Elon Musk, Social Media, and Radio Unfriendly

Issue #14: Favorites of the MCU

Hey kids! For those of you that follow regularly, you might have noticed that I haven’t published a newsletter in a few weeks. Quite frankly, I haven’t had a whole lot to say. Not to say that I have a lot to talk about this week either but I figured I’d at least jump on here and give you a few updates.

So the big news this week is the announcement that Elon Musk has bought Twitter.

There are a lot of people quite upset about this and many have said that they plan to leave the platform. I’m not really sure what they are so concerned about to be honest. I have no plans to leave Twitter myself. Personally, I don’t care who owns it. I don’t like or dislike Musk. He is the richest person in the world and what he does with his money is his business. Now, if he starts charging for the service I might rethink the idea of going elsewhere but as far as I have read, he has no plans to do so. The big thing he seems to want to change is to put more focus on allowing free speech. What that actually means only time will tell. I think a lot of people think that this could mean things like hate speech might be allowed. Although I seriously doubt this, if this is the case, I will do the same thing with any accounts that use the platform in that manner the same thing I do with anybody else whose posts I don’t care to see: either block them or mute them. Easy peasy. I’m just there to talk nerdy stuff, pro wrestling, and music and I’ll be damned if any assholes try to keep me from doing that.

Twitter is just like any other social media platform. Social media platforms in general are indicative of society in general. There are good people on there and there are assholes. Twitter is not any different than a platform like Facebook. There have been alternatives popping up but I haven’t really found any that are worth putting any effort into.

My point being, you get out of social media what you want from it. If you don’t want to see bigoted, jerkish posts, learn how to block and mute. If you want to hang out and engage with like minded people and have fun conversations about stuff you like, it isn’t that hard to do. Just search those people out.

If you want to hang out and discuss nerdy stuff and music like me, you can find me on Twitter at @otter272.

For this week’s list I felt like going really basic and listing my top 5 favorite films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier. This one was released in 2014 and directed by the Russo Brothers. The story gets its inspiration of the Winter Soldier comic book storyline by Ed Brubaker. I just really love this movie overall but some of the highlights I think are Steve’s relationship and banter with Natasha as well as his emerging friendship with Sam. One of the themes of the movie I felt was choosing security over freedom and I felt that it was really relevant to the current state of the world as well.

2. Avengers: Endgame. Released in 2019 and also directed by the Russo Brothers, this one was kind of an end of an era type film. There were a lot of emotional moments in the movie. Things like Tony Stark meeting his dad in the past, Steve Rogers coming to grips with the life he left behind, and ultimately, saving the universe of course. That scene in the final battle where all of the previously dead heroes show up. That was just epic.

3. Black Panther. Directed by Ryan Coogler, this one was released in 2018. Black Panther was the first superhero film to ever get a nomination for best picture by the Academy. What can I say about this film other than it was just really great. The message at the end about us all being one tribe really tugged at the heart strings.

4. Doctor Strange. This 2017 MCU film was directed by Scott Derrickson. I loved how this movie handled the origin of the character and how it described his ascendancy from the self-obsessed surgeon to the position of Sorcerer Supreme. Cumberbatch was brilliant in this role and I can’t think of anybody else that could have played the character.

5. Captain Marvel. You are not likely to see this one on too many favorites of the MCU list, if any. This one gets a lot of hate from people. I don’t get it. I loved this film. A lot of people didn’t like Larson’s portrayal of Carol Danvers. Maybe I’m just weird (of course I am) but I really liked her in the role. To be perfectly honest, I’m sure that somebody else could have done the part just as well but I really like Brie as Captain Marvel. It was released in 2019 and had 2 directors: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. Aside from Brie Larson, this movie had an incredible cast. I loved the chronological step back in time on this one.

Around the Ring

On the last episode that Justin and I recorded, we talked about a bunch of events that happened over Wrestlemania weekend. While we did not talk a lot about Wrestlemania itself (because neither of us watched it), there were plenty of non-WWE events that we discussed. We talked about GCW Bloodsport, Mark Hitchcock Memorial Supershow, AAA Invades Wrestlecon, NJPW Lonestar Shootout, and Impact Multiverse of Matches, and ROH Supercard of Honor. You can check out the episode on Apple Podcasts here:

Rogue One Radio

Our series on the Disney Plus TV show Moon Knight continued. This week, we talked about episode 4 of the series. We also played tunes from Young Pretorians and Counterpunch. You can check out the episode on YouTube here:

Radio Unfriendly

Also this week, my friend Scott and I launched our new punk rock music podcast, Radio Unfriendly! It’s a podcast more music focused where we will be talking about music, playing music, and (eventually) will have interviews. The first episode launched this week. Scott and I talked about some of our own musical histories, discussed some of our favorite bands, and of course played some tunes. The tunes we played on them episode came from Otisburg, Finale, Scrunchies, The Bruce Lee Band, and Dead Years. You can check out the episode on Apple Podcasts here:

For this week’s track of the week, I chose a song that Scott and I played on the first episode of Radio Unfriendly. It was one of Scott’s picks. The song is “I Hate This” by The Bruce Lee Band. The song comes from the album One Step Forward, Two Steps Back which is scheduled to be released on May 27. It is a fun song and has a great message.

That’s it for this time around. Thanks for coming.