31.12.14

IHAO on ... Everything-Else of the Year 2014

Get ready, this is a long one!

Welp, you guys did it.  You guys took a thing and made it more than mostly ridiculous.  It is a terrible list that is worth no one’s time, and I’m going to give you exactly what you asked for!  It is going to be ridiculous, but honest as best as I can.  The only things I will not be answering from the enormous list of “of the years” will be anything that is not actually an opinion but a fact I can look up.  I’ll also randomize these, and I couldn’t remember who gave me these at all.  So let’s do this.

“Most Wonderful Time” of the year 2014
Christmas is great, as is Halloween, but I can absolutely state that the most wonderful time of the year is early December afternoons, when the sky is grey and the weather is chill, when the breeze is hard and slow.  That is always the most wonderful.  I love it, and always will.

“Meal” of the year 2014
I’ve eaten a lot of meals this year.  On average probably 1.7 a day.  There have been a lot of things made by me and others that have been pretty outstanding, but for me, the meal of this year was a month or so ago at Moe’s.  The health inspector had just come and was giving notes, so I got my Wrong Doug with the grilled green peppers ABSOLUTELY PERFECT.  I have never had one as good as I did that day when Drew and I randomly decided to go early.

“D&D character (in games I’ve run or been a part of this year)” of the year 2014
I am currently running two Dungeons and Dragons games.  I hope to be running a third World of Darkness game soon as well.  Of the two games, to pick a single character would be hard, but I bet you my players would absolutely agree that the character of the year is Livbl, a snake-oil salesman from a chaotic swamp town we spent awhile in.  He was a scam artist, everyone knew it, but they kept letting his charm and work ethic win them over until eventually one of the players bought out every potion this flim-flam artist was selling in one big swoop.

“Seasoning/spice” of the year 2014
Paprika.  From Wal Mart.

“Episode of television” of the year 2014
There are only two television shows I watch at all currently that aren’t wrestling or sentai.  And they both had an AMAZING midseason finale … so I’m going with both of those.  Flash s01e09 and Arrow s03e09.  Both were incredible, and both shows continue to be my favorite shows in recent memory.  Flash is currently a little better than Arrow as a whole, but I love both of these episodes equally.

“Theft” of the year 2014
I was real worried that I wouldn’t have anything for this category, but luckily my good friend Jason helped me out by getting his car window smashed and some stuff stolen.  Don’t worry or feel bad though, he is in surprisingly good spirits about it.  It was a nail-biter, but this one just made it in time.

“Death” of the year 2014
Absolutely it is the devastating loss of the Ultimate Warrior.  You can read about it here, and I quote his final promo in my Wrestling of the Year article as well.

“Day” of the year 2014
May 23rd

“Video Performance by Beyonce” of the year 2014
I am not a Beyonce fan.  That is to say, I don’t listen to her music or watch her videos.  But I am a fan of other artists, and do watch their videos, and one of them happens to be a Beyonce one, which is probably the only video I watched that had anything to do with Beyonce this year, so itwins by default.  

“Betrayal” of the year 2014
Oh goodness.  Ok, so I’ve sat here for probably two hours stuck on this one.  I still have … 34 more of these to answer for the year, and I have quite honestly no idea at all.  I mean, I guess I need to go with … no, you know what, I’ll go a little more subtle than what I was planning.  I’m going with Adrian Neville’s betrayal of his friendship to Sami Zayn as he fought to retain his championship.  Adrian got as close to heel as a face could ever get without actually becoming a full-fledged bad guy, called his best friend unworthy and not good enough, and allowed himself to, while never cheating, bend the rules of matches in a way that is absolutely a betrayal of his own virtues and his friendship and competitive spirit with Sami Zayn.  There we go.

“World Event” of the year 2014
Bah.  Ummm … let’s go with the entire North Korea/The Interview debacle.  That was ridiculous here in the states, but also across the world.  I don’t know if affected anyone else around the world, but it is certainly a crazy event.

“Best Hamming/Worst Hamming” of the year 2014
Worst is easy.  Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber To, which as I posted yesterday, was the worst film for me of the year.  He was an awful caricature of himself, constantly chewing the scenary and mugging for the camera.  Best Hamming … The Rock’s social media comedy.  He is ridiculous and fun and hilarious and shout-outs to all sorts of people and is just he smiley-est and dopey-est enormous Hercules of a dude.  Good work, Dwayne.

