Happy New Year: 2024 Review!
Greetings, welcome to the last blog update of 2024! This will be a memorable year for me as I had an enjoyable holiday cruise near the start of it, I finally become a permanent member of staff in the middle and got the keys to a house of my own by the end of it. Of course, 2024 will always be significant after the passing of my old companion Treacle and I’d like to say thanks for your nice comments about her in my previous update. As always, I have thought over my personal picks of entertainment from the last 12 months and I’ve listed them below. Feel free to write your own highlights in the comments that you particularly enjoyed this year as those are always interesting to read over.
Television Show of the Year: Archer
A popular animated comedy series that ran from 2009 all the way to 2023, ‘Archer’ follows the adventures of the titular hero Sterling Archer, who is a charismatic and narcissistic spy, as he jets all across the globe in daring missions. I believe the show deserves to be recognised for the numerous years it kept me entertained although it unarguably became a little stale and repetitive towards the end of its run. The jokes may have been all too easy to foresee after a while and catchphrases became overused but ‘Archer’ finished strong and wasn’t afraid to dedicate whole seasons to trying something different by delving into different genres.
Book of the Year: A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole’s ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’ is regarded as an American literary classic and the enduring allure around it is partially due to the late author being unappreciated during his time. Even though I think the book dragged on for too long for my liking, I understand why people enjoyed it so much and especially why notable comedians hold it in such high regard. The main character of Ignatius J. Reilly is very unique and his attitude is amusing, particularly as the reader is introduced to him. There is a lot of comedy to be had with the sloppy Ignatius with his obsessive hatred for the modern world and his admiration for the medieval ways.
Game of the Year: Phasmophobia
‘Phasmophobia’ is a co-operative game from 2020 in which players work together to investigate a haunted location and towards the goal of correctly determining which type of spirit they are hunting. A single player or a team of players do this by collecting numerous pieces of evidence that will be applicable to only one type of ghost and they must avoid being killed in the process lest they lose the match as well as their hard earned equipment. A well-crafted, atmospheric and terrifying game in its early stages, this became a very popular title upon its release and dominated the Steam rankings for some time.
Film of the Year: The Holdovers
Funny, touching and bound to be a celebrated Christmas classic in the years to come, 2023’s ‘The Holdovers’ is a throwback to the early 1970s and is set in an all-male boarding school in a wintry New England. It follows Paul Hunham, a classics teacher who is equally disliked by both his lacklustre students and his academic peers, as he is forced to look after a small number of pupils who are unable to return home for Christmas. This number of holdovers dwindles down to just one boy called Angus and the plot slowly humanizes Hunham as his relationship with the student and cafeteria manager, Mary, blossoms.
That is all for 2024! I’ll be back to blogging again in 2025 and I’m currently on schedule to reach the 400th blog update which should be published on the site towards the end of the year. Additionally, I’ll be ramping up my literary efforts on Write Wise after a more relaxed year this time around and I already have the some of the stories in mind that I want to write over the next several months. I also intend to be indulging in more books and playing more video games next year as that is something I haven’t done as much as I would have liked to in previous years. Have a happy New Year and I hope 2025 proves to be a great one for you!
Quote of the Day
Here's something I bet you didn't know. Your uniform, festive as it is, is historically inaccurate. Saint Nicholas of Myra was actually a fourth-century Greek Bishop from what is now Turkey. So, uh, a robe and sandals would be closer to the mark. Yeah, but I guess that would be impractical given the weather and all the silly but lucrative mythology about Santa and elves and reindeer and chimneys and whatnot.
Paul Hunham
The Holdovers
Merry Christmas 2024!
Greetings, Christmas Eve is here and I’d like to wish you all the best for tomorrow as per my usual tradition. Before I do, I have a personal update that I felt was only right to note on the blogs. Treacle, my ginger and white cat of 14 years, was put to sleep yesterday after a sudden and unexpected illness with no possibility of a recovery. I find it hard to believe she has passed on as she seemed as bright and affectionate as ever only a few days ago.
She first arrived at my doorstep way back in 2010 and I have a very prominent memory of sitting bored stiff at my desk in Lurgan College watching the clock tick down impatiently as I wanted to go home and play with the cute new kitten that had turned up the day before. She always liked to play and be made a fuss of even in her older years but she would be sure to let you know, in the blink of an eye, when she had had enough by scratching or biting after a verbal warning. In fact, one much more serious attack split my lip and I had to be stitched up by hospital staff. We made up very shortly after then with me being extra cautious of her for a day or two.
