My 90s and 2000s Experience: Star Trek: The Mirror Universe Saga (1991, DC Comics)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I've got a comic book related post for you today. It's been a while and I picked a special one to talk about. So let's get into it.

Star Trek: The Mirror Universe Saga is one of the few collected editions that DC Comics published in the early '90s. It collects issues #9-16 of the original Star Trek comic book series that DC published from 1984 to 1988. It was also my first collected edition and my first trade paperback collected edition.

The book takes place between Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) and acts as a sequel/followup to the TOS season 2 episode, "Mirror, Mirror", about a decade before DS9 would do its first sequel to that episode, "Crossover" from late in its second season. So obviously, everything that happened in the TV show version of the Mirror Universe in DS9, hadn't happened yet, or didn't happen up to that point, as this version of Mirror Spock never challenged Mirror Kirk and took command of the Enterprise. 

The reason this book is so special to me, beyond the fact that, for decades, it was the only Star Trek comic collected edition I owned, is that I got it from a very special group of people. It was given to me as a gift by the cast and crew of Star Trek: The Next Generation, when I visited the set back in January, 1993. Along with several other comic books, including the comic book adaptation of the 1992 film, Cool World, which I reviewed on the Review Basement back in 2020. I still have this copy in my collection. I never got rid of it because it was given to me by the cast and crew of TNG and I really like the story.

Being that this is a collection of comics from the original 1984 Star Trek comic book series, the artwork isn't great. The characters are fine, but the interiors of the ships look more generic Sci-Fi ship interiors than starship interiors from the TOS movies. That would change with the 1989 series, which is mainly set between Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), but this was a problem that the original comics published by Gold Key in the '60s and '70s had as well. 

Because I still have my original copy that I got in 1993, I haven't been on the search for a copy to include in my collection. However, I have come across the original DC published edition it at comic book sales, geek sales, and conventions at least once. IDW also re-published it in 2022 as part of their Star Trek Classics series, and had previously re-published the entire story arc in Star Trek Archives: Best of Alternate Universes, which was volume 6 in the Archives series, in 2009. So it should be pretty easy for you to pick up if you're interested in checking out these classic Star Trek comics.

That's it for me for today my friends. I'll be back next time with another post. I haven't quite decided what I'm going to talk about next week. I'm also returning to the VHS Club Podcast next week to chat about Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie with Katie. The podcast has been on hiatus for the last month, so it'll be awesome to not only have the show back, but to also be the first guest host for their return. I should have a blog post up before Thursday, April 10th though. That's my plan anyway. Until then have a great rest of your week and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90s and 2000s Experience: The Phantom (1996, Paramount Pictures)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm going to be talking about the 1996 movie, The Phantom, starring Billy Zane, Treat Williams, Kristy Swanson, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, which I just watched for the very first time last night. Normally I talk about movies, shows, music, or whatever it is that I experienced in the 90s and 2000s, but, I've decided to start including 90s and 2000s things that I experience in the present as well, because there are so many things that came out during my childhood that I didn't watch or read that I'd love to talk about on here. So, let's talk about The Phantom. I watched it on VHS last night. Let's get into it.

Despite only watching it for the first time last night, I actually do have some history with this movie. I was nine years old when it came out in 1996 and I remember seeing the commercials for it on TV, starting probably in the fall of 1995, since there was lots of merchandise that came out. For example, on the back of Detective Comics #700, there was an ad for The Phantom trading cards from Inkworks. I also remember seeing the TV spots for it during Power Rangers Zeo as well as during the reruns of The Dukes of Hazzard on TNN, that I was also watching in 1996. I also had a replica of the Phantom's skull ring that somebody got at a convenience store or at Subway for me or something like that. 

I love this movie. At a time when superhero and comic book based movies weren't as prevalent as they became in the 2010s, The Phantom came out at the perfect time. Yet, I never saw it until last night. And the movie wasn't successful at the box office. similar to how The Rocketeer and The Shadow failed at the box office when they came out in 1991 and 1994 respectively. It's funny because just two years later, The Mask of Zorro did extremely well, and yet both are adaptations of old comic strips and pulp fiction novels. 1996 also wasn't a box office hit heavy year either. Though some very good movies came out that year like Independence Day, Twister, and Space Jam.