“Engaged couple (wink wink hint hint nudge nudge please pick Poseph)” of the year 2014
Some of the inside jokes and requests here are a little more subtle.  Like, it isn’t so obvious that Michael Collins asked about “hamming.” But Paige is being pretty daggum obvious.  So I guess I’ll have to pick … Joge!  BOOOM!  That’s right, I’m using a different abbreviation of your names that ends up sounding like a stupid meme that I hate!  Much whatever, stupid joke, don’t do it right.



“Inside joke that no one else will know except the person who was part of it and will confuse everyone cuz im not even gona explain it or give any names” of the year 2014
Potato stockings, bra.  Potato stockings.

“Catchphrase” of the year 2014
S. A. W. F. T.  Saaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwft!



“Dog” of the year 2014
P-chan, my wonderful pug, will always win this award until the unfortunate year she is no longer with us, in which I will retire this category to never be used again.

“Figure of Speech” of the year 2014
It is hard to describe, but a really stupid thing we end up doing in my household is to just mangle and ruin words in the worst possible way.  Such as “Daniel” becomes “Dangus.”  “Drew” becomes “Drewbii.”  “Melanie” becomes “Melalaualulalll.”  It is awful.  And we do it all the time.  So yeah, that.

“Piece of Mail I received” of the year 2014
Uh … I mean, I’ve order a bunch of cool stuff for the site and for myself.  And I know for a fact that the thing I am always the most excited to get is the next One Piece Collection for my DVD set!  I have the first 10, all of which I got this year, and it has become a favorite show of mine! I talked about it on the site in fact RIGHT HERE!  And COLLECTION 11 comes out in January!!!  So yeah, those.  Well, I have to pick one, so I’ll say that the one I was most excited for was Collection 4.

“’Of the Year’ list” of the year 2014
This one.

“Thing I hated” of the year 2014
Man, there are probably a lot of things I fumed and cussed and moaned about this year.  Most of the times it is things on this site, like the Batman review or Interstellar.  But the thing I think I hated most this year was the crop of memes that became popular right at the end of the year, especially the abstract frog feeling thing.  Ugh.

“Kabuki” of the year 2014
Uh … I mean, I watch a LOT of stuff, but … the closest I can say is Ressha Sentai ToQger, I suppose, since it is a Japanese art form like Kabuki.  I love it so much, and other sentai so much, that I’m think about starting a new series about it all.  I’ll talk about it more next year.



“Comedian” of the year 2014
This one is hard.  Wait, no it isn’t.  It is totally gonna be my (soon to be) good friend Paul!  He came and did a ten minute set for the best improve show that myself and the rest of the troupe I am in did, and he performed to his largest audience yet, which is amazingly cool!  He is real funny, and is working hard to be great at comedy.  I need to do something with him next year.  Maybe something … wrestling related.  Maybe something … podcast related.  Hmmm …

“Best class played (in Dungeons and Dragons)” of the year 2014
All right, this one is fun.  In my two campaigns, these are the break downs of the classes:

-          The Books of Eight Campaign: Invoker, Thief, Gypsy, Druid/Thief, Shaman, Fighter, Cleric (deceased)
-          Dunesko: Mirager, Fighter, Cleric/Thief, Necromancer, Bard

There isn’t a lot of overlap, especially considering how drastically different the two fighters are.  But really, my favorite class played currently is Shaman, which doesn’t work like most classes as you cannot cast quickly, you have to plan things out and ask favors of spirits, until you become more powerful and can chance doing an immediate calling.

Oh, wait, it says “best.”  Yeah, I love utility classes, but Shaman is definitely not the best, no offense to Alanthelis “Drew” Turner.  The class I think is the best, as in most effective and as a DM is the one I have the hardest time to plan around, is Druid.  Druid OP, what can I say. 

“Awkward Moment” of the year 2014
I have moments that were awkward for a lot of reasons, but none I really want to talk about or think top out the year.  The most awkard moment I can think of was very early in the year when, during an improve show, I made a “blue” joke.  A very funny one, too, but it was exceedingly off-color, and it bothered a few people, though none of the people that it could have bothered.  Yeah, it was a race joke.  And the guys I talked to of the race loved it.  But it still bothered enough people that I was told about it.  And I then had to go and talk to the parents of the kids I teach improve to every year and apologize.  That was rough.  Luckily, not a single parent cared, thought I did anything bad, or thought I was a bad influence on their kid.  Or at least, not THAT bad.  Ok, so maybe a few, but it didn’t actually hurt my standing with any of the parents or the kids, and that was what I was most worried about.  It was not an easy moment, and absolutely taught me that while I personally believe there is no such things as an “off limits joke,” when I teach kids, I need to make sure I am a little more above reproach if I want to continue to work with those kids, and if I want to move up the ranks in the theatre.

