Max Landis, son of director John Landis and a screenwriter in his own right, made this video about the time that DC Comics killed Superman. If you don’t like comics, you should still watch this because it’s awesome. On top of being fun to watch, it also features Mandy Moore, Elijah Wood, Simon Pegg, and many other famous people.

Watch it. I’m not kidding.

The latest in their never ending quest to make the most awesome music videos ever. I love “Needing/Getting” already and this only makes me like it more.

26! (Photo courtesy DJOtaku)

Everything’s all creaky and sore and old, but just because I’m 26 and old doesn’t mean you guys don’t get to find out what I’ve been doing.

Movies

Drive – Finally got around to catching this movie. Min was accurate in calling it more of an art movie than an action movie. Ryan Gosling’s pure rage and “coolness” bordered on psychopathic and I actually sympathized with Albert Brooks’ villain character. This movie is not for the faint of stomach. Lots of brutal violence. Has an 80s ambiance too that’s reinforced by the synth-heavy (and awesome) chillwave soundtrack

Moneyball – David got me this (THANKS DAVID!) and I love it. Started watching it because Min had never seen it and Tiffany needed something to help her fall asleep. Min liked it and it helped Tiffany fall asleep, which is great because otherwise she might have noticed me start to tear up. Sports movies are the best/worst. They really get me.

TV

Homeland – How I managed to put off watching the last three episodes of this season until last week is baffling. This show is the best new thing to come out this year. Great, tense drama. Amazing show.

Samurai Champloo – The last fun episodes before the finale are about as bizarre as television gets. Weird space zombies, bizarre baseball episodes. This show really just throws everything serious out the window before its end. I hope the last three episodes are cool. I’ll miss this show. It’s been a good journey.

Justified – Everyone and everything in this show is so badass and awesome. I love it. Can’t wait to see more gunslinging.

New Girl – The whole Jess/Julia contrast is really interesting. I really like Lizzy Caplan. Hopefully the show doesn’t just get rid of her. The cumrudgeon in her personality contrasts quite nicely with Deschanell.

Glee – If there were ever an artist that could match the awesomeness levels of the Madonna episode, Michael Jackson would be it…except he wasn’t. Meh storytelling combined with odd song selection (“Scream” with Artie as MJ and Mike Chang as Janet? What?) made for a stronger episode than usual, but not up to par with what the King of Pop deserves.

Persona 4: The Animation – I wish I hadn’t waited so long to see these episodes. The hilarity of Yu Narukami and the Persona 4 series is amazing. This show does a great job of capturing the events of P4.

Parks and Recreation – One of my favorite episodes of the season. Oren is always hilarious as were all the weird suitors they chose for Ann. The Ron Swanson runner where he was loving the scavenger hunt was amazing. Perfectly acted by Nick Offerman.

Archer – So many callbacks to other episodes! Archer continues to have an exceptionally strong third season. I was surprised at how great it was.

Up All Night – The starfuckers line was the best of the episode. Show is finding its legs, for sure. I’m happy with it.

Music

Rodrigo y Gabriela – Their new CD, Area 52, is amazing. Check it out if you can. It’s their old stuff, but with a full Cuban orchestra thrown in for good measure. Fun stuff.

Books

Nope

Video Games

The Old Republic – Finding time to play alts with Min has really slowed me down. We are making great raid progress though. On to Hard Modes!

Cave Story + – When I defeat you, Monster X, you will know my wrath. I hate you so much.

Ghost Trick – Getting close to the end and the puzzles are only getting more and more devious. Gotta figure out how to save this dude’s life!

People who really know me know that obsessing over a video game isn’t exactly odd behavior for me. I play an astounding number of hours of video games each year, but this was past that line. We’re talking canceling social engagements to make a raid or just not leaving my room for anything but meals all weekend. Clearly not healthy behavior.

Then the unspeakable happened: Bioware announced that they would be continuing their Old Republic franchise in an MMO form. My moratorium was in serious jeopardy. I love Bioware games and I was particularly fond of the Old Republic stuff too. The ban would have to be lifted.

Of course I couldn’t just dive in. Rules have to be observed. When it came down to it, the biggest one that I was forcing myself to follow was to never let the game get in the way of my social life. That means no canceling dates or hanging out with friends in favor of playing the game. It sounds obvious, but I didn’t manage it before.

