mondryle

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Posts posted by mondryle

  2. Posted

    I need to rep The Relentless Picnic one more time. They have been killing it with "untethered" episodes that are a deep dive into a topic other than current events. This has resulted in a truly astonishing episode about death and other incredible ones about paranormal experiences shared on Reddit, books and friendship, money, hitchhiking, Jurassic Park, and most recently the moon (and the eclipse). I can't get over how good this podcast is, please listen to it. Genuinely insightful and hilarious conversations happening here.

  4. Posted

    I read the band-aid thing as: it had just naturally healed, but the fact of it being healed, like the cherry pie in the box, was anticipated in the dream, so holy shit. Did not get the sense that the reaction was due to it having healed or disappeared in some mysterious improbable way. But the confusion over this from Chris and Jake has given me pause and now I'm not sure what I saw.

  11. Posted

    7 hours ago, marginalgloss said:

    Lately I've been enjoying a podcast called The Relentless Picnic (soundcloud, iTunes) which I discovered because it has lazenby on it. I only know him as one of the best writers to fall out of the tumblr scene - a blogger in the old sense of the word, I suppose. Read his stuff: it good.

     

    The podcast is mostly about post-Trump trends in American politics. It shares some of the trappings of the 'dirtbag left' but it is quite often better than that, though they are not entirely above cackling at easy targets on social media.

     

    The first couple of episodes are a bit rough - I'd be inclined to start with episode 3, which focuses on the extraordinary career of Vladislav Surkov, a sci-fi novelist who may or may not be one of the most influential spin doctors of the current Russian administration.

     

    I just finished ep 5; I never knew that I needed to hear Sean Spicer dubbed over Modest Mussorgsky's 'Pictures at an Exhibition' until now.

     

    It feels strange to encounter a podcast in this way because I know almost nothing else about any of the presenters - it's quite well edited but there's no introductions, no explicit mission statement, no pleas to 'like and subscribe', no personal framing of any kind. Not that there's anything wrong with that stuff but there's something refreshing about this more austere style.

     

    Yes! So glad you wrote this up for the uninitiated. Anyone who follows georgelazenby should give it a shot (he's Nick on the podcast). It's so good and so hard to pin down despite the focus on news and politics. The hosts are incredibly funny and have an obvious rapport, but they also bring an intellectual seriousness to the table in an affectless way that is very bracing. And on the production side the editing and use of music is inspired. 

     

    I don't think they're in the same room for the first few episodes so the audio quality takes a hit, but I'd say don't skip them, the discussions are absolutely worthwhile and I suspect knowing where these guys are coming from in terms of their sensibility and worldview makes stuff like the virtual CES episode even funnier.

  12. Posted

    16 hours ago, SirSlade said:

    Glad to hear it about the podcast! I've yet to listen to Twin Peaks Rewatch as I've only seen the series once (and shamefully recently) but I'm excited to go through it. Currently planning to lead up to the new season with 1 episode/day + TPRw and Fire Walk With Me day of the premiere.

     

    Also I guess you can still order David Lynch Signature Brand Coffee

    https://www.javadistribution.com/allegro-coffee//david-lynch-signature-cup-organic-coffee/

     

    You have the power to skip the worst of season two and listen to Chris and Jake goof on it instead. (They also summarize the episodes well if you're worried about missing anything plot-wise.) Use this power, use it well and be free.

  14. Posted

    I only caught the end of the stream and haven't listened to the episode yet. Just want to say that I think this is a good move and I'm happy to keep up with both shows. For what it's worth I like this new idea more than the last -- I even considered suggesting something similar in the last few weeks, just thought I would sound like a jerk if you guys had already made a decision. Thanks for all the casts and blasts.

