The Best of 2009

I decided to put together my favorite stuff of 2009. You know, Hollywood puts together their best movies, best music, best actor, best blah blah blah. For some reason the average "joe" never gets mentioned on these type of compilations of awards. News programs also offer the best stories of the year or the best event of the year. Barbra Walters did a "10 most fascinating people of 2009" just a few days ago so, I decided to do my own "best of" for 2009.

Therefore, I have put together the "best list" which will include all of my favorites in a few different categories.
1. My Favorite Videos (that I produced)
2. My Top Blog Posts (that I wrote)
3. My Top Selling Figurines on eCarters.com
4. My post with the most comments
5. My mosts viewed video on YouTube
6. Favorite new websites

Here we go:

My Favorite Video I posted on YouTube this year - Banadana and Was Up!





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2. My Top Blog Posts

* DMJ The Department of Mirth and Joviality

* Pants

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3. My Top Selling Figurines on eCarters.com
* Kayak Figurine
* Optometrist Figurine


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4. My post with the most comments


* Am I alone (8)
* Pants (8)
* Ghosts on my Computer (6)
* Suspicious Dog 6
* Whas Up! (5)

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5. My mosts viewed video on YouTube

Carters Get A Wii! (480 views)


The Super Nerf War (228)


Lower Falls at Yellow Stone Park (134)


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6. My favorite new websites:

* http://www.lsdfamily.net
* http://www.metalcraftstore.com

Christmas Sales

I don't think many people know that I have a web store. My store is www.eCarters.com. I sell Metal Figurines that are hand made by a small company in Hansen Idaho. This is an example of one of the figurines.
When I get an order, I just call them on the phone, place the order, and when they have a friend or family member coming into town, they drop it off at my door step. I don't make much money off this website, in fact most of the months the web store eCarters.com either loses money or just breaks even. However, during the 3 weeks leading up to Christmas, this is what it looks like in my house.



Even though most of the year is a bust, this little web store actually provides some needed extra dough for Christmas.

Avatar

I have been excited to watch the new movie Avatar that came out this weekend. I have heard great reviews. I have read that the CGI (Computer-generated imagery) is ground breaking. Therefore, I was interested. I watched as many previews as I could because it looked so dang cool. One of the primary characters in the movie is a native Na'vi humanoid. They look like a cross between a monkey, cat and human. Even though the previews showed a scantily clad woman Na'vi, I still had high hopes that the movie would be much cleaner. I went to Screen It to see if I could get any help on the movie. Screen It didn't have a review yet. So, I went to IMDB to see if they had any information. They only listed the Movie's Rating and described why it was rated PG-13, "Rated PG-13 for intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language and some smoking." This rating didn't seem too bad so I decided to take the boys to the movie on my birthday.

The movie started out harmless enough. There were a few swear words at the beginning but it was a war and battle movie so you kinda know that they are going to use some harsh language but it seemed minimal so we kept watching. Eventually the movie moved to the Na'vi and the main woman character was introduced. The previews were correct that she was presented as a "very native" looking creature. Unfortunately, these natives wore very little clothing and were very anatomically similar to humans. At first it seemed that this would be a small part of the movie, but as it progressed, it just got worse and worse until we got to a scene where I knew we just needed to leave. There were too many shots of naked buttocks and to many revealing shots of the torso of the women Na'vi. The final straw was when the Na'vi were headed off to their hammocks to go to sleep. That is when I leaned over to my boys and said, "I think it is time to go". So, we left the theater to find my wife and the girls that were watching a cartoon about 2 frogs wanting to become a prince and princess.

I was very disappointed. I really wanted to see this movie, and I still do. I just wished that there wasn't so much nudedidity!

A Song for the Mormons

On Monday night, the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien presented “A Song for the Mormons”, sung by bandleader Max Weinberg. Because U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch recently wrote a song for Hanukkah, Max Weinberg returned the favor.

This is totally hillarious! I was worried that it would bring up all of the old stereotypes about Mormons but it wasn't too bad.

