For today’s post I am going to write something a little off topic. This blog and website will forever remain devoted to board games, and the rental of them, but on occasion I plan on writing about other things I’m interested in.
I’ve been an avid blogger since college, with varying levels of success. The height of my blogging career was when I was writing about Mixed Martial Arts for the Bleacher Report.
This was before the Bleacher Report became a legitimate sports reporting agency. It was more like the wild west, and anyone could write for the website. I was the number two blogger on the topic of MMA, something I was pretty proud of.
Ultimately, like with all of my blogs over the years, it ended mainly because I got bored of writing about such a narrowly focused topic. Whether it was writing about movies, comic books, or the sport of powerlifting; nothing has really stuck.
I don’t want that to become the case with this blog, and I don’t think it really will be since I have a number of interconnecting interests that tie into it i.e. podcasting, small business aspirations. But I still think it is important to take a mental break to avoid any sort of major doldrum.
In the past some of my most off topic posts were still pushing board games. These are usually my theme week blogs, where I pick a board game to be used as inspiration for a weeks worth of posts. I’ve did this for The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire and a few other games in my collection. These have consistently been my favorite part of blogging on this website.
For today’s post I just thought I’d share some things I’m currently enjoying, or things I’m interested in that are completely free of board games. A strength and conditioning blog I occasionally read does these sorts of off topic posts from time to time, and I usually really like reading them.
Movies
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Right now, in my opinion, this movie is the GOAT when it comes to superhero movies. I’ve only seen it once, but I’ve been dying to see it again.
Into the Spider-Verse is now available on DVD, and I’m hoping to find some downtime in the next couple of days to got rent it.
What I loved about this movie
For starters the animation is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It is really hard to describe the look of this movie. It is CG animation, but done in a way to also mimic some of the elements of a comic book. It’s my understanding that the animators first animated the movie in CG, and then went over it again animating parts of it by hand. Simply amazing.
I’ve grown kind of tired of the Disney Pixar and Dreamworks Animation looks.
The story is also really good, and it was nice that it didn’t fit into the larger MCU narrative. I love the MCU movies, but the lore of them can be overwhelming at times. It was nice to have a standalone story that I could watch without having to worry about what Captain America, The Hulk, and the rest of MCU characters are doing.
I loved the character of Miles Morales as well in the film. I grew up reading Peter Parker Spider-Man comics, and I never spent a lot time with the Ultimate Marvel comic books. I knew some of the origins of Miles Morales, and the history of the characters creation, but not enough to make me an expert.
Morales has been around for almost 10-years, but the character still felt very fresh to me. I liked getting to know a new character that I didn’t already have 25-years of baggage with going into the film.
Say what you will about the new more inclusive direction of the Marvel Comics, and cinematic universes, but the Afro-Latino Morales has remained perhaps the most popular element in the new direction the comics and movies have taken with their characters.
Some might decry the use of Morales as pandering to PC culture, which is a fair critique, but I still think this is a great movie. Plus, I’m currently in an interracial relationship, and I like that my girlfriend’s son has a Latino superhero to look up to. I usually shy away from anything that could be perceived as political on this blog, but in this instance I’m breaking with tradition
Free Solo
This is another movie I’ve been dying to see again. It’s strange to me that both of these movies were Oscar winning films, but for completely different categories.
Like a lot of people I think it is fun to watch the Oscar nominated films leading up to or after the awards show. Although, ultimately I find most of the movies unwatchable after my initial viewing. Many of these films are good, but all of them have a sort of generic Oscar sheen added to them which make many of them pretty forgettable, or not worth re-watching in my book.
Sure there are gems like Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, and just about anything Martin Scorsese does, but I’m usually not left wanting more after my initial viewing.
With Free Solo, that is not the case. Part of this is probably because I was an Alex Honnold fan prior to the release of the movie. I found him intriguing as an athlete, and knew who he was going in to watching it. Another part of this is I’ve become more and more interested in the sport of rock climbing.
Either, way I love this movie, and have been dying to see it again ever since I first saw it at the movie theater in Muskegon
Why I loved this movie
First off, the story alone for this documentary is really compelling. Honnold climbed Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan without a rock climbing harness. That alone should be crazy considering one wrong move could mean certain death. What was just as crazy though is that he did it in only one day, with the pressure of a film crew following along the whole time. Typically, El Capitan takes climbers multiple days to climb.
Stories about human achievement, and things that seem completely superhuman have always been interesting to me. This movie combines both of those, but best of all it is funny.
This may have been my favorite comedy of the year, even though it isn’t marketed as such. Honnold is a funny awkward guy, my girlfriend and I found ourselves busting a gut on multiple occasions when watching this.
However, another great part of this movie is that it got me into exploring some of the other people in this movie. Honnold’s friend Tommy Caldwell, who is seen throughout the movie, has a story that is just as interesting or even more so than Honnolds.
It isn’t highlighted at all in the film, but Caldwell was taken hostage by terrorists during a climbing expedition in Kyrgyzstan. He managed to eventually escape his captors by pushing one of them off of a cliff. If that story isn’t compelling to you then I don’t know what to say, but I would have never known who Caldwell was if it wasn’t for me seeing Free Solo.
Books
Dune (currently reading)
This is not the first time that I’ve read this book. I probably read Dune 10-years-ago when I was in college, for whatever reason earlier in this year I decided I wanted to re-read the novel.
I’m really happy that I decided to. The book itself is about 800-pages long, or at least my copy is, but so far it has been a pretty easy for me to stick with. As much as I enjoy reading, I usually don’t read too many things this lengthy.
My last attempt at reading something close to 1,000 pages was Eiji Yoshikawa’s Musashi, which is historical fiction. I actually really enjoyed the time I spent reading that book, but I just couldn’t seem to finish it.
