In my quest to ressurect late 2000s-early '10s blogging culture, I'm going to start doing a weekly "I'm Reading, I'm Watching, I'm Listening To" post. I'm adding a section for video games too because I'm a dork. It's very self indulgent, but I loooooove doing little roundups of all the art I'm engaging with. Yeah, yeah, that's a pretentious way of phrasing it, but I DETEST the phrase "media I'm consuming", and that's the only other way I could think to put it. What an awful, sterile phrase. I'd rather be pretentious than dull. Art is supposed to be participatory! It's supposed to ENRICH your life, not just pass through you.
ANYWAY I want this to be a way for me to be excited about stuff I'm into right now, and to hear what you're into! Let's be excited about things!
Also I mentioned in my intro post that I want to have a world that's just for reviews. My idea right now is that I do short little roundup in these posts, and then do more expanded deep dives on the review world. I have the attention span of a goldfish though, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
With that all out of the way, here's what I've been digging lately:
I'M READING
I am working my way through A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin. Folks who follow me on Tumblr will know that I decided to give the ASOIAF series a shot last yearn and have been pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoy them. I have a rotten contrarian streak and reflexively avoid anything that's too popular whether I have a reason to dislike it or not, and that's made me avoid this franchise with a ten foot pole for years. What a shame, they're a blast! I would have been OBSESSED with these books in high school, they would have been my entire personality. Hm, on second thought maybe it's for the best I didn't read them till my mid twenties actually.
In terms of comics I have a big old backlog I'm slowly working through. I'm very big on Chainsaw Man and Dorohedoro right now, they freaking rule. I'm also currently in the middle of two different Wonder Woman books; George Perez' post-Crisis run, and Greg Rucka's Rebirth run. Maybe it's just my little kid brain, but gosh I love Wonder Woman.
I have a few other things on the backburner. Let's see, there's The Goon, which I've been working on of and on fora few years now. There's the TMNT treasury and the Heavy Metal Alien books I got for Christmas, and there's Spider-Man: Blue, which is phenomenal and CRIMINALLY hard to get your hands on. I'm also reading the Fantastic Four story where they try to get Galactus to fight Sphinx. A friend recommended that I start with John Byrne's run if I wanted to get into FF comics, so I tracked down the very first issue he's credited on. Of course, if I had done more research I would have know that issue was drawn by Byrne and written by Marv Wolfman, so that PROBABLY wasn't what my friend meant. That's alright, it's not like Wolfman is a downgrade haha.
Finally, last but not least, I am rereading the Hellboy series from the beginning. Gosh, I love Hellboy. 13yo me was not right about much of anything, but she was right to be obsessed with Hellboy. These are the best damn comics on earth.
I'M WATCHING
My two big TV shows right now are Justice League and The Crown. Inside of you are two wolves and so on. Oh, I also binged all the available episodes of Dungeon Meshi earlier this week. It's delightful! I will be keeping up with that for sure. May need to track down the manga too.
I'm also a very big fan of this webseries called Monkey Wrench right now. Just an insanely good bit of indie animation, it's criminal how under the radar it is. Go watch Monkey Wrench.
One of my resolutions this year was to watch more movies. So far this year I haven't watched nearly enough movies, so I'll have to change that. My most recent movie was a rewatch of Knives Out. Gosh it's good. I don't think I need to pitch anyone on this movie at this point in time, but it's just a blast.
I'M PLAYING
I've been out of a job for a month or so, and I responded the way anyone would: by getting alarmingly into Animal Crossing: New Horizons again. I'm kinda proud of my island right now actually, hmu and I'll give you a tour!
I also got Metroid Prime Remastered for Christmas, and I'm enjoying it very much! I actually have all the Metroid Prime games on their original hardware, but the sad fact is I'm much too lazy to set up my Gii to play all the great Wii and Gamecube games I own. So I've been really excited anytime an old favorite gets a rerelease on the Switch. Sure it's just the companies' way of getting me to buy something twice, but I'll happily pay for convenience at this point. For example, if they ported Twilight Princess to the Switch, I would happily pay full price. Hint hint, Nintendo. I know you're reading this. Port Twilight Princess.
I'M LISTENING TO
I've been on a bit of a Metric kick lately. I've been a fan since high school, and they just keep getting better and better. Their two most recent albums, Formentera and Formentera II, absolutely kick ass. That said, I don't think anything could ever top Old World Underground for me. It's kind of a perfect album.
And that's about it! Dunno how to wrap this up really, but I had fun writing this! It's a very self indulgent exercise that I don't expect many people will read all the way through, but it kept me busy for an hour or so haha.
Tell me what you're into right now, I'd love to hear!
