Sean's Best and Worst of 2020

I should preface this post by mentioning that this is primarily about pop culture items. I mean 2020 has been a pretty lousy year overall, so this is more of a fun look at the last 12 months.

Best Television Show: Better Call Saul

I watched a good amount of TV this year. I finally got caught up on This Is Us, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Watchman. The Good Place concluded in 2020, and I enjoyed The Queen's Gambit and Fargo as well as The Last Dance documentary. (Schitt's Creek and The Boys are still on my list of shows that I want to see.) Even with all of these great shows that I just mentioned, Better Call Saul tops my list. The writing and the acting are just so good. I mean, two of the storylines from the show's fifth season were about a guy not wanting to sell his land/home and another about a construction project by a German engineer and his team. While I know that I'm understating this, on paper, this doesn't seem very exciting. It really is captivating and thrilling though.

Best Movie: Knives Out

I didn't see many "grown up" movies, but I enjoyed two 2020 movies geared for kids in Onward and Soul. Even though the film came out late in 2019, my favorite movie of the year was Knives Out. What a fun and funny film. It's a murder mystery with a family of dislikable characters but it really is fun watching Daniel Craig try to figure things out as the lead detective. 

Worst Movie: Tully

This is another movie from a few years ago that I just saw in 2020. It's not a bad movie, and there are certainly parts that I liked, but it falls into the worst movie category only because I didn't see very many films in 2020. Like Charlize Theron and her family in the film, we also have three kids so part of this film really hits close to home. What bothered me the most is how useless the father (played by Ron Livingston) is, especially when there's a major reveal that I won't spoil here. 

Best Song: Blinding Lights by The Weeknd

My rule is that the best song must be featured in a blog post at some point during the year. While I really like Midnight Sky by Miley Cyrus (who once had the worst song of the year) and strongly considered it, Blinding Lights by The Weeknd is a banger. It's the jam. It's the cat's meow. Am I using these words correctly? We'll just go with this. It's a really good and catchy song. By the way, congrats to The Weeknd for getting best song of the year twice now even though Starboy doesn't seem quite as good as it was four years ago.

Worst Song: ily by Surf Mesa featuring Emilee

You know the chorus to Frankie Valli's 1967 hit "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You." It's a fantastic song with a memorable chorus. Well, how about playing just the chorus over and over and over again with some type of layering? I can listen and like the first 20-30 seconds of the song, but after that, I'm switching the channel. 

Best Book: The first three books of the Harry Potter series

I do pretty much all of my reading during my commute to work. Since I've been working from home since the pandemic started, I've read exactly zero books for myself. While I read some books in January and February, I can't remember what they were. Because of this, the best books I read in 2020 were the first three Harry Potter books to The Moose (my 9 year old son). It's been a nice bonding experience reading them to him.

I'll add that I just bought two books that I'm really excited to read: The Big Door Prize by M.O. Walsh and The Cold Millions by Jess Walter. I wouldn't be surprised if one of these books is on the 2021 best of blog post.

Best Sports Moment of 2020: Manuel Margot Catch

This was a tough call. As a Pittsburgh sports fan, the Penguins exited the hockey playoffs much earlier than expected (more on that below) and the Pirates were lousy. The Steelers started the season 11-0 but lost three consecutive games and looked terrible in the process before rebounding after being down by 17 points on Sunday. So while there were championships with fans and then championships without fans in 2020, this catch by Manuel Margot of the Tampa Bay Rays in game one of the American League Championship Series is the play of the year to me. So cool, and seeing this live, I really thought he might have fallen into an abyss. 

Worst Sports Moment: The Pittsburgh Penguins

While I didn't expect the Penguins to win the Stanley Cup, I did expect them to defeat the 12th-seeded Montreal Canadians in the first round playoff series. The playoffs generally only have 8 teams per conference. Montreal wouldn't have even been close to reaching the playoffs in a typical year. Such a terrible series. 

Best Blog Post: Songs of 2000 & 2020s Predictions

This was an odd year for Sean's Ramblings. As I looked through my posts from this year, I was a lot more "serious" than usual. Lots of "heavy" posts about the pandemic, the state of the country, and my family including a post about my dad passing away. So while I don't know if these were the "best" posts, my posts about the songs of 2000 and predictions for the 20s decade were the most fun and more in line with my "typical" blog posts. Don't mind me as I continue to put words in quotes!

Worst Blog Post: Kangaroos Wanted

I wrote an entire blog post about someone looking for kangaroos for a kids' birthday party.

