YouTube Obsession

I’m a huge fan of Neal Brennan not only because of his work with the Chappelle Show but but from his long-dead podcast The Champs.

The set up is 3 white comedians Neal Brennan, Moshe Kasher and DJ Dougpound interview a black celebrity¹ . Because of Neal’s connections to black comedy they have some amazing interviews over the episodes and I highly recommend you check it out.

Anyway he has another really good podcast called Blocks. that I have been binging recently.

Lots of celebs talking about how they still don’t feel beautiful and it’s hilarious. It’s a great look at what happens to the human brain when it’s placed at the center of the universe.

Also, Neal Brennan was the first celebrity I saw in LA after I moved here that made me fan-girl out.

Watching

My roommate wanted to watch David Lynch’s Blue Velvet this weekend because he watched Lynch/Oz, a documentary that explores the connections in Lynch’s art to 1939 film; The Wizard of Oz. Undoubtedly, this reading of Blue Velvet is especially effective and entertaining. Yet, I’ve always held that it has more in common with an even older and more foundational story: Gilgamesh.

Needless to say I am going to be spoiling Blue Velvet, so if you have not seen it, I strongly recommend you do that now.

!!SPOILERS!!!SPOILERS!!!SPOILERS!!!SPOILERS!!

Ostensibly, Blue Velvet is about looking. What we see when we look closer at society, people, ourselves and the very dirt under our nails. In the epic of Gilgamesh, the title character is a wealthy prince, sheltered by a palace his entire life until he looks over the walls for the first time. It is here that Gilgamesh sees a dying man, a dead man and a sick man; Unfamiliar with the concepts of dying, death and sickness, he then spirals into self-destruction until meeting his equal.

The first shot of Blue Velvet is of a white picket fence, the universal symbol of the suburban American dream. The main character of Blue Velvet, Jeffery is a bored suburban young adult, sheltered from the darkness of human existence. When Jeff looks over the wall/fence he sees a dying man; his Father after suffering a heart attack at the start of the film, he sees a dead man; the ear and he sees a sick man; Frank Booth.

Frank also represents Enkidu from Gilgamesh. Enkidu is the proto-wild man, living like an animal, all of the base emotions of man. Enkidu eventually confronts Gilgamesh and they become equals. Jeff, when confronted with Frank, experiences full contact with his Id and struggles not to become the very thing Frank is: Passion unbound. Jeff’s ultimate lesson is that there is destructive passion within himself, he and Frank are two sides to the same coin.

I want to be clear that I am not discrediting the Wizard of Oz take of Blue Velvet, nor am I stating that my reading is the definitive take. I just want to praise David Lynch for creating such a rich film that can support these and I’m sure many other readings.

Playing

I’ve had my eye on Kriegsfront Tactics since they first dropped art for the project over 2 years ago.

I’ve just recently played through the demo; Kriegsfront Tactics: Prologue. While I think there is plenty of room for improvement before 1.0, I thoroughly enjoyed where this game is headed.

Its tropical Asian jungle warfare setting -think Vietnam War- is wholly unique and obviously a topic very close to the Indonesian based indie-developer Toge Productions. I’m expecting even more Vietnam War parallels in the full game.

I’m excited to see what the overworld level of gameplay will end up being in the full release because the mech fights outshine everything else at the moment. The tactical encounters are wearing their Front Mission inspiration on their sleeve and elevate the concept extensively by rendering projectiles in real time. This makes line-of-sight and positioning key to winning battles.

Toge also released the Diorama Editor which allows players to design maps and mechs in the Kriegsfront engine. I hope this leads to a robust user campaign or map sharing system in the future. But meanwhile, it’s been fun to mess around in.

Other Notables

** ‘The Brutalist’, Zionism, and Self-Autonomy

** What did history sound like?

** An actual MLB pitcher breaks down my favorite baseball movie…

1  They only skewed from this a few times when interviewing rapper Riff Raff (terrible guest), Korean comedian Bobby Lee and porn star Sasha Grey (Because she’s a “dirty white girl”)