Since this is my "adventure blog" though, I should probably give a little "adventure" I had on New Years Eve. A family from the camping friends group hosted a New Years Eve party, like they do every so often. Normally someone in our camping group will host a new years party. I went over to my parents and we went to their house. I brought a bottle of wine, 2 liter of Sprite, and my home made pickled carrots. They went over pretty well. I ended up playing Monopoly with some of the "people of my generation" (I can't call us "kids" since we're all in our early 20s and such) for like an hour and a half, and even though I joined later taking over for someone who wasn't doing well, I managed to drag out the game for a while. After Monopoly everyone played catchphrase for an hour or so. Then it was time to watch the ball drop, and we all had glasses of Champaign (or for the non-alcohol drinkers, sparkling apple juice). It was a really fun time.
Now for the year in review. Lets start this off with the first and most major event, I got a girlfriend. If you've been following my blog, my longtime friend mskate and I decided to give dating a try, and it's been a wonderful experience. We've done so much together, like SpongeBob the musical and Dayton historical park, multiple weddings (like this one), many movies I probably wouldn't see otherwise (like the art of racing in the rain, and Lion King 2019), and a lot of other fun. I'm looking forward to a fun 2020 with her.
Another really cool thing is I got to see multiple minor celebrities live in person. First there was Tommy Wiseau at a midnight screening of the room. He was a really interesting dude. I also got to see Mike and Micky from the Monkeys and I was so close I could see their wrinkles. I also Jay and Silent Bob IRL, but I was in the nosebleed seats. There was also Toby Mac in concert, whom I saw with mskate.
While meeting Tom Green was at the end of 2018, I still want to include it, because I also got my friends together to watch his run on big brother.
Lets see, this was also a year I did multiple collaborations. I want to start off with the one that probably had the most reach, and that was the Animation Lookback Cartoon Network Part 7 April Fools Day with AniMat. That was a really fun collaboration that was my idea. I was a patron of his for years and I said "hey, you didn't cover ALL Cartoon Network has to offer in your 6 parts, can I make a request for you to review Animation Lookback Cartoon Network Part 7," and he said "that's a good idea for an April Fools video." There was also the String Cheese Commercial I did with one of my friends on hugelol. This was a commission from one of the other guys on hugelol, and for correctly figuring out what a nonsense video of me in an oddish cosplay (which was from my review of Detective Pikachu), BackseatDriver made a guest contributor. There was also my podcast with bio. But the big thing was my 2nd major multi-user collaborative project, Vidmewashere 2 Electric Boogaloo. Here's a little behind the scenes; this only happened because some guy with a sega said "here's my story if you make a sequel" and stoonios getting real life in the way of videos the first time, and realizing that there were SOOOO many different avenues I didn't use when trying to find people with the original vidmewashere (like lost media wiki discord, youtube, and vidlii). However after finding all the people I could (this time drama crew), and general disinterest from many people, I think I've exhausted everyone that is willing to discuss vidme. If anyone else wants to take up the vidmewashere mantel, you can and I would be happy to contribute. I wonder what kind of collaborations I will have in 2020.
One thing that was very surreal for me is 2019 was my 10 year anniversary of my online presence (as catholiccontriversy). It's kind of weird looking back at that, just thinking "I've done this for 40% of my life."
One of the funny things that just kind of happened was one of my first Pokematic videos was SpongeBob Truth or Square for SpongeBob's 10th anniversary, and this year was SpongeBob's 20th anniversary with Big Birthday Blowout. I reviewed both, and remastered my Truth or Square review. It was kind of weird remastering the Truth or Square video and seeing just how much I refined my character, with the comparably slow delivery and weak expressions. Looking back at the last 10 years, sorry Happy Gamer, I had plans for you, but since your videos are so hard to make, you get maybe 1 a year. But speaking of "improve as an artist," 2019 was also the year I decided "I'm going to rereview Catcher in the Rye and give it the thorough destruction since I didn't have the chops to do that when I started." I unfortunately didn't finish it because it was so rage inducing and was taking a serious toll on my sanity, plus I wanted to focus on vidme 2. I'm like 75% of the way through the book though, so I'll be able to finish it in 2020. Plus, I found I'm serving an underserved market with my "Holden Should Have Killed Himself" video being a top result for "catcher in the rye sucks," and "Catcher in the Rye is Meaningless Dada" being the ONLY result for "catcher in the rye dada."
I'm going to finish this. I owe it to myself and the world. The musings and thoughts I get when I think about analyzing catcher and why it's so bad are great, and I just need to refine them to cohesive arguments and counter points to "this is one of the greatest books ever." I have a pocket notebook that is about half full of notes and an entirely separate folder on my audio recorder for dictation.
I think that just about covers the major things that happened in my life. What, were you expecting a reflection on current events and news? No, there are so many other people doing that, I just want to reflect on my own life. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
