DOWN WITH PANTS!

Continuing on my need for "Best of" lists to end this year, here are my favorite movies of 2004. Again, just like in the songs post this is a list of my favorite movies not the best films of the year (except for Eternal Sunshine, which is the best film of the year). It's simply a list of the ones I really, really enjoyed. There sure were a lot of them. I don't think there has been a year when I loved so many movies. Yet most people say this was a very mediocre year.

This list is probably not complete because I'm positive I'm forgetting a couple of movies that I saw and I liked and I haven't seen many of the latest releases...

Tie #15 - Anchorman/ Dodgeball
#14 - The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
#13 - I Heart Huckabees
#12 - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
#11 - Finding Neverland
#10 - Shrek 2
#9 - Saved!
#8 - Garden State
#7 - Shaun of the Dead
#6 - Kill Bill Volume 2
#5 - Spiderman 2
#4 - The Incredibles
#3 - Napoleon Dynamite
#2 - Eternal Sunshine on the Spotless Mind
#1 - Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle

So? Think Harold and Kumar was crap? Did the Passion get you all hot and bothered? Is there something I'm missing? Please let me know...

I feel compelled to do some "Best of 2004" lists. Of course I realize that a "Best of" list is completely subjective so I won't force my opinions down your throat. What follows is simply the songs that have become my favorite this year. I don't really think that they are the best songs of the year, just the ones that I would put on a mix tape if someone asked me to...

Bonus #16 - "99 Problems" - DJ Danger Mouse - The Grey Album
15. "Move On" - Mike Doughty - Future Soundtrack For America
14. " Some Postman" - Presidents of the USA - Love Everybody
13. "I'll Be Around" - Cee-Lo Green - The Soul Machine
12. "Hoist That Rag" - Tom Waits - Real Gone
11. "Doublewide" - Southern Culture on the Skids - Mojo Box
10. "Portland, Oregon" - Loretta Lynn and Jack White - Van Lear Rose
9. "Common People" - William Shatner - Has Been
8. "Blinded By the Light" - The Streets - A Grand Don't Come For Free
7. "Me & Mia" - Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - Shake the Sheets
6. "Sex, Love and Money" - Mos Def - New Danger
5. "I'm Tongue Tied" - Magnetic Fields - I
4. "Through the Wire" - Kanye West - College Dropout
3. "Way of the Light" - Gift of Gab - 4th Dimensional Rocketships Going Up
2. "Section 12 (Hold Me Now)" - Polyphonic Spree - Together We're Heavy
1. "Float On" - Modest Mouse - Good News For People Who Love Bad News

Anything I might have missed? Have a song that really did something for you? Does my taste totally suck? Let me know...

The Down With Pants! crew took in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou at the Guild 45th in Seattle on Sunday night. While it probably is director Wes Anderson's worst movie it still is very good and I recommend it giving it Two Pants Down. It's funny, it's interesting, it's visually very well made, the music is great and it was a lot of fun.

That being said, I have no idea what the point of it was. It has so many themes and morals running around at once that as a whole it doesn't make much sense and continually contradicts itself. All of Anderson's films do this but they usually manage to clear it up nicer than this one does.

Bill Murray is incredible again but is upstaged by his co-stars especially Willem Dafoe who played the self conscious and hilarious Klaus. I'd love to see him get a nod for Best Supporting Actor but highly doubt that will happen. Even Owen Wilson manages for once to dial it down and gives a very restrained performance that fits his character nicely.

Overall, it's not great but it is very good. If you can enter the theater and not compare it to the other movies that Anderson has made I think you will enjoy yourself. But if you put it next to Rushmore and the Royal Tannenbaums it will not stand up. Not many movies could.

I have both good news and bad news. First the bad...Pho Shizzle isn't real. It's a photoshoped picture apparently originating from Fark. I kind of figured it was a joke especially since I couldn't find one in the yellow pages anywhere. "It isn't a real place, just cheap photoshoppery", says Dan Shahin of Wacky Hijinks, the site I originally got the picture from.

Now for the good news...Pho Shizzle isn't real! I can continue to use my stupid joke that if I opened up a Vietnamese Noodle shop I'd call it Pho Shizzle. Thank you to all the people on other blogs who have exposed this as a fake and thank you to Dan for commenting on my blog and letting me know. I appreciate it because I only have so many good jokes and need all the help I can get.

As I left the house this morning for work Death? yelled at me,"have a great day Fred Durst!". This is just about the last thing that I want to hear as I'm walking out the house because, as Michael Bolton said so eloquently in Office Space about Michael Bolton, he is a no talent ass-clown.

