Greg’s Favorites of 2022

Welcome to 2023, everyone.  Time to look back at the previous year and distill my favorite things I saw, heard, smelled, or experienced in 2022 into one lengthy post.

2022 started off shaky and ended the same way.  Maria had just completed some surgeries at the end of 2021 and everyone in the family finally got hit with COVID (except me!) and I started the year off by learning that I had type 2 diabetes and had somehow unknowingly lost 70 pounds from my body starving itself due to not being able to process sugar properly.  So I spent the first half of the year trying to educate myself and completely revamp my diet and exercise to get a handle on things.  At the end of the year I had lost another 40 pounds, but this was from me actively working to remove it and not the dangerous weight loss from before.  All said, I'm down 110 pounds from my heaviest weight that I was aware of (328 in 2019 to 216 at the end of December.)  Then by the end of the year, Maria had undergone three more surgeries (two for thyroid removal from a growth that turned out to be cancerous and one reconstructive lip surgery from the previous year to try improve where the worked on her before) and I got to spend the last week of 2022 sick with the flu (or something similar, still not COVID!) I'd been pretty lucky most of the rest of the year avoiding several bouts of illness that hit our family here and there.

I got to head to Utah to attend my 30 year Hillcrest High School Reunion event in October and see old friends I hadn't seen in a long time.  I was able to spend an extra day with a couple of my best high school friends whom I haven't been together with at the same time in over 20 years.  And a couple months before that the family took a quick summer trip to Colorado to enjoy a rented cabin in the mountains.

So that's my year summed up.  Moving on to the things I liked this year:

Music

It's really nice using Spotify so it can automatically tell you what you liked the most this past year. I keep track on my own, but it wraps everything up so nicely, I just had to do a quick comparison to ensure that these were indeed my favorites.

First, if you will indulge me, as I often do, I'd like to share my Christmas song I made this year. Not sure why I chose this one, but it feels like a good companion piece with last year's. Here's my synthpop version of "We Wish You A Merry Christmas"

Bands/Artists I listened to in 2022

• C Duncan - Alluvium. “Heaven”
  C Duncan is a very mellow artist with some really lovely songs and gorgeous harmonies.  I usually only really like half or less of his songs on each album, but those songs are always really good and the rest are all still really beautiful.  This was not the album I listened to the most this year, but this song was definitely the one I listened to the most.
  
  
  
  
• White Lies - As I Try Not To Fall Apart
  C Duncan had the song of the year, but this was definitely my album of the year.  These guys were on my list a year or two ago with the song "Tokyo" which is way high up on my all-time favorites.  And while nothing on this album reaches the level of that one song, nearly every single track on this album is super-strong.  It's hard to even pull a single one out because I like them all.  They even released an extended version at the end of the year with even more songs that are just as good as those on the original release.
  
  
• Lickerish Quartet - Threesome Vol 3 Roger Manning's project put out their final EP and then called it quits, unfortunately. I wish they'd package these three EPs together to make for one great single album. 4 songs every 8 months or so just didn't work for me, though I enjoyed everything they put out save for 1 song. Sad to see the project complete, but hopefully there will be more Roger Manning music in the future. This song "New Days" is a great California 60s-psych-pop throwback.
  
• Jukebox the Ghost - Cheers This was just a fun album all the way through. I love their cheerful piano-based pop and their Jellyfish and Queen-adjacent leanings. Although nothing here is better than "Jumpstarted" on their previous album, the album as a whole I enjoyed more than their others.
  
• Muse - Will of the People Muse decided this year to do something no one had ever done before: release a greatest hits album of all new material. In other words, rather than repackaging their earlier songs, they wrote all new songs that essentially captured the essence of Muse. And this was definitely the most "Muse" of all their albums. Sadly, though, with nothing actually new, this doesn't come off as Muse at their greatest, but definitely at their most "Muse." Still there were several songs I quite enjoyed. Here's "Compliance"
• St Lucia - Utopia This was a new find for me this year. A synthpop band that had several tracks that I really enjoyed. I don't know much else about them, but found myself listening to the following two tracks quite a lot: “Another Lifetime” / “Separate World”
  
  Here's "Another Lifetime"
  
  
  
  
• Twen - "HaHaHome"
  This DIY band I discovered has this very psychedelic BritPop track that dug into me on the very first listen.  I would have no idea they were American from this song.  Highly recommend this track!
  
  
  

Other bands and albums that I listened to:  Two Door Cinema Club - Keep on Smiling, Wooze - The Magnificent Eleven EP (Favorite song title of 2022: "Bittersweet Timpani").  There were several classic rock bands that had some good releases this year: Jethro Tull - The Zealot Gene (Probably the most listenable Jethro Tull album since the 70s), Styx - Crash of the Crown, Fixx - Every Five Seconds.  

