The fish and chips were good, but nothing to write home about. But apparently they were worth blogging about because here we are. They actually sold out for the night right after we got our food, so I guess they were reasonably popular.

The next morning we got up bright and early and ventured out in search of a “fairy trail” on the nearby Mackworth Island. When we got there it seemed as if everyone had the same idea to start Labor Day off with a hike and we were turned away due to maximum capacity. Instead we went right down the road and hiked at the Maine Audubon wildlife habitat. You would expect me to have taken some pictures, right?

As we were nearing lunchtime we sought after one of these infamous Maine lobster rolls. We settled on The Highroller, seemingly one of the more touristy places to dine in the city. I got a Maine-style roll with garlic mayo and split a flight of mini rolls that were a combination of Maine-style and the warmed up and buttered alternative: Connecticut-style. Don’t tell any of the Maine-enites, but I think I preferred the warm ones.

After browsing a few of the shops in downtown Portland, we needed to find something to do for the rest of the afternoon that would be open on Labor Day, so we went down to Two Lights State Park, out on Cape Elizabeth. This was probably my wife’s favorite part of the trip as we walked along the rocky cliff-side shore, enjoying the cool Maine weather.

At the northern end of the park is a restaurant called The Lobster Shack, so we popped our heads in for a minute to have yet another lobster roll. I guess I’ll say it now, but these were generally pretty good and tasted the same quality no matter where we went. They were also pretty expensive considering that I typically finished one in four or five bites and was hungry again within a couple hours.

After dinner we stopped somewhere to get ice cream (I forget what the place was called) and then headed back to the hotel to put the child to bed. My intentions were to stay up and play games in the hotel room after he went to sleep, but this vacation was already wearing me out. And seeing it all typed out here is exhausting me again, so I’m going to cut this off early and follow up in a few days with the next leg of our trip: northward into Bangor and beyond to Bar Harbor!

The road north

We left before the ass-crack of dawn, getting on the road around 5:30am. Our first destination on the trip was Providence, Rhode Island to see my friend and his family, but there was no way we were doing the entire seven-hour trip in a single shot. We ended up stopping in New Haven, Connecticut (spoilers, this won’t be the last time) and getting some apizza (pronounced a-BEETZ) for lunch at the semi-renowned Zuppardi’s. This style of pizza is typified by a thin, crispy crust with a bit of char around the edges, cooked at high heat, usually in a coal-fed oven. It’s kind of like a dirtier Neapolitan style.

I opted to get the signature tomato pie while my wife got some kind of clam monstrosity. I liked this style a lot but I don’t think the tomato pie was for me. Regardless, I bought a hat.

Back on the road, 90 minutes until we’re in Providence.

Providence

In the early afternoon we rolled up to my friend Danny’s house just outside of the city proper. He and his family were generous enough to let us crash with them for two nights. After setting up shop and getting unpacked we chit-chatted until it was time for an early dinner. They treated us to Mexican food at Poco Loco Tacos, which we took to-go and ate on the waterfront at their local yacht club. After dinner we took the kids to a nearby playground before getting devoured by mosquitos and heading back for the night.

The next day we had breakfast at KNEAD Doughnuts before stopping by a local farmer’s market. We were just around the corner from Swan Point Cemetery which interred the remains of everyone’s favorite deceased xenophobe and weird fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft. In a stroke of bizarre serendipity, his grave had a painted stone on it that had originated in the town where we live in Maryland! Weirder things have NEVER happened, even in his stories!

All of this death got us really hungry so we went out for lunch at a local Korean-fusion bistro called DEN DEN on the campus of Brown University. It is now that I begin to regret not taking that many photos of my food.

As the day marched on we decided to hit up a local book and oddities shoppe called Weird Providence where I purchased a collection of Lovecraft stories and a sticker featuring the establishment’s raccoon mascot.

We had a drink at Buttonwoods Brewery and had dinner at a Twin Peaks-themed bar/restaurant called Great Northern BBQ. The ambiance of the place was impeccable and nicely themed, but the food left much to be desired. After ice cream sandwiches for dessert we headed back home for the night. Tomorrow we would be back on the road, heading for Maine.

A brief taste of Enlightenment

Bright and early we grabbed a bite for breakfast with Danny and his family and then set off for the drive to Portland, Maine. But first, we realized that our route would put us directly on the path to Walden Pond, famous neck-beard Henry David Thoreau’s base camp for all things transcendental.

I had last visited this place in high school on a trip the National Honor Society made to Boston and its surrounding areas. Previously, my friend celebrated the occasion by miming placing his testicles in the open hand of the Thoreau statue on site so I knew I had to recreate the image for old times sake [not pictured]. We then took a very introspective walk around the 1.5 mile trail around the pond, stopping to let my son glam up some photos on the beach.

After this we planned to stop in Salem, Mass. for lunch but it was way too crowded downtown so we opted instead to pass through to Beverly and have lunch at a board game cafe called The Castle. We didn’t play any games but I appreciated that we could’ve if we wanted to.

Even though I’m part-way through only our third day on this trip, this post is getting longer than I expected. I’ll leave you here, dear reader, to ponder and pontificate on what you have just read and I will return in a week or so with the rest of the trip. SEE YOU SOON.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day - I took my nephew to see the newest Spider-man movie (despite him never before watching a Marvel movie) and I think we both enjoyed it. The Spider-man movies have always been high points in the Marvel catalogue for me (I don’t even mind Spider-man 3) and this one was no different. Although, it definitely felt like a cog in a larger Marvel machine, with a lot of pieces feeling like set up for future movies.

Hokum (rewatch) - Watched this one again, this time with my wife because I figured she’d appreciate a slower-burn horror movie with a mostly Irish cast. I think I stand by my initially assessment that this movie was criminally under-appreciated when it came to horror this year. I think this movie knocks Obsession and Backrooms out of the water.

What I read

The Lesser Dead by Christopher Buelmann - This gritty urban vampire story takes place in a 1970s New York City and concerns a small community of vampires that gets shook up by the sudden appearance of a pair of vampire children.

I really enjoyed this one and kind of liken it to something like American Psycho in that it really follows the point of view of one character’s day-to-day life living in the underbelly of the city. The characters are all very well established and once the plot gets rolling in the back-half of the novel things move along at a good clip.

All of Your Dreams Will Come True When You’re Dead by John Wayne Comunale - A gunslinger rolls into a town that seems to exist in a place between dimensions looking for his missing gun.

This short “splatter western” novel makes up for what it lacks in writing with pure ambition. The sub-200 page novel paints a sprawling portrait of a land beset with Lovecraftian horrors, magic, and bandits, but kind of blows through things way too quickly to really let me get invested in anything.

Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker - After committing a horrible crime, a college student flees to his father’s secluded home in Japan and has a series of run-ins with a ghost from the past.

I think the best way to describe this is that it’s basically a light horror version of the anime Your Name. It flip-flops between two narratives that intersect in ways I never expected. Everything kind of gets wound together in a retelling of a Japanese folk story in a way that makes much more sense in retrospect. This will probably end up being one of my favorite reads of the year.

The Devil By Name by Keith Rosson - Part two of the Fever House duology, this story picks up a few years after the end of the last novel with society trying to rebuild from the end of the world.

The ending of Fever House threw me for a loop when it abruptly shifted from a supernatural crime story straight into a zombie-esque apocalypse. Some of my favorite aspects were sidelined in favor of what I consider a much less interesting story. Ultimately, I still really liked the conclusion to this story, but it felt like a hasty epilogue blown out into its own novel.

The Day That Never Comes by Caimh McDonnell - Book two of “The Dublin Trilogy” follows Paul and Brigit of the previous novel as they try to figure out who is killing off wealthy land developers while trying to locate Bunny, the missing third of their detective agency.

This was another audiobook co-listen with my wife after we enjoyed the last one so much. I think the humor is even better in this one, even if the story is a bit over-complicated and hard to follow at times.

Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay - An ex-professional gamer is tasked with remotely controlling a functionally brain-dead man implanted with an AI augment.

I think there are some clever ideas buried in this one, but in general completely missed the mark for me. The main character is a very annoying gamer gurl who constantly spits out The Big Lebowski quotes, and large swaths of the plot make little to no sense under the slightest scrutiny. I’m starting to think Mr. Tremblay has lost his touch (if he ever had it to begin with).

The Caretaker by Marcus Kliewer - A young woman, hard up for cash and raising her younger sister, takes a job house-sitting for a home that requires specific “rites” to be followed.

I think I liked this more than Kliewer’s last novel, We Used to Live Here, but this still proved to be quite a frustrating read for me. While the story is more focused, the rules and rituals established constantly shift and change. It felt less like a thrill ride and more like someone making up a story as they go.

What I played

The Old King’s Crown - This much-buzzed-about game tasks players as slightly asymmetrical factions all vying to succeed the recently fallen king of a fantasy realm. This is an area control war game of sorts where players deploy troops to one of three regions on the board and bid cards from their hands in secret to bolster their forces. The game distinguishes itself from other games of this ilk with the player asymmetry: each deck of cards starts out mostly the same, but as players grow in power they have access to more cards and abilities that nudge their play style in a different direction.

After one play of this, I’m kind of on the fence about how I feel about it. While the art and graphic design of the game is top-notch, I wasn’t too sure about the gameplay. I was very wrapped up in the hype around the game before I played it, but later kind of felt a bit let down by the experience. It didn’t feel like the asymmetrical powers felt all too different from one another, and the whole process of fighting over regions felt a bit cumbersome and fiddly at times. I’m hoping it’s a game that ages well over several plays as players begin to feel comfortable settling in to their faction’s quirks.

Pragmata - I checked this new Capcom third-person adventure shooter out from my library and played it for the Switch 2. The story follows an engineer dispatched to a lunar colony who is soon the sole survivor of his team and discovers that the whole base has been taken over by an A.I. program gone rogue.\

I really enjoyed this one as it reminded me of the kind of single player games we got a dime-a-dozen of back in the early 2000s (complimentary). The unique twist on the gameplay here is that the shooting mechanics are tied directly in with a light puzzle solving “hacking” element that has you navigating a maze of sorts with your face buttons to weaken enemies before you can shoot them. The whole game took me maybe a little over 10 hours to complete but there was a decent amount of collectibles and side missions left that I did not complete.

Mortal Shell 2 - As a bit of an impulse buy, I picked up this game when it released towards the end of the month. I barely dipped my toes into the first game but it seems like this one has improved on it in every single way. I’m not sure what exactly is going on except that I’m collecting some kind of celestial mother’s eggs, but the combat is satisfying and the combination of “tarstone” power-ups you can apply to your character and/or weapon make for some fun experimental play styles. I love the gruesome art direction and the game is difficult without being overly punishing. I think I’ve just entered the last stretch of the game and I’m certain I’ve missed probably half of what there is to see in the game. It’s probably my favorite “souls-like” action RPG game since Lies of P.

What I watched

Obsession (rewatch) - Still great. Watched this with my wife so we can share Nikki memes back and forth.

Nirvanna the show the band the movie (rewatch) - Still great. Watched this with my wife so we can share in the fantasy idea of “Toronto”.

The Sheep Detectives - Totally fine. Watched this with my wife because this is totally a “my wife” kind of movie (complimentary).

Ponyo - Once again, my son has proved that he can sit through an entire Ghibli movie and I don’t know if the praise deserves to be heaped upon him or Miyazaki-sama. This was also my first time seeing this one, and it might be top 5 Ghibli for me. Amazing art and not enough plot to bog it down.

Evil Dead Burn - I went into this thinking “at least I’ve never actively hated an Evil Dead movie before”. There’s a first time for everything, I guess. I hated every character in this movie yet I still didn’t feel the satisfaction of watching them die in gruesome ways. The post-reboot movies in this franchise have all felt super mean-spirited, but at least they’re wacky and playful in ways that make them fun. There is no fun to be had here. Just misery and bad acting.

Over Your Dead Body - I enjoyed this one quite a bit, although I felt like it was strongest when Jason Segel and Samara Weaving were playing off one another. Once the rest of the cast enters the picture things take a turn for the less interesting. Samara Weaving, in particular, made this whole movie worth watching, in my opinion.

What I read

Darker Days by Thomas Olde Heuvelt - In this most-recent translation of the Dutch author’s work, a quiet street in the Pacific Northwest harbors a dark secret that affords them great luck for 11 months of the year. However, every November they must contend with the dark price for their prosperity.