I love the cast of The Phantom. Billy Zane is great as Kit Walker/the Phantom. He's funny, charming, and very proactive, though not to the obsessive extent that Batman can be portrayed as in the comics, and some of the movies and TV shows. I've only really seen him in Titanic, though he plays a member of Biff's gang in Back to the Future and Back to the Future Part II, and he's apparently in Zoolander as an uncredited cameo role as himself. It's been more than twenty years since I saw Zoolander so I don't remember a thing about it. And he plays P.T. Barnum in season 3, episode 2, "Freakshow", of DC's Legends of Tomorrow. This was my first time seeing Kristy Swanson and I've only seen Catherine Zeta-Jones in Ocean's Twelve, but I really loved them both in this movie. Treat Williams as Xander Drax, the villain of the movie, "X-A-N-D-E-R D-R-A-X, both starts with an x", stole the show though. I watched Everwood for probably about half the show's original run from 2002 to probably 2004 or 2005 (I'm pretty sure I missed the show's fourth and final season) and he was one of the main characters of the show, as Doctor Andy Brown, and I loved him in that role. He's also in The Empire Strikes Back, but I have yet to actually spot him in the movie. The rest of the cast is phenomenal.

As a fan of 90s and 2000s things, I watched The Phantom on VHS last night, because, why not? But, it was rough seeing the opening previews on the VHS because the first one was for the home video release of Harriet the Spy, given that Michelle Trachtenberg passed away a few weeks ago. Especially because the 1999 live action Inspector Gadget movie was one of my favourite movies when I was a kid, and of course, I loved Harriet the Spy when I saw it almost 30 years ago. However, the last preview before the movie started is the teaser trailer for Star Trek: First Contact, which I saw on the VHS release of Mission: Impossible when I watched that sometime in the early to mid 2000s. There's no exterior shots of the Enterprise-E in the teaser. Some scenes, including Picard's line about "The line must be drawn HERE, no further!" are included, but it's mostly shots from the TNG season 3 finale/season 4 premiere, "The Best of Both Worlds" and Star Trek Generations.

I had so much fun watching The Phantom. To this day though I have no idea why I'd never seen it before. It was less violent and scary than Batman Returns, and Xander Drax was a way less scary villain than the Joker in Batman. It was also even less scary than any of the three Indiana Jones movies (yeah, I didn't see those until I was a teenager for that reason), and I was older than I was when Batman Returns came out. The only thing I can really think of is that my parents felt my siblings were too young to see it, though it didn't have sexual content in it, no swearing, and very little blood in it. Who knows at this point. I'm glad I got to watch it last night regardless. I might even watch it again at some point in the very near future. 

Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I'll be back soon with more nostalgic posts for you. I'm probably gonna talk about a comic book next week. We'll see though. Until then, have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90s and 2000s Experience: Oreos

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Friday. I've got a quick little post for you today. I don't talk about food at all on my blog. Especially not in this series, because most of the food I ate as a kid (pre-1993) is the same as it is now. Yogurt is still yogurt, sandwiches are still sandwiches, etc. But, there is one food that I want to talk about and that food is Oreos. Specifically the Oreos Summer Fun Pack, which came out sometime between 1990 and 1993 (Wikipedia doesn't list these in the list of Oreo varieties), since they don't exist anymore. So let's get into it.

Like I said, I don't have an exact year these cookies were in stores in, I just have my own memories of when these cookies were out. There were very few foods that I could eat before I had the operation that led me to be completely fed through my feeding tube. But, one thing I could do was lick the Oreo cookie filling off the bottom part of the cookie because it was soft. Someone else would eat the cookie parts for me. 

These particular Oreos had colourful filling. The colours were red, green, orange, and yellow. One of the dieticians at CHEO always brought a package of them for me whenever I was in the hospital for however long. As a dessert to go with the soup broth, strained yogurt, juice or milk, applesauce, and whatever else was brought up for me on my lunch or dinner tray since I was on a strictly soft food diet at the time due to the problems I was having at the time with my original esophagus. I also had regular Oreos too, but these colourful ones really stand out to me as something I had as a treat. 

