It’s New Years Eve again. Wasn’t it just New Years Eve a few weeks ago? 2023 is ending? How the hell did that happen?

We don’t have any solid plans for today apart from picking up some take-out Chinese food. Maybe some board games? Maybe another round of Yahtzee?

I watched Rebel Moon on Netflix. I was conflicted. I wanted to watch it but I also did not want to watch it. See the conflict? My spoiler free review is to recommend that you wait until part two comes out in April. This movie feels like two hours worth of a four hour heist movie, where generally the first half of a heist movie is assembling the team. That means the movie that is out now is really just the assembling of the team. That’s why it doesn’t have a coherent story. It’s more like a bunch of mini-movies introducing all of the characters. Hopefully part two will make sense on it’s own. So if you wait for part two to come out and then watch them both together, maybe it will be a decent movie as a whole. For now though… eh.

I have to play guitar today. I have two songs in progress for this month’s Record Every Month challenge. They both need lead guitar parts. I need to record them today and then mix the two songs and then I will have my first R.E.M. win since September. It’s a must.

Speaking of guitar, I went down a rabbit hole last week that I find myself visiting once every couple of years. If you read this page you might have noticed that I have been obsessed with the band Rush since 1981. Back then there were two bands that I was obsessed with. The other was Led Zeppelin. As I got older though, the whole unending adolescence vibe that Zeppelin had sort of got tiring for me and I moved away from them. Also, Jimmy Page is one of my guitar heroes, and he is definitely one of the reasons I NEEDED to learn to play guitar when I was a kid. When I look at my own playing objectively though (if that’s even possible) I don’t hear a lot of his style in my playing. I think as I moved away from the debauchery that Zeppelin represented, I sort of moved away from Page too.

Every once in a while though, I feel the need to really dig into the catalog and try to remind myself that there is a lot of value there. That comes up once every couple of years, and it came up for me on Thursday. I put together a playlist with all of their studio records and over the course of the work day I plowed through all of it. Did the old musical feelings I used to get when I listened to Led Zeppelin as a teenager come back? Yes. Not exactly the same, as I am no longer that kid that I used to be, but it was close enough that I felt good about the whole experience. Now I can move on to other things again until the next time I feel cosmically compelled to examine the Zeppelin again. Probably some time in 2025, I think.

Okay then, it’s almost 11:00am. I have not had anything to eat for about three hours. It’s time to have a snack to keep my stomach happy. Gastric Bypass for the win!

Happy New Years Eve, everyone. HoHoHo.