How’s everyone holding up? I had a brief-but-bad mental health episode yesterday panicking over every single element of my life, which ironically means today I’m feeling very well rested. Going to bed three times in one day will do that sort of thing for you. And, I guess, eating a tube of Pringles with flavors they don’t sell in America. The Burger King Bacon Double Cheese XL flavor? NOT GOOD!

What caused the mental health episode? Why, that’s a story for another time! (Honestly, a combination of utter exhaustion and a minor conversation that set off a spiral that I was in denial about being a spiral until I slept it off and was like, “Damn, that sure was a spiral.”)

That said, the most relaxing moment I’ve had during Edinburgh Fringe was pretending to be a dead body on stage for 30 minutes, so let’s not dig too deep into what that might mean. Read on and you’ll eventually find out more!

I’m still at Edinburgh, and I’ve resumed by run of Shit Arcade. We’ve had two fantastic shows so far in this half of the run and I’ve got seven more to go. I’ve loved doing these shows, but passing the mark where the metaphorical announcer screams, “CHECKPOINT” was a relief. Also, if you want proof that I write too much about video games, the notes app I’m writing this in kept trying to change “relief” to “Reggie.”

Also, we need to confront the fact that autocorrect has gotten severely, significantly worse over the last few years. It’s stopped trying to fix words that you don’t know how to spell and just replacing random words. I just turned off autocorrect and predictive text entirely on every Apple device I own because this shit was driving me insane. But autocorrect at least used to TRY to suggest the correct word (outside of replacing “fuck” with “duck”). Earlier it also tried to adjust “change” to “calamari,” which makes so little sense that it feels like AI is just fucking with me now for being negative.

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I think part of the exhaustion I’ve had is performing this show so many times and working what amounts to two nearly full-time jobs at once this month, as well as three freelance assignments that each will take a four or five hours. All are projects I’m extremely excited about and that pay human money, so I’m very grateful and happy to have them. Like, I literally bounced up and down like fucking Tigger at getting those two big projects, so we’re all smiles there. But it’s all certainly forced me back into college cram mode.

As it stands right now, I’m in a lovely cafe in the middle of a beautiful city writing on a ridiculous fold-out keyboard on a ridiculous iPad Mini that I’m also using to read comic books. So, at least the work - that is, the work that I can do in public, which sounds very secretive (and a lie) but is just me fearing an NDA-adjacent lawyer knifing me to death - is pleasant. I want to stay in all these companies’ good graces because the entertainment industry, she is not doing too hot.

I’ve also been lucky enough to do stand-up a few times in the city, which has been fun. The odd thing about Fringe is that you sometimes get mostly American audiences. That’s not bad, but it is funny to be like, “I really gotta make sure I connect with this audience, a group of people I’m not normally performing in front of,” and then 80% of the crowd is from the Mid West.

The best thing - outside of my show, which, of course, is the talk of the town - I’ve done so far is John Robertson’s show The Dark Room. The best way I can describe it is an interactive version of old Zork text adventure games. An audience member, or comedian, gets to make choices on the the screen such as “Go North” or “Turn on Light,” which often results in John and the entire audience screaming, “YOU CAN’T BECAUSE YOU’RE IN A DARK, DARK ROOM!”

During the sold-out show, I was brought on stage and John was kind enough to let me promote Shit Arcade three times over the course of the night. I made some bad choices on stage and my video game self ended up dying. I’ve made a lot of bad choices that led to dying on stage before, so this wasn’t a completely new experience.

However, John asked me if I wanted to die on stage and stay dead. Which I did. I crumbled to the floor and stared forward, open-eyed, dead. Luckily, I landed right at an angle where I could see the projector screen which basically meant I got to watch half of a Fringe show while comfortably lying on the floor. I was complimented more than once for being good at being a dead body, something I’ve told myself in the mirror more times than I can count.

The fun part was a moment when John - and the audience - inexplicably started singing that Proclaimers son, 500 Miles. As other comedians came out on stage and began stomping to the beat, I, a dead man, reached out my hand and slapped the stage in rhythm, which actually got a fantastic reaction. I kind of imagined the old dancing skeletons from that old, old, old Disney cartoon and just went with that. I’m glad I did. It’s one of those silly, stupid, insignificant moments on stage where you make a fun choice and you know it’s something you’ll remember.

I’m having a great time, and I’ve got only seven shows left to go, but I think I’m ready to be back home in my own big, adult bed in a room with an air conditioner that goes below 80 degrees and is in a system of measurement I understand. I have learned a lot of painful, expensive lessons on promotion and what works and what doesn’t work, but I’ve also made Shit Arcade much, much better than it’s ever been before. I’ve met great comedians. I’ve met great producers. I’ve met great audience members who are now legitimate friends.

In conclusion, to sum up, that is how I spent my summer vacation.

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Hello again from Edinburgh!

Another late one, but I’m considering making a few changes to this newsletter after Fringe is over. Each of these takes me a little time to write, so I might split them into smaller things based on interest over the week. I feel like my audience is 1/3 comedians, 1/3 gaming people, and 1/3 people who like me ranting about politics with a futility bordering on self-inflicted madness. So maybe it’d be better if I broke up posts that way over the course of the week with maybe one bigger post every so often.

If any of you have thoughts on how you’d like this info broken down, please let me know. I just worry it’s giving whiplash when I’m like, “The flames of this country’s cruelty shall burn the just and the unjust alike” and then the next section is, “You won’t believe what this new Pokémon game is like!”

After Fringe is over, I’m also going to finally set up a tipping jar, I think. “I think” here meaning, “If I build the emotional energy to do something other than eating, purchasing things online, or asking my friends if they have jobs I can have, thereby making them question our friendships as anything other than transactional.”

I’m not quite ready to make this Subscribers Only™, if only because I don’t want to set expectations for people that I can’t always keep. At the current moment, I’d rather get $1 if you liked something than make you pay $5 a month and slowly slide off into nothingness until you finally got around to canceling. The thing about me is that I’m really good at selling myself. I’m such a sack of shit. God should’ve killed me.

Edinburgh’s been fantastic. I’ve had the last few days of the show off, with Shit Arcade resuming 23-31. During that time I’ve been seeing a few shows (and appearing on a couple shows) while working on two other projects that are exciting but won’t get announced until December at the earliest. I’m relatively sure that one (and probably both) of these won’t be revealed until 2027, which is a terrifying year in the future long after I thought Jesus would come back. I’d hint what they are, but neither are owned or created by me and I’ve signed NDAs in which large corporations have permission to ship me to a prison planet where I fight for their enjoyment.

But! It feels oddly luxuriant and ridiculous writing comedy lines in a cafe overlooking a castle! And it feels oddly luxuriant and ridiculous to have any work at all during this time.

I’m still enjoying the festival, but I do see how it can dry you out and make you feel desiccated like a corpse left in the sand. There’s a lot to do and a lot to see and the weather in Scotland never makes up its mind. You need to constantly carry an umbrella, a heavy sweatshirt, and a personal cooling fan. On the other hand, Edinburgh has shot to the top of my list of cities I’d live in if money were no object and governments were ready to take people whose skillset was, “Knows a lot about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

As I’ve said, there is so much to see and do during the festival. A friend who lives here told me that outside of Fringe, Edinburgh has about 500,000 people buzzing about. During Fringe, that balloons to about 3,000,000, which is fucking insane. Here’s the craziest fact: Did you know people come to the festival to just see things? There are people here who aren’t performing or reviewing or representing or buying or selling anything! I’ve met them. There are human beings that just enjoy absorbing art without the constant fear of not being good enough. What a world they must have. What marvels they must see. To not watch friends’ careers rise and fall like the statue of Ozymandias with a placard reading, “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and get half off tonight if you mention my podcast!”

I could explain what the above means and where it was from, but would it even matter? Would you shed a tear if you knew?

In the next post, I’ll probably have a better breakdown of the shows I’ve loved and people I’ve loved and the good times we’ve shared together and all the lessons we’ve learned along the way and how that’s the real treasure of the festival and then realize that the “real treasure of the festival” just emptied my bank account, which itself is the “real treasure of the festival” for someone else. My only battle against AI writing is the fact that my personal style is best described as “Mr. Magoo walking through an active construction site.”

So maybe I’ll start doing smaller chunks, and maybe I’ll be able to build a schedule that finally makes this more financially worth it for me to spend a few hours on every week. I enjoy talking to you all, but I also gotta wet my beak a bit / not panic about where and when my next paycheck will come. At the very least, I hope I can provide something that makes a few of you buy me a couple hamburgers a month. If I can get one full trip to Jackson Hole (the restaurant with oversized hamburgers, not the town), then I’ve done my job.

Remind me to tell you about the indie game that’s basically Pokémon pinball but a full RPG. You won’t believe what it’s like!

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Hello from Edinburgh Fringe, what I imagine the actual Christian Hell looks like if they decided to do ironic punishments for people in the performing arts.

I know I’m a day late with my regular Tuesday newsletter, but my brain has been broken by doing Shit Arcade for over a week straight while seeing friends’ shows and fighting through throngs of crowds that make Times Square look like a vast, empty plain through which one gently walks, touching stalks of grain, after you die in honorable battle. Does this involve carrying a very large sheet of multiple cardboard boxes taped together for a game about toilet paper? Yes! Yes, it does!

To be fair, I’m having a great time at Fringe with my show and we’ve had some truly incredible shows. I’d say of the eight I’ve done so far, all but one have been great. Which, honestly, for a show that switches up games and comedians each time, isn’t a bad hit rate. I’ve also been learning a lot of (cough, painful, cough, expensive) lessons about what to do next time. But, the fact that there is a “next time” in my head should tell you I’m being a bit facetious in my description of the festival.

It’s just that… It’s massive. You know that. I know you know that. I even knew that going in. But I’ve done Just For Laughs and the Netflix Is A Joke Festival and both were tiny compared to this in terms of pure fucking chaos. Every street is packed with magicians doing tricks while giving out flyers, musical theater actors singing while giving out flyers, and comedians dressed in funny clothes because nobody can hear their jokes while giving out flyers. There are also, of course, religious people giving out flyers unrelated to any show at all.

There is just so, so, so, so, so much art going on that it’s staggering. If you ever need a powerful reminder that you are not the main character of reality, this is the festival for you. You can see dozens of shows at literally any point of the day, from the early morning until late at night. You can see one-person-shows. You can see chaotic improv. You can see D&D actual plays. You can see live game shows. Every where you look there is someone’s story or idea or biggest hope on a poster board that probably cost them £500 to put on a wall that might or might not end up behind a dumpster.

You know in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, where he walks through a Hollywood backlot and sees like wild animals and showgirls and all that shit? That’s kind of the vibe, except the wild animals are trying to get the showgirls to support their show because a reviewer might be coming. But the good news is, the wild animals are willing to return the favor as long as tickets are comped. A fucking UFO could land in the middle of this festival and most people would think it was promotion for a celebrity who didn’t need the boost.

