And If I Was
I can’t place exactly when it happened, but this year I’ve spent more time down random YouTube cultural wormholes than ever before, and that was pre-quarantine times to boot. So far this year I’ve been down:
Lockpicking
Art restoration
Knife restoration
for varying lengths of time, and today I found myself in the “video game speedrun explainer YouTube” for a good amount of time, as this fella and his I-don’t-know-where-exactly voice takes you through the nuts and bolts of some of the most impressive achievements in recent speedrunning history, including the breaking of a GoldenEye 64 record that felt like the equivalent of a three-minute mile. Who knows where my impulse and a bottomless well of free time will take me next, but I’m sure you’ll hear about it.
Watch This: ZODIAC - available to stream via Amazon Prime
It might be a persecution complex but a decade out it still feels like this movie is overlooked. The Hulk and Iron Man share the screen back when this was the only THE AVENGERS people acknowledged:
I’d do a joke about how this should be the only Avengers but I think Disney has drone strike technology now so we’ll just move on. While a 2 1/2 hour murder mystery where even a cursory awareness of history will tell you there is no resolution may not sound very compelling, the film almost dispenses with the murders in the first half of the film, and spends the rest of its runtime examining the power of obsession, and how the drive to do something can take nearly everything from you. It also offers a look at just how primitive police work was up until very recently, as all you had to do go get away with most crimes was pretty much not get caught in the middle of doing it. BirthMoviesDeath ran a great write-up on the 10th anniversary of its release, and, if you haven’t seen it yet, give a spin to a film that, in a year packed with masterpieces (seriously, check out a list from 2007), might stand above them all.
It’d be difficult to articulate what would be nice to wake up to in these times, but I’d have to go…pretty far into the mantle of the Earth before this showed up.
On many peoples lives I’m not watching it but I assume the PSA is not “I have coronavirus”.
The music in Animal Crossing is best described as overwhelmingly pleasant, and someone’s extracted the files from them and uploaded a bunch to YouTube. This one in particular, that plays specifically while you’re looking at the fish exhibit in the museum, is a standout ambient track while also belonging in a film where the memory of Marion Cotillard is haunting you and you just want to get back to your kids dammit.
A company in the UK dedicated to helping people live out medical-themed kinks has donated their supply of scrubs to a hospital in an effort to assist with the current efforts. The company apparently sells medical-grade supplies, so it’s a very kind gesture to sacrifice horniness for the greater good. If you have any other needs in that area, be sure to hit them up and also never ask me how I found that link.
I didn’t expect to be doing multiple news items about The Weeknd, but him chiming in to crush this tweet that was gathering quite a bit of clout is a pretty funny move. At a thousand feet it’s one of those strange interactions where someone with literally 11+ million followers calls out someone with a few hundred who didn’t even tag them in a message initially, but then it does seem like the other person just wholly fabricated a quote so who’s to say what The Protcl is in a situation like this.
The developers of the Monument Valley games have made the second entry in the series free to try in their way to help everyone occupy themselves while we’re all becoming vault residents.
The important thing for this one is to focus not on how it’s not authentic Italian/Neapolitan pizza, but instead imagine how delicious a THE LAST OF US set in this universe would look, blooms of prosciutto everywhere.
If you’re still receiving unwanted solicitations through the mail, this is a nice guide to opting out of the largest mailer services. No bit, just a useful tip from your old pal.
I don’t understand what’s not to get, it’s just your everyday, run-of-the-mill “communal keyboard flanking the cooler section of your local superstore” I thought everyone had one of these, or maybe it’s just a Real America thing. My condolences to anyone who sees that keyboard and decides to take it for a spin.
In other piano news, this video is one of those where you think you know where it’s going, but you see there’s about 20 more seconds left and that’s when it gets you.
Finally, this:
A guide from a church that had to convert to drive-in service in the interest of social distancing, this looks like a made-up thing, but then there’s a video of the newscast and, if this is a bit, this is high-level commitment. Relatedly you’d all better have your blinkers on all the time while driving.
