Patreon Newsletter #23: September 2023

From Arnie

Closed out the summer with some trips to the pool and some days of 100 degree temperatures in Chicago. I work and record in the attic so if there are some upcoming episodes where I sound more delirious than usual that’s why.

Emily and I are going to Italy at the end of September a trip I’m looking forward to but I also probably have not spent enough time preparing for.

Work - Party Pack 10 is done. That’s actually not true, but it’s pencils down for most of the Creative department. And by day, I’ve already begun work on secret future games. (You can wishlist Party Pack 10 on whatever platform you prefer.)

TV – In no particular order.

• Telemarketer$
• Reservation Dogs s3
• James Acaster: Repertoire
• Dimension 20: Mentopolis
• Game Changer
• Hijack
• Psychodyssey - Finally finished this looong docuseries about the making of Psychonauts 2.
• Claim to Fame

Movies – Best to… less best. A lot of movies I’d already seen before.

1. Ocean’s 11
2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
3. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
4. Sympathy from Mister Vengeance
5. Men in Black
6. Ocean’s 13
7. Guardians of the Galaxy 3
8. Ocean’s 12
9. Men in Black II
10. Ocean’s 11 (the original Sinatra one which is terrible)

Video Games

• Dicey Dungeon - FINALLY finished it.
• Immortality
• Animal Crossing - Emily started playing it and suddenly my daughter and I decided “we have to go BACK”

Tabletop

• Blood on the Clocktower

Appearances

• Somehow missed that a recent appearance that Adal and I made on the podcast Low Definition had posted.
• Another (long) twitch stream for work. We played Party Pack 7 (I directed Talking Points for that pack) and Party Pack 8 (I directed Weapons Drawn for that Pack). This is really two streams in one. They’re both fun, but the second half with Brooke, Sniffen and our very own Ryan McGill (one of our Discord mods over here on Magic Tavern Patreon) is especially amusing. Lots of yelling. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1907443596

Arnie

From Matt:

Very busy. Work, work, work. Trying to keep up with stuff, but also got to relax a bit over the Labor Day weekend. Did some fun Improvised Shakespeare shows. They are always fun, but I did a few more than normal in August, so I felt I was back in the groove.

Audio:

More McElroys. Staying up to date with Steeplechase now and picking up the last few months of MBMBAM again. I tend to listen in little spurts to get caught up with them (gross).

TV/Movies/Web stuff:

Been on more nostalgic TV trips: The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Dick Van Dyke. Enjoyable in different ways, but also interesting to see what has and hasn’t changed in the last 50-60 years.

Games:

Still Tears of the Kingdom. Hard to imagine I have the bandwidth to finish it any time soon and every time I take a long break from it, it’s hard to know what to do. Explored some sky islands I had missed and then bought Triangle Strategy which I imagine I won’t play for…years?.

Collecting:

I think I have all the Mobile Suit Gundam: Witch from Mercury HG model kits now. I haven’t finished the show yet, but I was deep into season 2 and want to get back to it. Semi-related, picked up the first three volumes of the MSG: The Origin manga which I think is going to be awesome.

Food:

I drink too much coffee, but I love it. Wow. What a revelation. Haven’t had much of a food adventure lately. Lots of working from home makes that difficult. Hopefully, I can plan a trip over the winter or at least get out to some Chicago restaurants. Fingers crossed.

Matt

From Adal:

As a Catskills joke once proclaimed; I just flew home from Burning Man on Tuesday and boy are my arms/legs/knees/back/mind/soul tired! We didn’t have any internet or cell service (until Saturday when it was turned on in an emergency state) in the desert, so we had no idea we were international news. It was wild to have my phone suddenly explode with hundreds of messages of people asking if I was alive and/or eating human flesh to survive. I will say, as miserable as Friday to Tuesday (when we were finally allowed to leave) was - it was also a beautiful and thrilling experience and I’m excited to go back to future burns. I always had a preconceived notion that Burning Man was 25-year-old tech kids taking molly and gyrating to EDM and nudist hippies dry-humping in a kiddie pool of jello - and while it’s definitely some percentage that - it’s also kind of whatever you want it to be. You can curate your own amazing experience. Jemma and I mostly biked the playa day and night to take in all the enormous art installations and stumble upon mind-blowing immersive pop ups in the middle of nowhere. At some point we saw a weird neon glow and biked over for 15 minutes only to discover a 5 table Italian pop-up restaurant in the dark of the desert with waiters serving up fresh pizza and an Iberico ham leg being carved while you waited. Just bonkers ass shit like that made it a gleeful experience.

In August I also had a blast in NYC seeing Here Lies Love, Hadestown again and then going to Stockton, NJ for my brother-in-law's wedding.

Jemma and I took my mom to London for her birthday. She had only been out of the country once before (Spain when she was 18) so it was really delightful to be able to see the city through her FORTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD eyes (got your back mom). Highlights included afternoon tea while cruising down the Thames, a tour of Tower of London, Operation Mincemeat (so fucking funny) and taking my mom to see The Burnt City (she was absolutely floored by it). Now she did keep saying “ello guv’ner!” under her breath every few hours but other than that she was on her best behavior.

I’m heading back to London for a week to work on a project and see the final few shows of The Burnt City and then hopefully a lot of downtime at home with my cats to end September.

Here’s what I consumed in August:

TV:

• Justified seasons 4 & 5
• Ahsoka
• Winning Time season 2
• Only Murders in the Building season 3
• Hard Knocks

Movies:

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (in 4DX but of course)

Music:

• Operation Mincemeat cast recording on Spotify (seriously give it a listen.    It’s a healthy mix of Hamilton, SIX and wacky true British WW2 antics)
• TV On The Radio - Young Liars
• Grace Potter - Midnight
• Grace Potter - Daylight

Other Stuffs:

• Started reading Liberation Day by George Saunders
• Almost done with the book Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin - started this while lying in my muddy ass tent at Burning Man and waiting for the rain to stop. Only about 100 pages left and I’m absolutely in love with this book. Highly highly recommend picking this up.
• Cat Diary: Yon & Mu by Juni Ito - Casey Toney gave me a bunch of books to read and this perfect little cat manga is one of them.
• Cuphead - picked this up again. Hard as hell but such a beautiful game. I still need to play the DLC for this.
• The Common Descent Podcast - just barely started listening to this podcast but enjoying it.

Please let me know what you’ve been enjoying!

Love & Large Please

Adal