My biggest disappointment of the year was probably the new Tears For Fears album.  I'd been waiting since 2005(?) for another release, and despite trying, I just couldn't get into this new album.  It wasn't bad, it just wasn't great.  I can't remember anything on it despite listening 6-7 times.

I don't have any current artists or albums on my 2023 watch list, so it's completely open season on what will win me over in 2023.

Movies

This year I watched 196 movies. A bit of a dip for me as I usually watch over 200. A big reason for this was likely due to me getting a Steam Deck and turning my attention to playing some games that I hadn't been able to play lacking a PC game capable device for several years.

I watched 27 movies in theaters, up from last year's 23; 42 new release movies (within 3 years); 41 new old movies; and 86 rewatches. Most of the rewatches were going back through all the Marvel films with Jaden to catch up to the summer release of Thor as well as all the Spider-Man movies to watch the re-release of "Spider-Man: No Way Home" that came out this fall.

Some of my favorite movies I saw this year (not in ranked order):

• “The Lost City” - This was a great throwback to the old comedy adventure films of long ago (see: "Romancing the Stone") There are not a lot of theatrically released Hollywood comedies so I was very happy with this.
• "Everything Everywhere All At Once" / "Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness" - I'm tying these two together because they were both movies that dealt with the idea of a multiverse. "Everything..." was a much better film, and was an amazing head-trip of a movie, but I find it really interesting how these two movies would come out so close to each other, one a giant budgeted Hollywood movie with every resource at its command and another a tiny underground indie movie that showed it up in almost every way. However, unlike some, I really really liked "Doctor Strange" and it was one of the few movies I saw this year multiple times in the theater. I loved all the Sam Raimi touches it was able to incorporate. So I'm happy to have both films. As well as "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse," and its upcoming sequel.
• "Weird: The Weird Al Yankovic Story" I loved this documentary. It's the best Weird Al movie since UHF (and only). It had me laughing over and over again throughout. It's so sad we lost Al so young.
• "Top Gun: Maverick" The biggest movie of the year (unless Avatar 2 surpasses it). I had the most fun at the theater with this movie. We went as a work team to watch it. Watching a movie about Jet Fighters with a team of people who develop them as a career was very interesting. There was a lot of snickering going on and laughing at places that were not intentional. But overall, I think we were all impressed at what they got right over all the things that they might have changed for dramatic effect. No one thought those old jets would have a chance against the 5th generation fighters.
• "Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes" This Japanese film from 2020 is about as close to a magic trick as I've ever seen in a movie. Apparently all taking place in real time in a single continuous shot, a man discovers a monitor that shows the future--except just 2 minutes. Still, this discovery and where the movie goes with it is a wonderful trip. I super recommend this movie as well as recommend not learning anything else about it before watching.
• "Deadstream" Just when you think found footage is old and done with, someone finds something new. A Twitch-style live-blogger goes to spend a night in a haunted house and it turns into something close to a Sam Raimi "Evil Dead 2"-style experience. Having the streamer being able to interact with his audience mixes things up a bit and introduces something new to the genre. Also it was filmed in Utah, so I enjoyed seeing familiar mountains.

For 2023, a few films I was looking forward to in 2022 didn't yet come out: new Mission Impossible and John Wick 4. I'm also looking forward to Ant-Man: Quantumania and Guardians 3. I'm cautiously optimistic about the animated Mario Movie. And based on the trailer, the "Barbie Movie" could be amazing! Let's see how I feel at the end of 2023!

TV

Here's the notable stuff I watched on TV:

• Taskmaster: New Years Treat, Series 13, Series 14, NZ S3, Champion of Champions 2 Still my favorite show, and I still watched a lot of it this year. They were finally able to go back to a normal series with a live audience and contestants sitting next to each other after COVID precautions of the previous series. It was so much better.
• Lego Masters. This is the one show that Maria, Jaden and I all wait to watch together. We still have a lot of fun with it.
• Disney's Star Wars and Marvel Shows: Book of Boba Fett / Moon Knight / Obi-Wan Kenobi / Ms. Marvel / She-Hulk: Attorney at Law / Andor / Werewolf by Night / Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special Of the series listed above, the only ones I really liked were She-Hulk and Guardians Holiday Special. A lot of people really liked Andor, but I found it boring and very un-Star Wars. Where did all the aliens go?  
• Stranger Things Series 4
  Though I wish they'd stopped after series 1 or made it more of an anthology series, I had to admit that this recent series was quite good despite the whole Russian prison sub-plot.
• Adult Swim Yule Log
  I watched this on Christmas looking for interesting Yule Log videos and stumbled upon this.  What starts as a fireplace video turns into the craziest messed up horror movie I've ever seen.  From the people that brought you "Too Many Cooks," I don't want to say more than just that it's not for the squeamish.

