I rang in the New Year on my couch watching the countdown with my Animal Crossing islanders. The residents of Sandpiper (a nod to the TV series Wings) waved glow sticks, watched fireworks, and shot off party poppers once the clock struck midnight. My wife sat next to me on her Switch doing the same with her villagers. It may not be the most traditional way to start the New Year but it seemed quite fitting for us.Sadly, I had to go to work the next morning, so I went straight to bed to score the six hours of rest before I had to get up and shower.
A great quote from Jason Sudekis regarding kindness and empathy: “I don’t think kindness, empathy and openness ever goes out of style, there’s never not space for it. There will still be those other elements in the world, and one of the themes of the show is how you go about reacting to those elements, because you can never get rid of bad. You can never get rid of people’s baggage. You can help them open it up and go through it with them and help them fold, but they’re the ones who have to put it in the drawers.”
I went and saw News of the World at the Alamo Drafthouse on the 2nd. It was my first time seeing a movie in a theater since July 2019. Overall, it was a great experience. Alamo did a great job of screening, cleaning, and making me feel comfortable at the theater. It also helped that we were the only ones in the theater. I finally got a chance to use up my Valentine’s Day present from last year, which was originally bought to use on the new James Bond film which still hasn’t been released.
I also watched Brittany Runs a Marathon on Amazon and was pleasantly surprised. I like Jillian Bell but wasn’t really sure what to expect with the movie. I presumed it was a simple comedy, but I was surprised to find an in-depth dramedy that really discussed some deep seated issues in a realistic fashion. For example: losing weight doesn’t immediately fix things broken inside of you. I found it fascinating when I went to research the film by searching it on reddit, I found posts from all sorts of addiction subreddits, eating disorders, movies, running, getmotivated, etc. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a movie cast that wide of a net on reddit before.
I got a free year of Discovery+ with our Verizon account and I gotta say, I’m sort of excited. I’m usually quite down on new streaming networks, but my wife spends most of her time watching shows from the Discovery family and we watched quite a few of them together. Now I get to experience these with no commercials and even have access to a ton of older episodes should I want to watch them. My experience so far with Discovery+ is quite limited, but I’m impressed with what I’ve seen so far.
I’m still playing FIFA 21 on occasion, Animal Crossing daily, and I’ve dabbled in NBA 2K20. It was one of the free PSN games a few months back and I’ve always enjoyed the 2k series. I like that I can set up a league featuring vintage teams from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. So, I continued the league I started a few months back with the 96 Bulls. I’m still very annoyed with the Gatorade and State Farm in-game advertising, but I’m trying not to let it irk me too much. I quit playing last time because of the non-stop advertising in that game.I’m still on the fence about diving into something bigger and more engrossing. I got a copy of Fallout 4 for Christmas and I’m still working my way through another play through of Skyrim, but I haven’t really settled on anything to really commit to.
SRX, the new racing series from Tony Stewart, finalized their driver and track line up for 2021 and all that excitement I had upon launch has dwindled. The drivers and tracks are quite weak and I don’t have huge expectations for this to be a long-term league. I hope the on track performance blows me away, but I’m not betting on it.