YouTube Obsession

I love games that are complicated, difficult and require hours of playtime to become competent. I also prefer watching better people play these games. The current game that holding this obsession for me is Broken Arrow. It is a modern-day technology RTS that features cool terrain mechanics and just looks cool. Of course I want to buy it even though I know I have nowhere near the APM to have any fun.

Enter VulcanGaming.

He’s good at the game, explains his thought process well and, most importantly, does not yell and scream. I’m looking forward to his gameplay when the game releases later this week.

Watching

As a kid in rural southern Indiana, raised devotedly Catholic, there could not have been a more subversive movie to come out in 1999 than Kevin Smith’s Dogma. Funny to think about now, but it was protested heavily upon it’s initial release by the Catholic League. It was also the first movie I had ever seen of Smith’s and his brand of pop-cultural references was a very unique style at the time.

Unfortunately, it was produced by Harvey Weinstein, who during his criminal trails hoarded the rights for the movie to fund his defense lawyers. So the movie has not had a DVD release in over a decade despite Smith attempting to buy the rights multiple times. Well someone did buy the rights finally and rereleased the movie in theaters.

My partner (who had never seen the movie before) and I went and saw one of the viewings last week and for my money it’s still the best Kevin Smith movie.

I can objectively say that it is not a good movie, it’s editing is weird, there’s flat blocking and watching Chris Rock try to act is painful. Yet, through all it’s flaws, it is a compelling movie.

The plot is a good plot and would be fun in a serious Omen style drama. The cast is absolutely stacked and they ALL deliver, even Rock’s performance can’t overshadow it’s contribution to the whole. It’s funny!

Reading

The non-fiction kick continues with Jeffery Toobin’s breakdown of the Clinton/Lewinski/Jones/Tripp scandal A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President.

It’s very ironic reading about the republican party of the 90s that was so fixated on the character of the president considering how they just have accepted Trump. The GOP is evil but at least they are principled in one way: They will do or say anything to win.

Playing

Cyber Knights: Flashpoint is so close to being everything I want in a game. It has the tactical on-foot battles, the over-world base and team management, hacking mini-games and every mission starts as a stealth mission. Though I’m going to have to play a lot longer before I come to full conclusion because it has many deep mechanics that are not tutoralized well. Or wait until a tactics YouTube channel does an in-depth beginners guide.

The game has only been out a couple weeks and the developer has released multiple patches, balancing and improving the game extensively. Turns out that’s what this developer is known for: Release a game and patch it forever No Mans Sky style.

If money or time was not an issue, the one one thing I would add to make this a perfect game is another layer of battles at the mech level. Still have the on foot stealth missions but also add in mech battle missions. I can dream.

Listening

In a writer’s group I was participating in this spring, Andrew asked if there consistent themes in my works and there was: Rich people suck. More specifically, class consciousness is something always at the front of my mind, either when creating or consuming art.

This is a direct result of being raised on folk music.

At the heart of every great folk song is the distinction of haves and have-nots and you are most certainty a have-not.

More than that it is directly anti-capitalist:

Folk music is also distinctly and famously anti-fascist.

Modern folk music can be difficult to nail down, often rounded up with modern pop-country (gross) and the stomp-clap-hey music of the late 2010s. But it’s still being made, from the traditional…

…to the more experimental.

Now I just have an excuse to talk about one of my favorite songs of all time:

The reverence for man and nature is all at once in this song. The naïve industrial ideal, it’s one great product, the train and all she represents; freedom, power, the unknown is held to an almost mythological status.

Other Notables

** A woman once called me a “Summer” and I’ve always wanted a full breakdown of the seasons of color theory.

** Max Read likens the Musk/Trump “feud” to a Something Awful moderator crash-out.

** Jeff out here doing the real work