Closedown Channel Ten
Returning to the Mojave Wasteland, Leaving 2020
Previously on Phil’s Newsletter: I gots me a bad case of the Yips, we previewed the Festivus marathon, and so on.
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It’s Thursday, and you know what that means… it’s time for Phil’s Newsletter. As always we are broadcasting from Wizard Tower Gamma in San Francisco. In case you didn’t know it, it’s December 31st here. The brothers and I are getting ready for the traditional Twilight Zone marathon. If you’ve never let the dulcet tones of Rodman Edward Serling ease you into the new year, I highly recommend it.
I’d planned a big ‘ol 2020 Phil Year In Review for this issue. Events conspired. I’m still going to do it, but not this week- for my own mental health as much as for the newsletter. It’s important to mark things we accomplish. It gives the bad shit less weight.
Anyway instead of that we’re going to lead off with everyone’s favorite- shameless self-promotion in in a newsletter! We’ll also discuss Tom Petty’s coffee preferences, RetroStrange Movie Night, and the death of Brodie Lee. Scroll down to the bottom for The Good Links. Let’s go.
More Places To Find Phil on the Internet
To be clear- this newsletter ain’t going anywhere. I originally published this list on my blog, but realized I never syndicated that to my dear subscribers. This is the up to date list of presences and projects I’m actively working on and maintaining.
My Patreon, where you can support me directly each month and get exclusive content, credit on my work, and early access to stuff.
My Twitch where I sometimes stream video games, sometimes in VR, and we do RetroStrange Movie Night on every other Saturday night
My Redbubble shop, where you can order my designs on t-shirts, sweatpants, socks, phone cases, etc etc.
My Etsy, where I sell hand-made screen prints, buttons, and other stuff.
Discord: I'm philnelson#1094
My Thingiverse account, where I post my 3D printable models
Extra Future, my blog since 2008 or so, where I announce and release things
My Itch account, where all of my (pay if you can / free) video games are hosted including the recently-released Chipping Challenge plus old experiments like Duck Jumper, Rassler, and Haunted Floating Eye
I am @philnelson on Twitter
My YouTube where I upload the intros to every Movie Night and some additional content
My LinkedIn which I don't really use, but when I do, I mostly boost cool VR/AR stuff.
RetroStrange Movie Night is a curated public domain movie night that runs every two weeks
LOFI SCIFI a 24 hour streaming old time radio science fiction channel.
Divergent League Baseball, my simulated fantasy baseball league. The 1993 Season starts 1/8, and manager spots are open!
I’m probably forgetting something. Somehow my brain still sees all of the above as me being lazy. Go figure.
Yip Yip Yipee
From the “great recoveries from the Yips” department: Dodgers great Steve Sax cured his yips over 6 seasons, going from 30 errors in 1983 to leading the league in fielding % and winning a gold glove in 1989. How’d he beat the Yips? By talking with his dying father.
My own Yips are actually doing a lot better this week. I took a break from multi-player games and decided to venture back into the Mojave Wasteland of Fallout: New Vegas. It is, without question, the best open world game of its generation and possibly the best one ever. Don’t @ me.
Harrison Bomb Guy agrees with me, and he agrees so hard he spent NINETY MINUTES saying why, in a super in-depth video essay which now has over 1.6 million views after being out for 12 days:
I’m shooting a lot straighter now in video games, anyway, so thank dog for small favors.
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Amazon Prime Customers: You Can Help Me Out For Free!
Did you know that Amazon owns Twitch? Because of their connection, if you have Amazon Prime you can give us free money and support Movie Night. Here’s how to use your free Prime subscription to subscribe to my channel (twitch.tv/extrafuture).You’ll unlock no-ads-mode and get a shout out during our broadcasts, plus some other perks we have not announced yet.
Shout-out to mrsugarmuffin, smashjax666, urstarstuff, tetris, katanma and d_hock for subscribing to the Twitch channel this month. We really do appreciate it.
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The Tom Petty Experience
I’m a person who prefers pour-over coffee. To me Aeropress is still #1, and I grind the beans right before brewing for ultra-goodness. I also detest waking up in the morning, and being the self-awarewolf that I am I keep a big tub of ground Maxwell House around for lowest-possible-friction brewing.
I drink 3-4 cups of coffee a day on average. Usually 2 of those are Maxwell House. It’s fine but not what you’d call good… most of the time.