She was as sweet as she was fiery and would often purr loudly as she climbed in my bed when I was trying to change the sheets. She liked hiding underneath them and the bed would have to be made around her. When visiting my parent’s house, I would always go and greet Treacle first as she lounged about on sofas and was often taking a nap in sunny rays. Even hours after she passed, I kept expecting to see her looking in the house or hearing her tip tapping her way around. With Treacle’s passing, the Murray household is without a feline friend for the first time in decades as there has always been a cat in the house for as long as I have lived. She will be dearly missed by myself and the rest of the family.
While my Christmas will have a lingering feeling that something is amiss this year, I hope you have a great day tomorrow and get whatever is on your lists. I will wrap up the year with one more blog update on 31st December but until then have a very merry Christmas!
Quote of the Day
Merry Christmas? Bah. Humbug!
Ebenezer Scrooge
The Muppet Christmas Carol
Phasmophobia
Greetings, ‘Phasmophobia’ is a 4 player co-operative horror game that launched in 2020 although a brave single player is also able to play solo if they so wish. It was created by Kinetic Games who are a small independent video games studio based in the United Kingdom. They do not appear to have produced anything else of note according to their website and associated wikis nor does there seem to be any other upcoming projects unrelated to this game. As can be gleamed from the name of the game, it focuses around phantoms. The player is a ghost hunter and is tasked with determining which type of spirit is haunting a location during an investigation and to avoid being killed by the apparition in the process. ‘Phasmophobia’ became a very popular game around its launch due to numerous Twitch users and Youtubers streaming their terrified reactions, causing it to be the best selling game on Steam in October and November of 2020.
As of December 2024, there are 24 ghost types that the players have to whittle down to just one by collecting 3 categories of evidence on default mode. The difficulty can be increased which lowers the amount of evidence in the game and therefore makes identification even harder. While certain types of ghosts may share some of the same evidence with others, only one will have a specific combination of the 3 traits. The evidence is gathered through using various ghost hunting items. For instance, an Electromagnetic Field Reader will reveal if a ghost is in a nearby area by flashing over a range of readings while a ghost writing book can be written in by various spirits provided the player isn’t present during the action. Players can also make use of their headsets to speak to other players via an in game radio and with the ghost directly when using a spirit box.
A photo camera is one of the most valuable pieces of equipment in the game as the player can take pictures of paranormal instances including dirty water in a sink, otherworldly prints in salt and photographic proof of the phantom itself. Other items, such as a crucifixes, can impact the match in other ways including delaying hunting. Hunting is when a ghost is capable of killing players who are unable to escape the house. All players enter the level with a 100% sanity rating but this can be dragged down in various ways such as using cursed items, which can help track down the target, or by a lack of light in the room. A lower level of sanity means that spirits are more likely to perform numerous actions including engaging in hunting. Sanity is monitored in the starting location of the van which is a secure zone and serves as the focal point for reviewing equipment including live video camera feed.
There are 13 maps at present which consists of 8 small maps, 3 intermediate and 2 large ones. They cover various locations including residential houses, farmhouses, a school and a psychiatric hospital. I generally found the smaller and medium maps to be the most enjoyable as the bigger maps can be so extensive that it is hard to find just the ghost never mind the evidence it leaves behind. While more maps may be added in the future, it is interesting to note that a previous one known as ‘The Asylum’ was removed by Kinetic Games. The first few rounds of playing ‘Phasmophobia’ was a great experience as everything was so fresh and unknown with a genuinely creepy atmosphere having been built up. After playing it for a while, the mechanics become obvious and the fear it managed to initially induce is very much lessened. Saying that, I still have a soft spot for ‘Phasmophobia’ and I consider it to be one of the best co-operative games I’ve ever played.
Plot=6/10
Characters=5/10
Graphics=8/10
Overall=8/10
Quote of the Day
When I was young, folks used to talk about you. Said as how you knew things. Said if a man had been wronged, he could come to you and you'd call upon this thing in that man's name, and that man, he'd be avenged.
Ed Harley
Pumpkinhead
The Quiz Part 16
Greetings, welcome back to another iteration of the annual quiz which has returned for its 16th year. As hard as it is to believe the quiz has been a yearly tradition for this long, I’m also finding it difficult to wrap my head around the fact that it is also exactly one month to Christmas Day. As part of the run up to the festive season, I’ve come up with 10 questions to test your knowledge on a wide range of subjects. Last year Mark and Jordan tied in first place with 8 points while Aaron scored 6 but he could pull of an upset and come first again like he last did in 2019. So have a crack at it but don’t forget to avoid the spoilers below and put your score in the comments. Best of luck!
1. Which American entertainment personality created and narrated the seminal TV show ‘The Twilight Zone’ and later went on to do the same for another horror anthology show called ‘Night Gallery’ in the 1970s?
