I’ve fallen a bit behind on blog stuff lately, due to busy… things. I have a lot going on! Well, not right now. Now I’m mostly unpacking my crap and applying for jobs. Actually, I’m still busy. And stressed. And dealing with many depressions. It’s very fun being an adult! Anyway, the point is I have things I gotta talk about. Stories I haven’t told, and stories others have told that I haven’t discussed. There’ll be spoilers(Mild ones for Daredevil: Born Again and Poker Face and heavier ones for Severance), TV talk, and long-winded thoughts and anecdotes. Here we go!!!

10. Upcoming Movies.
If I haven’t mentioned before, I’m a fan of movies. There are many coming out at all times that I’m very excited to see! And this summer is a big ol’ doozy. Here’s the roster: The Phoenician Scheme, Superman, The Naked Gun, Materialists, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps. There’s surely more. Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning already came out, and… that’s something I’ll revisit at a later date. I don’t have much to say, it’s just an exciting time to love the movies that I love.
Wes Anderson is back in a big way with a great cast, I really enjoy the Naked Gun movies, and if everything worked out, we’ll finally be getting genuinely excellent and on-point cinematic iterations of Superman and the Fantastic Four! No offense to Christopher Reeve, offense to the people who wrote his movies without ever looking at a comic book. And it’s been five years since Chris Evans was great in a movie, so I hope Materialists is good. I’m REALLY excited for Superman by the way. And First Steps. These are some of my favorite characters, I want to see them done right.

9. Daredevil! And Poker Face Also.
TV shows where people know if you’re lying are back, everybody! Sort of, Daredevil: Born Again already ended a bit ago and Poker Face is halfway done.
So. Daredevil premiered in 2015 and ended in 2018, so it’s been too long since Charlie Cox got to sink his teeth into this character. And this new take yielded mixed results, I’d say. There are pros and cons.
Pros: Charlie Cox. Vincent D’Onofrio. The way this show actually uses New York as a setting that feels real. Some of the new supporting characters. The scene where Kingpin eats a cheese steak. The scene where Kingpin gets a pothole fixed. Every moment that allows Matt to be a little lighter and less depressed. The Hector Ayala plotline that shows what a selfish and idiotic prick Matt Murdock can be. The introduction of Muse.
Cons: The disjointed nature of the show that comes from the mid-production creative overhaul and all the episodes before that that remained sitting next to episodes that were clearly made by other people. The very poorly written addition of Heather Graham and much of the inclusion of Michael Gandolfini’s insufferable character. The back and forth writing that is not always good and sometimes makes Charlie Cox seem like a bad actor when he isn’t. The very basic handling of complex topics like the very real influence the Punisher has had on actual cops. The messy inclusions of Frank Castle, Foggy Nelson, and Karen Page, who were wedged into a pre-existing narrative. The almost blatant lack of any scenes where Matt discusses or practices his religion. The very insular nature this show has.

On the other hand, Poker Face is delightful and there are not many Cons in that department. Not every episode hits for me and not every mystery is as tightly written as it could be, but I don’t care. This is currently suffering from “people on the internet insisting the show is terrible now and should get cancelled” syndrome because we exist in a world of absolutes. I liked season one a lot and I like season two a lot also.
I like Natasha Lyonne’s character and her quirks so much, I’ll follow her anywhere. There has not been a single episode I’ve hated. I love this genre, I love Rian Johnson for revitalizing it on the big and small screens respectively, and I don’t even mind that they got rid of the overarching plotline to make it a fun ride along show. The people complaining about that are ridiculous, were you that obsessed with a thing that comes up every couple of weeks and barely impacts the plot? She’s a wanderer. Let her wander.
And while it wasn’t my most favorite episode, the John Mulaney episode was a highlight for me. He nailed it. If you haven’t checked this show out, please do. It’s a really fun week-to-week howdunnit starring one of the most charismatic women alive. I also particularly enjoyed the first episode with five Cynthia Erivos and last week’s episode with the psycho child. Great fun.

