Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day - 2023

Another year has come and gone, and we find ourselves arriving at June 4 of the year 2023. It is the 14th anniversary of Randy Johnson's 300th career win; the holiday I've been celebrating ever year on this date. Well, I personally spent the day hanging out at a My Little Pony convention in Chicago. It was great fun, but now I'm writing this in the O'Hare airport watching as my red eye flight out of Chicago get delayed already over ten hours out. Hooray! 

Meanwhile I still have the losing pitchers of Randy Johnson memorized, as I keep refreshing my memory by reciting the wins every time I harvest fruits in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. (I have 620 fruits to harvest, which is enough to go through each of Randy's wins twice through. I recite the final score the first time around then the date the second time around, while naming the losing pitcher every time.) My journey to get the autographs of the losing pitchers on their cards have definitely slowed, as private signings rarely include these losing pitchers and my autograph by mail attempts have hit dead ends. I did manage to get the autograph of Ricky Bones (win number 117 on July 18, 1997) in person at a Nationals vs. Mets game. I have also passed the halfway mark as I now have 164 signatures, although the last half is going to be so much harder. 

Ke Huy Quan's The Big Eunuch and The Little Carpenter: A Review

So the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once opened this past year to great critical and box office success, receiving rave reviews for its story, its visual design, and more importantly the acting performances. Of note Ke Huy Quan received plenty of praise for his multi-layered role as Waymond Wang, the beleaguered husband of Michelle Yeoh's Evelyn. It was a long road back for Quan, who was once upon a time a child star noted in films like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and The Goonies (1985). He disappeared from film for well over 20 years in the mid-90s, transitioning more towards work behind the camera, serving as stunt coordinator and later assistant director. He gave several interviews about his circuitous back to acting, many of which referred to a 1993 Taiwan costume drama with the amusing title of The Big Eunuch and the Little Carpenter.

Now, my parents are from Taiwan, and throughout most of my childhood in the 1990s we received satellite television, and one of the staples of our television viewing are the TV dramas, self-contained series that can extend anywhere from 20 episodes all the way to over 60. I'd certainly remember a show with the title The Big Eunuch and the Little Carpenter, but I had no memory of it, and as it turns out neither did my parents. Perhaps it never did air in the United States. I decided to do a search on Google, and found some bare-bones information with its Chinese title 大太監與小木匠. More significantly, the series was uploaded in its entirety by the Taiwan TeleVision (TTV) official channel, along with several of their great television drama, such as my childhood favorite Heroic Youth. (英雄少年)

 I pulled up the first episode, and it became evident pretty quickly why the series never made it to the United States. The show opens to a bunch of naked boys crowding a square. Yes, I suppose the boys were all eunuchs and since all eunuchs are by definition castrated they would have no external genitalia. Yet it's still a bunch of naked boys crowding a square. And because this is the first shot of the opening credits, every single episode opens with a shot of a bunch of naked boys crowding a square. And people thought the title was provocative. Yet this aired every weeknight at 8pm on TTV for 40 days from November 1993 to January 1994.

Nevertheless, I decided to watch the rest of the first episode. It's a fairly standard fare where it introduces the characters and the setting, but nothing really stood out for me. I watched about two more episodes and didn't really care for it so I shelved the show for a time. However, as Quan began capturing one critics awards after another, his chances of Oscar glory rose. (And in fact he did wind up with not only an Oscar nomination but also the Oscar victory). And since I can't think of any other Oscar nominated actor who had starred in a Taiwan television drama, I decided to give the rest of the show a chance. And now that I've finished all 40 episodes, I've decided to write perhaps the first English review of The Big Eunuch and the Little Carpenter. 

AMPS 2022 - Winners

 

Well, we've finally come to the end of a long road. The fictional Awards of Motion Picture Services (AMPS) had happened on the night of January 15 in my fictional country of L World. It ends a journey that had started with my Best Picture Nominee vote that was posted three weeks ago and continued through to the Best Picture nominee announcement a little more than a week after that. In reality I had been coming up with these fake movies since January of 2022, not to mention one that had been planned for a couple of years now. While this is only the first of the three fake film awards for L World, AMPS has been the set of awards that had been made the most public, with me announcing the winners dating all the way back to 2000 (including 2020 and 2021 that was included in the aforementioned Best Picture Nominee vote.) I'm not sure if anybody really cares that much, but I might as well present the AMPS winners for this past year 2022. I'll only be listing the films for the technical awards while the acting and directing winners would be named.