Online Media and Podcasts

This is the online media (mostly YouTube and Podcasts) that I subscribe to and enjoyed watching this year:

• Professor of Rock - This guy always has a great story to share with a great band or artist or song including many I've never heard of. I just wish he didn't have to use clickbait titles.
• Ryan George & Pitch Meeting - Still enjoy this guy's humor and his Pitch Meetings, which have their own channel now, are probably the funniest and most insightful sketch's on the Internet.
• Red Letter Media - Loved them since their Star Wars Plinkett review years ago and still enjoy them today. I love that they barely care about "how to Internet" yet somehow maintain a strong following.
• Corridor Crew - My newest find this year. They've been around a while but I just found them from stumbling into a video where 3D artists try to follow a Bob Ross tutorial in real-time. Their random challenges from creating satisfying renders to updating bad CGI to playing with AI and other cutting edge technologies is really fascinating.
• Screen Crush - Their regular Easter Egg and movie theory breakdowns are always a must watch for me after every Star Wars, Marvel, comic book, or other geek-related media movie or TV show drops.
• Um, Actually - Still really love this geeky game show. I Kickstarted a board game version of this so we could play it in real life.
• Dan Murrell - Though I wish he had a screen partner, he's my current go-to movie review and news guy. I enjoy his regular box office breakdown and well researched takes on movie trends.
• GeoWizard - I found this guy from his detective videos where he takes a submitted photo and find the exact location on earth where it was taken from clues in the photo. Kept watching through his various adventures such as his "straight-line" trips where he has to travel as near as possible on a geographic straight line across a country.
• Taskmaster Podcast - It's my favorite TV show, so of course I listen to the accompanying podcast.
• We Hate Movies/ How Did This Get Made - My two favorite bad movie podcasts are pretty much staple for me in my podcast listening.
• With Gourley and Rust - The "Easy-Listening" horror podcast. Continues to grow and evolve finding new horror movie themes such as this year's "Yuppies in Peril" group. They've regularly found me new movies to watch as well as old favorites to rewatch.
• Filmcast - The oldest podcast I still listen to. It's my go-to podcast to listen to after I watch a new movie to hear their conversation on the film.

Games

This year I got both a new laptop and a STEAM DECK! The steam deck is a portable handheld PC with a built in controller from Valve. I haven't had a gaming PC in years and years and so I finally had a machine capable of playing the library of games I had been building up on Steam. I spent a lot of time playing with this new toy that I absolutely adore.

Here are a few of my favorite games I played this year:

• Tabletop Simulator (PC) - I still love board games and this a great tool for collecting and playing digital versions of games. The setup time is just as fast as it loads. And it works so much faster on my new laptop. Not quite so great on the Steam Deck, but that's okay.
• Metroid Dread (Switch) - Really enjoyed this throwback/update to 2D Metroid games. I started the year playing through this game from last Christmas.
• Happy Color / Legendary DXP 007 / Survivor.io (iOS) - These are the apps I spent the most time playing on my iPhone this year.
• I Expect You To Die 1 & 2 / Synth Riders / Pistol Whip / Puzzling Places (Oculus VR) - I've really enjoyed playing on our Oculus/Meta Quest this year and these were the apps I played the most.
• Inscryption (PC) - A very strange mix of card battling, escape room mystery adventure, and a few other game genres. It got me quite involved.
• Rogue Legacy 2 / Slay the Spire / Black Mesa / 20 Minutes Till Dawn / Hollow Knight (Steam Deck) - Rogue Legacy 2 was the perfect game for the Steam Deck.  I tried playing on PC and got completely frustrated with the controls, but it was perfect on the Steam Deck.  Slay the Spire I had never got into but they brought a physical game to Kickstarter that I backed and it got me to reinvestigate this game.  Black Mesa is a remake of the original Half Life and the changes they made to the alien environment of the game's back half was just amazing!  20 Minutes... got me started on a mass shooter game kick including Vampire Survivors and Survivor.io and Spirit Hunters along with several others.  Hollow Knight is a Metroidvania-style game that I played about 95% but didn't finish as I got frustrated with never understanding what was going on in this surreal game.
• Spider-Man Remastered (Seam Deck) - I'm still just early playing this one, but I'm shocked how much it completely steals from the Batman Arkham City games.  I love those games, so I'm enjoying this Spider-Man version of it.