Enjoy

For all of the Facebook readers, here is the link.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/115218/the-tonight-show-with-conan-obrien-a-song-for-the-mormons

Too Much Money

I'm the kind of guy that would love to be cursed with too much money. I have always thought it would great to be "tested" with millions of dollars. What would I do with it? How would I use it? Where would I go? Who would I help? I think we all dream of being a millionaire. However, being a millionaire may not be all that it seems. Last week during our "Book Club" meeting, the subject was broached because of the incedent about Tiger Woods. Of course we all know that Tiger is a millionaire, if not a billionaire. So, why would he get in trouble with all of these different women if he had millions of dollars? Humm, good question. It seems crazy to us "poor" people why millionaires get involved in drugs, women, alcohol, addictions ect. Here is my theory.

If I was a millionaire, I would do all of the things I always wanted to do. For example, visit Australia, stay in the nicest hotels, go on the nicest cruise ships, visit exotic places, ride in limos, etc. Now, lets just say that I was able to do all of these things. I spend 5 year doing all of this stuff. After that 5 years, I've done it all. Disneyland is not interesting anymore. I've been to Italy several times, I even built a house there (boring!). I have several houses on the beach, I've lived in Paris. Nothing is interesting anymore, nothing is exciting anymore. So, where do I turn to find excitement? Drugs, addictions, the "s" word. How do you keep the excitement in your life when you have done everything? I'm sure it is hard to do.

So, if you every get filthy rich, don't go completely wild and do all of the fun stuff in life in a short period of time. Leave some fun stuff out there to keep your life interesting and fun.

As I said before, I think I'm ready to be tested with wealth. (cheesy grin)

Spirit of Christmas

The website on Youtube called Mormon Messages has done it again. They have produced another awesome little video and posted it today.



I hope all of my readers have a very Merry Christmas.

Savanna Clogging

Every year Savanna's clogging team prepares a dance for the Festival of Trees. This year was no different. Savanna loves clogging and dancing. She is one of the youngest dancers out there on stage. Even though she is young, she has been able to learn the steps and moves without any problem. If she continues, she will be one of the best cloggers in the studio that is her age. BTW, her dance studio is named "Rocky Top Cloggers".

Enjoy the video.

Warm Fire

Leave it to Clark Draney again to spark (no pun intended) a memory from my childhood. He wrote an article this week about starting a fire in his fireplace. I guess the post was just a normal post and didn't really excite me much until he came to the part about remembering to open the flue. Pow! The memories of growing up in our house just flooded my mind.



In our house there were 2 fireplaces. One upstairs, one down. The upstairs fireplace was well kept and was used to warm the main level of our house. In the winter, this was a great source of warmth in our house. However, to keep the fire stoked with wood, someone would have to tiptoe out the back sliding glass door periodically to get more wood. Upon doing so, a blast of cold air would rush into the main room and chill us all for a few seconds until the door was again slid shut.

The downstairs fireplace was a whole different animal. For some reason, the cold air would be pushed down the chimney. I'm sure there is a scientific reason for the down draft that made lighting a fire down there a difficult task. I remember several times trying to light newspaper down there only to receive a face full of smoke in return. The first blast of smoke was from forgetting to open the flue. The second blast of smoke was from the down draft of cold air. The instruction and scientific explanation was given that enough heat had to be applied at the beginning to get the air to start flowing back up the chimney. Once this delicate balance of hot and cold was overcome, the smoke would cease to fill the room. After several minutes of gray plums of smoke layering the downstairs family room, the miracle of the chimney would occur and the room would begin to filter up the brick column.

I am sure that as I get older, I will find that I have a layer of soot embedded deep in my lungs that will eventually kill me. Yes, I am sure I have a very minor case of Black Lung right now. I always new I would die of cancer.

Eagle Court of Honor

Last weekend, (Thanksgiving weekend) my sister Melinda's son earned his Eagle Scout Award. She had a wonderful Court of Honor the evening we were there so I took along my flip video and took a few video shots.

Congratulations Thomas!