“Confession” of the year 2014
Does this mean I need to confess something?  I mean, I could be scandalous I suppose.  Or is this a thing that was confessed already and should be remembered for it?  Uhh … I’m going to go with the later, because I’ll probably lose at least one friend if I make a confession I was thinking about doing.  Of the confessions that have already happened … OH, a friend confessed to me that he hated it when people use his last name as his name or nickname and I hadn’t known it for YEARS and had not only been doing it, but had gotten other people doing it to.  That was … I mean, that’s a big confession that made me realize I need to be a little better with that kind of thing.  We are better friends now.  :D

“Albino” of the year 2014
This albino pug:



“Game” of the year 2014
Hey!  That’s a real category and not a joke one!  I can totally answer that for reals because I play some games and I like to review things!

The game that epitomized the year 2014 to me was Twitch Plays Pokemon.  It showed a fascinating love of the games, all building up to the newest generation and the newest remake of an old generation.  It got people talking about and playing pokemon again, including me.  Even more, it was a MASSIVE shared experience that created some great story through the random elements of the game because of the way the game worked.  Seriously, check out this write up of the entire story of the game series.  It is fascinating!  

“#swagsockwednesday” of the year 2014
Ok, so looking at the hashtag on tumblr, my favorite one is this one:
And that’s because I bought those for him.  Boom, I’m great.  Go me.

“Protest” of the year 2014
Everything in Ferguson.  Just, all of it.  Cops suck.

“Fruit” of the year 2014
I want to make a joke and put a gay guy, but I’m going to actually answer this correctly.  The fruit of the year here at IHAO has to be … apples, I guess.

“Movie Trailer (for a film I have not yet seen)” of the year 2014
Seventh Son!  That looks like a frickin’ awesome fantasy movie with tons of action and magic and monster and it just looks so cool!  I’m so tired of Tolkien and even more so Peter Jackson styled epic fantasy films, and Seventh Son looks great and new and interesting!  WOOOOO!!

“Cornucopia” of the year 2014
I think my mother-in-law had one she put on her dining room table around Thanksgiving, so I guess that one.

“Character Death” of the year 2014
Absolutely, the one that sticks with me the most this year is from John Wick.  I cannot say who it is, what happens, or any of that, but it was crazy emotional and has stuck with me even to this point.

“Ninja Space Cowboy” of the year 2014
Space Dandy



“Least Noteworthy Performance” of the year 2014
See, this one is hard, because this is quite literally me giving a note to the performance here.  I could cop out now and say I can’t answer it because of that, but nah, I’m going to actually try.  I suppose I’m going to give it to … there was a blonde actress in an episode of Flash that worked with Iris who I think got one line about how Barry would make a good boyfriend or something.  Yeah, her.

“Plot Twist” of the year 2014
The midseason finale to Arrow.

“Choice Make Out Sesh” of the year 2014
May 23rd

“Color” of the year 2014
Interesting … I think I need to go with brown.  Like, shoe-leather brown. 

“Campaign slogan” of the year 2014
“Vote for Me”

“Most unexpected compliment” of the year 2014
My self-opinion is not very pleasant.  And on top of it, I don’t take compliments well.  They make me nervous and anxious and those words are synonyms.  But I got a compliment from a friend that just rekindled our friendship about my skill level and where I could go in the future that really touched me, profoundly.  I may be 30, but I still think of myself as young for whatever reason, mostly because I mean that as a negative, like I don’t have as much worth as other folks.  So it was just incredibly kind, and really shaped my decision on where I wanted to move forward in my life.  So yeah, that one.

“Worst film” of the year 2014
Dumb and Dumber To

“Best non-CGI effect” of the year 2014
This one is a hard one, because I’ve seen a lot of good films this year, but most effects work is now in CGI land.  And the thing that stands out to me is actually from Guardians of the Galaxy … the costuming and makeup for most of the cast.  It was shocking, seeing behind the scenes footage, or how much of the look of this movie was completely legitimate.  Awesome stuff.

And the last and final category of this year …

“Socks” of the year 2014
My wonderful wife got me LootCrate, and I was happy as all heaven to get it!  Even better, it had GROOT SOCkS in there!  The socks are cool, comfortable, and were a hug surprise as well as a present.  Those are the socks that win, absolutely.





All right everyone, thank you for reading my silly inane list of reader suggested categories.  And I want to say to all of you thank you for reading what I’m putting out there.  You guys taking your time to read, share, and comment keep me going and working hard at this, and have really helped me want to push myself further, with better articles, more constant updates, and more features and specials that I can share with everyone.  Thank you all.  I hope you have a great New Year’s Eve, and I will see you all on Monday with the first review of the new year!

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