But my shows have been a lot of fun. Stressful, yes. But I’ve loved working with Gilded Balloon, the company under whose umbrella somehow both my and Amanda Knox’s show fall. And I’ve met dozens of comedians both on my show and off. We’ve had people from all over the world - even including outside of America! I was especially delighted to see my friend Keza MacDonald, a great author and the video game editor for the Guardian, kill it on stage. Doing this show again and again and again has allowed me to refine it, change it, stretch it, and pull it apart. That said, my body and mind feels like it’s undergone a similar process.

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Oh God. I made a whole new cardboard box thing and just looked outside and it’s pouring. Oh God. No. This isn’t a bit. I heard rain and stopped to look out my window. Let’s see how it looks in 30 when I’m going to leave for my show. The game “Give Me Toilet Paper” might be off the menu tonight. Ew on “menu.”

As much dumb as I’m acting, I really have had some magic moments during my show. I watched a kid who must’ve been 12 or 13 whoop the shit out of two different comedians as Santa Claus in Fight of Gods. A retired game designer at my last show stopped me after to tell me the days of when she was forced to work on bad vanity video game projects starring rappers who you forgot ever existed. A crowd of fifty people cheering when someone finally, finally gets out of the hole in E.T. and then screaming when he falls right back in is a delight. It’s a chaotic, messy, silly show that sometimes goes off the rails and sometimes never starts on the rails. But it’s mine and I get to do it in the middle of hundreds, if not thousands, of other shows from people.

Edinburgh Fringe is a special place. It really is where creatives from all over the world are putting up their art for people to see. Part of the reason it’s so crowded is because it’s not simply run by one guiding body that says “yes” or “no” to a show. But that’s also why it’s so great and so necessary. There are fewer gatekeepers here. A lot of really, really, really old literal gates. But fewer people telling you “go away.” Yes, there are better promotional companies to team up with. Yes, there you do need to find a venue through said company or on your own. But this festival feels democratic in a crazy, mind-breaking way. Whether you’re a world famous comedian or a weirdo with a dream, there’s a chance you can sell out a show here and get press and get love for your work. That’s special. There is far more art for art’s sake here than I’ve seen at most festivals. And, to be honest, far less lying to one’s self about it, too.

On the other hand, as someone who lives in New York City, it takes a special kind of patience and self-awareness to not shout, “FUCKING WALK ALREADY!” to people gathered around a sidewalk clown. “Sidewalk clown” actually sounds like a good Law & Order insult, but I do mean clowns. There are clowns here. You can see everything. You can see anything. There are multiple Shrek parodies, which I know is my main demographic.

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And, again, the city is so beautiful it hurts. Much of the architecture in the older parts of the city have been maintained and are still used. I’m staying in a place that looks like it was once a fortress but was probably something simple and I’m stupid. A few blocks away from my place, I can see castles and palaces and mountains. I’ve seen ancient artifacts and Edwardian art and had a lot of meat pies. We need to do meat pies better in America, folks. We have them. I’m not dismissing the traffic-light-yellow beef patty by any means. I’ve lived off those since high school and, when I die, I hope to see a final score screen with how many thousands I ate. But, as a nation, we’re really being left behind in both healthcare and savory baked goods.

Anyway. Sorry for the typos. I’ve got to put pants on and run out into the rain so I can force some poor saps to play Bible Adventures on the NES.

I’m more terrified than I’ve ever been in my life. I’m terrified to be doing over a dozen shows of Shit Arcade in a new country.

Actually, that’s not completely true. Here are some things I’ve been more terrified of:

• Aliens abducting me from my room (ages 6-14)

• Asking for a divorce

• Vampires murdering me in the woods (ages 6-17)

• The ghost house in Mario 64 (ages 12-16)

• My parents screaming through their bedroom door

• Every day when I open my phone (ages 25-42)

But, honestly, taking this show to a new country is one of the scariest professional leaps I’ve ever taken. In reality, I know it’ll all be fine. We’ve got ticket sales and, barring a truly memorable disaster, I’m sure the show will run with a handful of hitches and be a good time. And even if there’s a memorable disaster, at least the word “memorable” will make it something I can talk about for years.

I’ve spent months prepping for this show, sometimes in the right way (lots of games, lots of testing games, lots of backup tech) and the wrong way (I probably could’ve started marketing this and inviting industry to come earlier). And now, outside of some last-minute show promoting, I’ve basically done everything I can do.

All I’ve got in front of me are over a dozen shows. But I know how to do this show. I’ve done it many, many, many times before. Will the material hold up in front of another country’s audience? Hopefully! Video games are pretty universal and Edinburgh is a big video game town. Plus, the fact that I’ve got physical copies of games is going to add some nice flavor now that more and more is heading to digital.

But the fact is, I’m scared. I’m scared I’ll let down the crowds. I’m scared I’ll let down my reps who’ve put a decent amount of work into this, too. I’m scared that I’ll put together a show that’s less than ideal, less than what I want. I’m scared that this is a fool’s errand, even though I very much already know it is. Then again, so is all of comedy.

The fact is, part of the reason I’m even doing this is because I’m scared. I’ve fallen into a comfort zone with my comedy and while this certainly falls under the banner of “video games comedy show I’ve done before,” this is the farthest away I’ve done it and in an international arts festival I’ve never visited before.

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It’s healthy to take a jump on something terrifying. I know myself. I know there’s a deep, overwhelming desire to do nothing with the rest of my life. Literally, just find a way to make what I’ve got stretch as far as it’ll go and just see what happens after that. It’s a strong urge to give up that sometimes feels stronger than any other emotion I’ve got.

But it’s not an emotion I’d like to give into. As much as I want that soft comfort of feeling like you’re being emotionally strangled to death by pillow hands, I don’t feel content with it. I need to keep doing things and, more important than that, new things (or at least old things in new places).

Fortunately, the way I’m doing this life tune-up is through a really fun show with really fun performers starting tomorrow.

Oh God, it’s tomorrow!

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I admit I’m pretty stressed out at the moment - both because I’m preparing for a month-long comedy festival in another country and because, well, every other thing happening on the planet.

Shit Arcade @ Edinburgh

Preparations for Shit Arcade in Edinburgh have been going well, and I’m delighted to say that we’re actually selling tickets, which was not a certainty by any stretch of the imagination. But doing over a dozen different video game comedy shows is going to be a lot of work and I want to get it right. I’ve got good games lined up and some great guests booked, but I really want to make sure the audience has a good time. And… I’m nervous about that? Not nervous as in I expect to fail. More like it’s what’s taking up a massive, unfathomable amount of headspace.

My fear regarding any creative endeavor is less that nobody buys it / sees it / watches it / reads it / plays it and more that people do show up and have a bad time. So that’s my big, big goal for the next month: Not deliver the worst experience possible. We’re straight up aiming for a review average above “one star.” We shall see what we achieve.

That said, I’ve got multiple Austin Powers games ready to go.

Resident Evil, Sam Brown, & The Zach Cregger Phone Call

Way back when I was in LA, I recorded an episode of Sam Brown’s podcast. We discussed video game movies and Sam even called fellow Whitest Kids U’Know alum Zach Cregger to talk the Resident Evil movie. I got to ask the dumbest possible question.

It’s crazy to think I’ve known these folks for about twenty-ish years, if not quite that. I met a former longterm girlfriend after opening for the Whitest Kids U’Know, which is probably far more than I’ve ever done for them.

Odyssey-Expert Emily Wilson Didn’t Like The Odyssey: The Movie: Based On The Odyssey

I really enjoyed Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. I don’t have the energy to write a long reason why and I don’t think many people would care. I had a good time at the movies watching monsters get mad and Matt Damon get sad. It’s a very “put on in the background while doing things” movie and I’m sure I’ll live that life once it’s available on a handsome VHS home video. Will it be like Titanic and require two whole tapes? What a time to be alive!

Anyway, Emily Wilson, a classicist whose translation Nolan cited while promoting the film, recently wrote that she kind of hated it. Which is both her prerogative and her area of knowledge. Her dislike of the film mostly comes from a passionate respect for the source material and a belief that Nolan is essentially breaking the toys by forcing them to fit a more modern narrative theme about regret. I disagree with a lot of her takeaway, although I do appreciate her point that a major scene in the film was shot in an occupied territory.

That said, she is an expert in Homer and I’m an expert in having to go to the bathroom too much in the morning because I wanted to eat more food at night. I’m less attached to sticking to original literary material, so I think I’m more comfortable seeing it tell a familiar story with an unfamiliar emphasis. Wilson believes that the resulting movie is less than the sum of its parts, which is fair. I kind of felt that way about the Super Mario Galaxy movie. And that movie had a lot of Super Mario Odyssey in it!

I’ve seen some people sound vaguely distressed by Wilson’s review, as if they had to change their minds about something they liked because they were told it wasn’t as good as they thought. Which is odd to me because… Who cares? It’s an opinion on a movie. An expert opinion, yes, but it’s still an opinion. You can enjoy a movie without permission from an authority figure. There is no Mayor of Entertainment who will tell you what’s good or not. You just have to enjoy something. Or not enjoy something. But the choice might just be yours.

There’s also a contingent of people who you can hear breathing a sigh of relief and saying, “FINALLY,” as if the correct person had finally allowed them to say they disliked a popular blockbuster movie. Same thing. Just say you didn’t like it. There is no authority necessary here. You don’t need to earn a little scented sticker in order to have an opinion.

I’m glad that Wilson wrote her editorial because it actually makes things more fun when experts pipe up and disagree. I know that sentence sounded sarcastic, but I actually do mean that. Debating whether or not a piece of art is good is itself part of the joy of art. It’s not a cheat sheet to look at during the test to see if you’re experiencing the art correctly.

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Side Note On Racists & The Odyssey

Okay, though.

Considering all this, it’s kind of ironic that Emily Wilson has been vilified by right wing weirdos as making the Odyssey “woke” with her womanly translation (which is just a good translation but doesn’t sound like the King James Bible, so big brains think it’s less special). Because Nolan had cited her early on, there was the assumption that it was her fault that Nolan made any choices they didn’t like. I’ve seen so, so, so many posts shitting on her and her work by people whose only knowledge of how translation works is getting mad if an anime’s English voice actor is fired for sexual harassment.

Emily Wilson definitely doesn’t agree with their reasons for being mad at The Odyssey (she’s not terrified of a black Helen of Troy because she is not a racist adult baby), but she’s definitely not happy with changes from the canon. For a movie that became the center of a right wing backlash, there really wasn’t much talk about the poem’s focus on masculinity, honor, and glory. Wilson probably would agree with a lot of critics that Matt Damon’s sad boy cry guy Odysseus isn’t quite what Homer had been talking about.

She’s not wrong there. Nolan did make changes. He wasn’t really quiet about them, to be honest. But there’s something darkly funny that the most insane anti-fans spent months attacking someone who kind of agrees with them on some broad strokes. It’s almost like they saw she was a woman who knew a lot about Homer and decided she was the enemy. Which, let’s be honest, they still think she is because she’s a woman with opinions.

