2019, a Year in Review

Hey everyone. To end off the year (or start the next due to the time of writing), I figured I'd do a little "year in review" kind of thing.

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.

Collaborating with Tom Green at his Comedy Show

Hey everyone, so if you don't know by now, I have a podcast I do with my friend Bio, and every episode I find some way to mention Tom Green and his career. You can watch the Peanut Butter Podcast here. Well I went to his website and checked out his tour schedule, and I saw he was doing a show in Muskegon Michigan (which while not "convenient," isn't unreasonable for a little weekend get away). So, I decided to book a hotel room and have a little trip. I was hoping to take a picture with him and maybe get him to say "peanut butter on a sausage" after the show, but what happened was SO much better (soon you'll find out the meaning of the title).

Now I've never been to a "real" comedy show before; the closest was a "last comic standing" thing my college did in one of the schools ballrooms with maybe 20 attendees, everything else is either comedy channels on Serious XM or Comedy Central specials. I didn't really know what to expect, but I was ready for a night of fun. The place that was hosting it is called "Back Alley Comedy," and it is one of the most interesting venues I can imagine. First off, it's not a comedy club, it's a bowling alley. I was trying to get the address by googling "Back Alley Comedy Muskegon" expecting a comedy club or bar or something, and I kept getting this bowling alley. After clicking on some links I realized "oh, this bowling alley does comedy shows too; that's interesting." Everything leading up to this wasn't that eventful (I drove for a good 4 hours, checked in, watched some spongebob on TV, that's kind of it). Now for the main event.

So I get to this place and the signage is like REALLY retro. I'm talking neon signs, the word "bowl" is on a disk thing that's spinning, it has this really old font; it was like something out of Fallout. I looked inside and saw they had Dance Dance Revolution and I knew afterwards I had to play, but first things first, I'm here for comedy. I bought my ticket there and ended up not having enough cash to pay (tickets were $30, I had $24). Thankfully they were able to ring me up at the bar with my credit card. They were quite busy, so it took them a while to ring me up. Since I was there I decided to get a Long Island. That took even longer, and it definitely wasn't one of the better Long Islands I've had (a bit too strong for my tastes, I enjoy more sours). Regardless, it still helped make sitting with a group of strangers easier. I sat up front, because I wanted to be right there with the action (and maybe get called on). I sat with a family whom after some small talk I learned the parents grew up with Tom Green and they were bringing their son to introduce him to his genius. That was cool.

Now for the main event; OK, the pre-show before the main billed act. The MC whom I guess is a regular came up and did some warm-up jokes. I gotta say, he was pretty funny. Then there was a lady comedian. I specify gender because she did some "I'm a woman, these are jokes about being a woman" jokes, but as a testament of how good she was she managed to make them funny to me, a single man. But that was only 30% or so of the act. The rest were funny regardless of gender. Now what was really awesome is she did some "play the audience" jokes, and being in the front I got to help. I don't want to say what the joke was, but my response to one of the questions was so bizarre it made her laugh. After she said the material she had written to the answer everyone else had, she worked my response into the punch line and asked me to elaborate more, and the end of my response she just lowered the mic, and walked over to take a drink, like "I can't build on that, that is just way too weird."

OK, now it is time for the reason I booked a hotel and drove 4 hours, Mr. Tom Green. Oh man, that was amazing. I was basically sitting right in the middle of the front row, and Tom Green walked down the middle of the event hall to the stage. He was within 1 foot of me, it was neat. Now out of respect for the art of comedy club comedy, I won't go into details about what his jokes were (which he made a joke about, there was a woman who was taking a picture with her phone and he joked about "the Instagram look at me I'm watching Tom Green" before going into a creative way of saying "don't record this"), BUT seeing that I was PART of the show, I want to talk about how I collaborated with Tom Green. Now even though I've not been to a real comedy show, I knew "if you sit up front, you're basically asking for the comedian to make fun of you," and that's exactly what I was hoping for, and it happened. There were 4 times when Tom Green spoke directly to ME, and made fun of my responses. And it's not like he was just "what's your name, here's a joke about your name," or "oh so your single, how hairy are your palms, I see you found a way to transplant the hair to your face" or something like that. No, there were a couple of times where we had a little bit of a back and forth; brief, but I still threw back some more material for him to work with. If you want to hear the full details, they're in this video here.

But what REALLY made it awesome, is after his routine he came walking down the middle and he patted me on the shoulder in a way that said "thanks for playing along so well loud guy." Then after the show as I was on my way out there were some people that said "hey you're the loud guy, that was good;" some more verbal than others. So yeah, there it is, I collaborated with Tom Green. Yeah, it's not like he was on the Peanut Butter Podcast or brought me on stage, or anything like that, but I've had yet another brush with fame. I know the title is a little click-batey, but when else am I going to be able to make a title like this again. Plus, I did give him at least 2 minutes of material directly at me, and in the world of internet videos that gives you a collaboration credit.

Now for the remainder of my little trip. After the show I played 2 games of Dance Dance Revolution in the arcade of the bowling alley, and I did pretty good. I'm not one of those "super heavy, my feat are barely touching the ground" kind of players, but I regularly set high scores on medium difficulty. And now my name is enshrined on at least 4 songs in the DDR cabinet of the Sherman Bowling Center (at least until someone plays perfectly on the songs I played, I got some combo breakers unfortunately). Then I filmed a Peanut Butter Podcast with Bio when I returned. We were both quite tired, so that meant things got a little weird.

The next morning I woke up early enough to eat the continental breakfast. Normally that doesn't happen, but the bed was so uncomfortable (super firm) and people were walking down I managed to wake up before they closed. Yay. I packed-up my stuff, checked out, and went home. It was REALLY fun. I hope to be able to do it again sometime. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.