Ethan Millman, Rolling Stone:

One huge difference separates the two songs: a cover of “Uncontrollable Urge” soundtracks the comedy clip show Rob Dyrdek’s Ridiculousness, which can play on MTV for as much as 14 hours in a 24-hour period, nearly every day of the week. (At its peak in 2020, it played an astonishing 113 hours out of MTV’s entire 168-hour lineup, according to Variety) Over the past decade, through 42 seasons, 1,545 episodes and countless reruns airing every 30 minutes, the performance royalties on that song net Mothersbaugh around $1 million per year, according to an estimate from his wife and manager Anita Greenspan.

“I’ve written so many other songs for films and television shows,” Mothersbaugh, who’s composed the themes for Pee-wee’s Playhouse and Rugrats alongside multiple Wes Anderson films, tells Rolling Stone. “I would’ve been shocked [years ago] if you told me this is the one that would become this prime source of income.”

Absolutely fascinating article about the long tail value to musicians of the simple TV theme song.

Makes me wonder how much the guy from Seinfeld’s making from his mouth noises and bass playing.

Also: goddamn does MTV show a lot of Ridiculousness. I get it, it’s one of the perfect Hotel Room TV shows.

Earlier this evening, I was in my car, my music library on shuffle as it usually is, when a favorite I’ve not heard in some time came on — “Welcome Home” by Coheed and Cambria.

The song’s a jam and a half, so I was enjoying it, but it reminded me of an inflection point in my fandom of them — which lead to a bunch of other thoughts, so you’re getting a blog post out of it.

Coheed and Cambria, for those unawares, is a New Jersey based rock band who came of age in the early 00’s. With a unique sound that mixed prog rock and post-hardcore, they were catnip for a twenty something me. Now, add the fact that the lyrics were inspired by a sci-fi story being written by lead singer Claudio Sanchez, you have the makings of something for devoted fandom.

What was the story? Who were the characters? How did each song fit in? It was something to discuss with friends, debate over the internet, and made each album an event.

And then…alongside the release of some one-off comics in 2004 and 2005, and then a very lengthy series called The Amory Wars from 2007 to 2024…we found out what the story really was. And — for me, at least — it never worked or satisfied on the level of the versions of the story which spiraled in my head as I listened to their music.

Knowing — in turn — ruined the possibility.

And I see this pattern a lot in our current franchise based era of entertainment.

One of the coolest elements of the first John Wick movie were the glimpses of a mysterious world of hitmen. Antiquated coins, tattooed phone receptionists, protected hotels…you saw the tip of an iceberg, and it added to the tapestry of the film overall. These were lights shining just beyond the frame, something intriguing but out of focus.

In the three movies since — good films, yes — each installment has brought more clarity to the world of hitmen…and, I’d argue, has become more blasé. We now know how things work. We have logic to apply to random sequences, versus just going with the confidence of the filmmakers to let you connect the dots.

Solo: A Star Wars Story was, from the jump, a somewhat cursed film — telling the story of Han Solo prior to A New Hope. Like X-Men Origins: Wolverine before it, it said to the world, “You want to know about his jacket, right? The LORE of jacket, right?” And it all became less special. And lest you think this was a Disney-era issue — didn’t the Clone Wars sound a lot more interesting when Obi-Wan made a tossed off mention of it in conversation with Luke, versus knowing it was a conflict between Robots and Clones, and those Clones who somehow became Boba Fett, and I guess Yoda was there too, and the clones were ordered by the Jedi for some reason and…

Yeah. Not knowing was better than knowing.

This last weekend, I watched Anora, a great movie with an incredible performance at its core, which — without spoiling — has an ending which could be read many different ways…and it doesn’t tell you how. And the director, he isn’t talking.

Could you imagine what Lost In Translation would have been if Sofia Coppola told us all what Bill Murray’s character whispered into Scarlett Johansson’s ear? Instead, the ambiguity has meant decades of discussion and theory.

I’m not going to come out and say “not knowing things is better”, because I wholeheartedly believe that knowledge is power, and ignorance is foolish.

But I will say, when it comes to creative works — no, I don’t need to know how these things happened. I don’t need to know all the rules of the world. Let me make the connections. Let our imaginations roam.

Ash Parrish, The Verge:

Games Done Quick’s schedule is set up to have the most popular games or gimmicky runs take place during the early evenings and weekends — the time when folks are most likely to tune in. But I’ve found some of my favorite runs are of games I’ve never heard of played well outside those primetime hours. I’ve developed a deep an abiding love of Mr. Bones, a Sega Saturn game I have never played, because I found it during a bout of January 6th-induced insomnia. The Ratatouille run from Summer Games Done Quick 2023, one of that year’s stand-out runs, happened on a Tuesday at 11AM.