We live in such a stupid time.

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Happy Tuesday! How are you?

This whole month has been a bit hectic preparing for Edinburgh with Shit Arcade, a thing I find extremely terrifying. And if you want to see that terror, here’s a link to tickets! Tell your UK friends! Call them. Right now. Don’t text first. Call them so they think something’s wrong. When they pick up, tell them about this show. Please, won’t you do that? Please, won’t you?

As you can probably tell, my mind is a bit melted right now. I’m doing my best.

Trump Curses The World Cup

Far be it from me to criticize anyone’s sports choices, especially when I spent most of my childhood saying the Harlem Globetrotters were my favorite team.

But, hey, so, Trump really curses sports teams, huh? He almost sank the Knicks. Then he picked Argentina for the World Cup. He even said he’s interested in changing America’s stance on the Falkland Islands issue, although that probably comes after someone makes a coloring book to give him the shortest possible summary of the Falkland Islands issue.

I’m not an expert at soccer, and I can’t give some detailed explanation on why we all knew it would go this way anyway. All I know is that our country’s leader is kind of a living pestilence that turns everything he touches to decay. That’s not a new observation. There are no new observations left about that guy.

It’s just the same observation over and over: Our country chose the least qualified person on Earth who’s also the worst person on Earth and now he’s doing the best to ruin said Earth. People got bored with things being too easy. They tricked themselves into believing that being comfortably bored is the same as being oppressed.

Anyway, once Argentina lost, the big guy pretended he was all in favor of Spain and refused to leave the stage as they celebrated, which caused Spain to Photoshop him out of the picture. Which is really funny and the path that you hope history takes with him.

Not a big consolation, but at least the world knows he’s a giant embarrassment. The world also hates my entire country now, but I don’t blame them. We’re literally throwing tariffs at Canada because of a fire that they did not want nor had any control over.

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The Woke Odyssey

I really liked Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. It even ends in a way that makes you think they could do The Odyssey 2: Dark Odysseus Rising.

The movie itself is really, really good. The Cyclops sequence is fucking horrifying and the Circe section of the film is so deeply disturbing. The fact that a lot of the Circe scene itself was practical effects made it even grosser. The animatronics and puppets really give you a feel for her fucking the soldiers up, spoiler alert. I’m actually not sure how much of a 3,000-year-old poem you can spoil.

Since I’m too online, I was inundated with the weird “woke” Odyssey shit. Because Nolan cast a Black woman to play Helen (and her sister) and a trans man to play Sinon (and not Achilles). Folks lost their minds over two actors appearing in the film for a total of, like, ten minutes.

Two things on this: One, they’re both great actors, so the scenes work. I’m not sure casting some Aryan-looking models (which is hilariously what they mean when they think of ancient Mediterranean cultures) could’ve done better. Probably not. Also, the movie is so diverse that it doesn’t seem like some crazy choice - it just is.

Weirdos wanted to act like The Odyssey is some made-up strawman college student with blue hair talking about acceptance. It’s actually a pretty standard dad movie in terms of being about loyalty and humility and fighting for your family. The whole movie pivots around the idea that we’ve lost the way we treat strangers and each other, which I guess is now a Left-leaning theme? It’s weird this ever became a controversy.

I know it’s all made up for YouTubers and podcasters and streamers to tell fans what to think and get them riled up so they come back for more opinions they can have.

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That’s all I got for today! Thanks for everything! I hope this email finds you well! I hope this email finds everyone well!

I’m currently preparing for my run of Shit Arcade in Edinburgh this August. I’ve got something along the lines of 90 cartridges and discs that I’ve got to pack for an international trip, as well as backup emulators on a computer and a MISTer. I’m trying to do a few different games every show, so I’ve got to pack basically a whole suitcase of toys. It’s really going to look suspicious, which is wonderful. I’ve got a lot of paperwork to prove I’m not shady, but I’m still excited for customs to search that bad and ask with tears in their eyes how I got to this point.

Why not put that there like an internet ad, eh? Why not indeed.

I’m incredibly nervous for the run. People keep telling me, “Hey, don’t worry if there’s low attendance. That happens a lot to shows without a big celebrity name attached.” But that’s not my fear. My fear is doing the show for a packed crowd that stares at me in silence until one person stands up and points, screaming, “He’s a phony! Hey, everyone! Everyone, look! A phony and a fouler!” Then someone would come up behind me with a wire hanger shaped into a loop and that’s the end of old Mike Drucker.

I don’t think the chances of that are super high, but you never know.

Sam Neill Died

Sad, tragic, one of the best actors to ever do it.

Lindsey Graham Died

Happy, funny, one of the worst people to do nothing to help the world.

Do You Have More On Sam Neill?

Sam Neill never felt like he was playing Sam Neill. His characters are so different from each other that it’s almost shocking. He’s filled with wonder as Alan Grant in Jurassic Park. He’s filled with horror as John Trent in In The Mouth of Madness. He’s a puppet for evil in Event Horizon. Those are the movies that first come to mind although he’s been incredible in everything from Peaky Blinders to Merlin, a miniseries I haven’t seen in decades and intend to watch again.

It’s a little bit of a cliche to say that actors disappear into roles. And, to be fair, whenever Sam Neill was in a movie, I’d think, “Hey, it’s Sam Neill!” But he could play such a wide variety of characters while always grounding them or inverting them through his (initially) calm exterior. He had an ability to surprise in every role, to deliver something you weren’t quite expecting.

The man was a singular talent. For me, and a lot of my generation, or even a lot of generations plural, we first knew and loved him in Jurassic Park. That look of wonder on his face as he sees real live dinosaurs will always be imprinted on my brain as one of the best movie scenes of all time. I’ll miss seeing him in things but I love that he’s still got movies coming out this year.

Do You Have More On Lindsey Graham?

No, but it felt funny to drop the Ghostbusters logo here.

Is It Fair To Compare Two Very Different People Who Simply Happened To Die Near The Same Time?

Yes. Yes it is.

What If Someone Made Fun Of You When You Died?

If it’s funny, add them to my will. Every solid burn gets one free video game from the big DVD binder.

Will It Be Creepy If You Die Before The Next Post?

No. Let’s be honest: It would not affect anyone’s day. Not even myself writing questions in the second person.

Can We Talk About Something Else?

Sure, what’s on your mind?

I Dunno, I’ve Been Pretty Tired Lately, Pretty Sad, It All Seems Inescapable

You and me both, buddy. I’m getting real tired, and in a way that goes deeper than the muscle. I don’t give a shit if Google Docs wants to change that “real” to “really.” Autocorrect would suck far less if it understood colloquial phrasing. I dunno. We all gotta keep going. If life has proven anything for us, it’s that it’s fun to outlive bad people. Maybe the point of life is outliving bad people!

Is There Anything I Can Do?

More exercise? More water? Stretching in the morning? I’m trying. I’m trying.

Sorry

No, don’t be.

New McSweeney’s Piece!

After that news story about the rich people in the Peter Thiel secret society where they talk about building cults and shit, I wrote this silly thing for McSweeney’s. It’s one of my favorite short bits I’ve written in a little while. It’s called, “My Critics Are Missing The Nuance Of My Membership In The Wealthy People Hunting Poor People For Sport Club.” That pretty much tells you what you need to know about the bit!

That’s all I got for today. Hope you’re doing well! May God help you.

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How are you? It’s been an odd week for me, but hopefully the worst of it’s over. That sounds mysterious or that I’m hinting at something, but really it’s just family stuff and getting older. I’d say nothing to write home about, but it’s literally happening to someone who lives in the “home” I’d write to, so they’re already aware. I think you get it. I’m still typing anyway. Who needs AI when your brain can blank out and just type sentences that barely make sense? Like this one. Or this one. Or this one.

• So America’s World Cup team lost to Belgium after the president put his finger on the scales to bring our number one player back from suspension. I would’ve loved our team to do well, but I’m kinda glad they lost after the U.S. government tried to cheat in their favor. It sucks that a surprisingly decent run is now marred by “you cheated and you couldn’t even win.” But I kinda think it would’ve sucked way, way, way more to win and have a giant asterisk next to their names for all eternity. Better to be an embarrassing footnote in history than an eternal scandal hated by everybody. At least, that’s what my grandma’s tombstone says.

  

• It is kinda funny that the Belgian team make fun of Trump’s little double-jerk-off dance.

• So Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce got married at Madison Square Garden, a facility that’s best known for nosebleed seats that make you feel like you’re going to fall to your death and indoor street food that costs three Michelin star prices. I respect that it has built in security and space for 1,000 guests, most of which are rich and famous people, but what an odd place to get married. I’m not upset about it as some people are, because I never expected a billionaire international superstar to book a mid-sized house that’s been converted into a wedding space. And while having 1,000 rich people on an island is a fun way to start a new Hunger Games, I’m not sure we’d have really thought that it was a more normal people option. Anyway, congratulations to all who were involved and everyone who lied about going since there are NDAs so who’s gonna know?

  

• Side note, we should all get married in Madison Square Garden like the Moonies. Imagine how intimidating that is for every person you invite. Then again, I don’t have many close friends, so I’m not sure a space that sits tens of thousands is going to be great when I’ve got, like, three people I played Magic: The Gathering with in 2013. Weddings really teach you who’s got friends and who doesn’t and hooooo boy, do I not have a lot of friends who’d be willing to come to a wedding. Anyway, we should all do a big mass wedding at Madison Square Garden so everyone thinks we’ve got a cult going.

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• Sony announced that PlayStation games won’t come on physical discs starting in 2028, which is sad and makes archiving games harder and makes ironically buying really bad video games for an Edinburgh Fringe show more difficult. It’s clearly a business decision, I get that. Most sales are digital. People like getting a game instantly rather than waiting for it in the mail, and as game sizes balloon and often require day-one patches, it gets harder and harder to justify putting it on a disc. For them. For me, owning the physical copy of the game makes it feel more real. Hell, some of my most prized possessions are physical copies of games I’ve worked on. Having that go away for developers and workers and creatives is a real bummer. But making games less accessible for fans - that is, harder to trade, impossible to sell, even more impossible to suddenly find ten years from now at a retro game show.

• Xbox fired thousands of people, including friends of mine. This just happened and I don’t want to pour salt in any wounds, but it’s kind of wild that the biggest corporations on Earth keep buying up other entertainment companies, put an immense amount of debt and pressure on them, don’t get the return they want since those companies never made that return to begin with, and then strip it for parts so they can sell all the copper wiring. This has happened in games, movies, TV, book publishing, you name it. I’m not sure if it’s happened in music because I know a lot less about that industry but I’m gonna make a wild guess that “yes” is the answer. But, hey! At least we get a choice between a console where you don’t own the games and a console where the people who make the games don’t get health insurance anymore.

