For the "There's a fish on my head" bit, Ben Schwartz took inspiration from co-star Jim Carrey's Dumb and Dumber.
Tom still can’t believe everything that’s happening. That the alien is real, and that some madman pulled straight out of science-fiction threatened them with attack drones. Sonic presents himself and explains about the portal rings (more advanced cultures use them to travel between worlds – hey, what do you mean we’re not advanced??), and that he needs them to leave Earth. Tom stops the car on the side of the road and tells Sonic to find San Francisco himself by going west. Sonic speeds away… and returns wet, with a fish on his head. He crashed right into the Pacific Ocean.
...Did he really run from Montana to the Pacific, a 14-hour drive... in 3 seconds??!?
Considering how far Montana is from the Pacific, it should have taken him more than a minute to come back.
Sonic: Instant joy. Tom: Instant regret. I don't blame him.
Tom, you should have told him to go southwest! With an angry Sonic pleading for help, Tom relents and agrees to drive the hedgehog to San Francisco. Woo, road trip! Classic ‘90s trope, alongside the “you might be wondering how I got here” from the intro! If Google Maps is to be believed, it’s a 15-hour drive... assuming Green Hills is close to the bottom edge of Montana.
Late in the evening, Tom stops at a gas station to call Wade from a phone booth and tells Sonic to wait in the car. Oh, you don’t tell that to a kid with ADHD. Especially not when the station is right next door to the Piston Pit, a biker bar that looks like the coolest damn thing the poor lil’ hedgehog has ever seen.
He makes even speaking on the phone look threatening.
Tom talks with Wade, but learns that Robotnik, Stone, and several secret agents are in the Green Hills Station, listening in. The doctor grabs the phone and threatens Tom. I love the detail that, of all things he could be mad about, Robotnik hates to be punched in the face. Which Tom did, earlier. Like, I get that it’s a basic tenet of this Robotnik’s worldview of using the machines born from his brains to beat down any brawns, but specifically, getting punched is a trigger he carries since childhood. And for all his intelligence, he does NOT have the emotional sanity to respond any other way than “must hit back tenfold”. Tom hangs up in the middle of the doctor’s tirade.
Better get this show going, I’m not even 10 minutes into the film yet!
A Day in Green Hills
Green Hills, Montana? Looks like British Columbia, Canada, to me.
Sonic presents Green Hills and its people. First Tom Wachowski, who’s the sheriff but helps with anything around town; Sonic nicknames him “Donut Lord”, since Tom likes donuts so much. Tom’s wife Maddie (Tika Sumpter) is a veterinarian; however, Sonic nicknames her “Pretzel Lady” due to her yoga, which he can’t replicate. There’s Crazy Carl, the only one who has figured out Sonic’s existence (and can only draw a very Sanic-esque version, love the meme reference here), but nobody believes him. The hedgehog even watches from Tom’s window when the cop puts on a film. Sonic likes to pretend he’s got all those friends who never heard of him, but deep down he’s a lonely kid who just wants to talk to someone.
Oh my God that's Sanic. That meme has gone PLACES.
Awww. Hey, this film came out around Valentine's Day, I'll say that makes it count with the holiday.
Tom gets home after work. He chases some raccoons out of the trash cans outside his home, then comes in. He’s greeted by Maddie holding a letter from the San Francisco Police Department. Tom loves working in Green Hills, he’s continuing the Wachowski family tradition as town sheriff (and, to be fair, he IS the most competent member of its force). But he feels that he would be more useful in San Francisco, where much more is bound to happen. He opens the letter – he’s accepted! Maddie shows him a “you tried” cake… then realizes her mistake and pulls out a “Congratulations!” cake instead. She never had a doubt!
She mentions that she started looking up apartments on Zillow. 4K$ a month? That’s a bargain! (Yeah, this movie is a bit… blatant in its product placement. Zillow was intentional, but Olive Garden, which is name-dropped twice, was meant as a recurring gag.) She offers to fly to San Francisco with their dog Ozzy and look for a place to stay. She mentions how much they helped each other as a couple before, and how much they’re willing to help each other in this new development.
It's on the screen for four entire seconds. And name-dropped. (...And now I'm guilty of it too, dammit.)
I enjoy Tom and Maddie’s relationship, it's so nice and sweet. They’re adorable and I bet they’d be fun to watch even in a movie without some CGI character running around. That said, they are original human characters in a Sonic movie; they’re not the reason fans walked into theaters. Human-focused adaptations are common, and when it comes to live-action it’s especially notable. After all, special effects are expensive, and these CGI characters are nothing but VFX (because that doesn’t count as “animation” proper), so having more scenes with only live-action actors can help cut the costs.