2. Who said this? – “Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances.”
3. Which United States President was the first person to hold two non-consecutive terms in the Oval Office from 1885 to 1889 and 1893 to 1897?
4. Place these generations of games consoles in order of their North American release dates – A. Xbox 360 B. PlayStation 1 C. Nintendo Game Cube D. Atari 2600 E. Dreamcast
5. In the 1957 Science Fiction film ‘The Incredible Shrinking Man’, the protagonist Robert Scott Carey battles against what type of creepy-crawly in the climactic conclusion?
6. In the card game of Uno, what happens if a player sets down a card that contains a circle with a slanted line running through it?
7. Name the character.
8. Unscramble the letters to reveal an actress - DAREUY PRENUHB
9. Which iconic comedic duo are referenced throughout the ‘Imposter Series’ as a statue outside of McMenamin’s Movie Theatre (Saoirse), when Eamon Quayle mockingly refers to their bowler hats (The Curse) and with one of their movies playing in the Picture House (Sinner’s Paradise)?
10. The Conservative and Unionist Party lost the 2024 UK general election in a major electoral blow but for how many years had they been the governing party of Great Britain until they were ousted from power?
Spoilers!
1. Rod Serling
2. Grand Moff Whiluff Tarkin
3. Grover Cleveland
4. D. Atari 2600 (1977) B. PlayStation 1 (1995) E. Dreamcast (1999) C. Nintendo Game Cube (2001) A. Xbox 360 (2005)
5. A spider
6. The next player is forced to skip their turn
7. Gabriel Van Helsing
8. Audrey Hepburn
9. Laurel and Hardy
10. 14 years
Quote of the Day
They wouldn't put me on a pedestal, so I'm laying 'em on a slab!
Oswald Cobblepot / The Penguin
Batman Returns
Ash vs Evil Dead
Greetings, ‘Ash vs Evil Dead’ is a horror comedy television series that ran from 2015 to 2018 for three seasons before it was cancelled due to low viewership. It had numerous directors involved including Sam Raimi who is known for directing the original ‘Evil Dead’ trilogy that this programme continues on from, the critically acclaimed ‘Spider-Man’ trilogy from the 2000s and stylistic Western ‘The Quick and the Dead’. Bruce Campbell reprises his iconic role of Ash Williams while new cast members to the franchise include Ray Santiago, Dana DeLorenzo and Lucy Lawless. Jill Marie Jones and Samara Weaving, who is known for the 2017 slasher movie ‘The Babysitter’, also appear in the first season. The conductor is Joseph LoDuca who composed the soundtrack for the original ‘Evil Dead’ films as well as the 2001 period French horror movie ‘Brotherhood of the Wolf’ and would be later contributing to the ‘Chucky’ TV Series.
The plot picks up 30 years after ‘Army of Darkness’ in which a much older Ash hasn’t progressed in life at all. He’s still working as a stock boy in a department store and being his wild partying, womanizing self as he lives alone in a trailer. His life is uneventful as the Deadites, the demonic evil that Ash had previously defeated, had been dormant for decades but that soon changes when he goes to a local dive bar. After he picks up a loose woman and has his way with her in the restroom, he is disturbed to notice that for the briefest moment her face had become deformed during the act and she warns that they are coming for him. The deformity is one he is all too familiar with as it indicates the person has been possessed by a malicious Deadite. At that moment he recalls that he recently read from the hidden away Necronomicon while high as he was using it to impress a prostitute named Lucy during a ‘poetry read’ and unwittingly unleashed the ancient evil.
Elsewhere Michigan state police detective Amanda Fisher and her partner, John Carson, are responding to reports of a disturbance. A neighbour had claimed they had heard a woman screaming from inside her home. Once inside the dark house, the cops find a corpse and eventually encounter a weeping woman at the other end of the room. The crying woman is Lucy. Amanda asks Lucy to turn around and put her hands up but Lucy merely snaps her head around, revealing she has the face of a Deadite. Lucy attacks Amanda and stabs her in the hand with a pair of scissors before she impales Carson on wall mounted antlers. A stunned Amanda pulls a pistol from out of her ankle holster and kills Lucy by shooting her in the head. As Amanda attempts to recover from the shock, she becomes increasingly confused as Carson’s body is no longer in the room. Her undead partner emerges from the shadows and attacks her until the adrenaline filled Amanda shoots him dead as well.
I enjoyed seeing Ash again after such a long time and liked how the show delved much deeper into his background, including visiting his old home town, as the films never did explore that to any great degree. I also appreciated how the show added quite a lot of new details to the lore of the Necronomicon and how it paid homage to the movies by returning to the sinister cabin in the woods where Ash’s troubles began. The series also isn’t afraid to kill off major characters which is good for suspense although the main trio of Ash and his two friends, Pablo and Kelly, remain largely unscathed throughout the seasons. The three series feel fairly cohesive when watched consecutively and I don’t think the show ever ran out of steam but it could feel a bit repetitive at times. If you are a fan of the ‘Evil Dead’ trilogy or even the remakes, of which I am yet to see, then you’d probably enjoy this latest instalment in Raimi’s cult horror hit.
