My back is not yet 100%, but it’s miles ahead of where it was at this point in January. It turns out that I have a mutant healing factor! OR I was being a hypochondriac.

But probably the healing factor.

That seems more likely.

Anyway: it’s Valentine’s Day! Happy Valentine’s Day to lovers, young and old. I know, I know. Valentine’s Day is a commercial holiday, and it’s dumb to need a day to express your love. You’re not wrong. But… EVERY holiday is a commercial holiday.

Do I really NEED a Labor Day?

No.

But no one rails against that! Let me just have a third summer picnic holiday. And a February love day.

You know what I love?

(Uh, besides my wife. And cats!)

Entertainment media! So let’s take a look to see if it has loved me back so far this month.

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MOVIES

You know what was nice about the beginning of February? Nothing was unmistakably bad! Sure, Mortal Kombat got two stars, but that’s because it was poorly made; not because it wasn’t a solidly fun watch. It looked like crap, but you could tell everyone involved was having fun. What more do you need?

As part of our Friday The 13th video reviews, I finally got a chance to rewatch Jason X, and you know what? I kind of love that movie. It’s such a detour from everything the franchise had been to that point, and it embraces the dumbest aspects of itself. “Guys, he just wanted his machete back”, indeed.

If you had asked me, like, 5 months ago what Snowpiercer was, I’d have said “…a James Bond movie?”. But it’s not! It’s much better than that. Glad I finally got around to watching it.

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TELEVISION

Nothing new here, as I’m still enjoying the weekly distributions of WandaVision and Resident Alien… but I am fully intending to getting around to watching Schitt’s Creek sometime soon. Maybe between the end of WandaVision and the start of Invincible in late March? I have obviously heard nothing but great things about Schitt’s, but I just kind of missed it. I remember being mad that it won a lot of Emmy’s and The Good Place didn’t, but… we’ll see if it was deserved. I guess it stunk that both of their last seasons were going against each other.

Resident Alien is, as of this writing, just 3 episodes in, but I like it more and more each week. The pilot was a great start, but pilots are pilots. The subsequent two episodes have had me in stitches throughout. Alan Tudyk is a gosh darn treasure. I’ve actually never read the comic this was based on, so I’m curious to see where the show is going. My wife thinks the two strangers are more aliens; I think they are something more akin to MIB. We’ll see who is right!

WandaVision continues to get more and more intense by the week after its inauspicious start. It’s definitely at the point where I get actively disheartened every time an episode ends. I’ve always preferred weekly viewing to binge watching, but damn if every ending doesn’t make me want to keep on going! I’ve seen all the speculation online about who may end up as the ultimate antagonist, but you know what? I’m awful at prognosticating. I’m just enjoying the ride on this one.

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READING

As predicted, I got around to re-reading the first trade of Monstress in preparation for finally getting to the second and third volumes, both of which I have owned for some time but haven’t read. Monstress is so incredibly dense, that even now that I’ve read it four times, I worry about how much I have retained. On the one hand, I love stories that just chuck you into a world and dole out the history to you in bits and pieces while refusing to hold your hand, but on the other… there are a lot of words here that are hard to keep track of! Lillium and Cumaea and Arcanics and stuff. It makes my head swim a lot.

But when I get past that, I can appreciate a dark, in-depth story with characters of every stripe, and a fully-realized world created by Marjorie Liu. Oh, and Sana Takeda’s art, which is ALWAYS a treat. I still love this trade and am eager to get further into the tale.

I read a bit further along in Nick Spencer’s Amazing Spider-Man, too, getting up to issue #25 (I thought I had gotten that far previously, but I bailed after the Kraven story wrapped up in #23). That ends the run as I have it. Time to go Trade Paperback shopping!

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OTHER

No great change in what I have been gaming as of late–still mostly tossing back-and-forth between replaying Skyrim and a Franchise in Madden 21, while hoping not to let the Final Fantasy 7 remake slip out of mind. I did recently buy the Jackbox Quintet (Jackbox party packs volume 1-5) to hopefully play with some chums on Zoom, but we’ll see how it goes.

Aside from that, I have finally gotten around to sub-dividing out my Spotify playlists a bit!

My Spotify history started with a 1000+ song playlist that was basically “every song I like”. Then I cut that down to a 500+ song playlist of “That, but a little more discriminating”. Then I culled a lot of my crappier music and added in stuff the wife likes so I would have a playlist she wouldn’t oppose in the car.

But I was really hitting a point where sometimes I only wanted to listen to specific kinds if music. None of this “everything in one list” crap.

So I created a Cover Songs playlist, a generic–more modern–rock playlist, a hip-hop playlist, and an older music (80’s!) list. Also, I have a WWE entrance music playlist, which I should edit to just make The Mountie’s theme 30 times in a row.

Here’s what I’ve discovered: mostly I just want to listen to 80’s or cover songs. The latter of which is odd, right?.

Did you know there is a Rob Zombie (featuring LIONEL RICHIE) cover of “Brick House”? I didn’t! Spotify recommended it to me, and that song is EVERYTHING. You see the artists and title and think “But how can this be?”. Then you play it, and within 30 seconds, your reaction changes to “Oh, this makes more sense than any song I’ve ever heard before”.

Hopefully by the end of 2021, it will be my most played song of the year.

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That will do it for the start of the shortest calendar month! Winter is… supposed to end soon? I mean… I hope. It’s been snowing a ton here. Blech.

Until next time… take care!