Updates Weekly
Erin and I are working on tighter budgeting, eating out less, all that good stuff. We’ve been pretty good since coming home after Christmas. Going out to eat has become something we plan and budget for; it should be an event, not an excuse to not cook on a lazy night.
To that end, for Valentine’s weekend, we booked ourselves two dining experiences.
Continue reading “Extravagant Dining”I finally bought a couple Subtle Notebooks from Cortex Brand. I won’t go into their whole deal; I’d like to just focus on this particular product.
I’m a notebook hoarder. I’ve always enjoyed having journals around, with different shapes, paper types, and cover styles. Admittedly, many of these are still blank, or only partially filled. Some of them have a specific use-case that has run its course (or has been extensively delayed), while others are too nice, too boring, or just don’t feel quite right for some things I have in mind.
I’ve had a few cheap moleskin notebooks I bought for work, and they have been slowly filled with notes, bits of math, and quick reminders. They’ve been great. However, my others have been languishing. I’m not a huge fan of lined paper for general note-taking, and it feels wrong to use, for example, an Italian leather journal gifted to me by my sister for random notes during a podcast.
Yet, I still bought two subtle notebooks after I saw my fiance had one. Its stitching makes it lay flat incredibly well, the cover is a pleasing soft-touch, and it has dot-grid paper which has become my favorite type over the past five years, eclipsing my previous preference for blank. After a few weeks of sitting on my desk, untouched, I finally decided they would be my writing journals. I would sketch out ideas, make any notes, or be a receptacle when typing into a computer doesn’t feel quite right.
It’s worked perfectly in this role. I’ll walk around with it in my backpack, and leave it open on my desk. While it’s a bit on the expensive side, and I can be reasonably served by other products, the fit and finish is superb, in particular the thicker paper that works with any pen I use, and how well it lays flat. So, the increased price is worth it to me, given how slowly I move through notebooks. If you’re in the market, give it a shot.
I recently discovered the Tin Can Bros, which I would consider an offshoot from StarKid Productions, the makers of, among other things, A Very Potter Musical.
It’s exciting to come across more genuinely hilarious musical theater. I’m no musical buff, but I enjoy comedy with a modern twist. Anything by either group is worth a watch. They remind me very much of what my friend Tim Radermacher’s style, and I love having more of that in my life. And if you’re not a fan of musicals, check out their Wayward Guide video series.
My friend Brandon wrote a short play, Cameo, for performance over Zoom. It was part of an event put on by Invisible Disco Productions, and was the final of four plays put on, each about ten minutes long.
Continue reading “Video Theater”One month ago, a good friend of mine released a feature-length movie on YouTube. I had followed along as they released the various trailers, then discovered the half-truths in their lovely making-of documentary.1 I managed to watch it the morning after the film’s premiere, on December 19, and have not gotten it out of my head since. I’ve started and stopped multiple reviews, taken copious notes on a second watch, and am finally releasing what I consider the movie’s canonical review.
If you frequent this part of the internet, you may be just the right person to watch Doctor Feelgood and the Asparagus Kid or: The Respect for the Omnipresence of Death. If the title intrigues you, give it a shot. Then come back here (regardless of whether you completed it) and enjoy a shameless, spoiler-filled plug and review for this movie co-written by my friend Timothy.2
Continue reading “Doctor Feelgood and the Asparagus Kid”Tomorrow I’ll be recording an episode of OHAC, where Mikhail, Jack, and I will be discussing yearly themes. That will serve as a nice recap of the year and a starting point for 2021.
To wrap things up on this blog though, I figured I’d go back through my posts from 2020 and select one or two favorites from each quarter, and maybe write a little bit about how I view those posts now. I don’t often revisit my expository writing, so I think it’ll be a good exercise.
Continue reading “The Best of My 2020”After significant pestering from Netflix, I began watching The Umbrella Academy. It gripped me immediately, and I’ve enjoyed watching it. I’m nearing the end of Season 2 and so far the twists and turns have been handled deftly in my mind. I’m sure some could find some faults, but it’s been an amazing ride. Since last week I’ve known I wanted to write some brief thoughts on it, but I needed something to say. When comparing it to other superhero and supernatural shows I’ve seen, I realized it’s the show Heroes could have become.
Continue reading “The Umbrella Academy: What Heroes Could Have Been”What an amazing show. Of all the nostalgic cartoons I have from elementary and middle school, I think Avatar and Spongebob are the only two I will continue to watch for years. While Spongebob is simply a feel-good show for me, which helped establish my sense of humor over the years and always puts a smile on my face, Avatar deals with issues more sincerely and deeply, in a way that is accessible to its younger audience.
I decided to rewatch(?) the last season of Avatar over the past week. I’d seen the first two seasons quite a lot growing up, but only managed to catch bits of the final season once when it was on TV originally. Watching it again was quite affecting. It is an emotionally dense show with clear morals, without it being quite as in-your-face as, say, The Clone Wars television show. (That’s also an awesome show, but just has a different feel to it.)
Now that I have dropped myself back into this fantasy world, I discovered The Legend of Korra on Netflix as well. I had never heard of this show before, since it aired after my TV-watching days were at their peak. I’ve started the show, and find it a fantastic sequel, aimed squarely at teenagers (or those just a little older) who appreciate what Avatar has to offer, but want something that handles things more maturely. Its antagonists are less binary: We don’t have a fire-bending dictator, but rather someone who wants to remove bending to promote freedom. It’s a huge shift in focus, but the world has been handed off succinctly and deftly to a new generation of characters (far more effectively than Star Wars managed to do in the sequels.)
For anyone who hasn’t watched Avatar, give it a go. Regardless of age, there is so much joy, frustration, sadness, and excitement to be found in it. While it can be silly, and it is a kids show, there is depth in each short episode that we can pull a lot from.