Sean's Best & Worst of 2014

Many television shows, magazines, websites and newspapers have best and worst of 2014 lists. Well, I do too!

Best Movie I Saw In The Theater: Gone Girl. A well-made film with a huge twist. Great acting by Neil Patrick Harris, Rosamund Pike, Tyler Perry & Emily Ratajkowski too.

Worst Movie I Saw In The Theater: Gone Girl. I liked the book much better. Yes, I only saw one movie in the theater in 2014.

If you think my list so far is a bit ridiculous, I encourage you to stay here. It gets better. Possibly.

Best Song: My rule is that the best song must be from a video that I posted on my blog. I actually didn't post many videos this year, but I'll take The Walker by Fitz and the Tantrums slightly over Vance Joy's Riptide. And yes, I realize that the video for The Walker was posted on YouTube in October 2013, but I don't think I first heard the song until 2014.



Worst Song: I think I'll go with Anaconda by Nicki Minaj solely for her desecrating Sir Mix-a-Lot's Baby Got Back. I just hope that Sir Mix-a-Lot got paid well for this. (I don't even want to share this probably NSFW video here.)

Best Sports Moment: The Pirates reaching the playoffs for the second consecutive year, highlighted by Josh Harrison excelling in rundowns.

Worst Sports Moment: The Penguins leading the Rangers 3 games to 1 in the Eastern Conference Finals only to lose the next three games and scoring only 3 goals in these games.

Best TV Show: Game of Thrones. HBO had a free preview this spring, and I was able to record the entire first three seasons. It took me a few (okay, more than a few) episodes to figure out who was who, but what a show. Now I need to watch season four. Honorable mention to Brooklyn Nine-Nine, a consistently funny show.

Worst TV Show: Anything on Bravo. I can't stand any of the people on that network especially any housewives or Vanderplumps or people that work on a boat or sell houses. Bring back West Wing reruns!

Best Book I Read: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. This is the summary: "Unbroken is a biography of World War II hero Louis Zamperini, a former Olympic track star who survived a plane crash in the Pacific theater, spent 47 days drifting on a raft, and then survived more than two and a half years as a prisoner of war in several brutal Japanese prisoner-of-war camps." Any of these could be its own story, yet all of this happened to Zamperini. All of this is just unbelievable. I'm hesitant to see the movie since I don't know how it will work. To fully tell Zamperini's story, I don't know how the movie can be less than 5 hours. Honorable Mention: The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. A fun Forrest Gump-esque book.

Worst Book I Read: I didn't read nearly as many books as I would have liked in 2014, so I'm the worst for this category.

Best Blog Post: My post on becoming a dad for the second time along with the 6-month update. I still like my idea of bringing a Pittsburgh festival to DC too.

Worst Blog Post: My post congratulating someone named William Tell on marrying Laura Conrad. Exactly.

Have a Happy (and safe) New Year!