Metal Monday

First off, when did Substack’s slogan become “A new economic engine for culture”?

That’s dumb.

ANYWAY

YouTube Obsession

If there was a description in Webster’s dictionary for “chaotic twink energy” it would read [ key-ot-ik ] [ twingk ] [ en-er-jee ] and have a picture of Nick DiRamio.

I found Nick because of his Teen Witch breakdown and I have been watching all his recaps since. Disney Channel originals to the Twilight saga, nothing is safe from the judgmental shade of a former theater kid and a ring light. If you don’t have a gay bff to riff on movies with you Nick is a great stand-in.

Watching

Speaking of Disney Channel original movies, I watched Halloweentown for the first time this year.

[MARQUEE] SPOILERS [/MARQUEE]

This movie was a Halloween staple for my partner growing up so they wanted to share the magic with me. And lemme just say: That even though this is -objectively- a low-budget “bad” movie, it’s really hard to hate this movie. The child actors are so cute and shmaltzy, Debbie Reynolds is a great mischievous grandmother and I will love Judith Hoag in anything.

The absolute CHOICE to have most “monsters” only wearing rubber masks, with no matching arm/body paint is like chefs kiss bad movie making and I love that shit inject it directly to my veins. Background extras are a delight to watch, in their half-assed makeup, mugging and pretending to do what a dracula playing basketball would do. In the video above, I swear there is just some dude cosplaying Piccolo form Dragon Ball Z and that’s just rad.

*PUTS ON NON-GENDER SPECIFIC SJW HAT*

This movie is kinda serving a “I’ll decide if my child is trans!” allegory. Halloweentown be staying relevant. The great stories always do.

Reading

Would its surprise any of you that I am still reading the 1000+ page puzzle encyclopedia that is Infinite Jest? I am still loving it but I also need to take frequent breaks to outline sentences so I can understand what just happened.

Surprisingly, it’s fun! It’s a fun book to read. I completely understand now why english nerds love to annotate books. I’ve always been a highlighter and note taker when reading books with heavy themes but never a full on annotation. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get into that after I read another 6 page short-story explaining the history of a fake Canadian death-sport in the endnotes of Infinite Jest.

GAMES

In between binges and purges of Escape from Tarkov, I have been relaxing with Shiro Games’ Wartales.

Some games were made for me specifically and Wartales is definitely one of those games. On the meta scale it has XCOM: EU turn-based battles and on the macro it has Battle Brothers-esq dudes management, resource collecting, map exploring and quest completing. Wartales has less a reliance on outrageous RNG as the other titles: The battles have more a feel of rock-paper-scissors than managing wildly varying hit percentages.

It’s very relaxing and I see this becoming one of my go-to cozy games.

Other Items

Debbie’s delivery of “but it was turning us evil, which we are not” is something I can’t get out of my head. It’s an awkward line of expositional information that is acted by an absolute pro.

Also, the comments on this video are pretty amazing.

Wands up if you magically agree!