The novel takes place primarily during this titular period in November, we get to experience it over the course of two years. I was admittedly not feeling this at all for the first half, as it was a whole-lot of place-setting and exposition to get certain characters up to speed on the plot. However, events transpire at the mid-way point that really propel the second half of the book in a direction that I really enjoyed. Overall, I think this is my second-favorite Heuvelt novel after Hex.

It Rides a Pale Horse by Andy Marino - A sculptor is commissioned to recreate art described in an occult journal in exchange for his kidnapped sister.

I pretty much loved this book from cover to cover. It was a bit of a struggle for me to get into at first because of the dense language and art history the author infuses the work with, but the cosmic horror and dark humor flowing out of the book is beyond anything I’ve ever read. My only slight gripe is the inclusion of a few interstitial perspective-switching chapters that lean a little too hard into the humor and provide a bit of tonal whiplash that’s a bit hard to settle into.

Dead End Tunnel by Nick Roberts - After his friend goes missing in a nearby tunnel, a young boy and his family is targeted by a malicious entity.

I don’t think Nick Roberts is a good writer. His prose comes off akin to a Redditor who thinks he’s hot shit posting creepypasta, dropping superfluous popular culture references out here like he’s the Ernest Cline of horror. But does the book at least have an interesting hook? No, it’s Temu IT.

The Night Birds by Christopher Golden - A Texas Parks and Wildlife worker shelters his ex and a runaway with an infant aboard a permanently-moored centuries-old ship from a storm and a coven of witches.

This was a perfectly cromulent thriller that elevates a lackluster premise with an intriguing setting. Nothing to complain about but also nothing all that special. I finished it in less than a week.

Strange Buildings by Uketsu - The third entry in the Japanese YouTuber’s Strange series, this entry spins together a story of 11 peculiar architectural oddities that revolve around a cult and a construction company.

I really loved this book, probably more so than the Strange Pictures or Strange Houses. My only real complaint is how this one spends the final large chunk of the book just being a recap of the previous stories with the “solution” to the puzzle being laid out very matter-of-factly. But given the style of semi-epistolary novel, I’ll forgive it.

What I played

Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West - my wife, my nephew and I finally finished our 12-game campaign that spanned about a year and a half. I’ll probably end up doing a write-up about our experience, but my brief thoughts are they it was very enjoyable as an evolving experience from game to game. It definitely got a bit bloated with “mini-games” towards the mid-point of the campaign, but I felt like things tapered off quite well at the end.

Orloj: The Prague Astronomical Clock - I’ve only got one play of this under my belt, and we kind of messed up a semi-crucial rule, but I think I liked this. There’s definitely a lot going on, but it feels more cohesive than the average “point salad” Eurogame as the disparate pieces here play into one another in a way that make sense. I look forward to speaking more about it after more plays.

The Lost Ruins of Arnak - We finally got this one back to the table at my weekly meetup and my initial reaction is that I still love it, but maybe think it’s a game that has a lot to do but not enough time to accomplish it all. If you know me, you know I love deckbuilders, but I feel like that might actually be the weakest aspect of this game. The cards you can add to your deck feel bland in comparison to adventuring aspect of the game but at the same time they feel very powerful and proved to be instrumental in the strategy of the winner of our playthrough. I think it’ll still end up being a game I hold on to though because, even though I don’t think it’s as solid of a game as something like Dune: Imperium, but serves as a more thematic and introductory experience for newcomers to the genre.

Five Tribes: The Djinns of Naqala - Another relative “oldie” that came off the shelf in a 2-player game against my wife. While the game isn’t as strategically dense as something like The Castles of Burgundy or Viticulture, both games that I have gotten her to play and enjoy, the central Mancala-like mechanic was something she was completely unfamiliar with. I still think this game really shines as a 2-player game, but it didn’t feel like the game I fell in love with almost a decade ago. Certain strategies seem extremely overpowered without having any kind of check in place and swaths of the game were straight-up ignored as irrelevant for both of us. I’ll maybe give this a couple more tries, but right now I’m thinking it’s in danger of being culled…

dnup - A new card game designed by the same guy as Scout, one of my favorite card-shedding games, plays, as you might have guessed it, a lot like a variant of Scout. In this one, you’re still trying to play sets of cards and hope your opponents don’t one-up you, but this time when your play gets bounced back, it gets rotated 180-degrees in your hand to become a completely different set of cards. This one was a good, snappy play, but I don’t quite think it replaces, or even tops, Scout for me.

Got Five! - Deduction games are my bread and butter, and this one is probably the best example of a Clue-style game distilled down to its core puzzle that is easily set up and played within 20 minutes. In this game, each player has five numbers, one of each of the 5 colors, or suits, ranging from 1 to 60, faced away from you, and a dry-erase board to keep track of findings. Your job is to deduce what your numbers are before your opponents.

Each turn you flip over a numbered tile from the shared pool and ask a player to either place it sequentially within your lot or compare the number of pips on it to any one of your five. That’s it. With these two bits of information you eventually whittle down your possibilities, racing to be the first person to correctly name all five of your numbers. It’s fast, simple, and required just enough mental gymnastics to keep you thinking. It’s a huge recommend from me for gamers and non-gamers alike.

A trip to Virginia Beach and beyond!

To celebrate the numerous birthdays in my family falling in Gemini season, we took our annual trip down to my in-laws’ lake house. On the way down we decided to spend a couple days in Virginia Beach to soak up some sun and waves before spending the weekend with family.

What I watched

Backrooms - believe it or not, the only movie I watched this entire month was Kane Parsons’s Backrooms (did you know that he was only 20 years old? (he’s actually 21 as now as of me writing this)). I thought it was an solid extension of the webseries, of which I have seen some, and did a great job of establishing a mythos while telling its own contained story. While the performances were good, I do think that the character writing was a bit flat and one-note at times, but that’s not what I was there for. I just wanted to see unsettling geometries and creepy guys, and on that it delivered.

Widow’s Bay finale - Following up on what I mentioned in my last post, the AppleTV show’s first season has now ended (renewed for a second season, woo!). While it wasn’t perfect, and some of the episodes hit harder than others, I think the balance of comedy and horror is damn near perfect. It’s a brand of straight-faced humor in the face of some terrifying stuff that I don’t know I’ve seen before. And the mystery/drama at the core is something I felt has been opened up enough (no spoilers) to allow to be expounded upon in further seasons. I think there are a lot of people digging into some of the gags as if there is more backstory there than there really is, and I really hope that the showrunners don’t feel the need to fill in every single gap and question.

What I read

Knock Knock, Open Wide by Neil Sharpson - this thriller spans decades following a woman who, after finding a corpse on the side of the road, stumbles into a conspiracy involving Irish folklore and a children’s TV show. Years later, her daughter picks up the thread and begins spiraling into a dark underworld. I thought this novel was really well written and mostly entertaining, but I’ve read one too many version of the “demonic kid’s show” creepypasta for this to really hit for me. The aspects of Irish folklore that are weaved into the supernatural mystery were the best bits for me, even if the ending ultimately fell flat.

Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito - this follows a newly-hired governess in a Victorian manor as she struggles to integrate into a wealthy family’s home while trying to suppress some rather disturbing urges. I don’t think I really gelled with the humor this story was putting out. It really felt a little too shocking for shock’s sake with the same gallows humor you see in most works like this. The last bits of the novel try to play off the central character’s amorality as some kind of commentary on social justice, but I think the message gets pretty muddled by the time it’s over.

Left to You by Daniel J Volpe - a man makes a bargain with a strange acquaintance to save his dying mother’s life, but there’s more to this old Holocaust-survivor’s story than he initially lets on. The bulk of this novel is a flashback set in a concentration camp and while I think they are some of the best bits of the book, the choice to frame the violence and cruelty in a “splatterpunk” novel really felt in bad taste to me. The rest of the story set in present day was awful in pretty much every other way and as soon as the book returned to it, I was almost ready to put the book down for good.

What I played

We had a mini-game day at some friends’ house and played:

• A couple games of Hot Streak - still a goofy fun time

• King of Tokyo - a game I haven’t played in a long time but still enjoyed the press-your-luck dice rolling

• Magical Athlete - I think I’m starting to like this more than Hot Streak because of how all of the crazy powers can interact

At my weekly game night we played:

• Trajan - one of the first heavy Euro games I owned, was fun to revisit. It’s still dry as all hell, but the burning itch that it gives my brain makes me feel alive

• Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy - another semi-oldie but a goodie. I kind of ignored my race’s asymmetric strength in developing technologies and struggled greatly for it.

  

We also had some home game nights with friends where we played:

• The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship - I think this one was a bit much for my wife and her friend. We actually got our sub-quests completed but lost all hope trying to toss the ring into Mt. Doom. I still have yet to win a play of this game.

• Quacks of Quedlinburg - I 3D printed some organizers for this game so I decided to break it out towards the end of the month. I forgot how much I love this game.

  

And some video games:

Mina the Hollower - I almost bounced off this completely due to its steeeeep difficulty curve at the start of the game. Once I got through the first dungeon or two I started to hit my stride and I ended up seeing things through to one of the endings within a couple weeks.

Pokopia - Got this as a birthday gift and immediately sunk quite a few hours into it. The jury is still out as to how I’m actually liking it, because the main gameplay loop feels more like work than play, but I’m not completely burnt out on it yet.

What I’ve been listening to

I picked up a few records this month. A good mix of old and new stuff:

All Them Witches - House of Mirrors
Slomosa - Tundra Rock
Angine de Poitrine - Vol 1
Angine de Poitrine - Vol 2
Howard Shore - The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (soundtrack) (birthday gift!)

Also, here is some of what I’ve been listening to this month. This is supposed to be a playlist, but it looks like you can only skip songs if you’re in the actual Youtube browser. SUBSTACK FIX YOUR SHIT AND GET BETTER AT NATIVELY EMBEDDING YOUTUBE PLAYLISTS THANKS

For our third anniversary, my wife and I treated ourselves to a showing of The Book of Mormon at the National Theater in Washington, DC. This had been on my to-do list for quite some time, but I never really wanted to put in the effort of finding somewhere that was playing it. Luckily, the traveling tour was less than an hour away and its final weekend was conveniently close to our anniversary.

As expected, the show was fantastic. It was equally hilarious and horribly offensive and had me listening to the soundtrack in my spare time for the next week. If you ever have the opportunity to check it out, I’d say it’s worth the absurd price of admission.

What I watched

Apex - Netflix original survival thriller about a recently-widowed woman who is stalked and hunted by a psychopath in the Australian Outback. This was a shining example of the middling type of garbage that Netflix puts out and hopes that people will just stream it in the background of more entertaining goings-on. Absolutely nothing remarkable about this one at all except that Taron Egerton was entertaining as a creepy freak.

Hokum - A crotchety novelist travels to Ireland to spread the ashes of his parents at a creepy hotel. Another mild success from filmmaker Damien McCarthy. Much like his last two films Caveat and Oddity, this one does a lot with creepy atmosphere and production design, but failed to leave much of a lasting impression on me. I do think Hokum is the strongest of the three, mostly due to a compelling performance by Adam Scott.

Milk & Serial - A birthday prank goes sideways and tensions arise between a prankster duo. Seeing as this was reportedly made for only $800, it was surprisingly competent and made good use of the found footage gimmick. I just didn’t think there was much substance and probably would’ve ended up being 15 minutes long if shot conventionally.

Obsession - A man gets more than he bargained for when he wishes for his platonic friend to fall in love with him. I think the hype surrounding this one got to me, because while I liked it, I think it has a lot of problems that keep it from being great. There are some great comedic and terrifying bits, but they’re stuck in a kind of rambling and plot-light story. Inde Navarrette has been getting a lot of attention for her role as Nikki, which I think is very deserved.

Widow’s Bay (Apple TV) - In the last few days before our Apple TV subscription ran out, my wife and I decided to check out this horror/comedy show that has been getting buzz. The show follows Mayor Tom Loftis as he tries to promote and draw tourists to his island that is “the new Martha’s Vineyard” and “totally not cursed.”

Unfortunately the show is currently airing, so we were only able to check out the first half of the season, but I’m actually considering resubscribing to finish the series. It’s hilarious, but not in an over-the-top and predictable kind of way that you would expect. The writing is sharp and the horror elements aren’t overdone. They more kind of seep in at the edges of the show, which is primarily more like Parks and Recreation, but plaid a bit more straight.

