Movies & TV
- Something Very Bad is Going to Happen — Started out strong, lost its way a bit midway through, but finished with a flourish and the finale had one of the most memorable horror scenes I’ve seen in a while. Visually striking throughout.
- Obsession — Oh man, this was an intense ride. They took a simple premise (guy makes wish that girl is obsessed with him, and it comes true) and really let it rip. Passes the critical horror movie test of “made me shout or audibly gasp out loud multiple times” (also see Weapons, Together).
- Undertone — This horror flick was more of a deliberate slow burn, but haunting and worth a watch. Some good jump scares.
- The Odyssey — I’m not a movie guy, I didn’t have an English teacher that made me read the book, and plenty of ink has been spilled on this movie already. It feels kind of dumb for me to say anything other than “I liked it! It didn’t feel like a 3 hour movie because I was into the story and the characters. Cristopher Nolan is really good at what he does.”
- The Bear — The first few episodes were awful. It felt to me like there was no script and everyone was doing half-assed improv that didn’t land at all. I remember having this feeling in other seasons, and maybe this is the magic of the show — if you stick with the lows you rope-a-dope into some of the best television you’ve ever seen and it makes you want to be a better person.
- Project Hail Mary — I almost gave up on this one early on (this is a recurring theme, maybe it says more about me?) — I didn’t find anything interesting about Ryan Gosling’s character. I didn’t become emotionally invested until his extraterrestrial buddy Rocky hit the screen, and I fell in love with the bastard. Fist my bump!
Reading
We Are Living in a ‘ChatGPT Flyer Pandemic’ (account required)— this article from Jason Koebler at 404 Media stuck with me, because it acknowledged something I think a lot of people have been noticing for a while. Flyers created with generative AI are everywhere, and they’re almost instantly recognizable. What’s the giveaway? More than anything else, they’re typically insanely dense with content — AI does not like whitespace. It also loves that hand-painted looking lettering. Do you like lists? You must, because AI loves sectioning out lists with icons. Lastly, the illustrative style of imagery used is very distinctive — often hand-drawn, cartoonish, or distressed.
For the past several months, Marcin Wichary has been quietly and consistently writing about “software craft and quality” at his blog Unsung (a nod to one of Helmet’s best songs? I doubt it, but maybe?). That description doesn’t do it justice — Marcin goes deep on some pretty esoteric topics, and every post is written from the POV of someone who cares deeply about details and intimately understanding the way things work.
Music
We checked an item off our bucket list by seeing a show at Red Rocks in Colorado. The Head and the Heart were out there for a couple shows to celebrate the 15th anniversary of their first album. Well, we were there celebrating 25 years of our album called “marriage”, so…
Now, I’m a baby and usually complain about the experience of going to big shows. The concession, merch, and bathroom lines are always a mile long. Getting out of my seat to do anything means climbing over dozens of people. And as an LA suburbanite, I can reliably count on tacking 3+ hours on to my night navigating the crowds and traffic getting there and back.
Red Rocks was so chill. We booked one of the cushy buses in from Denver, and then took a short stroll from the parking lot and through the rocks into the venue. Once we were inside it was easy to get around — we had assigned seats and there was plenty of space in the rows, which you can see in the pic below.
HATH put on a great show, stopping every few songs to have different people from the band tell a story from their 15 years together. The highlight of the night was when they invited their families on stage to play a song together.
Miscellanea
We spent a few days hanging out in Denver, the first time both of us had been there. The main attraction was the show at nearby Red Rocks, but we had a full slate of some fun stuff in the city as well. Some highlights:
- Dinner at The Plimoth — cool little place in the middle of a quaint neighborhood, everything we had off the from-scratch menu blew us away
- Breakfast at Stowaway Kitchen — loved the vibe and food here, and was a short walk to The Denver Central Market and a bunch of cool shops
- Museum of Illusions — unexpectedly fun, we felt like kids playing with all the hands-on exhibits
- Drinks at The Cruise Room — almost 100 year-old bar with some really interesting history and decor inspired by the Queen Mary
- The National Ballpark Museum — what a great collection, right by the stadium
- Lunch and beers at Evans School — what a cool old building that used to be a school, we ate down in the former boiler room
- Beers at Westbound and Down (in Denver Milk Market) — fun, lively place to hang before the Rockies game
- Rockies game at Coors Field — my favorite thing was that the ushers made us wait until an at bat ends before we could return to our seats, wish that was the standard at all stadiums
- Breakfast at Onefold — cool breakfast place by Union Station, the plan was to check out the Museum of Contemporary Art afterwards but the bastards were closed so we walked down to the river
- The Odyssey at Alamo Drafthouse — you can order food and drinks from your phone during the movie and they’ll deliver it to your seat, pretty cool and necessary for a 3 hour movie 🍻
- Drinks at Union Lodge No. 1 — old school bar with mostly the classics, easy call to order an Old Fashioned (est. 1803) off the beautifully designed menu
- Dinner at Barcelona Wine Bar — this place was absolutely hoppin, great atmosphere and always fun ordering a bunch of tapas