• I should note that business decisions are not the fault of the individual developers, so it sucks that people at first party studios are getting shit on for this. I’m guessing approximately zero of the actual people making the games are thrilled for mass layoffs or losing physical versions of their products.

That’s all I got for now! I’ve got to get back to work.

I hope your weeks are good. Maybe I’ll try to post more. I say that all the time. I don’t. But I’m thinking about it!

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I don’t know how I should feel about the 4th of July right now. I’m definitely not sure how I should feel about America right now. Bad? Yeah. Worried? All the time. Hungry? Yes, I am, thank you for asking.

There’s always, always, always been an undercurrent (actually more of an overcurrent) of bigotry in America. We’re a country that was built on slavery and cheap immigrant labor. And that doesn’t even include prison labor which itself is basically also slavery in a lot of states. From the Civil War to World War II, we’ve usually been on the right side of history only after someone’s really forced the issue. We’re a nation that somehow achieves greatness when we have to make a loud “ooof” sound when finally getting off the couch.

But when I was growing up, a major, major, major part of the American mythos was the whole melting pot thing. I don’t mean movies or TV shows. I mean textbooks. The way teachers talked. There was always an emphasis that anyone could make it here, and the more that people from around the world bring to this country, the better we are. I grew up in Florida going to public school, so it’s not like I was stuffed into a hardcore leftist collective. And let’s not forget that Superman, possibly the world’s most famous fictional immigrant, was against bigotry before my parents were born:

Now, I know that some asshole could argue that “immigration made this country a powerhouse in the 20th century” is also propaganda. Sure, maybe. Propaganda we’ve been teaching children for nearly a century, but fine, I guess, whatever. It just didn’t seem like that much of a controversial stance, even when radio hosts were talking about “feminazis,” people on TV were blaming Rodney King the brutality he faced, and gay marriage was still an outrageous idea to most of the country. Weirdly it seems more controversial now, just as a lot of people are going right back to being furious that women are working, black people are pilots, and gay couples are in cereal commercials. Or they were always there and I was lucky enough to not feel that heat. Probably both.

Unfortunately, it’s simply gotten worse because a large portion of the country has decided that trans people can be sacrificed for a better harvest. Then again, we’re a country that used to put lynched people on postcards. We’ve always sacrificed other humans for the harvest - including in the most real world, actually-happened interpretation of that sentence.

It feels insanely obtuse to act like things in America only got bad just now. It’s also fair to say that I’m probably at the lower end of the people in danger of being thrown in prison for moving a box of pamphlets. I’m a fat, bald, white dude with glasses and a face that appears to always be in some state of ugly resentment. In other words, I look like 90% of the people they have rounding up grandmoms and babies. Hell, I don’t even have a car that can be suddenly pulled over, potentially leading to a life-altering event. Nobody’s ever watched me in a store that didn’t sell baked goods reachable from my side of the counter.

Besides the fact that this is woefully unfair, all this sad, horrible shit reminds me that I really do believe that the kernels of America’s greatness come from the things other people bring here. Our holidays, our foods, our sports, our literature, our science, our movies, our shows, our music, and our games wouldn’t be nearly as special if we only had contributions from people who descended from the pilgrims. I don’t say that to be progressive, I say that because it’s overtly fucking true.

Let’s look at the best parts of America.

Pizza! Italian, if changed a bit.

Hot dogs! German and Austrian, if made slightly grosser.

Chinese food! Obvious where that came from, but pretty different from what Chinese people expect from culturally Chinese food in China.

Basketball! Invented by a Canadian man living in America.

Rock and roll! Well, that is singularly American. As is the fact it was basically lifted from Black musicians and handed to white ones for profitability. Not to mention that a large percentage of the greatest rock musicians of all time are from across the pond.

Actually, most of our pop culture works that way. There is no “legacy American” (a phrase that racist people love) who could’ve written a song that, over three decades later, still makes us unable to lie about our love of big butts. I’m only half joking on this one. That’s one of the greatest pop songs ever written. It will live on long after we’re dead.

The history of video games, a thing I’ve been known to love, wouldn’t have been the same if Jerry Lawson didn’t help invent cartridges. Now he’d be called a DEI hire by people using DEI to use a different word that starts with a different letter.

Movies and TV! European directors showed us what a special effects masterpiece looked like long before we got nearly as good. Foreign-born actors played some of our most famous movie monsters, which themselves were based mostly on books and legends that came from other countries. Would I Love Lucy have been the same without Ricky Ricardo?

Rod Serling was born to Jewish parents, one of whom was an immigrant. The Twilight Zone is one of the greatest American television shows ever made. Still holds up. Serling’s show talked about racism and bigotry and the horrors of war when half of television was about heroic white cowboys and dastardly Indians. Would The Twilight Zone be the same without Serling’s experiences? Did that give him empathy?

Or how about Christmas? Every country has it, but America does it pretty well. Hell, good old American man Clement Clarke Moore was one of the earliest people to establish Santa Claus as we know him today in A Visit From St. Nicholas. And if there’s anyone who defined the look of Santa Claus, it’s Thomas Nast. Who was born in Germany. He was an immigrant.

Hell, it’s crazy Thomas Nast isn’t mentioned more often in American history since he’s the artist who created a massive amount of America’s greatest icons: Uncle Sam, the Democratic Donkey, and the Republican Elephant.

But Nast was also racist. Despite being an immigrant himself, he was against Chinese and Irish immigration, drawing both people in pretty horrible ways. The immortal flaw in America will always be its deep-rooted hypocrisy going all the way back to, “All Men Are Created Equal.”

The things that make America great were shared, improved, and created by a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds. There is nothing magical about the ground we stand on. God didn’t kiss all of America by skipping over Canada to get to Alaska. These things were possible because we encouraged a lot of voices to come together with ideas. Maybe some people hate that idea now because we’ve all repeated that so many times that it sounds more like an annoying, sugary, calorie-free fantasy than an actual truth. No, we can be honest with each other, a lot of them always hated it.

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There’s a line of thought that diversity is only forced upon others. Or that it’s an affection to “please” activists. That America would be vastly better if we put the rich white protestants back in charge (as if they ever left). But I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that America would be nearly as good or as rich or as famous if we locked it all down in 1900 and only allowed in bleach-white Anglo-Saxons (“Irish need not apply!”).

What we’re doing now as a country isn’t restoring it to some previously great period. I don’t always love the tech industry for a variety or reasons, but without immigrants, that shit would be nothing here. Which is also crazy because it’s a white immigrant from South Africa who’s partially responsible for making the situation so, so, so much worse. Again, the irony of America is there, too: It’s a melting pot until you’ve got your plate full and then we can put the lid back on.

It’s kinda dumb and old-man-y to wave my hand and say with just a few changes, a new layer of paint, and a couple people in jail, this country could go “back” to the way it was. Even the idea of “going back” to better times is a cudgel wielded by the worst people who think America used to feel like the town in It’s A Wonder Life (directed by an Italian immigrant with “suspicious” politics).

America could be a great country and, occasionally, when the moon is right, and if you squint really hard, and you’ve got over twenty dollars in your pocket, it is. But it can also be a place that celebrates suffering, rewards cruelty, and sees no problem with taking a grocery cart full of shit to the “10 Items or Less” line.

I know I just spent a lot of words to say “America is a land of contradictions” like a child using the cheapest possible AI for an essay, but this is my Substack and I’m assuming only six of you got this far, so it doesn’t matter.

Happy Birthday, America. You could be better if you just stopped giving all the money and power to the worst, least qualified assholes ever born.

Due to a combination of work and, far less fun, a family member in the hospital, I don’t have much of a column / post / aimless piece of writing to offer up today. Everything’s alright at the moment and hopefully on the upswing, but it’s been a bit of a draining few days, so I apologize for not being a great friend to you, the reader.

I’ll have more next week, and I’ve got a few fun things coming up / coming out, but for right now, I’m going to give a few recommendations that hopefully don’t make things worse for everyone involved. Great. Great. Great.

• The wonderful posted his old Vanity Fair interview with Mel Brooks, one of my heroes. Mel Brooks just turned 100 and his movies have been in my life as far back as I can remember. Literally. I saw Spaceballs before I saw Star Wars.

• McSweeney’s continues to be a site one of the few websites I enjoy as much now as I did before… whatever demarcation point we’ve decided things changed. The relatively new piece, “Notes From A Tired Egyptian Guy Whose Job Is Explaining That Humans Built The Pyramids” by Aman Alam was very good.

  

• The Steam Summer Sale is on, and there’s a lot of good stuff. I’m gonna pitch to you something stupid: A once-delisted Warhammer 40K interactive novel that’s all in pea green. Legacy of Dorn: Herald of the Oblivion is under $5.

  

• An extended version of Backrooms is coming to theaters with 15 minutes of extra footage. I’ve loved the Backrooms as a theme for a while, and Kane Parsons’ short films (made before he was 20, dear lord) are extremely good. So, I’m looking forward to seeing a bit more of what he’s got to offer on his big movie version.

• Dua Lipa is opening up a library for banned books, which is more than I’ve ever done for anyone. That’s less of a recommendation and more of a, “Hey, maybe I should do more for the world” type thing.

Hope all of your days are going well! I’ll try to write something later this week if / as things ease up. Thanks as always for reading and apologies for something of a short one this week.

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Happy Tuesday. How are you? The last week has been surprisingly odd and busy, so this might be another shorter post. Over the past week I’ve finished a script, a couple comedy pieces, some video game freelance work, and I’m almost done with a draft of a short story that readers are sure to call, “A collection of words that’s too short to be compelling and too long to be interesting.” I’m not trying to brag here, I’m trying to convince myself to keep going when all I want to do every day, every moment is stop. Too real? Still, it’s been good to get anything done through all the mental health haze and preparation for Edinburgh in August.

Here’s some things:

Pool Runnings

Oh, man, this headline!

It’s really fun that the Reflecting Pool is now the same color as the ooze that made the Ninja Turtles. I’m not sure what the color water should be if a child could easily put their hand into it, but neon green might not be it. It feels like if you had a giant blacklight, the entire fucking thing would glow like those stars I still want to put on my ceiling but I’m a man in his 40s and at what point do we cut that shit out?

I’m not the first to say this, but that reflecting pool drama sure is a big old metaphor for America! So they drained a massive body of water, painted it blue, but didn’t seal it correctly. That’s fun because the color blue absorbs heat, which warms up the water, which makes it more welcoming to algae. It’s like trying to get rid of rats by covering your floor with peanut butter and loose hotdogs. It’s exactly like that, with no differences.

And, of course, since that paint was both poorly sealed and they’re pouring a large amount of chemicals into the pool to kill the algae, said paint is chipping and peeling.

Iran Deal or No Iran Deal

What a clever, clever headline!