AMPS 2022 - Best Picture Nominees

Well, it's past the New Year's, which means it's now officially 2023. It also means that 2022 is over, and we can fully look back at everything that had happened in the past year. Which in this case means we can look at the films that I made up that were deemed worthy of competing for the top prize in one of my fictional film awards, in this case the Awards for Motion Picture Services (or AMPS for short). 

Last week I had picked out three finalists for a vote, the winner of which would take the final slot among the Best Picture nominees. And I want to thank you all that had voted in the poll. This is my 13th year of running these polls, and this was by far the most number of responses that I had in any of them. Of course, part of that was the fact that for most of the vote there were two films that were in a direct tie, which led me to seek out additional voters to break the tie. In the end there was one film that came out on top by just one vote, and that film will join the four other pre-determined films as the Best Picture nominees for the AMPS ceremony honoring the films of 2022, which will be presented after the break.

But first...here are the previous nominees that I had presented. (I skipped 2009-2010, 2014, and 2018),
2008 2011 2012 2013 2015 2016 2017 2019 2020 2021

AMPS 2022 Best Picture Nominee Vote

It's Christmas. Merry Christmas and all, but it's also a time for me to take a look back at the past year and decide which of the fictional movies that I had come up with over the past year would be granted the honor of taking part of my fictional film awards. You see, I have been coming up with these fake films for the past 25 years and then handing out fake awards in one of three sets of awards. The earliest of these is the Awards for Motion Picture Services (AMPS), and since 2008 I have been letting the people around me play a part in deciding the list of films nominated for Best Picture for AMPS. Of the dozen or so movies that I had made up over the past year, I set aside four films that would be guaranteed nominations, and from the rest of the list I pick out three finalists that everybody else can vote on, and the winner gets the final spot in the AMPS Best Picture lineup that year. And this is where I will present the three films for this year and provide the SurveyMonkey link where you can vote on your winner. Now these are all fake movies, so I'll let you decide what factor would you focus on in casting your vote, but there will be a section where you can write your comments on these movies.

YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THESE MOVIES
THESE ARE MOVIES THAT I'VE MADE UP
NOBODY HAS SEEN THEM BEFORE BECAUSE THEY DON'T EXIST
EXCEPT IN MY OWN IMAGINATION
DON'T LET THAT STOP YOU FROM VOTING FOR ONE OF THEM

And in case my explanation is confusing, here are all of the previous finalist votes for your edification: 2008 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

RIP Gaylord Perry (1938-2022)

If you're a fan of the 300-Win Club, then you might remember that the exclusive pitching club suffered a major blow in the six months between August 2020 and January 2021 as it lost three of its illustrious members in Tom Seaver, Phil Niekro, and Don Sutton. It was a difficult time, but things seemed to have settled down, or so we thought. Then the news came out today that yet another member of the 300-Win Club had passed away early in the morning of December 1, 2022: Gaylord Jackson Perry, apparently from complications of a coronavirus infection. He was 84 years old.

Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day - 2022

It's June 4, 2022! Which means that it's the 13th anniversary of Randy Johnson's 300th Win, the signature baseball moment of my lifetime. Which also means that it's time for my favorite holiday of the year, the one that I made and I'm pretty sure I'm the only person to celebrate.

Happy Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day!

It hasn't exactly been the best day for me. I woke up after only three hours of sleep from a throbbing pain in my ear. I knew I had developed an ear infection, but in order to get any antibiotics I had to go to a 24-hour emergency room. Then I found out that my Nintendo Switch no longer reads any of my cartridges, so I am probably going to have to send it in to Nintendo for them to repair. It hasn't been all bad. I did get to go to my first baseball game in person on June 4 since the historic double-header in 2009. And it was a Rangers 3-2 victory that took 2 hours 30 minutes, which happened to be the running time for Randy Johnson's 300th win 13 years ago today!

Happy Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day!

I've written way too much about the milestone game itself over the years that I don't think I'm going to do so again. (But you darn well know I'm going to watch it again). But I do feel it could be a good time to update about a variety of subjects, including the progress of hopefuls for the next 300-game-winner.

Visiting Every MLB Stadium

So I Sunday, April 10, 2022, I watched the Texas Rangers play the Toronto Blue Jays in the Rogers Centre. That in itself isn't a very special event. There have been literally millions of people that havev seen a baseball game in the ballpark that opened as the SkyDome back in 1989. Heck, the Blue Jays led the American League in attendance every year from 1989 through 1994 with numbers that regularly broke 3 million. 