One of the reasons I wanted to talk about this today is because these Oreos haven't been available, at least not here in Canada, in about 32 or 33 years and I really wanted to eat them after my esophagial graft was done in 2003, alas I have never found them. I was also curious to know if anyone else my age or slightly older had these cookies. They were from the early 90s for sure because, like I said, I never saw them again after 1992 or 1993. But, they also could've come out in the late 80s and were just released in the summertime until 1992 or 1993. I just know I was introduced to them sometime between 1991 and 1993.

Aside from eating them in the hospital, I don't have any really specific memory of eating them while watching a particular show or movie, or reading comic books or anything like that. Not like eating strained yogurt for breakfast while watching The Care Bears Family on Global or having a juice box while watching reruns of Batman on YTV (before Power Rangers started airing), or eating soup broth for lunch while watching The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle and Friends and The Flintstones on YTV. Things like that. 

I think that's going to be it for me for today. Like I said, I just wanted to talk about these briefly because I was curious to know whether other people who were kids in the late 80s and early 90s ate these cookies. Plus they were part of my 90s experience and that's what this blog is all about. Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I'll be back soon with another post next week. So until then have a great rest of the day, a great weekend, and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90s and 2000s Experience: YTV Big Fun Party Mix 4

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I had planned on doing this post last week, but stuff came up and I didn't have the energy to focus on working on the blog. But, I'm back and this week we're going to talk about a very obscure album that I had on audiocassette in the mid 2000s. In fact, it's so obscure that I can't find a picture of the audiocassette cover, so I have to use an image of the CD cover instead. That album is YTV Big Fun Party Mix 4, which was released on CD and audiocassette in 2003. So, let's get into it!

 So I don't really remember when I exactly got this album. It was either a birthday or Christmas present from my friend, Kelly, in 2003, or I bought it for myself while I was hanging out with Kelly and another friend of ours at the time, at Walmart in 2007. I'm about 95% sure that I got it in 2003 for my birthday or Christmas because I remember still being in high school when I got it. And none of my friends drove when we were in high school, so we had to rely on our parents to take us everywhere. And other than going to see The Two Towers in January 2003, the only other time I went anywhere with Kelly in the car while we were still in high school was when Mom and I picked her up in December 2002 for my party for my 16th birthday.

The songs on this album are a mix of the popular pop songs at the time, including "I'm a Believer" by Smash Mouth, which had been made popular by Shrek in 2001. However, there are three songs on here that are...interesting. The first is the English dub theme song for the Anime, Beyblade, "All Across the Nation" by The Black Europeans. The second is the theme song for the Anime, Hamtaro. The third is called "Super Smelly" by Nuclear Donkey.

For those of you who watched YTV in the late 90s and through most of the 2000s, you'll remember Nuclear Donkey. It was originally formed by the hosts of The Zone, PJ Katie and Pat Kelly and they recorded songs for each of the Big Fun Party Mix CDs, except for 7, 8, and 10 (according to Wikipedia). However, by the time Big Fun Party Mix 4 came out in 2003, Jen (PJ Katie) and Pat had left The Zone, and had been replaced by Stephanie "Sugar" Beard and Carlos Bustamante. As the new Nuclear Donkey, they recorded "Super Smelly" which is probably my favourite song on this entire album. Just because it's such a silly song.

There is one song on this album though that I'd love to talk about because it's my favourite song on this album that isn't "Super Smelly". And that song is "Whole Again" by Atomic Kitten. It's track 11 on the CD, but the third track on side 2 of the audiocassette, and I think one of the reasons that this album sticks out to me among all of the compilation albums I have that came out in the 2000s is that I'd heard this song and "I'm a Believer" on the radio a lot when I was in high school. Majic 100 played both songs all the time in 2001 when they were first released. So, when I got this album and saw that both songs were on it, I was thrilled.

I think that's all I wanted to say about this album. I'm honestly really happy with where this blog is. It took me ten years, but, I finally have it the way I want it to be. Which is great. That's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with lots more posts. Until then have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90s and 2000s Experience: Toys I Played with Growing Up That I Didn't Own

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm going to be talking about some toys that I never owned when I was a kid, but got to play with either at school or at the hospital. There are 18 of them in total. I'm only gonna pick five of them for today though, just so I can split this up into three parts. The other two parts I'll do some other time in the future. This part is just going to be the playsets and one vehicle, but no figures. So let's get into it.