This is one of those dumb things where every dumb person on every side of the dumb table has a different dumb opinion on what’s happening. So, I guess there is an Iran deal where we give them a bunch of money and a promise to back off from their proximity and a giraffe and the guy who cares for the giraffe. I guess it’s not a good deal? I don’t know, I’m not an expert in things. I feel like if I started a fist fight and I ended the brawl pulling out my wallet and handing him $200, I would consider myself the loser of the match. Unless he was all messed up, and I tossed the money on him and was like, “Clean yourself up and buy a new suit.” Then it would be cool.

But we didn’t do that, really. I don’t know how we even would. And I don’t have the confidence to actually do that thing I just said in real life. I’d screw up the cool line and be like, “Clean your new suit with yourself” and feel so stupid.

Anyway, now it sounds like the Iran deal possibly won’t happen? Mostly because we’re very bad at stopping other countries we gave a lot of weapons to stop using those many, many weapons?

Grand Theft Auto VI Is Probably, Definitely Coming

A pre-order date and cover art reveal / trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI came out this week. I’m excited for it, both because I love games in which I put off the main story until I finish incredibly minor, somewhat annoying side quests and because it takes place in a weirdo version of South Florida / Miami. You probably know that. Maybe you don’t.

There isn’t a lot of deep analysis I have on box art, which is why I was an idiot and wrote a piece for TheGamer where I talk about my ideal Collector’s Edition for the game, including all the most useless bits and bobs possible. It’s extremely stupid.

That’s All For Now

Sorry for the shorter one! If I don’t post something next week, you can consider me dead and anyone subscribing to this is owed at least one loose, useless controller from my drawer of loose, useless controllers. Finally, you can get that first gen, half-broken Wii Remote you’ve been dying for!

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How are you? Happy Tuesday. Thanks as always for reading this silly little thing. Sometimes it’s hard to keep this going due to all the other things in life and me being one of the worst writers on Earth. I hope if you read this thing, it brings any sort of happiness because hoo boy, it is rough out there. Every day feels like emotional sandpaper that’s slowly removing every layer of skin until it’s just viscera. Good image. Good work, everyone.

Let’s start with some good news, though, for once.

Comedy In Video Games for Game Informer

The video game industry is in pretty dire straits, and I’ll get to that, but here’s something relatively nice: Comedy! Well, sometimes comedy is nice. A lot of the time, it’s just too real for you (e.g., there are a lot of horrible racists doing it). But fortunately, this time, this one time, we’re talking about something good in the world.

Anyway, I wrote about comedy in video games for Game Informer, a magazine that I both enjoy and encourage you to subscribe to so you may also enjoy. As of now, the article is behind a paywall, but I’ll repost it again once it’s out of its subscriber-exclusive period. Usually that’s a month or two down the line.

It was a pleasure to talk about jokes in games with everyone from Dana Gould to Tim Schafer to Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, which is a pretty wild group. I even talked to the legendary Al Lowe, which is just crazy. There are more people than that as well, but you get the general idea. They all gave lovely opinions and were very nice to put up with difficult questions like, “Could you talk on Monday at 9 am my time, even though you’re on the West Coast?”

I also go into a bit of my own thoughts on comedy in games in the article, as I’m allowed to use myself as a source since I am a comedy boy and I’m not a real journalist. If you want that theory in a nutshell, it’s that the best comedy in games comes from players feeling like they caused the joke, whether that’s from thinking up something weird to try that works or creating their own jokes in games like Quiplash. The article is much better than that mealy-mouth summary, though.

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Comedy In Video Games In Danger

As I said, the video game industry is not looking the best right now. Microsoft has been slowly trying to turn the Xbox ship from the problems-they-themselves-caused iceberg. They’ve tried to reach for nostalgia with rebrands and promises of hot exclusives that won’t make their way to other platforms despite that seeming to be one of the last solid ways that company is selling games.

But, it looks like after a couple weeks of trying to turn the ship, they’ve realized they can avoid the iceberg entirely if they just blow up the boat instead. They’re considering closing a few studios, including Double Fine, which is run by the aforementioned Tim Schafer. That studio is honestly just one of the best out there, creating decades of some of the most memorable games in the industry. Yes, I know that some of its smaller releases haven’t sold as well recently, but this feels like a movie conglomerate thinking about dropping a director because they only brought in five Oscars from low-budget dramas.

Of course, Double Fine isn’t the only studio. There’s also others like Ninja Theory and Compulsion Games, which as others have pointed out, made South of Midnight. If you haven’t played South of Midnight, you very much should. As far more qualified people have pointed out, there are not many mainstream video games that come from a Black perspective. If I was going to take a wild, still-unqualified guess, I’d say there are far more video games in which the main hero is a robot than there are video games in which the main hero is Black. Losing the studio that made South of Midnight feels just sad, like the industry is giving up and going back to extraction shooters for racists. That’s a little harsh, but whatever.

Knicks (and the Mayor) Win!

I love a good bandwagon, I do!

Whether you cared or not about the Knicks winning, it was nice to have something nice happen to millions of people in America for once. I mean, to be fair, millions of Americans are always happy when their team wins or a team they hate loses. But it was nice to see it in New York City, a place that’s often shit on by the rest of the country because they saw The Warriors once and now fear everything.

One, it’s just great to see so many people running to the streets and celebrating. Strangers hugging strangers, you love to see it. There were fireworks, there were parties, people were giving out homemade food, people were giving out handmade merch, it was beautiful. (It also really felt like a lighter version of the amount of celebrating that will go down when it happens.)

I’ve also loved seeing Mamdani in all of this. I know there are very weird people online who hate this dude, but I’m not sure how. Like, I get being skeptical of promises and frustrated by some things he’s done, but there are people who are in a rolling state of fury against this man. But, honestly, he’s the first time in a long time we’ve had a high profile mayor of any city who’s felt like a small town mayor with a sash that just reads “Mayor!”

He’s in parades, he’s doing morning announcements, he’s telling kids that he’s abolishing bedtime during championship games. I know all this isn’t filling potholes, nor does it stop the subway from flooding, but neither was that the case with the last couple mayors who acted like it would be outrageous and improper to make people interested in how their city works. Mamdani isn’t going to get everything right, but, Hell, if he’s at least trying to make the city a better place. And, not for nothing, it’s nice to have a politician who’s not just constantly looking over your shoulder for the hotter, bigger job.

So New York City came together, as it does. I love this place. I’m also willing to move if you’ve got a job and the price is right, so let me know.

The Iran War Is (Probably Not) Over

Not much to say here on this one. It’s really hard to believe that America’s war with Iran might be over. By “hard to believe,” I mean mostly “they’ve lied about this shit multiple times, so who the fuck actually knows?”

I’m not a foreign policy expert, but it seems like this deal sucks significantly worse than the one Obama made with Iran. They’re getting more money and they know they’ve got more leverage. It feels like we started a bar fight and as a result, the guy we tried to punch now owns part of the bar. He can’t keep us from visiting the bar, but he can charge a little more for drinks just as a thank you.

The White House UFC Match

These people don’t deserve much attention because they enjoy suffering the way others enjoy a long shower after a hard day. We always knew they were racists, and the way they talked about Michelle Obama was as shocking as it was completely not surprising. And that says nothing about the fights that happened on the White House lawn away from the matches. It’s all trash all the way down, like if Alice fell down a rabbit hole made of pure sewage.

Anyway, Thank You!

Wow, what a turn into the ending there! That’s it for me for now. I have to get back to work and also use the bathroom very, very badly, which is not something you needed to know. I hope everyone has a good week.

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I’m under a couple deadlines today, so I’m afraid this one is going to be a little on the shorter side than usual.

Plus, I’d say there isn’t much in the news right now that warrants discussing. Considering I don’t have much time and I’m a little behind on things, “everything is bad” isn’t necessarily the topic I want to spend my time delving into. I’ll definitely have more on that issue soon, because “is bad” will probably continue to be the state of “everything” for some time.

California Election

I don’t fucking know anything about how anything works. I’m just glad I’m in New York City, where our charismatic political weirdos have been trending towards good.

I was going to write more about this, but then I realized that one of the greatest problems facing us all today is people who don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. I mean, I’ve read up on the issue. And if I still lived in California - and especially Los Angeles - I’m sure I’d have a lot more to say.

That said, I really don’t think a slow, overly-complicated system is somehow proof of cheating. Especially because Republicans are literally looking for any reason they can say people are cheating. I don’t know, man. If the election had run so smoothly that everyone instantly knew the results, that would’ve been proof of cheating, too. It’s hard to say there is literally any situation in which people wouldn’t claim there was cheating happening.

You know why else I don’t think there was cheating or rigging or interference or another synonym? Because everybody involved is too self-centered and incompetent to pull off a heist of that magnitude. These are all people with massive egos and a tiny amount of actual ability to back it up. If Democrats were going to rig this one against Spencer Pratt… Well, I’d be surprised that this was when they finally gave it a shot and also even more surprised they didn’t accidentally announce it in a dozen text messages asking voters for more donations.

Grand Theft Auto VI and the Fear of Releasing Games

This week was Summer Games Fest. If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically a big event in which companies announce all the video games they plan on delaying over the next three and a half years. Anything that says it’s coming this summer is coming this winter. Anything coming this winter will be released after the sun has faded and all life has moved to other solar systems.

While I’m excited about a lot of games coming up, I think the funny thing is just how afraid everyone is of releasing a game in November, when Grand Theft Auto VI comes out. GTA 6 is expected to be the biggest game release of all time, and not in the way you’d say that when you’re screeching at your mom to please let you get a copy. There is a fearful hope that this game can sell well enough to buttress an entire industry that seems to be on fire.

So, to avoid competing with that release, almost every company is shoving their biggest games into September, meaning there’s already a massive backlog of games you can prepurchase so you can have them on the day of release and then never finish them. I’m looking forward to a lot of them, but I’m not convinced that everyone putting their games out at the exact same time is going to prevent the same business disaster as releasing around GTA 6, but also, I’m not a smart man.

At least we got a new Final Fantasy trailer.

The Video Game Culture War Well Is Running A Little Dry

The folks at TheGamer allowed me to write a little something about how the video game culture war well is running a little dry. As you can probably guess, any time a video game is announced in the current era, a subset of fans will lose their minds if you’re playing as a woman or a person or color or - horror upon horror - a woman of color.

Hell, they’re even mad that James Bond works with black people because… I guess that’s woke, even though… Why am I trying to argue against the stupidest people on Earth? But, hey, that’s the way of things. However, recently I’ve noticed that it feels even more forced than usual and the right wing influencers whose entire job is to hate stuff are tired and aimless. The juice is gone. At least until someone announces the most milquetoast shit and they get mad because an android doesn’t have honkers.

Recommendations

I’m still a bit in the Backrooms mode, so I’ve been reading Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix. I wouldn’t call it a 1:1 Backrooms book, and I’m not sure I’d even want there to be one, but a haunted house set in a knockoff Ikea is a great concept whether or not you love getting stuck in liminal spaces. As with Grady Hendrix’s other work, the book is funny and fast and - again - very “I’m trapped somewhere I don’t want to be, please let me out, please, please.”

