Catching Up Before The End Of The Decade

Hahaha, it's been a while...

NEW SONG ON PATREON: "Remember"
This is a song that I've had kicking around for a while, ever since I finished listening to the podcast
The Weezer Bracket. It was a podcast that, March Madness style in Song Vs. Song matchups, set
out to determine the Worst Weezer Song (spoiler: It was "Beverley Hills").

In the process, I've learned a couple things:
1. They have A LOT of songs that are "We're going back to our roots! We don't suck anymore, we promise!"
2. Rivers Cuomo has A LOT of weird song writing strategies.
Most fun: Adderall, tequila, and a nap on a hammock.
Least fun: A notebook full of chord progressions he refers to like a textbook.

From all of this, I kept getting the impression that Rivers Cuomo, after being embarassed by Pinkerton, got kind of... desperate for approval. One day at work, I saw that there's a special "Weezer Island" on Fortnite, and I went "HOLE- EEE SHIIIIIT"

Little by little, the song came to me.

NEW SONG ON YOUTUBE: "Mercedes Merced"


Last week, the trailer for Black Widow dropped, and while I haven't been keeping up with the Marvel movies, I have kept my eye on this one, since one of the villains is rumored to be Taskmaster.



Taskmaster, as I've mentioned before, is one of my FAVORITE comic characters. His power, photographic reflexes, allow him to copy any movement he sees and replicate them perfectly; whether it's fighting like Iron Fist, shooting arrows like Hawkeye, or throwing his replica sheild like Captain America. He's a mercenary scumbag, but the fun kind of scumbag, where he'll interupt a villain's speech about their goals or whatever, and Tasky will be like "Don't care. Fuck you. Pay me". I love his dumb skeleton pirate costume, as well as his Tacticool Luchador from Udon, which I actually cosplayed as!

 

He's been explored in a variety of ways throughout the years, and the song Mercedes Merced, was inspired by his 2011 limited series, "Unthinkable". Mercedes Merced is actually Taskmaster's wife, who he forgot about over the years, as his in order to use his powers and commit it to muscle memory, his brain "forgets" an explicit memory, and the series chronicles him reconnecting with his wife, then later forgetting her again to save his life. It's a really bittersweet tale, and I recommend it immensely.



So for this song, I made it about a relationship you half remember but it ended up being way more important than you were led to believe.

HEY RHYTHM BASTARD, HOW DOES HE LOOK IN THE MOVIE?



uhhhh... WHO WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT SOME CONVENTIONS?

ANIME IWAI RECAP!
FRIDAY!
-Iwaivor Series 2019!
We crowned a champion after a lot of fighting and a lot of promo cutting. We're slowly, but surely getting a grip on how to run future events efficiently. Namely, people REALLY aren't prepared to cut promos!

Also, as we get more popular, we're going to get more crowded, and we don't want to turn anyone away, so we'll just be doing 4-man Royal Rumble Heats until we get down to Two Finalists.

-My Concert!
Went swimmingly! It was my last concert of year, and my friends at the 3KB made sure it went over big and got HYPE AS FUCK!

-3000 Brigade Show!
Maybe it's because this is my 3rd show, maybe it's because I had so many costume changes, or maybe it was just that we were super confident in our show, but this year flew by.


First I was a Herald for the Fort Knights from Fortnite, then I was Johnny Cage from Mortal Kombat, then Shitty Drag, then Green Link, and then Johnny Cage again. Then I went shirtless and the crowd went wild.



-Also, I attended a "Fursona" panel, and this is the artist's interpretation of the "Thrash Panda" protag:
 
Art by IsadoraDraws

PAX UNPLUGGED RECAP!
I LOVED PAX Unplugged this year! I sold a shit ton of MtG cards and got to play some new games.

Honestly, my favorite part of PAX Unplugged is the city of Philadelphia. My friend Owen's a local, and took me out to all the cool food places. I got a Wawa's, I got a proper Cheesesteak, I ate scrapple at the Reading Terminal Market, all those boxes were checked off.





















As for actually playing games, I played a round of Commander for the first time in a while, and my group couldn't have been nicer. I only had the Mind Sieze Precon from 2013, but it provided me with a nice enough base to build on, and I've been building a couple decks back here at home, with a third commander deck on the way. Oops...



