YouTube Obsession

Allison Pregler is out here doing the lord’s work. Her videos cover a myriad of pop-culture analysis and voyeurism but her legacy (IMO) will be her herculean episode by episode break down of the peak 90s television series Baywatch and hilariously ridiculous spin-off Baywatch: Nights.

If you grew up in the 90’s there was no way you didn’t catch an episode on some bored and lazy afternoon. We were still experiencing its cultural shockwave well into the late 2010s.

Pregler does a good job of burning through the episodes giving them as much respect as they deserve and often more respect than the show had for itself. One of her best episodes is her break down between the original DVD and more recent HD rerelease. Of the entire series.

I highly recommend her Baywatching series, it truly is what the internet was made for.

Watching

Dude bro man-o-sphere but make it The Substance and you get Conner O’Malley’s acid trip short: Coreys.

MM

Any regulars of my Letterboxed know that I have very complicated relationship with Dario Argento movies. For one thing, my partner is a huge fan of Argento movies, huge huge fan, so I’ve seen a lot of his movies. Most of his movies have tremendous moments of surreal imagery and technicolor violence surrounded by the dullest and most incongruous shit. Tone is not really a concern for Argento. And I can certainly imagine a world where I saw an Argento movie at 16 years old and loved him.

Anyway, with all that said his best movie is the 1977 masterpiece Suspiria. Argento is firing on all cylinders with this surreal and mythological thriller. I speak a lot about “High Strangeness” as a concept in media and Susperia nails it to a T. It’s a fairy tale painting come alive with all the attendant cultural references to a long dead culture. I highly recommend.

So, this weekend my partner wanted me to watch the 2018 remake Susperia. After watching I would definitely qualify it as a reimagining. Right off the bat, they are completely different films, where film 1977 is mythological and heavily metaphorical the 2018 film is decisively explicit. It is entirely text. There is no mystery or question to be answered but is still, somehow, enthralling to watch. I will say that most of my enjoyment came from the acting¹ . Especially the performances from older women gave off an air of a lovingly evil matriarchy. I don’t want to spoil any more because I think it is a movie worth seeing for yourself.

I think watching both films would be an amazing double feature since they are so different. So go watch them now.

Playing

I might be insane but I am kinda hype for Bungie’s newest game Marathon.

Maybe because I’ve not played Tarkov or Destiny in so long -or really any multiplayer games- but I’m really itching to get sucked into a live-service loop. And I am totally ok to pay $40 to see if Bungie can pull-off an accessible-arcade extraction shooter. Yes, I am the problem.

I also wanted to use this to say that the old Marathon games on MacIntosh were rad as hell. In fact, Marathon was the first mouse and keyboard shooter I ever played. My friend and I hot-swapped levels back in the 90s on his sister’s computer² barely making it through and rarely stopping for the -entirely- text based story. However, one piece of lore always stuck with me: AIs in the Marathon universe go insane in a very specific way called Rampancy. It’s a cool universe that obviously influenced a lot of Halo lore.

Listening

I have been a regular watcher of the YouTube channel Baseball Doesn’t Exist for a while now. His videos understand that baseball (and sports in general) are essentially vessels for stories. Each video breaks down the various happenings in the sport with all the juicy Stats™.

Given the fast-paced nature of baseball and the channel’s wonderfully and heavily edited videos, they are not what should be considered baseball “news.” Though, during last years playoffs they did make more current events videos that had me itching for a place to get more baseball news.

Fortunately, they just started Podcast Doesn’t Exist. A twice-weekly podcast that is all baseball news that still focuses on the stories. I’ve been loving the constant updates on a sport I no longer have the time to watch regularly. Also, I can talk to my dad about baseball again.

Other Notables

** Though this is a great write-up of the events leading up to Trump’s tariffs, I am wholly annoyed that articles like these always fail to mention the base ridiculousness of ‘free trade’ and ‘markets.’ Just a brief “wow, this is all insane and money is fake” would do.

** 4chan meme war

** RIP Val Kilmer

1  Nepo baby Dakota Johnson is the only “meh” from me, I’m not exactly sure what her appeal as an actress is really? Physically her performance is great but her line deliveries are like listening to confused 5yo. I’ll be generous and say that’s on purpose.

2  We played a ton of Marathon and SimAnt for whatever reason.