AMC Stubs A-List

I held off on this for years because of the comfort of my nearest boutique theater, the desire to support the local independent chain, and the fact that the nearest cineplex to my house is a Cinemark, but I finally just committed to AMC, and I’m glad I did.

Math time! I watched 35 movies at AMC theaters since I got A-List at the end of March. Nine months of A-List costs $179.55, which means I spent $5.13 per movie ticket. A regular evening ticket costs $14.18 after tax, which means I saved myself $316.75 over the course of the year. (This is napkin math. I saw a lot of matinees that would have been discounted if I’d paid, and I saw some IMAX, 3D, etc., that would have been more expensive.)

It’s the best purchase I made in 2023. The most affordable way to see movies is to just see a ton of them.

Momento

A psychologist could probably tell me why my brain works this way, but I love being able to track things. Since I was 21 years old, I’ve tracked (pretty much) every craft beer I’ve tried using Untappd, and in three or four years of using Letterboxd, I’ve managed to track every movie I’ve seen. I think something about this obsession is akin to mental hoarding.

The glaring hole was sports. Thanks in large part to my job, I attend a silly amount of sporting events, and Momento gives me a place to log it all in real-time (and in hindsight). After hours of cataloging every MLB game I could verify I’ve attended, I can say I’ve seen (at least) 24 MLB teams in person at eight different stadiums, and that kind of data tickles me. And now I’ve got renewed motivation to grab a cheap ticket to Reds-Padres and check another team off the list.

There are a lot of obvious features the app needs to add, but it’s still new, so I hope this is just the beginning of my romance. Follow me on there!

Camelcamelcamel

This site feels too good to be true because it tracks Amazon’s price history, which lets you make an informed purchasing decision. “Is this really a deal, or does this pop up every few weeks?”

This year, I needed a new pair of AirPods, though not urgently, so I looked up the historic best discount, set an alert for that amount, and got an email when they hit that price. It’s a game changer for purchases you can afford to wait on.

New TV shows

Anyone who knows me knows I stopped watching TV in favor of movies, though I still make time for a few. Here are the new series I liked in 2023:

Jury Duty (Amazon Prime Video) Like a prolonged episode of Candid Camera. A constructed reality occupied by only one real person, and the guy they found to be their mark is almost impossibly good. Hilarious, fascinating, feel-good. This is the best new show of the very few I saw this year.

Telemarketers (Max) It’s easy to see why the Safdie Brothers stepped in to produce here. This true crime mini-series hangs on a character that feels pulled straight from their cinematic universe. I love anything that is able to center lovable outcasts and rejects.

The Curse (Paramount+) I planned to watch more of this than I was able to. (Haven’t finished!) For better or worse, it’s Fielder’s career at its most thematically ambitious. Simply incredible that he’s roped A-list movie star Emma Stone into this.

Frasier (Paramount+) Okay, so this one isn’t new, but I had to get a Paramount+ subscription to watch The Curse, which means I got to reunite with what’s perhaps my #1 all-time comfort show.

Muji Gel Ink Ballpoint Pen (Black, 0.38mm)

It’s a good pen.

Good & Gather Pepperoni Pizza Flavored Dip (from Target)

It’s a good dip. (Tastes like filling from Combos pretzels.)

iPhone 15 Pro

I’m on a two-year iPhone update cycle at this point, which is admittedly a little hard to justify even though Apple will emphasize each September that this is the best iPhone ever. The iPhone 15 Pro does justify the claim, though. The more comfortable build, slightly lighter weight, and addition of USB-C make it my favorite iPhone ever.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder

I rarely play video games, so when I do, I want things to be fun, satisfying, and easy. Surprisingly, few games feel designed for this purpose without feeling like an iPad game for babies. Nintendo is good at them, though. The team who made this was surely doing drugs.

New England

This year's annual vacation was to the northeast, a place I’ve visited a couple of times but not really spent much time exploring. Aside from the unrelenting humidity, it’s a gorgeous part of the country. Underrated gem: New Haven! Seriously! Yale makes it feel like a giant, historic college town with great pizza.

Seeing old movies in theaters

I never understood the appeal of going to a theater to see an old movie until I got into rewatching a few years ago. In 2022, I got to see Jaws, and this year, I saw Titanic (in 3D) along with Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy. The former two felt like an American rite of passage; the latter is a modern classic. I now have a movie theater bucket list. Somebody re-release The Shining or Rear Window.

Don’t Blink Mixtape

If you were 14 years old in 2006 and into the NBA and video editing, you spent time on DontBlinkMixtape.com, the best site for Tracy McGrady poster dunks and hype videos of Allen Iverson and Baron Davis set to Linkin Park-Jay Z mashups.

Like much of the 2000s web, it’s been lost to the sands of time. Fortunately the Wayback Machine captured a lot of it, including a surprising amount of .wmv files and desktop wallpapers (pictured above). Though most of the titular mixtapes were hosted on FileFront (!!!), never to be found again, a couple stray ones did manage to make it to YouTube––which barely existed at DBMT’s peak.

There’s a tool on GitHub that lets you scrape Wayback Machine archives for a complete package of data on a website, which sent me down a nostalgic wormhole one evening into an era of the internet that’s never coming back.

Playing little games

Wordle is old news (though I still play), but the genre of “little games to play each day” has exploded. The New York Times app has the market cornered with Wordle, The Mini, and Connections, but don’t miss newcomers Daily Dozen Trivia and Movie Grid, too.

Arc

It feels sad to be excited about your internet browser, but then surely it’s equally impressive to make an internet browser people are excited about. I’ve been a Safari devotee for years, but Arc got me to switch permanently, which is the strongest recommendation I can give. It feels like the best way to be using the internet.

TikTok Accounts of the Year

This is what I was watching this year when I was supposed to be sleeping:

@ronlechler: This guy has a lot of old TVs, and he shows them to you.

@thedivebardick: This guy is somehow traversing the country to review dive bars.

@schoolhousecaulk: This guy talks really fast and tells you everything you never knew you needed to know about a laundry list of topics.

@dk_dreamhouse: These poor people are renovating the most tragically neglected home in the Pacific Northwest, but doing a great job. Super satisfying to watch!

@boeinghobo: The next Johnny Hamcheck.

@lateralcast: YouTube nerd legend Tom Scott doing a weird kind of trivia game. Easy to watch a bunch of these in a row, which is acceptable here since you’re learning in the process.

@vookum: Watch this guy run around the Diamond District buying and selling luxury watches.

@samanthabrowntravels: Remember watching Travel Channel in the 2000s and seeing that lady review hotels? Well, she’s on TikTok now, and she’s still charming.

Favorite Things of 2023