Another blog episode

RELAAAAX

At some point I really will finish my top 2010 albums list. Seriously I honestly will. It's mostly done, it's just that the albums I've put off writing about are the ones I've found difficult to write about, so it's sorta tedious. Ah well. So big spoiler warning, but not really surprising probably: the two Das Racist mixtapes ranked very highly. Of course they did. But in Das Racist last year I beheld something more profound and exciting than just a collection of excellent music: I saw the promise of more. Their maturation from early joke songs and silliness to masterpieces like “And the White Man Get Paid Off of All of That” was explosive. Not only did their skills and production budget improve, not only did their crew of collaborators expand to include some of the best out there today, but they started proceeding with an confidence that what they were doing was being appreciated and understood, which allowed them to really go all out without fear. This attitude, more than anything, is why I think Relax is going to be yet another tier above the mixtapes, perhaps even above things like “AtWMGPOoAoT” or “Swate”. This is now officially my most hyped album for the rest of the year unless Animal Collective gets in super HAM mode and releases their new album this year too.

YuruYuri episode 2

This show continues to impress, sort of surprisingly? This episode was legitimately funny and wacky in a way that's actually sort of inventive and interesting. Sure it goes a bit farther than necessary a few times, but what can you expect? At least it goes really far with the jokes at the same time, giving the fanservice some sense of purpose. The plotlines were as simple as they come, but they were legitimately plotlines, with problems and developments and solutions and all, which is more than a lot of other shows have mustered. But man they are doing weird, weird things with this. Like, spending their second episode focusing almost entirely on secondary characters. Or setting up some sort of multi-episode plot arc right at the start and then ignoring it pretty much entirely. Is that even going to come back? Well whatever. This is like a solid 8 I'd say.

Usagi Drop episode 2

Wow they are doing a good job with this. Still seems like they're in a bit of like a “development” phase, like, we haven't hit the routine or meat of the show yet. Or maybe we won't ever? I dunno, I figured this would settle down into really episodic slice of life stuff but maybe it'll be all development based. At any rate, they nailed the emotional qualities of the episode, you felt both the anxiety of him wanting to leave work and that of her waiting to be picked up. Conveying a sense of a lifestyle that, while not torture, just completely wears someone out is difficult to do, but when it works, it's quite profound and can leave the audience just as exhausted. I hear uh, “The Pursuit of Happiness” with Will Smith nailed this but I saw it on an airplane with no sound and it was just him running around and I had no idea what was happening. Anyways this show is definitely going places, I am quite impressed. Art style and such excellent as always. Only weird sorta thing is how jarring some of the more moe scenes can be, but whatever it's like, the only reason it's jarring is that usually the show is just all moe scenes, e.g.:

The Idolmaster episode 2

So I was sorta curious about how they'd manage to do a 13 character show and it seems like they're planning on chunking them into groups of 3 or 4 and doing episodes centered around each group. Works for me! So the groups seem to be like uh... the group in the episode (twins, poor girl and rich girl), old group (white, blonde and “attractive”), and characters I'm forgetting group (tomboy, shy girl, MC(?), animal girl), and then uh the other producer and is that it? I think I'm forgetting one. Oh singing girl, dunno what group she'll end up being in. Anyways I think this episode's group might be my favorite but I guess we'll have to see. The plotline was pretty good, had good opportunities for some funny stuff which was more just bizarre than funny but whatever, and the moral at the end was pretty standard but elegantly derived, I guess. They've set it up well to have the more experienced idols able to give lessons to the less experienced ones while still having problems themselves, like, they avoided the idea of a “mentor character” that only has one function and isn't too feasible. So yeah they had a “moral problem” of “how do I do good in my photoshoot” and the solution was “be yourself”. This was good because it let them go back to the core characteristics of the characters again and show how each was suited for the idol world, which is good, because they have to like, actively work on making each character really likable but also really simple. Succeeding so far. The whole moral situation I find hilarious, though, 'cause they're handing it out like it was a moral lesson to some kid on a soccer team for poor kids with problems at home. The only character that doesn't seem to have it completely and utterly made on lock is poor girl and even she's like happy poor. And yet we get these heavy doses of “wow you all learned something today” like these kids were struggling to get recognized by their parents or at least fighting monsters from space. Oh well. I can't say I'm not having fun watching this.

Nichijou episode 16

Wow this delivered in a HUGE way. Last few episodes I was jonsing for some Mio scenes and bam, here we go, Mio and Suzuhara and his goat all getting some real quality screentime. Plus, oh man, oh man, oh man, Yuuko visiting the lab!!!! Probably the most anticipated scene imaginable, aside from maybe more events in this whole chemistry teacher wants to kidnap Nano plot arc. And bam again it knocked it out of the park, way out there! This show is still on the upswing. We're gonna be seeing some amazing stuff. My goodness gracious.

