Lamp, broken circa 1988

Takakeisho fascinates me. I remember two years ago, his first match against Hakuho made me cry laughing. Hakuho was chasing the wins record, and he just taunted Takakeisho, who was using the very earliest version of his now impressive style. He wanted to be a thruster, but he had very short arms, and so Hakuho had no reason to really fear him. Here's the match if you've never seen it. And now, a year and a half later, he scores his first win over Hakuho with the full version of his style. He's turned his short arms into an advantage: his huge torso allows himself to force anyone out once they're in his range, but for someone to try to get him they have to put themselves in range of that attack. However, if they over extend he can pull himself out and force the opponent into an unfavorable position. His body is now his offense and defense. It's a fascinating approach, especially since it covers for the deficits he'd have belt wrestling with short arms.

lol yeah he endured a serious pectoral tear and shoulder injury on day 13, refused to pull out, and spent the rest of the tournament not able to use that arm in any real way. Here he is, winning the tournament in a tiebreaking playoff against Terunofuji with a one armed throw.

I will always love Kisenosato for his one armed basho performance, but for complicated reasons. See, my main man is Kotoshogiku. At that basho, he had just got demoted from Ozeki and was at Sekiwake, struggling to win the 10 he would need to immediately reclaim Ozeki. He was at five losses when he went up against the leader of the basho, Terunofuji. Terunofuji jumpstarted to broadcast a charge, and then the second time, immediately Henka'd. Kotoshogiku didn't get a fucking fighting chance. So when one armed Kisenosato beat Terunofuji two times in one day, first by Henka and then by straight up belt wrestling with one fucking arm, I laughed so much I almost cried. I'll always love Kisenosato for that.

(it helps that 1 & 2 are legitimately good light gun games but Typing of the Dead is straight genius)

because I feel like being weird and ornery I went through all the sega franchises I could find and turns out Sonic is probably like 10th best. in order, Yakuza Virtua Fighter Panzer Dragoon Phantasy Star Shining Force (NOT THE ARPGS) Streets of Rage Puyo Puyo House of the Dead Jet Set Radio and then Sonic, unless you're one of those weird fukin Shenmue people in which case you should go play the Yakuza games, they're Shenmue But Good Instead

For total clarity: the "I'd be willing to let two through" is for the thing where I listen to it and write the reviews. Around 12 people participate in that, so that'd be 24 albums, which is still A Lot to write about. If you think I'm going to do five albums per person in that format you're out of your mind, or, alternatively, you'd all need to pay me first, and it wouldn't be cheap. If people want to do ballots, I'm totally fine with ballots. I was just trying to gauge where interest was.

CODECOMBAT [3] I dont know why this is the year that I've decided to learn how to code as a hobby, but this is the year that I've decided to learn how to code as a hobby. Codecombat is a browser based python tutorial with RPG framing. I am enjoying it as a logic puzzle. Ideally this turns into an ability to make a video game later. My goal with learning how to code is to make a game for my mom, who likes Castlevania but has been passed up by 2D action game design in the last twenty years. Maybe I'll put it out. Maybe I wont ever finish it. Either way, Codecombat is a good enough time. THE ETERNAL CASTLE REMASTERED [4] GOTY candidate if your brain is broken in the same way mine is. It is a modern Flashback/Another World style game with an artstyle that is 100% completely amazing. It's only using four colors for the palette at a time, but what it's doing with those colors is just incredible. But, honestly, if you read "modern Flashback/Another World" and went "ugh why the fuck would you do that," you're good, this game will do nothing to convince you. It's also fascinating as a performative co-opting of nostalgia. The Eternal Castle isn't a real game. It's framed as remastered because the conceit of the design is that it's based on a game the developer remembers playing but doesn't remember the details of, so they made it again from scratch. So while that original game doesn't exist, that kinetic awkwardness of old PC games absolutely does. I strongly conditionally recommend this game.

I'm trying to think if it would be arrogant to point out the times I've done this in my own music

YO Bungie Splits With Activision, Keeps Destiny Okay so I haven't expressed this at length on here because y'all are a group still enjoying the game but this is the time to share my story. This is also not an invitation to convince me "it's better now." Destiny 2 Warmind broke my fucking mind. I'm kind of the lynchpin in my social circle for the playing of Destiny, and I will never forget the night Warmind came out and I beat the campaign in a single sitting. I thought Curse of Osiris was extremely disappointing. I spend an hour after beating Warmind laying on the floor of the living room, muttering "I can't believe it's worse" over and over again. This is not an exaggeration. Multiple people can vouch for this. Our Destiny group imploded in the immediate wake of Warmind. The final nail in the coffin was the point at which they gave it away for free, basically punishing me for buying it with the belief that "It will be More Destiny, That Will Probably be Great." I'll hold that L. I, stridently, believed that there was nothing they could do to bring me back. Of course, when I was entertaining possibilities, "Bungie pulls a second publisher heist and not only gets out of their publisher's grasp but this time with the rights to the game" never even begun to occur to me. So if they announce a third Destiny, my interest will be "Cautiously Curious" instead of "Dead To Me." That's improvement. Either way, this is the second straight decade ending with Bungie pulling a fast one on a major corporation, so that's amazing.

