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July was kind of a weird month for me with lots of going and doing and very little time to chill and take in new things. I barely even made time to read, which is the easiest thing to make time for in my life! But I still liked some stuff!
 Pray for the Wicked is so, so, so good and I wasn’t really expecting it, even though I was excited to hear it. (I’m a firm believer that life is best lived with low expectations! Disappointment is worse than surprise! Don’t be cynical, be chill!) It’s a nice follow-up to Death of a Bachelor and the songs were amazing live. I won’t say too much since I’m pretty sure this one will end up on my year-end list, but what an album of jamz, man. Tracks to Check: “Hey Look Ma, I Made It” & “Roaring 20s” & “Dying in LA”
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 It took me a while to read Rebecca Stead’s First Light but thankfully that isn’t the book’s fault, I’ve just been terrible at follow-through this year. This was a conceptually great story with characters it was easy to care about and follow, even in the more high-concept side of the story. As I said in my review, I’m not a scifi/fantasy person generally, but I would definitely read more of this universe, which I think is a great sign.
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 Crystal and I have dedicated our summer (and our October…) to live music because we have missed it so, so much since we moved to the middle of nowhere. We saw The Used in May which was an excellent show in an incredible venue and in July we saw Panic! at the Disco and Coheed and Cambria, both in Minneapolis in wildly different venues. Coheed and Cambria were spectacular even 11 years after I saw them the last time, with an incredible stage setup and lighting package, and Claudio Sanchez’s absolutely mesmerizing… everything. It was a big, awesome show put on by really talented musicians for fans who were so extremely into it and I’m so glad we went.
We bought the Panic tickets on a whim and it was ABSOLUTELY the best thing we’ve done so far this year. (We actually ended up not going to Warped Tour because we’re old, which I do not regret at all which I was worried about, so that’s good.) It was SUCH an unbelievably good show with great sound and some of the most spectacular showmanship I’ve ever seen. Fire and sparkles and lasers and smoke and a flying piano and Brendon Urie’s golden voice, which he likes to show off as much as possible to the audience’s very vocal delight. We danced and sang along for TWO ENTIRE HOURS, twenty-eight songs, which is just absolutely insane to imagine doing night after night. What a damn show. We’ve got more live music to come before winter sets in (KNOCK ON WOOD FINGERS CROSSED) and I can’t wait!
And three to look forward to…
  
Panic! at the Disco photo is by Jake Chamseddine & technically Crystal and I are both in it!
Everything is so, so awful, so I escaped into gay love stories this month! Coping methods are what they are, man. (Also, queer joy is radical.)
 Netflix’s Alex Strangelove was very charming and very sweet and pretty funny with likable characters that I super enjoyed spending time with. I was a little bored with the root of Alex’s repression (and repression in general, some people don’t figure it out ’til later on and that’s FINE, it doesn’t always have to be about trauma) but overall this was a really fun, really joyful gay romcom. Daniel Doheny was very good and I loved seeing Jesse James Keitel’s character Sidney be really unapologetically visible in the face of Dell’s dumb straight boy ranting. Fun and sweet!
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 I had been very eagerly awaiting Love, Simon since I read the book way back when and had loved it pretty thoroughly and I think it translated really well to screen and was a fun, sweet watch. It was lovely to see so many characters of color and teenagers just being teenagers and also to see dumb, shitty bullies get told off and punished by an adult in a really satisfying way. Everyone was really great in this — I particularly loved the parents and teachers — and I was particularly impressed with Clark Moore’s Ethan who, in a movie made even five years ago, would have been a one-note joke.
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 Cinnamon Toast and the End of the World was a gift from the Amazon algorithm, recommended to me based on the probably pretty high volume of queer books I both peruse and buy. I really liked the writing in this one and Stephen’s inner monologue and the secondary characters we get to spend time with. I also especially liked seeing it take place in an semi-unfamiliar place and time, the 80s in Nova Scotia, and the fact that it is a real coming-of-age story, following Stephen for a good long while. This one is less happy than the the stories I tend to love (and beware if you’re particularly sensitive to violence) but it is really hopeful and kinder than a lot of books set in similar times and places. It reminded me some of Marie Sexton’s Trailer Trash, which I loved a LOT, so now I’ll probably think of them as a little gay small town 80s American-Canadian set.
And three to look forward to…
  
I absolutely watched… nothing this year? Because, as previously lamented, our movie theater is absolute garbage and I also just have not had the ~energy for most TV and movies, aside from Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Speechless, which I’ve talked about before, but are still two of my very favorites.
ANYWAY, I did enjoy a lot of what I watched, so here’s my Totally Top Five for 2017!
 5. YOUTUBE! – Since my media consumption energy tanked, I have fallen to YouTube a lot for entertainment, often because the media itself is shorter, but also because it’s just way easier to watch someone talking through a make-up tutorial than it is to watch something where you are (or are trying to be) invested in the characters.
