TH's Other Things He Enjoyed in 2021
I'm not qualified to write extensive lists about anything else that happened this year, so here's a potpourri of things I quite liked this calendar year.
Yesterday, I dropped my albums of the year list, which at this point is probably the only in-depth thing I’m qualified to write about anymore. Hell, I’m probably not even qualified to write about music either. I just happen to listen to more of it than I consume of any other area in new media. I know most of my readers don’t come here for expert opinions in one area. For the rest of my year-in-review, I’m just going to give you my thoughts on a hodgepodge of things I thought were neat across various subjects. That’s fair, right? Right. Allow me to start off with my favorite movie of the year…
Denis Villeneuve’s Dune – Of course, you saw this coming, given I’ve already written about the movie around the time it came out. However, that post was centered on people who were expecting jokes in a dense sci-fi epic about drugs, guerrilla warfare, and giant worms. Okay, giant worms can be pretty funny, but that’s what Dune shitposting is for. It’s important to set expectations about things, but it’s also important to expound upon the things one enjoys. Joy spreads through word of mouth anyway. Dune, which I guess officially is Dune, Pt. 1, does not need me to evangelize to boost its popularity. I’m going to do it anyway because I too want to be one of those weirdos who knows things about this labyrinthine futurescape created by one Frank Herbert.
In order to imagine a universe where humanity has spread their collective legs to its furthest stretches, you need a director with a grand sense of scale. Denis Villeneuve was a perfect choice because he’s dealt with both futuristic settings (Blade Runner 2049) and extraterrestrial movement across the universe (Arrival). One can see the care he put into making everything feel epic in scale, like the viewer was immersed in these grand, monolithic worlds. Setting and environment are so important in these fantasy films, and Villeneuve just nails it. He sets the stage for a power struggle that happens in media res, no elaborate origin stories, no flashbacks to Butlerian Jihad. He gives the audience credit, and the audience is rewarded with a rich, intelligent blockbuster in an age where Disney has conditioned people to think that a blockbuster has to be ribald, intentionally dumbed down, and formulaic. It’s not to say that all Disney blockbusters are “bad,” because I quite enjoy the MCU baseline, and Star Wars, Episode VIII: The Last Jedi would be my favorite Star Wars movie if you didn’t factor in pesky things like “continuity within the trilogy.” It’s just that you can and should be able to expect more out of any movie.
Of course, leaving an intentional dangling midpoint is a choice, but it’s a good one given how much source material is packed into any one of Herbert’s novels at any given time. I’m shocked that in the age of television shows with movie budgets that they didn’t turn Dune into a prestige show, either on a streaming network or on HBO. Then again, you can’t watch prestige television in IMAX, and although my wife and I watched it at home, you cannot deny cinephiles and sci-fi fanatics the opportunity to see a world like Arrakis in the best quality picture possible. Still, Dune, Pt. 1 did what it was meant to do. It gave me an incredible movie experience, and it left me wanting Pt. 2 today instead of in a couple of years.
Anyway, speaking of television shows with movie budgets…
Marvel’s Hawkeye – At the time I wrote this newsletter entry, I had not seen the season finale. I probably won’t see it until late tonight, if you’re reading this on the day it was published. That being said, they would have to fumble the bag mightily in that sixth episode to turn my opinion on this show from sunny and positive to becoming a pre-ghostly visit Scrooge on it. This is Marvel’s fourth crack at serialized television this year. WandaVision was pretty good. Falcon and the Winter Soldier was not as good. Loki was better than the other two. They set a baseline quicker than they did with the movies, but Hawkeye was a taller task than most, at least for me.
The thing is, from his first appearance in Thor to his last appearance in Avengers: Endgame, Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton never resonated with me. I’m not a comics reader, and Hawkeye was never really a character people who were readers talked about. I had a good idea of what Tony Stark or Thor Odinson should look like or how they should act. Clint Barton? Rasa tabula. What Renner brought to the table, this bland meathead who shot arrows and bantered with the infinitely more interesting Natasha Romanoff, wasn’t appetizing, and it was a huge reason why the big set piece scene in Endgame, Nat in a race with Clint to see who could sacrifice themselves to get the Soul Stone, didn’t pop the way it should have.
The series, however, has made me care about Clint Barton. Renner still plays him like an old meathead, but the writing, which is based of Matt Fraction’s heralded comic book run, is much kinder to making the audience sympathize to him. Perhaps all he needed was to have more focus on him to allow him to show a little more range. Granted, it’s not much more room to pivot for Renner or the Barton character, but sometimes, the most minuscule of freedom or focus helps. It also helps that Hailee Stanfield is phenomenal as Kate Bishop, the restlessly mouthy college age inheritor to the Hawkeye mantel. Florence Pugh, Tony Dalton, and Vera Farmiga all are wonderful here too, and the mere specter of Vincent D’Onofrio showing up as Wilson Fisk has me all hot and bothered. Of course, he doesn’t properly show up until today’s episode, which again, I’m expecting to stick the landing. But it’s not like we don’t have any idea what D’Onofrio brings to the table. We’re all excited because we saw him in the Netflix Daredevil series. Either way, with or without the Kingpin, Hawkeye stands as the best Marvel show on D+ so far. I think it might be worth checking out even if you’re MCU-averse.