lol I'd be willing to let people nominate two for the decade thing on account of the Bigness of a decade but otherwise that's More Work Than Would Be Fuckin' Feasible

here's a question. The end of the decade is coming up at the end of the year. Let me float three options. 1) we attempt to do a decade ballot thing because the odds are better that we've heard enough albums over the last ten years to do that vs. end-of-year lists. 2) I'll be blunt: the reason I started doing "SHOW ME YOUR AOTY" is because I tried to run the AOTY poll here a few times and got dramatically less responses as that went on. I came up with the other thing as a replacement, because people feeding their personal favorite record to an arbitrator is significantly less work than exposing yourself to enough records to feel like you have a good sense of the best of the decade, and by doing that whole process we end up with a DVDVR-specific Best Albums Of The Year proxy. So yeah I'm suggesting a potential "SHOW ME YOUR ALBUM OF THE DECADE" spinoff next year. How's that sound. 3) don't do nothin' big at all

Honestly, probably around the same. I bounced off it when I tried it, but Stop Trying To Be God has been heavy in the rotation just by itself, so it's possible I would've liked more of it.

What's extra funny about that is that like Daughters is only Barely in my own top ten of this year. for anyone that could possibly care,

We have arrived at the end of this year’s efforts! Thanks again to everyone who participated, I really do enjoy doing this and I hope you do too. See you next Novemberish! "Wide Awake!" by Parquet Courts "You Won't Get What You Want" by Daughters "Vile Luxury" by Imperial Triumphant "Dirty Computer" by Janelle Monae "Joy as an Act of Resistance." by IDLES "II: Sojourn" by Wytch Hazel "Tell Me How You Really Feel" by Courtney Barnett "Drift" by The Men "Creation" by The Daysleepers "The Sciences" by Sleep "Ruby" by Macy Gray Okay so remember that thing I said about Parquet Courts and the road trip with my brother? IDLES was also on there. I then later tried to listen to the record, got four tracks in, and then had to go take care of some business around the house and never got back to it. On the plus side, I dont remember tracks 3 and 4 that well so it’ll be like they’re new!

for those uninitiated in rainbow six siege, an Ace is when you kill all the members of a team by yourself. It's very hard. AND NOW I HAVE THREE. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

qube was excellently spooky space horror portal times, so the sequel is probably Also Good!

General rule of thumb is I listen to it the same day I post it, although this year I was late on one or two so that's fair enough

Alright, signups are now officially Closed, and there's one album left after this one. Thanks again for everyone who participates in this, I hope you enjoy reading this stuff as much as I clearly enjoy writing it. "Wide Awake!" by Parquet Courts "You Won't Get What You Want" by Daughters "Vile Luxury" by Imperial Triumphant "Dirty Computer" by Janelle Monae "II: Sojourn" by Wytch Hazel "Tell Me How You Really Feel" by Courtney Barnett "Drift" by The Men "Creation" by The Daysleepers "The Sciences" by Sleep "Ruby" by Macy Gray Of course I know who The Men are. I remember in 2011 coming to this board and screaming, at the top of my lungs, repeatedly, about how Leave Home was a modern classic and that if you didn’t listen to it, you did not actually like rock music and I no longer had to listen to anything you had to say. I still feel this stridently about it. All that’s changed is I just make a mental note of this failing instead of shoving people’s faces in the cataclysmic wrongness of not thinking The Men were the best rock band on the planet from 2009-2012. When I was in high school, I played music with a friend of mine. We were in proximity and had instruments. This is how this kind of thing goes. His parents were otherworldly rich, at least to me. They built a three story castle for them and their sons to live in together forever. They fucked that up. Anyways, they left the bottom floor of this place to their musician son. The living room was decked out with an electronic drum kit, multiple amplifiers, multiple guitars, a piano, a mixer, a PA system, and more. He would repeatedly tell me he didn’t want to do anything more than be in a band. He was a decent enough rhythm guitarist when we were kids. He sang with a British accent because he listened to the Beatles that much. I vividly remember the night that started unwinding for us. It was when we were driving somewhere. I had burned him a copy of Leave Home. We were young adults. I played it as loud as I could. It shook my nervous system the way it did every single time. At a point, he turned to me and said, “I think you just want to be in this band.” I screamed “hell yes,” and that was mostly because of my desire and not because I was trying to yell over Lotus. I also screamed “Don’t you?” He chuckled, and shook his head. In 2012, I released my first two albums and saw The Men in Los Angeles at The Smell. They played a lot of songs from New Moon, because they had already written New Moon, because they were the fucking Men and of course they had. It was the first concert I didn’t go to with that guy in several years. He later moved out of town to get a degree in geology. He moved to Texas with his now-Wife. We drifted apart before long before that. He never recorded a song, despite having every instrument he could ever want to make his Beatles/Jack Johnson dreams come true. The Men are very, very tightly woven into me. Not just my taste, but the reason I do anything at all. They were my platonic ideal band: a band with perfect playing of simple songs with no leaders, only songwriters who were game to play anything. The instruments turned electricity into sound, but their songs turned the sound into electricity. I am perfectly happy with being a solo musician, but every once in a while my body seizes up and demands I form a band like The Men. I’ve resisted so far. This is all to say that I listened to Drift twice, felt sad both times I listened to it, and it became the first record by The Men I do not own or plan to own on vinyl. Let’s revisit it and see if I was just being harsh.

