All right readers, you know the drill. So no need to talk about it; let's just get right to it.

Top Ten Concert Moments Of The Year

After a full year of rocking, I've decided that putting the 38 performances I was present at into any sort of order was both a fruitless and baseless task, so I now present to you my Top Ten Concert moments of the fiscal concert year!

10.Dave Matthews Band - 7/11 - Ants Marching:If you haven't seen the DMB live and think they suck, go check out their show and then see if you still feel the same way. Dave and co. decided to encore with one of my all time favorite tunes in "Crush", and then played directly into the soaring "Ants Marching" to get the crowd dancing and send them home happy. Dave tours are a summer staple I look forward to every year, and this moment reiterated why I do.

9.Coheed And Cambria - 10/17 - Everything Evil & In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth 3: After taking in the C&C sonic session earlier in the day, I spent most of their electrified and incendiary performance that night at the Electric Factory slugging back Long Islands. By the time their set climaxed with Everything Evil I was rocking my drunk ass off, and then they returned for the encore I had been waiting 3 plus hours for...The nearly ten minute epic IKSWSE3...Hearing every person in that building join in for the mega crowd chant was well worth the wait.

8.Midtown - 7/1 - Give It Up:Y100 treated the city of Philly to a free concert at Penn's Landing every Thursday in July, and this was the first, with Midtown opening up for Lit. Of course Penn's Landing wasn't prepared for the magnitude of freeloading Punk/Emo fans moshing on concrete, so to settle the crowd down throughout the set Midtown's power was cut until the moshing stopped. When Midtown finally reached this, their last song, the crowd went bonkers and power was killed for good. Not wanting to go out like that, though, lead singer/Jesus figure, Gabe, led the crowd in an inspirational powerless sing-along of the chorus. I was never prouder to be a fan in my life. Aftermath saw me throwing myself over the railing at the front to retrieve a guitar pick which a security guy would not let me get, and nearly kicking a pregnant woman (or so she claimed) in the stomach in my flailing over the rail. Which begs the question, why would a pregnant woman be in a moshpit to begin with?

7.Something Corporate - 5/10 - Hey Ya:SoCo capped off their awesome set at Towson's Recher Theater with this unexpected raucous cover to a very receptive crowd, also following it up with their very own rocker "Punk Rock Princess" to finish off the fun show. Toe tapping fun!

6.Homegrown - 4/18 - Don't Stop Believing:Homegrown opened up the main stage on Day 3 of this year's Skate And Surf Fest with an energetic set which Mike and I had a prime viewing spot for. But when Something Corporate's Andrew McMahon joined them on stage to finish their set with a cover of this Journey standard it could only be described as live music MAGIC. Plus, the aftermath included us getting to meet HG and Andrew and take a hilarious picture.

5.Yellowcard - 11/8 - Rocket:Yellowcard kicked off the encore to their first show of a two night stint at the Electric Factory with this unexpected jam, directly leading to me and Matt from The Starting Line's cousin doing some kissing due to an escalating series of coincidences in the bar area above the stage. Then they also decided to play their rarely heard gem from the Spider-Man 2 soundtrack, "Gifts and Curses" (with KILLER guitar soloage in the middle), and topped it all off with the crowd pleasing "Ocean Avenue". Great show.

4.Taking Back Sunday - 4/17, 5/26, 8/6, 8/9, 11/28 - Cut From The Team:I saw Taking Back Sunday 5 times this year...so I got to hear my favorite song ever 5 times this year too, and each time was special in its own way...Seeing them cap off the 2nd day of Skate and Surf and playing this song in front of nearly 5000 insane fans was just a cool moment as we observed the entire floor jump up and down like a wave of humanity...Seeing Adam scale the stage rigging then hang upside down over a crowd during their opening set for Blink 182 in Hershey was something else. Being front and center during their crazy Warped Tour set and part of that giant climactic sing back of "Why can't I feel anything for anyone other than you!" line was an emomotional moment for me...Hearing them play this during their acoustic set I got lucky enough to be at let me hear it in a different way...and then I heard the song again...it was kind of repetitive by that 5th show. Is that too much? I never know.

