Kind of feels like an odd line up this week, and I am trying to “encourage” myself to post more individual posts on some things, like gaming.
Gaming
I actually have been playing the LEGO Fortnite a fair bit. Primarily with some sandboxy elements on, so I can quickly build little villages, but still fight things. I doubt this lasts very long sadly, the game play loop is just… not that deep. Especially with the material grinding removed. Anyway, I hope to post more detail on it later.
Truck Sim has its Christmas event going on. The mechanics are very similar to the Halloween one. I also bought the remainder of the “Ultimate Edition” for $15 on the Steam winter sale. It adds Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Nebraska maybe? At least for stuff I didn’t already have. Anyway, I finished the event, with my 15 deliveries to Winterland. I did a few of them in Euro Truck SIM as well
Music
I picked up a stack of CDs for $5 at an estate sale. Some “experiment” stuff, some pretty decent stuff, including the Beatles’ One, though I think I have a copy of it already. Also I’ll need to swap some of the cases possibly, the previous owner of these CDs had some sort of really random system going where they would put times and notes on stickers on their CDs.
- Two Willie Nelson albums, Teatro and December Days. I don’t really know a ton about Willie Nelson’s music and thought I might at least give it a try. He is pretty famous and all that.
- Two John Denver albums. Similar to Willie, I am not actually super familiar with John Denver’s music, just more that he exists and the Muppet Christmas Album with him is great. That said, fun fact, John Denver is the first actual concert I ever went to. A friend in High School invited me, we went with his family. I don’t really remember any of it, but it was at Deer Creek Music Center in Indiana.
- The Best of Simon & Garfunkel
- The Beatles – One
- Elton John – The Big Picture
- Cher – Believe, I was, Ironically, listening to a song from this album in my car when I arrived at the sale.
- Reba McEntire – What If It’s You – This one is more for my wife to listen to
- Vespers Shine – A few years ago I started a little collection of local albums, this one is from 2011 and produced by Millikan University in town. I mostly have vinyl LPs, but I’m open to CDs. I get them when I find them at these estate sales.
- The Patsy Cline Collection – Honky Tonk Merry Go Round – I have a little interest in this, but I think my daughter is more into it, so it’s more for her if she wants it.
- Crosby Stills Nash & Young – So Far – I am kind of excited to give this one a go, but I’m not sure if I’ll actually like it much.
And lastly, I picked up Germany’s Greatest Hits… All of them. Right here, one CD, bam, the best Germany has to offer.
It was kind of a wild sale. I didn’t get any, but there were a LOT of records. Like… enough that I got tired of going through them, and I was looking for a while. Quite a bit of probably original artwork too. The place was really cluttered but kind of interesting in a “someone eccentric lived here” sort of way.
Movies and TV
I joked with my wife that we were watching Angelina Jolie’s exes. My daughter had turned on Ocean’s Eight, which I hadn’t seen. This inspired watching through Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen. With Brad Pitt. A bit later we also watched Snatched, also with Pitt.
We also started watching Landman. Its a sort of “new hotness” show that seems to be popular. It also has Billy Bob Thornton, who also was married to Angelina Jolie. I… kind of hate it. Its almost interesting, but it also feels like its paid for by oil propaganda advertisements. And has a fair amount of uncomfortable conservative undertones. But like, several times they push the standard anti green energy nonsense, and a whole lot of “Oil is God” narrative. It has it’s moments, but it’s a bit too much at times.
Anyway, Bully Bob Thornton and Brad Pitt were both partners with Angelina Jolie at some point.
Aside from some random Mortal Kombat animated films, I also finally watched the new Super Man. I liked it a lot more than I expected to actually. The plot was a little over filled, but it was all good,, better than grim dark DC.Â
From my Letterboxd:
Man, I always kind of disliked Superman for being overpowered and boring but this film is pretty good. It feels like there are a few… unorthodox plot choices? With the Superman harem subplot and the nanobot vomiting.
The supporting cast is all great too. Krypto steals every scene he is in like the good boy he is. I rather liked Guy Gardner as a sort of “Superhero who lets his superhero-ness go to his head a bit.” Super serious Mr Terrific was entertaining. Lex is an actual evil for the sake of evil villain, not some misguided sympathetic boring “evil” like so many villains end up being in these things.
The tone kind of really reminds me of the old Christopher Reeve films where its allowed to be goofy and fun for the sake of being goofy and fun. It borrows a lot of elements introduced in those films as well, especially when it comes to Lex Luthor.
In other TV interests, and I really want to do a separate write up for it, I watched The Amazing Digital Circus. It’s kind of amazing. I had absolutely no idea what it was going in, I just had found some random meme on Reddit with one of the characters, and decided to watch it.
It was surprisingly incredibly good, though the release cadence is so slow, I thought it was probably done but then there are two more episodes to come out, and neither is coming for months.