8. Severance.
This list isn’t all about stuff I like to watch, just these bits. And I should have talked about Severance already, to be fair. It is quite possibly my favorite TV show, period. Certainly my favorite TV show with Adam Scott. Sorry, Parks and Rec and Party Down. I love you guys. Now I must confess I haven’t done a season two rewatch yet, but I don’t think I did a full rewatch right away when the first one ended. There’s just a lot in this season and a lot going on.
This season definitely suffered from that same syndrome I mentioned earlier. I mean, opinions can vary, we’re all different people, but if you don’t like a slow burn, that’s on you. You can’t hate on a show taking the time to focus on character interactions and development each episode, that’s what shows should do. Now I will say, though I loved this season, there were many elements that were undercooked or sidelined to fit a pre-determined endgame. I can understand why some would have preferred a tighter, more focused season that didn’t ask more questions than it answered.
John Turturro leaves the show in a very odd way and we have no idea if he’ll come back,(I think he will) who he was talking to or why he was investigating Lumon. Ricken’s ego-stroking plot about writing a new Lumon handbook is dropped because the show doesn’t have much for him to do. Dylan’s affair with his own wife does not get enough room to develop properly, so the resolution feels a bit unearned.
Mark’s reintegration never fully occurs for plot reasons but the extent of his reintegration was not fully explained early on. So starting it so early in the season becomes less of a bold subversion and irrevocable change to the status quo and more of an oddly paced side plot that vanishes before the finish line when Outie Mark is given something else to do. Cobel disappears for half the season only to return in an episode that was very divisive. I’m not going to say it’s my favorite of the season but I definitely didn’t hate it. Overall this season is still very much excellent and I still love this show.
High points included Adam Scott’s acting across the board, the ORTBO episode, the Gemma episode, Miss Huang, any scene with the infuriating but excellent and very sexy Tramell Tillman, the devastatingly brief appearances from Alia Shawkat and Bob Balaban, and the whole finale from start to finish. I’m forgetting things, a lot happened. I just hope the next season is more focused. I also got a lot of anxiety throughout realizing we wouldn’t be returning to the status quo, but now I’m excited to see how they evolve the narrative.
Oh, and watch this if you haven’t, nothing I said makes sense if you don’t know the show. Big fun good time. I love weird sad but also funny sci-fi that’s surreal and shows the world what an excellent and sexy actor Adam Scott is.

7. Hot Sauce.
I thought I had a brilliant story to tell about this but basically my friend and I went to this shop and saw that they sold Da Bomb, the horrible hot sauce featured in every episode of the YouTube interview show Hot Ones. And when we tried it, my friends spent about an hour in different bathrooms while I sat in unbelievable pain for twenty minutes drinking a half gallon of milk and crying. It felt like someone punched me in the mouth with a million boiling needles all at once. So, don’t eat that, especially if you have no spice tolerance, and don’t do it twice.

6. I’m in a Book! Soon.
Last year I was in a class centered around publishing a book of stories and poems on Amazon, and my most wonderful professor has just about gotten around to publishing it. It will be called Tales of Migration or something akin to that. It’s a great book full of stories written by my classmates and Duluth community members. These stories detail different relationships people have with the concept of migration and what it means to them. My story was a very personal one and much more personal than anything I’ve written on here as of yet. When it’s out I’ll post a link to check it out.

5. Trader Joe’s.
When I was a child I would go to Trader Joe’s with my dad all the time, because he likes falsely healthy food that costs more for being a fairly generic copy of regular brands, but with -o slapped at the end of the word.
I hadn’t shopped there in what felt like ten years, but I went back with my dad a few months ago and experienced something very emotionally confronting.
My favorite thing to get from Joe’s as a kid was a frozen tortellini pasta with little chunks of tomatoes and zucchini. It was delicious. All I wanted was to get a bunch of that and bring it with me to Duluth. It wasn’t in the frozen section though. So I spoke to this very charismatic employee who searched their system and found out that it had been discontinued nine months prior. Which means those hippy jackasses waited several years and basically right before I got there, they pulled the tortellini rug right out from under me.
So I thought I’d settle for my second favorite Joe’s item, the lollipops. If you haven’t been to Joe’s, they have a company mascot named Tiki Sven, and Tiki Sven likes to hide around the store. And if kids find him hiding in the store, they get candy. Which is not a creepy concept. They sell these organic lollipops in little tubs. Or they did. Apparently they stopped doing that too. To the charismatic gentleman’s credit, he did offer to give me a handful from the treasure chest, despite the fact that I had not found Tiki Sven. I turned him down, since I am a bearded 22 year old man and that felt a tad patronizing.
At this point I’m just trying to get the hell out of there, but I’m still talking to the guy, and he asked if there was anything else he could help me find. There wasn’t. I explained it had been several years since I’d been there. He welcomed me back, said the Trader Joe’s family was happy to have me, all the normal shit. Now, I can’t tell you if I read too much into his incredible “comforting sales guy” vibe, but he was so nice I honestly thought he may be flirting with me, and I didn’t mind if he was.
What’s the point of this mini story? Fuck Trader Joe’s, is the point. They get you hooked on their delicious frozen pasta only to yank it away from you almost a decade since you stopped shopping there. They lose track of fairly recognizable items and use unpaid child labor to make up for their mistakes, rewarding them with delicious candy they don’t even sell anymore. And then they leave you a broken, confused, emotionally confused wreck, while playing even further into your doubts that you know what flirting is, all in the name of mostly crappy pretend healthy food substitutes. Bah, humbug.