A game I tried and ended up buying was Raccoon Tycoon. It's a game about producing resources, selling them for profit, and buying property to help you on your way. You get into a good pace once you get going, and it is straightforward after a couple of rounds. It's got a nice, old world style, and even though raccoons are scavengers, not capitalists, it was worth picking up for $40.



Pat Baer, who helps run League of Heels, the PAX Wrestling Federation, also runs a lot of fun comedy panels, one of which is the Improvised Postmortem, where you make a game concept and make a postmortem on it on the fly from just a title. Loading Ready Run talent, and lots of other familiar faces are there, and did a great job!

JAM OF THE WEEK: "The Passenger" by Siouxie and the Banshees


Recently I checked out the series "Infinity Train" because the second season was advertise with a trailer that has this cover of Iggy Pop's "The Passenger". The Iggy Pop version was also used in the trailer for The Outer Worlds.

Outer Worlds rules, Infinity Train rules, this cover rules, and this was also in the credits for "I, Tonya" which I didn't mind, so if you want me to check out your thing, put "The Passenger" in the trailer.

Status Quo Sunday's Feeling Kinda Fuzzy

NEW CON CONFIRMED FOR BRAWL!

Otakufest! 

OtakuFest is a two-day festival that celebrates anime, manga, cosplay, gaming, comics, and more. You can dress up as your favorite character or come as you are, we aim to be a very inclusive convention. OtakuFest is new to South Florida’s convention scene, but its creator/show-runner Winji Mesadieu has been a part of Supercon as well as the South Florida convention community for over a decade. OtakuFest expects to bring in 4,000 people over 2 days for its first show in 2019. OtakuFest will feature activities and celebrities from the realm of comics, anime, animation, cosplay, manga, comics, gaming, and more!

It's also the day before Labor Day, so you can guarantee I'm getting all Socialist-y at this show. And you can get shitfaced and not have to worry about work the next day.

I did get word back on one OTHER new con, but I'm waiting for an announcement on them first...

SPEAKING OF NEW CONS...

MINI IWAI!

Mini Iwai was a blast as always, and the show was fun to put on.

However, my two favorite events of the day were the ones where I didn't play.

First up was "Cosplay Relay". which is a good concept that needed refining, and will be one to watch when Iwai: Rush comes around in a couple months. Basically, two teams of three work together to make a cosplay for a "model" (which I was) using a bunch of supplies provided for them. The catch is, every member is only given 10 minutes and can not communicate with each other. It's got potential, but it seemed like everyone only had a 80% grasp of the concept, so it needs ironing out.

Then came the 3000 Brigade Preview Show, which was just great.

As opposed to a preview show where our TOTALLY REAL BOY BAND B12 performed, it was Match Game where everyone was different charachters. We've done this before at other shows, and this time I was Tenya Iida from My Hero Academia because I spent $50 on a UA Gym Uniform AND GODDAMN IT I WAS GOING TO USE IT AGAIN.

Also turned out to be really popular. Huh.

MEGAPLEX AND AFO!

Same weekend, that started with Car Troubles: namely my car overheating a couple times and a hole in my tire. So I had to drive 50 miles on my spare, then wake up at 8 AM to get a new one the next morning. Then Sunday on my way home, my battery died.

ANYWAY, HOW WAS THE FURRY CONVENTION YOU ASK?

I had a good time! The night I got there, I caught Foxes and Pepper's Concert, which is the musical project of Fox Amoore and Pepper Coyote, two big musicans in the furry scene. If you're a fan of very folksy alt-rock, along the lines of say, Counting Crows.

The next morning, Fuzzy Logic had an escape room set up, which more cons should have. Escape rooms can do a great job of reinforcing the theme, get attendees to meet new people and are different than the usual fare. Obviously my team won, because Zero Escape vet here, duh. 



I was lucky enough to secure a slot in the Artist Alley via their Lottery system (ALSO A THING MORE CONS SHOULD DO), and I did WAY better than anticipated. I think I sold more CDs there before a show than any other convention.

As for the show itself, tech issues made us start late, but I wanted an eager crowd, and I GOT ONE!

Definitely a great experience and I think there might be a higher cross over between furries and punk than with anime/gamers and punk.

SO ARE YOU A FURRY THEN?

...Let's say Thrash Panda was something of a "soft launch"



Then I went to AFO, and of course Tiny Waves killed it at the rave.