What I read

I hit my goal of 26 books this year about 7 months too early, so I have upped my goal to 50. I’m going to try to read at least 12 books rather than listen to them. I’m a slow reader but a much quicker listener.

The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht - Complete trash novel that basically turns Frankenstein into a gay fantasy. Not that that’s inherently a bad thing, I just thought there was nothing of substance here at all. Luckily it was short enough to run through and quickly forget about.

Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo - A colony ship drifting aimlessly in space without purpose comes upon a seemingly abandoned planet and, shortly after, an abandoned alien space ship. I really wanted to like this, but in my opinion nothing interesting ever came of the premise. Instead, a bulk of the novel is concerned with the politics between leaders on the ship.

The Gone World by Thomas Sweterlitsch - An NCIS agent jumps back and forth in time and alternate dimensions as she tries to solve a murder and missing persons case. The mythology behind the technology and “science” in this novel completely blew me away and the way the story unravels and unfurls information kept me constantly engaged. The ending gets a bit muddled in the over-complicatedness of timelines, but it was well worth the read. It will probably end up being one of my favorite books I read this year.

Exponential by Adam Cesare - A murderous blob monster traps a handful of patrons inside of a bar on the outskirts of Las Vegas. This reminded me of a Syfy original movie that gets in, does its gruesome business, and gets out quickly without any fuss. For what it was, it was fine: a brief distraction that I will probably never think of again.

In the Eyes In the Shadows by Gage Greenwood - When Jackson sees a fleeting image in the eyes of his dying father, he spends his days trying to track down what exactly it was that he saw. Eventually this leads him to being haunted by the vengeful ghost of a dead teenager. This one did very little to differentiate itself from the dozens of other haunting stories I’ve read in the past few years. When it finally gets to the crux of the story, I literally said aloud “really? That was what this was building to?”

The Exorcist’s House by Nick Roberts - A family purchases the former home of an old man who died while locked in a battle with a demonic presence. Again, this was another haunting/possession story that goes through the paces of 99% of these kinds of books. Reading this was like dragging myself through a trench of broken glass, and not in a good way.

What I played

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers - This Chinese Soulslike game was added to Playstation Plus this month so I decided to see how long it would take for me to bounce off of it like I did with Wo Long and Black Myth: Wukong and Lords of the Fallen. The answer is: pretty quickly, but I got farther than I expected to. It’s actually a fairly well-designed action game with quite a few combat systems that play off each other nicely. At what I understand is about 20% through the game I came up against a boss that completely demoralized me and I decided to put the game down for good.

Magical Athlete - This board game, which is a remake/reimagining of a 2003 game (read: ancient), is a roll-and-move racing game where players draft wacky racers each with their own crazy game-breaking twist. The game is played over four races, and the player that has accumulated the most points (through race placement or other means) by the end of the game wins.

Even though the core gist of the game is rolling a die and moving your character, it’s the chaos that the variable character powers bring that make the game shine. Games are quick and dirty and, across the two games I played, create enough laughs to justify its existence. As long as you don’t really care about winning, this is a game I can see a lot of people who don’t play a lot of board games being willing to play.

Pendulum - After sitting on my shelf for years without a play, I decided to take this real-time worker placement game to my weekly game night for a spin before I decided to get rid of it. In Pendulum, players are some kind of time lords vying to become the ruler of some fantasy land. The story is practically non-existent, which actually hurt the game more than I thought it would.

Gameplay consists of playing workers to one of three zones, each of which is separated into two rows. As the game goes on, sand timers are flipped and block one of the two rows in each zone, signalling to players which rows can be played to and which rows can have their actions resolved. While the sands are draining, players are free to move their workers around the board as much as they want, as long as the timer isn’t moved to block the area they’re moving to/from. As you’d expect, the game then vacillates rapidly between players’ arms clashing as they try to move around simultaneously and then long stretches of people staring at sand timers waiting to move on to the next action. I give this game some points for attempting to stretch the hobby into a different dimension, but in practice it did not work for me at all.

Fromage - The last new game that I want to talk about is the cheeze-themed worker placement game Fromage. Much like Pendulum, Fromage kind of plays with timing, but in a much less frenetic and much more thematic way. On any given turn, each player is privy to one quarter of the large circular board. Each of these quadrants plays like a separate mini-game that sees you completing collecting sets, controlling areas, or even placing cheese in contiguous groups. On your turn you can only play on your quadrant, but each turn sees the board rotate away from you, turning your workers with it. Only when your worker is facing you again can you retrieve him to use again. So in a way, time in a resource to be spent: more expensive actions take longer for the board to rotate your worker back toward you and quick actions may have your worker back next turn.

I fully expected the separate scoring sectors to feel disparate and disconnected from one another, and to a degree they are, but you’re given such a finite amount of time, you can never spread yourself out too thin amongst the different routes to score points. In the end, the game feels the exact right length to let you dabble in a few strategies without going fully into one thing.

After over two months of dealing with insurance adjusters, contractors, and project managers, our basement is finally ours again!

For those not in the know, back at the end of January a pipe burst in our down stairs living room and flooded half of the basement. We had to tear out all of the vinyl plank flooring as well as a good bit of the drywall two feet above the floor. We lost our new(ish) couch but mostly everything else we lost was just junk furniture from Facebook Marketplace purchases. We consider ourselves relatively lucky that I had water sensors set up.

Fast forward 9 weeks and the floor has been replaced, walls put back together and painted, a new couch has been purchased, as well as some other bit of furniture to tie the room back together. It was a painful stretch of time for the whole family, but despite us needing to pay a little bit out of pocket to supplement the insurance claim, I think we made out much further ahead of where we started.

Movies

Project Hail Mary - After constant nagging from friends and strangers alike I finally made it out to the theater to see the new Lord/Miller sci-fi adventure from Andy Weir, author of The Martian. I had read this book a couple years ago and was intrigued to see how it would translate onto the screen and was very pleased to see that the humor, intelligence, and optimism made it through unscathed. I do think it drags a bit at parts in the first half, but it’s extremely entertaining nonetheless. It’s also good to see a science fiction movie that’s not relentlessly dour and pessimistic.

My Neighbor Totoro - I guess I can officially mark this down as the first movie I watched with my son. He sat through the vast majority of the film without interruption, a feat that astounds me seeing as he’s not even two years old. The movie is essentially plot-less, which lends itself well to being ideal entertainment for toddlers, but it was also surprisingly scary for him at time, especially when Totoro roars and bares his teeth. Overall, I think he really enjoyed it. Look out for his letterboxd account, coming soon.

Hoppers - I’ll go out on a limb and say Hoppers is one of the best things Pixar has put out in years. It’s an original property with a pro-environmentalism message that’s darkly comedic and very shocking at times. A great deal of the jokes are likely going to go clear over the heads of most of Pixar’s usual audience, but it’s still cute and thrilling when it needs to be. I found myself reminded frequently of Pixar’s Seeing Red in its irreverence and jokes that seemed laser-targeted at millennial parents.

Books

North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud - This is the second short story collection I have read by this author and fourth book of his overall and I have to say I think it may have been one of the most disappointing collections of stories I have ever read. The stories are described as a mix of horror and dark fantasy, but to be honest these elements are frequently barely at the edges of more mundane and dull narratives. There wasn’t a single story that stuck out to me at the time, nor is there one I can even recall in retrospect.

The Odds by Jeff Strand - This short novel follows Ethan, a man with a gambling addiction that finds himself in a death game of sorts when offered a 99% chance to win $10,000 in exchange for a 1% risk for his arm to be shattered. As you might guess, this quickly spirals out of control and Ethan finds himself in an ever-escalating game that threatens to envelop and ruin his life. The story progresses pretty much exactly as you would expect and nothing really ended up surprising me. The last few chapters try to dip harder into dark humor and satire, but it felt really out of place with the rest of the book and didn’t quite work for me.

A Man With One of Those Faces by Caimh McDonnell - I listened to this as a buddy read with my wife, looking for a light-hearted crime thriller and finding exactly that. This Irish mystery follows Paul, an every-man who spends his free time pretending to be the loved ones of dementia-addled senior citizens as a form a community service. When one of this “clients” attacks him and then dies, Paul is thrust into a mystery surrounding one of Ireland’s more notorious crimes. I thought this book was hilarious, only made better by the excellent narration by Morgan C Jones. I instantly wishlisted the other eight books in the “trilogy.”

Hollow by Brian Catling - This is a book that I picked up a long time ago and bounced off it due to its dense prose and archaic language. This time I was able to soldier ahead and really enjoy what it had to offer. Inspired by the arts of Hieronymus Bosch, the story weaves three tales in an alternate medieval Europe where the barrier between our world and hell is starting to diminish. I really enjoyed two of the three narratives this one offers, with the third feeling a bit tacked on and inconsequential to the events of the book. Nonetheless it was a grotesque blast to read.

You Invited It In by Sarah Jules - When a man who can commune with the dead goes after a phony psychic, he accidentally welcomes a malicious presence into his home. This was a very quick read for me and I’m not sure much of it stuck. There was nothing that I particularly disliked about it, but it evaporated from my mind the second I logged it as read.

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker - Rounding out the month, I just finished this one after I saw it pop up on a bunch of best-of lists for last year. Set during the early days of the pandemic, this novel follows Cora Zeng, a Chinese-American woman after the abrupt death of her sister at the hands of a serial killer targeting Asian-American women. It hit that metaphorical sweet spot by entwining a story about racially-motivated hate crimes, the COVID-19 pandemic, and restless spirits all together in a way that really worked for me. My only gripe is that the first half took a while to get going and felt very disjointed compared to the latter half where the mystery starts to come together.

Video Games

Vampire Crawlers - My sole digital obsession for the past couple weeks has been poncle’s follow-up to their genre-defining Vampire Survivors. This time, everything from that game has been retrofitted into a dungeon-crawler deck-builder format, down to the items, characters, locations and enemies. Compared to its predecessor, it’s a much more active game, requiring a little bit of thought when it comes to playing cards and racking up combos. Compared to other games of this ilk, I do think it’s a bit easy as I’ve almost unlocked everything a little more than a week after release. Thankfully, if the game is anything like Survivors, there will be plenty of updates and DLC to keep it rolling.

Board Games

Lightning Train - The only new board game I really got around to breaking out this month was Lightning Train, a route-crafting bag-builder designed by Paul Dennen and published by Dire Wolf. After roughly a 20-minute teach, the game played four of us in about two hours. I’d rank the complexity somewhere in the mid-heavy tier, akin to something like Great Western Trail or Lost Ruins of Arnak.

The main gist of the game revolves around players building train routes across a map of the United States, not dissimilar to something like Ticket to Ride. Rather than collecting sets to do so, however, players draw tiles from their own curated bags. In a fashion similar to deck-builder games like Dominion, tiles in your bag are used to perform actions or spend as currency to get more powerful tiles. From here, you use the tiles to lay down routes, build stations, and secure contracts to deliver goods from producer cities to stations with specific demands. The game ends when players complete a route from New York City to San Francisco or 12 rounds elapse, whatever happens first.

Having only one play under my belt, I’m not sure if I have fully formulated a definitive opinion yet, but I can say that there was certainly a point where everything began to click for me and I was really enjoying myself. The first few rounds were very slow and unproductive as we all got our bearings with the flow of the game, but towards the middle I could see the proverbial gears turning across everyone’s faces.

One of my favorite aspects that sets Lightning Train apart from other train games I’ve played is that routes from one city to another do not have to all be from the same player to be used for delivery. Players share in the points depending on how big of a presence they have in the deal, which creates and interesting balance between trying to keep a portion of the map to yourself or instead spreading yourself out in pockets around the board to hoover up a point or two off over other players’ ventures.

Setup and teardown were a bit of a weak point in the game, if I had to point to something I didn’t like. There’s a ton of tokens that have different functions and come into the game at different points, but they’re really difficult to tell apart at a glace. I will probably end up 3D printing a storage solution if I decide that this is going to be a game I keep for a long time.

At the beginning of the month I took my nephew to his (and my) first college basketball game. We saw UMBC beat out New Hampshire at the NCAA America East quarterfinals. UMBC would go on to take the division championship and earn a place in the Division I tournament.