Edinburgh

As I’ll keep promoting for the next two months, I’ll be taking Shit Arcade to Edinburgh Fringe from August 5-13 and 20-31. You can get tickets now, show up at the door, or murder me. If you’ve ready this far, you can legally murder me. But you have to call it in the comments first!

I hope to see you or someone or literally anyone out there. If I’m on stage, and I see a glint of metal, and you scream, “You told me I could if I read this far in your Substack,” I’d understand. I’d understand and there would be a smile playing out on my lips as the light left my eyes. “Thank you,” I’d whisper. “Thank you so much.”

That’s All

Hope you folks have a good rest of your week!

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Happy Pride Month, as far as that goes in the nightmare world. But we need it; we’re really going back to the 1980s in terms of acceptance. We’ve gone from a Pride in which posting a rainbow was a low-effort show of customer support from companies doing the bare minimum to a wide swath of the population losing their goddamn mind when they’re reminded queer people exist. People always lost their mind, yes, and there has always been a lot of bigotry, but goddamn everyone turned it up to 11.

At this point, the complaints about Pride are kind of just a looping cassette tape of old conservative talking points. “They’re shoving it down our throats by having a parade!” (You don’t have to go.) “They’re teaching kids to be gay!” (You seem to be confusing the concept of “accepting” with “teaching.”) “Children are being forcibly transitioned!” (No, they’re not, and it’s a fascinating type of stupid that you believe the healthcare system is somehow a breeze for trans people and nobody else.) It’s all the same unending stream of bad faith, thought-terminating bullshit.

Right now, states are trying to roll back the right to same-sex marriage. And lord knows both states and the federal government have gone after trans people with all their might. It’s ironic you still have people who are like, “I’m bravely fighting the trans activists” as if they were the third most powerful military in the world and not a few dozen people trying to protect basic civil rights. I’ll never quite understand how dipshits began to believe trans people were somehow a mighty hand controlling the culture. But, hey, at least insane people are following any woman with a short haircut into the bathroom and demanding to see her genitals. That’s good news for everybody of every age.

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Personally, I’ve always had a weird relationship with Pride. I’m bisexual, which a lot of people interpret as “not anything at all.” I pretty much stopped wanting to talk about it after the fifth or sixth person said, “No, you’re not!” and then asked for some sort of evidence. Like I could submit my porn search history and be like, “Look at that! Two guys, no girls!” and I’d get a stamp of approval from a governing agency. That said, I’m also a white cis dude, so I’m really in the less-endangered range. It’s frustrating to have a finger wagged in my face and hear I’m not something I am, but also, that’s not the biggest fish to fry at the moment. If it’s annoying to be told you’re not actually bi - “you’re cosplaying, you’re trying to fit in, you want to seem cool, you’re just confused, you’re not nearly attractive enough for it to count outside of video game conventions” - I’m pretty sure it’s a hundred times worse for those being denied passports and driver’s licenses and the ability to use a restroom.

I also know Pride has its criticisms from within the queer community and that the queer community is not monolithic as gay conservative men feel required by law to put on their social media profiles but never mention on Grindr. Not every queer person supports other queer people, and lord help you when gay people get mad at being called “queer.” Do most of those people belong to the previous group I just mentioned? Who’s to say! The important thing is to kick that ladder down before anyone else can climb up to safety. A lot of people with podcasts are more than happy to become the next Ernst Röhm if it means hurting another group they don’t want to see at a parade.

And, to be fair, I know that some people from the Left feel like corporations have co-opted Pride so they can sell more beer by putting up a rainbow for one month while spending the other eleven donating to politicians whose only pleasure is hurting trans kids. It’s also kind of telling that brands will put up pride flags for every one of their accounts except for ones serving countries in which being gay is illegal. On the other hand, it’s almost shocking at this point in American culture that brands don’t try to pivot for the audience that will spend money on anything that makes an oppressed group feel bad. You want to make some easy cash right now? Just say that buying a $800 golden phone with 2007’s middest technology is going to make pink-haired college students cry.

As I said, the current cultural moment is why Pride exists. Just a few years ago, it felt like some people - queer and not - expected folks to hang it up and say, “We did it. Rights are secured. We don’t need to march anymore.” But the rights weren’t secure and, as the current government proves, just because they were secured does not mean they will be forever. It’s easy to sort of boil Pride down to parades, parties, and memes, but it actually does matter. Existing matters. Not being afraid to exist matters. Showing others that they deserve to be happy with themselves matters. I don’t know. Maybe I’m preaching to the choir.

But Happy Pride and I hope you all are alright.

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Bad Video Games at Edinburgh Fringe!

Let me turn that wheel really hard as the wheels make a screeching sound. As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I’m bringing my show Shit Arcade to Edinburgh Fringe from August 5-13 and 20-31! That link was for tickets, by the way.

I’m super excited and nervous for these shows and already have a couple insanely fun guests booked, which I’ll hopefully have a more official lineup of in the upcoming month. But if you’re in the UK or you’re going to be at Fringe, I’d love to see you there. I’d also just love to see you in general, you old so and so.

Thanks as always and I hope you folks have an alright rest of your week.

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That said, if you’re a sports fan, Roy Wood Jr. is a great host and the two of us have come up with a fun monologue. It kicks off tonight at 7 pm on YouTube. Check it out here:

That’s all I got. Work time. Thanks for everyone who reads this. I’m gonna do better! I promise, mama.

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How are you? Happy Tuesday! I’m genuinely surprised that I’ve kept this going each Tuesday considering my inability to focus on anything as the world slowly falls apart. Well, the world will be fine. But maybe we could go with saying the human construct of civilization is falling apart. That’s maybe too dramatic, too. Shit is bad, and what follows could be worse.

Booing AI at Graduation

So, it sounds like students across the country are booing at their graduation ceremony when speakers bring up AI. Let’s also be clear here: They’re booing generative AI. They’re not booing AI that finds cancer before doctors do. So, that annoying argument can be put on the shelf where it belongs. They’re booing the AI that those companies have promised is going to take their jobs away. Maybe it was foolish to make half of AI ads say something like, “IMAGINE YOUR BONUS WHEN YOU CAN FIRE ALL THE HUMANS!”

I understand that the primary demographic for spending money on generative AI is corporate executives who want that bonus so very, very bad. I also understand that those ads were trying to be provocative and to get attention. Shock value and all that.

Still, there is something weird about saying, “You can replace all your employees with AI - and also, that AI is going to be a hot lady that can’t escape you.”

I’m glad Gen Z hates this shit. Or, at least, hates the way that it’s being fist fucked into everything. I’m also glad that companies are beginning to realize that basically saying, “eat this shit, you stupid little mouse, eat this garbage” isn’t going to get people to like it. Putting it in every product is annoying. Making it pop up to pitch alternate email drafts for when you just need to write, “Thank you!”

Outside of the moral part of stealing everyone’s work and the environmental part of sucking up all the power on the grid and polluting nearby, I think more people would be more ready to embrace AI if those companies weren’t dicks about it? AI boosters say things like, “Just accept it! It’s inevitable!” like it’s a force of nature and not a human-made technology that people are choosing to use.

Gen Z is booing this shit because they’re facing an awful economy and job market entirely owned by a dozen oligarchs who keep smirking and saying, “Don’t we live in the best times?”

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Honestly, I Should Be More Corrupt

I’m not a good person, and I think I should be more corrupt. There’s no longer any punishment for it! Well, unless you’re below the poverty line, in which case every government official is making sure you don’t spend a dollar of welfare on a cookie. If someone self-deals billions, we gotta just accept that everything works in mysterious ways. If someone accidentally applies for medicaid wrong, we are going to hunt them down and make sure they die as fast as possible. America! We’re really doing it!

I’m specifically talking about the president of America, who human adults actually voted for, settling a lawsuit between the IRS and himself (e.g., himself and himself) with a $1.776 billion fund to pay off his allies and friends. That’s not even an exaggeration. That’s just what he’s doing. The whole “1776” is extra cute. Glad they did that so we know it’s patriotic corruption. There are genuinely people who will fall for this as a good thing.

So I don’t see why I shouldn’t be more corrupt. I’ve got to find some angle. I don’t have billions of dollars, but I do have hundreds, which should be enough to do some low level, Coen Brothers Movie-style corruption. I’m not really sure how to do corruption, though. I’ve seen all my examples of bribes in movies, so I feel like I’d probably put a couple 20s behind a pie and say, “Go ahead. Get your beak wet a little.” The problem is I don’t know how to make more money off the bribe that already cost me money. I can’t bake a pie myself, so I’m already out $15 and that’s before the cash!

Does anyone know how to do corruption here? I think the furthest I’ve gotten is downloading music on Limewire twenty years ago. I need money, folks. I owe a lot of bad people. Anyone got something I skim off the top from?

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The Joy of Voting Rights

What the fuck do I even say about this? Between the Supreme Court gutting voting rights and blocking Democrats from gerrymandering their distracts, I dunno. Some people have said we’re basically entering Jim Crow 2.0, even though I feel like we’ve been in Jim Crow 1.5 since Jim Crow 1.0. A lot of people want to act like racism is making a comeback tour while it was always around, selling out arenas. But they finally got to turn the knob all the way to “open about racism and very proud of where it’s headed.”

I wish I had some hopeful silver lining, but Jesus Christ. I think the problem with there being no floor to the horror is that you keep falling. Conservatives have built this strange system of denial in which they defend the Confederate flag, but always say Democrats caused the Civil War. They defend racism, but always say Democrats started the KKK. All of this is bullshit since the parties switched polarity in the 60s, but it’s a neat little trick for them that Democrats in power seem to not fully understand. “We like racism, but our sports team didn’t start it, so we shouldn’t be held accountable for it.”

They like to act like racism is out of their hands. When people say slavery is America’s original sin, you can feel a loud subset of those people yearning to say, “But we weren’t there for that, so how can you accuse us of having benefitted?” Meanwhile, they keep pushing for policies that allow them to benefit from it and worship the historical figures who fought to keep it. You think they’re going to monitor their own people if they take a chainsaw to even more rights? Fuck no. They don’t care. It’s all about scaring people away from voting or, at the very least, punishing them severely for any mistake in the paperwork.

People keep saying the solution is to vote very, very hard, but that’s a bit disheartening. We’ve all fucking voted hard. “They’ve fixed the game in their favor, so you’ve got to play your best” is not a strategy that gets people excited. But it’s also true, which sucks a lot. And, as other people have said, they wouldn’t be trying to crush some people’s voting rights if they weren’t afraid of how those people might vote.

My only hope is that they got greedy and turned some very solid red districts into slightly more purple districts. But so far my hopes have been dashed over the last ten years, so let’s not lean too much on that.

Shit Arcade at Edinburgh

I’m starting to book guests for my run of Shit Arcade in Edinburgh. I don’t know if any of you live in the UK, but as a reminder, here is all that info and here’s a link to tickets. You should come! If you’re there! If you’re not? Fly in.