However, it was a very important milestone in my own personal life. After all, the Rogers Centre is the 34th stadium where I've seen a Major League Game. However, four of those ballparks are no longer in use, which means that it took until now when I completed the journey that I'm sure many baseball fans desire: I have seen a game in every active Major League Baseball stadium. 

I'm not sure exactly how many people have completed this journey. I used to think it was a lot, but then I realized that teams are constantly changing their ballparks, most recently my hometown Texas Rangers. They opened up their brand new Globe Life Field in 2020, but thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic there were no fans in the stands until 2021. Sure, they led the league with 2,110,258 fans in 2021, but surely not every one of those 2,110,258 were missing only that one ballpark to complete their set. 

Anyways, I should be proud of my own accomplishment, even though the only reason that I was able to make this trek was because my parents' middle-class upbringing allowed me to go into school and enter a reasonably well-paying profession, which gave me the means with which to travel to all these cities. And now to rub it in I am going to be sharing my story about my visits to each of these stadiums.

Watching Every NHL Team

 

So earlier in the day (I guess it would be yesterday by now), I watched the Dallas Stars beat the Los Angeles Kings in a stunning come-from-behind win by a score of 4-3. It was significant for the Stars in their playoff push as it helped them get into a Wild Card spot. However, more significantly on a personal level, it was the first time that I watched the Kings in person. Which means that in my almost-six years of watching hockey games on the NHL level, I have finally seen all of the teams in person at least once. It took me only 67 games to reach this milestone, 35 games less than it took me to watch all of the MLB teams in person!

Back in 2018 I had written about every MLB team I had seen in order. I will now do the same for the NHL teams.

AMPS 2021: Best Picture Nominees

So back on Christmas I had posted the annual vote for the final Best Picture nominee in the first of my three fake movies awards: the Awards for Motion Picture Services (AMPS). Thanks to all seven of you that decided to humor me in placing your vote, but one film has surfaced as the winner and has been elevated to the fifth and final Best Picture nominee. The full list shall be presented now after the break.

Last year I had done something unprecedented and had y'all vote on the winner. That was a fun little experiment, but there won't be a repeat this year. Feel free to post what you feel should be the winner in the comments below.

Meanwhile, here are the previous years where I posted nominees.
2008, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020

AMPS 2021 Best Picture Nominee Vote

Merry Christmas everyone, and for us it means it's time to focus on...Fake Film Awards! That's right, it's the time of year when I come and look over the movies I've come up with over the year and select a few of them to compete for awards glory in one of my three set of fake awards. For the past several years I've allowed people to vote for the fifth and final Best Picture nominee in the first of these awards, the Awards for Motion Picture Services (or AMPS for short.) I've already come up with four films, and then here are three more films that everyone here can vote on to take the final spot. I'll introduce the candidate films with a short summary, and then comes the poll where you can pick one of the three films, and leave comments about the films. 

And in case you are curious, here are polls for previous years: 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2008

And here comes our annual disclaimer.

YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THESE MVIES
THESE MOVIES ARE MOVIES I'VE MADE UP
NOBODY HAS SEEN THEM BECAUSE THEY DON'T EXIST
EXCEPT IN MY OWN IMAGIANTION
DON'T LET THAT STOP YOU FROM VOTING FOR ONE OF THEM

Anyways, now that I got that out of the way, the movies will be after the break.

2011 World Series Game 6 - 10th Anniversary Retrospective

So yesterday was October 27, 2021. It's the 36th anniversary of the day the Kansas City Royals clinched the 1985 World Series with a win in Game 7, and the 17th anniversary of the day the Boston Red Sox clinched the 2004 World Series to end 86 year of heartache.

It's also the 10th anniversary of the infamous Game 6 of the 2011 World Series. The Texas Rangers were one win away from capturing the 2011 World Series. Of course they blew it in historic fashion to enhance their legacy of failure.

And of course, because I was so masochistic I decided to watch the entire game for the first time ever, since ten years earlier I only tuned in for the seventh inning onward. And I decided to Tweet the entire debacle. Here's a collection of my tweets.

Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day, 2021

It's that time of the year again, it's Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day, or the anniversary of the day that Randy Johnson became the 24th member of the 300 Win Club, all the way back on June 4, 2009. Yes, I have gone ahead and made it a holiday. I'm probably the only person in the world that celebrates it. 