Board Games

Despite COVID calming down and people being able to meet for gaming again, I attended very little game gatherings this year.  Part of it was in May when I attended BGG Spring convention, my back started really hurting to the point where I have been unable to sit upright at a table for longer than an hour at a time, which significantly reduces my ability to participate in game nights.  Our church started doing bi-monthly game nights, though, which usually were much shorter than hardcore gamer nights and I really enjoyed those.

I keep my game plays recorded in an app called BGStats.  It tells me I played 439 games this year in 20 locations with 109 players.  Of those 439 game plays, they were of 114 different games.

Here are the games I really enjoyed playing this past year:

• Legendary: Marvel, James Bond, Buffy, and Big Trouble in Little China - Legendary was my obsession this year.  I finally bit the bullet and fell down into the Marvel end of things fully completing my collection of every single Marvel expansion.  This included several out of print expansions which were not inexpensive.  I spent a lot of time sleeving everything and printing out and cutting dividers and built a special box to hold the main game plus a few extra expansions.  I also did some 3D designing and printing for extra enhancements to the game.  I just really love playing this game!  And it's very easy to play solo, so I don't need to rely on other players.
• Tiny Epic Dungeons - A fun little dungeon crawler.  I spent a lot of time playing both with my physical copy as well as digitally on Tabletop Simulator.  This was the first Tiny Epic game to come with miniatures so I spent a lot of time painting all of the figures including those that came with the expansion.
• Slay the Spire - The virtual version on Tabletop Simulator is the only way to currently play this while it goes through production from Kickstarter.  I'm really looking forward to playing this in real life with other people.
• Warp's Edge - This is a really fun solo game, part of a solo hero series with "Proving Grounds" and "Wreckland Run" (just released.)  It's a bag-building game where you are a ship fighting hoards of enemy ships in order to take down a final mother-ship.  You only have so long before having to reset and start over again similar to Groundhog's Day or Edge of Tomorrow, except your bag of weapons gets more powerful each time you start over.  There are many different ships and many different Mother ships to fight that all require a different tactic so there is a ton of gameplay here.  I've only scratched the surface.
• Final Girl - Another solo game that is the perfect horror movie scenario generation game.  The game comes with many different locations and bad guys playing homage to classic horror movies such as Friday the 13th, Poltergeist, or Nightmare on Elm Street.  The game is quite difficult, and very often unfair, but in so doing perfectly captures the nightmarish scenario of a typical horror movie.  You are trying to stop the villain and rescue "victims" while finding weapons and tools to fight back.  Every game creates its own unique story even if you play the same location and bad guy multiple times.  Season two should be arriving within a couple months to add a second giant box to my collection.  I spent a long time with this game painting all the miniatures and both look forward to and dread painting even more when the second box arrives.
• Space Base: Mysteries of Terra Proxima - Enjoyed playing this second expansion with Maria and Jaden over several sessions.  It wasn't quite as fun as the Shy Pluto expansion, but it added a few interesting new items.
• Dice Throne: Marvel & Santa vs Krampus - Some new Dice Throne items added to my collection this year.  The new Marvel Dice Throne took the system and applied it to Marvel Heroes.  I really enjoyed how they incorporated each hero (or villain) into the system and not just re-skin previous Dice Throne characters.  The Santa vs Krampus arrived just in time for Christmas and was a fun little themed-addition to the game.

In 2023 I'm looking forward to several games that I Kickstarted this year: Quodd Heroes, Slay the Spire, Drop Drive, and Final Girl Season 2.

Books

I didn't take the opportunity to read much this year. So I only completed two novels:

• Jurassic Park (reread) - I read this originally back before the original movie came out. After enjoying the Martian and Project Hail Mary last year, this seemed like a good one to revisit.
• Horrorstor - A haunted IKEA-esque store presented almost as though it were in an IKEA catalog. This book gets an A+ in presentation. The story itself went almost too surreal jumping from "is it just our imagination" to "HOLY COW EVERYTHING IS GOING CRAZY" so quickly that I almost got whiplash. But I am intrigued to track down some more of author Grady Hendrix's novels.

2023

Looking into this year, I expect it to be pretty much a continuation of last year, but hopefully getting back to more of a sense of normal.  I hope to continue to improve health-wise possibly falling under the 200 pound milestone.  Maybe I will finally get back to playing games with others.  My back has been hurting all year, but it's been improving.  We don't have any big plans for this year, so let's just hope we survive intact and maybe better off.