Weeknotes 188

I’ve been ill for the last few days, stuck in bed with a cough and aching muscles. The COVID test is negative so I suppose it’s just a cold. Fortunately it’s mild and I’m on the mend.

NO CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP CORNER: I’ve gone back to daily gym visits after an idle couple of months. That meant I had to power through a humiliating conversation with the man on the front desk who knows my name: “Hello stranger! You been away?” Yes, and also, does this gym have a machine that can kill me now?

In other respiratory ailment transmission opportunity news, I met Chris & Leo for lunch on Tuesday, this time at the new Cook Daily on Hanbury Street. The food’s still good but the whole setup is too chaotic to recommend: the prices are wrong on the menu and much higher than before; their website is abandoned and their hours are unpredictable so it’s hard to know if or when they’ll be open; and somewhere on their byzantine network of disused Instagram accounts they say it’s cash-only, causing us some last-minute sweat and panic, but it turns out they take cards like everyone else.

It’s quick & tasty vegan food but probably not worth it as long as the excellent Spitalfields Club Mexicana exists.

Across the Spider-Verse appeared on iTunes so I watched it. It’s definitely beautiful, inventive, chaotic and impossibly dense. I felt like I was missing a reference every five seconds so I just relaxed and let the shapes and colours wash over me.

Was it worth the pain? Arguably not.

Likewise Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 showed up on Disney+. It’s very long for a film which consists entirely of silly nonsense but it’s pretty fun if you don’t think too hard about what’s happening. I’m now confident I’ve seen enough scenes where all the characters stop what they’re doing so they can rattle off a few minutes of limp improv on the theme of finding each other annoying.

Someone finally says “fuck”, breaking a 32-film–long curse.

In other “fuck” news, I decided to start Picard season three. I’ve only seen four episodes so far (and rewatched the two reviews which go with them) and it’s pretty good! It does at last feel a little bit like TNG again, except everyone’s absolutely ancient and that gives you a scary feeling about the howling void. Its story appears to be independent of the events of the first two seasons so I’m glad I didn’t slog through them first.

Inevitably, he says it.

No programming this week, mercifully.

Cough, cough.