In the past several years I've generally written something on Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day. This year will be no different. However, whereas in the past I've written about the game itself, I'm going to stay away from that. After all, how many times can you write about the same game, especially after I dedicated almost 500,000 words to the 10th Anniversary of the game. Instead, this year I am going to focus more about the prospects that any future pitcher has with reaching 300 wins.

And frankly, this year things don't look too good.

The Art of the Walk-Off

It has been said that the triple and the inside-the-park home run are the most exciting plays in baseball. However, I disagree with that assertion. I feel that the most exciting play in baseball is the Walk-off. A walk-off refers to a play that leads to a run scoring to end the game. Normally baseball is measured in outs, and a game ends when the losing team runs out of outs. However, in some games the team scores a run to take the lead in the final half-inning, after which the game ends. The run can score due to everything from a hit to a home run to an error to even a strikeout, but at any rate one team comes away with the joys of victory while the other team has the agony of defeat. Any time a walk-off becomes a possibility the buzz in the ball-park become palpable, and when one actually happens the excitement goes through the roof.

The walk-off is about as old as professional baseball itself, but the term "walk-off" was first credited to Hall of Fame reliever Dennis Eckersley, who in 1988 referred to a game-ending home run as a "walk-off piece," as the pitcher that allowed it has to walk off the field in shame. Incidentally Eckersley would give up one of the most famous walk-off pieces in baseball history later that year. Walk-offs aren't all that uncommon. 193 of the 2,429 regular season games in 2019 (the last full season) ended in a walk-off, plus three more in 37 post-season games. It comes down to 7.9% of all Major League games ending in a walk-off. Nevertheless, many of baseball's most famous moments are walk-offs: Gabby Hartnett's Homer in the Gloamin' in 1938, Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard Around the World" from 1951, Bill Mazeroski's Yankee-killing home run in 1960, Carlton Fisk's "Wave It Fair" home run in 1975, Ozzie Smith's "Go Crazy" home run in 1985, Bill Buckner's "Behind the Bag" error in 1986, Gibson's "I Don't Believe What I Just Saw" home run in 1988, Kirby Puckett's "We'll See You Tomorrow Night" home run in 1991, Joe Carter's "Touch 'Em All" home run in 1993, Robin Ventura's Grand Single in 1999 Luis Gonzalez's Yankee-slaying single in 2001, David Ortiz's "We'll See You Later Tonight" home run in 2004, and unfortunately David Freese's hit in 2011.

I have seen 12 home runs in the 149 Major League baseball games I attended, equaling about 8.0% of the games I've seen. Back when Facebook had the Facebook notes, I had written about the walk-off games I've seen, making a post once every two years. Well, obviously Facebook has deleted the posts, so I figured I might as well re-write it for this blog. In my original post in 2015 I had ordered the games by win probability added (WPA), but this time I will just do everything in chronological order and list the WPA among other facts.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/1012622782535273/
https://www.facebook.com/notes/350088632769894/
https://www.facebook.com/notes/346225136604238/

20 Years of AMPS Winners: 2000-2019

I had wanted to post this yesterday, but then came the report of Don Sutton's passing, and that scuttled my plans for the rest of the night, as I had several Excel spreadsheets to update while writing my tribute post while watching Sutton's 300th win. But now I can come back to present a little bit more about a little about my fake movies.

As I mentioned when presenting the winners of the Awards for Motion Picture Services (AMPS), this was one of my fake awards for fake movies from my fake country. There are actually three sets of awards that I've come up with. The L Awards was the first set of awards I made up, way back in 1998 to celebrate the films of 1997. This was the most prestigious set of awards and is similar to the Academy Awards. However, a few years later I came up with two other awards to act as precursors for the L Awards, just as how there are other awards to predict the Oscars. One of these is the Movie Magazine Awards, which was designed to be the awards voted on and presented by the editors of the Movie Magazine, who also annually selects the ten best movies of the year as well as the ten best performances. They actually hold two sets of awards, one for comedy films and one for drama, so it's similar in that way to the Golden Globes. And then there's AMPS, which is nominally voted on by a select group of industry professionals but are similar to the Critics Choice Awards. 