I was wearing my red Mexico City Diablos Rojos hat and a black hooded sweatshirt (shown above thanks to the magic of MS Paint). When I dress like this I suppose I do look a little bit like Fred Durst. Really anytime I wear a red hat and a black piece of clothing I resemble his dumb ass.

I noticed this resemblance years ago when Limp Bizkit was getting popular but I kept it to myself afraid that if anyone else knew they'd mock me mercilessly. Unfortunately Death? and I were walking around the NY State Fair in Syracuse when a hard rock radio station DJ broadcasting live stopped me as we were walking by and asked "hey Fred Durst, mind if we have an interview." I just snarled something nasty at him as I kept walking but the seed was planted in Death?'s mind and knowing my hatred of Limp Bizkit and Fred she has never let me live it down.

A big thanks to Daniel Sales for hooking me up with a GMail invite the other day. So now I finally have an email address that I don't feel weird about giving out to just anybody. Of course I should have done this a loooooong time ago, but I'm pretty lazy. So please, drop me an email sometime soon at downwithpants@gmail.com and let me know what's on your mind. Thanks!

Last night I attended the Washington Huskies 68-64 victory over the North Carolina Wolfpack. Both teams struggled and both stars, Nate Robinson for the Huskies and Julius Hodge for the Wolfpack, had off games. Brandon Roy surprised everybody by returning and scoring 10 points including a huge tip dunk late in the game that brought us to our feet and helped turn the tide for the Huskies. He also had the big defensive play that stopped the Wolfpack from tying the game with only a couple of seconds left.

It was an impressive win because the Huskies were totally taken out of their game offensively but were still able to overcome their struggles and make the big plays down the stretch against a really good team. After this win teams are going to take notice and know that the only way they can beat the Huskies is by playing their absolute best game of the season. It's going to be a great ride once the Pac-10 season starts.

Bitchiest thing overheard at the game: A little tiny waif of a girl sitting behind us talking about the cheersquad. "...and they are kind of fat, they are a little chunky. Look at that little chunk on the end closest to us. She's not the prettiest thing in the world." Personally Down With Pants! would take the "chunk" over that nasty rail any day.

In other sports news, my kind of alma mater (I never quite graduated, whoops!), Bowling Green State University has a football team playing on Wednesday in the GMAC Bowl, a basketball team that has started 5-1 on and a hockey team that has made vast improvements over the past few years standing at 8-6-2 on the season but suffered some tough news when they learned that their star goalie, Jordan Sigalet was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Good job Falcons, why couldn't you have done all of this great stuff when I was there?

I can't exactly say I'm a fan of John Mayer's music, but I just watched his show, John Mayer Has A TV Show, on VH1 and it was hilarious. Really one of the most entertaining TV shows I've seen in a long time. I highly recommend it. Of course it's on VH1 so it will definitely be repeated at some point, the question is when. They might squeeze it between an episode of the Fabulous Life of Some Skanky Bitch and I Love The Top 100 Most Awesomely Bad Polka Jams Strikes Back, so you'd better watch closely.

Blogging on a Friday night? Yeah, it's true. Tonight Death? is at a girls only slumber birthday party so I'm relaxing, watching the Supersonics game and surfing around.

The mind starts racing with images when us guys think about a girls only slumber party. What do I think the girls are doing right now...

This week Death? (my fiance for everybody who is new. I'm Cake...our geocaching name is Team Cake or Death? in reference to the great Eddie Izzard) is interviewing for family practice residency programs here in Seattle. What this means for me is that I have been dragged to two dinners this week where applicants can meet the current residents in a more casual setting and pick their brains and see if they would like the program and be a good fit. Of course this means a lot of medical and hospital talk which isn't really my cup of tea.

If you've never been to a medical school party, then let me describe it to you this way. At another party I went to a few years ago a fellow non-medical student and former Microsoft employee said "med student parties are worse than Microsoft parties." Now I have never been to a Microsoft party but when I think of one pain shoots from the front of my brain, down my spinal cord, kicks me in the crotch and then makes my feet just give way and I fall down and ball myself into the fetal position and start crying.

Some parties have been pretty bad, it's true. When you put 50-100 med students into the same room and only sprinkle in a handful of non-med students chances are most of us non-med students will end up learning how to sleep with our eyes wide open. I'm starting to get pretty good at this, I've had lots of practice.

But please, worse than a Microsoft party? I have my doubts. At the very least, the med school parties are well catered. Tonight we had some outstanding Thai food, good beer and wine, some of the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever tasted and ice cream. What I think I would get at a Microsoft party is Cheetos, Mountain Dew and leftovers from the afternoon run to Chotchkie's.