The first one I wanna talk about is the Sewer Playset from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toyline produced by Playmates Toys in the late 80s and early 90s. I played with it once when I was in the Intensive Care Unit at CHEO for some reason or another. It was super late at night and I was having problems sleeping as I usually did when I was in the ICU. Being that usually people are in the ICU and can't get out of bed, the one at CHEO didn't have a dedicated playroom like the regular units did. They did have an area where toys, books, and VHS tapes were kept. So that night one of the nurses, probably my nurse, brought me this sewer playset and the talking Michaelangelo figure with the rip cord that you put through the shells to make them talk. I think that was the figure that she brought to me to play with until I was ready to fall asleep. Regardless, this is the only time I ever got to see the Sewer Playset in person.

Next is the Batcave Command Center playset from the Batman Returns toyline. This one was owned by a roommate I had at the hospital. His name was Justin, and he was my hospital roommate several times through those early years. Anyway, one of those times, his parents had brought in a number of his Batman toys, and the Batcave Command Center was one of them. We were friends, so he let me play with it along with one of the many figure variants of Batman that got released for Batman Returns and Batman: The Animated Series in 1992 and 1993. 

Now we come to the Fisher Price Play Family Castle, which was the #1 toy that I played with when I was in the hospital growing up. Every chance I got I'd play with it. Especially when I was stuck in my hospital room and couldn't go to the playroom. The volunteers would always bring it to me for a little while. I absolutely loved it. To the point where I honestly don't remember playing with it for the first time. I just remember playing with it.

Oddly enough, I also played with the Playmobil Operating Room set when I was in the hospital. I know, I don't understand it either considering just how many operations I had during my childhood and how well I knew the CHEO operating rooms, but I had a lot of fun playing with this set. This is another one where I don't remember the first time I played with it, just how often I played with it.

You didn't think I'd do this blog post and NOT bring up Mighty Morphin Power Rangers did you? So I first saw the original Deluxe Megazord toy at CHEO. I was there for an appointment in the Medical Day Unit (MDU) and one of the other kids was playing with their Deluxe Megazord. And this was fascinating to me because I'd never seen the toy in person before. They separated it and transformed the individual Zords into their separate forms, and then recombined them. Which was cool to me because you only see the Megazord combination on the show from certain angles, so you don't see everything. So seeing the toy was really cool to me. I own it now as an adult, but I never got to own it as a kid.

That's all for me for today. I'll do part 2 another time, but I wanted to talk about these five toys in particular because I feel they had the most impact on me when I was a kid. So until then have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90s and 2000s Experience: CJOH TV (Cable 7)

 Hey everyone, how were your weekends? Mine was pretty quiet. It was at least nice outside on Saturday so I could go outside for some fresh air. Today I'm going to be talking about a local TV station that I watched for as long as I can remember. It's known as CTV Ottawa now, but up until 2011, it was known simply as CJOH TV, Cable 7. Out of all of the local TV channels and national TV networks, CJOH is the one I have the most experience with. So, let's get into it!

Originally debuting in 1961, CJOH TV was a huge staple here in Ottawa, particularly in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s. In fact many of us who grew up in Ottawa in those decades, grew up with this station. For me it was the home of many of my favourite TV shows. Disney shows, teen dramas, sitcoms, both Star Trek and Star Wars shows aired on CJOH at one time or another. In fact, the last time I watched CJOH (now CTV Ottawa) was in 2023 when the series finale of The Goldbergs aired. It was also one of the channels that I got on the TV in my bedroom, both the original one that I got in the summer of 2001, when I was going to have surgery on my right knee and would be stuck in bed for a couple of weeks, and the TV/VCR combo set that I got for my 16th birthday in 2002. But, what made it so special?

