Liner Notes (December 28th, 2018)

Damn, this is the final Liner Notes of 2018.

In this week’s roundup, I recap the holiday week and my favorite gifts, share some thoughts on Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, go through my usual weekly media diet (heavy on movies, light on music this week), and share ten songs to ring in 2019. I hope everyone has a lovely rest of the year. The supporter Q&A post can be found here.

Five Things

  • What started as a little fun bullet point rundown thing in the forums has become a pretty significant write-up each week. I’ve done one of these each week for 24 weeks straight now, they usually average about 1,800 to 2,500 words, and they tell a good portion of what my year looked like in music, movies, TV, and other forms of entertainment. Thank you, all of you, for reading each week and all of the feedback. It was that feedback and back and forth that led to this becoming a thing, and it’s been a whole lot of fun. The plan is to continue this through 2019.
  • Christmas was a success this year. Beside the emotional gift of getting to spend it with those I love, I also got some cool functional things for the house, including some more LED lights to finally replace all of the condo lighting with LED lights. Christmas as an adult sure is different than Christmas as a kid. My mom got me a home camera so we can spy on the cats when we’re away. I still need to figure out the best place to install this. I want it to be out of the way and not super noticeable, but also hit most of the kitchen and main entryway. This will take some cord hiding and figuring out the least destructive mounting techniques. I’ll check back in when I get it all set up and let you know my verdict. I also received a bunch of nerdy t-shirts. (A great Spider-Man shirt, Robin, Riverdale, and Jurassic Park, so I’ll be a very stylish dork around the house all year.) Hannah got me the Apple Pencil, but I haven’t had a lot of time to play with it yet. I think I’ll use it a lot for sketching things out, making markups on images/documents, and stuff like that. As I find a place for it in my workflow, I’m sure I’ll write more about it. I will say, the iPad Pro purchase was my best purchase in all of 2018. I genuinely love this computer in a deep way. I was worried I’d miss my MacBook, but I don’t. I still love the Mac, and this iMac Pro that I’m writing from right now is such a great workhorse computer. It’s because it’s so big, and can do so many things, that the lightness and perfect portability of the iPad Pro becomes a virtue. I don’t need it to do everything for me, because it’s not my daily heavy lifter. It’s just the best “anywhere not at my desk” computer for me. Between writing, editing, researching, or relaxing and watching or reading something … it’s a real joy to use.
  • As a Christmas gift to ourselves, Hannah and I bought Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for the Nintendo Switch. It is so much damn fun. It’s incredibly addicting and one of those games that we start playing and all of a sudden a few hours have flown by. We’re still learning the ropes, and I’m grinding out unlocking all the characters. I currently love playing with Cloud, because I have such fond feelings about Final Fantasy VII. I think Lucina is my second favorite at the moment. We like playing the 5v5 matchups, often with random characters and a few of our favorites, to keep things interesting. Hannah likes the bigger characters that can grab and throw and stomp on you, and I like the ones with swords. Once I’m done with the day I plan to get in a few more rounds before heading to the gym.
  • My favorite font manager, Right Font, was recently updated to version five. If you have and work with, a lot of fonts, I can’t recommend this app enough. Having too many fonts installed on your computer slows it down and is unwieldy. This app lets you view all your fonts and only activate the ones you want to use. It’s also a great font browser for finding the perfect type for any project you’re working on. The new version of the app is better in virtually every way. It’s fast, and it can handle my massive font library.
  • The plan is for Craig and me to record an EOTY podcast in the next week or so. I want to run it not long after we have launched our EOTY feature. The plan is to talk about our lists, the staff list, and touch on a bunch of albums. I do have plans and ideas for the podcast in 2019; it really will come down to finding the time between building out new website features, the whole “make money to eat” thing, and finding a format that I think is sustainable and doable on a more consistent timeline. Fingers crossed.

Music Thoughts

  • The past week was a very light music listening week for me. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on my computer, so that meant I was listening to things far less than usual. I tried (not very successfully) to get caught up on my podcasts. I did listen to my Pop-Punk Christmas playlist on the Amazon Echo a few times, and shuffle is definitely still not working. It’s still a fun playlist.
  • My “End of the Year” list is completed, and we’re finalizing up everything for the final feature now. The list is built, we’ve assigned blurbs, and next week I’ll be making sure everything gets submitted, formatted correctly, and ready for posting. I’m aiming, like last year, for a January 7th posting date for everything. Pretty exciting to see how everything shook out, and I was surprised at what ended up topping the list. It’s not The 1975.

