (basically Canadian bacon, but obviously they don’t call it that, lol) sandwiches at this famous marketplace in the city. I’d be tempted to go back up there just for that, they were soooo good. But overall, it was just a cool weekend to catch up with old friends, explore a new and fun city and take in a couple of amazing shows. Good times.

-My graduation was something I had been looking forward to for awhile. My school counseling program was different than other graduate programs, in that it required us to take it part time in order to fit in our practicums and internships. So it took us all four years to get through (on top of the fact I had already done a year and a half at Fordham that mostly got tossed out the window). It took a LOT of hard work and perseverance but I made it through with the grace of God. So graduation day was my day to celebrate and just have fun. So I wore my WWE World Heavyweight Championship belt under my gown and brought it out during the actual ceremony when they announced our class had officially graduated. I got a bunch of fun pics with my classmates and even my professors, while holding or wearing it, lol. I then celebrated with my family at Tosca for lunch and Icee Capades for dessert. Then at night I celebrated with a few of my classmates at Don Coqui in New Rochelle. It was definitely a fun and proud day.

-Lastly, honorable mention for favorite moment/experience was the Young Adult Retreat back at the beginning of the year. Bro. Mike Shreve was the special speaker and everything that went on that weekend just moved me and worked in me with things that had begun to be revealed to me the prior year. It was at this retreat that I decided to fully commit to what God has in store for me, and do what had been on my heart to do (and to continue to do). I hope people have been able to notice the change within me, and that it’s 100% for the better (even if people may not exactly like to hear what I have to say, lol).

So yeah, in the end, that’s a wrap up for my entire year. I hope you enjoyed reading and I look forward to trying to share more in my blogs in the future.