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Recommendations

I’m basically out of email space, but I’ve got to recommend Sektori. I’ve been playing while taking breaks from working and somehow it’s become my favorite game of 2026 so far. It’s not the best game of 2026, but it is my favorite. It’s essentially an upgraded Geometry Wars, which is also one of my favorite games ever. If you haven’t played that, it’s a twin stick shooter. Move with one stick, shoot with the other, get upgrades for your little triangle ship.

Sektori feels like an arcade game from an era when traditional arcades thrived and weren’t all replaced by ticket machine games. It’s basically Video Game: The Video Game, and I’m fine with that at the current moment. It’s brainless, and I’m even more fine with that.

Thank you all!

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Happy Tuesday. I know the news has been pretty bad lately, but that’s like saying the sun has been pretty yellow lately. We’re living in a time of mass horror, war, and disenfranchisement, a word I did not expect to spell right on the first try. Even added some stray letters to make sure autocorrect wasn’t sleeping on the job or waiting to change a word on a text right at the moment I hit “send.”

Before I get into this next part, I wanted to ask for some opinions. Writing these columns take some time (at least when I’ve got the time to do them right), and I wanted to raise a balloon on whether or not people would be into a tip jar of some sort. While I’m fine, I’d love to be able to dedicate more resources towards working on this - but I wanted to check the temperature. If I ended up making a charged newsletter, I’d definitely post far, far more a week, so I’m open to hearing about that too.

As of now? Free! And maybe eventually tips. Back to the previous conversation.

It’s such a bad time that I understand why people are deep, deep, deep into nostalgia for the ‘90s and early ‘00s right now. So I want to talk about nostalgia sickness. And this is pretty rich coming from a guy whose room is decorated with old toys and wrote a book about old video games. But stick with me here, because I’m putting some effort into my hypocrisy. Plus, I want to say up top: This is a me problem. If you don’t feel this way, I’m not criticizing you or your experience with the game.

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Nostalgia Sickness & Mixed Feelings About Mixtape

If you don’t know, there’s a new game called Mixtape. It’s a smaller game, although there’s some debate about the whole “indie” designation due to it being financed by a relatively large company owned by the daughter of a not-relatively super, super, incredibly rich billionaire. That said, this game is neither about that, nor is it a swing at moral righteousness, so none of that really matters here.

Anyway.

Mixtape is a nostalgic game set in 1999 about a high school senior named Stacey and her friends enjoying their last night together before Stacey goes off to make a big, kind of creepy swing to become a music supervisor. The fact that she plans on literally stalking a woman for a job is joked about once or twice, but it is odd. Teen arrogance, etc. Her friends feel a little hurt and betrayed by her decision to stalk this woman because they’d intended to take a grand, post-graduation road trip down to their friend’s college.

The important thing, the core of the game, is that each moment is punctuated with a specific needle drop. The name Mixtape might have given that part away. Most of these songs are explained by Stacey straight to the camera in a sort of non-funny Wayne’s World style, albeit if the character still spoke exactly like Wayne Campbell. We’re told what emotions the songs will evoke, there’s an explanation for every moment. It’s like watching a romance movie if there was a little guy in the corner saying, “This is where you say ‘aww’!”

To be fair, they’re all pretty good songs but also almost entirely white and a lot of which come from before the ‘90s. As others have pointed out, it makes sense for Stacey to be a music snob who might turn her nose up at “modern” music, yet she also brags about taping MTV while she’s away from home so she can watch every music video. So it’s kinda weird that she’s a fan of the biggest, most pop-heavy music station while leaving out literally any popular artists you might associate with the late ‘90s. Also, when someone brings up Green Day and Pearl Jam, she gets kind of mad?

Teens are complicated people, but it’s… I dunno. There’s also something odd about being a mean music snob as a teen but without getting the slightest pushback from other teens. Stacey exists in a bubble, and there’s no narrative crime in that, but it’s hard for me to connect with a teenager who says “I know all I need to know about you” when someone else likes other genres of music. I’m not nostalgic for people being a gatekeeping asshole in high school, even if it’s supposed to be putting a hat on a hat on her immaturity. A burnout who acts like a popular kid.

These songs either play out during dramatic scenes or during small mini-games that range from skating down a street to skipping rocks to lighting fireworks with your hands. It’s all a bit impressionistic, with mundane teen moments turned into magical realism. The goal here is to recreate the feeling of being a teen about to leave home and the feeling of seeing your friends for what might be the last time (outside of awkward drinks every five years when they’re in your city for a business trip). And it does succeed! The visuals in this scene are stunning, and the best part of the game is when the characters’ imaginations get away from them.

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This all sounds like a video game made for me. It’s about sadness. It’s about looking back on regrets. It’s about music. It’s got little rhythm-y sections that make me feel like I have the wonderful ability to stay on beat. This is everything I look for in a small game and made it an easy sell for me to buy based on reviews. And, I’ll add, I am glad other people are loving this game. I want good games to succeed, even the ones that don’t connect with me.

But, lord, I feel like I’ve got mixed feelings about this thing. Again, and I’ll beat this drum a few more times, I want to say that I really wanted to like this game. I paid for it. I downloaded it. I set aside time for it. I wasn’t coming in ready to hate it. A few chuds on the internet are mad because they think the game is woke despite being extremely white and extremely “good old days in the suburbs.” This isn’t about that and I don’t fucking care about them. Some folks hate that the gameplay is almost entirely mini games and walking around rooms. That’s fine with me. I ain’t got no problem with that gameplay loop. I was playing PaRappa before you were born.

My problem is that the nostalgia in this game feels unexamined. It feels underbaked while being over polished. It feels painted and sanded down in a way that even the most rose-colored-glasses piece of art usually doesn’t. It’s like if the kids in Stand By Me all had great lives overall and few difficult conflicts outside of what was directly in front of them. It makes me feel the way Ready Player One did, which was another book/movie that should’ve been right up my alley. There’s something a little too smooth to the nostalgia, a little too much of the bittersweetness seems to come from a store-bought bottle. It’s a story where everyone has to solemnly nod and say some version of, “These are the good old days” eight or nine times, sometimes while looking into the camera.

Worse, the nostalgia feels untethered from anything in reality. Yes, yes, magical realism. But we’re talking about Ronald Reagan statues… in 1999? Nobody cares about pop culture? This is when The Matrix came out! This is when Phantom Menace came out! Those were major parts of conversations, not just background noise. And that includes, in the case of The Matrix, music. Plus, this is clearly an upper middle class town (look at those massive fuckin’ houses!), but all of the tech is weirdly from the early ‘90s? I’m splitting hairs here. I don’t think Stacey might have owned a CD burner or a DVD player, but it’s odd that the game is so focused on cassette tapes when those had started to become a little quaint and embarrassing by that point. We were already burning CDs using school computers. I knew kids easily poorer than the in-game trio who had MP3 CD players.

If anything, Stacey’s obsession with audio cassettes feels more modern, the way that millennials collect vinyls and Gen Z collects, well, audio cassettes. When CD players became standard, folks were thrilled to stop needing vinyls. Cassettes were usually a cheaper, worse, slightly more travel-ready option than CDs. To be fair, Stacey has CDs as well as cassettes, but, again, this is a rich town that seems to be hitting a series of misplaced nostalgia buttons while screaming, “This is universal! This is timeless! This is how we all felt!”

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And a lot of people did! I’ve seen the reviews and I’m certainly aware that people who didn’t grow up in a rich mostly white town with no real problems still found a lot that resonated with them. The developers themselves said they wanted to go for the feeling of leaving home, not an exact replica of one day in the life of somebody doing so.

However, it all feels just too smooth for me to feel nostalgic. Like Ready Player One, it feels like it doesn’t quite earn its nostalgia so much as shake you by your shoulders and eagerly tell you about it. While I think it’s supposed to have the vibe of all-encompassing, non-specific bildungsroman nostalgia, I wonder if that makes it feel like unseasoned mashed potatoes to me. There’s no real anchor for the nostalgia outside of a copy of a copy of a copy of the plot of teen movies that generations of people watched as kids. I can relate to stories about people who aren’t like me, but ironically these kids are just enough like me that it makes me feel a bit hollow. I went to a far less white high school and lived in a far smaller house, but it’s close enough that I get it. I was “there” in a way.

But that slightly dissonance makes my stomach hurt.

And, like I said, I think it’s great to celebrate times in the past and think about the good old days when we had bigger toy stores and no doom-scrolling. I do it all the time. I’ve made money off doing it! But here everything is so heavily idealized. There are no rough edges, really. Even the biggest conflicts resolve pretty happily, even when they’re supposed to be life-defining struggles. Angry, possessive parents become understanding with relative ease. It’s yearning for a better time, but it strikes me with the same emotion as hearing someone complain Star Wars or SNL hasn’t been as good since they became adults.

Maybe that’s it. It’s a game where teen characters act like they’re 40-year-olds who got a chance to go back in time and pretend to be teens again. I’m slightly younger than these characters are, but I was in high school in 1999. I knew metal heads and burnouts who liked to philosophize. But these characters are just a bit too wise to their own place in the world, too somehow subconsciously aware they’re in a nostalgic past, too self-referential about the times to the fourth wall, too certain that this is the last good time ever.

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Or maybe I experienced things so very slightly differently that I just felt left in the cold. Which, again, confuses me because both the developers and fans have described it as a universal experience. I probably wouldn’t be so confused by my reaction if others all over the world hadn’t said it touched them and resonated with their lives.

But I still worry there’s some nostalgia sickness here. An edgeless look back that shoots through the same lens with the same color backdrop in the same white suburban town as so, so, so much of nostalgic media. Nostalgia doesn’t need to be a massively broad brush in which everything used to be better and simpler and easier. We can still show the warts of the times without ruining the beauty of it all. And if we’re nostalgic for a time, I wish it was more realistic to that time rather than a relatively recent setting that inexplicably has a plus or minus 15 year range.

I do like nostalgia. I do like looking back. But, and maybe this is just how I grew up, I don’t like looking back uncritically and letting a warm bath flow over me to convince me that now is the problem and back then is the solution, especially without any real supporting evidence other than that it sucks to pay bills as a grownup. No, that’s not the game’s thesis or point, but it does have that feeling in a way. We don’t know what we have until it’s gone, that’s why every character is going to say what they have and why it’s important and why it’s going to be gone. I can’t emphasize enough how many times we’re explicitly, literally told how to feel in scenes.

That said, I actually like the parts the right wing chuds complained about. I like the interactive music video / movie nature of the game. That’s straight up me. I like the stuttering, stop-motion-style look of the characters. Nice. There is heart here, and I respect it. This game was made with love. People are enjoying it for a real reason, and I’m glad they are.

But something about it leaves me feeling left out. For me, it’s like hearing someone brag about how great their high school football career was and the entire story is shining clean despite traumatic moments on the periphery. Or randomly seeing a giant IP killer robot from a horror film and being told, “Don’t you feel happy? You remember this! Feelings? Fun!”

