If you’re following this blog, you should be watching Tiger King. It’s 2020’s Wild Wild Country.
It’s Half-Life: Alyx Day, and I’m fixing other folks’ computer problems rather than murdering headcrabs.
I formally protest.
I’m old and thus don’t understand the broad appeal of things like Twitch, but I’ve got to admit, I actually enjoy watching expert Beat Saber players do their thing.
As far as playing it?
Dear god, get the words “hundred dolla bills!” out of my fucking head. Please.
Playing my way through Dance Monkey and Barbie Girl back-to-back resulted in Baby Talk Overload. A small part of my brain died. I had to immediately play Soundgarden’s Spoonman to resuscitate it.
Based on my willingness to play through them over and over in BS, it appears my two favorite songs of the last twenty years would be Seven Nation Army and Florence’s No Light. I could have guessed the former, but I’m mildly surprised by the latter.
I also appear to like This Is America a lot more than I initially believed.
And Tenacious D seemed a lot funnier in the ‘90s.
It is technically impossible to not look like some variety of dork with a giant plastic box strapped to your head and a cable tangled around your ankles, but BS occasionally makes you feel like a cross between Neil Peart and Syrio Farel, and that fleeting sensation is sublime.
Thanks to @bedtimestoriesforbrokengirls I can’t stop thinking about Lilo and Stitch and I am going to curl up with blankets and wine and watch it tonight and I’m so excited!
Good.
Then watch The Secret of NIMH on Prime Video… it’s based on my favorite book from the third grade —Mrs. Brisby and the Rats of NIMH— and was a passion project for Don Bluth.
(Don Bluth was a Disney animator who left to start his own studio, and eventually created An American Tail and Land Before Time. Even more important to men of my age, he also created the Dragon’s Lair laserdisc arcade game, which even by 2020 standards is still one of the most gorgeous video games ever made… sadly, it wasn’t particularly playable or fun even by 1983 standards. But wow was it amazing to watch someone else throw away a dollar trying to play it.)
So while I was sick, I managed to watch a couple movies, both of which I loved, and neither of which I expected to like at all.
The first was Lilo & Stitch, which I managed to not-watch for eighteen straight years. And holy shit, how did no one get across to me that this was more than just Moana with an angry alien instead of an adorable pig?
I mean, what the hell? Tia Carrere —whose greatest previous cinematic achievement was being schwing-worthy— delivering a powerful performance as the best sister in all of Disney lore? A big ol’ slice of goofy sci-fi served up to an audience that wasn’t normally targeted for that sort of thing? And a lead character who’s essentially the Anti-Princess… a little girl so real, so full of distressingly grounded pain and problems, that even the otherwise excellent Inside Out seems trivial and superficial in comparison? I’m disappointed in myself for letting all of that slip by.
Granted, it isn’t perfect. It falls victim to the limitations of old-school Disney… they didn’t really have much of an ending, so a lot of the plot is resolved with quick “hey, it’s animation!” shortcuts. But that first hour is amazing, and had me all misty-eyed more than once.
A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood didn’t hit quite as hard, but it hit more personally.
It’s far too easy to forget how good Tom Hanks really is. (So easy, in fact, that half the reviews of his work written in the last twenty years seem to inevitably mention how easy it is to forget him.) But he completely disappeared inside his character within minutes of the film’s opening, and stayed gone the whole time. It helped that he was playing opposite Matthew Rhys, who is also exceptional at seeming normal, but still… Hanks has come a long, long way from fucking Bosom Buddies.
But what struck me most were the little moments that made me realize that Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood —a show I watched half-heartedly and almost disdainfully as a kid— is embedded deep in my brain.
“You like everyone, but you love people like me. Broken people.”
I’ve got to tell you, “sadistic Mr. Rogers” is not at all the vibe I’ve been going for, but I’m afraid it’s the one I have.
Summer sun has come to stay Bikinis, tans, outrageous legs They’re all retarded, and they all look the same And Barbie’s body’s melting down On her face a big fat frown Cause Mr. Cellulite just moved into town
Kendall Payne’s Supermodels was the last gasp of my ‘90s. All the bitterness and self-loathing and masochistic romance of the decade’s girl-music was dying at the hands of The Spice Girls, but for a brief moment in 1999, Ryan Murphy’s one good show played this nasty little “fuck you” of a song over glamour shots of Leslie Bibb and Carly Pope, and all was right with the world.
Rule: you can only repeat one artist and only one time, so we can all kind of spread new music to the people we tag. try to listen to at least one of the songs people rec here!
