Metal Monday

The 9th of October 2023 already? Where has the time gone?

YouTube Obsession

It the days before Jersey Shore and 16 and Pregnant, MTV would air a show that has lingered in my brain since 1998.

My friend had an older brother who had recorded episodes of the Sifl and Olly Show on VHS and we would treasure them for years. Phrases from the show still linger in our common vernacular to this very day. Also, making me a life-long fan of Liam Lynch from My United States of Whatever, to his early adoption of video podcasts in 2005, to his work with the HBO Tenacious D show.

I recently have been revisiting the first two seasons on YouTube. The term “crescent fresh” is definitely making a comeback in my vocabulary.

Reading

No other book has been able to capture the feeling of living in pre-cell phone rural south like Ægypt by John Crowley. He has a way of describing the doldrums of summer in Kentuckiana by evoking doilyed windows of farm houses and cool sanctuaries of tree shade. I haven’t finished it yet but it is making me very nostalgic for the hills and hollers of my youth.

Also, this is not an easy book to read. This book is a reader’s book. It’s an occult book about a book on the occult. It’s language and pace can cause me nausea from information overload, so I have to take breaks.

This book was suggested by Read Max, a constant source for great reads, and I’m so glad I searched out a copy.

Watching

RoboCop: Rogue City is releasing soon and all the coverage has me in the mood to revisit Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 masterpiece RoboCop for what is probably the 100th time.

What a gloriously violent and prescient movie. This movie always makes me nostalgic for practical effects, squibs and explosions. Its tight 1 hour 40 minute run time means every frame is necessary and entertaining; Nothing is wasted.

How this franchise became aimed at children is bizarre and bewildering. Within the first 20minutes a man is shot to pulp and another is tortured and executed by lethal lead injection. What is even crazier is that my parents let me watch this movie at 8 years old: Drugs, sex, violence, corporate espionage and thinly veiled satire of capitalism apparently didn’t bother them.

(Fun sidebar: In elementary school I won a raffle and choose between a mountain bike, $50 Wal-Mart gift card and a XXL RoboCop 3 t-shirt. Let’s just say I wore that t-shirt well into the early aughts.)

Gaming

Battlefield 2042 released in fall 2021 in a wretched state. Bugs, horrible map design and a baffling decision to swap out classes (for which the BF franchise is known) for popular-in-2015-hero-shooter-knock-off “specialists” were only a few of the game’s major issues.

EA fumbled the bag so bad because, they literally could have removed loot boxes, re-released BF4 with a vaulting mod and they would have sold a billion copies.

Before release, I was in major hype mode because I really could not vibe with the past 2 installment of the series (set in WWI and WWII respectively). Luckily(?) I have been burned by pre-orders in the past, so I was able skip the horrible launch and pick up BF2042 for free in 2022 when it was offered as part of PlayStation Plus. Spoiler: It still sucked in 2022.

With it’s 6th season of content being dropped tomorrow I have been slowly dipping my toe back into the game and (after many patches) it is surprisingly well balanced and fun, giving me vibes of BF4. I still think they are dropping the ball by not adding local chat like genre contender BattleBit Remastered.

Other Items

It has always bothered me that 9/11 conspiracy folks put so much weight on the melting point of steel¹.

"Retarded metallurgical thing you are saying"

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¹Bush did 9/11.