Aside from the numerous TV shows I watched on that channel, from Degrassi: The Next Generation and The Big Bang Theory to Star Wars: The Clone Wars (first season and a half only) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (1989-1990), what made CJOH special, and different from CBC and The Global Television Network, was the people. Specifically the news anchors and the news reporters. It wasn't just that they were good at their jobs, but they were involved in the community. From 1989 to 2010, CJOH News, originally known as Newsline, Max Keeping and Carol Anne Meehan were the news anchors, along with J.J. Clarke as the weather reporter. There were others, some I met, others I never got the opportunity to meet, but Max, Carol Anne, and J.J. were the core trio, and the ones I interacted with the most, besides reporter Leanne Cusack.

My personal involvement with CJOH comes through my childhood as a disabled person, who spent my entire childhood being in and out of the local children's hospital, CHEO. Everyone at CJOH worked at the CHEO Telethon every year, and I was one of the many children whose story was told by CJOH. I even visited the studio (the one that was on Merivale Road) so I could be interviewed for the Telethon. Leanne Cusack, the reporter I mentioned earlier, was the one who interviewed me the most when it came to stories about CHEO. In fact, I remember one time where I was at the hospital for an appointment, and we happened to run into Leanne in the lobby as she was there to do a story for one of CHEO's anniversaries, and she asked if she could interview me quickly for the story. I agreed and we went upstairs to the 6th floor and she interviewed me near the nurse's station of the Medical Day Unit, a place where I spent a lot of my later childhood days.

During my many interactions with J.J., he would often joke with my parents that I might actually replace him as the weather reporter for CJOH News when he retired, being that my weather "predictions" that I would make in jest, would actually be right sometimes. I think that's one of the reasons I leaned towards being in the media, either TV or Radio, when I was deciding which program to apply to for my college application in the mid 2000s. Unfortunately, the TV Broadcasting program required students to carry heavy equipment around as part of the training, and even in my wheelchair, I wasn't able to lift and carry heavy equipment. But, I loved listening to the radio, so I ended up going for Radio Broadcasting instead of TV Broadcasting.

All of the people I've mentioned have either retired from broadcasting, left CTV Ottawa, or have passed away, but the CHUM Media Mall (now known as the Bell Media Mall) in the Byward Market, in Downtown Ottawa, had an open door event where the public could go in and meet the personalities both in front and behind the cameras and microphones (radio stations are in that building too), in 2010, and Brad took me. We were waiting in line to go in, and Max had come out to say hi to the people waiting in line, but, when he saw me he came right over, said hi, and then proceeded to lead Brad and I ahead into the building as if I was royalty. I got to see the people who I met growing up, as well as some of the radio hosts that I'd been listening to on MAJIC 100 since the station began in 1991, AND some of the TV hosts from CJOH's sister station, CHRO/The New RO/A Channel (now known as CTV 2). Max and Carol Anne both remembered me (I missed J.J.) and they were absolutely blown away that I was 23 years old, had been in college for Radio Broadcasting until I got sick, and how well I was thriving compared to the sick boy they met almost twenty years earlier. 

Growing up though CJOH was the channel where I watched all of the Disney Afternoon cartoons since we didn't have the American networks that aired that block. The first cartoons I remember watching on CJOH were The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears, which were aired in an hour long block known as the Gummi Bears-Winnie the Pooh Hour. Later on, during the mid 90s, CJOH, as part of CTV, was owned by the Baton Broadcast System (BBS), and on weekend mornings they would air a children's programming block called BBS Master Control, hosted by former YTV Program Jockey, Jenn Beech, which aired all the Disney Afternoon and One Saturday Morning (which became ABC Kids in 2002) animated shows like Gargoyles, Timon & Pumbaa, Jungle Cubs, Aladdin: The Animated Series, and the Disney produced seasons of Doug.

There were also two local shows that we watched on CJOH when I was growing up. The first was Homegrown Cafe, which was basically a local variety show hosted by J.J. Clarke, and featured many singers and actors, including Ryan Gosling. Which is crazy to me. The second was called Regional Contact, which was hosted by Joel Haslam and Kathie Donovan, and they went to different locations in the Ottawa Region to try out different foods, and other activities run by local people. It used to air on Saturday nights at 6:30 pm, between Newsline/CJOH News and airings of Star Trek: The Next Generation (in the early 90s obviously) since the Saturday night newscasts were only half an hour long while the weeknight newscasts were an hour long.