Plot=7/10
Characters=7/10
Special Effects=7/10
Overall=7/10
Quote of the Day
When you bring me out, can you introduce me as Joker?
Arthur Fleck / The Joker
Joker
A Confederacy of Dunces
Greetings, ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’ is a comedy novel by American writer John Kennedy Toole and this work is often cited as one of the best pieces of modern literature ever produced. It was released posthumously in 1980, 11 years after the troubled writer killed himself in part due to his inability to get his works published during his lifetime. Some other struggles likely contributed to his death, such as the unverified belief that he was a closeted homosexual who struggled to accept his desires. The often depreciating way he wrote his gay characters in ‘Dunces’ would certainly suggest there is some truth in the notion that he was repressing his feelings. After years of trying to get his work appreciated by the literary world, his mother Thelma was eventually successful when she gave a copy of ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’ to a novelist by the name of Walker Percy. Walker was suitably impressed by it and their combined efforts ensured the novel won a Pulitzer Prize a year after it was published. John only ever wrote one other novel called ‘The Neon Bible’ that he had completed while in his teens but he regarded it as a rather adolescent effort.
The story takes place in New Orleans during the early 1960s and is about Ignatius J Reilly, a 30 year old unemployed slob with a degree in medieval history and a great dislike of the modern world. While waiting for his mother outside a department store, Ignatius is accosted by Officer Angelo Mancuso who wants to arrest him for being a suspicious looking character. An outraged Ignatius loudly declares his innocence and begins to berate the lawman, drawing in a crowd of people watchers around them. An eccentric older man by the name of Claude comes out from the crowd to Ignatius’ aid and starts to accuse Mancuso of being a communist. This distracts the police officer who is forced to redirect his attention on to Claude, who is arrested for his behaviour. Ignatius’ mother arrives during the ruckus and uses the distraction to flee from the scene of disorder with her son. The two walk into a club called ‘The Night of Joy’ as they hope to hide from Mancuso. The bar is a shoddy strip club run by the strict proprietress Lana Lee. Using it as a place of sanctuary while Mrs Irene Reilly and her son lay low, Irene makes the most of it as an opportunity to get heavily drunk.
Meanwhile, the poorly socialized Ignatius regales a dim-witted bartender by the name of Darlene of the one time he had attempted to leave the safe confines of New Orleans. The normal routine of a Greyhound Scenicruiser bus journey had horrified and forever scarred the mollycoddled Ignatius who became even more of an isolated shut in as a result. After watching them for a bit, Lana Lee decides that both Ignatius and his mother were bringing down the atmosphere of her establishment so she kicks them out. The two decide that the heat would have died down by then and wander home but as they start out on their way, the inebriated Mrs Reilly drives her car into a building. Mrs Reilly is caught red handed and is charged a sizeable sum for the property damage she caused. Unable to pay the fine herself, she forces her lazy son to get a job so the money can be raised. He had previously coasted by without one, shunning any notion of work in favour of self-indulgently pursuing his interest in medieval philosophy. Ignatius surprisingly does gain employment with Levy Pants but soon causes problems as he, thinking of himself as a great social activist, attempts to get the African-American employees to launch an armed coup d’état.
I can partially understand why so many people like ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’ with its bizarre characters but I didn’t quite get all of the appeal myself which may be down to the hype surrounding it. Once I figured out half way through the book that it was the sort of novel that didn’t really go anywhere, I found it a bit difficult to engage with the rest of it as there were no stakes. I personally felt that it was simply too long and that the jokes which were humorous at the start of the novel such as Ignatius’ barmy behaviour, felt lacklustre towards the end. Its rambling plotline is why there have been numerous failed attempts to make a film adaptation of it with the general consensus now being that it isn’t suited to the silver screen. I do like the morally indignant and repulsive character of Ignatius however as he is a quite a unique creation. I enjoyed that his actions, which are intended to better the world, are not driven by his desire to improve the human race but merely to outperform his equally batty pen pal Myrna Minkoff with whom he has a strange rivalry with. In conclusion, this novel is a hard one to recommend but those that do enjoy it seem to really get a kick out of it.
Plot=6/10
Characters=7/10
Wording=8/10
Overall=6/10
Quote of the Day
Harry thinks if you call him Harry again he's gonna make you eat that cat!
Harry Moseby
Night Moves
