#i have the nxt six wks off work to recover so i will hopefully feel good enough to doodle soon

[mokuba]

finally had my surgery yest after needing to put it off for the last yr n a half n honestly i feel so much better than i did after my last one?? which is wild bc this one was essentially three major procedures in one :”)

here’s hopin this was truly my final time goin under the knife 🙌🏻

[hoogiehowser]

MEDIA DIARY JANUARY

:::::::::: MOVIES ::::::::::

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) I liked this so much I ended up seeing it twice. The animation is on a whole different level from everything else in theaters I just can’t believe it. Nothing has immediately endeared me to a character more that when Miles gets to the place where he’s going to put up graffiti and yells “BROOKLYN!” to get the echo. Absolutely perfect. 

Happy Death Day (2017) The trailer looked good but the trailer for the sequel looked even better. Good time repeating movie. Way better than Blood Punch. I’m excited to see more of this.

Alien: Covenant (2017) Had no clue what to expect going in but I actually dug it. It’s just Alien again like every Alien movie but what they do with David from Prometheus makes it really interesting. There’s also some straight up slasher movie sleaze that definitely appeals to me.

MacGruber (2010) It’s just a bunch of dick jokes while a bad action movie happens. There’s no clever spin to it.

Better Luck Tomorrow (2002) Wanted to watch this due to the Fast & Furious connection. It’s a great movie about overachievers and getting away with shit. I think Justin Lin is a great director and his unique voice benefits every movie he does.

Collateral (2004) I didn’t realize until the credits that this was a Michael Mann movie but it was so obvious in hindsight. The premise is simple, Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx are great, and everything comes together in a genuinely cool film.

Wilson (2017) Based on a comic I don’t particularly like from Dan Clowes’ grumpy old man phase. The cool thing about the comic is that each page works on its own and has a different art style. The movie can’t do that. But it’s still faithful to the book which means it feels like a series of one page gags strung together until it finishes. Woody and Laura Dern are great though and it is pretty funny at times.

Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare (2018) There was another truth or dare based horror movie a year before that was a Syfy original. The Syfy one is better. The problem with them both is the supernatural contrivances that make people play truth or dare against their will. It’s such a strained premise.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) Guy Ritchie made a King Arthur movie and it feels exactly like you’d expect. 

Thoroughbreds (2017) Girl who can’t feel emotions befriends girl who is very politely hiding her extreme emotions. Things get bad when they start to think about murder. Anton Yelchin plays a druggie scumbag loser. It’s such a good movie. 100% my kind of thing.

:::::::::: TV ::::::::::

The Great British Baking Show (Beginnings, Collections 1-4) Got addicted to this one. I love cooking competitions shows and pleasant ones are usually the best. I like seeing competitors that like each other. I like Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry not trying to tear people down. I love Mel and Sue. It’s just a nice show for the nice people.

Toei Spider-Man (Episodes 1-5) I’m not a big toku guy but Spider-Verse got me curious about various Spider-Men. Takuya Yamashiro wasn’t bitten by a radioactive spider, he was injected with blood from the last survivor of Planet Spider and carries out a mission against Professor Monster’s Iron Cross Army to avenge Planet Spider and his own father. Next to nothing present from the classic Lee/Ditko Spider-Man and that’s totally alright. I’m going to try to watch more because the episode where Spider-Man has to donate his blood to hurt child has some serious heart.

The Prisoner (Episodes 7-17) I started watching this a while ago but only now got around to finishing. Mostly super clever plots and the atmosphere is always great. Patrick McGoohan sells it every single time. Some of the later episodes go really off the rails though. There’s an entire wild west episode. Nothing in this stretch tops my favorite episode, The Schizoid Man, where Number Two brainwashes Number Six to act differently and then forces Number Six to pretend to be Number Six while a different man is already pretending to be Number Six. The ending is solid though and carries a really good tv series to a confusing, surreal end.

Cutthroat Kitchen (Season 7, Episodes 1-7) Polar opposite of The Great British Baking Show. It’s the Mario Kart of cooking competition shows. Everyone tries to fuck each other over and Alton laughs at them the entire time. It’s brilliant.

:::::::::: PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING ::::::::::

TJPW Tokyo Joshi Pro ‘19 (January 4) I don’t follow TJPW and don’t know any of their wrestlers besides Meiko Satomura but I watched this because it was on before Wrestle Kingdom. Meiko vs Reika Saiki definitely made the show worth watching and the rest was pretty alright. Lots of fun, new personalities that I like.

NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 13 (January 4) Probably the most I’ve looked forward to a show and it absolutely delivered. For the past few years I’d watch WK and recommended matches but in in July I started following everything NJPW. That added investment made this WK special. Ibushi/Ospreay tore it up and I really hope Ibushi recovers soon. Jay White/Okada shocked me. Naito/Jericho was fucking brutal. And Kenny Omega vs Hiroshi Tanahashi was a match I was so invested in that I thought I was going to cry. If you haven’t checked out New Japan yet this show would make an excellent start. GO ACE!

Impact Homecoming (January 6) Impact has gotten pretty good. I’ve only seen a few of their most recent ppvs but it’s obvious that they have a wealth of talent and they’re willing to tell the kind of dumb stories that I really like. Since Homecoming was in Nashville I went and it was one of the best shows I’ve been to. The energy was insane all night and LAX vs Lucha Bros has to be the best match I’ve seen live. Now that they air on Twitch I’ve been following the weekly show and enjoying it quite a bit.

WWE Royal Rumble (January 27) I always love the rumble but the rumble was weird. Both rumble matches were okay but filled with dumb stuff and way too many recovery spots that were immediately deflated by the person getting eliminated. I like the winners. AJ/Daniel didn’t deliver like I wanted. Sasha and Ronda had a good match. I loved how Finn Balor worked Brock Lesnar’s diverticulitis. Fun show.

NXT UK Takeover Blackpool (January 12) NXT UK doesn’t really grip me aside from the women’s division. I liked this well enough but nothing really changed my mind. Finn Balor made a surprise appearance and he looked like such a star compared to everyone else. Excited to see what WALTER can do here though.

GCW 400 Degreez (January 12) GCW’s brand of hardcore indie nonsense is my absolute favorite. 400 Degreez isn’t the best they’ve done but it was full of disgusting beautiful deathmatch bullshit. Markus Crane vs Nate Webb especially.

NXT Takeover Phoenix (January 26) Takeover always delivers. Johnny Gargano vs Ricochet was definitely the match of the night. I don’t dig the War Raiders schtick but their match was great. Bianca Belair and Shayna Baszler also killed it.

:::::::::: COMICS ::::::::::

One Piece by Eiichiro Oda (Volumes 1-10) I wanted something long to start reading so why not One Piece? Enjoying it so far. I like getting the crew together and Usopp’s story in particular is great. Oda is a master cartoonist. I love every time we get reaction faces.

Spider-Man: Fever by Brendan McCarthy Spider-Man fever got me wanting to revisit Spider-Man: Fever because I remember liking it. I still like it. Doctor Strange accidentally opens a doorway into a spider dimension and Spider-Man gets caught in Doctor Strange’s bathtub and the alternate dimension spiders take him. All this and McCarthy’s art make Fever pretty far out. 

Spider-Man 2099 by Peter David, Kelley Jones, and Rick Leonardi (1-15) Miguel O’Hara wasn’t bitten by a radioactive spider, he had Peter Parker’s DNA put into him by weird future DNA machine and he wages war against the gigantic corporations that control everything. I like Spider-Man 2099. Miguel is so different from the Peter Parker archetype and he’s got claws and fangs. He’s brutal. It’s got a neat post-hero future kind of like Batman Beyond. I stopped reading because the next part is a crossover with Punisher 2099, Ravage 2099, Doom 2099, and X-Men 2099. I’ll hopefully pick it back up because I want to know what happens with the hologram that’s in love with Miguel. 

Spider-Man by Kazumasa Hirai & Ryoichi Ikegami Yu Komori was bitten by a radioactive spider and he definitely wishes he wasn’t. It starts off a lot like our usual Spider-Man but the villains are so much more tragic and Yu deals with some heavy shit. Ikegami’s art evolves from cartoony to serious as the tone of the book changes. He’s a really incredible artist who is consistently pulling neat tricks and trying new things. I really liked this and it may top my favorite Spider-Man comics. It’s just so bleak and unforgiving to poor Yu. By the way, the final plotline is exactly the same as the Sonny Chiba movie Wolf Guy. Turns out the comic that movie was based on was written by the same guy that write Spider-Man. An odd find.

:::::::::: VIDEOGAMES ::::::::::

Axiom Verge Had my eye on this for a long time and finally picked it up on sale on my Switch. It’s okay. There are a lot of clever ideas here that I don’t think work for me. But I do like the decorrupter and the teleport. Some of the movement feels great but some stuff like the grappling hook feels awful. I hate the story. Completely incoherent sci-fi nonsense. But it’s a fun game and I enjoyed my time with it.

Hollow Knight I’ve spent about 30 hours on this game and I feel like I’m close to the end of the story. I absolutely love it. The movement, the combat, and the exploration all feel excellent. I’ve played over ten metroidvanias in the past year (I really like them) and this might be the best. My favorite part about them is how you’re almost never wasting time because there are new secrets to discover all across the map and Hollow Knight does such a good job with that.