Is June the best month of the year?
As a Gemini, I'm not arguing; I'm just passionately educating you.
My birthday month! Woohoo!
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.