I know, I know, Brad Marchand is an asshole =) But I really like him as a player and turned out he has other talents as well

The year starts off with some nice music! After a few (well, who am I lying to? After many) pretty average albums Annihilator released a very decent record, “Ballistic, Sadistic”. The songs have a good dynamic, Waters has always been great as a guitarist and won’t disappoint anyone again and his vocals is better than on “For the Demented”, although I still wish they found a singer.

The second album I want to mention is named shortly and humbly “Rebirth By Blasphemy” and belongs to the band Midnight. I learned about their existence accidentally, they were opening for The Black Dahlia Murder, but their simple riffs and questionable lyrics (a la Venom) turned out to be right down my alley. And their new album is pretty much the same as their old ones =)

P.S. Speaking of music — we’ve bought the tickets to the upcoming Rammstein show in Montreal. Going to be fun I guess =)

I’m not the most curious person in the world and when, sometimes, the question “Why does Budweiser Gardens look so odd?” popped up in my mind, I quickly silenced it with an obvious answer — “Well, it’s because it’s probably built long time ago”.

I’m talking about this — in my opinion, these windows and the architectural style in general are not typical for a modern hockey arena.

Accidentally, I found out that the arena is actually pretty new, the construction started just in 2001. Before there was a historical building, The Talbot Inn, which was demolished. Probably because the building was a designated heritage property, the new arena had to get this appearance.

The Talbot Inn

Random Sunday Photo

PlayStation Wrap Up 2019

If I take a look at the list of things I mentioned last year, the things I’d like to achieve — it will probably seem that year 2019 was a failure. I didn’t do anything from that list =)

But if we forget about those empty promises, it turned out to be an okay and maybe even eventful year. We changed the apartment, became permanent residents of Canada, visited a few more cities around, attended a bunch of concerts (Cannibal Corpse, Death Angel, Steel Panther, Kiss, Alestorm). I attended two pro sports events — a TiCats game in Hamilton and my first NHL game in Ottawa. At work we implemented a deferred renderer and it was used for the Tennocon demo. I started learning Japanese and even though it’s been going very slow I still have hopes =)

Books. The best one I read was probably “Prayers to Broken Stones” by Dan Simmons. He’s an amazing writer and always offers more than just a raw idea, in short stories it’s really noticeable.

Music. Last year three albums stood out for me year and I spent a lot of time listening to them: Children of Bodom — Hexed, Death Angel — Humanicide and Xentrix — Bury the Pain. If I had to pick one — that would be the album by the thrashers from Bay Area, after all we even were at their concert =) An honorable mention would go to Sodom — their EP was good and I look forward to checking out the long-play.

Games. Just looking at the number of hours I wasted on it my Game of the Year should be NHL 19. In 2019 I also finished a bunch of JRPGs — Blue Reflection, Tokyo Xanadu, Y’s VIII, but it’s quite hard to choose one of them, so let’s just say that it was a year of Japanese role-playing games =)

Anime. This time it’s surprisingly easy for me to name the best show of the year. It was an anime that was cute, funny, cozy, easy-going and it touched all the right strings. Thank you again, Takagi-san ^_^

What else we had… The best comedy show — Kaguya-sama: Love is War. I liked this anime enough to start buying the manga and if such a cheapskate as me does that, it means that the story has something in it =)

The best anime for those who work out — well, this is an easy one =)

The best anime putting a spotlight on shirokodama (sometimes literally) — Sarazanmai!

The best plot — it’s always a tough one. I’d pick Yakusoku No Neverland but must admit that I got disappointed when read the next couple issues of the manga.

The best anime where the main character speaks using poems — Senryuu Shoujo.

The award for the best 姉さん of the year easily goes to みゃー姉! In its turn, 面白い女 of the year is certainly Tanaka-san from Joshikousei no Mudazukai.

The last but not least, the best opening:

And the best ending: