Crystal went to Florida without me this month and in her absence I read several books, listened to a metric fuckton of music, watched a couple of movies, and some TV. I’ve never been so productive in my life.
I’ve been watching Good Mythical Morning daily for a while now and sporadically for a real, real long time before that and while I think Rhett and Link are funny (even when they aren’t retching and/or hiccuping convulsively) I genuinely had no idea what to expect from Buddy System, so while it was out from behind the YouTube Red paywall, I sat down in my bachelorhood and watched all of the first season and had a great time! I must admit to a moment of visceral bewilderment so strong that I had to pause when it moved from the GMM format opening and then had them step out from behind the desk, but it was weirdly effective. I really liked that this leaned way into the sense of weirdness I get from their humor and that it was just happily, balls-out goofy. As I am sure I’ve said before, I hate musicals with very few exceptions and I think comedy songs are mostly bad, but I had a remarkably good time with these, especially “So Dang Dark” and “Power Nap” and “Tough Decisions”. I like that they both commit so wholly to their bits and Link’s straight delivery of every absurd thing he said sent me into hysterics. I also watched and liked season two a lot, but this is long enough already, yes? (“I Like What I Like” and “Naked” are the stand-out songs this time, but “Kings of Bellevue Estates” made me actually legit laugh out loud because it was just extremely spot-on as a parody. Okay really, shutting up now!!)
Here is my first opinion: people who post on the internet about how they don’t like the things people post on the internet are the worst and shouldn’t be allowed to access the internet. My second opinion: if you can’t summon any interest in hearing about the things your friends like… why do you have friends? My third opinion: the Spotify wrapped infographics are fun and I’m glad people share them! How can I be adequately obsessed with you as a person if I don’t know what pop culture you’re obsessed with?! Also, mine rules, specifically, because I have an excellent and varied taste in music. I thought the decade thing was pretty interesting this year although mostly useless to me because I listen to Spotify at work and when people are agitating me, I listen to a playlist I have called “Soothe” on repeat and it’s just Vince Guaraldi Trio’s “Great Pumpkin Waltz” and “Thanksgiving Theme” so those have been my top two songs like, four years running and that was my artist of the decade too. Otherwise 2019 was very spot-on for the stuff I listened to and loved the most and it has me AMPED for my Totally Top Five this year.
I liked Late Night so much! Mindy Kaling is so, so charming and funny and I liked SO MUCH that even when the circumstances of the story pushed Molly into a really awkward moment that could have been played as deeply humiliating and for laughs, it instead leaned toward more regular human behavior. I like that the story didn’t demand that Molly change and become ~one of the guys~ in order to succeed or survive and that her success came directly from her personal experience, talent, and willingness to stand up for herself and her ideas. Emma Thompson was GREAT and I ended up liking the guys as the plot let them develop too, especially Tom, obviously, because I am a sucker, though I stand by my opinion that the SPOILER shoulder kiss at the end was a bad choice because of COURSE they would end up together, it didn’t need to be made TEXTUAL. Anyway, I laughed a lot AND had a nice time emotionally and I don’t really need anything else to have a good time with a movie, so I’d say it was a very solid watch.
I didn’t know how I would feel about Lords of Chaos going in — I probably know about… 300 times more about Norwegian Black Metal than the average moviegoer — and I wasn’t totally sure what I thought after, but I sure have thought about it a lot. This was both a story I already knew and a subject I am vaguely interested in and I was worried I might be too concerned with The Truth to just watch it as a movie, but that ended up not being an issue because everyone is so good in it that I just sort of disappeared into it. I ended up having a lot of feelings I didn’t expect and though I think I wish it had focused more on the relationship between Euronymous and his band before Dead’s death, I obviously get why we got the timeline we did. I was surprised at how beautifully this was shot and also how absurdly funny it was in places and also how much the ending got to me emotionally even knowing what was coming. It’s not going to be for everyone and I think selling it as a “horror-thriller” is not only incorrect, but gross. This is a music biopic tragedy set in a subculture that looks absolutely nonsensical, even to people familiar with it, and it does that well.
Cavetown, Lemon Boy – I have accepted that I exist only at the whims of the algorithm so I should know by now that when it serves me a song that I really like, I shouldn’t wait six months to listen to the album that the song is on, but that’s exactly what happened with Cavetown. “Lemon Boy” showed up at some point early this year and I loved it and have listened to it and put it on my 
Like so many other people on the internet, I have been playing Cat Condo because it is a soothing and simple distraction in a chaotic world. There’s not much to say about it other than the cats are extremely cute and I really like being able to come and go without any commitment to sit and tap unless I want to because the game keeps generating cats in my absence. What a time to be alive.
I started reading this just as before my mom’s emergency started and it was an immensely welcome distraction while dealing with hospital stuff and waiting waiting waiting and also any time my brain started to spiral into thoughts I couldn’t control. I’m sure this whole series will show up on my end of year list, so I won’t say too much, but the fact that I could get lost in this, even in the midst of some of the worst days of my life and that it could offer me some substantial relief from my own thoughts is genuinely a testament to its immersive world and engaging characters.