Though people asked me about Megaplex with the same tone you'd use to find out someone was in the hospital...

NEW SONG: "FUCK TERFS (BUT DON'T HAVE SEX WITH THEM)"






For Gay Wrath month! Got a lot of requests for it at Megaplex, so I figured, WHY NOT?

JAM OF THE WEEK: "We Are All On Drugs" by Weezer



The tech issues mentioned earlier were that my laptop died, so I had to use whatever backing tracks I had on Google Drive, and I didn't have the Backing Track of "Hunting Bigger Game" with "Magic" by Mystery Skull tacked on the end, so I requested house music, and this is what they came up with.

So basically this makes Jam Of The Week because a week ago I ran around shirtless throwing Magic The Gathering cards to this song.

Echo Chamber Post Game Episode 85

NO PICTURES, SOUND ONLY, DOWNLOADING DESTINATION

-So, here's "Expiration Date", the TF2 short me and Mystakin geeked out about:


It's impressive how they've still been plucking away at this game for the past 7(!!!) years.

Also, "Sexual Congress" is:
A. The name of my Presidents of the United States of America cover band.
B. A sex move where one person begs the other for sex, nothing happens and instead they shit the bed.
C. Weird Al's poorly received "Sexual Healing" parody meant to spur voters in the midterm elections.
D. Classy way of sayin' boner-time
E. All of the above

-Dear Esther is the game that Jeff is complaining about, and here it is in ALL ITS RIVETING GLORY:


Things that would make Jeff love Dear Esther:
-Soundtrack by Bad Religion
-Puzzles that require thinking so out of the box that you're in another box
-Puzzles that require you to use Google to translate ALT into Braille into Morse Code
-A way to get on the damn boat

-"It's Always Sunny" clip for reference:

Fuck tha haters.

And I was right, it was the epiosde where "The Gang Wrestles For The Troops"

-Majesco: STILL EXISTS!
Current projects: COOKING MAMA 5 and porting Gone Home to consoles.

A very, very sad state of affairs indeed: The Mama series, movie games, ports, $5 bargain PC games on the Nintendo DS...

-HERE'S THAT MEGA64 SKETCH YOU GUYS!!!



-Weezer: Ehhh.....? I guess...? I kinda liked "Memories" of Hurley, but it doesn't seem like they've been trying anything too different. And I guess I can say that for their previous albums where I liked one song or two, but then again I haven't really listened to any of their recent albums in their entirety. It's like with Green Day and their "Uno! Dos! Tre!" triple album: if they waited on some of that, they might be able to make one excellent album.

-GWAR: Really, Oderus Urungus MADE that band. A great front man is ridiculously hard to replace. They can get a good metal singer, but to have one that was so into the character like Dave Brockie was would be like replacing MC Bat Commander. Like Queen, the singing ability can still be there, but the face of the band, however scarred and hideous it may be, is the soul of the band. 

-YouTube Let's Play Discussion- I'm gonna skip over this a little bit, since Mystakin did bring up a lot of solid arguments, and mine felt kind of half-assed in comparison. Really mine just comes from a place of "Well, the people with the most money are going to fuck with all of this." 

-Ryback does have a Twitter. It's deserted.

-And, of course the Something Awful article I mentioned. 
If anything, Tetris would be more likely to canonize MY fanfiction, because it has WAY more graphic sex scenes. Seriously, it makes "Anime Cow Is Late For School" look tame.

February 6th, 2013 Video Of The Week

Late, but this week’s music video is “Keep Fishin’” by Weezer

Probably before the shitstorm that was Make Believe, “Keep Fishin’”, off of the album Maladroit, was probably the last decent album before that drop off.

While a strong blues rhythm and excellent harmonies straight from the 50’s make this fun to listen to, the real reason I’m posting this is because these lucky bastards got to work with The Muppets, even before the big revival from 2011’s movie. These are exactly the kind of shenanigans from the original Muppet Show, and it just be the last time the band was having any fun before the “Let’s take ourselves seriously, but ironically” attitude of the last decade, hence why it’s also the last time I saw Rivers Cuomo smile in public too.

Echo Chamber Post Game Episode 25

DOWNLOAD LINK TO THE PODCAST

Self titled albums!