Season 7 of Aqua Teen Hunger Force

Started watching this, sorta hit and miss but mostly good. At some point I'd like to figure out exactly what changed with this show over the years, because on paper it seems largely the same but it's different in a way that I can't put my finger on. When it's on point it's as good as it ever was, I'd say, but now it's like, the sort of the spaces between jokes where they need to set up new jokes is sorta weaker. I think they're getting too referency too. Oh well.

Season 2 of Party Down

Still enjoying this one a lot. I think Lydia is a better character than Constance but neither of them were executed all that well. I like Henry better in this position, works better with his character, I think. Now that he has responsibilities and cares about stuff he has a bit more of a conflict, which is cool. The stuff with him and uh, what's her name, Casey? I think. Anyways yeah I am amazed that I actually care about the relationship subplot. Like, probably the most I've cared about a sitcom relationship subplot since Tim and Dawn on the Office. Ron's character arc has been pretty endearing too. He's a pretty unique character. I didn't like him so much when he was mopey so yeah glad to see new new Ron. Last one I saw was the Steve Gutenburg one which is pretty excellent and I'm hoping for more development and wacky failures from Ron. Kyle and Roman are also getting expanded nicely but I'd be happy to see more multi-episode arcs for them, although I wouldn't want them to be too serious. Kyle's base jumping movie is good example of what I'd want to see. So yeah good times here.

Episode 2 of Season 8 of Curb Your Enthusiasm

Oh man CLASSIC CURB. This is exactly what we watch Curb for: several plotlines, all of them funny, all of them connected thematically, intertwined in the story, all of them motivated by some sort of societal failure, and, and this is where Curb starts to separate from it's predecessor, all of them HBO-only in terms of appropriateness. Now I mean like I'm not just into vulgar comedy for vulgarity's sake, but when you get something like this, where the shock side isn't presented as shocking, it just adds this whole new layer of absurdity that's really appealing. Tim and Eric also nail this in some of their stuff, basically anything absurd being treated as perfectly fine always has a chance of hilarity. Can't wait for more.

YuruYuri Episode 3

Less plot heavy than the last one but yeah makes sense. Sleepover episode is usually an archetype they do later on but I guess they wanted to really establish the idea of Yui and uh blond girl having a really old friendship, which was sorta ignored up until that point. So yeah pretty fun, some pretty good jokes and scenes and then other ones that were just bizarre, par for the course. Wait no the scene where they're looking at the photo album and uh blond girl (I should remember her name because she is tied for first for my favorite character with the three other characters) has this flashback fantasy is like the craziest thing I have ever seen and I cannot believe they actually wrote and animated and aired that. Yui having her apartment for no reason is sorta funny in how lazy it is but they seem to acknowledge that no one cares if they make these leaps in logic for premise to enable other scenes, and then they just go ahead and do it 'cause why not no one cares. The two characters reflected by their RPG playstyle was an especially nice touch and almost made me give Yuilillillia the edge for favorite character. But yeah man this show is mad fun. I was going in figuring it'd be this season's A-Channel but it's quite a bit more. This season's Nichijou maybe but Nichijou is this season's Nichijou and is still even more. Speaking of which have y'all seen the full version of the new song??? OH MAN!

Cyberbully

Yeah so this is like latest “memefilm” going about the chans. I don't watch or even pay attention to every one that comes along but sometimes the jokes are just so funny that you have to check it out. And after I saw the trailer, I couldn't resist. Anyways this was pretty much what I expected I guess, except the budget was way higher and thus it was slightly less campy. I found it all pretty weird though 'cause this is probably the furthest I have ever been from something's target audience. I was seeing things that not only had I never witnessed in real life, I had never witnessed before in fiction. And yet, I know, or at least I'm told and can believe, that there are children out there that actually act like this. Which, y'know, is sad, really, but I just can't get my head around it. At any rate I watched it with my roommates and we had some laughs and all that and that's over. NO WAIT UR A LIAR STEVEN YOU'LL BE REFERENCING THIS FOR YEARS.

Writing Stuff

Lately I have been writing a lot of stuff. Well not so much lately I've been doing that a lot but lately I figure I maybe should submit stuff places because why not? And as for why it is because I need to eat food to survive and some of these places give you stuff that can be changed for food nearby. So yeah I've also totally redefined how I write stuff. Before it would go like this:

1. Think of something I want to write
2. Think about that thing for a very long time
3. Think about it until I pretty much know word for word what I want to say
4. Sit down and not want to write it because I'm thinking about other stuff now and don't want to go back and have to think about the stuff I've already thought about
5. Find that when I finally try to write it, I can't make it sound as good as I did in my head

Which was sorta lame.

So now I've been trying this:

1. Think of something I want to write
2. Write as much of it immediately
3. Don't think about it at all until I'm writing it again

Which has been working well when step 3 succeeds.

I was gonna work this into a complicated parallel to my recent Tetris success but said Tetris success has sort of dwindled and I spent too long thinking about how that parallel would work and now I don't wanna write it.

So now I'm more just putting this here so I'll remember to STICK TO IT.

Probably won't post much fiction or whatever to the blog unless someone really wants it.

  Anyways I guess that's about it for now.