Hi it's Rowan,
Welcome back errbody! Again, we have gained subscribers since last week, let’s keep this bish growing! Thank you so much, it's really encouraging :)
Nothing too crazy on my plate this week just been watching a lot of stuff (honestly feeling like I've wasted a lot of time. Again, using the log system I talked about last week, has made me feel really guilty. I'm constantly comparing myself to myself and even at the end of my work week, when I naturally don't create as much (and I can recognize this), I consistently feel like I'm not (doing) enough. Like I should've been more productive and done more measurable things).
To help counteract this, my last few notes in my logbook were notes on brainstorming and ideas I thought about and more explicitly saying what I spent time watching (particularly on YouTube). This helps, not only make me feel less bad as a sort of quantitative comparison between the days but also assists in cementing these ideas.
Now on to some reviews!
Things to check out this week:
I've been a pedestrian fan of lil darkie for a minute but was really excited to see this new track. The album artwork is really cool and this song has a feature from Muscle Man of Regular Show fame. It's also got British darkie which is a voice the artist goes into sometimes. Great song.
This actually got me down a bit of a rabbit hole. I started thinking about what lil darkie's community might look like. What are the niche memes they post online? What kind of humor/rapport do they engage with? So, as anyone might do, I take a look toward r/lildarkie. Immediately I see a lot of praise for the new song, occasionally seeing a few people who hated it. I start seeing some fan art, and some actual pictures of the real-life dude. I had thought that he was one of those animated only/character-driven artists who didn't reveal their face. Then further down, some more fan art but this time including some other folks I do not recognize visually but names like Afourteen, BLCKK, and Cxrpse. I catch a few "Spider Gang" tier lists and it includes these other folks I've been seeing I put together that this is the moniker their group goes by. I then look to Spotify for some SPIDERGANG playlists and found one that was the longest, so I've been inching my way through that. On a shuffle, it can be real easy to have several songs in a row that are a bit rough, and by that I mean they aren't subjectively good to my taste.
I was on the ol' Spotify desktop app, where it allows you to sonically stalk people, and I see someone listening to a song called Swimming by Lunar Vacation, I had never heard it before but I give it a click and low and behold it's a classic 2017 indie band and that's because its housing album Swell, is just that an indie album from 2017.
Remi Wolf came out with her debut album Juno named after her dog who is featured on the album art. I first heard Remi on Monte Carlo a really fun song to throw your head to. The vibes are immaculate and hilarious at times. I don't have much to say about the songs but you can catch her on this episode of The Cave with Kenny Beats where she sits down and makes a song with Kenny. This gives interesting light into her songwriting process which opened my eyes to how some of the songs on this album came to be.
Squid Game on Netflix
I'm sure you've all heard about this show by now but I just finished the series. My girlfriend and I watched it subbed because we aren't heathens. If you are watching it dubbed I would suggest NOT doing that, I couldn't imagine being able to emotionally invest yourself in some of the dumb ways these characters sound. You are doing yourself a disservice. But like I mentioned last week, this is how Netflix takes over the world. I've also heard that the Spanish dub is streets ahead of the English dub.
Thoughts on the end? and thematics without giving much away? The theme is pretty clear and shoved down your throat a bit. The Squid Game isn't strange it's actually far fairer and more rewarding than life outside. Great, thank you. Money can't buy happiness. Oh thank you. If all you care about is mo- Okay, yes! I get it! Thanks so much. I don't know who still needs to be reminded of these things we are taught, oh so repeatedly, through media and mediums of all sorts. I'd like to say that I am a believer that money is everything. Not that it holds the key to happiness but oftentimes people who say that money doesn't matter are people who have it, and have a lot. As they've probably realized that money and things won't make you happy. For them, the perceived necessity of money is just that, for achieving happiness, but for people who don't have a disposable income, money isn't really a means for happiness but for survival, and more often than not, a point of stress in their lives.
That being said, the characters are so intriguing, and seeing how they respond to the games was never disappointing. I found all the behaviors and motives really realistic if not just understandable, a wee caveat to this is that it makes events and choices far too predictable. Great show! But don't just take my word for it, watch it for yourself and let me know what you think! You can leave a comment or reply directly to this email.
Karen Puzzles and Jenny Nicholson
I don't know why but I have been absolutely absorbed by these two YouTube channels lately. The first is Karen Puzzles which is one I discovered thanks to Tom Scott's newsletter where he pointed to her especially thorough examination of an "armchair" mystery box with a million-dollar prize that has never been collected. I just started here but soon was captivated by every video each with its unique twist, some jigsaws being completely clear or some with false edge pieces, odd shapes, and colors, and so on. She is both kind of annoying and kind of endearing.
Jenny Nicholson recently posted an hour and twenty-minute video completely incinerating the new Dear Evan Hansen movie musical. Now, as someone who has listened to the music, found most of it, aside from a few songs, mediocre, and has read the wiki on the questionable plot I knew this would be a weird movie, to say the least. Having the movie come out so long after the original show and insisting that the original lead reprise their role... what a mistake and huge waste of time. This long-form complaint is not only hilarious, with Jenny's quips bringing light to her tirade but also cutting to clips of the movie out of context are just so goofy because of how disgusting its main character looks. I've watched some of her other videos and have since subscribed.
What I've got for ya:
Review of I, Robot by Issac Asimov
Well well well... was I in for quite the surprise while reading this book. As for many people my age I presume, I watched the movie when I was young, was decently entertained, blindsided by the twist ending and that was pretty much it. (If I'm being a little more personal with my thoughts on the movie, starring Will Smith mind you, I thought that shit was dope. I have seen it multiple times because of how dope I thought that shit was.)
When I picked up the book I was, as I had been entertained, decently confused. To simplify, the movie had essentially ripped off the name of Asimov's collection of stories. I, Robot contains a number of short stories that are loosely connected with a common character named Susan Calvin (who is notably old as opposed to the movie (but if I were to acknowledge every time the movie differed we would be here a while)), and the three fundamental laws of Robots. I won't state them here but the most important (why it is #1 on the list) is that robots may not cause direct harm to humans, or by their inaction may they allow a human to come to harm.
The stories that are to follow recount possible paradoxes and hangups that select robots have with particular orders given and how they coincide with their understanding of these three laws. A favorite takeaway from this novel for me is that in the end, the entire world is run by computers and no one noticed because it was going so well. They cared for or rather had no other option BUT to care for the preservation of humanity.
Review of A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle
I picked up this one figuratively up because I bet it'd be a nice story to lsiten to. And that it was.
A story of mystery, twists, and questioning how you experience your reality. A tale about communication and finding out what's below someone's surface, how people aren't always what they seem. This book is eons old so I doubt I'm saying anything new but the themes beneath a dimension bending adventure story are ones of family, trust, and being yourself... honestly like most adventure stories.
Take-Aways:
Is that I, and maybe you, should go easier on yourself. If I am going to compare days of productivity between each other then I should be honest and fair to myself. Including things that might have been a little less measurable and subtle effect on myself.
New music is new music. Check it out.
Squid Game is good but if you watch it dubbed you're a sinner. The message is clear and solid but makes motives predictable.
p.s. Muppets Haunted Mansion was too short, running at just 49 minutes! Pretty silly and wholesome family fun but over too soon.