01/14/24

Once again it has been a while since my last blog post. I was going to make one in the first week of the new year, but to be quite honest my motivation hasn't been there. I'm pushing myself now because I have a great time updating this sitew when I do, so hopefully I can be more consistent going forward.

My holiday break was pretty great. My girlfriend and I celebrated our two year anniversary by making a trip to Atlanta. While there I was able to go see the Sonic Symphony concert!!! This for me is a childhood dream come true. Growing up I've always had a huge love for Sonic music, but never once did I think I would be able to see some of the songs that I obsessively listened to in class live in concert.

They played all of my favorite songs, with some highlights being All of Me, What I'm Made Of and Break Through it All. It was kind of crazy (and a bit scary) to see a huge congregation of Sonic fans in one place, but some of the best moments in the concert were when we all got to sing a long to the vocal tracks. You could feel the energy in the room. It was a really great show and anyone that was thinking of going should definitely check it out.

That wasn't the only thing we did while we were in Atlanta. We also went to the Atlanta Aquarium, Zoo Atlanta and the World of Coca-cola museum. When I was a kid I had always wanted to go to the Coca-cola museum just to try out all of the flavors that they have there. I finally got to do it (another childhood dream satisfied) and it was kinda exactly what I expected, a lot of okay flavors, some great ones and some really really bad ones. I forgot exactly what it was, I think it was a Plum flavor from an Asian country, but it was probably one of the worst drinks I've ever tasted. It tasted like BBQ sauce.

Zoo Atlanta was nice, but with how cold it was a lot of the animals that we wanted to see weren't out. It was pretty disappointing, so hopefully we can stop by in a warmer time of year to see some of them. The Atlanta Aquarium was my favorite of the side adventures. There were so many cool fishes and other aquatic life to see, with some of the tank sizes being truly jaw-dropping. My favorite part was when we got to see beluga whales playing and making some random bowl thing their hat.

Also for any comic book heads, definitely check out Dr. No's Comics and Games. It was probably the best comic book store that I have ever stepped in to and to this day I am super jealous of you Georgians. You have it good up there.

I wanted to end this post by saying that I HATE BUCC-EE'S. I have been hearing about this place for a while from coworkers and such hyping it up to be this big thing, so I finally went to one on our way down from Atlanta. I will never be going back. That was probably one of the most stressful places that I have ever been in. There were so many people, we were packed in there like sardines.

All for a place that sells decent food and merchandise with the stupid gopher on every possible thing. Bucc-ee's shirts, Bucc-ees shotglasses, Bucc-ees furniture, Bucc-ees snacks, Bucc-ees toys, Bucc-ee's hats. I bought a shirt and a shotglass so I never have a reason to ever go back. FUCK BUCC-EE'S!!!!

12/13/23

Wow, it's been a while since I've updated the site! It's been a busy couple of weeks for me which is part of why there haven't been any updates, but I've also run a bit into a motivation problem. I have so many ideas for what to put onto to this site, but the hardest part is thinking of something worthwhile and putting in the work for it, which can be especially hard when I'm feeling down. As of yesterday though, I've started to feel more like my normal self and I've been cooking up some ideas that I want to get started on in the new year! I want this site to sort of be a personal archive of...just me I guess.

Writing my thoughts on the games that I play, the movies I watch, the comic books I read and anything else that might be going on in my life (that isn't too personal for the internet). I find myself struggling with remembering my experiences compared to when I was younger. I don't know if it's due to medicine, stress or age but it's harder for me to remember how I feel about certain games or movies or comics compared to before and I've felt less connected because of that. Hopefully this website will help me at least have a window back to what past Zett was thinking.

I've been able to do a lot of cool things since the last update! Two weeks ago I watched one of my most anticipated movies of the year, Godzilla Minus One, with my girlfriend. We both really loved it, it was a truly great Gojira flick that had both of us teary eyed by the end of it (the indomitdable human spirit can do that to you). I've seen around fifteen Gojira movies at this point and this was definitely one of my favorites. The action was intense, the characters were memorable and compelling and it was able to tread familiar ground while impressing with it's refreshed take on the original movie's post World War 2 setting. While I like some of the Legendary Godzilla movies, the Reiwa era films completely blow them out of the water. I still think Shin Godzilla is my favorite Gojira flick of all time, but Minus One is close. I would recommend it to anyone that hasn't seen it yet.