4. Hot Sauce 2.
Previously on this post – “So, don’t eat that, especially if you have no spice tolerance, and don’t do it twice.”
For the entirety of my time at the University of Minnesota Duluth I worked at the library, and for my final semester I had the pleasure of spending my Thursday closing shifts with some wonderful people who also love reading my blog. I refer to Johnny, Adam, and Julia. Well, mainly Johnny, the other two are rat bastards.
I proposed mainly as a joke trying Da Bomb again with them because I don’t learn lessons and I thought it would be funny to act that stupid in the workplace, where I am hired to supervise and behave and not be a little dipshit. So on our last Thursday shift, I came in with two half gallons of milk(Everyone knows it’s easier to carry two half gallons in a backpack than one gallon) and my radioactive hot sauce. I bought some chicken from the campus food court. We were all set to be stupid. But the rat bastards barely ate a tiny drop each, whereas I actually poured some on. Again, this isn’t a great story, but it is a PSA: If you go to that library in the fall before midnight, there’s a chance you’ll see them, and you must know they can’t be trusted. They seek pain and humiliation for others. But all kidding aside, I like them. Julia is fun to talk to, and Adam is a man of science.

3. Elevators.
Long-time readers may remember a post from a few years ago entitled Stuck In An Elevator, which details the time I was at work and found myself stuck in one of our elevators for forty minutes. So it was truly fitting that I found myself stuck once more a few weeks before graduation, in our second elevator. This time I beat my record by forty minutes.
The technician was busy, so while I waited I read the book I was meant to find for a patron, which was about irrigation or something. I got bored and read comics on my phone. Then I got up and did laps for a bit, tried to do push-ups and sit-ups. I’m not good at these exercises, and I forgot I was in a suspended box with a decreasing percentage of oxygen.
When the guy got there he fixed the issue fairly quickly, and just as the hour mark hit he brought me down to the basement. He then asked me to get back in the same elevator so he could make sure it was working. He sent me up to the main floor and I never saw him again.
Elevators are fun.

2. Canada.
I went to Canada! For two days. Sort of. It was an overnight weekend thing with my friends. We drove up from Duluth to Thunder Bay, and it was a nice trip, but I think going to Ontario or somewhere more… central Canada? May have been more fun. Thunder Bay is a bit run down and decrepit. There’s some good stuff there too, it’s just not the most exciting town. We went to this one candy store which had all these different gummy candies and stuff from all over the world, and that store was delightful, but on our way in there was a man peeing next to his truck. His friend said “There are people coming!” And the guy said “I couldn’t hold it and now I have my pecker out by all these girls, oh no!” And then he went in and scooped candy into bags without washing his hands. So at least that dude knows what he’s about, I guess? I had a good time, though. I don’t have much to say about the trip because I delayed this post too much and a whole lot more has happened since then.

1. Graduation!
Here we go. I should probably write a separate post about this? Maybe. I don’t know. I graduated. I’ve spent the last month recovering from four years of school that I definitely always showed up adequately for. I don’t quite feel that I deserved to graduate, moreso than when I graduated high school. But I have the diploma, and I’m not going to argue with UMD. It’s just so fucking surreal, you know? Walking across that stage was an insane experience. I’m always going to feel like I didn’t deserve to graduate, I would feel that way even if I’d showed up every day, done all the homework, gotten incredible grades, and lined up a job right away. I, like all humans, hate myself a whole lot sometimes. But it’s so weird to think that I’m done now. I’ll never sit in a classroom and learn stuff again. That was sixteen years of my life. And now, what, I just find an office job? I know it’s my life and I’m at the beginning of it and I can make so many decisions and change my career path a million times if I want to, but I’m confused and in mourning, you know? I’m mourning something I didn’t even know I would miss. Because my brain is not made for a conventional classroom setting. Man. Life is so weird. And now I gotta figure out what comes next. Hmm. But I did it? Yay.

Now I can’t promise I’ll be back on a normal schedule yet, but I do have some other posts planned. I’m back home, I have to apply for jobs and focus on the life stuff I’m barely good at