Surprisingly, at the rate I am reading Dune I expect to be done with it by sometime next week.
What I like about this book
Dune is a classic sci-fi novel, which is probably the fiction genre I tend to like the most. Prior to this year I didn’t read a lot of fiction, from my mid- to late-20s I mostly read non-fiction, with the occasional Orson Scott Card novel thrown in to the mix.
Musashi was probably hard for me to finish because it’s historical fiction. It is a genre I don’t typically read.
Some people love books that have a lot of world building in them. I’m not really one of those people. The idea of this sounds great to me in theory, and I’m impressed by authors who take the time to create lingo, or even a brand new language, for their books. However, it’s my opinion that most of the authors I’ve read who do this get too caught up in writing about the minutiae of the story, most of which is just really boring.
J.R.R. Tolkien was a philologist, and took the time to create the languages spoken on Middle Earth. Stephen King created a unique lingo for his Dark Tower series. I really hated reading both the LOTR trilogy and The Dark Tower series. The Dark Tower more so because it felt like a garbled mess of disparate plots without any discernible meaning. I still haven’t finished the last book.
Usually, a book that includes a small dictionary of terms in the back of it, or in the case of the Dark Tower a companion reference guide to be purchased, is probably something I will not like.
Somehow, Frank Herbert managed to write Dune in a way that feels less pretentious than the other fantasy and sci-fi authors that do this. Dune includes a small dictionary, and even an appendices of information in the back of the book. For whatever reason though the book seems easier to digest for me, and these things don’t feel very necessary to read and enjoy the plot of the book.
There is a lot of political intrigue in Dune, and although I don’t think it was written with the intent to be a commentary on OPEC and the things happening in the Middle East, it still manages to be a relevant allegory for both of those things.
The relevancy of this book today makes this a pretty compelling read, and is something I enjoy thinking about.
The Prince of Thorns
This is the book I read right before I started re-reading Dune. The Prince of Thorns will not be for everyone, but I really enjoyed the book, especially once I got about half way through it.
This story is a revenge tale, and the character at times seems completely immoral. Jorg Ancrath is a prince who watched his mother and brother murdered before him by his uncles men. He is left for dead by his father for political reasons. Seeking vengeance Jorg joins up with a band of blood thirsty criminals that he freed from prison.
He eventually kills his uncle, takes control of his lands, and then positions himself to become an enemy to his father. Jorg is not a nice person, and doesn’t do things unless they benefit him in some way.
What I like about this book
The Prince of Thorns is a brutal book, and in a way it is both fantasy and sci-fi. The book at first feels like pure fantasy filled with necromancers and sword fighting mercenaries , but there are these weird little details about the history of the Roman Empire, and ancient philosophers that are sprinkled through out.
It takes a bit of piecing together, but the world Jorg lives in is a post-apocalyptic version of Europe, that at first glance would be recognizable as something in a fantasy story. I really liked this unique take on the genre.
I also liked that Jorg wasn’t trying to save the world, his motivation at first was to get revenge, and later to conquer the world. This is a perspective I don’t think is usually written about in fantasy, which is what makes it all the more compelling.
The Prince of Thieves is the first book in the Broken Empire series, which is subdivided into two storylines. I can’t wait to finish Jorg’s tale, and then read the other three books written by Mark Lawrence.
Podcasts
Disgraceland
I love podcasts, I rotate through a number of them on a regular basis, casually adding new ones to my favorites list, and discarding ones that I no longer listen too. In 2018 there were a number of new podcasts I got into, but by far my favorite was Disgraceland.
Disgraceland is a music podcast with a twist. Instead of music nerds talking about new albums and artists tracks it does something very different – It tells stories. These stories are usually slickly produced pieces that are meticulously researched by the shows host Jake Brennan.
Most of these stories are sort of dark and weird, it was originally sold as a true crime music podcast, which I think is an appropriate description. I love learning the history behind music and the musicians who play it.
Once considered the most dangerous band in the world The Rolling Stones have been episode subjects on more than one occasion. I found this interesting since, as good as their music is, they don’t have that sort of image any longer.
Whatever punk rock rebellious nature they once had is now over shadowed by the extravagant ticket prices they charge for their concerts, and the corporate licensing of their music for Martin Scorsese films.
A lot of your favorite artists probably have skeletons in their closets they’d rather you soon forget.
What I like about this podcast?
First off, this podcast is really well produced. The audio, the music, the very presentation is sort of amazing. It is worthy to be an NPR podcast, the show in its first season was completely independent, and had a team of only one person.
Jake Brennan the host researches, hosts, edits, and creates all the music for the show. At least he did for season one. When he took a break from the show towards the end of the 2018, I was bummed, but it was understandable considering how much work he puts into this.
The level of production and detail put into this show is just an audio treat. Seriously, this guy could produce a podcast about the life cycle of worms, and I would want to listen to it.
Of course the production of the show is all a bonus really, because I find the subject of the show so dang interesting.
I love music, so much so I have physical reactions to it when I listen to it. I get shivers, shakes, break out into tears at times, and at times completely chilled to my bone when I hear things. I didn’t know that I was unique in this regard, but apparently some people don’t have these sorts of reactions.
In addition to loving music, I like story telling, and work as a reporter. The history behind music has always been interesting, and this podcast combines the two together. Which is a real feast.
Season Two just started, it is a two part series about Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and Hole’s Courtney Love relationship. The story has been beaten to death in the media to the point of no longer being interesting. There have been numerous documentaries and T.V. specials produced on the subject, articles and books written. But I could care less because this podcast makes a story as old as time still interesting.
Lakeshore Game Night 