Best Musical: Hamilton

Have you heard about this show? It's about the guy on the $10 bill and was created by Lin-Manuel Miranda who was in one Brooklyn Nine Nine episode and one How I Met Your Mother episode. I never saw this live and for the most part avoided the music because I first wanted to hear and see it on stage. Well, I still haven't seen the show live, but I watched the film version of the show which was actually three performances of the show from June 2016. It lived up to the hype!

Best Podcast: Ya Jagoff!, Owls Americast, The Tony Kornheiser Show, and The Poscast

I don't listen to podcasts as much as I did when I was commuting to work, but I rarely miss episodes of these podcasts. I like listening to John and Rachael to hear about all the cool things going on in Pittsburgh on Ya Jagoff! Owls Americast is my connection with Sheffield Wednesday. The Tony Kornheiser Show gives me a sense of big sports stories (with some really good guests) along with various rants of Tony's life. And The Poscast is based around baseball but always makes me laugh. All of these podcasts gave me some normalcy in definitely abnormal times.

Best Blog: Josh's World

This might be the third or fourth time Josh's World has won this. I like Josh's take on things. Nothing against Josh, but I also need to expand the number of blogs I read. I tend to read the same sites, and there are fewer and fewer individual blogs each year.  

Please feel free to share some of your own best of and worst of 2020 in the comments section below.

If you're curious, you can see how some of my best of and worst of picks from the past few years hold up, please click here.

Midnight Sky

Miley Cyrus and I have an odd relationship. Maybe I should start again. I believe that Miley's "Party In The USA" is one of the best pop songs over the last 15 years. You can fight me on this. She probably knew that she would never have a song as good as this, yet, it's not like she was going to retire from the music industry before turning 18. Back to me and Miley, I also admitted to liking the song "See You Again" in the early days of my blog. However, I selected her "Dooo It!" as the worst song of 2015. It's like the opposite of "Party In The USA" in how terrible it is. See, we have an odd relationship. Fine, I have an weird relationship with her music. And I really like her latest song "Midnight Sky."

By the way, the "oooh" said by Miley several times during the song (the first at the 1:05 mark) sounds a lot like Stevie Nicks in "Edge of Seventeen."

Random Ramblings

1. It's never good when you get call from my son's elementary school. Earlier this week, I received this message regarding my five year old, The Moose.

This is [school nurse] at the [elementary school] health room and I just wanted to let you know that [The Moose] was here in the health room. He was accidentally hit on his right eye by another student's bottom at recess. He could see without difficulty. There was no redness and he did stay here with me for 20 minutes with ice next to his eye just for comfort. He wasn't upset or anything like that, and I did not see any adverse symptoms, so he did go back to class and just wanted to let you.

I'm not sure why the nurse needed to include that he was hit "by another student's bottom." I think accidentally by another student is sufficient. Adding the bottom part, while funny after hearing that he was fine, seems a bit humiliating.

2. I had big plans for this weekend between coaching my son's soccer game, attending a neighborhood Halloween party, and of course, going to Wegmans. All of these plans are cancelled. Instead I'm going to wait at home for Miley Cyrus to visit and encourage me to vote. When she comes to my door, I plan on playing a Britney or Jay-Z song so that she put her hands up, nods her head like yeah, and moves her hips like yeah.

3. On Thursday, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump appeared at the Al Smith charity dinner hosted by the Catholic Archdiocese of New York. Just out of curiosity, when do you think the two of them will be at the same place at the same time again? My guess is that it will be at least two years if ever.

4. With apologies to fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the entire country should be rooting for the Chicago Cubs to make the World Series. Instead of non-stop election coverage, every news outlet will cover the Cubs making their fist World Series appearance since 1945 and trying to win for the first time since 1908. Now, I'm completely fine with them losing, especially since Cleveland hasn't won a World Series since 1948, but a long series will be a fantastic distraction from the election.

5. Please like Sean's Ramblings on Facebook. I'm going to apply for media credentials for the Oscars (more on this later), and I probably need more Facebook likes for them to consider my application seriously. I think 50,000 likes should do it!

6. Finally, let's end this week with a video. This is Heathens by Twenty One Pilots from the movie Suicide Squad which I think was a big deal for about a week before leaving theaters pretty quickly. In my opinion, this song has a legitimate chance of getting an Oscar nomination. If that happens, maybe I can ask them questions from the red carpet!

Sean's Best & Worst of 2015

Many television shows, magazines, websites and newspapers have best and worst of 2015 lists. Well, I do too, and while mine is probably not nearly as good as their lists, I think that my list is more entertaining.

Best TV Show of 2015: Fargo

Game of Thrones is always amazing, and while I don't see every episode, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is both educational and extremely entertaining. I also always enjoy Brooklyn Nine-Nine. However, my favorite show this past year was Fargo. Although season one was in 2014, I didn't actually watch it until late 2015. And I couldn't stop watching it. Billy Bob Thornton was incredible in such a fascinating character, and the rest of the cast was amazing. I've recorded all of season two and am finally going to start watching it any day now.

Worst TV Show of 2015: The Mysteries of Laura

I've never actually seen this show, but the fact that it wasn't cancelled cost me The Ted Marshall Open TV Death Pool championship for the 2014-2015 season. I seriously have no idea how this show got renewed and is still on the air.

Best Song of 2015...

My rule is that the best song must be from a video that I posted on my blog in 2015. Your nominees are:

Renegades by X Ambassadors
Ex's and Oh's by Elle King
Uma Thurman by Fall Out Boy
Beggin for Thread by Banks
Kathleen by Catfish and the Bottlemen

And the winner is: Kathleen!



Worst Song of 2015: Dooo It! by Miley Cyrus

The Video is NSFW due to language...and for it being a terrible song and terrible video.



Best Movie I Saw In The Theater: Trainwreck

I saw two whole movies in the theater in 2015. That's double what I saw in 2014! Trainwreck was much funnier than I expected. Surprisingly enjoyable appearances by John Cena and LeBron James. Oh, you may have heard that Amy Schumer was in it too.

Worst Movie I Saw in The Theater: The Martian

Okay, so The Martian was better than Trainwreck, but it was a weird experience for me. I finished the book only a few days before I saw the film, so I compared the two constantly. While I won't give away much, there was a part in the movie where Matt Damon drives thousands of miles across Mars. In the book, this was quite an eventful trip. In the movie, driving across Mars was as difficult as driving from New York to Chicago on the interstate in perfect weather. I was also frustrated by the ending. It's really my fault though. I should have known better than to finish the book and see the movie so close together.

Best Book I Read in 2015: My Sunshine Away: a novel by M.O. Walsh

Here's the description: A man reflects on the summer of his fourteenth year, where in Baton Rouge he fell in love with a golden-haired girl across the street before an unspeakable crime shattered illusions in his seemingly idyllic neighborhood.

My Sunshine Away is a coming of age book, but quite dark because of the crime that I guess I can't speak about. The book was very well written and the neighborhood certainly had some fascinating characters. I highly recommend it.

Honorable mentions: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng and The Martian: a novel by Andy Weir.

Worst Book I Read in 2015: Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee.

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite books all of time, so I felt like I had to read this book. It actually felt like a homework assignment reading the "new" Harper Lee book at times. There were parts that were really good. Lee also gave what appeared to be an accurate description of what it was like to live in the South during a specific time period. However, Atticus Finch, though fictional, is supposed to be perfect (at least in my mind) and some of his views in Go Set a Watchman don't mesh with how most people in the real world view him.

Best Sports Moment: Max Scherzer's No Hitter

I didn't like the fact that this occurred against the Pirates, but seeing a no-hitter live and at my son's first baseball game was priceless.

Worst Sports Moment of 2015: The Pirates Losing the Wild Card Game

The Pirates had the second best record in all of baseball and were rewarded by getting to host the NL Cy Young Award Winner. Naturally, Arrieta dominated. Here's what ESPN's Jayson Stark wrote about Arrieta:

1) Over his last 18 starts of the season, the Cubs went 17-1 -- and in the only loss, they got no-hit (of course they did) by Cole Hamels. (2) Over his last 20 starts, he hit as many homers as he allowed (two). And (3) if you'd started your clicker on Aug. 1, you'd have counted 269 pitchers who allowed at least four earned runs in an inning. And while all that was going on, Arrieta was also allowing four earned runs -- in two months.

Stupid Cubs. Stupid Arrieta.

Best Blog Post: (Tie) My Summer of Sean series & a special TMI Thursday

The Summer of Sean series chronicled part of my incredible summer of 2000. Unfortunately, I only wrote a few posts. When I have free time, maybe I'll continue this series. I also shared what really happens in my bedroom on nearly a nightly basis.

