Reviewing the Year in Review
For almost as long as I've been on LiveJournal, I've doing summary "year in review" posts around my pop culture consumption, specifically movies, concerts and books. My 2003 movie summary was a scant month after I joined LiveJournal, and my 2003 concert summary was just a month later.
Since I didn't start tracking my books until 2007, my book summaries include every book since I began tracking. However, both my movie and concert lists predate my time on Livejournal, so I actually have lists that aren't summarized on my journal. In this post, I'll summarize the lists I have that never made it to LiveJournal in the hopes that I can retroactively attempt to do those summaries in the future.
Movies
My personal movie lists start on Memorial Day 1998. This means I have lists from 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002 that I could summarize. To give a sense of the scale:
- 1998 - 28 films
- 1999 - 34 films
- 2000 - 49 films
- 2001 - 25 films
- 2002 - 42 films
Further complicating matters, I didn't consistently track the date and theater until 2004, which I started in large part because of my summaries. For movies that *mostly* won't matter, and I could fill in some gaps with my ticket stub collection, the old online schedules of CWRUFilm, old calendars (yes, I keep them) and such. So on the face of it five years doesn't seem like too much, but given my mania for detail, I suspect I could disappear into each year for a while.
It's worth noting that earlier abortive effort to track all those early films from the first list fell apart back in 2010, but that attempted to be a film by film summary, not a yearly summary.
And as long as we're dreaming, while I can't possibly remember every movie I ever saw in the theater prior to Memorial Day 1998, I could probably recreate quite a bit of that list. Since I didn't see many movies back before college, the ones I did stand out in my memory more, and are largely very mainstream so a perusal of box office records for a given year would probably tag a lot of obvious ones. In college, CWRUFilm was the provider for a huge percentage of the films I saw so the old schedules might serve the same purpose.
Concerts
I didn't originally start tracking concerts back in 1998, but at some point a few years later I went back and attempted to recreate the lists from 1998 onward. They may be incomplete, but I'm not likely to get more accurate ones at this late date.
1998 - 4 gigs / 5 bands
1999 - 10 gigs / 11+ bands
2000 - 21 gigs / 29+ bands
2001 - 20 gigs / 36+ bands
2002 - 23 gigs / 33 bands
2005 - 51 gigs / 95 bands. I somehow never did a summary for 2005. Probably because I was exhausted, as I'm pretty sure 51 is my record.
As with movies, I don't have accurate dates or venues for all of these lists. It took a few years to get to my current standards of note taking. For example, the +s are because I have some entries that say things like "Studio-A-Rama, many bands". So much for the historical record!
If I were feeling ambitious, recreating my pre-1998 list would actually be pretty easy, as I didn't go to too many shows before college and have ticket stubs for nearly all of them. I'm sure I'd miss something along the way, but it wouldn't be many.
Summary
The takeaway is that I have material for at least 11 year in review posts, plus at least 2 and likely more if I attempt to recreate some of the pre-1998 highlights. Given the extra complexity of revisiting the past, each would probably take bit longer than usual, so I don't anticipate making this a regular series so much as something I fill in when I have time.
And no, I'm not trying to recreate book lists prior to 2007. Nobody can count that high!
Since I didn't start tracking my books until 2007, my book summaries include every book since I began tracking. However, both my movie and concert lists predate my time on Livejournal, so I actually have lists that aren't summarized on my journal. In this post, I'll summarize the lists I have that never made it to LiveJournal in the hopes that I can retroactively attempt to do those summaries in the future.
Movies
My personal movie lists start on Memorial Day 1998. This means I have lists from 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002 that I could summarize. To give a sense of the scale:
- 1998 - 28 films
- 1999 - 34 films
- 2000 - 49 films
- 2001 - 25 films
- 2002 - 42 films
Further complicating matters, I didn't consistently track the date and theater until 2004, which I started in large part because of my summaries. For movies that *mostly* won't matter, and I could fill in some gaps with my ticket stub collection, the old online schedules of CWRUFilm, old calendars (yes, I keep them) and such. So on the face of it five years doesn't seem like too much, but given my mania for detail, I suspect I could disappear into each year for a while.
It's worth noting that earlier abortive effort to track all those early films from the first list fell apart back in 2010, but that attempted to be a film by film summary, not a yearly summary.
And as long as we're dreaming, while I can't possibly remember every movie I ever saw in the theater prior to Memorial Day 1998, I could probably recreate quite a bit of that list. Since I didn't see many movies back before college, the ones I did stand out in my memory more, and are largely very mainstream so a perusal of box office records for a given year would probably tag a lot of obvious ones. In college, CWRUFilm was the provider for a huge percentage of the films I saw so the old schedules might serve the same purpose.
Concerts
I didn't originally start tracking concerts back in 1998, but at some point a few years later I went back and attempted to recreate the lists from 1998 onward. They may be incomplete, but I'm not likely to get more accurate ones at this late date.
1998 - 4 gigs / 5 bands
1999 - 10 gigs / 11+ bands
2000 - 21 gigs / 29+ bands
2001 - 20 gigs / 36+ bands
2002 - 23 gigs / 33 bands
2005 - 51 gigs / 95 bands. I somehow never did a summary for 2005. Probably because I was exhausted, as I'm pretty sure 51 is my record.
As with movies, I don't have accurate dates or venues for all of these lists. It took a few years to get to my current standards of note taking. For example, the +s are because I have some entries that say things like "Studio-A-Rama, many bands". So much for the historical record!
If I were feeling ambitious, recreating my pre-1998 list would actually be pretty easy, as I didn't go to too many shows before college and have ticket stubs for nearly all of them. I'm sure I'd miss something along the way, but it wouldn't be many.
Summary
The takeaway is that I have material for at least 11 year in review posts, plus at least 2 and likely more if I attempt to recreate some of the pre-1998 highlights. Given the extra complexity of revisiting the past, each would probably take bit longer than usual, so I don't anticipate making this a regular series so much as something I fill in when I have time.
And no, I'm not trying to recreate book lists prior to 2007. Nobody can count that high!