As is tradition, here is a distillation of my favorite media—formatted into digestable bulleted lists for posterity.
Music
LPs
- The 1975 - Notes On a Conditional Form
- The Beths - Jump Rope Gazers
- The Front Bottoms - In Sickness & In Flames
- Mansions - Big Bad
- Taylor Swift - Folklore & Evermore
- Seaway - Big Vibe
- City Mouth - Coping Machine
- Four Year Strong - Brain Pain
- Tom Oakz - Like New
- Kid Cudi - Man On The Moon III: The Chosen
- ManDancing - The Good Sweat
- U.G.L.Y. - Goons Live Young
EPs
- Super American - YOBWOC [1]
- King Neptune - Alright, Whatever
- Cady Groves - Bless My Heart [2]
- Carly Paige - indie pop post rock cinematic sometimes: vhs
- Mansions - Big Bad at Home
- Troye Sivan - In A Dream
- You, Me, and Everyone We Know - Radical! Change
Honorable Mentions
- The Avalanches - We Will Always Love You
- Ariana Grande - Positions
- Lizzy McAlpine - Give Me a Minute
- Young Culture - Young Culture
- Hayley Williams - Petals For Armor
- Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher
- Pinegrove - Marigold
- Soccer Mommy - color theory
- mxmtoon - Dawn & Dusk
- beabadoobee - Fake It Flowers
- D Smoke - Black Habits
- HAIM - Women In Music Pt. III
- JoJo - Good To Know
- Pinegrove - Marigold
- Snarls - Burst
- Paris Jackson - Wilted
- Fiona Apple - Fetch The Bolt Cutters
- Bartees Strange - Live Forever
- All Time Low - Wake Up, Sunshine
- Carpool - Erotic Nightmare Summer
- Fleet Foxes - Shore
- Fletcher - The S(ex) Tapes
- Noah Gundersen - A Raven and a Dove: Acoustic Selections from Lover
- Riverby - Smart Mouth
Podcasts
- Dead Eyes [3]
- California King
- The Last Archive
- Dithering
Movies
Rough year for the movie industry. My Letterboxd ranking list for the year is abridged below.
- Soul ✮✮✮✮½
- Feels Good Man ✮✮✮✮½
- His House ✮✮✮✮
- Nate ✮✮✮✮
- Onward ✮✮✮✮
- The Midnight Sky ✮✮✮✮
- Underwater ✮✮✮✮
- The Invisible Man ✮✮✮✮
- Relic ✮✮✮½
- Antebellum ✮✮✮½
- The Devil All The Time ✮✮✮½
- Uncle Peckerhead ✮✮✮½
Television
Great year for television.
- The Mandalorian, Season 2 (Disney +)
- Middleditch & Schwartz (Netflix) [4]
- Tiger King (Netflix) [5]
- The Pharmacist (Netflix)
- Dracula (Netflix)
- McMillions (HBO)
- Stargate SG-1 (Showtime) [6]
- Hamilton (Disney+)
- Raised By Wolves (HBO Max)
- How To With John Wilson (HBO Max)
- High Score (Netflix)
- Dexter (Showtime) [7]
- The Queen's Gambit (Netflix)
Games
I keep a running list of video games I've played here. Below are the games I enjoyed in 2020.
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch)
- The Dig (PC) [8]
- The Last Of Us, Part II (PS4) [9]
- Jedi: Fallen Order (PS4) — Thread
- Star Wars: Battlefront (PS4) — Thread
- Star Wars: Squadrons (PS4)
Not included, but my favorite song this year has been "How Big Is Your Brain?" The music video for which is very fun. ↩︎
It's not fair that Cady wasn't alive to celebrate the release of these songs. I have no doubt that her career would have blossomed as a result. ↩︎
I helped out with some research for an episode of this show that has yet to air. Mike offered me a rabbit hole of Polish ancestry I couldn't resist navigating. ↩︎
I do hope more of these appear in my Netflix queue someday. I've rarely laughed as hard or often during a single special than I did during all three of these. ↩︎
Truly a once-in-a-lifetime documentary subject. ↩︎
I finally took my friend Tyler's advice and watched the movie, then fell into the TV show. I only wish I would have discovered this franchise when I was a kid. ↩︎
Mae had never seen Dexter all the way through and I was curious to see how it held up. Man, when that show is good, it's good. That ending aged worse than I hoped. It's due back sometime in the next year or so. ↩︎
After ~20 years, I've finally finished this incredible point-and-click adventure game, with the help of Mike Comite. ↩︎
I've been thinking about this game like I thought about Parasite last year—frequently and with complex feelings. This was such a beautifully heartwrenching story with complicated themes and many moments where the player is made to do things they don't want to see happen. It's a phenomenal game for which Neil Druckmann and Naughty Dog should be very proud. ↩︎