I could go on and on about all the shows I watched on CJOH over the years, but, I think I'll leave it off here. The channel was a huge part of my life for so many years, between the CHEO Telethons, watching the news with my parents, watching everything from sitcoms to Star Trek, to knowing the on air personalities.

Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I'm not sure if I'll have more blog posts for you this week, but my next post is going to be my 400th post on this blog, so I might do that post later this week or wait until next week, I dunno yet. Until then have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Why I Started Blogging: A Josh's Geek Cave and Review Basement Retrospective

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. The week started off pretty busy, so that's why I'm just getting around to doing this post today. It's also not going to be a long post either. With this week being the 10th anniversary of me starting my blog over on Word Press, as The Geek Outpost, I just wanted to talk a little bit about why I started blogging in the first place. So, let's get into it!

To start off we need to go back to February, 2015. I was 28 years old, lived with my parents, had a girlfriend, and had been out of college for almost five years. I can't work, and I was encouraged by my girlfriend at the time to write reviews and post them. I'd kinda started doing this in the Notes section on Facebook back in like 2010 or 2011, but I didn't continue with them. Also at this time, superhero movies and TV shows were extremely popular thanks to the huge success of the MCU, which had started with Iron Man in 2008, but had really taken off with The Avengers in 2012, and the success of Arrow on The CW, which had debuted in October, 2012. I was also heavily into YouTube channels such as Geekvolution, The Nostalgia Critic, ComicPop, Comicstorian, and Comics Explained at this time. So my goal was simple: write reviews about comics, books, TV shows and movies that I had access to, mainly what I could borrow from friends, owned physical copies of, owned on DVD, watched on TV, or went to see in theatres.

I was also steeped in geek culture in 2015. Not only because the MCU was everywhere, and DC Comics based TV shows were coming out, but I was attending Ottawa Comiccon every year for the entire weekend it was scheduled for. I ended up getting a lot of content for my blog from my attendance of Ottawa Comiccon. These first two years were filled with uncertainty because I got really sick and my parents and I were getting ready to move into the city after 23 years of living out in the rural area where we'd been living. So I wasn't sure if I'd be able to continue doing the blog since I couldn't fit it into my schedule because of showings, hospital stays, and the actual moving part. But, once we got settled into the new house (not so new now though), and I had fully recovered from my medical issues, I got back on track.

Then the pandemic hit and suddenly I found I had a lot more time on my hands than I ever had before so I moved over here to Blogger and set up The Review Basement, which I ran for almost two years before I started Josh's Geek Cave. Though it'd still be another few years before I finally settled into how the blog is now.

I started this blog because, aside from having a girlfriend who encouraged me to do so, I had the time to do it. I had the time to put as much effort into it as I do. I have the time to sit here, and type out blog posts the way I want to do it. In a way I really do think of this as my job. While I don't post daily like I used to and most weeks I don't post more than once a week, even when I'm not posting I'm thinking about what I'm writing about that week, gathering the images I need for each post, and even looking information up for said posts. I don't commit anything to paper in terms of planning my week of posts out. Normally on Thursday or Friday every two weeks I decide what I'm going to post for the next two weeks and then I do the work to get what I need for said post, such as images and looking stuff up to make sure I'm remembering correctly what channel a show aired on, or what VHS or DVD release I first saw a movie on, that sort of thing. 

Most of all though, I keep this blog going because it's fun. I never expected to have more than a couple of readers. Namely a few close friends and my family. Instead I people who read my blog all over Canada and the United States, and probably in other countries too. Which is super cool. I've also been on podcasts and my blog has been featured on other blogs too. 

I've been asked before why I didn't do YouTube or my own podcast. The answer is that, YouTube is not what it was back when it first started in the late 2000s. Plus I've always felt I can get my ideas and opinions out in writing better than I can in a video. As for doing my own podcast, it's pretty much the same reason. I've found it easier to get my thoughts and opinions out in writing than I have speaking. Also, I can do it anytime, be it day or night without disturbing anyone. And that would be the case whether or not I was living with my parents. It also gives me the chance to do this however I want, and allows me to take my time writing the posts as well.

I think that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with lots more blog posts. Until then, have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.