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.

A Historical SpongeBob Weekend

Hey everyone. Back in August I saw that SpongeBob The Musical would be playing in Dayton this weekend (November 22nd) and I asked mskate if she would be interested in seeing it together since I was interested and Dayton is close enough for us to go to. While SpongeBob isn't really her thing, she knows it's something I enjoy and would enjoy having a little date weekend. Friday was SpongeBob, Saturday was all mskate's choices, and Sunday was travel home day.

Friday was a simple day. I took the Friday off work and left 7AM after eating a quick breakfast. I drove all the way to mskate but since she was still working I had some time to myself. I went to the videogame store in her city and spent about an hour there, looking for PS2 games I don't have. I picked up 12. After shopping I went to the thrift store in her city and did some thrifting. Unfortunately I didn't find anything there. Oh well. I still had some time before mskate got home to let me in, so I sat outside her apartment and watched some hulu and youtube with the end of the range of the wifi. When she got home she needed a rest, so I just watched Home Improvement in the warmth. After the rest, we watched I Want to Eat Your Pancreas, and she really enjoyed it.

Now for the main event, SpongeBob the Musical. I got dressed up all special.

Slightly kidding, I wore that under my pants and jacket.

Mskate wasn't too thrilled about me, being me about it, but once she saw I wasn't the only one wearing very casual and SpongeBob stuff she was cool with it. The souvenir stand didn't have any posters, so I unfortunately didn't get something from there; I have enough t-shirts and don't use buttons and bags and such, but I like getting posters to hang in my nerd cave. Since we got there early the doors weren't open yet, but thankfully there was a guy giving a talk about the history of SpongeBob and the musical. Here's a brief clip I took.

It started with Stephen Hillenburg's start in a tidal pool park and his creation of a comic book of the marine life in tidal pools and went all the way to the creation of SpongeBob the Musical. I didn't know he created a comic book, or worked on Rocco's Modern Life. When he said "Rocco's Modern Life," I gave a small excited fist pump and he said "oh I see you're a fan, anyone else fans? No, you should check it out." Also when he said "SpongeBob has been on the air for 20 years" I thumb pointed to myself saying "fan since the start." Then at the end there was a little trivia question for "how many times has SpongeBob failed his driving test." I was thinking about the season 1 episode where he failed 38 times, and the speaker said "superfan, let's let the kids have a chance." When they were saying "1000 times" and "that's too low," I thought "oh no, it's the episode where Mrs. Puff gets replaced, that was...9,256 times," so when he called on me I said "well if you're going off the season 1 episode it was 38 times, but later it was 9,256 times." I was still off, because it was 1,258,058 times, but because I was such a super fan he gave me a consolation prize of a reusable bag.

By now it was about time the doors opened, but first I went to the bar to see if they had any SpongeBob themed drinks. When I go to the movie theater it's not uncommon for a big movie to have a themed cocktail, and I like to try "the cliffhanger" and similar. Unfortunately there wasn't "the fry cook" or "Texan squirrel" or similar, so I didn't have anything. Just like with The Monkees we went to a higher floor thinking "based on what I paid we're probably up higher," but then the usher told us "no you're on the 1st floor." After finding our seats I decided to walk around some and take in the sites.

After doing my blogger/vlogger thing, I sat down and enjoyed the band.

It was pretty fun. Mskate got a little frustrated when they just kept going beyond when the show was supposed to start. Anyway, about 5 minutes or so before the show started there was a guy dressed as Patchey that was walking around taking pictures.

Appreciate the pictures, because I almost got in trouble for them. One of the ushers came up to me and said "no pictures." I thought he was just a super fan cosplaying as Patchey, but apparently he was part of the show. Anyway, the show started not much longer after that and you can check out the companion review podcast.

It was a really fun day. At the end of the show they shot streamers over the front of the audience. The last time I went to a show where they shot streamers over the audience I stuck around to collect the streamers. Then again, the last show I went to with that was Sesame Street Live when I was 7, so there's that. Seeing that it's almost 20 years later I didn't do that. We left the theater pretty much immediately after the show. We went to our respective sleeping locations and that was it for the night.

Now comes Saturday. We went to our favorite breakfast place once we were both up. I decided to try something different this time, super breakfast sandwich; scrambled eggs, bacon, and cheddar cheese on white toast. She had an omelet. After breakfast we went shopping. We went to TJ Maxx to get clear nail polish and a picture frame. The clear nail polish was to seal the decal I put on a hair brush for her birthday gift, and the picture frame is for a Christmas present for my grandma. After TJ we went to Bath and Bodyworks for a little Christmas soap present shopping for the ladies in our life (moms, grandmas, and her) since all the hand soaps were on sale. We did some more walking around the mall, but there wasn't anything else worth noting. We just hung out at her place and watched Home Improvement for a few hours until our next activity. It was fun watching it with her because we were both little kids when it first aired and our dads really enjoyed it. "I remember watching this when I was really little, my dad really liked this show," "mine too, I remember watching it at our old house." I had soup from the grocery store that's across the street from her for lunch. We also made a gingerbread turkey as a little art and cooking project. The turkey turned out good.

Now for the next activity, Christmas village thing at the Dayton historical village. The historical village is a bunch of different buildings and such that was around Dayton for the last 200+ years, like from the time before electricity to the late 40s. They were making gingerbread cookies, roasted chest nuts, and hot cider in the pre-electricity area, and I had a gingerbread cookie. It was a good cookie, and the first one I had this season. After the cookie place we walked around the village some more. We went to a working printing press, and it was cool to see all the old equipment and old way of doing things. They also had the backgrounds on some old sayings. Like, "mind your P's and Q's is based on how lowercase p and q look similar, and with print mirrored it's easy to mess up," and "dingbat is actually fancy way to fill empty space." We also went to a history of bikes from this factory. Here are some pictures.

Bicycle built for 3, and a bike with a radio. It was neat.

The next place was this train museum. They had cabooses, trolley cars, high class train cars, and souveniers. There was also a little train we could ride on. Like, it was this mini-engine that could pull 4 cars with 5 people to a car around a little track. It reminded me of this part that was by my house we called "the train park" because they had the same kind of thing. Mskate and I had a fun little ride. Here are the pictures of the train car.

We also went up this observatory tower thing. The sign said it was 120 steps, and by the top we were tired and I felt like I had a good work out. However, we did get a really nice view of the lights, and it was worth it for the exercise. After that we went to a Wright Brothers museum. They had the work shop they worked in, some prototypes, a 13 minute video of the history of their experiments and journey to flight, and the piece de resistance, the actual plain the Wright Brothers made their flights on and the final project of Orval (bring the plain back home and build a museum around it).

I had some cheese fries after the Wright Brothers, and after that we looked around the historical museum. Apparently cash registers were a big industry in Dayton, as was prohibition.

We're definitely going to go back there for a day trip sometime, because there is a LOT to see, and we were getting pretty tired. We had take-out for dinner, and I made it romantic with candle light, and watched more Home Improvement the rest of the night.

Sunday wasn't too spectacular. I had my left overs from dinner for breakfast and went to church. After church we packed up my stuff and I went home. It was a really fun weekend, full of a lot of fun things. Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.