Anyways, even though the L Awards are the most prestigious and Movie Magazine Awards has the most potential to be fun with its two separate sets of categories, the AMPS has been the set of awards that I've made the most public. I actually started out by allowing users of the Nintendo NSider forums to vote on the final Best Picture nominees for the L Awards in 2006 and 2007, but they made some dubious selections, so I switched to having votes for the final Best Picture nominee in 2008. I took a break in 2009 and 2010 as I was just trying to survive the first two years of medical school, but I went back to holding the votes in 2011, and they have been held annually since then, and this year I went with having a public vote for Best Picture. I thought it went fairly well, so maybe I will continue doing this going forward.

With all that said, I've decided to present the AMPS awards that had been going on since 2000. I've actually retroactively come up with winners dating back to 1989, but I'm going to keep this to 2000 onwards, largely because the "All persons fictitious clause" don't necessarily apply for the years before 2000. Anyways, I will present the winners in all 15 categories after the break, plus the Best Picture winners for Movie Magazine and L Awards, and some commentary just to show how much time I've wasted in coming up with these fake awards. And I'll post the five films nominated for AMPS Best Picture nominees for the heck of it. Names would be given only for acting and directing awards. We start with 2000 after the break.

RIP Don Sutton (1945-2021)

With just 24 members, the 300-Win Club is the smallest of the three major milestone clubs in Major League Baseball history. The members come from a diverse background, but are linked by their individual accomplishments of winning 300 games. There has been at least one living member of the club since Pud Galvin first reached the milestone back on September 4, 1888, but between June 4, 2009 when Randy Johnson joined the club and August 30, 2020 we have been living in an unprecedented period with ten living members of the club. This historic period ended with the tragic death of Tom Seaver on August 31, 2020. After Seaver's death he was quickly joined by Phil Niekro, the man who followed Tom Terrific in the 300-Win Club, who passed away on December 26, 2020. It hasn't been a month since Niekro's death that the news hit today that the fellow that followed Knucksie into the 300-Win Club, Donald Howard Sutton, had passed away in his sleep on January 18, 2021. In the space of less than five months months we had went from ten living members to just seven, still a decent number but which had fallen below the eight living members from Grover Cleveland Alexander's entry on September 24, 1924 to the death of Christy Mathewson's passing on October 7, 1925.

Sutton's career is defined by his consistency. He reached double digits in victory a record 21 times, including 17 straight from his rookie season in 1966 to 1982. That allowed him to achieve 300 wins despite reaching 20 wins just once, in 1976. He was less than flashy on the mound, and was overshadowed by teammates in all five of his Major League stops, but still managed to court some controversy with his tendency to doctor the balls to increase the efficacy of his breaking pitches. He helped four of his five teams to the post-season, and went to four World Series in 1974, 1977, 1978, and 1982. Yet he never had a chance to celebrate a World Series victory. He was released by the Los Angeles Dodgers on August 10, 1988, a little more than two months before they would upset the Oakland Athletics in the World Series. By then he had announced his retirement and would settle in his second career as famed broadcaster. He did most of his broadcasting work for the Atlanta Braves, where he got to see the prime of fellow 300-game winners Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine. He was hired by the Washington Nationals for the 2007 and 2008 seasons, but he returned to Atlanta in 2009, thus costing him the chance to call Randy Johnson's 300th win on June 4, 2009. He battled renal cell carcinoma for most of the 2000s. It went into remission for much of the past two decades, allowing him to continue working. However, he suffered a broken femur from walking in March 2019 (possibly from a bone metastsis?) and he struggled to regain his mobility. With the 2020 season coming and going with him outside of the booth, his health failed rapidly, and he died on January 18. It was the end of a long and fruitful life.

Anyways, the wins of Don Sutton after the break

AMPS 2020 - Winners

Well, it's been over two weeks since I posted the five Best Picture nominees for the Awards for Motion Picture Services (AMPS), one of the fake awards I created for my fake movies I came up with from the fake country that I made up when I was around seven or eight years old. (The fake country is called L World, because seven-or-eight-year-old me was so creative.) I am pleased to report that there were enough votes for a clear winner to come out, so the fake ceremony was held this past weekend. Of course, Best Picture is just one of the 15 awards being given out in multiple different categories pertaining to all different aspects of moviemaking. So here we go: the winners for AMPS from the year 2020.

Before we get started, a big thanks to my good friend Nathaniel "Diamondwhits" Whitman who used his graphic design skills to create the AMPS logo, obviously based off a film reel. Oh, I miss my projectionist days.

Also once again, these movies and these names are fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. (That hasn't always been the case...) 