Later in the month my wife and I took our son for a mini vacation up to Cape May and Wildwood, NJ. While the beachfront town was a bit deserted for the season, we had a great time visiting the Cape May County Zoo and riding the Cape May-Lewes Ferry on the way home.

Rec league volleyball has finally picked back up after the winter hiatus and it feels pretty good to be consistently active again. It’s not as intense a workout as I would hope it to be, but at least it’s something.

The basement is still under construction but the light at the end of the tunnel is starting to shine. This month has been a lot of fighting with insurance adjusters and dealing with contractors coming and going from my house. Hopefully we’ll be done and moving things back in before mid-April.

Movies

Train Dreams - I enjoyed this way more than I thought I would. It’s a relentlessly dour and bleak movie but the cinematography is breathtaking and made it well worth watching.

Redux Redux - This indie sci-fi thriller is about as indie as you can get. A mother of a murdered teen hops across dimensions to enact her revenge against the killer across many timelines. Never gets as interesting as the premise would insinuate and goes through the exact same beats as you would expect.

Undertone - A podcaster tending to her dying mother encounters strange audio files that may be more sinister than they first seem. Another big let down for me. I thought the build up to the mystery was engaging, but the payoff and final act went a bit too crazy and left me with more questions than answers.

F1 - Admittedly I only really half-watched this, but I thought it was incredibly dull and cliche. As a life-long fan of Brad Pitt, I thought this was the lowest-effort project I have ever seen him in and I am honestly astonished that it got so much Oscar buzz.

The Secret Agent - Way weirder than I would’ve ever expected this to be, and then I found out that it was from the same director as Bacarau. Honestly, without much investment in the historical side to this story, most of it fell completely flat for me. The quirkiness of some of the characters and side stories were the only remarkable parts.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die - I absolutely had a huge blast with this one despite it laying on the anti-AI and anti-social-media rhetoric a bit thick (although I don’t disagree with it). The first two-thirds were inventive and really fun, even if some of the vignettes felt a bit disconnected and out of place. The final act sagged a bit for me as well as it started to succumb to the same blockbuster climax we have seen in countless other sci-fi films.

TV

Neighbors (HBO Max) - I had high hopes for this one to scratch the itch left in the absence of John Wilson and Nathan Fielder. Most of the episodes boiled down to people squabbling over property lines and fences which got very repetitive. The best episodes were the first and last ones where they really highlight the batshit insane people that live in middle America.

Books

Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra - Buddy read with my wife. This was kind of an awful piece of trash that couldn’t decide if it wanted to have a twist or not. This was a master class in how to write an unlikable narrator.

You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White - A disturbing piece of fiction about a trans man living in West Virginia where a portion of the population is bought into an alien hive-mind society. It’s gruesome, heart-breaking, and most importantly uses its themes and plot to highlight the loss of autonomy and individualism when it comes to reproductive and trans rights in current day America. I admired it for its message more than I actually enjoyed the act of reading it.

Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson - A Vietnam veteran bartender and his niece get embroiled in a vampire crime story in the 1970s. This was an absolute blast from beginning to end. As much as I think vampire stories are overdone at this point, I feel like this one does things right by kind of pushing the supernatural elements to the background in favor of a bloody revenge story. After this and Fever House, I am officially a huge fan of Rosson.

The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni - I bought this book thinking it to be a piece of genre fiction but later found out it was a rather straight-forward coming-of-age story about bullying and living your life in spite of negative people. I buddy read this with my wife and I think we both enjoyed it even if it wasn’t exactly thrilling or exciting. It’s just a well-written and mostly wholesome story.

Strange Houses by Uketsu - The follow-up to Strange Pictures, which I read last year. Rather than being a collection of separate stories that eventually come together into a single narrative, this one is a single story throughout the span of the entire novel. I’d say it’s a weaker novel on every single front when compared to its predecessor: the pictures are less integral to the plot, the story itself is much more simple, and the exposition is way more blunt and spells things out a bit too succinctly.

A God in the Shed by J-F Dubeau - A small town in French Canada reckons with generations of mysteries surrounding a local serial killer and occult worship. Despite reading a lot of hate about this book, I liked this one much more than I expected to. It reminded me of a Lovecrafitian style take on something like the German show Dark. The final few dozen pages, however, really accelerated to an abrupt conclusion that seemed way to eager to set up a sequel rather than paying off in a satisfying way.

Video Games

Marathon - Even though I was a huge fan of the Destiny games, I wasn’t too excited for Bungie’s new extraction shooter on the lead-up to its launch. This all changed when I tried out the open server stress test last month and saw the depth there was to the story and lore surrounding the gameplay. I haven’t been able to put much time into it yet, and the little that I have has been met with a lot of dying at the hands of other players, but I surprisingly don’t feel too demotivated by it. Right now, my biggest qualm with the game is that it takes too long to get back into the action. Matchmaking queue times are way too long and really put damper on me wanting to pend a lot of time with the game.

Slay the Spire 2 - Speaking of spending a lot of time with a game, I have been devoting just about any and all free time I have to playing MegaCrit’s sequel to arguably the best deck-builder game of all time. StS2 is basically more of what made the first game great, this time with a really addictive progression system that makes the grind to unlock content a ton of fun. The game is in early access on PC, so things are a bit rough around the edges, but it’s not stopping me from playing run after run.

Board Games

Moon Colony Bloodbath - From the famed creator of Dominion comes a unique twist on the “engine-builder” genre of board game. Moon Colony Bloodbath pits players against one another as rival scientists trying to establish lunar bases and outlast one another when the inevitable robot uprising occurs. Players take simultaneous actions as the game progresses through an ever-expanding deck of event cards, constructing buildings, managing resources, and eventually deciding how to optimally throw their colonists to the proverbial robowolves.

I’ve played a handful of games of this one at this point and I can see how repeated plays mold your mind into better adapting to the chaos that this game entails. It’s probably the first game I’ve seen since Galaxy Trucker that is both an engine-builder and an engine-destroyer game. By that I mean that the first half of the game sees you managing money, food, and colonists to best make use of synergies and efficiencies while the back half sees you figuring out how to prioritize what buildings to scuttle and in what order to prolong your settlement. At times this can kind of seem like multi-player solitaire but there’s some fun player interaction when people start adding cards to the communal event deck. I recommend this as a fun and wacky light strategic game to hoot and holler over.

Hot Streak - Speaking of games to hoot and holler over, Hot Streak is a game whose manual positions it as a game about “betting, racing, and SCREAMING.” At its core, it’s a racing game where none of the players control any of the four racers but instead are betting on the outcome of three races. In another similarity with Moon Colony Bloodbath, Hot Streak sees players playing from a randomized and shared deck of cards that dictate what each racer will do and in what order. Every race players will each secretly add one card to the deck that will hopefully tip the odds in their favor, but as we quickly found out, nothing is a sure thing in this race.

While the randomness kind of throws most strategy out the window, this game is certainly more about the vibes. It’s encouraged that the player revealing cards from the deck put on an exuberant announcer voice and narrate the events of the game and the game can play in its entirety in about 30 minutes, so it’s more of a drinking game than anything else. Highly recommended to those who entertain larger groups and want maximize the ratio of entertainment to rules overhead.

As of the end of February, we have had our flooring completely torn up, holes cut in our drywall around the perimeter of the main room, and most of our personal effects either tossed out or put into storage. We’re currently waiting on insurance to approve the rebuild, and then we’ll start on scheduling a full remodel of our basement.

And to add to the shit pie we’ve been served, just days after this tragedy unfolded someone hit our car, causing for the entire passenger door needing to be replaced. Luckily the damage was paid for in full by the guy who hit us, we still have to deal with the inconvenience of losing our car for more than a week. We just can’t catch a break.

Movies

Die My Love - Another movie about the stresses of motherhood and marriage, but this time Jennifer Lawrence goes completely off the deep end (again). It’s kind of mean spirited and at times very uncomfortable to watch, but it was a decent sit.

Return to Silent Hill - As someone who has always loved the Silent Hill games, particularly a fondness for Silent Hill 2 after Bloober Team’s excellent remake last year, this movie was a complete pile of steaming excrement. I won’t even elaborate any further because there was nothing of value here at all.

Marty Supreme - Probably going to end up being my personal pick for best picture for 2025, even though I don’t think it has a shot in hell to win. It has all of the best manic and anxious energy of Uncut Gems but while being a bit more “fun”. Josh Safdie is excellent at painting entertaining portraits of absolute scumbags.

Nirvanna the band the show the movie - Hands down the most fun I’ve had at the movie theater in a long time. Before seeing this I was only partially familiar with the Nirvanna the band web series and TV show, but now I feel like I have to go back and consume it all. There are things in this movie that had to be done by actual magic or an ungodly amount of foresight.

28 Weeks Later: The Bone Temple - I had a lot of hope for this one coming off of the solid, but not mind-blowing 28 Years Later seeing that the story was going to move forward with Dr. Kelson and the gang of Jimmys. I think I came away entertained but kind of expecting more. For sure there are some great set piece scenes here, but I feel like it leaves the next movie in a strange place that I’m not really looking forward to.

Books

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - A man trapped in an infinite labyrinth of halls ponders his existence after an unexpected visitor shows up. This started out as a buddy read with my wife, but the sheer obliqueness and weirdness put her off immediately. I was told it would be up my alley if I enjoyed The Library at Mount Char (which I do), and I totally see the comparison there, but this one didn’t hit as hard for me. I do like how the story starts out vague and deftly unravels and reveals itself as things move along, but ultimately it wasn’t a story I could really care about.

Root Rot by Saskia Nislow - A group of unnamed children come together for a family reunion at their grandfather’s house in the woods and weird things start to happen. I had no clue what was going on for the majority of this short novel and will probably have to reread it at some point. Narrative shifts between characters (or maybe it doesn’t?) and it’s really hard to keep track of the characters and what is going on. I got the impression that the ambiguity was a deliberate part of the story but it really hurt my brain.

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman - After the world is flattened by an alien corporation, the survivors are thrown into an underground role-playing-game-inspired intergalactic game show to fight for their lives. This was my mindless entertainment slop read for the month and while it started out a little bit insufferable, I ended up getting on its wavelength by the end and kind of actually enjoying it. It’s definitely an uphill struggle trying to not roll my eyeballs out of my head at all of the shoehorned references, but it’s handled leagues better than something like Ready Player One. There are like 8 books in this series and while I’m not going to rush out to complete them, I might dip back in whenever I need to unwind a bit.

The Wingspan of Severed Hands by Joanna Koch - The fates of a teenage girl and a weapons director spiral together in a world succumbing to a cosmic madness. I thought for maybe the first third of this book that I had a handle on what was going on, but that was swiftly dashed away as this novella goes completely bonkers and incomprehensible. The prose is really well written but sometimes got in the way of my basic understanding of events and characters. I think I spent too much time this month reading extremely dense and difficult stories and my brain is just shot.

Games

ARC Raiders - I’ve been dumping a ton of hours into this extraction shooter that I started playing last month. I’ve been mostly playing alone, honing my understanding of the map layouts and loot routes while steadily growing my arsenal of weapons. A big update went out at the end of the month and added a few enemy types as well as a new weather event. As I near the level cap, I see myself backing off quite a bit, but I can totally seeing this as a game I come back to now and again as the devs put in more content.

Diablo II: Resurrected - Briefly, I checked out the new update that Blizzard put out for this 26 year old game. They added a new class, the Warlock, who kind of plays like a mix between a sorceress and necromancer. I started up a new ladder character for the season but really haven’t seen any new content other than this character.

Resident Evil: Requiem - I was so excited for this game that I actually took a vacation day at work to play. I’m maybe a third or half-way into the game and I’m absolutely loving it. The game is divided up between two characters: Claire, who is recommended to play in first-person perspective and plays more like the slow-burn puzzle-filled horror experience that the early Resident Evil games cultivated; and Leon, who in third-person is in more of an action-oriented game, blowing off heads and axing zombies in the face. I can’t wait to see how this story unfolds because I’m extremely interested in this new villain character, Dr. Victor Gideon.