We saw Ghost live in Minneapolis this month and OH MY GOD, what a freakin’ show! Theatrics! Goofy stage banter! Pyrotechnics! Guitar solos! Masked, ~anonymous musicians! A sinister pope playing the saxophone! A keytar! Fog! A packed audience chanting ominously to Satan! Fans in costumes! The weirdest, most random, mixed-up audience I’ve ever been part of! Drunk older women coming up to tell me how much they love my Get Bent tank top! I super recommend going to see them if you get the chance at any point, even if you don’t think it’s your thing. This show was just bonkers and I will definitely get out to the see them again as soon as humanly possible.
We’re in St. Louis right now and it’s beautiful here. I am all about this good Fall Shit and I am soaking it the hell in every second that we’re here. Fall came and went in about a week here and I am sure we’ll return to frigid misery, so I will take what Missouri will give me and say thank you.
As I’ve probably mentioned a hundred-thousand times before, I have a LOT of trouble absorbing information aurally, so I’ve – frustratingly, tbh! – never been able to get into podcasts. But I kept seeing people talk about My Brother, My Brother, and Me and just generally excitedly recommending all of the McElroy endeavors, so I tried it out and it’s 1. hysterical, and 2. so much easier to listen to than I expected and Crystal and I have been listening to it a lot! (Well, like, one or two a week. YMMV on “a lotâ€. I know you people are insatiable when it comes to podcasts.) I still don’t know which one is which or whose voice belongs to who, but that’s really fine and I figure after enough time I’ll probably get it and in the meantime I laugh a lot and also extremely love listening to them laugh at each other. What finally convinced me to try listening was 
A guy I follow on Instagram (He did merch at a show Crys and I went to and was extremely nice and friendly!) mentioned he was going out on tour with the KVB later this month, so I did as I almost always do when people talk about music in any capacity and went to check them out. I listened through their entire discography and was super into it! I am especially into their most recent album Only Now Forever, especially that eponymous song, “On My Skin,” and “Afterglow,” but the album as a whole is just really solid. It’s that sort of dreamy and ethereal synth pop shoegaze thing, which has been extremely my musical wheelhouse lately and I’m glad to have another discography to add to my playlist and a new “Fans Also Like” section to explore on Spotify.
Because Crystal and I have a long, long, looooong history with Supernatural and because it’s about to go into its final season, we decided to try to catch up so we could watch it in (roughly) real time as it airs. It hasn’t gone exactly to plan — we’re nine episodes into season 13 — but it has been pretty fun! I can’t say that I’ve ever thought of Supernatural as GOOD, per se, even when it was my favorite show, but it has always been a pretty okay time. The characters get both a little better and a little worse each year, but I’ve really fallen for some of the recurring characters (Rowena! Jack! Crowley, obviously! Castiel, sometimes to often!) and have really, really loved the reintroduction of Mary Winchester. If you could go back to 2006 and tell me that this goofy show I was obsessed with would get FIFTEEN SEASONS, I would have laughed in your face. What a wild ride, man.
Through whatever algorithmic magic occurred this month, I finally heard a Billie Eilish song and it was pretty good! So then I listened to When We all Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?! And that was really good! And, were I still compelled to tweet with the frequency and volume I once did, I would have tweeted ‘i finally listened to billie eilish and i enjoyed it am i young again now’ because through the alchemical magic of pop culture, I did kind of feel young! I like “bad guy” A LOT because of the dramatic tempo change (One of my musical weaknesses!) and “you should see me in a crown” is extremely good and I got pretty appropriately obsessed with “my strange addiction” and I love the unsettling opening of “all the good girls go to hell” and its echo-y chorus too. “bury a friend” is also a jam and “listen before i go” is lovely. I really like the layering and reverb and bass drop stuff here and I love that it never feels like it’s hiding either her lyrics or voice. The kids are alright.
Speaking of kids, we watched Rim of the World which was less awful than I expected from McG and actually a very good time. I love when kids get to save the world! And I love and am terrified of aliens! And these had an actually pretty interesting design that didn’t feel like I’d seen it a thousand times (Humanoid aliens are boring!) even if the CGI was lackluster. The kids in this are really funny and charming and smart, especially considering they aren’t working with the greatest script ever produced, and I really appreciated that solving problems always came down to working together and doing the thing that needed to be done, even in the face of extreme fear. It also made me extremely homesick for southern California, despite the apocalyptic alien invasion.
I joke with Crystal all the time that when I conceptually attached myself to Ryland Blackinton way back in 2008 when he was with Cobra Starship (and I made a custom shirt for our three night tour following trip that said ‘RYLAND IS GOD’ on the back…) I really hung my hat on the right guy. He works a lot and every time he shares something new he worked on, I end up loving it. The newest is Goldroom’s Everybody’s Lonely EP which is extremely good, both chill and dance-able, and so far ceaselessly repeatable. Please immediately go listen to 
