📺 Ren Faire (Max): The very horny and gross 80-something man, “King George”, runs a Renaissance Festival in Texas, and is literally the mayor of the city he incorporated around it. The story is about the succession of the festival, but it felt to me that was the wrong story to tell. I would have rather a documentary either more directly about the festival itself (so many cool nerds! show me!), or focused entirely on George’s dates (already the wildest scenes).
📘 Moonbound: Robin Sloan’s latest was absolutely wonderful. I was ultra captivated by the first few pages and repeatedly stunned at the world building and turns. It felt light to me, likely because while it felt epic, nothing terribly horrible happened. That gave it a fresh and likable vibe. Each region they visited was so vastly different it makes me want to know what else is going on on that planet so far into our future. Studio Ghibli make a literal appearance in the book, which felt like an important nod: this is an anime. The talking animals, the techno optimism, the bagelness?! If this becomes a show it very needs to be a cartoon. Worth reading just for how the beavers resolve debates. I added that random colon just for Robin.
📺 Three Pines (Prime): Took me a while realize Alfred Molina is the voice of the dad in Frozen 2. Haunted me for days. It lost me when he figured out who electrocuted the rich mean lady in a chair was the girl with… an electric chair (?!) in her basement (?!).
🎧 The Universe (Podcast/YouTube): Absolutely excellent show about… The Universe, from the beginning on up, with Dr. Katie Mack and John Green. Funny, endearing, and thick with modern knowledge.
🕹️ Kingdom Rush (iOS): I said I would let Kingdom Rush be after playing the first one, but I ended up playing through both Frontiers and Origins as well. Frontiers was the best one so far. I see Alliance is freshly out, and I imagine I’ll give it a run. Tower defense is just so fun.
📺 The Bear Season 3 (Hulu): Like many others, all the intense “Fuck you, no fuck you, no fuck you” stuff just isn’t very fun to watch. I’d call it bad writing, except the good parts are so good that it’s still worth watching. I enjoy being pulled into Chicago for this show. I recently ate at Addison, my first ever three-star experience, so I have a reference for all the ultra fancy restaurant stuff they are doing. I never knew what a “charger” plate was until I was weirded out by this nice plate being removed from my table before it was even used at Addison, and that weirdness is echoed in the show when they are fighting about costs.
📘 I Die Each Time I Hear The Sound: A Mike Doughty memoir. He’s a great writer, drawing upon a weird life of a musician, but I like his The Book of Drugs better.
🎧 Shell Game (Podcast) Evan Ratliff makes an AI voice out of himself and makes it do stuff and it’s weird.
