Friday, December 2, 2016

314. Things I've been enjoying

Ever since the election, I’ve been trying to just take myself out of the media circus of the election and enjoy a few things. I know when I need to step away from it all. Since getting through the day is annoying, I think it’s important to find some things that you enjoy. Throughout most of the year it’s been great to log off Twitter/Facebook for extended periods of time. I think I know what I need and what I do not need from social media. I don’t need or want it to entertain me for a long period of time. I have to cut myself off at some point.

So here are a few other things I’ve been trying to enjoy in spite of all the crap that seems to happen on a regular basis in 2016.

-I’ve been getting back into How I Met Your Mother. There are times when the show has those cheesy sitcom plotlines, and relies on some old tropes, but overall I think it has higher quality writing than most other 30 minute television comedies. I love the device of using flashbacks to tell a fuller story of how the protagonist eventually meets the mother. It’s a unique way to tell a story, as opposed to a linear progression of things. If I studied television writing, I’d probably use this show in some sort of class. I remember a while back when a former girlfriend told me that I was like Marshall. I think I’m a mix of Marshall and Ted. Definitely not Barney.

-Josh Ritter has been dominating my music listening for the last week or so. I can’t remember exactly why I started listening to him again. Last year, I listened to the album Sermon on the Rocks a ton. Nothing else really stuck from his catalogue though. This time around it did. The song “Golden Age of Radio” makes me want to sing a long. I’ve put “Monster Ballads” on repeat, and I’ve found myself mouthing parts of the words to “Right Moves” in my office cubicle.


-I went and saw “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” last weekend. I have a mixed review of it. I enjoyed Eddie Redmayne’s performance. I like how he’s not your typical heartthrob movie star, yet he’s been in a lot of big movies in a variety of roles. He did a good job portraying the magical zoologist Newt Scamander. I also really enjoyed the CGI of the aforementioned beasts. The 1920s New York City motif was a lot of fun. However, I wasn’t a huge fan of the storyline. I haven’t read any of the Harry Potter books in a while, so that might be the case, but this was a separate land. It just kind of felt like they were doing too much. There’s the plot of chasing all of the beasts that had escaped, as well as a plot to stop this mysterious ethereal creature that’s terrorizing the city, as well as a family that is firmly anti-witch and wizard. They try to tie it all up at the end, but I had to rehash the whole thing a few times before I got it.

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