Bloodborne, and if you didn't have a PS3, Journey

1) Siege and Tekken still, but also I'm replaying Celeste and putting a bunch of time into a clicker game because I'm currently mid Extreme Depressive Episode and watching the numbers go up is about as much as I'm capable of some days. 2) Kentucky Route Zero Act 5.

lol you can change it if you want, there's still one more before yours

lol obviously photoshopped

Obligatory Business Announcement: Since the end of the year is on monday, I’m gonna go ahead and say that the signups for this close on Friday. So if anyone else wants to suggest a thing for this, you’ve got a week. Thanks to everyone who’s already signed up! "Wide Awake!" by Parquet Courts "You Won't Get What You Want" by Daughters "Vile Luxury" by Imperial Triumphant "Dirty Computer" by Janelle Monae "II: Sojourn" by Wytch Hazel "Tell Me How You Really Feel" by Courtney Barnett "Creation" by The Daysleepers "The Sciences" by Sleep "Ruby" by Macy Gray My older brother put me onto Janelle Monae. She’s like one of his favorite artists at this point, and I’ve never like not gotten why. She’s very talented. I’ll also say that I was suspicious as fuck of this record after that Yoga song that came out last year, which felt kind of hollow and also caused me to learn who Jidenna is and I’m still unhappy about that. It also came out with the whole movie thing, and I’m not the biggest fan of that way of doing things that way. It feels like it undersells the importance of the music in favor of the spectacle. But hey, all that really adds up to is “I shouldn’t make movies about my albums,” so I wont. However, I did doublecheck with a friend that’s already seen it and they say there’s songs on the record that aren’t in the movie, so I’m going to do this based off the record.

Alright I'm resurrecting this for two reasons. One, I feel bad about bringing an unrelated argument in here and dipping. Two, I've had a REALLY hard week, damn near bottoming out mental health wise and what I'm about to talk about is what pulled me out of it. Before old heads were yelling at mumble rappers, there was Cloud Rap pulling a majority of the scorn. This was mostly because of the association of the genre with Lil B (who i love but most people hate even though it's now clear he was way ahead of his time), but the only group I ever heard take up the mantle of Cloud Rap was the Best Duo Ever, Main Attrakionz. It's like this: no matter what mood I'm in, no matter how bad things are, listening to Main Attrakionz records fixes it at least for a little while. It is magical music, to me. And it's in that cloud rap genre; their choice in beats (especially their work with Friendzone, RIP James Lawrence) leads their music to this swelling beautiful quality that not a lot of acts really try to meet. There's LOTS of people out there attempting to sound hard, or attempting to make the hottest club song they can. Main Attrakionz are just out here trying to make beautiful songs about being alive. So if you need something to help you feel better, maybe this'll help because it works for me.

lol well I did say “if you must.” On to the next! By the way, quick reminder, but I write everything that appears after the list first, preambles like this second, and the list third. I do this because I know the review is very long, and you don’t have to read it. As a result sometimes you get things like this, where the list is going to show that Parquet Courts is #1 and the first chunk of writing is going to be dismissive. Observe! "Wide Awake!" by Parquet Courts "You Won't Get What You Want" by Daughters "Vile Luxury" by Imperial Triumphant "II: Sojourn" by Wytch Hazel "Tell Me How You Really Feel" by Courtney Barnett "Creation" by The Daysleepers "The Sciences" by Sleep "Ruby" by Macy Gray I’ll be honest: I’ve deliberately avoided listening to Parquet Courts for years. I have no sense of where my aversion even is rooted in. All I know is that the vibe I had gotten from them is that “this is probably not my thing.” No one I know has ever pulled me aside and been like “you gotta check out parquet courts” or anything either so this adds up to me having zero awareness of what this actually sounds like. So, let’s get open minded!