  16. Posted

    I bought Stephen's Sausage Roll on the Steam sale and like any good reader, revisited the discussion in this episode after playing for a while. I more or less landed where Chris did after a few puzzles (ie, I like it, it's tough but fair, it's clever, but I don't get the extraordinary praise). I just want to say that it really started to astound me after a few more hours. And there's nothing to spoil about why that is; there's no one moment or reveal. It just keeps showing you more of what is possible within its very simple set of rules, over and over, without filler, without simple variations on the same "trick" before moving onto a new one. I find this kind of progression from puzzle to puzzle amazing. It's subtle, it's confident, it expresses so much through its mechanics in a way that really has to be experienced. I have had more moments of discovery and joy working through this game's puzzles than I have in anything I have ever played. Finding solutions has even made me laugh out loud on several occasions. Certainly the designers who really love this game can make a better case for why it's brilliant, but I feel like I get it now, the high praise is totally warranted. Play it!

  18. Posted

    I thought this was a fun read. Some messy thoughts now that I've cooled on this admirably bananas thing:

     

    Edit: I clarified some of my thoughts on the idea going around that the book is a riddle to be solved, which originally read like I was ragging on the book for the readings it was inspiring.

     

     

     


    - Very much agreed that the Hawk and Jacoby sections were among the strongest. I would have thought revisiting these characters would be the most off-putting and corny, in a cringey fan fiction sort of way, but they captured more of the charming weirdness of the show, and were more engaging in their own right, than anything else in the book. 

     

    - Which makes the rest feel even more superfluous and strained. I enjoyed the convoluted conspiracy theory lunacy of it all, but ultimately that stuff meandered and didn't really hang together with the characters and setting of the show. Instead it felt like Frost struggled to work them into the Milford story, and vice versa. That said, I thought the way it tied Briggs in worked just fine. I buy that all of this stuff led to his top-secret X-Files sort of work, so it doesn't feel entirely forced.

     

    - On the subject of whether this book is a riddle to be solved (because the impression I get from Reddit is that it is): It would be cool if I was wrong and just missed a lot, but I don't think it actually is, not in the sense that the annotations, documents and the identity of the Archivist are deliberately misleading, or continuity errors point to an alternate timeline, etc. In light of the way people are going full hivemind on it, that aspect of the book kind of feels like a missed opportunity to be a bit more complex and ambiguous, especially since its design totally leans into the idea that the reader is poring over evidence and there is this interplay of three different voices at any one time. But sometimes a framing device is just that. I don't want to hold it against the book for not being some kind of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective thing where you are actually doing the work of the FBI agent. I'll just say I didn't get to the end feeling at all like I had to reconsider everything I had just read, so either I'm not that clever or it just isn't that kind of book.

     


    - It's interesting to note that this isn't the Season 2.5 book that was originally pitched, about what the characters have been up to in the interim. There is a tiny bit of that, though, which I enjoyed. 

     

    - Frost and the artists who worked on this obviously cared about making a cool thing, and that aspect of it is consistently very good. The Dr. Jacoby book cover and the carefully formatted book excerpts in particular are a highlight. 
     

     

  21. Posted · Edited by mondryle

    A few spoiler-free impressions for anyone who, like me, had no idea what this thing was (wrapped for anyone who wants to go in cold):

     

    - Except this first one: It's a really nicely designed book. If you want this, you probably don't want the e-book.

     

     

    - It's a hefty, full-colour hardcover with some complex layouts and really strong art direction. (Edit: Not full-colour. It is actually a very limited colour palette used in varied and striking ways -- very cool.) I expected a conventionally sized and formatted novel with some illustrations but this is not that. There are photos and many, many reproductions of "in-universe" documents. Just flipping through it, it seems dense with that stuff. I don't think any of this would translate well to the e-book format. 

     

    - It's a novel by way of annotated documents from before, during, and after the events of the first two seasons. The ratio of text to art is very high, like the art direction is in service of the conceit, not padding the length. 

     

    - I'm extremely wary of lore and even the existence of this book, but the structure and execution make me want to dig into it. That said, it is absolutely fan service executed at a high level and it is long. Not a coffee-table book for fans but a book-ass-book for fans.