Today, completely by accident, I had what might’ve been that perfect cup of the stuff- As foretold by the late Tom Petty Maxwell House at the just-right brewing (and drinking) temp and the just-right coffee/water ratio is exquisite. I legitimately wondered if I’d made something else and forgotten. I’m still thinking about it days later but have been unable to replicate. I get it now, Tom. I get it.
Speaking of Thomas Petty I’ve been listening a lot of his incredible album Wildflowers this week. I think Time to Move On is a great little tune for the New Year:
Love & Death & Wrestling
It seems almost… ridiculous to post weepy memorial shit about an entertainer that I never even met right now, just a few weeks after one of the most important people in my life passed away. But life is ridiculous. Pro wrestling is ridiculous.
Following the career of a pro wrestler is a lot like following a musician or band, but there are important differences. To start with there are orders of magnitude fewer wrestlers out there than bands which means the pool of who you will see, who you even can follow, is smaller, so you see the same wrestlers more often. Some folks will be in the ring 5+ times per week, and in the Internet era, we’ve been lucky enough to watch some of these people, like Jon Huber AKA Brodie Lee / Luke Haper, from the very start of their careers.
Being a fan of Brodie Lee was totally not one of those slow-burn for me- from the second he showed up on WWE TV I dug his look, his athleticism, the obvious thought and care that went into every little thing he did. The shirt stains, the pocket bandana, the horror movie monster shout of “YEAH YEAH YEAH.” Everything he did was for a reason and it was expertly fit together. Once he started working more matches and I saw more of him, I realized that he was one of the safest workers in the business, too. There’s a reason that Jon Moxley trusted Brodie to powerbomb his ass out of the ring onto a goddamned ladder.
Pro Wrestling, a term for what is a global community of people many of whom have already lost so much this hellish year, lost a man who was a giant inside and outside the ring, and left no-one happy at his passing. His family’s loss cannot easily be summed up in words. RIP Brodie Lee.
RetroStrange Movie Night #15 Recap
The Mandatory Holiday Party + Health and Safety Marathon went great. Subscribers can view the marathon in the Twitch archive.
RetroStrange Movie Night #16: Prince of Space, Captain Z-Ro (Eps 1 & 2)
The first Movie Night of 2021 is all about sci-fi heroes. We’ll be watching the Sandy Frank version of Japanese sci-fi bedrock Prince of Space and what might’ve been America’s Doctor Who if it hadn’t gotten cancelled, Captain Z-Ro.
RetroStrange is working on some more original content for 2021, including some more pre-taped shows.
Phil’s Good Links
Psssst: I just bought vrfunclub.net. Stay tuned.
Legendary pro and collegiate wrestler Danny Hodge passed away this week, too. He was famous for crushing apples with his bare hands, even into his 70s
Conway’s Game of Life turns 50, if you don’t know what it is ask literally any engineer or programmer of any kind.
Zoom continues to be a shitshow of a company, with the DOJ now filing charges against an employee for helping the Chinese gov’t censor memorials of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Nintendo’s WorkBoy, the never-released keyboard for GameBoy, has been found after 28 years. I’m, obviously, hyperfixated on it now. Can you imagine?
One of the few bright spots of 2020 is I see a whole lot more people pushing back against the stupidity of “The Customer is Always Right.” Sometimes the customer is just an asshole.
Quoted for truth
The lifestyle seen in The Simpsons, which was originally meant to be lower-middle-class when the show started in 1990, is now unattainable to most Americans.
John Harris posted a kick-ass roundup of Legend of Zelda stuff on Metafilter in commemoration of Zelda Day (Dec 26) on the blue.
Going back to the Reddit well, the annual Who ruined your family Christmas and what did they do? thread is a wild rollercoaster of silly shit and life-altering betrayals.
Thanks to Olivia Nuzzi we now have the The Full(est Possible) Story of the Four Seasons Total Landscaping Press Conference
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This newsletter is free but I depend on your support. I’m an independent creator without a day job in a really scary and uncertain time. If you like me or what I do you can help by sharing this post (it really helps a lot!) on your social feeds, directly supporting me here on Substack and/or Patreon, or sending a tip of a couple bucks on Ko-Fi / PayPal. Every little bit helps.
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And that’s that. Another year in the bag. Or down the drain, as it were. As for me, I’ll be partaking in the traditional classic Twilight Zone marathon and dipping in and out of Tabletop Simulator.
I intended to sandbag this one but it ended up being the longest one yet. Wakka wakka. Thank you so, so, much for subscribing and reading. Doing this newsletter is something I look forward to every week. See you on the other side.
— Phil