🙏🏻 The Friday High Five

Best Bros, Girl Gamers, and Podracing

Marvel Studios

Every Friday I share 5 things I enjoyed this week. Also, high fives are inherently cool, and I think we can all agree Friday is the bestest day. Hence the Friday High Five. 🙏🏻

My big thing this week was opening up a paid tier on All the Fanfare.

I don’t want to repeat myself, but getting to this point was hard. I generally feel pretty confident about my ability to combine words in fun and inventive ways. Putting those words behind a pay barrier requires a level of confidence I don’t easily have, apparently. Pushing ‘send’ only required a pep talk from my wife and a few hours uselessly tweaking the text of the email. I even progressed to the ‘Are you sure you want to send this?’ screen 3 times and backed out 3 times because I wasn’t sure, actually, thanks for asking.

It’s only been a day but the initial response has been overwhelming. I’m seriously awed by the level of support. Like Moff Jerjerrod in Return of the Jedi, I shall double my efforts. That means more Star Wars references, penis jokes, and an obnoxious number of footnotes. You’re most welcome.

Thanksgiving is only a few days away here in the States. I can practically taste the turkey and stuffing. I have a lot to be thankful for. Family and friends. Health. A Detroit Lions team that doesn’t suck. Near the very top is this community of readers and friends.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for reading and commenting. Thanks for making this crazy dream a little more real.

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Last week’s poll was fairly evenly-split. I like to do all of these things, other than shop. Unless we’re talking about shopping for new books or video games.

Have a great weekend!

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5 Things I Enjoyed This Week

Captain America: Civil War

My Captain America trilogy rewatch concluded this week. If you missed them, here were my initial thoughts after revisiting The First Avenger and The Winter Soldier. All of this is fodder for a piece I’m working on exploring the Bucky/Steve bromance.

Civil War is an Avengers film in all but name, and it includes some of the best action scenes in the entire MCU. The airport fight sequence in particular laid the groundwork for the comic book splash page style fights we’d get in Infinity War and Endgame, but while these later efforts were bigger and sometimes better, the airport fight retains a purity of spirit that remains appealing. It’s the same reason Superman (1978) will always be one of my favorite superhero films, no matter how dated the effects look. (Superman actually holds up really well, despite being 45 years-old.)

The airport fight is also a microcosm for the film’s theme. There are no winners here. Everybody loses. When pretty much every superhero movie ends with the hero triumphant, it’s refreshing seeing the good guys take an L.

While I still enjoy all that, I find myself drawn more to the film’s quiet moments. The inhalations before the exertions. We can’t care about the spectacle if we don’t care about the people first. This is where Marvel thrived during its amazing run.

Civil War also has my favorite movie trailer. Not just in the MCU. Period. Still gives me goosebumps.

This incredible article about being a girl gamer

I thoroughly enjoyed Amanda Kay’s article about her experience playing multiplayer shooters online. It’s a heartbreaking read.

It’s weird to say you enjoyed reading something that elicits those kinds of feelings. I’m not a masochist or something. But sometimes good art stings.

What they were really asking, or at least what it felt like they were saying, was, “Why are you here?” What they were saying was the same thing I could read on the expressions of every GameStop employee who stared at me from afar as I browsed the shelves or who asked me if I was shopping for a boyfriend or a brother. Girls don’t game, and if they do, they can’t be good.

Conan O’Brien plays Starfield

Clueless Gamer is one of the Internet’s greatest gifts to humanity. There’s nothing quite like watching Conan fumble around in a video game while keeping up a hilarious monologue.

I thought the series had concluded, but a Starfield episode popped up on my feed this week. As you maybe know, I like that game quite a bit.

Going on the Gotta Pop! podcast

I had the pleasure of being hosted on Buddy Gott’s podcast yesterday. I’ve known Buddy longer than any other writer. We met as part of a community that’d formed around a fiction podcast at least 10 years ago. We kept in touch a bit before reconnecting on Medium. Buddy wrote under a pen name for a while, which basically means I knew Bruce Wayne was Batman the entire time.

Buddy is a great guy and a warm host. Had a wonderful time talking about Point Break, movies, NaNoWriMo, and other things. I’ll drop a link once the episode airs.

Podracer Trailer Fan-Film

Now this is podracing.

This fan-made trailer dropped yesterday and it took my breath away. Sadly, the trailer is the extent of the production. In a very real sense, the action is the juice.

Modern trailers have proven it’s easy to make anything look good with 60 seconds of random footage. Remember when everyone lost their minds over the initial Superman v. Batman trailer? That trailer was the best part of the movie. It’s not alone in that distinction.

However.

The one thing you can reliably glean from a trailer is tone. Podracer imparts a level of pneumatic oiliness I’ve never really encountered in Star Wars before. It feels like a blend of Gran Turismo, Days of Thunder, and Gone in 60 Seconds. It feels fresh yet familiar.

I’ve been saying basically forever that I’m dying to see Star Wars step out from the Skywalkers’ shadow and maybe put the lightsabers away for a bit. To this point, Andor is the anomaly. Hoping for more in that vein.

Which leads to this week’s poll.