Great little article about the joy that is Games Done Quick. GDQ is something I got into during COVID, a week long celebration of video game speedrunning, where talented people take advantage of exploits and bugs to complete video games as quickly as possible.

They push things further, by having really incredible runs – last Summer, you could see a Good Good Dog complete a game of Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball, and last night, a player completing New Super Mario Bros. Wii, using a motion controller on their head and feet, while playing the score of the game on piano. These make for massive crowd cheering moments, on par with some of the greatest moments in sports.

But at the same time, there are bizarre and surreal runs which introduce you to games you’ve never seen, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. Yesterday’s Batman Forever run, and last night’s Inspector Gadget: Gadget’s Crazy Maze, are perfect examples of the punch drunk joy of experiencing bad games with good friends.

If you have any interest in gaming at all, you owe it to yourself to watch Games Done Quick at least once. You might get hooked.

EDIT: Let’s go ahead and add last night’s run of Golf With Your Grandmother as a surreal must watch.

Well kids, this is it, the final day of 2024. I’ve had the pleasure of being able to take some time off last week and this, so I figured I’d be vaguely productive online and share with you, dear reader, my favorites from different types of media in 2024.

Please note: this is just based on what I’ve been able to play / watch / listen to this year. There’s some movies and such which I haven’t had a chance to watch that I’m pretty sure I’ll dig (Anora, Conclave) and I’m sure there are games and albums I’ll be discovering from 2024 for years to come.

That said, let’s get into it.

Favorite Movie of 2024

Saturday Night (Dir: Jason Reitman)
For quite a while there, this was pretty much Dune Part Two, and going to be locked as such. But then it seemed that Hollywood decided to go directly for the Marty Day vote and released a movie which…

• Was about putting on a show
• Featured young Hollywood
• Was in gloriously stressful “real time”
• Was about Saturday Night Live.

I get it, the movie’s historically inaccurate and there’s no way all of this happened in the hour-and-a-half before showtime, but no movie had me locked in and enthralled from the jump this year quite like this one. I’ve revisited it a few times on VOD since, and still dug it each time. I’m going to be watching this for years to come.

Favorite Movies of 2024 List (Alphabetical)

• Alien: Romulus
• Dune: Part Two
• The Fall Guy
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
• Heretic
• Inside Out 2
• Jim Henson - Idea Man
• Nosferatu
• Saturday Night
• Twisters
• The Wild Robot
• Wicked: Part One

Favorite Album of 2024

Los Campesinos! - All Hell

Gareth from Los Campesinos! is 39 years old. This year, I turned 40. And no album this year spoke to me directly than this. Battling with your age and relevancy in a world you used to define by your taste and creativity is a rough go, and over the course of 15 tracks and 50 minutes, this album puts you there. But it’s far from a bummer of a listen. Enthusiastic, sarcastic, enthralling, heartbreaking, intense, the album covers a bit of everything, and that’s why it racked up play after play in my Apple Music library.

Best Track: “Clown Blood/Orpheus' Bobbing Head”

Favorite Albums of 2024 List (Alphabetical)

• And So I Watch You From Afar - Megafauna
• Black x Sea - Every Tree Shall Fall: One (EP)
• Childish Gambino - Atavista
• Childish Gambino - Bando Stone & the New World
• Future Islands - People Who Aren’t There Anymore
• Godspeed You! Black Emperor - “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD”
• Gulfer - Third Wind
• Jack White - No Name
• Justice - Hyperdrama
• The Last Dinner Party - Prelude to Ecstasy
• Los Campesinos! - All Hell
• Nada Surf - Moon Mirror
• Riley! - Keep Your Cool
• RJD2 - Visions Out of Limelight
• The Smile - Wall of Eyes
• The Smile - Cutouts
• St. Vincent - All Born Screaming
• Tycho - Infinite Health
• Vampire Weekend - Only God Was Above Us
• Wallows - Model
• Wishy - Triple Seven

Favorite Video Game of 2024

Balatro

If you had told me at the beginning of the year that I would dump literal hundreds of hours into a poker video game, I would’ve said you were crazy. But not since Tetris have I seen a game which grabs so many, from so many walks of life, and causes them to sink hours upon hours into a game that surprises and delights on every round. And in an industry where game budgets are bloated, layoffs are happening everywhere, and creativity seems to be dwindling — here’s a project by ONE person which has sold millions and will likely sell millions more. More Balatros in 2025, please.

Favorite Video Games of 2024 List (Alphabetical)

• Astro Bot (PS5)
• Balatro (macOS, iOS)
• *Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth *(PS5)
• Helldivers II (PS5)
• Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth (PS5)
• Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics (PS4)
• Marvel Rivals (PS5)
• Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (PS5)
  Note to self: play more video games next year.

