Metal Monday

YouTube Obsession

As preface for this entry, I think it’s important that my readership know that I grew up in the country. Like, one stop light, gravel roads, no franchise restaurants, public school graduating class of 40 people, my nearest neighbors growing up were no-electricity Amish; COUNTRY.

That’s partly how I explain that, as teens, my friends and I wrote and produced multiple seasons of backyard wrestling. Now we weren’t the ICP branded backyard wrestling that busted florescent lights or bashed each other with barbed wire bats; We were more focused on ridiculous stories and characters. We filmed everything on VHS and we pooled our money to buy VHS editing software¹ so we could edit episodes. We then drove the episodes an hour to Bloomington, Indiana so we could put them on public-access cable channel. I never saw them air because we didn’t have cable in my hometown.

All this to say that I love wrestling. Though I fell off of WWE years ago, I still have fond memories of the singular time and place of Attitude Era WWF. To me, the Attitude Era is the perfect encapsulation of 90’s societal rot. No wrestler captured that place in time better than Goldust.

Playing off the homophobia of the crowd, Goldust would usurp gender expectations with his character and conventional wrestling expectations with his bizarre style. He also uses his family’s long history in the in the business to his advantage; Tapping into fandom nostalgia long before that became the primary trend.

A perfect wrestler at the perfect time. I’ve been in a YouTube rabbit hole for days and it all started with Goldust.

Watching

The Vista Theater, owned by Quinten Tarantino, is finally running full-steam after COVID and it’s lengthy renovation. Committed to 35mm film showings, their film line-up is expanding to various classics and changing regularly; Showing 15 different classic films in the next 6 weeks.

Being that I live less than a block away, I’m definitely taking advantage of this venue to see classics on the big screen. This week my partner and I went to see a favorite of mine: Sergio Leone’s western epic, Once Upon a Time in the West.

I was raised on westerns and Once always stood out as special. For one, the score. That droning harmonica transcends the soundtrack, inserting itself in the story. The anachronistic guitar riffs somehow fit right in with the setting, truly a testament to Ennio Morricone’s talent. Paired with precise moments of silence, the music used to it’s full potential.

Blocking and scene composition is the best the genre ever saw. Outstanding even among Leone’s other westerns. Monument Valley has never appeared so beautiful, impervious, timeless.

A movie worth seeing in any medium but I’m glad I got to see this on a beautiful widescreen film projection.

Reading

If this newsletter accomplishes anything I only hope that it causes people to get library cards. I’ve spoken on my love the services provided by having a card these days but I continue to delve deeper. I recently got nostalgic for Conan comics (I was once a regular reader² ) and went looking for copies of the Dark Horse run of Conan from the mid 2000s. I couldn’t find any physical copies but I it gave me the option to lend me an eBook copy. It had never occurred to me to try digital because I don’t usually enjoy reading without a physical book, but I loaded Conan: Born on the Battlefield by Curt Busiek and art by Greg Ruth onto my iPad and I must say, comics read well on tablet devices.

Boomer is late to the party I know, but I’m genuinely excited to read more comics this way. And the Conan comics? They’re still great, pulpy timeless. Borrow them from your library!

Playing

I got really into Call of Duty late and only once. I don’t share this in some sort of “I’m not like other mainstream gamers” but because my first and only COD multiplayer obsession was Black Ops 2, the installment of the series that many gamers claim is the best COD ever was. I tend to agree since I have played almost every COD since and nothing has grabbed me like BLOPS 2³ . I think this is for many reasons but in particular…

My first sober job was the overnight shift at a headlight factory in Seymour Indiana. If you’ve ever worked an overnight shift in a factory you know that pretty much everyone is crazy (myself very much included.) and a whole lot of fun. A group of co-workers were big into BLOPS 2 so they convinced me to play every Saturday morning after our shift. That was truly the only time that I have ever had a steady group of other people to play video games with in my adult life.

So, yes, I understand that that has no bearing the quality of the COD games but it speaks to the simplicity of the BLOPS 2 design. There weren’t 100 attachments for every gun doing a 1/2% decrease to horizontal recoil. Maps were simply designed; 3 lanes, minimal elevation, easy to read and uncluttered. Also, BLOPS 2’s main theme is iconic and is still in my rotation of workout songs.

And, most importantly, consistent lobbies. My crew would sometimes stomp the lobby only to get our asses handed to us in another. This sinusoidal fluctuation of challenge was key to our enjoyment. Skill Based Match Making (SBMM) changed that entirely. SBMM is kind of a dirty word among COD players these days because it shuffles players around to different lobbies based on how well they play the game. Many players say this system removes any incentive to get better at the game, since you will always be playing people at your skill level.

Enter XDefiant, a free-to-play multiplayer hero shooter that claims it is not using SBMM to form lobbies and those lobbies will be consistent. It only released on the 21st and from what I’ve played: That appears to be true. It has it’s problems, mainly; Weapon leveling is very very slow (even with a weapon XP booster applied) making the process very grindy. Some levels -though all layouts are simple (a good thing)- are designed with very busy art and assets making readability of enemy characters very difficult to pick out of the background. Finally, there are couple hero abilities that are just way too OP and some balancing is definitely in order.

Overall, I’m excited to not spend any money and maybe get a little bit of the original BLOPS 2 vibe going.

Other Notables

** The constant performances of the social creature.

** Cute basset hound puppies care not for graceful social cues

** New modular controller; A bit pricy but the tech is cool and perfect for gamers with physical handicaps.

1  To this day I can’t remember which software it was but $200 in 2002 was a lot of money for 8 high schoolers.

2  I started picking up Conan monthly with Queen of the Black Coast in 2012.

3  COD: WWII almost caught the feeling, but I just hate WWII as a setting for video games⁴ .

4  Unless you’re absolutely destroying Nazis like in Wolfenstein: The New Order.