I watch a LOT of people talking about make-up and some vloggers and stuff, but there are only two channels I watch every time a new video posts and that’s The Tim Tracker and VlogAfterCollege.  Tim & Jenn Tracker post vlogs around the Orlando theme parks (and their home and other local doings) and are just very charming and soothing to watch. Ryen Lung is also extremely charming and I find his extremely routine vlogs (I’d say life, but what can you know, you know?) extremely relaxing and charming. Also his dog Gatsby is the best.
 (Both of these channels do some good/bad food labeling and some diet talk, but in like, the same offhand way you have to hear about it in your office, but heads up if that’s a thing that bothers you. I certainly don’t love it, but it is i-n-e-s-c-a-p-a-b-l-e on Youtube. So much food shame, so much apologizing for just, like, eating food like a human person. Diet culture is a nightmare!!)
 4. Thor: Ragnarok – Extremely funny, extremely charming, extremely visually rad, extremely fun in a way that I feel like comic book movies forget we want. We are all extremely lucky to be alive on Earth at the same time as Taika Waititi. This movie was an absolute gift.
 3. Good Kids – This was a fun, charming (uhhh, clearly I like being charmed), fun, kind of old school teen sex comedy with some really nice unexpected stuff that made it pretty delightful. Nicholas Braun was great, but it’s also a really nice cast as a whole, including the adults.
 2. Glow – Crystal and I watched all of Glow in about a week and only because we forced ourselves to space the episodes out because we didn’t want it to be over. Everyone is great and it’s one of the only times I’ve ever watched a show with unlikable characters and didn’t resent it or stop watching (I want characters to be likable! Sue me!!) and eventually, with a combination of exposure and character growth, came around to liking them. It’s funny and moving and fun and extremely, intensely nostalgic if you are at all a child of the 80s.
1. Spider-Man: Homecoming – Like pretty much everyone else who saw Captain America: Civil War I was extremely charmed (ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!) by Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and was extremely looking forward to seeing the standalone movie and it extremely did not disappoint! I thought the action in this was really fun, but also just teenagers being teenagers with the added complication of superhero-dom and also good, subtle villainy, and super great secondary characters. Good time all around!
Honorable Mentions
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 | The Year Dolly Parton Was My Mom | Rogue One: A Star Wars Story | Deidra and Laney Rob a Train | Better Things
Previously
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Crystal and I have spent like, the last three holiday seasons, watching a whole bunch of those made-for-tv(ish) holiday romantic comedy/dramedy movies available on various streaming services because the holidays are a time for ignoring your problems and watching laughably bad movies made on shoestring budgets, so here are five of my favorites in no particular order!
 The Spirit of Christmas mostly gets points because it has, by far, the best looking male lead in a sea of mediocre white guys. Also, he’s a ghost and kind of rude and stand-offish in a way that’s both infuriating and kind of hot. Jen Lilley is also enjoyable, even if her character is a little too tv Christmas movie trope-y for my extremely refined tastes. Their chemistry is good and the movement from antagonistic to romantic is extremely enjoyable. Also, this is the only movie on this list that I paid actual money to watch and I didn’t even feel ripped off!
 A Snow Globe Christmas is great because they took Alicia Witt and let her be kind of caustic and then paired her with a cheerful, patient (and handsome!) Donald Faison and then actually let them kind of play and push at each other instead of just making them walk a standard romcom line. This one is kind of a weird ride though, let me tell you. And it’s one of the first that had an ending I couldn’t exactly predict!
 Naughty & Nice or Christmas Mix (How much do I love that so many of these movies have multiple names? SO MUCH.) is one we put off watching for a long time because we’d been avoiding all the Haylie Duff movies (I have an aversion.) but had to finally give in because we were running out of other options. She is actually very charming here and Tilky Jones is probably the second handsomest mediocre white dude I’ve seen in these movies. Also, he used to be in a boy band. This one’s got good chemistry which helps tolerating the unnecessary complications of the third act easier. Also Marsha Brady’s a badass, mountain-y mom in this, which was a delightful surprise.
 Married by Christmas or The Engagement Clause is our most recent watch and possibly my very favorite? Jes Macallan is great; pretty and pretty normal and super funny, especially while playing drunk, and Coby Ryan McLaughlin is handsome and extremely charming even while being a dick. This one was mildly frustrating because the lead is blamed for things she shouldn’t be, but it makes up for it by actually featuring a gay character (!! I still absolutely cannot believe Hallmark isn’t churning out at least one gay/lesbian version of these movies every year. Honestly. What a waste.) and also being intentionally funnier and missing the typical unnecessarily complicated third act! Also, shout out to the world’s ugliest wedding dress.
 A Holiday Engagement has an okay-ish dude the the very charming Bonnie Somerville who is way better served by this script than she ever was on Friends and Jordan Bridges is pretty good-looking. (I know where my priorities are, thank you.) I loooooooooooove a good fake relationship story and this one is very dumb and very cute. The real winner in this though is the kooky family element and all of the Christmas-y fun that develops from it. Also, Shelley Long is a DELIGHT.