Worst Blog Post: My Interview With Dr. Christopher Geary About Big Ben's Injury

Based on his position as an Orthopedic Surgeon and Chief of Sports Medicine at Tufts University Medical Center, you would think that Dr. Geary would be better than sharing wild Tweets. He also didn't give much in my interview with him or come close to apologizing for declaring that Big Ben was out for the season.

I hope that you had a great 2015 and a better 2016!

Sean's Best & Worst of 2013

Many television shows, magazines, websites and newspapers have best and worst of 2013 lists. What makes my list different is that I'm posting this in January 2014, well after everyone else.

Best Movie I Saw In The Theater: Most lists will have 12 Years a Slave, Gravity, American Hustle or Captain Phillips at the top of the list. Unfortunately, I only saw two movies in the theater in 2013. Therefore, my vote goes to This Is The End starring Seth Rogan, James Franco and Jonah Hill.

Worst Movie I Saw In The Theater: The Heat. I enjoyed this movie, but not as much as This Is The End.

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

Best Sports Moment: Pirates Wild Card win over the Reds

The first Pirates playoff game since 1992 was incredible. My brother and I drove to Pittsburgh on the evening of the Wild Card game for a funeral the following day. We listened to the first few innings in the car including hearing the "Cueto" chant, him dropping the ball, and Russell Martin's home run. Then, we watched most of the rest of the game with my parents at a Quaker Steak & Lube by the airport and saw the 9th inning and highlights in a small hotel room that we shared as an entire family.





I still get goosebumps watching these videos.

Worst Sports Moment: The entire Penguins-Bruins Eastern conference finals.

Best TV Show: Breaking Bad. In other news, the Earth is round. Honorable mention to Orphan Black, Parks & Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Happy Endings.

Worst TV Show: Oh Sit! CW still hasn't cancelled this show!

Best Book I Read: While Midnight Rising: John Brown and The Raid That Sparked The Civil War by Tony Horwitz was fascinating and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn was captivating and had the most unexpected twist I experienced in a book in years, I'm going with Someone Could Get Hurt: A Memoir of Twenty-First Century Parenthood by Drew Magary. I really enjoy Magary's writing, and I guess this book seemed to speak to me at this point in my life.

Worst Book I Read: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Okay, this may not be the worst book I read, but it definitely did not live up to my expectations. The Great Gatsby is supposed to be known as an American classic, but I didn't get it. I disliked every character, who had no redeeming values, and really don't understand why the book has the status that it does. I already know that Mr. Brame is going to completely disagree with my choice.

Best Song: I Knew You Were Trouble by Taylor Swift. Yes, I've lost any street cred I may have had. I listen to pop music regularly as background noise, and I never got tired of this song. In the middle of writing this, I found that I first wrote a blog post about this song in December 2012. I guess this song isn't eligible for 2013. In that case, I'll go with Macklemore & Ryan Lewis for Thrift Shop and Can't Hold Us.



Worst Song: This was a tough decision. We Can't Stop by Miley Cyrus get an honorable mention, but the winner goes to Perfume by Britney Spears. I just think this is a terrible song.



Best Blog Post: I'm cheating and going with every post of the Pittsburgh Sports Blogger Interview Series.

Worst Blog Post: So many choices. Let's go with Sisqo Coming to Fairfax.

2013 Song of Fall

It seems like every year, music sites and companies declare the song of the summer. Last year, you couldn't avoid Carly Rae Jepsen's Call Me Maybe which was the undisputed 2012 song of the summer. According to Billboard, Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke featuring T.I. and Pharrell was the summer song of 2013. However, have you ever heard of anyone talking about the biggest song of the fall? Although fall only started last week, I'd like to formally declare Royals by Lorde as the Fall Song of 2013.



I'm sure that folks will say that it's too early to declare a song of fall. Others may argue that Katy Perry (Roar), Lady Gaga (Applause), Miley Cyrus (Wrecking Ball), Bruno Mars (Gorilla) or Avicii (Wake Me Up) deserve this title. I disagree. Lorde and Royals didn't have the hype of the first four songs/artists. Actually, these first four artists could release songs of them singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat, and they would reach the top 10. Anyway, Royals has been building slowly and it somewhat reminds me of Goyte's Somebody That I Used To Know in that it doesn't sound like anything else on the radio. Oh, the song is also now receiving airplay on nearly all radio formats.

So join me in congratulating Lorde for Royals, the 2013 Song of Fall.

