- The week started in a healthy fashion: Kim took a day off and we went out to play a game of not-tennis, aka padel. It is not a cheap pastime, and that’s taking the discounted rate we got from going at noon into account. It was not in the least bit overcast and I don’t think I’ll be risking heatstroke like that again. Indoors, maybe; the less strenuous variety (pickleball), maybe. Honestly, the more I think about padel, the more upset I get. It’s clearly a lazy attempt at making tennis slightly easier, and the added walls feel like an afterthought to create differentiation for the sake of it. If you want a more accessible tennis where your strategic game isn’t held up by your poor physique, go straight to pickleball; embrace the unsexiness. If you want to hit a tennis ball hard and run around, just play actual tennis.
- Suitably sweaty already, we then went to the Botanic Gardens for an afternoon walk and lunch at the outdoor restaurant, Park Side. I had a gussied-up luncheon meat sandwich and liked the look of the menu fine — it is after all an affiliated brand of P.S. Cafe, which I frequent a lot — but Xin disliked her own experience there enough to reach out and tell me it was underwhelming. Well, I for one was whelmed. Lmk what you think.
- A couple of days later, I fell sick with a mild flu. Was it the sun exposure, or the mall crowds we braved that evening on the way to see The End of Oak Street? I put the odds at 50-50. The movie was a lot of fun to see in the theater, and stylistically called to mind Spielberg’s best work of the 1980s.
- Laid up at home the next few days, I got a lot of couch business done. Nintendo Switch visual novel Iwakura Aria? All endings completed. It boasts some unique artwork, and the writing isn’t too bad apart from some elements clearly contrived to add shock value. I’d rate it a cautious recommendation: if you’re into Mages’s work and are happy with a quasi-horror story, go ahead. I went in knowing nothing!
- It was a big week in game teasers: I mean GTA VI, obvs, which I’ll probably have to buy when it comes out. It’s like being alive when the Beatles released Abbey Road and deciding you weren’t going to listen to it. This game is going to be the entire culture for at least a fortnight in November. I was also excited to see The Witcher 3 Remastered get announced, especially since I’ll be getting it as a free upgrade for the Switch 2. This is a game I bought with the highest of delusions — a massive 300-hour fantasy RPG is not my jam at all — and ended up quitting because of how ass it looked on the original Switch. Now that it’s receiving a lush graphical upgrade, I’ll finally get to be disappointed by the realization that I don’t actually want to ride around fighting monsters on horseback.
- I also spent more time on Tiny Bookshop after hearing from Cien that she’d finished the game. For one thing, I didn’t even know it had an ending. I took it for an infinite business simulation with a fairly repetitive gameplay loop, made palatable by the fact that you were recommending real book titles for customers to buy out of your mobile caravan store. I thought I’d seen enough of what it had to offer after 10 hours, but I was wrong. (Spoiler warning) I’m now nearing the end, which ironically involves clearing a bunch of tasks so that you can… take over a not-so-tiny bookshop? What’s left for the sequel, sell out to Barnes & Noble and stock board games and blind boxes?
- Playing that game always puts me in the mood to read more, and so I decided to start on a lengthy Neal Stephenson one, the kind that I don’t dare attempt until after I’ve completed my Goodreads annual challenge. I think Goodreads needs to make it about the number of pages you read, not books. Reamde, for instance, is about 1,600 pages on my Kobo, versus 300–400 for most other novels. So if someone committed to 12 books a year, then choosing Reamde effectively ups it to 15.
- Anyway, I’m about 38% through it now and having some of the most fun I’ve had reading a book since… the last Neal Stephenson, maybe. I’m literally laughing out loud and shaking my head at his ability to imbue standard paragraphs with comic timing. Its globetrotting adventure core involves MMORPGs, ransomware, Chinese gold farming, and Russian mobs. Although the 2010-ish setting is quaintly anachronistic — with mentions of characters using WAP, Flickr, Facebook, and encountering problems that could be solved with cryptocurrencies and generative AI — it holds up perfectly and I never want it to end. In that regard, its length is a feature rather than a bug.
- I’ve been listening to the new CZARFACE album featuring Tom Hardy aka Frankie Pulitzer and while he’s not a bad rapper at all (many people say he’s great but I don’t know how much is because it’s Tom Hardy doing something unexpected), I think he’s outclassed here next to the likes of Inspectah Deck; his flow is never as crisp and satisfying, and by flattening his accent to a neutral delivery, it lacks the character of, say, a Staten Island native. The beats are fire, though.
Week 35.26
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