Marathon (Server Slam) - I checked out this free weekend for Bungie’s new extraction shooter and left with kind of mixed feelings. I think the shooting feels great (as you would expect from the creators of Halo and Destiny) and the augment/weapons system shows promise, but the game’s art style and UI design feels a bit off-putting to me. Playing on console with a controller does not feel intuitive and sometimes I can’t even tell what I’m supposed to be looking at on screen. I’ll probably hold off a bit on buying into the full game when it comes out in March. If they can deliver a PvE experience on-par to Destiny’s dungeons and raids, I will consider signing up.

And then I developed dual sinus and eye infections.

And then a pipe in our basement wall froze and flooded our downstairs den.

GREAT START TO THE YEAR Y’ALL.

Movies

Bugonia - If you know me, you know I’m always showing up for the new Yorgos joint. I thought this was pretty alright, somewhere in the middle of the pack for Yorgy, only really memorable for a few key scenes and some good performances. The ending just didn’t sit right with me and can be interpreted to undo the message of the movie.

Avatar: Fire and Ash - A rehash of The Way of Water, which itself was kind of a rehash of the first one. Diminishing returns prevented me from liking this as much as I should’ve.

The Life of Chuck - Finally finished this after sitting on the first half for a few months. I appreciate it for what it is, but it feels too saccharine and life-affirming to really be my jam.

Eddington - Liked this a lot more than I was expecting to, despite being a difficult recommend to anyone I know. The experience of watching it is torturous, as is the experience of drawing breath these days, but I guess that’s what you go for in an Ari Aster movie.

28 Years Later - Rewatched this with the wife in preparation for THE BONE TEMPLE. It dragged a lot less on a second viewing but still stands out to me as being so unconventional for a director who’s now over 30 years into his career. Maybe Boyle still has the juice?

Send Help - Finally, Sam Raimi is back with an original horror movie and he hasn’t missed a beat. While this one is a bit more grounded and way less supernatural than your standard Raimi fare, it still has some gnarly stuff going on that really hearkens back to Drag Me to Hell.

Are you following me on Letterboxd?

Television

Pluribus - My wife and I finally plowed through the first season of Pluribus, the new show from Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. The majority of the season kind of left me a little bit cold and uninvested. It felt like things took a little too long to get going and then the ending didn’t exactly craving more. I’ll probably stick with it though.

The Celebrity Traitors UK - We’ve been fairly obsessed with The Traitors (the international versions more than the obnoxious US ones) and binged through an entire season of the first Celebrity season in the UK. If you haven’t checked this show out, it’s basically a reality game show version of the social deduction game Werewolf (or Mafia). I highly recommend it if you don’t mind slightly trashy reality TV.

The Chair Company - As a huge fan of I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, and to a lesser degree his film Friendship, I feel like The Chair Company channeled the absurdity of the former into a narrative project much better than the latter. In stark contrast to Pluribus, the end of season one made me ravenous for more.

It: Welcome to Derry - Partially as background noise, I kind of drifted my way through the first season of this prequel to the Stephen King book (and recent movie series). I thought it was sufficiently disturbing with some really good elaboration on the backstories of character I would’ve honestly been fine without. But if nobody can stop the corporate machine from milking every drop out of an established IP, at least this time it was kind of worth my time.

Books

The Devils by Joe Abercrombie - Set in an alternate medieval past, a priest is put in charge of a group of outcasts (including a vampire, a werewolf, a cursed undying crusader, and a necromancer) as they escort an heir to a recently vacated throne from Rome to Troy. Just shy of 600 pages long, this took me over 3 months to finish. I actually really enjoyed it, it just lacked anything to make me want to binge read it. The characters are excellent and the writing is darkly comedic. I enjoyed it thoroughly and look forward to seeing what a sequel might involve.

The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp - An epistolary novel documenting a journalist who, while setting out to disprove the existence of ghosts and the supernatural, goes and gets himself cursed/haunted. The writer’s tone and style really kept this one going for me. The protagonist is a huge asshole, but is still made to be at least somewhat sympathetic and relatable. There are some great, creepy moments spread throughout this novel that really do a good job at getting under your skin and replicate the feel of a found-footage horror movie. I highly recommend this to someone who enjoys their horror with a bit of dark humor.

Intercepts by T.J. Payne - The last book I finished this month was a somewhat pulpy and sloppily written sci-fi/horror story about clandestine government operation overseeing a program involving remote viewing via sensory deprivation. The main focus of the story is Joe, an overseeing manager at a facility that uses (and abuses) people in extreme sensory deprivation to “intercept” the thoughts and actions of targets around the world in the name of national security. When one of these “antennas” becomes aware of her surroundings, Joe’s life is suddenly thrown into a total nightmare. I thought this one had an interesting premise and some avenues to really say something poignant about the state of national security but ultimately just opted to focus on gore and shock value.

Board Games

Tag Team - a new game I received as a gift for Christmas and marks the first game to be added to the 2026 10x10 challenge. This one is a 1v1 fighting game simulator game that is pioneering the new genre of “auto-battler” games. In essence the game operates by both players have a deck of cards that represent their character’s sequence of attacks/techniques. After each round a new card is added to each deck, but the order of the cards remains static relative to each other. Adding new cards to the mix shifts play a bit from round to round, but the key is remembering what’s going on in your opponent’s deck so you can try to respond to and counter it.

I played a couple games with my wife and I’m still kind of on the fence about it. I actually love the “auto-battler” spin to it, but it feels like the player choice is minimized quite a bit as a result. I’m going to finish out my 10 plays of it and maybe it will all come together for me before the end.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - Trick-Taking Game - Another Christmas gift, but this time it’s a cooperative trick-taking game with campaign elements. In this game you play a sequence of “chapters” which dictate which characters are in play as well as any modifiers that may change the course of play. The characters each have their own goals, like one character may need to win a certain number of hands by the end of the round, or another character must have one or more cards of a certain suit. It’s very similar to games like “The Crew” but with a splash of Lord of the Rings flavor. Speaking of flavor, I don’t think the theme really does anything for this game, but it’s neat to loosely follow along with the story.

Carcassonne - Brushed off this classic to play with the wife as part of the 10x10 challenge as well. It’s a great pick-up and play game that we can knock out in a half hour or less and I feel like has nearly endless replayability despite being quite a spartan design compared to modern games. And I found a really neat tower to 3D-print that holds and dispenses the tiles. Bonus!

Vidya Games

ARC Raiders - The new hotness double-A game from the creators of “The Finals” is a PvPvE game set in a world where humanity has been pushed underground by some murderous robot overlords. Players act as “raiders” who make short 30-minute-or-less runs to the surface to gather resources and junk while avoiding clankers and other player-controlled raiders out to jack your loot. I’ve had a good enough time with this so far, more often when I’m playing with friends. As a solo gamer, it can be quite frustrating to be playing well and then one misstep sends you crawling back empty-handed. I haven’t even had that many bad experiences with other players (although I definitely have had some), it’s just that the game feels very unforgiving and punishing in general. But despite this I keep coming back pretty much every night.

TR-49 - On the faintest of whims I decided to check out this new indie game that was on sale on Steam for about 6 bucks. It’s a story-driven game that places players at an old wartime code-breaking machine that has been repurposed to archive documents, and maybe something else? The gameplay consists of reading through these documents, trying to piece together names and creators while building out an index to keep track of it all. As I saw someone say online: it’s like rebuilding a wikipedia page with broken links. All the while you are in the middle of some kind of alternate-history resistance trying to prevent one particular book from falling into the wrong hands.

I completed this game in almost a single sitting, maybe over the course of 2-3 hours. I found it compulsively engaging albeit a bit frustrating at times as someone who sometimes likes to mash through dialogue. In the end I’m not 100% sure what exactly was going on, but I think I had fun doing it.

2025 in Movies

As expected, my first full year raising my little gremlin cut into my movie-watching time in a big way. Here are some stats for my year in summary:

Films watched: 63, 56 of which were new watches for me.

Hours spent watching: 110.5

Most watched actor: (4 way tie, 3 watches each) Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Paul Walter Hauser, Ivy Wolk

Most watched director: (3 way tie, 2 each) Osgood Perkins, Chris Sanders, Steven Soderbergh

Favorite Films of the year (in alphabetical order)

2025 in Books

My reading goal for 2025 was to finish 26 books either read or listened, but to have at least 12 of them be eyeball-reading books. I finished out the year with 32 books read in total, with 19 of them meeting my eyeball goal.

Some of my highlights:

2025 in video games

I didn’t get a chance to play a lot of video games this past year, but when I did I had prolonged bouts of being addicted to them until I burnt myself out. The top three offenders here are:

BALL x PIT - a fun rogue-lite Breakout-like with base-building elements that has a very addicting gameplay loop that makes it very easy to play for hours on end.

Blue Prince - probably my favorite of the year, a really chill puzzle rogue-lite with more secrets and hidden objectives that made me feel like a genius when I figured something out on my own. The last time I felt like this was with 2016’s The Witness.

Hades II - I maybe like this more than its predecessor because it’s the same loop but with SO MUCH MORE.

Special shout out to the Switch 2 that was definitely my console of choice this year, but kind of lacked first party games right out of the gate. Donkey Kong Bananza was a minor distraction for a while, but I never actually finished it. I’m still waiting to hear more about The Duskbloods.

2025 in tabletop games

This past year marked the first for me to try a 10 x 10 challenge. The year started out strong, but in the end I failed to follow-through on both choosing 10 games, or finishing more than two of them.

Ticket to Ride: Legends of the West - we played through 10 (or maybe 11?) games of this 12-game campaign with my wife and nephew throughout the year. Although we didn’t finish the last game and tally up total scores, I’m pretty sure we unlocked everything there was to see. Perhaps I’ll do a full retrospective on the game once we finally close out the campaign.

The Castles of Burgundy - this is an oldie but a goodie that popped back up on my radar when I received the Special Edition early in the year. This was always one of my favorite games by one of my favorite designers, but the special edition really takes things to another level, turning it from just a game into a substantial investment into the hobby.

SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - one of my new games for the year and while it’s a bit heavier than I’ve played lately, it was actually easier to pick up and teach. We played it for a few weeks back to back in my game group and it really clicked with me each time.

Shackleton Base - A very late addition to the collection, this one feels like the big brother to SETI and does the modular gameplay even better. I’ve only had one play under my belt so far, but this might be something I try to throw onto the 10 x 10 for the year.

Bomb Busters - this was a Christmas gift and I ended up playing with my wife and friends this past week for 6 games in a single session. I combines the co-op hidden information and communication of a game like Hanabi but fleshes it out with a campaign-like story and unlockables. I can’t wait to see what’s in these secret boxes…

2025 in new music

My wife and I treated ourselves to an early Christmas gift and purchased a Bambu Lab A1 mini 3D printer. And then after two weeks we were obsessed and ended up purchasing the upgraded model, the A1.

So far, we’ve printed objects ranging from extremely useful to utterly pointless but cool, nonetheless. My favorite print so far has been a drinking mug that holds one standard can of beverage but also doubles as a dice tower. I printed it in faux-wood filament and plan on painting the accents at some point.

My wife also designed some really cool bird drink coasters that I was able to turn into print models. I think her plan is going to be to sell them at local art markets, so follow her on Instagram if you want to find out how to get some.

What I watched

Frankenstein

Enjoyed this one quite a bit. The production design was tremendous, as should be expected from del Toro, but the way the story was presented and acted was a bit too over-the-top for me.

The Amateur

Please don’t make me look at Rami Malek for this long ever again.

The Toxic Avenger (remake/reboot)

The humor vacillated between some genuinely chuckle-worthy bits and some of the cringiest shit I’ve ever seen. Overall, a good time that is probably best enjoyed by a room packed with drunk people.

Shelby Oaks

The found-footage opening act was intriguing, if not a little bit hokey, but the back half is just boring and does absolutely nothing new or noteworthy. Total snoozer.

What I read

Strange Pictures by Uketsu

A very clever series of intertwining stories revolving around a series of drawings that ended up being more procedural thriller than horror. The way everything ended up tying together was extremely satisfying.

The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre by Phillip Fracassi

People are dying at the old folks’ home! But these causes are anything but natural and are instead the work of a serial killer. It’s a pretty standard slasher flair with a unique perspective, but the ending was extremely unsatisfying.

The Divine Farce by Michael S. A. Graziano

Three people are forced to live together smashed into a concrete stall. My desire for answers faded as this one went on and by the end, I didn’t really care at all. It’s way more philosophical than this dummy can comprehend.

