My Summer Of Symphogear

Alright, so what in the fuck are we doing back here of all places? The astute among you will remember a long-running series on this blog, from 2020 and 2021, where I wrote basically a fucking novel about this dumb show. There are things about it that I'm fond of, and things about it I'm not fond of, but that's basically the kind of creator I am: in my head my writings have the shelf life of milk, and anything past six months I look back at and go "oh my god this stinks, what was I doing?". To wit, then: I was successfully able to express my thoughts and emotions about what the show meant to me. I kind of wish I was able to do it without bloating the word count by giving lengthy plot summaries of what happened in the show. It makes me feel like an out-of-touch Internet reviewer when I do that shit, a Doug Walker or a Quinton Reviews. I don't like it, but the words on Symphogear are out there and are like that and I just have to deal with that regret. These words are not a replacement for them.

We're back here because of my own absolutely ridiculous aesthetic chasing. There's no easy way to admit what I did, so let's just say it outright. One day in the spring, I was fooling around with things in my basement when I got an idea. My PS3 had the option for AV cables, and could play Blu-Rays. What would happen if I were able to hook it into my old VCR via those cables? What sort of things that came out on Blu-Ray, years after the VHS format faded away, could be retroactively ported over to tape? The hookup worked, and then I got a further idea. A VHS tape on SLP mode can hold 6 hours of video, at fuzzy lower quality. The runtime of a season of Symphogear on Blu-Ray is just over 5 hours. The result?

Frezno's Criterion Challenge: July 2023 Trip Report

A very happy welcome to the second half of my Criterion Challenge Trip Reports! It's hard to believe that we have gone through half a year of cinematic wonder. It's also hard to believe that I've dragged my feet a little on some of these. I shall have to try and make September a big one, because August has me doing a lot of writing and we know what kind of madhouse October will be on the blog. Regardless, here we go. Some more movies to try and expand my cinematic horizons and make me better at something or other, and we start with...

The Warring States Of Love And Hate (Inuyasha)

Right, then. Let's get back on the same page, shall we? So, to recap: I found this improbability in late February while cleaning out the basement:

The rediscovery of my long-lost off-air recording of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me was a terrifying enough bit of synchronicity, which I talked about last May. I briefly mentioned also watching the last bit of that tape, the spare 90 minutes for taping. What was on there filled me with a pure sense of nostalgia, a longing for a long ago time. Now that Twin Peaks is done and dusted, I can go back and tell you exactly what those 90 minutes were. They were three episodes of anime that I recorded on VHS in the year 2005, specifically off of Bionix, the Canadian youth channel YTV's weekend programming block for older youth and teens. (The astute among you may recall that a chance encounter with YTV two years prior to this taping, in 2003, was my reintroduction to Sailor Moon.) 

Frezno's Criterion Challenge: June 2023 Trip Report

Welcome back, my friends, to the broadening cinematic horizons which never end! It's once again time for a Criterion Challenge Trip Report, and can you believe that after this one we're halfway done with the year and the challenge? How time flies. This month's challenge also took place during Pride Month, so I slotted in some films with queer themes. If I'd thought of this beforehand I would have saved The Times Of Harvey Milk for this month instead. Nothing stopping you from watching it yourself for Pride Month, except for the fact that by the time you read this Pride Month will probably be done. Well, still watch that movie anyway. And probably a few other movies on this list that I watched in June 2023, if they're good. Let's find out together if they were or not, starting with...

On Survival Horror And Spicy Food

Let me ask you a question: Do you like spicy foods?

A lot of people love that kind of stuff, and will eat it up at any culinary opportunity. Bury their barbecue with buffalo sauce, sprinkle some sriracha on their sweet potatoes, confidently chew on a Carolina Reaper. Good for them, I say, enjoy your bold spicy flavor. I, on the other hand, have a low spice tolerance and can hardly muster anything hotter than a spicy Dorito. I remember a few months back, I was on a vacation with family and we went out for dinner on Friday night to a sports bar and grill. I ordered a nice burger with a side of sweet potato fries, but one family member went and ordered some extra spicy wings. When I asked him how in the world he could eat such spicy stuff, he said that it really wasn't that bad, like a 2 out of 10, and that I should try one. So I did. 

I made it one bite in before going "oh fuck no" and spending the next 10 minutes nursing my mouth burn with iced tea. That shit was so hot that a little got on the corner of my mouth and actively burned there too. It was not a pleasant time. Later, just to prove that this man's spice tolerance ratings scale is off the charts compared to my own, he showed off his 10 million Scoville scale lollipop and took a taste. He was relatively fine, just saying it kind of tasted like shit. That terrifies me. On the other hand, spice didn't make the night a total bust: my sweet potato fries came with a side of spicy mayo, and that stuff was actually quite pleasant. Its creaminess with a little teensy kick made for a nice flavor contrast with the sweetness of the fries. 

Let me ask you another question: Do you like survival horror games?

Frezno's Criterion Challenge: May 2023 Trip Report

(TW: brief discussion of actual murder, suicide)

You know the drill by now, I hope. Another month done, and another handful of cinematic hors d'oeuvres with eclectic tastes and vibes for my sampling and horizon-broadening. Where were we? Ah yes, last month we went on a little silent kick, ending off with a bit of gothic horror in black and white. That was wild, but what can we follow that up with? Let's find out.

The Impossible Dream Of A Walking Fire (Twin Peaks: Part 4) [Twin Peaks: The Return]

(Before we begin, a quick little bit of self-promotion. I was a guest on Whowatch 16, with my friend Sean Dillon and his friend David Mann, to talk about the latter half of Series 8 of Doctor Who. You know, Peter Capaldi's first and where I got my start on Doctor Who critique. These two let me talk about Clara Oswald for an Amount Of Time, and I enjoyed the discussion with them and hope you do too. Now, then. Let's finish this journey.)

So far, 2023 on the blog has been a completely unexpected surprise of creativity and invigoration for me. I honestly thought I'd be recapping musical anime and talking about anxiety and my own inferiority complex. We very well might do some form of that someday, but instead a beautiful thing happened. I encountered Twin Peaks, and my inability to write about it in a way that explained it forced me into a new and exciting form of writing, a form that I love. I found my brevity again, and found a new and better way to talk about media. As I write this, it's the 6th of April. I'm currently a little under the weather, which is annoying because I want to bang this entire thing out, but I must take a slow recovery from this cold and pace myself carefully. I at least want to bang out the intro here, while I have enough energy. 

2023 is a quarter of the way through, and what I am about to tell you may very well be the lynchpin of it for my creative era on the blog. It echoes back to what I wrote before, and echoes forward to what I will write after we put Twin Peaks to bed in this (probably massive) blog post. Let me set the stage for you. Let me tell you a story. I already told you, in part 1 of this impromptu project, how I became aware of Twin Peaks. How I found a secret diary and read it, and how that later got me to tape a TV airing of Fire Walk With Me. I know I taped it, but remember very little of it beyond that. The tape was lost to time, probably taped over long since. Ah well. I forged new memories of the show, the diary, and the movie. I moved on to pace out the gap between Fire Walk With Me and The Return with more of David Lynch's filmography. During that time, other things happened beyond me watching movies. Sometimes you can't just sit on your butt to watch movies or write about them. Sometimes you have to do errands.