Most entertaining stuff of 2005

I was rooting around on my bookshelf today and noticed the book that I enjoyed the most last year: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon.

Most fun movie? I’m picking a black horse this time: The 40 Year Old Virgin. It surprised me by being better than I expected.

Most entertaining video game? I’m going to go with Guitar Hero (see my earlier post), but if I’d discovered Katamari Damacy or We β™₯ Katamari, it would have been very close. Just when you think every genre of videogame has been invented, along comes fresh new ideas. In the Katamari series of games, you roll a ball around; as you roll up more things, your Katamari grows larger, until finally you’re rolling up islands and countries. It’s so much fun that I’m ordering the Katamari soundtrack.

53 Responses to Most entertaining stuff of 2005 (Leave a comment)

  1. I will second 40 year old virgin. I think Steve Carrell is hilarious – he’s great in The Office too.

  2. I still chuckle when I think about the speed dating scene when he meet Gina.

  3. Have you played Psychonauts yet Matt? AMAZING GAME!

  4. Most fun movie? I’m picking a black horse this time: The 40 Year Old Virgin. It surprised me by being better than I expected.

    If you pull a Mooj and start talking about all the different sex positions, or having an Asian woman wax you while you scream profanities, I’m outta here. πŸ˜›

    Seriously, that movie ROCKS!

  5. Re: 40 Year Old Virgin

    I literally cried in the theater when he had his hair ripped off his body. That was soooo funny!

  6. I have to admit, The 40 Year Old Virgin was not the piece of crap I thought it’d be. It was way too long, but overall a good watch.

    Interesting choice of games … reliving your teenage years? πŸ˜›

  7. re: katamari

    Have you played much on the Nintendo DS this year? they are doing some killer stuff in relation to wifi gaming. Mario Kart DS on wifi, Animal Crossing DS on wifi, soon to be Tetris over wifi.

    Nintendo really seems ripe to a partnership with a company that might be looking to extend wireless capabilities to lots of U.S. metro locations.

    Anyways, Nintendo has really surprised me this year. My thoughts on it here if you want to read.

  8. Curious Dog – Monty Hall problem! Cool.

  9. I’ve heard good things about Psychonauts, Aaron. Would it still be fun if I, say, sucked at most video games?

  10. It’s funny how a lot of people find coincidences with Cristhopher behavior.

    Lots of Asperger in this Techie World! πŸ˜€

  11. I also heard a lot about this “40 year old virgin”, and eventually watched it: it looked to be filled with “sex-enticing” replies; yet the whole idea and the actors play was really great. I also enjoyed it a lot, yet I would not recommend it to the younger ones, because of the negativa effect it might have on them.

  12. >Would it still be fun if I, say, sucked at most video games?

    Well it is not say RBI baseball easy. But I think the game was generally not designed to be hard. I got stuck in a few spots, but found the game to be worth the effort of getting stuck. The game is fun right from the start.

    The coolest part about the game is that each level is so unique in design that it is like playing a different game each level. Lots of humor in each level too.

  13. Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was by far the best book i read last year i couldn’t put it down…very funny as well as being an insight into the commonly unknown condition; autism.

  14. I loved that book! One of the most original concepts I have read in a long time..

  15. Nah gotta think the Ringer is the best film around, Johnny Knoxville rigging the special olympics, quality

  16. I thought The 40 Year Old Virgin was good as well. Especially that drunk blonde with the beetle scene. Now I another good movie in that same funny genre would have to be Wedding Crashers http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0396269/

  17. There’s actually another good link to the Curious Tale …
    http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/curious/

    I’m not sure why but I don’t like amazon, hence providing this link

  18. Matt, could we concentrate on Google more ?

    As each day passes, i see more and more un-Google related posts from you.

    Don’t get me wrong, i know it’s your personal blog (“faq”), and i do love it, but since you are actually the number one Google representative for all of us out “there” you might wanna keep us up-to-date more.

    I mean, sure, Aaron is your friend. He loves to talk about games with you, and i don’t blame him. πŸ™‚

    But the other 99,5% of your visitors, who actually read your blog every day, care more about SEM/SEO πŸ™‚

    All the guys that post in your other-than-SEO posts, are just sucking up, or tying to get themselves known πŸ™‚

    It’s just my 2 cents.

    Anyway, have a great week.

  19. I saw a preview for ‘The Office’ and it dawned on me Steve Carell is also the star of that show.

    My most fun movie? Star Wars – pretty fun stuff. πŸ˜‰

  20. I didn’t like that film – it just went on too long and I stopped paying attention.
    I only have one more book to read, and then I can start Curious Inci….

    However – that game looks really relaxingly cool. If only it was not only on PS2…

  21. 40-Year-Old Virgin is an awesome movie. After seeing that, I found myself very attracted to him. There’s something about vulnerable geeky guys that I like.

  22. 40 YOV was more-less an excuse for typical, over used, under-thought sophmoric humor where Wedding Crashers(http://www.weddingcrashersmovie.com/) to me had a story first, then humor second.

  23. That film was so boring…

  24. Couple of things….

    1) We β™₯ Katamari is one of the best games ever created. Fun fun fun – you don’t need to be a master gamer to enjoy it.

    2) SEO Pirate – what about guys that resemble birds, like a hawk or something strange like that? Not talking furry action here, but just bird-like.

    3) Did I mention how good We β™₯ Katamari is?

    4) Matt – come to Boston where the real Search action is. No more of this West Coast Plex-o-matic bs….Beantown has this Search Industry on lock down (I think…..).

    Hahaha….

  25. Well I certainly agree with you on the book choice. I gave that book to my sister and mom after I read it, but the best comedy of the year goes to wedding crashers.