Entertainment Thoughts

  • We re-watched Blockers last weekend and I liked it even more on the second viewing. It’s the kind of movie I can see myself re-watching for years to come. It’s not on a 21st Jump Street level, but it is very re-watchable and very funny.
  • Bird Box was good, but not great. It never quite got to the level I was hoping it would, but it was a decent watch for an evening, and I like Sandra Bullock.
  • A re-watch of Dazed and Confused was precisely what I needed right before the chaos of Christmas. It’s up there with some of my favorite films, and I can always find a happy place while watching it. Alright, alright, alright.
  • The last two movies we watched right before Christmas were Christmas Vacation, which has been a staple of my life for 30 years, and The Family Man. I’ve seen Christmas Vacation probably as many times as any movie, but it’s always enjoyable and puts me in the Christmas mood. The Family Man was not well received when it came out, but it’s a movie I’ve 1) always associated with the season, 2) have an immense soft spot for. I love the “live the life you could have had” storyline, and I think the main idea of finding what matters to you and following it — is almost universal. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but this movie finds a way to hit me just right, and reminds me to take the time to appreciate all that I have in life.
  • Hannah had never seen the original Predator, so we gave that a watch. Boy, those special effects do not hold up. It’s still an entertaining, but dated, movie. The “cloaking” effect is just terrible and, truthfully, just not needed. At least Hannah will get all my references to this movie now. It was getting weird when she’d stare at me blankly when I’d yell “get to da choppa!”
  • We barely made it 15 minutes into Life Itself. What a colossal piece of shit.
  • Mid90s was a solid film that never really got to the level it thought it did. A solid writing and directing debut from Jonah Hill, about the period I grew up in, but it was missing the extra something to make it special. Still, it was good, and the right length, and for anyone around my age, a nostalgia trip into our skating youth. However, recent movies like Eighth Grade and Lady Bird tapped a similar feel for me and did it better.
  • The final episode of Titans capped off a gratifying first season. The storyline with Batman and “what would happen if he finally snapped” was well done and I’m excited to see where they go from here. My one wish is that the show would follow the group, and their interactions, more next year. There felt like too many “one-off” episodes this season that would give us some backstory, or even a fun episode, but wouldn’t progress the main story that much. That said: I enjoyed this season way more than I expected, and it reignited a love for Robin so much Hannah got me a Robin t-shirt for Christmas.
  • I completed Dan Slott’s run of Amazing Spider-Man. I loved his last arc and thought it did a great job of wrapping up who Spider-Man is and why I love the character. Dan’s run on the comic has been controversial at times, but I appreciate the risks it took with the character and I thought it gave us plenty of memorable moments. I plan to continue with the next run shortly, but first …
  • I went back to Batman and started reading Scott Snyder’s Superheavy. I wanted to break up all the Spider-Man reading, and so I jumped back in where I left off with Bats. I’ve enjoyed everything that Snyder’s done with Batman so far, and this has been good and interesting so far. I am curious where it goes. I like Snyder’s ability to weave an intricate, even if sometimes verbose, story. It doesn’t take long for me to feel like I’ve been transported back into the dark world of Gotham. Hopefully, I’ll find more time to read this over the next few weeks … before work kicks back into gear.

Random and Personal Stuff

  • The whole “keep weight in check over the holiday” thing … went only okay. I ended up gaining some weight, but only about 2.5 lbs in total. And, I lost 1.5 of that by the end of the week. I’ll consider that a success. The hardest part was all the family gatherings. Not really knowing what you’re eating, or the actual size, mixed with higher calorie beers and snacks than usual, made it pretty nuts.
  • By and large Christmas was a success. It felt very long, with lots of families to see, and lots of social situations to be in, but I made it out relatively unscathed — only a few moments where I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
  • I hope everyone had an enjoyable Christmas/holiday week. At the moment we don’t have much planned for New Year’s Eve. Hannah is working that night, playing a concert, so I am planning to take it easy. After getting through the holiday madness, I look forward to some downtime to recharge, and try and feel re-centered and a little more normal again. Better eating, better routines, more sleep. We also will be diving back into the wedding planning soon, and I’ll need my energy reserves.

Ten Songs

Here are ten songs that I listened to and loved this week. Some may be new, some may be old, but they all found their way into my life during the past seven days.

  1. Motion City Soundtrack – Resolution
  2. Florrie – Speed of Light
  3. Fall Out Boy – Alpha Dog
  4. Less Than Jake – Mostly Memories
  5. Green Day – Macy’s Day Parade
  6. Jimmy Eat World – The End is Beautiful
  7. The Menzingers – The Freaks
  8. Eisley – Louder Than a Lion (Acoustic)
  9. Lorde – Perfect Places
  10. Death Cab for Cutie – The New Year

The playlists are also available on Spotify and Apple Music.

Welp, that will just about do it. I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend and rest of 2018. Stay safe out there. I don’t love New Year resolutions, but I do like goals and the idea of trying to better yourself every day. Last year I wanted to make it a habit to read one lesson from The Daily Stoic, and to try and meditate and/or deep stretch, every single day. I succeeded more than failed, which I consider a win. Throughout the year, when I was feeling stressed, or overwhelmed, or angry, or sad, I tried to think back on this quote, from Marcus Aurelius:

Since it is possible that thou mayest depart from life this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly. But to go away from among men, if there are gods, is not a thing to be afraid of, for the gods will not involve thee in evil; but if indeed they do not exist, or if they have no concern about human affairs, what is it to me to live in a universe devoid of gods or devoid of Providence? But in truth they do exist, and they do care for human things, and they have put all the means in man’s power to enable him not to fall into real evils. And as to the rest, if there was anything evil, they would have provided for this also, that it should be altogether in a man’s power not to fall into it. Now that which does not make a man worse, how can it make a man’s life worse? But neither through ignorance, nor having the knowledge, but not the power to guard against or correct these things, is it possible that the nature of the universe has overlooked them; nor is it possible that it has made so great a mistake, either through want of power or want of skill, that good and evil should happen indiscriminately to the good and the bad. But death certainly, and life, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, all these things equally happen to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil.

A small medallion with the saying “you could leave life right now” is one of the few things on my desk. I turn to it often throughout my day, and repeat it to myself, as a reminder of our limited and not guaranteed time here on earth.

Previous editions of this roundup can be found here.