The Nicsperiment's Favorite Things of the Nicsperiment: 2018 Edition (With Bonus Political Content! (and some stuff not originally found on the Nicsperiment!)
I'm going to try a little something new this year. I bumped up my usual "Favorite Albums" list a day, so I could end 2018 with an entry about everything I liked about the year...though now that I have already done it and am proofreading, I know what this actually is...a recap of the year centered around my favorites of this year's 160-plus Nicsperiment posts.
The year began for me, ironically, reviewing the Rocky IV soundtrack, as part of my "Every Album I Own" series. Man, that's going to end up being serendipitous. January usually falls into the lower tier of month rankings for me. I'm generally unsure about the year, or what I want to do with it at that point, and generally, someone close to me dies. It snowed out in Pointe Coupee Parish and in the Greater Baton Rouge Area a lot this January, which is completely antithetical to our normal weather patterns. This meant everything shut down, and I ended up sitting at home, playing a lot of Super Mario Odyssey, and feeling tentative. However, the month had some pretty nice payoff, as I came to the conclusion that the year would be best served if I just lived as myself, and did the things I most enjoyed. Common sense for most folks...years long therapy goal for me. I thus ended the month with a Nintendo 64 review that seemed to be more concerned with Little Debbies.
As I write this, I realize how little global events actually stick in my head. I thought I'd pepper this with references to a lot of stuff that happened nationally and globally, but the truth is I don't know what happened this year outside of a general sense of noise. That inspires me to make the rare Nicsperiment political statement, which is ironic considering the first couple years of its existence, The Nicsperiment was primarily focused on politics. That statement is:
STOP FEEDING THE TROLL.
I keep reading breathless story after breathless story about how whatever current scandal is happening will be the thing to finally take down Trump. Like most people under the age of 55, I don't like Trump either, but talking about him only gives him power. Instead of the opposition endlessly talking about Trump's actions, speech which only further galvanizes a Trump voter base that wouldn't abandon Trump if he shot his own wife on national television, we need to find a viable candidate to run against him (surely there must be someone), tout that person's accomplishments, get them ready to destroy Trump on the campaign trail, and get everyone who indifferently voted for Gary Johnson in 2016 on our side to beat Trump in 2020.Full candid admission: The Nicsperiment voted for Gary Johnson in 2016. Otherwise, in two years we'll still be talking about Trump getting taken down, while he's swearing in for another four Baby Boomer-empowered years. Every mean story about how Melania decorated the White House weird for Christmas just further ensures that our moms and their friends are going to meet early for sangrias on November 3, 2020, before pulling the lever for the incumbent.
So anyway, this Spring, the President did a bunch of crazy stuff, his voter base loved it, everyone else ineffectually abhorred it, and I ate a bunch of Poupart's kingcakes, Also, I marathoned Game of Thrones in its entirety, and reviewed every season in this mammoth entry.
I also wrote a retrospective of my own music "career." I hadn't really done any mental curation of that aspect of my life, so that was incredibly fun...as well as a little bittersweet.
I also found myself going on a serious stoner metal tear (though I've done about as many drugs in my life as the times Trump has repented before the Lord), which fueled one my more fun and wild hiking trips, this time to the hilly forests of the Kisatchie, captured in this bodaciously ridiculous travelogue.
About the time I got back, I picked up the flu, then marathoned Westworld, which is not the best show to marathon when you've got the flu, got better, and watched Avengers: Infinity War twice in the theater in a 24-hour span. I watched all kinds of movies this year, and a lot of them were pretty hoity-toity, but you'd have to be an absolute cretin to not see the value, and feel the emotional impact in Infinity War's final minutes. Plus, I love how the film unfolds as what previous films' have established is Tony Stark's exact nightmare. Robert Downey Jr. is great in this one (he's always great in these, but especially in this one).
The summer brought a chance to do some of my favorite things. First, I got to take my son to Grand Isle, where we split going to the beach with playing copious amounts of video games. He went with the throwback, Animal Crossing: City Folk, while I played game-of-the-year, Celeste, and finally, after seven years, dug into the incredible Skyrim. Then, I sneaked in a marathon of the incredible, The Terror, before kicking my family out of the house for a week so that I could immerse myself in a video-game and movie playing, viewing, and reviewing blitz, while also listening to a ton of vinyl (I started a vinyl pickup entry this year!), and cooking a lot. What a fun week!