-I'm both surprised and not surprised Jeff didn't bring up Foxy Shazam's self titled. It's a lot more refined and focused than their earlier albums, but it has "Unstoppable" and "Oh Lord", which is probably the most uplifting combination of two songs since Akira The Don's "Slow Down Ghandi" and "Bittersweet Symphony" Mashup.


-Now the trifecta of Weezer's self titleds:
"Hey man, what's up? Yeah? That's awesome! Right now I'm doing this thing, but like my girl isn't that into it, but..."

"Oh? Yeah, that's cool. Defintely." (looks around the room, checking out who else is here) "No, man, I'm totally paying attention."
GREEN ALBUM
(ignores you, and is totally talking to the kinda cute Asian chick in the corner, drinking a can of PBR)
"Later" (as you leave because fuck this party)

-Tenacious D's  Self Titled, featuring all the songs from their HBO show that made them famous(er) before Jack Black blew the fuck up.



And for NON-self titled albums, Rhythm Bastard put "Dino Hunter MD: The Sound Track" on Soundcloud!

Oh Yes, It Is So

DUH DUH (bwah wah) NUH NUH (bwah nah)

SAY IT AINT SO
Ha Ha! Success!

Yeah, so as for the hard parts, the entire goddamn song. For the main riff, this guy has your number. Bar chords ahoy.

For the three parts I mentioned, buckle in it's gonna be a loooong ride:
First Interlude-
E---------------------------------------------
B------------9----10/12-10--------------9---
G----9-9----9----11/13-11--9h11p9-----9-9-
D----9-9h11---11--------------------11----9-
A-11------------------------------------------
E---------------------------------------------

The only real problem is playing it up to speed. Other than that, keep the index finger over the ninth fret is the best I advice I can give.

Second Interlude:
E-----4-4---x-0--------------5--5----------7--11-7-9---7--------------
B-4h5-5-5--x-0------0-------5--5----9----7----------9---7-9--7------
G-4---4-4--x-5------5----5/-6--6-6--9----8------------------9---9--
D-4h6-6-6--x-6-----6-----6/-7--7-7--9----9--------------------------
A-4---------x-6-----6-----6/-7-------7---------------------------------
E-----------x-4------4----4/-5----------------------------------------

Right here-----------------------------^ Pick in the (slightly) adjusted chord form, then it's pentonics all the way.

E--------------------------
B---------------------------
G--9br-8h9----6h8---6---
D-------------------9---6-
A--------------------------
E---------------------------


Solo:
E----------16-----------------16-------)-------
B--------17--19p1716-------17--19p1716
G-16s18-------------16s18-----------)

E-----------16--14---------16br-14---16-----
B--------17--------17--16~---------------17--
G-16s18-------------------------------------

Speedy Pentonics all the way. I used Power Tab to lower the BPM, then gradually work my way up.

Not a whole lot of "reccomendations" this time around, other than just working on dexterity.

"I Fought The Law" by The Clash is the DLC song.

SETLIST UPDATED

News Stuffs

IT'S ELECTION DAY. VOTE BITCHES.
--------------------------------------------
Remember how a few weeks ago I called the Rock Band Stage Kit stupid and impractical?

I take back the first part, and the second if you have friends. Found out via FakePlasticRock that it ain't half bad. Looking at some of the videos, it seems like a worthy buy for frequent party people. The effects range from OMG!AWESOME! to Eeeehhh.... and it feels like the game.

BUT HOW? You ask,
Apparently the company making the kit worked with Harmonix, so that everything syncs up with the virtual light and game effects, so everything is all programmed in.

It looks good, but $99 is a bit too much for me right now.

I leave you know with Boston:

------------------------------------------
"Say It Ain't So" is really hard for a Tier 2 song. I guess I'll do "Hand That Feeds" in the background.
-------------------------------------------
The reason Harmonix is now the true overlords of has right to the Beatles songs, is accountable to one thing: flexibility.

I guess this means with royalties or branding, whereas Actvision would want the games in the Guitar Hero franchise, I have no idea what this game is supposed to be. Harmonix just wanted it more and would be willing to do something else entirely rather than say BEATLES IN ROCK BAND NAO! Sometimes it's not who gives you the most, but who gives up the most. Both companies stance have something, but again, I would like some more details. Holiday 2009?!? I still don't know what the hell I'm doing for Holiday 2008!