So hey, how’s it been? It’s nice outside.
Since last I wrote, I’ve seen The Avengers twice, Sound of My Voice, a few concerts, and probably some other stuff I can’t remember. I’ve spent a lot of time outside and have had no impulse to write about anything, but it’s all just piling up and I still have a vague sense of responsibility for some reason. Now since I’m taking the day off to recover from Meshuggah last night I’ve got some time to kill. Here we go.
The Avengers is super great as expected. It seems anything Joss Whedon controls is destined for wonderfulness, and now that he’s a got a familiar property to play with he’s finally getting the recognition he deserves, breaking pretty much every box-office record there is like Chris Nolan and James Cameron before him. It’s certainly not a perfect movie, but as far as super-hero stuff goes it’s what it needs to be, and Whedon’s penchant for witty dialogue and excellent handling of large principal casts makes it crazy entertaining.
Sound of My Voice is basically garbage. Don’t bother unless you like being bored and only enjoyed Lost before they started answering questions, except that’s not really even a valid comparison because Lost is good.
As I mentioned, I saw Meshuggah last night along with Decapitated and Baroness. Decapitated were pretty boring, probably because I don’t really know their songs at all, but they struck me as border-line deathcore of a sort I don’t really dig. Baroness kicked all sorts of ass and included a few songs from their yet-to-be-released Yellow and Green album, which seemed okay for the most part. Meshuggah owned the stage of course. I had to push my way out of the crowd though because the middle of a Meshuggah audience is no place for a short, bespectacled music lover.
The night before that I got to see Reggie Watts with some friends. I’m only passingly familiar with him so I probably didn’t enjoy the show as much as I might have, especially since as soon as any sort of music starts playing the speech-center of my brain shuts down completely and words lose all meaning to me. His standup was pretty good though. Very nerdy.
I saw Converge a while back too, which was just extremely excellent. It’s the second time I’ve seen them but this time I was much closer to the stage, which is really the only way to experience their ridiculous intensity. Jacob Bannon is a monster of a performer. They played a number of new songs, which didn’t really sound like anything as revolutionary (for them) as Dark Horse did before Axe to Fall was released, but they were definitely solid and I look forward to them. I only caught one of the opening acts, Loma Prieta, which sounded nothing like music at all and made me wish I’d remembered to bring my earplugs.
I watched some shows too. Some friends got me into Adventure Time, which is a great cartoon made for pretty much everybody, drawing from stuff like Dungeons and Dragons and Candyland, with both childish and adult sensibilities throughout. It’s a joy to watch. I also caught up with Justified, which seems to almost be a spiritual successor to Deadwood, starring the same Timothy Olyphant and guest-spotting a bunch of other alumni. It’s fantastically written and almost every episode is a gripping reprieve from some other less-awesome shows I’m still holding on to.
Community is not one of those less-awesome shows. It’s probably the most awesome. Shame that it probably won’t be next season though. We’ll miss you Dan.
I think that’s everything.