  26. Aaron Wall is now my hero for the RBI Baseball mention.

    However, Matt, I HATED 40YOV. To me there were about three funny parts in the whole movie… “You know how I know you’re gay?” But they really missed out on exploiting the funny stuff. I thought Wedding Crashers was infinitely better.

  27. It occurred to me that you may like to know that one of the top matches for The Curious Incident.. over at StoryCode is Catcher in the Rye. That’s a bit out of left field, wouldn’t you say.

    Oh and incidentally, one of the top matches on BlogCode for your blog is some Microsoft guy Robert Scoble, Scobleizer.

    Steve

  28. that book’s website is the worst website use of flash ever…

    but you did convince me to buy the book (used from amazon of course)… but still.

    When i’m done reading “tuesdays with morrie” i’ll give it a shot.

  29. Yah, Steve Johnston, it’s a little weird that Scoble and I have intertwingled blogs. But it was nice of him to offer to let me visit the Bay Area MSFT campus.

  30. Cristian Mezei, please see
    http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ignoring-me/
    for how retrieve only Google-related posts. Essentially, just subscribe to the feed

    http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/googleseo/feed/

    Hope that helps,
    Matt

  31. Hmm. Darn typosquatters, Darn URL autocomplete. Darn everything.

    Typed “mattcut” and was taken to: http://www.mattcut.com/blog/

    — Were you looking for the blog by Matt Cutts, Google Search Engine Engineer? Sorry for the same default layout; your typo, my gain…

  32. I think that Curious Incident is one of the best books I have read in YEARS. Talk about something that really gets straight to your emotions and makes you see right into the feelings of others. Incredibly powerful.

  33. Never mind using a Marble Memo composition book as a PDA–I use mine as a laptop, saving even more weight! (Where do you think the term “notebook” came from?) For research trips that require even more data storage, I use very cool-looking orange or blue 001 Notes composition books in various sizes that I buy at BHV in Paris. They’re filled with graph paper instead of lined paper, which is nice for those of us who want to look technical or who want the flexibility of switching between landscape and portrait view.

  34. That’s great Matt. Thank for the info.

  35. Love it, spike!

    Quote:
    “Our Father”, who is listed in Google over 2 million times, take a look at our site. See that it is good. And remind Google that they should list it in their index. It is a good index, and it should stay that way. My pages are important. My children depend on visitors to my ’62-Ford website. Dear Google, please send me visitors and make me rank.

  36. my favorite games of the year were guitar hero (my birthday present from my husband) and we ♥ katamari as well. πŸ™‚ katamari is the ultimate in the type of game that you can really just forget about everything else in the world. just melt into the stupid retarded happy world of katamari… of course, happy until the king shoots laserbeams out of his eyeballs at you.

  37. Matt,

    I have a music related site (a lyric site, but for once without the crazy amounts of spam on the other lyric sites) so I am posting this in the music section (though this post is for some reason about a movie more than music).

    My question is regarding the other lyric sites that are out and how they have not been flagged for being spammers. My site http://www.lyricvault.com has been trying for over 6 months to out perform them and I managed to accomplish this for a whopping 7 days (last week Google index 10,000+ pages but they have now unindexed all but 300 of them, another topic in another post on your blog) but I keep failing eventhough I have told the spam page about the sites using adware, spyware, and zillions of popups that even get passed the Google popup blogger. Which sites? Do a search for ‘music lyrics’ and click on the first 20 results. You will be so frustrated by the end you will wonder how an entire industry can be so dreadful.

    How is it that these sites continue to break the Google rules so blatantly and still manage to get the rankings that I am trying to acquire by following the rules (again, got this for one week but gone again and don’t know why)?

    Any assistance you can provide, would be greatly appreciated.

    Sincerely,

    Brent D. Payne

  38. the best game i’ve played (and completed) has been Killzone on the PS2. graphics are brilliant, but the gameplay is better.

  39. The 40 Year Old Virgin surprised me aswell, thought it would be more clichΓ©, I liked Steve Carell in Bruce Almighty.
    Apparently, there will be an ‘Evan Almighty’ movie coming out in 2007

  40. Mark Haddon shows great insight into the autistic mind, and he brings his young narrator protagonist quite wonderfully to life.I found it very funy.

  41. Easy to read,very funny book should everyone take this book to their archive.

  42. i am surprised you actually have the time to watch TV and play computer games πŸ™‚

  43. Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night was a great read. Not sure what the situation is over in the states, but they published two versions in the UK, what I assume is the original with all the swearing and language plus also a version for schools which toned down the stronger words.

    Not played Guitar Hero, but just finished Elder Scrolls – Oblivion which was fantastic – think it would have been better if there was more of an online element to it though. Now getting stuck into Battlefield 2 which in my opinion is the first decent online multiplayer to come out on the 360.

  44. Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night is a great book. The author was also on TV program in the UK, that was ages ago though.

  45. 40 years old vergin with his own choice or because he never found somebody willing to go to bed with him ??

  46. I apologise for the spelling mistake of virgin, pl correct it.

  47. I loved the AbLounge being used as a recliner. πŸ™‚

    I’m trashy like that too.

  48. Big Brother!!!!!!! i Love it.

  49. Very nice. Love it too much.

  50. The author was also on TV program in the UK, that was ages ago though.

  51. I literally cried in the theater when he had his hair ripped off his body. That was soooo funny!

  52. Nah gotta think the Ringer is the best film around, Johnny Knoxville rigging the special olympics, quality

  53. Hey Cristian,

    Besides SEO and google some entertainment will not hurt anyone.

    My 2 cents……

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