As the summer burned on, my wife and I began to look for houses in the city, and I started getting more reflective about not only the seven years we'd lived in the country...my home country, but of life to that point. I wrote a review of an old video game that changed my life, a heartfelt, rambling review of an entire year of my life encapsulated in a Sigur Rós album, and wrote a heartbroken, existential-crisis-centric tribute to Carli LeBlanc, a girl who was murdered on my street.
Then, my little trio moved to the city. It took me a minute to adjust, but I soon realized that for the first time in nearly a decade, I had the full power of the Internet at my fingertips--the Internet was not accessible in the rural bayou corner of Pointe Coupee where we'd lived. This changed everything, giving me the power to stream audiobooks, films, and TV shows for the first time. We also now lived in the shadow of Tiger Stadium, and my son and I bought season tickets for the first time, as well. It was marvelous.
And my niece won homecoming queen, and Alabama screwed us over again, all on the same night! During the whole month of October, I undertook perhaps my favorite thing I have ever done on the Nicsperiment, marthoning a ton of classic horror films and reviewing them all, along with a horror video game, and a horrific new travelogue, all encapsulated here. Also, one of the best things I've seen in many a moon, the Castlevania animated series, is reviewed in the above link, but I have to mention it outside of that link because holy cow, was it good. Absolutely perfect. And that castle-storming scene. Wow!
Then, some very good friends came from the frozen North to the soggy South, and (I sure hope!) a good time was had by all, with some facilitation by this absolutely magical hike, which I haven't commemorated in words, but did so by photograph.
Right before the year wound down, I viewed It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's "Mac Finds His Pride" episode. I felt extremely skeptical as I watched the first 15-minutes: this show has always taken Seinfeld's "No hugging, no learning" ethos to a delightfully absurd limit, but "Mac Finds His Pride" features the show's perhaps most lascivious character showing empathy, and the most bumbling character suddenly showing a striking amount of competency. However, the final five minutes of this episode essentially throws those concerns out the window, with a dance sequence that has to be one of the most powerful scenes ever aired on television. Sunny takes the more micro element of the goofy Mac coming out to his father, and raises it to a macro level of self-acceptance that even the most hetero of heteros can identify with, including the Nicsperiment, who is only attracted to blogs of the opposite sex, except for that one really weird night in Vegas with that crocheting blog. "Mac Finds His Pride" is not only about self-acceptance, but finding unconditional love from God. It's insanely powerful.
I ended the year by reviewing every Skillet album ever made, and also seeing Creed II twice. I saw Creed II once right after it was released, liked it a lot, and reviewed it here. However, I saw it again the night after Christmas, with three generations of one of my favorite families with which to flick-watch. Creed II's themes had been on my mind since first viewing, so I appreciated them even more the second go round. While there's a lot going on, the movie's deceptively difficult central theme revolves around the boxer, Adonis Creed, realizing that he doesn't fight for himself, or his family, but simply because he was born to be a fighter--and how he must bring that personal energy of purpose to better serve the universe. Sure on the surface, that sounds like a bunch of cosmic nonsense. However, I've learned over the years that if I live solely to make myself happy, it's empty. If I live solely to make my wife or son happy, it's empty. If I try to fulfill my purpose, which honestly, I haven't completely figured out yet, while not losing sight of taking care of my wife and child, and practicing self-care, things are pretty great...even, if like I said, I haven't completely figured out the point of me yet. Maybe I never will, but I know when I get that ping of "I just made this place better," and the drive that results helps me better myself and better serve my family, God, and the universe, as well.
Taking on a foe he has negative emotional ties to, Creed initially acts out of fear, which generally always leads to disastrous results. As it moves on from the first act, I like how the film stresses that to fully achieve your purpose, you need people in your corner (which Creed doesn't have early on), highlighting this by having Creed's musician wife perform and lead his entourage out before the film's final fight, while Creed's foe, who the film miraculously makes sympathetic, has no one. And when the "antagonist" finally does gain a supporter...geez, get your Kleenex ready. During the second viewing, I also appreciated the soundtrack even more. It's a mix of modern hip-hop, nearly exclusively written for the film, and a score by Ludwig Göransson that goes from rousing to meditative. Göransson draws on the past, with instrumentation whose unique use of woodwinds seems to come directly from the 70's, but his work also includes modern guitar touches, as Creed contemplates his situation and experiences his life outside the ring. Göransson's score reminds me that this particularly film series, beginning with 1976's Rocky, has perhaps had a more positive impact on my life than any other. I didn't intend to let Creed II take over this year-long recap, but I find it is occupying quite a bit of my thoughts during this final week of the year.