I very, very, very much want to like this game. And I’m not upset that I played it. Also, one last time for the back, I am glad people are loving it and I’m the biggest hypocrite possible when it comes to nostalgia. But I just wish there was something here that resonated with me more and didn’t make me feel like a kid who’d never be invited to the party thrown by the kids who’d never be invited to parties. I wish it didn’t tell me to feel a certain way rather than drive me to feel a certain way. I wish its nostalgia was more specific because then, to me, it paradoxically would be more universal. At least, I think so. I’m wrong about everything else, so I’m probably wrong here, too.

Still, that rock skipping mini game is solid. That could be its own game, really!

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Another Discourse, But Dumber and About Slay the Spire II

I wrote this piece for The Gamer about the weird discourse around Slay the Spire II and a right wing nerd nemesis. A woman consulted on the game and people lost their fucking minds. So, here’s what to do if a woman consults on your video game.

That’s all I got today. Time to work on some work that actually pays me money!

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I hope you’re doing well! Usually I’d add a “despite” and then a clause explaining why we’re all depressed, but I think we might be on the same page here. We get it.

Anyway, I’ve got some good news for once, so I’ll just jump into that.

Shit Arcade at Edinburgh Fringe

In something I’m extremely excited and nervous about, I’m bringing my bad video game show Shit Arcade to Edinburgh Fringe from August 5-13 and 20-31!

I can’t believe I’ll be doing this show over a dozen times in a month while spending said month in Scotland, a place I’ve never been but have always desperately wanted to visit. So here we are!

If you’re in the UK and you’ve never seen this show, I invite a few comedians on stage and we play and roast bad games live, and then sometimes give a few away.

As of now, I’m planning on mixing up games and comedians at each show, so if you’re in the area and think it’s a fun way to spend 10 pounds, please come out more than once! I have multiple copies of Austin Powers for Game Boy. Multiple. Copies.

I’m producing the show in conjunction with Gilded Balloon and I’ll be at the Teviot Dining Room at 10:30 pm on the aforementioned dates.

Right now, tickets for August 5-12 and 20-30 are available, with the last two dates popping off a little later. You’ll also be able to show up at the door, which is how I’m told a lot of shows end up doing well anyway.

While I’m terrified of whatever this turns out to be, I’m just going to go out there and be really stupid about bad games and hope for the best. Also hoping I meet some cool people, do a few extra fun shows, and not everyone hates the shit out of me for being American at a time when America ain’t doing too hot.

Anyway, if you’re in the country or visiting Fringe, please come on out! I beg this of you!

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Billion Dollar Ballroom

As you probably saw in the five minutes that it was in the news, there was an assassination attempt on the president by a man who can only be described as a giant dope. “Attempt” is a bit grandiose because it seems like his plan was to somehow bypass layers of security by running very fast and hoping he could slow time down like it was The Matrix. I know security was bad there, but there wasn’t zero security. The dude wouldn’t have made it past the guards of a natural history museum.

Sidebar: The wannabe sloppy floppy assassin was apparently an indie game developer? For fuck’s sake, can we stop embarrassing ourselves like this? It feels like every time I’m excited about anything regarding video games, there’s always somebody who has to remind me that this is a thoroughly embarrassing hobby. Some of these folks need to play Stardew Valley and calm down.

I’m not really going to get into the assassin side of this because I don’t need someone knocking on my door with a burlap sack to put over my head. And, honestly, let’s not make the big guy a martyr. The only thing that achieves is helping some of the worst people on Earth elevate the absolute worst person on Earth to godhood. I don’t need to see even more AI-generated memes that make Less-Human-Formed Grimace look like Elderly Hercules. The White House is already posting pictures of him as Fat Mandalorian. I’m not gonna post AI slop here, so let’s run with this:

I know, I know, I’m also very ready for the day when there’s a certain headline that allows me to take off work and eat ice cream all day. The thing is, I could also do that right now, but it would simply be described as “depression.” You need some reason for it. And that reason probably also requires a few specific additional circumstances that don’t cause you to lose your career forever. When I’m shot to death by a deputized 14-year-old wearing oversized shoes and a government-issued Punisher shirt, this was probably the catalyst.

Anyway, apparently now the ballroom has become the only place the President is safe? And so they only want him to hold events there? Even though he’s obviously going to hold events in a lot of places? Why am I asking this like it’s a contradiction and not just overt cynical bullshit? Why do I use this question construction when making declarative statements? Why can’t my brain stop asking me to end it? Someone call that 14-year-old!

Apparently we’re now going to spend a billion on this ballroom, which, going by early sketches looks like a combination of Penn Station and a high school gymnasium but without the charm of either. But a billion dollars! After two years of Republicans scoffing at the mere suggestion taxpayer money could go towards this, they’re suddenly kind of open to spending a billion on a large cafeteria for rich morons who like seeing marble from every angle. If it’s marble, it must be expensive!

Look at this tacky shit.

I recognize the idea is to make this ballroom a bunker, including the literal bunker they’re rebuilding under it after destroying the old bunker under the old East Wing. But for fuck’s sake, a billion? A billion? You could probably protect him better if you just strapped a million dollars in singles around his body. It wouldn’t even bother him - he’s been to strip clubs, he knows the women are only looking at him for one reason.

Yeah, yeah, we were always going to pay for this shit. I’m surprised that people actually believed this was completely privately funded. But I need to stop being surprised at what other Americans are willing to think was a good idea. It’s like I keep winding the box, hoping a clown doesn’t come out at the end of Pop Goes the Weasel. Then again, the man does wear massive clown pants because he needs those pockets filled, baby. And because he shits himself all the time, but sometimes the metaphor and the reality work in tandem.

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Recommendation - Forbidden Solitaire

I’ve got to go soon for annoying reasons, but I wanted to recommend Forbidden Solitaire to any folks with access to a PC. Hopefully it’s ported to Mac and consoles soon as it’s pretty great.

Without spoiling anything, it’s a dungeon-y horror solitaire game with a few other twists I won’t spoil. More importantly, it uses a mid-’90s FMV game aesthetic that might as well be my pleasure center. It was also developed by the people who made Regency Solitaire, which was like Jane Austen meets… you know, solitaire.

I know it sounds like I’m describing a much more fancy version of what you played on your work desktop computer in 2003 when you were bored, but this is legitimately a crazy fun game that’s designed for people like me who grew up with computer games like The 7th Guest and board games like Nightmare.

Oh, phooey, just check out the trailer!

That’s All

You be good.

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Those of you who read this might’ve noticed this is super late. I want to have a good excuse but I’m traveling and the last few days got a little out of hand and I haven’t had much time.

Apologies for coming up short!

Ah well. Life goes on.

If anyone’s got any recommendations for music, I could use it, though, cuz I’m about to be on some very long flights over the next summer. That sounds cooler than it is.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I am, as you can tell, sorry.

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Why you might share or subscribe this particular post is beyond me but my life is built on lying to myself.

I’m actually in Los Angeles this week, so my schedule has been a bit all over the map. I’d love to really dig deep into the horrors of the world to give us all a chuckle as we stare into the gaping, toothy maw of tomorrow, but I’m weirdly running around a lot and very tired in a slightly concerning way. Also taking expensive cars and begging friends to pick me up because I don’t know how to drive.

I should really fix that. Everyone offers to teach me to drive, but that just sounds like an invitation to accidentally kill someone in the most predictable crash ever. Which is the go pedal? Which is the stop pedal? Which is the throw a banana peel pedal? Someone help me, my family is dying. Or they’re being erased from existence. One of the two.

But I’ve had a fun time out here, and it’s been refreshing seeing a lot of my old NYC friends who’ve moved out here and stayed out here and started families and moved on with their lives and are completely and utterly happy with where everything landed. I’ve also had a couple productive meetings, but that always sounds like a complete lie. Have I brought up a lot of video game IPs? Oh, boy, I have!

Los Angeles Shows

As I said, I’m in Los Angeles this week and a little bit of next. I’ve got a few shows lined up, as well as some “we’ll see if we throw you on” types. But the ones I’m doing should be fun. They are, my friends, as follows:

New World Disorder - Thursday the 23rd - 8pm - The Ice House

Live From the Belly Room - Saturday the 25th, 9:25 pm - The Comedy Store (Sold Out)

Jonah Ray’s Scratchpad - Tuesday the 28th - 7:30 pm - Scribble

If you’re around, I’d love to see you!

Recommendations

The new Tomodachi Life is out and it’s like watching a video game sitcom in which you create the characters but you’re never quite sure what the fuck they’re doing. It looks a little bit like Animal Crossing, but it’s really a bit more like a simplified version of The Sims that focuses more on very, very weird events and interactions.

It’s hard to describe how absolutely bonkers this game is if you haven’t played it. Like the best video game comedies, it feels like you’re a participant in the strange shit happening. Giving them items, dressing them in bad clothes, clicking on them while they’re sleeping, it all has a reaction that makes the world feel absurd and lived-in. Characters fall in love with other characters who get weird about it. Some people start hating each other. It’s wonderful.

Yesterday, I also was lucky enough to go to a staff screening for the new cartoon Kevin, including an episode written by my friend and former roommate, Jess Dweck. It’s about a cat that leaves his owners when they go through a breakup and starts living at a rescue shelter. The show is a machine gun of jokes that feel like a horrible spoiler if I give any away. There’s one told by an aging Broadway horse in the third episode that’s so devastatingly funny I gasped. The show is disgusting and fucked up and catty (in both the pun and non-pun sense).

Well worth your time.

Among the books I’m currently reading, I’ve gone back again to Salmonella Men on Planet Porno by Yasutaka Tsutsui. Fun fact: I didn’t learn until writing this right now that he’s 91 fucking years old! Oh, and if you’ve ever seen the anime Paprika, he actually wrote the novel that it’s based on.

Anyway, Salmonella Men on Planet Porno is just a real fucking bizarre short story collection. The vibe is mostly small, but stark changes to everyday life that turns everything into either a nightmare or a punishing social maze. My favorite story, “Rumors About Me” features a businessman who’s suddenly, and without any reason, a national celebrity. The news gossips about his failed work crushes, people on the street point at him, cabbies are hostile to someone who could make them look bad, and his bosses begin treating him with a feigned, condescending respect that some people give celebrities. What makes it pop is his inability to comprehend what’s going on and the sheer horror of realizing everybody knows every embarrassing moment of your life. Fun times.

If that doesn’t sell you, there’s also a story about a magical tree that couples can buy to have completely free and consensual sex with anyone they want in their dreams. The problem people seem to have with this situation is knowing when they’re dreaming and when they’re not. Drama!

The stories are mostly short, mostly funny, and something I return to again and again for inspiration. Plus, you can’t really beat the title Salmonella Men on Planet Porno.

That’s All

Thanks, everyone! Sorry for the shorter update. I need to get back on my game with some firebrand-y essays about video games or ice cream or whatever the fuck I do.

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