Movies & TV
Kind of a slow month on the content consumption front, for reasons I’ll get into later. The Gentlemen (the Netflix TV series) was fun and fast-paced, everything you’d expect from Guy Ritchie. As I was watching, I thought “awesome, I wonder if this storyline is in the same universe as Snatch or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”. I didn’t know until afterwards that it was a spinoff of the movie The Gentlemen, so I guess I was in the wrong universe.
I also rewatched Lake Mungo, and whoa! I saw this years ago but forgot most of the plot points aside from the chilling ending. I love the true mockumentary format with found footage embedded in the story, and just when the gimmick of finding hidden things in the various media becomes stale it takes a turn.
Looking for some A24 horror movies I’d never seen led me to St. Maud — it had some cool scares and a decent premise but overall it kinda fell flat.
Books
After a hot start, my reading also slowed down in March, but I did finish Parable of the Sower. As a huge fan of dystopian fiction, I’m ashamed it took me so long to read this book. Butler’s vision of a near-term dystopian United States was chilling, and I’m excited to finish Parable of the Talents next.
Music
When I was a younger fella metal was my thing, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve found it really hard to connect with newer metal bands. Last month, though, I found a few bands I’m kinda digging. The Last Ten Seconds of Life and Left to Suffer have been in heavy (ahem) rotation the last few weeks.
Games
NY Times Games has another hit on their hands. I added Strands to my daily repertoire of games last month, and I look forward to playing it every morning. It’s like a hybrid of a word find and a crossword.
Miscellanea
Burying the lede — I started a new job last month! I joined SageSure as a Principal Designer, my first individual contributor role in quite a while. I wanted to make the transition out of management a few jobs ago, but the opportunity never lined up.
One more thing — I qualified for a free smart home device/service called Ting through my home insurance, so I set it up and it’s been running for the past few weeks. Ting claims to “prevent electrical fires before they happen” by monitoring your home’s voltage patterns and detect anomalies that could indicate a potential issue. Seems like a pretty cool “set it and forget it” service.