Welp! That’s that, folks. I’d love to hear your thoughts, and I’d love to hear what YOU dug in 2024. Shoot me a line or ping me on Mastodon/Blue Sky. And let’s look forward to a happy, healthy, exciting 2025.

The New York Times:

When millions are happy to play old games with outdated graphics — including Roblox (2006), Minecraft (2009) and Fortnite (2017) — it creates challenges for studios that make blockbuster single-player titles. The industry’s audience has slightly shrunk for the first time in decades. Studios are rapidly closing and sweeping layoffs have affected more than 20,000 employees in the past two years, including more than 2,500 Microsoft workers.

Many video game developers built their careers during an era that glorified graphical fidelity. They marveled at a scene from The Last of Us: Part II in which Ellie, the protagonist, removes a shirt over her head to reveal bruises and scrapes on her back without any technical glitches.

But a few years later, costly graphical upgrades are often barely noticeable.

As is so often said that it’s become a meme: “I Want Shorter Games With Worse Graphics and I’m Not Kidding”.

Nintendo owned the last few years of hardware sales with the same chipset of a lower end smartphone. My favorite game of the last year was Balatro, which is closer in graphics and execution to Tetris, versus anything triple-A.

I mean, how ridiculous has this become? Here’s another excerpt from this great article:

In 2007, the first Assassin’s Creed provided more than 2.5 hours of footage for a fan edit of the game’s narrative. As the series progressed, so did Ubisoft’s taste for cinema. Like many studios, it increasingly leaned on motion-capture animators who could create scenes using human actors on soundstages. A fan edit of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, which was released in 2020, lasted about 23 hours — longer than two seasons of “Game of Thrones.”

It’s too much, folks. Make games as games. We will all be better for it.

Jake Rossen, Mental Floss:

“Nickelodeon kind of made a mistake,” Russell says. “I don’t want to call it a mistake, or if it was not a wise piece of instruction that they told me, because they told me the items don’t have to necessarily get into the cart. They just have to touch the cart and it’s yours. It didn’t have to stay in the cart, either.”

“So then my dad was like, ‘You heard what they said, right? That means all you got to do is take your hands and put it to the very back of the peg that they would store games or anything on. Pull them all off with the cart near you and just have them be knocking the cart so they don’t have to even get in there.’ ”

It was good advice. On the day of the spree, Russell was given the go-ahead. He darted through aisles, adhering to the strategy. Entire pegs of games were swatted to the ground, collapsing in a cacophony of plastic and cardboard. Russell acted like a human tornado, following the rules and having stuff bounce off his cart.

“I basically cleared out the entire game section of the store in about two minutes,” he says. “The whole thing was gone. And then, I took out the action figure aisles, and this was when the first wave of X-Men figures were out. I was literally just reaching to the back of the peg line and just taking the entire row of action figures.”

Just in time for a season where kids would be excited to see their hauls from Santa, an incredible, in-depth look at the ins and outs of what it was to win Nickelodeon’s Super Toy Run. Including the strife that met the kids at the schoolyard later.

Two stories broke today, which, for whatever reason were the straws that broke me.

Variety: Jeremy Allen White Joins ‘Star Wars’ Film ‘The Mandalorian & Grogu’ as Jabba the Hutt’s Son

Jeremy Allen White has joined the “Star Wars” film “The Mandalorian & Grogu” as the voice of Jabba the Hutt’s son, Rotta the Hutt, Variety has confirmed. The project marks the first major franchise for the actor following his Emmy-winning breakout role on the FX series “The Bear.”

The Wrap: Chris Evans Sets Marvel Return in ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ | Exclusive

Chris Evans is returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as part of the cast for “Avengers: Doomsday,” the highly anticipated sequel that will also star Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom, The Wrap has learned exclusively. Evans will be involved in some capacity, but the extent and exact nature of his role is unknown.

I grew up as a latchkey kid. Single mom, only child, you get a lot of time to yourself. And I threw myself into the worlds of comics and movies. They showed me the powers of creativity, the magic of filmmaking, the intricacies of line art, taught me lessons about color and light.

I’d devour any of it. Watching movies on cable lead to renting movies from Blockbuster. Renting movies led to buying movies. Buying movies lead to buying more movies (I had roughly 1000 Blu-Rays + DVDs at a point). Reading comics lead to reading Wizard Magazine. Reading Wizard lead to learning about all the amazing and creative things being done at all the comic companies. Just like with directors, I learned to follow writers and artists to their next thing.

I don’t say this to be dramatic or a bummer, but they were my world. A child of divorce, who struggled to socialize, I lost myself in the 4-color worlds of Marvel, DC and Image, and the big screen adventures that hit every weekend.

Then I found my people, fellow nerds who knew more movie quotes than extended family members names, who loved to rank and talk and share and recommend and debate all of this.

