Fond of rumpots, crackpots, and how are you, Mr. Wilson?

I've been meaning to cobble together a post about my YouTube channel, and since the "I've been meaning to" phase has lasted a year and a half at this point: Hey! I have a YouTube channel! It's called Reckoned Opinions (here, have yourself a link), and it's devoted to pop culture top ten lists and that kind of thing—not exactly trailblazing, but I'm having a blast and doing work I'm pleased with and finally developing something resembling a viewership, so I'll take it. I'm currently working on a new epic-lite supercut video, which means I'm mustache-deep in Project Mode, juggling Post-Its and paper clips and (no exaggeration) 850 index cards in an effort to get all the bits and pieces cobbled together in some semblance of order. It also means that I intermittently want to delete all of my online accounts and either crawl under a rock, take up goat herding, or both.

Don't get me wrong, it's still fun for the most part, but oh fragrant gods does my brain hurt. It's the organizational process that's doing me in; I'm trying something different with the editing, and it's putting me in red string on the bulletin board territory. My executive functioning can be somewhat damaged on the best of days, and right now I'm asking it to dance on a sprained ankle. This in turn bleeds over into life away from Adobe Premiere, because this sort of brain-weary that makes me misplace the second halves of sentences before I'm done with the first halves. And that, in turn, pokes me in the place in my psyche that makes me emotionally puny when I'm stressed or sleep deprived. The other day I asked Andrea about dinner, she texted back "I thought we'd decided that," and because I couldn't remember that earlier conversation I tripped a low-level meltdown, not collapse so much as operational weirdness.

So, intentional self-care it is. I did a video a few months ago presenting every title in the Criterion Collection (1,190 of them, at the time), a project that turned out well but at the cost of my life being devoured like that hard-boiled egg in Angel Heart for three whole weeks. The current project is similar, only with a side of conspiracy theorist / four-dimensional chess player action, so I'm doing my best to maintain a healthy and reasonable level of obsession. More breaks, more stretching, more Things That Are Not That Thing. Also, I'm giving myself permission to take too long to complete it, because deadlines make the baby Jesus cry. I think it's going to be amazing once it's done, and I'm hoping I'll be upright enough to appreciate it once I get there.

(Relatedly, I'm at the office today, and the index cards are at home. I'm not saying that's why I'm on DW today after a yearlong absence, but I'm not not saying that. Also, I missed you guys.)

Before I turn in, just...just watch.

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As a dyed-in the wool Criterion whore, this fairly well blew me clear out of my socks:

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637 clips in 2 1/2 minutes, one from each film in the Criterion Collection, in spine-number order. The squeaking noise you're likely hearing is my geek-wankery ventilation system going into hyperactive overdrive. (My oft-forgotten fondness for "Music For A Found Harmonium" doesn't hurt, either.) And now I'm playing the "name that movie wait wait go back GO BACK" game. Repeatedly.

I'd seen this when it was making the rounds a few months ago, then saw it again recently, and have since been watching it on auto-repeat until my eyes hemorrhage and shoving it in the faces of anyone who doesn't duck fast enough:
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Meanwhile, over at Cracked, the After Hours video series rebounds from its slide into mediocrity with a brilliant discussion of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that references both Sex and the City and the four humours(!):
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And as much of a Ricky Jay fanatic as I am, this bit of sleight of hand by Lennart Green may be the best I've ever witnessed:
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If one were able to visualize the inside of my brain, it would look much like this an alarmingly large percentage of the time:

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Relatedly, figmentj would now like a dancing tube thingy.