We were also able to see the new Miyazaki Studio Ghibli film, The Boy and the Heron last week. I came out of this movie a bit disappointed to be quite honest. I found the pacing to be pretty disjointed and the characters lacking compared to previous Ghibli classics. The world and creatures are wonderous and help make it an overall enjoyable watch, but it felt like a bunch of nice vignettes without the stitching needed to bring it all together. The main character's journey felt underdeveloped and the way their story comes to an end and the lessons they learn because of it came about in an underwhelming way. I watched it in the english dub for Robert Pattinson, who has an amazing performance don't get me wrong, but I wonder if the characters' stilted performances had an impact, though I'm not very confident in that. I wanted to love this and hopefully one day I will. The animation was stunning though, but at this point that is not a surprise when it comes to Studio Ghibli.

So many other things have happened that if I try to put it all in this blog post it'll take way too long so I'm going to rapid fire the rest of what's been going on. I just started playing through Yakuza: Like A Dragon, which has been a long time coming for me. I've been trying to catch up on the Yakuza series for years but really fell behind, but this year is finally the year where I will be caught up, just in time for Infinite Wealth's release next year. I'll probably write a review about it when I finish (whenever that is, it seems like this is gonna be a long one).

I finished reading the first collection of Lee/Kirby's Fantastic Four and it's so so good. I was going to write a review but I decided it would be best if I wait until I finish the entire run for that one. I've been reading Golden Age Batman again recently, which is something that I started a couple months ago with the goal of reading through all of the eras of the character. I've been doing that more often with many different characters and it makes you really appreciate the evolutions they go through over time. I did that with the Blue Beetle over the summer and now I've been doing it with Batman, the Fantastic Four and the X-men. It's so satisfying seeing the groundwork for how we envision these characters today get built up, I think any comics head should try it out at least once. Once you get used to the old timey comic jargon it's not as bad as you might think (it's quite great actually)

Well that's it for now, I probably won't post until the end of this month or early on in the new year with the holidays going on. I hope anyone reading this has a very happy holidays! Also, here's baby Kong because I like him.

11/26/23

I'm finally getting around to making my first blog post! I don't know for sure what I'll be posting on here, but this will probably be where I post a bit more about what's going on in my personal life whenever I feel like it.

The Thanksgiving weekend is about to end and I think I can say it was definitely better than last year's. I got to spend the whole weekend with my sweet wonderful girlfie (neocities user mangoopaste) shopping around on Black Friday and spending some time at Disney Springs. We both used to think that Disney Springs was pretty lame after not going for many years but after going recently we realized it's actually a nice place to hang out. the Disney adultification of us is real. We had a great time browsing the stores and we even went to Rainforest Cafe!

My Black Friday haul was pretty great too, I was able to get the first omnibus for Hickman's Fantastic Four, Grant Morrison's Animal Man, Superman For All Seasons as well as some italian Disney comics from the Fantagraphics sale. I also bought Crisis Core and Yakuza 7, which I'm excited to play through.

When we got home at the end of the day we were able to watch the first of the new Doctor Who specials with David Tennant back as The Doctor and honestly it was decent, but I have a few issues with it. I just started getting into Doctor Who because of my girlfriend and I've found that I actually really enjoy it, so I was excited to watch a new release with her. David Tennant is still great as The Doctor and he really made the episode worth watching. The twist with The Meep was pretty predictable, but it was still a fun concept to see play out.

My main problem lies with how heavy handed some of it's attempts to inject gender politics into the plot and how silly it was. Doctor Who is inherently a silly franchise, but the jokes and "commentary" about pronouns and gender identity almost feels like parody cooked up by conservatives intending to make fun of liberal politics. The gender fluidity of The Doctor is a potentially interesting concept to explore, but how it's framed in this episode made our eyes roll a bit. Despite that, I still enjoyed it and would reccommend it to anyone that was interested in watching it.

Overall I had a great time this weekend and I'm looking forward to finally finishing up this semester. I still haven't finished Super Mario RPG!!! I gotta get on that.