POLITICIS VLOG

Oh! what a pretty thumbnail! I didn't think it was really working, even as I finished it up, but I had to hack something together so I carried on with uploading it. But now seeing it with fresh eyes, it really is quite fetching, isn't it?

Video has a few views? Get a lot of views (even, and esp., of not-the-latest-upload videos) around times of video release; must be THE ALGORITHM.

Vlog tomorrow I guess?

Kiki

So today is apparently the thirtieth anniversary of the release of Kiki's Delivery Service? That was my favorite Ghibli film growing up. Um... that's really all I have to say; maybe leave a comment on what your favorite Studio Ghibli film was as a kid. Also, I was reading this thing about, it was a comic now that I think about it maybe I could link it,

HA FOUND IT 

https://www.boredpanda.com/boys-like-girl-hero-damian-alexander/

about how girls are allowed to have boy heroes but we discourage boys from having heroes who are women, even girls who kick butt like Matilda, and like what's with that? So with Kiki being my favorite of all the Miyazaki heroes, I guess I was a pretty lit kid.

(...though hold on. MOST of Miyazaki's movies have female main characters. Which is good, but, shoot, I thought I was being retroactively woke for a sec there...)

So all in all: Miyazaki: amazing. Takahata: amazing. (Pom Poko is my favorite Ghibli movie as an adult.) Studio Ghibli in general: amazing. Just, like, yeah. Life is beautiful, kid.

New Video

I uploaded a terrible version a week ago but it was so awful that I made that video private and spent a whole extra week on editing and pickup shoots. It's now... about as good as it's going to get. This, this is basically the ideal version of this particular video. Is it good? Is it bad? I can't say myself, but maybe other eyeballs on this would be able to tell me. The thumbnail, at least, rocks. That's one thing that's about darn perfect.

Still Makin' Ends Meet

 Animation director of the show breaking down the steps taken in animating the highwayman segment:

Videos I'd Like Twice if I Could, 2/2

This is technically the third part of a three-part series but is totally watchable on its own, and indeed is a bold shift thematically from the previous two videos so just FORGET THOSE GUYS I GUESS, they're pretty good but not nearly as brilliant as this one (the first talks about the Secret of Monkey Island and the eventual death of the adventure game, the culprit ultimately being the stagnation of the genre; the second is a preview of a few intriguing new game mechanics in then-upcoming games that Ian was excited by the prospect of, with the chance to break that stagnation-- basically all of which do in retrospect go on to become Big Deals so good job calling it there.)

It's not just about adventure games but uses the subject as a jumping-off point for discussion of genre itself, providing a good framework for discussion when talking about that and basically all categorization (such as, spoilers, whether a hot dog is a sandwich or not.) Amazing stuff.

New Moon or Something?

As I held up the ladder for Dad this morning, helping him pick the apricots off of Uncle Jim's apricot tree, an airplane passed overhead and I turned my eyes heavenward. And there, in the northern sky, I saw it- at first I thought maybe a balloon or something, or a plastic shopping bag caught up in the breeze very very very high, but it didn't move, just stayed there a white dot stationary in the vast blue. A planet? A star? We paused and I went to get my camera; maybe EXTREME ZOOM LENS would shed more light or definition on the situation.

My zoom lens isn't all that zoomy though so this is the best I managed to get.

As time went on it drifted across the sky, downward and to the east, getting dimmer and smaller as it went. Here are three different snapshots of it, one taken not terribly long after initial discovery, one taken fourtyish minutes later as a marker for its celestial path, and the third one the last time I managed to find it in the sky, so small and dim and behind the trees from the initial marked vantage point. 

Can't be Venus because Venus is on the horizon in July in the northern hemisphere. I personally think/hope that it's a second, teensy weensy moon that just, like, appeared there today.

Videos from Yesterday I'dda Liked Twice If That Were an Option

Though I suppose I have more than one YouTube account so I can just like it on two separate accounts?? Oh dear oh dear oh dear...

(The videos didn't necessarily come our yesterday but I watched them yesterday and didn't have time to post about them then- and even now only have time to post about one today, guess it'll be a two-parter.)

BUT PART ONE ANYWAY

(I've shown you Peter Knetter before right I'm pretty sure??)

Parade Oxen

Absolutely do not get church. It always feels like I want to be joyous when it's time to be reverent and be reverent when it's time to be joyous. There's a Greek legend of when Pan was visiting some dude's house on a chilly night, and noticed how the guy blew out hot air to warm his hands but blew out cold air to cool his soup, and Pan's all well which is it? and the guy's all excuse me? and like Pan straight up murders the dude for inconsistency of mouth temperature.

and That's how I feel, like, all the time. Not the killing per se, that's just Greek gods being strange and capricious, but the ???s over my head, cos to Pan the mortal was the capricious one. It's like, wild, man.

Lukewarm Takes

You can probably never know if a hot take is going to be original or not and maybe what matters is the fact that you're the one giving it? And people only mind if the hot take is particularly uninformed maybe, or if it's on David Bowie being dead.

I just had like a grillion hot takes on the tip of my fingers but can't remember a single one. Stranger Things 3 is out? Does that count as a hot take? 

An Ointment Fact

okay so there was a fact about ointment which I'd meant to bring up a week ago but I'd forgotten the precise details of till now so I didn't: but Christ is from the greek, meaning anointed, yeah? That means that the word "Christ" and the word "Cream" are cognates.

things are supposed to get better but what's getting better is me being able to tell what makes a good day good which means that I can tell now that things won't necessarily always get better but it's still largely in my hands

Frederick Douglass

https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/

"I am Full of Ordinary Sounding Words" - A Robot. Literally.

So the thing about auto generated/artificial-intelligence written stories is that I kind of love them, but they terrify me artistically/existentially? All of my best ideas come from dreams which are kind of the same thing but bio organically; a thing becomes art as a human decision to frame it as such.

Spider-Men

Into the Spider-Verse is unsurpassingly brilliant for a myriad of teeny details that have to be studied carefully and specifically in order to fully appreciate the depth and scope of their perfection. Rami's Spider-Man trilogy is astounding and fresh on a macro level, full of storytelling decisions that are simultaneously unexpected and breathtakingly satisfying, even coming on near one-two decades later. And for as much flack as the ASM films get, Marc Webb is one of the greatest directors not just currently working but possibly of all time in terms of the breadth and depth of his understanding of human psyche and human relationships. Venom is, well, Venom: love and beauty and life itself.

And so like I'm not entirely sure of myself when I say that Far From Home is possibly the greatest Spider-Man movie of all time? I can't really judge a film until I've seen it at least two times; there were a few weird elements which hardly seem real looking back, and I thought the first act was kinda funky the first time I watched it, but maybe it'll work itself out, knowing the end from the beginning. And a lot of the enjoyable bits seem themselves surreal, like it was so good it couldn't have been real. Comes with the territory I guess.

It's the first MCU film without a Stan Lee cameo; this and Dark Phoenix are the sort-of capstones for their respective franchises and I can't tell if that's fitting or not. The road goes on without him now, him and Ditko. But there is a sort of after-credits logo mini-tribute, not quite as extensive or thematic as Into the Spider-Verse's. But still there.

I guess in a lot of ways it's like the looming presence of Tony Stark. You can feel it in everything. Or something.