So I end 2018, a year I truly loved, on this note: find people you can both enrich and be enriched by, support and be supported by, and try your best to occupy whatever role it appears God has given you. Here's to a bonkers great 2019.
* * *
As I write this, I realize how little global events actually stick in my head. I thought I'd pepper this with references to a lot of stuff that happened nationally and globally, but the truth is I don't know what happened this year outside of a general sense of noise. That inspires me to make the rare Nicsperiment political statement, which is ironic considering the first couple years of its existence, The Nicsperiment was primarily focused on politics. That statement is:
STOP FEEDING THE TROLL.
I keep reading breathless story after breathless story about how whatever current scandal is happening will be the thing to finally take down Trump. Like most people under the age of 55, I don't like Trump either, but talking about him only gives him power. Instead of the opposition endlessly talking about Trump's actions, speech which only further galvanizes a Trump voter base that wouldn't abandon Trump if he shot his own wife on national television, we need to find a viable candidate to run against him (surely there must be someone), tout that person's accomplishments, get them ready to destroy Trump on the campaign trail, and get everyone who indifferently voted for Gary Johnson in 2016 on our side to beat Trump in 2020.Full candid admission: The Nicsperiment voted for Gary Johnson in 2016. Otherwise, in two years we'll still be talking about Trump getting taken down, while he's swearing in for another four Baby Boomer-empowered years. Every mean story about how Melania decorated the White House weird for Christmas just further ensures that our moms and their friends are going to meet early for sangrias on November 3, 2020, before pulling the lever for the incumbent.
So anyway, this Spring, the President did a bunch of crazy stuff, his voter base loved it, everyone else ineffectually abhorred it, and I ate a bunch of Poupart's kingcakes, Also, I marathoned Game of Thrones in its entirety, and reviewed every season in this mammoth entry.
I also wrote a retrospective of my own music "career." I hadn't really done any mental curation of that aspect of my life, so that was incredibly fun...as well as a little bittersweet.
I also found myself going on a serious stoner metal tear (though I've done about as many drugs in my life as the times Trump has repented before the Lord), which fueled one my more fun and wild hiking trips, this time to the hilly forests of the Kisatchie, captured in this bodaciously ridiculous travelogue.
About the time I got back, I picked up the flu, then marathoned Westworld, which is not the best show to marathon when you've got the flu, got better, and watched Avengers: Infinity War twice in the theater in a 24-hour span. I watched all kinds of movies this year, and a lot of them were pretty hoity-toity, but you'd have to be an absolute cretin to not see the value, and feel the emotional impact in Infinity War's final minutes. Plus, I love how the film unfolds as what previous films' have established is Tony Stark's exact nightmare. Robert Downey Jr. is great in this one (he's always great in these, but especially in this one).
The summer brought a chance to do some of my favorite things. First, I got to take my son to Grand Isle, where we split going to the beach with playing copious amounts of video games. He went with the throwback, Animal Crossing: City Folk, while I played game-of-the-year, Celeste, and finally, after seven years, dug into the incredible Skyrim. Then, I sneaked in a marathon of the incredible, The Terror, before kicking my family out of the house for a week so that I could immerse myself in a video-game and movie playing, viewing, and reviewing blitz, while also listening to a ton of vinyl (I started a vinyl pickup entry this year!), and cooking a lot. What a fun week!
As the summer burned on, my wife and I began to look for houses in the city, and I started getting more reflective about not only the seven years we'd lived in the country...my home country, but of life to that point. I wrote a review of an old video game that changed my life, a heartfelt, rambling review of an entire year of my life encapsulated in a Sigur Rós album, and wrote a heartbroken, existential-crisis-centric tribute to Carli LeBlanc, a girl who was murdered on my street.
