Metal Monday

YouTube Obsession

First off, let’s all just agree that YouTube’s website redesign to be more like the mobile app is not just ugly but cantankerous to navigate.

As far as I can tell, there is no way to browse my subscribed channels, just a feed of the most recent uploads. I hope someone got fired for that blunder. While I’m airing YouTube design choices I have been waging a war in my mind as to why the “Watch Later” playlist is no longer pinned to the top of the playlist tab on the mobile app. Its pinned to the top on the website so why not on the app? It’s dumb and I hate it.

Watching

The previews for Dune Pt 2 included a preview for Furisoa: A Mad Max Saga starring the ever-present Anna Taylor-Joy and I was…meh actually.

However, it did get me excited to re-watch Mad Max: Fury Road from 2015. My partner is unfamiliar with the Mad Max series and radness of George Miller in general so we gave it a watch (Speaking of George Miller, did you catch him in the trailer for Death Stranding 2?).

Geeze what a rad movie. Everything in Fury Road implies a bigger world. While watching, it’s easy to imagine an entirely different and rad story happening 100 miles away. My partner is a fan of Lore^TM so they were fascinated by the world building that is always present but never explicit.

I’m so grateful I saw this movie in theaters, but the effects (I suspect because they used a lot of practical fx) hold up in a home viewing. Every shot feels epic, filled with an anxiety and seemingly seconds away from ripping itself apart. Since this was the tail end of the ALL MOVIES MUST BE 3D agenda that was being pushed on everyone at the time there are a couple of corny shots that are obviously meant for 3D. That being said Fury Road is still a 5 outta 5 banger and it is definitely in my top 4 on my new Letterboxd page¹ .

Reading

Sometimes I don’t take Stephen King’s talent very seriously. It comes from reading his books voraciously as a teen and being disappointed by his mid-aughts output (From a Buick Eight springs to mind). Luckily for me that forced me to really broaden my reading horizons and I am better read today.

That being said, when I read other authors trying to do what King does it becomes glaringly obvious just how good King is as a storyteller. King has a tremendous ability to portray the immense inner lives of his characters in single paragraphs. His descriptions are absent of judgement and don’t come across as hokey.

While I enjoyed David Koepp’s Cold Storage, his attempts at portraying his antagonists’ interiors just reads as corny and condescending.

Though I wasn’t interested in the characters, I was thoroughly pulled along by this book’s plot and premise. A piece of the MIR space station lands in the Australian desert and kicks off a fungal outbreak 30 years in the making. I’m a sucker for outbreak books and Cold Storage was fun enough. A quick read too, so if you have a flight coming up maybe give this a try.

Playing

For some reason I decided to get addicted to another open-world RPG just before Dragon’s Dogma 2’s March 21st release.

I’m replaying Sucker Punch’s (best) game, Ghost of Tsushima. I played it when it released in 2020 and I loved it so much that it is one of the few games I 100% completed. As a child raised on westerns, kung fu and samurai movies, Ghost delivers everything I would want in a samurai video game. If you ever wanted to be an honorable Ronin wandering the countryside saving hapless villagers from bandits and warlords, this is the game for you. There is a dedicated button to sheath your katana and a standoff mini game that recreates scenes straight out of Zatoichi.

The choice to stylize the world instead of focusing on hyper-realism is so genius as the visuals will hold up for a long time. (As opposed to the newest game from Team Ninja, Rise of the Ronin. Just look at that Assassin’s Creed-ass bland world design.) Also, I know games catch a lot of flack for having ‘Ubisoft’ open-world game design but when that design is applied correctly, its fun! Ok? Let me eat my fruit loops.

It’s finally coming to the PC so if you’ve been waiting to play, now’s the time.

Notable Others

**The phenomenon of Disney adults is not new or by accident. 

**Something cool that will never happen.

**A really cool thing about competitive off-road racing I had no idea existed:

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¹ SHAMELESS PLUG