Oh, this is going to be a big one. I knew it would be, I have so much to say about it. Besides, the time couldn’t be better, with Sonic 3 being in a hot competition with Disney. (God, I hate the very concept of Mufasa. I’m so glad Shadow kicked that movie’s teeth in, even if just for a few weeks.)
If you’ve been reading this blog since 2020, then you know that I’ve been rather closely monitoring the Sonic movie-verse, publishing a quick review of each film shortly after seeing it in theaters and even going out of my way to get the Knuckles mini-series on DVD. I have a soft spot for the film franchise, owing to reasons I’ll get into before discussing the movie proper. It helps that I’m a fan of the game franchise it takes its inspiration from. In fact, there is so damn much to say… I’ll get to it right away!
The background
Sonic has been a successful franchise since the ‘90s, so talks of a movie have existed since that decade. Live-action, of course; there has been one animated film in 1996. I won’t get through all the details, but after some time at Sony, the movie rights changed hands, landing at Paramount in 2017. Jeff Fowler was set to direct; it would be his live-action debut. He already had experience with the Sonic franchise, having directed the animated cutscenes for 2005’s Shadow the Hedgehog. Casting-wise, I won’t discuss the whole timeline of who joined when, other than Ben Schwartz joining to voice Sonic in August 2018, when principal photography took place the following month and ended in October. The finished product was set for release in theaters in November 2019.
Pictures resurfaced of concept art featuring other actors as the human lead, such as Mr. America’s Ass, I mean Captain America, Chris Evans; but he was likely too busy. James Marsden was announced in May. I only bring it up because of the picture.
Which shows a design not as bad as, but still relatively close to, Ugly Sonic.
Go here for Part 1. Continuing today with the remainder of the albums from the mystery box.
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Live in London ‘19
The members of KGLW have released more bootlegs in 2024 than ever before (37!!), which makes their previous 14 bootleg-friendly live concert releases pale in comparison. The way the bootlegging program works is that the band openly offers the stems and files on their website, free to download, and any label can use them to create their own variant of any album made available, be it a live concert, a demos collection, Teenage Gizzard (which I discussed), or Polygondwanaland. The band’s one request is to be shipped copies of the created variant, to sell on their label p(doom) records’ own website.
Their most productive year for those, prior to 2024, was 2019. That year, the band’s albums were the boogie and blues-inspired Fishing for Fishies, and the intense thrash/doom metal of Infest The Rats’ Nest. Along came six live “official live bootlegs” recorded between July 12th and October 14th, three of which (Brussels, Adelaide and Paris) were released in January 2020 to amass money for a charity fighting the Australian Bushfires. The other three (Asheville, London and Milwaukee), released in late 2020 or in 2021, also prominently feature tracks from 2019's studio releases.
I heard them all. And despite being the only one I own out of those six, Live in London ’19, recorded at Alexandra Palace, might be my least favorite. I know live bootlegs aren’t the place for incredible sound quality (…or might not have been, but then again, compare this to the sound quality of their 2024 live output), but even here it doesn’t feel so great. Maybe it’s because I’m a lyrics guy and I like to understand the lyrics when I listen to music that has them, and it’s a bias.
Don’t get me wrong, this album has lots of fan favorites from King Gizz’s discography. The Mind Fuzz Suite (though it’s missing its finale!), Evil Death Roll, Rattlesnake and Float Along – Fill Your Lungs are examples. However, when compared to the other live bootleg albums from that year, London ’19 has little that makes it stand out. The longest track, Crumbling Castle, while still my favorite, doesn’t even reach 11 minutes. Very few songs here are given the jam treatment, so it feels like it just doesn’t have enough of what makes KGLW concerts interesting.
If it’s only your first or second time hearing a live performance from the band, it’s fine on its own. However, at the time, there were already plenty of live bootlegs with more adventurous setlists. Honestly, it’s only middling in comparison to the rest of their output; on its own, it’s pretty good and does feature the range of their sound from the time (let’s just say, they’ve expanded it a lot in 5 years).
Doing this again this year! Same concept as last year. I feel it’s just right to do this, as though I am doing my part to promote Needlejuice, a record label that has its big names, but also a lot of lesser-known artists that can benefit from the spotlight. Needlejuice Records, from Nashville, specializes in indie artists, providing physical versions of these artists’ albums (in vinyl, cassette and CD formats, and beyond). They have a Bandcamp, a website and a Discord server. From 2021 to 2023 ('24 was too busy a year for them to do it), they sold mystery boxes through which they pass their overstock, even adding extra goodies. Each mystery box I purchased contained three vinyl records, three cassettes and three CDs, with a bonus vinyl test pressing and an extra surprise.