What I played

Quarriors

This is a dice-rolling game that I owned once-upon-a-time that I grew kind of disillusioned with and sold. Years later, my friend breaks it out at a game day and I think I’ve fallen back in like with it. The main gist of the game is that it’s a “bag builder” where you roll a personal stash of dice to accrue currency to purchase more dice and score points by sending them out into battle (and having them survive until your next turn).

The art is iffy and the game’s sense of humor is a bit on par with 2006 myspace, which is probably why I dropped it to begin with. Despite this, it’s kind of the perfect filler game where you just get to chuck a bunch of dice and cheer or sob according to the outcome. Good times, good times.

Brass: Birmingham

I’ve gone on record numerous times as saying that this is probably my favorite board game in my collection, but it had been maybe three or four years since I had last played it. Maybe I’m just easily influenced by BoardGameGeek having it at the top of the community’s list as well.

At its core, Brass (Birmingham flavor) is an economic route-building game where you create networks of material depots and factories. The game is built upon the crippling idea that resources are scarce, and you’ll likely never be able to do what you really want to do.

Resources you create are communal, and if someone is connected to your network, they’re free to use them as they wish. Thankfully, when one of your stashes are depleted, the depot flips and scores you points and/or income. It’s a bittersweet feeling when someone takes that last cube off of your iron works knowing that you get rewarded, but your plans to use that cube have been thwarted. It’s this interplay between players and resources that I think is at the core of my infatuation with this game.

What I listened to

Pretty much the same crap as last month.

One Battle After Another

If I had a nickel for every time this month I watched an uncharacteristically kinetic and thrilling movie based on a book, directed by an auteur filmmaker that came to prominence in the late-90s, early-00s, I would only have I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.

In all seriousness though, this one was an absolute blast. Also a little bit terrifying how reflective it is of our current era despite being (loosely) based on a novel from 35 years ago. DiCaprio gives an all-timer performance, equally comedic and heartfelt while Penn’s Col. Lockjaw is up there as one of the most interesting, pathetic, and entertaining villains of recent memory.

The Ritual

This one was a rewatch for me, first time viewing since its release in 2017. It had been orbiting my thoughts for a while recently while I contemplate reading the Adam Nevill book it’s based on. This time around I felt the second half drags a lot less than I had remembered. The creature design is still top-notch and the effects have held up overall. All-in-all it’s a decent watch. Nothing super memorable outside of the creature.

Caught Stealing

The second in my aforementioned auteur-helmed novel-based thriller duology, this time directed by Darren Aronofsky. I found this one very entertaining if not a little slight and inconsequential compared to One Battle. Austin Butler further cements himself as a very charismatic leading man and the rotating cast of side-characters was continually surprising. This one is a high-recommend for something you can watch but not have to devote your full attention to (but doing so may be more rewarding).

What I read

The Handyman Method by Nick Cutter and Andrew F Sullivan

In this novel a family man’s life spirals into insanity and chaos as something in his new house compels him to… make home renovations? I fully understood that this was supposed to be a takedown of toxic masculinity and gender roles, but it was entirely too on the nose and obscene to be enjoyable. A lot of the text was downright cringe-worthy, and I really struggled to stick it out to slightly redeeming conclusion, but I don’t think I could recommend this to anyone.

Fever House by Keith Rosson

The lives of a former rock star, her son, and a mob enforcer intersect when the latter comes across a severed hand that seems to drive anyone in its vicinity into a murderous rage. In stark contrast to the previous novel, I absolutely loved Fever House and could not put it down. Without spoiling much, the novel starts in one place but ends up somewhere completely unexpected before the (strangely abrupt) ending. The writing is witty and darkly comedic and the central mystery is compelling and hints at some peripheral lore that I’m hoping gets expounded on in the follow-up The Devil By Name, which I plan on checking out soon.

What I played

Pokemon Legends: Z-A

It seems every time there is a new Pokemon release I’m there on release day with cash in hand despite me not having finished one of these games since maybe Diamond version back in high school. This time is no different as I decided to pick up this second game in the “Legends” line, the last of which I actually got within hours of the game before losing interest in.

The hallmark of the “Legends” games is that they eschew the normal gym progression system in favor of a more story-based approach. They also put an emphasis on exploration and in-world battles. Legends: Z-A takes it a step further this time and opts for (mostly) real-time combat instead of the turn-based combat that this franchise was founded on. And for the most part I think it feels really good, apart from a few strategies feeling left in the dust.

I’ve only put in about 10 hours so far but I’m enjoying this new combat system and the environment of Lumiose City despite it feeling a bit small. There’s still a ton of things to do and a plethora of side-quests to do outside of the main story. I am eager to see how far I can take it before I eventually lose interest for something else again.

BALL x PIT

This is my current obsession. BALL x PIT is a top-down vertically-scrolling shooter rogue-like/survivor-like with a bit of base-building mechanics. I checked this one’s demo out briefly during Summer Games Fest, and I enjoyed it for the most part, but it didn’t really get its hooks into me. This month it finally saw its full release and the second I saw it was only $15 and getting a free Switch 2 update, I pounced on it.

The objective of any given run is to make it through waves of enemies by shooting and bouncing balls, much like the classic game Breakout, and drafting said balls to have synergizing powers like poison, burn, or even chain-reaction lightning. After each run (win or lose) you return to your post-apocalyptic town to build structures that provide passive bonuses, resources, and even new characters for further runs. The gameplay loop is extremely satisfying. If you need further convincing, I’ll add that I got my wife into playing this and she too is addicted.

Absolum

Absolum is another run-based “rogue-like” game in the vein of BALL x PIT, Hades, or Dead Cells that puts user in a never-ending game loop that rewards the player with incremental improvements in order to do better each time. What sets this game apart from the others is that it is a take on the side-scrolling beat-em-up genre popular in arcades in the 90s like Streets of Rage or Golden Axe.

I admittedly haven’t put as much time into this one as I would’ve liked because BALL x PIT has filled this particular niche for me right now, but the little bit I’ve played was very slick and showed promise of quite a bit of depth. The art style is gorgeous and the story, or what I’ve seen of it thus far, is intriguing. I hope to get more into this after I wrap up playing in the ball pit.

October’s Playlist

This month I’m trying out something different with the What I’m Listening To section that I established last month. Please enjoy below a brief playlist of music that has caught my attention in the past few weeks.

Horror has always resonated with me above all other genres because, regardless of quality, a good horror film is almost always trying to do something different. This has led to a huge variety of subgenres that span between different audiences. As part of the free service I provide to you, my loyal followers, I am going to use this space to try to recommend a spooky movie for even the most discerning of viewers.

For those seeking an under-seen classic

The Blob (1988)

I’m leading off with what I would normally consider an all-time classic that very few people I’ve spoken to have ever seen. Chuck Russell’s 1988 remake of The Blob is a short, snappy, effects-driven monster movie that I can almost put on par with classics like The Thing. It’s a movie with very little downtime and makes for a fun and stomach-churning watch this Halloween.

Available on: Shudder, Rental

For those who fear their fellow man

Green Room (2015)

It’s a rather well-trodden cliche now that the scariest monster of all is man. This is immediately evident in Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room, which pits a down-on-their-luck punk band against a venue full of white supremacists after they accidentally witness a murder. With its brutally realistic portrayal of violent crime coupled with the anxiety of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, this movie plays like a 90-minute panic attack.

Available on: Showtime, Kanopy, PlutoTV, Rental

For those seeking a real mind-f**k

Possessor (2020)

Science fiction is a genre that plays well with horror because it allows for things to get fantastical without being outright supernatural. Brandon Cronenberg (son of the body-horror legend David) made his sophomore feature in Possessor, the story of an assassin in a futuristic world where technology exists to inhabit other peoples’ bodies. This movie throws in some very trippy visuals in combination with some gut-wrenching violence and really challenges the viewer more than most mainstream horror can get away with.

Available on: Tubi TV, Kanopy, Rental

For those seeking something foreign

Exhuma (2024)

Different cultures have different societal fears and the horror films of said cultures tend to reflect that. Jang Jae-hyun’s Exhuma feels a little more western-inspired than most, but definitely relies on Korean customs and folklore to differentiate itself. The film follows a small group of paranormal investigators of a sort trying to dispel a curse on a newborn child. It’s a little bit on the lengthy side, but the slow-burn first half satisfyingly leads into an absolutely bonkers back half.

Available on: Shudder, Kanopy, Rental

For those seeking something off the beaten path

The Empty Man (2020)

The downside to having seen so many horror movies is that it takes a lot to genuinely surprise me. When David Prior’s The Empty Man hit theaters in December of 2020, nobody was planning on rushing out to the theaters for one reason or another. It wasn’t until later the following year that it would be dumped onto Video On Demand and largely overlooked by nearly everyone. It’s a shame because it very deftly and simultaneously juggles elements of cop procedural, urban legend, cult, and cosmic horror to form a mostly cohesive cerebral trip.

Available on: Hulu, Rental

For those who want to laugh

Deadstream (2022)

Comedy in a horror film is typically used to diffuse tension for a break in the action but can also be used to trick audiences into letting their guard down. Vanessa and Joseph Winter’s Deadstream is a comedic found-footage film that follows a disgraced streaming personality who attempts to gain back his following by streaming live from within a haunted house. Comedy is extremely subjective, but everyone I’ve shared this one with has absolutely loved it. Its humor is largely broad, but there are some genuinely gut-busting and gnarly, goopy and gory bits that I go back to over and over again.

Available on: Netflix, Shudder, Hoopla, Tubi TV, Rental

For the whole family (or scaredy-cats)

Coraline (2009)

My final recommendation acts as a catch-all for those who might not be up to the task of a fully-fledged horror movie. Henry Selick’s Coraline is a stop-motion animated film aimed at a younger audience but doesn’t necessarily shy away from being genuinely creepy. The sheer artistry on display is enough to capture the attention span of children while the darker themes and undertones keep the adults engaged. This should be a Halloween staple in mostly every household.

Available on: Tubi TV, Rental

At the beginning of the month I was notified that I had been laid off from my job. Maybe it was the anti-depressants I was taking, but I feel like I took the news pretty well, all things considered. I was coming up on my 5th anniversary of working for this particular company and had gone almost 2 years without a significant raise in pay and my team was bounced around to 3 different managers in as many years. I’m kind of glad to be moving on, but I can’t deny that the perks of working there will be missed.

Luckily after only 2 weeks of searching I have been offered an opportunity to return to my old position at a previous employer. I’ll be back in the company of familiar faces, in a setting that I worked in for 12 years prior. Fingers are crossed that things haven’t changed too much.

An Evening with David Byrne

This last weekend my wife and I took a trip down to The Anthem in Washington, DC to see David Byrne perform on his Who is the Sky? tour. We had pretty great seats up in a balcony box on the third floor with a great view of the stage.

His show was very unique in that his backing band (Ghost Train Orchestra) played a mobile arrangement with all members wirelessly dancing and playing along on stage. The stage was outfitted with an 180-degree backdrop that accompanied each song with neat artistic videos and scenes. He played a lot of Talking Heads songs, but I even enjoyed his solo stuff that I wasn’t familiar with. There was always something cool to look at even if the music wasn’t getting me.

What I watched

The Naked Gun

A comedic breath of fresh air that hearkens back to the days when broad comedies actually had jokes and gags. This Liam Neeson-headed reboot of the classic spoof series has more jokes per minute than physically possibly to perceive. Without a doubt this will end up on my best of the year list.

Kingdom of Heaven: Director’s Cut

This one has been on my bucket list to watch for several years now, but I never had the time to devote to the 3-hour epic tale of 12th century Jerusalem and the crusades. Honestly, I was a bit let down by this one because of how overstuffed and kind of hard to follow it was. At times I felt like the story would better be absorbed in print form.

The Long Walk

Finally, the long-awaited adaptation of my favorite novel is here, and it (mostly) didn’t disappoint! The strongest point here is the casting, which nailed the troupe of boys perfectly. No notes at all on that (specifically going to praise Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, and Charlie Plummer). My only rub is that they needlessly changed the ending, which is arguably my favorite part of the novel, and undercut a main character’s entire development.