Honorable Mentions
How Sarah Got Her Wings | Window Wonderland | Christmas Crush or Holiday High School Reunion
If you need even more recommendations for holiday viewing this season, I also have a Totally Top 5: Christmas Movies edition. 🎄🎅🏿
Not to be a HUGE DOWNER, but 2016 was kind of a shitshow, yeah? Everything is kind of terrible! If you had told me in January that my neighbors would successfully elect Donald Trump to the United States Presidency, I would have laughed. A lot.
Anyway, in the spirit of my Twitter declaration to try to share good things in the face of the dumpster fire burning eternally around us, it’s time for TOTALLY TOP FIVE 2K16! Because the year didn’t really fall totally apart until the end and I managed to like a lot of stuff before I got too depressed and hopeless to function like a normal person!
 5. 4th Man Out – This movie was so much more charming than I expected it to be. And it did such a good job of dealing with straight-guy-gay-panic in a way that felt more true to 2016 than a lot of contemporary stories have. It had a realistic level of angst without ever veering near tragedy porn — something that a LOT of LGBT stories still do — and most of all, it was funny and kind and about FRIENDSHIP. Really good friendship! It was super duuuuuper white, but I did appreciate that they were regular working class people in ordinary jobs and lives. Lots of good parental stuff too. It’s nice to see a coming out story where no one is irreversibly miserable and everything just sort of goes okay-enough. That’s what I think (and hope) it’s like for most people and it’s nice to see that translated on screen.
 4. Ghostbusters – The original Ghostbusters is one of my favorite childhood movies and I was amped to see it with women and I just got more and more amped with each announcement. I really loved it. I thought it was funny and good-looking and charming and had really, really great action scenes. I LOVED that women were smart, complex, and ATE FOOD WITHOUT BEING WEIRD ABOUT IT! I love that Holtzman was coded so clearly as queer and that she was so incredibly hot and that it wasn’t intended for men! It subverted so much of what people have come to expect from action-comedy and media in general and it did it while making a really fun, watchable movie. My only disappointment is that I know there is another version of this movie that is funnier and sharper and a little bit darker that was supposed to exist and I know that it was strangled by studio dudes who wanted to make something really marketable and family-friendly. That sucks for everyone who made the movie and it sucks so so much for everyone who didn’t get to watch the movie they really wanted to make.
 3. Captain America: Civil War – Crystal and I saw Captain America: Civil War twice in two days, one of which was in these goofy things and both times I mostly just quietly cried to myself while murmuring, “Bucky… Buckyyyyy…” over and over again. Good action, good story, good pacing for the most part, super funny, and extremely re-watchable. I was surprised to really L-O-V-E every new character and how well they folded into the existing universe. I am disappointed that the comic didn’t get translated as directly as I’d hoped (SAD TROMBONE, WHAT A UNIQUE COMPLAINT) and I am STILL frustrated about the lack of development/transparency about the content and political impact of the Sokovia Accords because I’m a nerd and the details of that document are VERY IMPORTANT. Without them, choosing Team Cap or Team Iron Man is MEANINGLESS given the limited information given. Sorry I’m going to be an angry nerd forever.
 2. Crashing – Crystal picked this on Netflix on a whim one night while I was working in the other room and watched the first episode and then came in yelling at me, “YOU HAVE TO COME WATCH THIS SHOW.” And so I did and then we watched it all in a night because it was so charming. It’s not groundbreaking comedy, but it is a really unusual living situation populated with interesting people, funny, awkward conversations, and super weird stuff. Not all of the characters are likable which was VERY HARD for me, but I still wished there were way more than six episodes to watch. I mean, I often argue that TV shows need to know when to end and that we should move toward the British model of short, unpredictably aired seasons, but there’s something to be said for having 22 episodes to watch each season.
 1. Stranger Things – Maaaaaaaaan was this an easy #1 to choose this year. Stranger Things is a giant, fun, moving, awesome homage to everything I grew up loving. I didn’t really expect to love it that much because I’m not really a scifi or fantasy person — I’m a horror movie nerd! — but MAN did I love it. Winona Ryder is so, so good and every teen, tween, and child actor in this is UNBELIEVABLY good. It’s beautifully shot and set-designed, the creature design and world-building are amazing, and it’s fantastic that it manages to tell a complete and satisfying story in just eight episodes. I was really hoping that it would end up being an anthology series, whether that was with the same actors in a new situation/era or with new actors in an expansion of the existing universe, so I am a little bummed that it’s coming back as a regular second season, but also pretty excited about it because it was great, obviously. VERY EXCITED.
Honorable Mentions: The Fundamentals of Caring | Deadpool | Speechless
2K12 | 2K13 | 2K14 | 2K15 | LISTENING | READING
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