Big Brother

Weekly Highlights – September 26, 2022

Weekly Highlights, Written Posts

Highlights of the Week

Big Brother 24 on CBS:

Just last night I witnessed what I believe to be the best finale in Big Brother history, with the most iconic final two speech and most satisfying winner in Big Brother history as well. I truly don’t think I’ve ever rooted for someone as hard as I did towards the end of this season, and it happened to produce the most unlikely winner and the most incredible underdog story the show has ever seen! I’m thrilled with the outcome of the season and am grateful for the mold being broken in such a meaningful way.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the Nintendo Switch:

I have been making more progress with my replay of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and I have been enjoying it for sure! Still very much at the early stage of the game having just passed through Kakariko Village and having only completed a handful of shrines at this point. I don’t know whether I will see this second playthrough all the way through or not , but I am definitely going to continue to enjoy my time with it for as long as I’m feeling it!

Renaissance by Beyoncé:

Though I’ve always had this sort of unspoken respect for Beyoncé and her music, I’d never really taken the time to listen to much outside of the mainstream hits and never listened to an album of hers in its entirety… until now. My girlfriend and I listened to this album together for the first time a week or two ago and we’ve been enjoying it a lot ever since! Personally I think my favorite song continues to be Cuff It, but I’m pleased with most of the songs overall and am honestly impressed at how seamlessly they transition into each other if you listen to them in the proper album order! As someone who appreciates and loves music, I’m always eager to listen to and appreciate more!

Content of the Week:

Survivor: Guatemala Ep. 14 Reaction (FINALE!) – Tarqaron

The finales of Survivor are always a fun time where you really get to see the narrative of the season either stick the landing, stumble a little bit at the end, or completely fall on its face and I always look forward to enjoying these old-school finales with Alec. Not only do we get to see the jury grill our final two but I also get to see Alec’s reaction to the ultimate winner of the season. In some ways Guatemala is like a redheaded stepchild of old-school Survivor and you will see some of those ways explored in our comprehensive season review this week.

Survivor: Guatemala Ep. 15 Reaction (Reunion) – Tarqaron

I even mention in this video that reunion episodes tend not to be my favorites, or even very memorable in general, and this one was really no different BUT like always there are little nuggets of live tv weirdness that make it worth it. As I’m writing this, Blake’s comments during this reunion stand out for me at least, and I’ll just leave it at that…

Pinocchio (2022) Review – Tarqaron ft. Rusty

Quite a while ago at this point, Alec, Rusty, and I said that we would make it a mission of ours to go through the live-action Disney remakes as well as tackle any new releases that come our way and somewhere along the way we lost sight of that. Of course, naturally, Pinocchio would be the one to bring us back together and hopefully get back on track. We spent nearly an hour talking about this movie and I’ll just say that not much of it was positive but we enjoyed talking about it at the very least!

Zach’s thoughts on the Survivor 43 PREMIERE! – Tarqaron

While the overall public discourse that I’ve seen tends to lean towards a positive reception of the premiere, I’ve got to say that while I was happy for Survivor to be back, I still am very much hesitant to enjoy some of the new norms that have been established over the last new seasons. Additionally, while I was happy with the editing I found myself underwhelmed by the episode and its more of the same vibe overall. But as always I will keep an open mind and enjoy the season as it is another season of Survivor, after all.

Weekly Highlights – September 12, 2022

Weekly Highlights, Written Posts

Highlights of the Week

Ring Fit Adventure on the Nintendo Switch:

Of all of Nintendo’s “gimmick” accessories, the one used for Ring Fit Adventure just might be the most impressive one yet. I’ve only played a few hours at this point, but I’m already impressed by all of the different ways it is being utilized and I truly believe people should be talking about this game more! Ring Fit Adventure really gets you moving, and not in a “shake the Wii Remote and Nunchuck” kind of way. The game allows you to actually exercise while also giving you a fun RPG story mode to go with it. Especially for someone who is not nearly as active as they should be (like myself), this seems like a perfect starting point for exercising while simultaneously just being a fun game with plenty of content to enjoy! Definitely worth the $70-80 cost if you any of that sounds enticing to you at all.

Big Brother 24 on CBS:

This week of Big Brother was particularly notable because of an entertaining double eviction episode which saw perhaps the hardest working person all season go home without disappointing with his exit in the slightest. It’s always great to see someone fighting until the bitter end and giving us an iconic exit, so I’m thankful for this as a memorable week of Big Brother in 2022.

IT’S MR. VIDEO on YouTube:

So this past week I’ve been addicted to Mr. Video’s Game of Thrones reactions on YouTube. I literally forgot how much I loved the large majority of that show until I decided to start watching his reactions and I have been reliving Game of Thrones in its prime along with him. It’s bittersweet because the last season of the show literally soured me so much on it that I forgot why I fell in love with it to begin with and I tend to forget that it was literally my favorite show of all time for several years. With all that being said, I still have yet to check out House of the Dragons, so maybe that will help to soften the blow taken by how Game of Thrones ended? I’m not sure, I’ve heard good things, but hopefully I can judge for myself soon and you might see that on a Weekly Highlights post here soon enough.