So far I’ve been doing pretty well with TOR. It’s nothing at all like WoW. I did start getting into work and going to bed later, but I’ve yet to cancel any social engagements and I’ve been actively keeping up with my friends and family. I kept myself from overcommitting by joining a chill guild that has a pretty loose raid schedule. So far we’ve made good progress in the game without too much drama at all. Overall, it’s been a much more pleasant experience than playing WoW was.

Funny thing about school is that people cycle out. Every four years, on average, the slate is wiped clean. 2011 was the year Cornell was officially emptied for me. The last friend I knew on campus had graduated in May, which means that my reasons for being at the school, reunions aside, have all but disappeared.

Every year after graduation means another year of drifting apart from the relationships that were so crucial and big in my life during undergrad. I keep close with a few important ones, but you can’t argue with the drift of time. People who graduated and went to the same city I did aren’t there any more. People who did are now functionally too far away to see frequently. For someone who moved around a lot as a kid like I did, this feels like a natural attrition rate, but I still wish my close friends lived closer.

It felt like everyone I knew was at that MSG game in 2009 and like we made a bigger effort to rendezvous. I know that, numerically, the numbers were probably about the same in 2011 (a lot of people from undergrad live in/around NYC, so it’s not really a trip for them), but the game was far less of a foregone conclusion to me this year. I think I’ll probably go again in 2013, but it’ll be one of those things I have to think about, you know? It’ll probably be the same way with class reunions. Five years is next year. I bet that’s the biggest turnout 2008 gets (ten years might be bigger because of our obsession with powers of 10, but I’m hedging my bets on five) because Cornell gets smaller and smaller in our memories the longer we’re away from it.

That’s what I cherished so much about going to the game this year. I got to see my favorite people from undergrad once again. Sure, I also got to see some I didn’t like and it also felt far too short, but these moments will never be this easy as the years keep marching on.

Was I expecting to learn that my brother was having a kid back in October? No way. I mean, the invitation was a little weird and out of character, but I wasn’t expecting that kind of bombshell to be dropped on me.

I use bombshell as a descriptor, but we all know that the extent to which this will actively affect my life will not necessarily be huge. I’m not personally responsible for a new life, my brother and sister-in-law are. It’s just….crazy. I mean, I know my brother is three years older than me and we’re both closer to 30 than we are to 20, but still! He’s a guy I remember at age eight!

When you think about it, it’s kind of weird that I think of this as a huge event. I’ve got plenty of cousins with kids. The oldest of them are older than my youngest siblings, so I’ve had a long time to be used to people of my generation having kids, but this is my brother, man.

I also find that my sense of responsibility is much greater than it was when I was in undergrad. I mean, maybe it has to do with being older or maybe it has to do with occasionally caring for my younger siblings, but I have no fears about taking care of young kids. Just six years ago I would have been paralyzed with fear that a kid would choke on something or I’d drop her or something like that. Now it feels like it’s not a big deal at all.

The other thing I’ve learned, mostly from Eric, is how exciting and scary the prospect of parenthood is. I’ve seen his emotions range on the spectrum of ecstatic to terrified and that makes a lot of sense. His life is about to change tremendously and I have a lot of respect for him and Danielle for taking on what amounts one of the most important roles, on an individual level, for people.

There’s a long way to go before the kid is up and walking around and talking, but how mind blowing is it that something that started as two cells merged together is gonna have a personality and a voice and she’s gonna call me “Tio”. Bizarre.

(Photo courtesy DJOtaku)

]]> http://nothingtothetable.com/archives/3643/feed 0 http://nothingtothetable.com/archives/3641 http://nothingtothetable.com/archives/3641#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:40:45 +0000 Dan http://nothingtothetable.com/?p=3641

Of all the movies in this video, only The Secret World of Arrietty interests me at all. That is not good. I guess I don’t have to go to the movies in Feb…

Here's a suggestion: If you're playing Cave Story for the first time, don't pick hard mode (Photo courtesy escaped.monkey)

Busy weekend with lots of media consumed. That kind of thing happens when I hang out with Min.

Movies

The Descendants – Shailene Woodley was a revelation as Alex in this movie. Excellent acting. George Clooney was also quite good. Pretty chill movie and worth seeing, even if the land ownership subplot is kind of tacked on and not as interesting.

