Thursday, December 19, 2019

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.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7c/Cover_of_Avengers-196.jpg/250px-Cover_of_Avengers-196.jpg

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!

 https://66.media.tumblr.com/dfe58ffad5aa8fce9071ccb0810741df/tumblr_pl7k6vM05a1twdz6wo1_400.png

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.

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marvelcomicsfanon/images/b/b8/Mer.jpeg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/340?cb=20190618154940

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?

https://www.nme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/EK2npijXYAARkDt-696x442.jpeg

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.

Image may contain: 3 people, people smiling, people standing, people dancing and indoor

-Also, I attended a "Fursona" panel, and this is the artist's interpretation of the "Thrash Panda" protag:
 No photo description available.
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.

Image result for Jeleva



















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...

Raccoon Tycoon Title

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.