Dangerous Animals

A serial killer abducts and feeds his victims to sharks. Jai Courtney absolutely holds this entire movie on his back and it’s actually a pretty goofy and entertaining watch. It takes some pretty stupid turns, but it’s half-winking at the camera most of the time so I give it a pass.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps

What a huge let-down for me. I was eagerly awaiting the Fantastic Four’s entrance into the MCU because of the numerous times it had been botched in the past, but what I got was a very benign and uninteresting take that I honestly may have liked even less than the 2015 Josh Trank attempt. The casting just felt very flat and uncharismatic and the story beats felt chopped and screwed to the point where the first third felt like a recap of movies we never got.

What I played

Hollow Knight: Silksong

I only got a few hours to put into this before my Game Pass subscription ran out, but yeah it felt like a slightly more (fr)agile Hollow Knight. I never got too far in the original game because I was really bad at it and pretty much the same thing happened here. Maybe one day I’ll pick it up on a sale on Switch and play it all the way through.

Silent Hill f

I think I’m about halfway through the game at this point. From reviews that I’ve seen, there is supposed to be a pretty substantial change in the narrative coming up, but I don’t think I’ve hit it yet. I can see peoples’ issues with the increased focus on combat this time around, but it’s also not bothering me too much. I care more about the puzzles, which are satisfyingly creepy. Still not entirely sure what is going on in the story though.

Hades II

The same day that Silent Hill f dropped, Hades II had its soft-launch on the Switch. I had already purchased this on PC in early access, but I enjoyed the first game on Switch so much that I figured I’d pick it up there as well. It feels great and looks surprisingly awesome on the Switch 2. Along with my new dbrand Killswitch case/grips this is the perfect handheld game to play right now.

Some new music that got me through the month

Pile - Sunshine and Balance Beams

Dance Gavin Dance - Pantheon

Between the Buried and Me - The Blue Nowhere

Nine Inch Nails - TRON: Ares Soundtrack

To start off the month, my wife and I attended Merriweather Post Pavillion to see King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard on their Phantom Island orchestral tour, supported by Sarah Hicks and the National Symphony Orchestra. There was no opener, but KGLW played two sets: first, the entirety of their new orchestral album Phantom Island; and second, a set of older songs reworked to include the orchestra.

This was my second time seeing them perform live, and while I had a good time, I think I preferred them playing a more traditional set like they did in DC, back in 2022. I am admittedly not a huge fan of their newest album, but the second set made up of mostly longer, jammier bangers really saved the show for me. My wife also snagged us some sweet t-shirts from the ridiculous merch line.

Movies

Together - As a result of supernatural forces, a couple in a faltering relationship begin to get closer than they ever expected. I really dug this one. It has some really gnarly body horror as well as some really effective but not overblown world-building and lore-crafting. The only thing that kept me from truly loving it was literally the last shot of the movie.

Weapons - After the mysterious disappearance of nearly an entire class of elementary-schoolers, a small town reckons with the fallout of the tragedy. This will probably end up being my favorite movie of the year. I loved how it balanced an actually gripping mystery with pitch-perfect dark humor.

Drop - A woman’s first date becomes a nightmare when she is air-dropped messages from an unknown stalker asking her to murder her date. This was a mostly inoffensive but bland thriller that would’ve benefited from a lot more humor, which is what I would expect from Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day, Freaky) anyway.

Final Destination: Bloodlines - A new installment in the horror franchise that bends the mythology in a new wider-scoped direction. I was hoping to like this one more than I did. The deaths are mostly really great, but I felt like this one takes too long to get going and starts nodding off when it has to stop to consider the plot. So, basically the same as most of the other FD movies.

Tornado - A Japanese immigrant in 1790s Scotland takes revenge on the bandits that upended her life. Setting aside the unique setting, this was one of the most paint-by-numbers revenge thrillers I have ever seen. Everything builds up to a last act confrontation that failed to do anything for me at all.

Games

Wandering Towers - In this memory game, players race to move all of their wizards into Ravenskeep tower first. This game is played on a circular ring board with 3-dimensional towers that can be moved and stacked. Players play cards to move both their wizards and these towers clockwise around the board, potentially landing towers on top of other wizards, imprisoning them beneath.

This game seems very family-oriented at first glance, and for the most part it is, but it also quickly becomes very cutthroat as wizards quickly get stuck between tower levels and you struggle to keep track of where everyone is. This also frequently makes the game absolutely hilarious as sometimes peoples’ memory isn’t as good as they think it is.

My only qualm comes from a bit of a breakdown towards the end of the game. A secondary goal for victory is to fill up potions that you have (and can also spend on extra actions) by imprisoning wizards under towers. The problem is, once you have all of your wizards in Ravenskeep, if you don’t have all of your potions filled it becomes very tedious to spend your time trying to capture wizards. The cards in your hand that can only move wizards become useless, and the only consolation is in the ability to discard you whole hand to only move a single tower one space for your entire turn! This extra goal feels very tacked on and I would’ve preferred it if just getting your wizards to the end was the only aim of the game.

The game plays pretty quickly in only 30-45 minutes and seems to benefit from higher player counts. This will probably stay in my collection for a while as it kind of carves out a niche that none of my other games do.

SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - This GIGANTIC euro-style game tasks players with launching space probes and analyzing deep-space signals in an effort to find signs of alien life. Over the course of 2+ hours you will try to optimize your game-play to spend your resources efficiently and out-play your opponents to find traces of alien life first.

The game primarily concerns itself with finding “traces” which can be done in three ways: launching probes and landing them on planets in the solar system, scanning deep-space signals and collecting the majority of data from given sector, and analyzing said data. You can also purchase technologies that make your actions more powerful and/or efficient. These techs very satisfyingly socket into your player board in way that makes me say “ooh yeah that’s nice”.

Because of the breadth of ways to score points in this game, it kind of feels like a mishmash of other types of games thrown into one. It’s certainly an engine-building game where you’re trying to line up combos and synergies, but it’s also an area control game in the segment where you’re vying for majority stake in scanned signals. And this is before I even mention anything about the aliens!

Every game has two randomly selected (and hidden) alien lifeforms out of a possible five that reveal themselves after enough traces are collected. These aliens are additionally “mini-games” of their own that alter the rules of the game and introduce more end-game ways to rack up points. In the game that I played, we had a race of bug-like aliens that added a pick-up-and-deliver-style mechanic to the game and another race with an asteroid that essentially becomes a new planet to land on and scan.

Overall, I really enjoyed this game and look forward to playing it again. It looks very daunting from all of the options of things you can do on a given turn, but it quickly becomes very clear what you can and can’t do, and paths to get points are laid out reasonably clearly. There are also multi-purpose cards that on their own are pretty powerful, but can also be discarded for a nudge in resources to get you out of a bind.

This year felt like it was easier to find books to match the themes. In general they seem to promote inclusivity for minority authors as well as some fun categories related to the school.

A book published the year UMBC opened (1966)…

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

A man with reduced mental capacity undergoes an experimental process to become a genius. I’m really glad that this challenge got me to read this sci-fi classic because it’s really well written and sheds a light on how we treated mentally handicapped people 60 years ago (and to a degree still today). The first-person perspective of Charlie Gordon was really effective for me at illustrating the gradual internal changes he was experiencing.

A book with UMBC colors on the cover (black and gold)…

Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones

A young boy travels the American south with his werewolf aunt and uncle as he awaits the day he will finally transform himself. This was without a question my favorite Stephen Graham Jones novel so far. I loved the way that it kind of meanders without a plot, instead using vignettes to highlight aspects of this world’s werewolf lore. I’m not typically a fan of werewolf media, but this really struck a chord with me.

A book recommended by UMBC alum, staff, faculty, or student…

Assembly by Natasha Brown

A well-to-do British Black woman reflects on the myriad of microaggressions and social trespasses she experiences while she also contemplates her future. It’s easy (and maybe a bit reductive) for me to say that this one felt too obvious and didn’t really feel like it was saying anything new or groundbreaking. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, but then it just kind of ended on a flat note. Luckily it was a very short read.

A book set in my home state (Maryland)…

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

A rookie FBI agent/student enlists the help of notorious serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter to catch another killer who skins his victims. Being a huge fan of the movie I couldn’t help but notice how incredibly faithful it was in adapting this novel. It goes to show that if the source material is excellent you can pretty much use it as text for an adaptation.

A banned book…

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

An NYC yuppie navigates upper class society while also moonlighting as a sadist and serial killer. This one deviates a little bit between source material and adaptation, but still has that darkly comedic sensibility. I actually enjoyed the tonal whiplash from some of the funniest writing I’ve read leading straight into bar-none the most graphic and disturbing filth ever put to page.

A book by an author of color or featuring a main character of color…

The Unworthy by Augustina Bazterrica

A woman living in a post-apocalyptic convent begins to question the nature of her surroundings and even her own past. I enjoyed this one for its simplicity and for how quick a read it was. The story is structured through the protagonist’s journal entries, which make very little effort to ease you into the world. This made it a little difficult to start but later makes it very satisfying to chip away at the history of this world.

A book by an LGBTQ+ author or featuring a LGBTQ+ main character…

We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer

After a woman is visited by a man and his family that claims to be the previous resident of the house she is renovating, things get weird when circumstances prevent them from leaving. This one was a real page-turner for me because it really gets into the premise quickly and keeps the twists coming one after another. Unfortunately it lost steam for me towards the end when the answers proved to be less interesting than the questions.

A book by an author with a disability or featuring a main character with a disability…

Nestlings by Nat Cassidy

A newly-handicapped mother starts experiencing weird happenings surrounding her infant daughter after her family moves into an ancient high-rise apartment complex. I had to slog though this story early on in the summer as nothing about it really compelled me to read more. Eventually as the mystery unravels towards the end I was starting to enjoy where it was going, but by then it was too little, too late.

Reader’s choice…

When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy

A young woman takes in a runaway boy with terrifying powers who is being hunted by something that he claims is his father. I thought this was an absolute blast from start to finish. Not only is it a terrific meditation on how fear can consume and rule your life, but its breakneck pacing and brutal set pieces made it an incredibly quick read.

For my wife’s birthday this year we planned a trip to the beaches of Delaware. We stayed two nights in Rehoboth Beach and two nights with my aunt and uncle in Milton, DE.

On the first day we made the surprisingly short trip straight to Rehoboth Beach but took a last minute detour to Dewey Beach to kill some time before our hotel room was ready.

That night we celebrated my wife’s birthday with a reservation to the sushi restaurant Saketumi. I didn’t think I’d need the reservation, but the place was packed and the food was delicious!

The next day we got up early and went straight to Rehoboth Beach proper. We spent the morning at the beach and had lunch at a pretty decent fish and chips shop on the boardwalk. We then returned to the hotel to freshen up and have a bit of quiet time.

After showers we decided to brave the 98-degree-plus heat and play a round of mini golf. Following that we had dinner at a pizza and craft beer place and returned to the Rehoboth boardwalk to check out Funland, their amusement park. My nephew and I braved the Haunted Mansion (which was kind of lame, but still better than Ocean City, MD).

On the third morning we packed up and checked out of the hotel, heading today to Cape Henelopen State Park for the third unique beach of the trip. Overall this may have been my favorite beach we went to. They had excellent bathrooms and changing rooms/showers. The beach was a more gradual slope into the water and the waves weren’t super strong. The only drawback was, and this was true of all of the beaches this week, that there were jellyfish creeping up on us. My wife and nephew even caught part of one. Ouch!

Later that day we arrived in Milton, DE at my uncle’s place. We basically spent the rest of the day settling in and chillin’ with the fam. My nephew even picked up a bicycle and finally learned how to ride without training wheels! Way to go Jace!!

The next day the weather was pretty cruddy, but we still got to check out the Dogfish Head brewery. It’s a very hip and stylish hangout spot with a really extensive gift shop. We sampled some beers in a flight and then bought a whole bucket of beers and got to take the bucket home! It’s currently one of my son’s favorite toys.

After our lunch outing at the brewery we came home and wasted some time watching TV while my uncle drove back into MD to pick up CRABS FOR DINNER! The feast was delicious and made me proud to be a Marylander. It was the perfect way to end the mini-vacay, for the next morning we packed up shop and headed home.

Movies

Thunderbolts* - I finally watched this when it came to Disney+. It was a perfectly fine distraction with just enough fun, laughs, and heart.

The Phoenician Scheme - Watched this half-distractedly with the wife and mostly enjoyed it, but I think I’ll need to sit down and watch it again to understand wtf was going on.

