June was disruptive to the routine drudgery. I went on vacation at the end of May/start of June. Friends of mine graciously let me bum around their house in Michigan for a week. I drank their coffee, drank their liquor, and ate their food while watching them work from home, do chores around the house, and wrangle their kids.

Five stars.

They also took me to a great lake (the Michigan one). I knew it was big. But it did not connect that it would have a vista like the ocean. Freshwater stretched across the whole horizon with a sandy beach was a sight to behold. Kicking myself that I didn’t drink from the sea.

My parents also came for a visit. It coincided with Father’s Day and Juneteenth so it turned out to be a nice three-day weekend. I got to drive them around town, show off the local eats, and take my dad to see the new Top Gun (an action film among action films).

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This month’s playlist:

Mad God

My movie list this month was rather eclectic. Three are worth writing about. But everything has been said that needs to be about RRR. And all you need to know about After Blue (Dirty Paradise) is a young woman unearths Kate Bush on an alien beach and becomes unreasonably horny.

Mad God may be the most visually unique film to release this year. Composed almost entirely of practical VFX and grotesque stop-motion. Phil Tippett (whose work appears in Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and RoboCop) voids his mind onto the screen filling it with shit-golems, larval fetuses, and witch crows.

The story is minimal. And begins and ends with an excerpt of Leviticus at the start in which God pronounces a curse on humanity. What follows are simply vibes that follow that theme.

Mad God is gross and often uncomfortable. Yet we rarely get to see movies with such transgressive visuals, or made in this way. We are richer for it.

Love, Death & Robots

Animation is my favorite medium. I cannot state this strongly enough. Of all the things Netflix has bankrolled, I am most thankful for this anthology. A creative sandbox for ideas to come to life that would otherwise remain phantoms.

I wish the animation styles strayed from 3D more often. Regardless, the visuals are varied and often experimental. The writing is especially strong this season encompassing drama and comedy, sci-fi and fantasy. An engrossing short story collection.

Particular stands outs include Bad Travelling (fantastic writing and world-building), The Very Pulse of the Machine (awe-inducing premise), and Jibaro (just outstanding visuals and storytelling from Alberto Meilgo yet again).

Knotwords

I’m not one for puzzles. I like the idea of solving puzzles. I like feeling smart. Unfortunately, I’m much too lazy to invest time and effort into solving serious puzzles.

If a solution takes more than a few minutes, I usually drop it. Or if I’m playing a video game, search for a guide. Otherwise, I feel like I’m wasting valuable time when I could be doing something that requires considerably less effort.

The Wordle wave caught me like many others. That puzzle cleverly requests only a small investment of time and prevents you from gorging on the game by only offering a single problem a day. I took the bait which became a gateway drug to my current puzzle vice: Knotwords.

Knotwords somehow combines the crossword with sudoku, and the daily restraint of Wordle, to create something superior. Visually more daunting than Wordle, but once you understand the flow, just as accessible. And the payoff is worth it. I’ve happily spent up to half an hour solving one of these knots.

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This month I also edited a vignette of my trip to Michigan.