3.Green Day - 10/29 - We Are The Champions:No one puts on a show like Green Day, and they outdid themselves when they covered this Queen classic to encore their show at Temple's Liacourous Center. As they jammed out, the entire crowd sang along (led by the lyrics displayed on the massive TV screen behind the band for anyone who didn't already know it) and confetti and fireworks rained down as Green Day took that step from cool popular band status to legendary rock legends of our generation status. Then, as the rest of the band exited the stage, Billie Joe did the lone guitarist thing and ended the show on a beautiful note with "Time Of Your Life". Truly, I had the time of mine.

2.Britney Spears - 4/9 - Touch Of My Hand:Yeah I saw Britney Spears. I also got to see her simulate masturbation on stage in a bed and bathtub wearing very little clothing to this sultry number. IT WAS AWESOME.

1.Dashboard Confessional - 6/24 - Vindicated:When Chris Carrabba came back to encore his Merriweather Post Pavilion show on this hot Summer eve with this, his awesome new single, I didn't count on being so struck by emomotion I'd make a life altering stupid ass decision. Now that goes to show the true power of live music.


Well, that's it...really, there were too many moments I've enjoyed so much that I could spend days pouring over the fun I've had rocking out at the shows this year In case you're wondering though, here's the final by the numbers:
38 Shows (including 5 acoustic performances) from
102 Bands at
22 Venues across
5 States (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, New York)with
26 different people...thanks to all of you, hope you had a great time! Come rock with me in 2005!

Today I saw my 100th different movie in the theaters this year. It was my 110th movie including movies I've seen already. The movie: the very forgettable Blade Trinity, the place: Neshaminy AMC 24. This year began in earnest, with a re-viewing of Elf (not included in the 100 count). At some point in February or March I set the bar higher than I ever thought I could reach with a goal of 100 movies. In November, a victim of my own success, I set my bar at 100 unique, requiring me to view 110 on the year to make up for the 10 multiple movies I'd seen throughout. The feeling I have while typing this proves that no matter how stupid, if you set a difficult goal for yourself and meet it... you will feel a great sense of accomplishment. Of course, as per my own rules, I couldn't do it alone... I'd like to thank the following people:

Justin, the originator of the quest
Amy Tai, she sat through some real stinkers in a real stinky theater on many an afternoon
RJ, who was there for 'the 5' and more
Irene, for not mocking the goal too much
Davis, who I should have saved a few more movies for
TW, he burned with me through Ladder 49 when no other would

... and everyone else who saw a movie with me this year.

So what have I taken from this experience? It's hard to put it into perspective just yet but here's a few things:

1. There is such a thing as seeing too many movie previews
2. Sporatic viewing of indie films make hollywood wrecks like The Day After Tomorrow easier to swallow.
3. Popcorn is not a solid dinner.
4. Hollywood is tired of releasing just one big movie per weekend.
5. November and December are lifesavers!

My full list will be here when I get back to my other computer.

I don't know why all of you people like to brave the crowds like a bunch of apes when we have technology to avoid the lines of smelly people and whiny children. The Internet is a wonderful invention and perfect for shopping. Here is my guide to finding good deald online.

First off, http://www.amazon.com">Amazon.com is always a safe bet. They ship quickly and reliably and have consistently good prices. You can find pretty much any kind of item at this store. They even sell laundry detergent as I found out.

If you're a deal hunter, check out http://www.fatwallet.com/c/18/">the Fatwallet.com hot deals forum. These fruigal clows make us jews look like lavish pop star spenders. But beware, the site can be as addicting as gambling and many forum posters buy stuff that seems cheap without even knowing what they are buying. But if you find posts with lots of followup messages of people confirming a deal, you should be good. I read this site all say at work. Recent pointless purchases from Fatwallet posts include a $10 pair of binoculars, a $20 toolkit, and a $5 Sneakers DVD. But many good things that were truly useful have come from it such as the recent TiVo hardware for $0 deal. Use it wisely.

Other sites of interest are :

http://www.dealuniversity.com">DealUniversity.com

http://www.slickdeals.net">slickdeals.net


And I must also point out that if you are in the market for DVDs you must visit http://www.dvdpricesearch.com">DVDPriceSearch.com. This site will let you add a bunch of DVDs to a virtual cart and then figure out which online retailer will give you the best deal. It will even factor in tax and shipping. A dvd shoppers dream!

Well I hope you enjoyed learning about online shopping. Next time your sitting in the mile long backup at the King Of Prussia exit of the turnpike, make sure you think, "Shit I could have shopped online!"