Weeknotes 35

Timestamping a new weeknotes file is a good opportunity to compare my expectations of what month it is against reality. Hold on, it’s September? Okay.

A low week. I spent most of it feeling listless and grumpy, prompted by nothing in particular. I expect that’s normal at the moment.

I had a couple more in-person coffees with friends which definitely lifted my mood. Even then, it’s hard to properly relax in these public situations because strangers are unpredictable and I never feel particularly safe. Maybe this is an overreaction and everything’s fine as long as you’re outside? I just don’t know.

We watched Billy Elliot and Billy Elliot the Musical Live as a minimum viable film season. This unintentionally created a time loop feeling of watching the same events unfold repeatedly, as did the experience of dying over and over again in Lonely Mountains: Downhill. Maybe it’s time to move on from the accidental Groundhog Day theme.

We also watched Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey in anticipation (I thought) of Face the Music coming out soon. Aside from a few disastrous missteps and dated visual effects they hold up pretty well as lighthearted 80s/90s teen comedies.

I discovered too late that the new film will mysteriously be “only in cinemas” in the UK, unlike the US where it’s also available for streaming. The chances of me going to a cinema are zero so I suppose we’ll just have to see it… eventually?

I used a laptop without an external keyboard and monitor for the first time in ages and found it impossible to resist occasionally touching the screen to scroll a window or dismiss a dialog. This makes gorilla arm rhetoric feel outdated; using the iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard every day has made it obvious that touch is incredibly useful as a secondary input mechanism on a laptop. Sort it out Tim Apple.

I bought the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 remaster. It’s had universally glowing reviews which praise it for being “the game you know and love”. This doesn’t help me because I’ve never played a Tony Hawk’s game before so I neither know nor love it.

The best thing I can say about it is that it does remind me of being a kid: a whole summer stretching out ahead of me, stuck with the one game I could afford with my pocket money. In that situation you have no choice but to keep playing the thing until you learn to enjoy it. But I’m older and less patient now, and without the lure of nostalgia I can’t imagine making myself play this for long enough to make the controls feel more fun than frustrating. Games have moved on and I will too.

The two separate legal agreements you’re forced to slowly scroll through at the beginning are a nice punk touch.

Nat ordered a box of mystery produce. I admit I had to look up the granadilla but I think it’s fair to say that everybody involved was very impressed when I identified the cherimoya straight away. I should audition for “What’s My Fruit?”.

Autumn’s arrived: the days are cooler, the leaves are darker, the skies are bluer. I love it.