Superman - Excellent superhero movie that brings back the comic book sentiment of just being a good time without too much baggage. David Corinswet nails it as Superman, but Nicholas Hoult is a pitch-perfect whiny and petty Lex Luthor.

The King Tide - This one was an indie blind watch for me. It follows a small isolated Newfoundland island community that enters a civil war of sorts concerning a baby girl with mystical powers that washes ashore. It’s played very realistically and understated, but was a bit too slow to unravel.

The Rule of Jenny Pen - Quite possibly one of the most bizarre relatively mainstream movies I’ve ever seen. John Lithgow and his creepy hand puppet terrorize Geoffery Rush and other residents at an assisted living facility. Things start off extremely unsettling and disturbing but end up spinning wheels as the movie peters out. I wish I liked this one more than I did because John Lithgow gives one of the most sinister villain performances of his career.

TV

King of the Hill - With the reboot on the horizon, my wife and I have been powering through the original run of the show. We’re currently on season 3 and almost every episode is great in one way or another. RIP Jonathan Joss and Chuck Mangione.

City the Animation - From the creators of one of my favorite comedy anime Nichijou comes another show in the same slice-of-life vein. I’m three episodes in and it’s enjoyable but hasn’t hit the same heights as its predecessor, mostly due to the lack of memorable and relatable characters.

Vidyagames

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 - This one is a blast from my past and a no-brainer for my Switch 2. I’ve already plowed through the THPS3 campaign and am now making my way through THPS4 and the nostalgia waves are taking me out. The updated soundtrack rocks too, with added music from King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Mastodon, and Turnstile.

Donkey Kong Bananza - Mario Kart World aside, this is the game that is going to sell a whole lot of Switch 2’s. It’s basically a spiritual successor to Super Mario Odyssey in that it’s a collect-a-thon of a bunch of “banandium gems” akin to the Mario’s moons. Almost everything is completely destructible (up to a point), which activates some kind of latent mild OCD in my brain, causing me to waste unfathomable amounts of time crushing everything to smithereens.

Tabletop

So Clover - This is a cooperative word game that I played a few times this month. Each player gets a set of ring-shaped cards that fit onto a clover-shaped board so that 4 sets of two word pairs are formed (picture provided to make up for my inability to articulate what this game is).

Each player then secretly thinks of a word that can be associated with each of these pairs and then removes and mixes up all of the word cards in secret. It is then the rest of the team’s job to take and rotate/affix the ring cards back on the board so that each handwritten word is matched up with its associated word pair. The more successfully this can be done for each player, the higher the cooperative score.

I found this game pretty good for a quick chuckle as you try to get inside the headspace of your friends and see how it is their connect their dots. It kind of fills the same place as something like Just One or a reverse, cooperative Codenames.

River Valley Glassworks - I picked up the deluxe edition of this game at my local store because of the neat components and cute art style. The game here basically consists of set collection and drafting reminiscent of but much more thematic than Azul. Players gather river stones of varying colors and shapes and deposit them in a storage grid that later dictates your score. In essence, you want to gather many different stones in different colors, but not so many as you run out of board space (either too many colors, or too many of the same color). Which stones you can collect are dictated by the shape of the stones in your pan, but it’s the color that ultimately matters for scoring.

When I first started playing this I was immediately let down in a “that’s it?” kind of way. But as the game neared to a close I started to see glimpses of the strategy and how to manipulate the board to maximize your score. As I mentioned at the start, this game is basically 90% similar to Azul, but likely gets a slight edge for newer players due to its theme and approachability. As for actual game mechanics and strategy, I would probably recommend Azul instead.

Cities - I’ll briefly mention this here because we finally completely one of the games on our 10 x 10 challenge (which I talked about in my first Substack blog post). Finishing the 10 plays for Cities basically came down to mad dash because both me and my wife were utterly tired of playing this game. It played decently enough at 2 players, but the variety of strategy from game to game just was not there. And it typically took about as long to set up for a new round as it did to play said round, which was grating to say the least. This game is definitely going in my SELL pile.

This is the first (and only) time me (36), my wife (36), my son (1), and my nephew’s (9) ages will all be perfect squares! This is the only time that will ever happen! Math!

To celebrate all of the Gemini birthdays in the family, we took our traditional yearly trip down to the in-laws’ lake house in southern Virginia. The weather was pretty much perfect; not too hot, but warm enough to swim. My son got his first taste of open water and absolutely loved it! It’s such a relief to see that he’s not terrified of swimming (floating). Here he is hanging out with his best friend and cousin.

And more to say on the fatherhood front: my boy is walking! About two or three weeks after his first birthday he made the leap from crusing across the walls and furniture to walking unassisted! It’s cliché to say, but they really do grow up too fast. Where did my little worm go?

Movies

• Blue Ruin - A man at the bottom of a personal spiral digs himself deeper into trouble after planning an act of vengeance against someone from his past. Forgive me if I’m prone to hyperbole, but this is one of the most realistically tense and compelling thrillers of the past 20 years. Everyone knows that some kind of happy chemical is released in your brain when you watch someone who is really good at their job. What this movie makes you realize it that something just as potent happens when you watch someone fumble miserably, completely out of their depth. That’s exactly happens here and Macon Blair sells it in such a sincere and compelling manner without tipping into comedy or farce. It’s just kind of sad and a bit endearing in the best way possible.

• 28 Years Later - Nearly three decades after a virus ravages Europe, a father and son struggle to survive on an isolated island in Britain. I was not prepared for where this movie would go and I have to say I’m excited to see where this new trilogy of films is taking us. There was a point towards the middle of the film where I started to feel like I had been poisoned or drugged but a final act Ralph Fiennes brought everything back around. And I’m not even going to touch on that insane final scene.

Books

• Assembly by Natasha Brown - A woman takes stock of the subtle and overt prejudices in her life as she grapples with a medical diagnosis. This was a recommendation from a friend that I used to satisfy one of the requirements for the UMBC Summer Reading challenge. It was a very short read, which I count as one of the only things I enjoyed about it (sorry!). To me, it really struck a “yeah, I get it” nerve pretty early on and continued to repeat pretty much the same refrain throughout the entire length. I was expecting there to be something more, but then it just ends.

• We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer - A woman’s life is completely upended after a man claiming to be one of the previous inhabitants of her house shows up on her doorstep. Yet another Summer Reading Challenge novel, but this one I actually really enjoyed. It starts off rather benign and just slightly unsettling but ramps up at a good pace over the course of the novel. I wasn’t a total fan of where the story ended up, but the main bulk of the novel was sufficently nightmarish.

Games

So… despite my ambivalence earlier this year, I ended up buying a Switch 2. I was able to just walk into a Gamestop on the morning it was released and purchase one with zero resistance. This is just who I am. I make rash decisions and spend the rest of my life trying to justify that I did the right thing. To keep things brief: this is what the first iteration of the Switch should’ve been. More comfortable in handheld mode, overall performance more in line with what I expect from a modern console, and an actually usable social platform.

There’s not many games for this yet, but I’ve been playing:

• Mario Kart World - I was kind of poo-pooing the open-world aspects of this game when it was first announced, but it’s actually exactly what Mario Kart needs. With the addition of some new advance mobility techniques, exploring is something I never thought I’d want to do in a racing game, but here we are.

• Pokemon Violet - I bounced off this game HARD when it first came out. I don’t think I put more than 5 hours into it, to be honest. Now that it actually runs and doesn’t look like it’s being played on a Samsung refrigerator door, I’m using it as one of my “chill out” games. Who knows if I’ll even finish it. I don’t think I’ve completed a Pokemon game since Gold version.

• Slay the Spire - keeping with the theme of older games that I’ve been revisiting, I’ve got myself back into a roguelite mood after Steam Next Fest. I jumped back into what may consider one of the best deckbuilder games and realized how horrible I am at strategy.

• Lies of P - Now that the Overture DLC is out, I picked this one up on a Playstation sale. I made it about 75% through when it was free to play on Xbox Game Pass, but now that they have introduced difficulty settings, I can whimper my way through on easy mode like the weakling I am. I still love this game and consider it probably the best soulslike game not made by FromSoft. The gothic Victorian Pinnochio theme scratches that itch that has been plaguing me since Bloodborne.

• Death Stranding - Another game I bounced off of when it came out but decided to revisit it in a different light. This time, I’m about caught up to where I was on my first playthough, but now I’m actually paying attention to the story a bit more closely. Despite (or maybe because of) all of its weird Kojima-isms, everything is gelling for me this time and I’m almost ready to call it a masterpiece.

Death Howl

developed by The Outer Zone, published by 11 bit studios

Death Howl is sold as a souls-like turn-based deckbuilder game that fashions itself as a dark fantasy version of Slay the Spire meets Into the Breach. The demo sets up the story of Ro, a scandinavian mother in 6000 BCE who journeys into the spirit world to recover the soul of her dead child. While there are light exploration elements, the core of the game is a grid-based combat system that revolves around a deck of cards representing offensive and defensive actions. Combat here is super unforgiving and punishing but feels very rewarding as winning matches yields materials to build new cards for your deck.

I really liked the art style, that I could only describe as grotesque pixel art reminiscent of Blasphemous, one of my favorite indie games of recent years. However, the combat’s difficulty really put me off playing more of this. I will probably wait to hear what more people say about it before considering getting the full game later this year.

Insider Trading

developed and published by Naiive

With the smash-hit success of Balatro last year, it’s no wonder that a few copycat games are starting to show up. Insider Trading is yet another rogue-like deckbuilder that tasks you with manipulating the stock market to hit weekly monitary goals. Each of the 5 days of a given week you are dealt a “hand” of stock moves that will trigger at the end of the day, moving prices up and down according to rules of each move. You can spend tokens to manipulate the order of these moves to put yourself in a better position to gain a profit. Between each day you can also spend these tokens for permanent enhancements that change the way moves interact with one another, optimizing your loadout.

While I appreciate developers trying to cash in on the success of the simplicity of Balatro, I don’t really think that the idea of the stock market really lends itself to this kind of gameplay. It was fun for a few minutes, but I don’t see the final product being something I might invest in.

IRONHIVE

developed by Wondernaut Studio, published by CRITICAL REFLEX

Another deckbuilder! This time it’s a city-building resource-management game that appoints you as the leader of a post-apocalyptic colony, building your city from the ground up while trying to keep four different factions of colonists in check with one another. You can also send your workers out on expeditions to scout new land or plunder dungeons for riches, at the risk of losing them forever.

I really did not gel with this game at all. The nebulous goals of building up your empire felt unrewarding and the scarcity of resources and workers felt like an artificial limit put on an otherwise easily obtainable goal. I’ll probably never pick this one up again.

No, I’m not a Human

developed by Trioskaz, published by CRITICAL REFLEX

Not a deckbuilder or roguelike! Instead, this game is a horror survival visual novel with interrogation and investigative aspects. You play as a normal guy, confined to his house at the end of the world as the sun begins to scorch all of humankind of out existence and murderous underground “visitors” emerge. At night you interrogate guests through your front door, deciding based on clues whether or not you let them seek refuge in your house or shy them away as threats. During the day you can interact with those you let inside and examine them closer to determine if they are friend or foe.

A genre of game I have to admit I’ve never gotten into is the visual novel. To me, it always seemed like a minimally interactive way to experience a story in a medium that differentiates itself through interactivity. I didn’t know that’s what I was getting myself into when I booted this game up, and I was mildly surprised that there was more game here than I expected, but not as much as I wanted. I found this game incredibly aimless and confusing at best. I felt like nothing I did had any consequence (or maybe I was accidentally making the correct choices?). I’ll probably end up just watching a Let’s Play youtube video on this one if it ends up generating any buzz.

Ratatan

developed by TVT Co Ltd and Ratata Arts, published by Game Source Entertainment

Ratatan is a sequel of sorts to the Patapon series of rhythm adventure games that started out on the Playstation Portable. Even though I owned a PSP, this game went completely under my radar, despite me also having a significant interest in rhythm games. In this game you accrue little “ratatan” critters that follow you and react to your commands to the beat of music. I have never played a Pikmin game, but I imagine this game shares a lot of DNA with those games, except with music being a key component.

I kind of hated this game, probably due in part to me playing it with a mouse and keyboard. The rhythm aspect seems to barely matter and my commands sometimes didn’t even work the way I intended them to. There’s a good chance I just wasn’t playing it right, but the tutorial hardly did anything to set me on the right path.