Somewhere in here, the comics started hitting theaters again. Tim Burton’s Batman was a near religious experience for me as an 5 year old, but that seemed the exception to the rule. Until X-Men hit. Until Blade hit. Until Spider-Man hit.

My loves were colliding. And what’s that, more Star Wars too? Sure, the prequels were flawed, but they were more of something I loved. Giving me something new from a world that had more or less helped to define my love of movies.

Iron Man hits. Robert freakin’ Downey Jr. as Iron Man? No way. Wait, what’s this about an Avengers project? It ties into that new Hulk movie? No way they got Chris Evans to be a superhero again, I loved that dude in Scott Pilgrim. Paul Rudd(!!!) as Ant-Man with Edgar Wright behind the lens? Holy shit.

And now Disney owns them. And they’re gonna own Lucasfilm too? Wait…more new Star Wars? And they’re gonna try to make up where the Prequels failed. Interesting. Can they? Wow, Force Awakens was a lot of fun. Rogue One, what a flick.

And the saturation came. I didn’t need to special order comic book shirts from Diamond Distributors by way of my local comic store, I didn’t need to go to comic cons, I could just go and buy representations of these things which were the fabric of me at my local goddamned Target? How cool. Phases? TV Shows? Streaming? More? More? MORE? MORE??

…and…I think they’ve gone too far. And I can’t help but feel like I’m a bit at fault.

Not me specifically, but who I am. As has been said before, “The Nerds Won”. Nerdy things don’t make you outcasts, they make you accepted, as I longed to be and eventually was. And there’s always more.

But…it’s not the new. It’s not the different. It’s not the daring.

That Star Wars prequel? Outshined by The Matrix that year, a radically different, unique, original idea that inspired the next generation after me, in ways both in terms of filmmaking, and making people think differently about themselves and the discomfort they feel.

…is it any wonder they did two more? And a fourth, over a decade later?

We’re at a phase where these things I love are just being reheated and re-served to me. Look at the archives of this blog, I was excited about these things along the way. I’m still excited for some things (I really want to see a trailer of James Gunn’s Superman quite badly). But I can’t help but feel like the magic is going away.

The headlines above, while real, they feel like they were slapped together by AI. [ACTOR OF NOTE OR FORMER STAR OF FRANCHISE] Joins [INSERT FRANCHISE WHO NEEDS HELP] as [CHARACTER]. These aren’t the first, they won’t be the last. We’ve got Robert Downey Jr. returning as…Doctor Doom for some reason. Apparently we’re getting a whole slew of actors we know and love…to just do Harry Potter again, but longer. We’re getting more Lord of the Rings and they might just be making them up this time.

I’m 40 years old. Maybe I’m aging out. Or maybe Hollywood needs to realize…they can’t keep marketing to me.

I mentioned above how much comics have meant to me. They went to a fandom to a side hustle to a second career. And if you step in a comic store, you know what they’re doing now? Selling more variant covers of every issue to the same, older growing audience. And raising the price, to see what the ceiling can be. They’re marketing to me and people like me, again and again and again.

There are flashes of hope. Every so often there’s a Saga or a Walking Dead or a Dawnrunner or *Do a Powerboat!*that shake things up for comics and give us something new. Every so often there’s a movie out there which gives us a wholly unique experience and reminds us what we love about movies.

But they’re not coming everywhere. We’re afraid to take swings, we’re afraid to try and fail, we’re afraid of New. We’re afraid of Different. We’re afraid of the old tricks not working. And maybe, the real issue is: we’re afraid of becoming old.

Let the next generation take over and make new things. It’s how we got here in the first place. Whether it was Stan Lee and Jack Kirby using the social changes of the 60’s to create flawed comic book heroes, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird self publishing a Daredevil parody with turtles in the 1980s, George Lucas using the cache of the success of his 50’s greaser movie to cash in and make a new version of the sci-fi serials he loved, but for the modern day…these were risks. These were creatives. These were people who wanted to make something new, first for themselves, and then found how it reverberated with likeminded folks.

I don’t need to be blanketed in the safety of what was. I’m longing for the challenge.

This is rambling and turning into almost a “Comics and Genre Movies are Dead” version of the speech Jeff Daniels gives at the beginning of The Newsroom, so I’m going to tie this together. It doesn’t help that I’ve written all stream of consciousness, but, eh, we’ll deal.

Could these movies be good? Sure. Will I see them? Likely.

But will they inspire? Will they make people want to make their own films at home? Will they make someone say “I have a story and I need to tell it”?

I don’t know. Because right now, it all looks like just another gig for a paycheck. Another instance of confirming shareholder value and maximizing the use of legacy IP or whatever rambling shit the heads of these studios are going to tell people on investment calls. But it’s not adventurous. And we could all use an adventure right now.