Survivor: Guatemala Ep. 12 Reaction (Scumbags) – Tarqaron

If absolutely nothing else, this episode is worth a watch just to see some of the most iconic parting words in Survivor history. It’s exactly the kind of exit I love to see from someone being voted out on Survivor, and all in all it’s a beautiful blindside to behold.

Alec ranks Zach’s favorite things! – Tarqaron

So every year, Alec and I each get to pick a video, any video, to do in honor of our respective birthdays. So I was tossing around some ideas, mostly centered on reviewing one of my favorite movies or an offbeat movie that we might not review otherwise, but this fun little idea popped into my head and I couldn’t shake it. I put together 50 random things that I love, which included anything from video games to movies to foods to activities, and I made Alec rank them on a tier list just for the heck of it! I thought seeing him have to compare practically incomparable things would make for a fun video and it did not disappoint! And spoiler alert: Alec may have just stolen my idea for this week’s video in honor of his birthday as well, so perhaps still more tier list shenanigans to come!

Weekly Highlights – August 29, 2022

Weekly Highlights, Written Posts

Hello everyone, welcome to a new weekly series I’ll be doing here on my website. Unlike my weekly blog series that I did for months last year, this series won’t focus on my personal life but rather will allow me to highlight the different games, movies, shows, books, and musics I enjoyed from the past week as well as elaborate on any content I posted as well. This does not mean I have included everything I enjoyed from the past week, but rather specific highlights that I thought were most worth mentioning! These will be posted every Monday and I encourage you to leave a response if you have any opinions on anything I highlight here throughout the week! Feel free to leave a comment here or reach out to me on Twitter @_Zach_Archer_ ! I love talking about these kinds of things so I’m happy to add another outlet for me to regularly do so.

Highlights of the Week

438 Days by Jonathan Franklin:

This is actually the first book in years that I actually sat down and read through in its entirety! Despite always having an interest in reading more, the flashier trinkets like video games and YouTube videos tended to distract me and keep me from really committing to a good book, but now that I’ve had some extra free time on my hands I don’t intend on stopping after this one. This was actually a real-life story I knew about before, but I was so curious to read about in more detail. 438 Days follows the grueling 438 days that a man named Alvarenga survived lost at sea with nothing but his survival abilities and seemingly endless miles of ocean around him. It’s truly unfathomable to wrap your head around just how long 438 days is to be in even just one place in general, let alone stranded at sea in a survival situation. I highly encourage you to read this if you’re interested at all in hearing about this incredible survival story.

Fable II on the Xbox 360:

My relationship with the Fable series is an interesting one. I have always been a fan of the series, but weirdly enough, I have only beaten Fable III and have yet to make significant progress on the first two despite starting them over multiple times and enjoying them both. But for some reason I was feeling that Fable itch once again and I’m going to try to stick it through to the end this time. I guess I’ve accepted my non-linear relationship with the series and so I’m going through Fable II next, it was just calling to me more. So far I’ve been enjoying it, but as tends to happen with this series, I spent a few hours the other night getting distracted winning over many of the townspeople in Bowerstone, getting married a couple of times along the way, and as such haven’t done much in terms of progress recently. But the next time I play I plan on focusing up and moving forward with more of the story proper.

Big Brother 24 on CBS:

Watching Big Brother has been an annual tradition for my family for so many years that it is just a regular part of each summer at this point. This season has been delivering in a lot of ways because it has been a rollercoaster of ups and downs and despite a really rough start to the season it has picked up and led to some interesting dynamics, even in spite of a couple of awful twists imposed by the producers. This season is also the first one I’ve been able to enjoy and discuss with my girlfriend, so that has been a plus, too. Hopefully the endgame proves to be just as interesting and gives us more to enjoy.

The Lucky Ones (Deluxe) album by Pentatonix:

Recently it kind of slipped my mind that I hadn’t given the deluxe version of Pentatonix’s latest album quite the love it deserved. I had listened to it a few times, sure, but not as much as many of their other albums for sure. I’ve since realized that the additional deluxe tracks are some of my favorite Pentatonix songs period now, with You’re Out standing out to me this past week especially. Truly a treat to enjoy, and one I’m sure I’ll continue to appreciate for quite some time.

Content of the Week:

Box Art Battles! – Episode 6 | Tarqaron ft. Ryan

This episode was a lot of fun. As always in Box Art Battles!, we got up to a lot of fun shenanigans as we navigated a variety of video game box art. Most notably I feel like Winning Post 7 really defined this episode in a lot of ways, lest we forget the moments we shared.

Survivor: Guatemala Ep. 10 Reaction (Blindsided, Nice!) – Tarqaron

Jamie’s parting words were almost too iconic not to be referenced in the title, especially after the dramatic downward spiral that we witnessed from him throughout the past few episodes. I know Alec was happy to see them finally actually go through with voting him out and I don’t blame him; it was a much needed change of pace. Had a fun time with this episode for sure!

Belle Review – Tarqaron

This was definitely an interesting anime film worth highlighting, and I knew there would be a good amount to get into, but I certainly never expected Alec to get so heated about one minor critique I made in the video (especially since we were more or less in agreement about everything else). Watch for yourself and let me know if I was really being that unreasonable with what I said, because it really took me by surprise.