In my previous article, I said I wasn’t sure why it took me a full year before ranking the albums from the first mystery box I purchased. I do have an answer; before making this list, I want to make sure I understand each album within the wider context of its creator’s discography. Which is a fancy way of saying that, like the madman I am, I shove every studio release from each artist into a single Spotify playlist and listen at random, getting a good feel of each artist’s stuff and giving me a new perspective on the album I received. I even plan to check which albums I enjoyed the most in that playlist, and will buy those too.
Why yes, my music collection is big, why do you ask?
I purchased a second box in late 2023 and received it in early January 2024. This has given me a year to hear these albums several times (some more than others) and do that deep discography dive. I threw into that playlist every studio album from these artists, and for good measure, I also included any new albums from artists I had already heard (from the previous list) and who had new stuff out.
Another 11 albums, once more ranked from favorite to least favorite. Remember that if I rank an artist lower, that doesn’t mean their stuff is bad – it can just be that it didn’t click with me. Maybe it will click with you. Oh, and the previous article was too long, so this time, I’m splitting it into two parts. Starting with…
Nick Lutsko – Swords
The sad clown says it all.
Nick Lutsko, from Chattanooga, Tenenssee, has been releasing music since 2012. He made a name for himself providing comedic songs for Netflix and CollegeHumor, including a longer stint making satirical tunes for entertainment company Super Deluxe. He has albums that are satirical, albums that are more comedy/horror (he has released a few songs every Halloween since 2021), and the occasional serious one, with today’s album being an example of the latter. He performs live with The $100K Band.
Keeping up with the news, even if to do funny stuff with it, means being constantly exposed to everything messed up about the world. Lutsko came out of a long period of writing satirical songs, I paraphrase his words, “disillusioned with the zeitgeist”. If there’s a group of people that’s painfully aware of the state of the world, it’s comics and comedians.
Swords is an odd beast; Lutsko hesitates to call it a concept album, though the signs are there. Each title is a single word starting with S (so… S-words?). Most songs are about a deeply troubling aspect of the world we live in. Starting with self-destructive willful ignorance (Sideshow) and xenophobia (Superior) and moving on to social media addiction (Straitjacket), hopelessness (Sometimes) and more. If the lyrics to Software, the closing track of the album’s original version, were too subtle, the video spells it out: It's about the general unwillingness to prevent school shootings from happening so damn often in the U.S.. Ouch. The songs are tied by recurring motifs and lines, and the instrumentation to many tracks incorporates circus-like music in some capacity. The result is indie alt-rock/progressive pop that sounds incredible from beginning to end.
Although this album has elements of his career up to now, it also stands as his most serious. The cassette I got included the tracks from “Seven Inch Swords”, a minidisc follow-up that includes Spineless, a song so good I keep thinking it’s part of the original Swords. It also includes two demos and two live versions. I think Swords is his best work so far, and I love it, even though he himself admits to it being “a bit of a bummer”.
If you want to hear more from him, Nick has the satirical Songs on the Computer duology; and he compiled his recent Halloween songs onto HAUNTED, released in 2024. He has also been working on a follow-up to Swords titled Ends, and I am HYPED for it. One single has already been released.
Oh, you expect me to say more? World’s going to Hell, magnitudes worse than it did 12 months ago. We can fully expect America to crumble under the weight of its own bullshit, pulling down several other countries (including possibly mine, because I’m right fucking next door!) along with it. Hate has won and is on the rise. And I would be here happily munching on my popcorn watching the leopards of the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party having the feast of the fucking millennium, if so many of my friends across the United States weren’t getting caught in the crossfire!
Will things get better? I’m doubting it more and more. I am genuinely terrified of what’s to come. Across the next months, across this year that has just begun, across the next four years and beyond. These are not flashbacks to 2017; no, it’s so much worse. I am not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And from my position, the best I can do is reskeet posts about current issues and show my support any way I can. If shit comes knocking at my door, I’ll take my signs and march in the streets. My scope of action is limited, so I’ll do what’s possible. It’s kind of odd just how militant I became against the rising bullshit when it struck. My first order of action was to leave the site formerly known as Twitter, and become a recurring poster on Bluesky instead. Join me over there, it’s got its issues we must fight against, but otherwise it’s going much better.
You know that joke from Airplane!, “I picked a bad week to quit drinking”? 2025 looks like a good year to start.
Okay, you know what? Life’s gonna suck, but if I keep crying about it, nothing will get done. Besides, you are not here to hear me mope, and moping won’t solve anything anyway. If you’re here today, you’re here to be distracted from the *gestures wildly at everything* and have some escapism. So… I’ll provide. It would do me some good, too, to think about something else for a moment.