Evangelion 2.22 – I thought I’d seen this…but I hadn’t. I really missed seeing some of the fun/interesting battles of the old tv show. I mean, cutting Israfel in favor of a school drama plot about making Shinji lunch and a dinner party? I’d rather have that sequence instead. I also get that the movie doesn’t allow for the ponderous and deliberate psycho-analytic battle against Leliel, but it’s one of my faves so I was bummed about losing it too. Did not care for the new pilot, Mari, at all, and I didn’t love the business with mixing up who’s who in the battle against Bardiel, but, whatever, right? Some things are different. 2.22 makes me want to watch Neon Genesis Evangelion instead. The more relaxed pace allows for much greater character development and interesting concepts. We’ll see what happens with the rest of the movies and the new ending.

Tangled – Min hadn’t seen this, it was on instant, and we were bored. It’s pretty great, but I hate the video quality of the Starz movies.

Haywire – Went to see this on Sunday and it cut out 40 minutes in. We could have either stayed to watch it from the beginning or taken a voucher for a new movie. As interested in seeing this as I was, I couldn’t stomach watching the slow opening 40 minutes again. I’ll either try again or wait for Netflix.

TV

Childrens Hospital – Ward 8 and the children stabbing Nick Offerman with pencils was great. So was the Bob Seger joke to find out how old he was. Fantastic show. Can’t wait for a new season.

Up All Night – Megan Mullally and Shayna. So great. The bit about cheating on watching a TV show with your spouse was great. Super awkward.

Glee – Pretty interesting “Summer Nights” recreation, complete with the overlay in the climactic final note. I like songs like “Wedding Bell Blues”, but the processed voices sound a lot like they don’t belong in the show. I guess it was a dream sequence Wow, making Artie move/act like Mick Jagger is surprisingly effective even though he’s in a wheelchair. Whoa…what?! The thing about Finn’s dad came out of NOWHERE.

Justified – I’m cool with case of the week stuff when it’s this good. Sometimes it’s ok for Raylan not to be the absolute center. I hope they get Carla Gugino on the show more. The other new villain is appropriately scary.

Archer – “Cyril?” “No breakfast for you!” Another great episode of Archer this week. I miss Ray as a field agent, but I guess this has a lot of comic potential.

Parks and Recreation – The bit about Tom bowling like a grandma (and Ron begging him to have some decency as a man) was amazing. April being nice is unusual, but she’s been softening up a lot anyway. Still one of the greatest shows out there.

Scrubs – Just put it on for a few minutes to pass some time. Always a good show.

Sherlock – The middle episode about the Chinese smugglers is kind of boring, but the Moriarty episode is fantastic. I love how crazy Jim Moriarty is. So great.

John Oliver’s New York Stand Up Show – Popped this on during dinner for something to laugh to. Pretty good stuff.

Music

The Gregory Brothers – You know they put up a new Auto-Tune (Songify?) the News segment, so that got me listening to all of them again. I even dipped into their non-ATtN music because I love Sarah Gregory’s voice.

Books

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – Slow and steady. Bloomqvist sure gets around with the ladies, doesn’t he?

Video Games

The Old Republic – The guild’s got Eternity Vault Normal on farm status so now it’s time to start working on Karagga’s Palace.

Ghost Trick – Making a lot of progress in this game. The mystery continues to deepen as my Spanish continues to improve. I love playing games in Spanish!

Earthbound (Mother 2) – Started up a new save file to play in between bosses in a raid. Fun times. Still very early in the game (haven’t explored the meteor yet)

Rayman: Origins – Min and I beat the game and started going for the prestige levels. Holy god the last one, Land of the Livid Dead, is about as punishing as the game can get. Platforming gets frustrating, but it’s also got a super satisfying feel once you conquer it.

Cave Story + – Thought I’d boot up something different while Min was napping. This game is pretty fun and pretty solid, but deciding I should play it on hard mode may have been a mistake. I’m stuck on Monster X because he’s a beast. Every one of his purple projectiles kills me in one hit, so I’ve got to be perfect. On the good side of the spectrum, the machine gun mechanics are amazing. Love that gun and the ability to float with it.

I saw that they were adding boxart Mega Man to the roster. Now I’m a lot less certain about whether or not I should buy it…

Complete with Joseph Gordon-Levitt cameo! I guess it’s called Songify the News now?