Hook – I try not to talk about wrestling on here for good reason. I have an outlet for that. The thing is, I’ve forgotten to write on that outlet a bit, mainly because this year has been rough. When it hasn’t been bad rough, it’s been busy, which is rough but good. My juice for having opinions about wrestling has been limited to 280 characters lately anyway. I don’t know why. Perhaps everything that that I have to say about wrestling, I’ve said before? It’s an entertaining artform/sporting simulacrum, but it’s certainly not deep. I don’t know.
But I do want to show some appreciation for Tyler Senerchia, better known to All Elite Wrestling fans as Hook. He’s the son of Pete Senerchia, whom AEW and Extreme Championship Wrestling fans know well as Taz. He made his first appearance in AEW in 2020, and people started to get behind him for ironic reasons. They decided to call him “Hook” for crying out loud, and it wasn’t because he was a pirate or had a curved metallic pin where his hand should have been. It was like he was a fever dream of a shitposting wrestling fan brought to life. But as he kept appearing on camera, the irony started to turn earnest. Part of that was because Team Taz has been one of the best parts of AEW. Part of it was you had this objectively attractive young guy who exuded mysterious swagger. Part of it was that before he became a commentator, his dad was one of the most fearsome wrestlers around. Things started to reach a fever pitch around him when CM Punk asked Taz to “send Hook” in September. Then he started offering chips to Dante Martin. He couldn’t just be a meme forever.
On the second Friday of December, he finally made his televised wrestling debut. It would’ve been too on the nose if it sucked, because hype has a way of creating disappointment. We all could have put our fingers in our ears and said he was awesome just to fuel the memes anyway. But it didn’t suck. Yeah, it was a squash match1, and he didn’t have to show the finer points of being a wrestler. Pro wrestling isn’t just about the moves; you have to be able to build pathos, make the crowd care. You do that by “selling,” or pretending to be hurt. Vulnerability is what makes ever superhero in a movie worth rooting for, and it’s what gives the audience hope in an otherwise invincible-looking villain. He’ll get his chances to show off how much of a full package he is in that regard. However, it is important to look at the brief glimpses and to see the promise. The important thing to note is that Hook came to the ring looking like the coolest motherfucker in the tristate area, he looked natural doing his offensive moves, and at the end of the match, he gave everyone who turned him into a meme reason to respect him as an actual wrestler. There have been better wrestlers in 2021, but for me, none of them really approach the kind of zeitgeist that Hook represents.
What were some of your favorite things from this year? Movies, books, video games, sports moments, anything! Leave them in the comments!
Mike’s Hot Honey – By no means is this a new product. I am slow on the uptake on new trends (which might be why Dune being on here is so surprising), but again, it’s not when you get on the good stuff. It’s that you discover it altogether. Hot honey is one of those things that mashes two different flavor worlds together. You know about sweet and savory, but what about sweet and spicy? It’s an intriguing mix that elevates a lot of dishes to which it’s added. Burgers? Surprising, but it works. Fried chicken? That’s the obvious play.
Detroit-style pizza is the wild card here, but we found a place called Icon Pizza up the road that specializes in it. One of their pies, the Motown, comes with cup-and-curl pepperoni and a drizzle of hot honey. The first time I tasted it, it was like I saw the face of God himself. It was the perfect deployment of hot honey. The way the spice in the honey naturally complements the natural zing in the pepperoni, all backed by that sweet and sticky honey on top of beautifully melted cheese and the little dabs of that pizza sauce, it was heavenly.
You’re really not going to find a whole lot of culinary innovations under the sun anymore. Humans have been cooking the food they’ve been eating since before recorded history, like for ten millennia or so. It’s the little slices of heaven that you’re going to find by performing culinary alchemy on things that you never thought went together, like oranges and chocolate, chicken and waffles, or in this case, honey and hot peppers.
Playing Old Video Games on My Nintendo Switch Console – I spent almost 5,000 words yesterday describing all the new music I loved, partially because new music is pretty good still, but partially because I didn’t want to become some loser nerd who thought that music peaked when they were in high school. Of course, it’s probably true that I still hold the bands I got into in high school in higher regard because they hit me in the feels during my development as an adult, but I’m still realizing that great music is being made today and that I don’t have to shut myself off because I obsessed over Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop in 1996. Yet, when it comes to video games, I realize that I have become, if unintentionally, that loser nerd who clings to the stuff they played in their youth.
It’s not that I don’t think great games are being produced today. Gaming is just an expensive hobby, way more so than music with the advent of streaming services. I want to be able to have access to a shitload of games for a reasonable price to keep me occupied between the big box Nintendo franchise setpiece games. Nintendo has that for me in the form of the various online libraries of their older systems. They had the Nintendo and Super Nintendo available for a while, and those are both pretty neat even if you account for how lax they are in updating them. Then they went and added libraries for the Sega Genesis and Nintendo 64, albeit for a premium fee. Still, fifty bucks a year is better than fifty bucks per cartridge.
To move forward is a good mindset for a lot of things. In other areas, the gossamer feel of nostalgia will always sing a siren’s song. Could I be like the hip kids and play games like The Binding of Isaac or Far Cry 6, or can I just retreat into another mission in Star Fox 64 or trying another random-level playthrough of Toejam and Earl? I’m 40 years old. I have to keep thinking of ways to move forward in my career, my family, in the important areas. If I just want to blot my mind out and play games I’ve already played 100 times before, I’m going to do it. It’s my comfort zone.
A “squash match” in wrestling parlance is one where one wrestler gets a majority of the offense against a hapless opponent, or a “jobber.” It does not involve literal squashing nor does it involve gourds of any kind.