Tired of Tires

I’ve been a driver for nearly 18 years and probably driven over 200,000 miles during that time. I mentioned briefly last Monday that I got a flat tire, but I didn’t include the fact that this was the first flat tire in the 18 years of driving. Well, while heading back to Pittsburgh on Friday, I had my second flat tire in less than a week. Last week’s incident occurred on I-66 when the rear driver’s side tire blew out. On Friday, I noticed that my alignment seemed a little off when I was on 270, but I didn’t piece everything together until I merged onto I-70 and heard and felt another flat tire. In this case, the rear passenger’s side tire had some sort of valve leak. So now I have two new tires and two new valves on the front tires. However, I still sort of freaked out when I drove to and from Washington this weekend. I worried a little after hitting any bump on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

As a bit of a tangent, I’m quick to criticize or write negative posts against companies that do a poor job. I don’t always give props to companies that go above and beyond my expectations. So today, I want to give credit to AAA auto services. They were amazing during both flat tire incidents. AAA arrived quickly and was extremely thorough and professional. Kudos to AAA!

Since I’m in a generous mood, I’d also like to give kudos to The Washington Post. I unsubscribed from receiving the Sunday edition because they were unreliable in delivering the paper. They ignored vacation stops and wouldn’t deliver the paper until after 9:30 on Sunday mornings. Well, I subscribed again a month or two ago, and something changed within the organization. I had a 6:00am flight to Bradenton, Florida when I went to Pirates’ Spring Training last month, and the newspaper arrived on my doorstep at 4:30 just before I left. They have been great since I subscribed again.

OK, tangents over. Not to make this too much of a sappy post, I was subjected to watching Miley Cyrus and company promote the new Hannah Montana movie on the Tyra Banks show while waiting for my tire to be repaired. While I do not condone torture, airing the hour-long Miley Cyrus-Tyra Banks episode on a continuous loop would cause any terrorist or criminal to confess!

TMI Monday

I realize that I’m three days early for TMI Thursday, but it’s not every week when the Pittsburgh Steelers are in the Super Bowl. For the non-sports fan readers, you’ll have to excuse me for all of my football coverage this week. I plan to have some entertaining takes on the game as well as an exclusive interview, so it won’t be all sports, but my writing will tend to focus on the Steelers over the next week or so.

For this week’s TMI, I need to admit something that may or may not be a big deal. I really like Taylor Swift’s new song Love Story. While this alone probably isn’t alarming, I am seeing a trend I am not proud of. In May 2008, I admitted to liking a Miley Cyrus song; in December, I wrote that a Britney Spears song is catchy; and just a few weeks ago, I used a TMI Thursday to share my thoughts on The Secret Life of the American Teenager. Am I turning into a 13 year-old girl? The only think I’m missing is a love for the Jonas Brothers. Well, approximately a year ago I wrote that the Jonas Brothers were no Hanson. Well, it turns out that the Jonas Brothers are bigger than Hanson could ever be.

While I'm not writing that I like the Jonas Brothers, I better end this post now before more damage is done.

She’s Just Being Miley

In addition to more upbeat stories about the economy and the fact that Rev. Jeremiah Wright won’t go away, one of the major news items this week was the Miley Cyrus pictures taken by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair. While I think everyone involved is in the wrong, that’s not what I am writing about. Instead, Miley Cyrus being in the news seems like the perfect time for me to embarrass myself (again) by writing that I really like a Hannah Montana song.

I listen to Yahoo! radio at work occasionally switching between the Big Hits of the 80s station and Today’s Top Hits so that I can stay current with what the kids listen to (which judging by American Idol this week, seems to be Neil Diamond; this bodes well for the future of our country). Knowing popular music also helps during trivia night, but I digress. Several weeks ago, a song came on with the first line "I got my heart set on you." While this line is nothing special, it sounded very similar to the start of Corey Hart’s classic "Sunglasses at Night" ("I wear my sunglasses at night"). After a few lines of the new song, a catchy beat emerges and I found myself wondering who sang the song. I was a bit surprised to learn that the song is "See You Again" by none other than Miley Cyrus. My initial reaction was embarrassment. How could I, a 32 year-old without kids, like a Hannah Montana song? Only 10 year-old girls who watch the Disney Channel like Hannah Montana songs. I do not fall into this demographic. The next day, I turned on Yahoo’s Teen Pop just to hear the song again. In case you were wondering, Bananarama was also played on this station. What current teens have even heard the song Venus? 

Anyway, there’s not much more to write. I freely admit that I like a Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus song. It’s not something that I’m necessary proud of, but it’s true.