Then, my little trio moved to the city. It took me a minute to adjust, but I soon realized that for the first time in nearly a decade, I had the full power of the Internet at my fingertips--the Internet was not accessible in the rural bayou corner of Pointe Coupee where we'd lived. This changed everything, giving me the power to stream audiobooks, films, and TV shows for the first time. We also now lived in the shadow of Tiger Stadium, and my son and I bought season tickets for the first time, as well. It was marvelous.
And my niece won homecoming queen, and Alabama screwed us over again, all on the same night! During the whole month of October, I undertook perhaps my favorite thing I have ever done on the Nicsperiment, marthoning a ton of classic horror films and reviewing them all, along with a horror video game, and a horrific new travelogue, all encapsulated here. Also, one of the best things I've seen in many a moon, the Castlevania animated series, is reviewed in the above link, but I have to mention it outside of that link because holy cow, was it good. Absolutely perfect. And that castle-storming scene. Wow!
Then, some very good friends came from the frozen North to the soggy South, and (I sure hope!) a good time was had by all, with some facilitation by this absolutely magical hike, which I haven't commemorated in words, but did so by photograph.
Right before the year wound down, I viewed It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's "Mac Finds His Pride" episode. I felt extremely skeptical as I watched the first 15-minutes: this show has always taken Seinfeld's "No hugging, no learning" ethos to a delightfully absurd limit, but "Mac Finds His Pride" features the show's perhaps most lascivious character showing empathy, and the most bumbling character suddenly showing a striking amount of competency. However, the final five minutes of this episode essentially throws those concerns out the window, with a dance sequence that has to be one of the most powerful scenes ever aired on television. Sunny takes the more micro element of the goofy Mac coming out to his father, and raises it to a macro level of self-acceptance that even the most hetero of heteros can identify with, including the Nicsperiment, who is only attracted to blogs of the opposite sex, except for that one really weird night in Vegas with that crocheting blog. "Mac Finds His Pride" is not only about self-acceptance, but finding unconditional love from God. It's insanely powerful.
I ended the year by reviewing every Skillet album ever made, and also seeing Creed II twice. I saw Creed II once right after it was released, liked it a lot, and reviewed it here. However, I saw it again the night after Christmas, with three generations of one of my favorite families with which to flick-watch. Creed II's themes had been on my mind since first viewing, so I appreciated them even more the second go round. While there's a lot going on, the movie's deceptively difficult central theme revolves around the boxer, Adonis Creed, realizing that he doesn't fight for himself, or his family, but simply because he was born to be a fighter--and how he must bring that personal energy of purpose to better serve the universe. Sure on the surface, that sounds like a bunch of cosmic nonsense. However, I've learned over the years that if I live solely to make myself happy, it's empty. If I live solely to make my wife or son happy, it's empty. If I try to fulfill my purpose, which honestly, I haven't completely figured out yet, while not losing sight of taking care of my wife and child, and practicing self-care, things are pretty great...even, if like I said, I haven't completely figured out the point of me yet. Maybe I never will, but I know when I get that ping of "I just made this place better," and the drive that results helps me better myself and better serve my family, God, and the universe, as well.
Taking on a foe he has negative emotional ties to, Creed initially acts out of fear, which generally always leads to disastrous results. As it moves on from the first act, I like how the film stresses that to fully achieve your purpose, you need people in your corner (which Creed doesn't have early on), highlighting this by having Creed's musician wife perform and lead his entourage out before the film's final fight, while Creed's foe, who the film miraculously makes sympathetic, has no one. And when the "antagonist" finally does gain a supporter...geez, get your Kleenex ready. During the second viewing, I also appreciated the soundtrack even more. It's a mix of modern hip-hop, nearly exclusively written for the film, and a score by Ludwig Göransson that goes from rousing to meditative. Göransson draws on the past, with instrumentation whose unique use of woodwinds seems to come directly from the 70's, but his work also includes modern guitar touches, as Creed contemplates his situation and experiences his life outside the ring. Göransson's score reminds me that this particularly film series, beginning with 1976's Rocky, has perhaps had a more positive impact on my life than any other. I didn't intend to let Creed II take over this year-long recap, but I find it is occupying quite a bit of my thoughts during this final week of the year.
So I end 2018, a year I truly loved, on this note: find people you can both enrich and be enriched by, support and be supported by, and try your best to occupy whatever role it appears God has given you. Here's to a bonkers great 2019.
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