AMPS 2020 Best Picture Nominees

Well, it's about the end of the year, and that means it's about time to announce the results of the AMPS Best Picture nominee votes. Thank you to all that had voted in the preliminary vote. I had more votes than ever before. It was a pretty close match, but in the end only one film came out on top, and the winner joins the four other films that I had pre-selected for spots. Each of them will be introduced after the break.

Normally whenever I present the nominees it's just for your edification, and I had a winner already pre-selected Big Brother-style. HOWEVER, this year will be different. I haven't spent all that much time thinking about these movies, and I don't have one that I am particularly attached to. So that means I will open the vote up to all of you! That's right, you can help select the potential Best Picture winner in the Awards for Motion Picture Services (AMPS) of 2020! The process will be the exact same as before. I will present the five nominated films, and at the end there will be a poll that will allow you to pick a winner. Since these films are fake and all you have are my (poorly-written) summaries, there really is no criteria for how you should vote. 

And just in case you're wondering, here are the nominees from previous years
2008, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019

Yes, back in 2014 and 2018 I didn't care enough about the films so never bothered to present all the nominees. This year could have been the same, except I am giving y'all this wonderful opportunity to play an even bigger role in my fake film awards.

And once again the disclaimer

OF COURSE YOU HAVE NOT SEEN ANY OF THESE MOVIES
THESE MOVIES ARE MOVIES I MADE UP
NOBODY HAS SEEN THEM BECAUSE THEY DON'T EXIST
EXCEPT IN MY OWN IMAGINATION
DON'T LET THAT STOP YOU FROM VOTING FOR ONE OF THEM

RIP Phil Niekro (1939-2020)

Well, we thought we can get through 2020 with no other major issues, but alas the accursed year proved that it was not done with its accursed reach. It has claimed yet another baseball legend, to join with the six other Hall of Famers that have passed away. Moreover, it was yet another member of the 300-win club. That's right, knuckleball specialist Philip Henry Niekro has passed away at the age of 81 of complications from prostate cancer. His long career with the Atlanta Braves will never be forgotten. 

Furthermore, with the passing of Tom Seaver back in August this marks the first time ever that two members of the 300-win club had passed in the same calendar year. In fact the three month and 26 days between their passing is now the shortest in between deaths of 300-win pitchers, just beating out the four month and 17 days that came between the deaths of Christy Mathewson (in 1925) and Eddie Plank (in 1926). This leaves just eight living members remaining of the illustrious 300 win club: 2/3 have passed away.

The Wins of Phil Niekro below the break.

AMPS 2020 Best Picture Nominee Vote

Well, we're finally near the end of 2020. That's probably a cause for celebration for most of you, but it just means it's time for me to focus on my fake film awards. That's right, for those of you that don't know, I've been coming up with fake films and awarding them with fake awards since 1998, because I've got nothing better to do. For the past decade or so I've been having my friends participate through polls done on Facebook notes. Alas, Facebook has shut down their notes, which means I have to migrate to my blog. However, this might not be a bad thing after all. With Facebook notes I was limited to just my Facebook friends, and they have to vote by leaving comments. However, with the vote being held on my blog, it is available to anybody that has to my blog, which could be the entire internet! And I could create a poll in something like SurveyMonkey and embed the poll on this page, so you can just read the choices, click on your pick and go on with your day*. I can get something that far dwarf the 1-5 votes that I normally get on these things. This is getting exciting.

*While comments are not necessary, I would certainly welcome any comments about the films or about how bloody crazy I am.

Nevertheless, as I had mentioned this is a poll to select the fifth nominee for Best Picture in one of my three film awards: the Awards for Motion Picture Services (AMPS). (Yes, I have more than one of these awards). I have already selected four pictures out of the many that I've come up with throughout the year that would get Best Picture nominations. Then I have selected three more that would be up for this vote, and the winner will go down as the fifth Best Picture nomination. I will be presenting the three candidate films below the break. I am not going to tell you what criteria to direct your vote there really is no criteria. Just vote for what you think should be the final nominee.

If this all seem confusing to you, here are the votes from previous years: 2008 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

Before I get to the candidate films here is one final announcement

OF COURSE YOU HAVE NOT SEEN ANY OF THESE MOVIES
THESE MOVIES ARE MOVIES I MADE UP
NOBODY HAS SEEN THEM BECAUSE THEY DON'T EXIST
EXCEPT IN MY OWN IMAGINATION
DON'T LET THAT STOP YOU FROM VOTING FOR ONE OF THEM

Anyways, now that I got that out of the way, the movies will be after the break