Weeknotes #198

Matthew Perry died on Sunday (New York Times) and I found out about it on Threads. I receive notifications for breaking news alerts from both Reuters and the New York Times (both of which did notify me later in the day) so I was impressed and figure this augurs well for Threads’ long term future.

Also on Sunday, the local ‘high street’ held an event encouraging kids to dress up for Hallowe’en and walk around in costume. I’d been a bit organised this year and bought Emma a Princess Peach costume and John a Darth Vader costume and so they had fun walking around in those. While they did that with Eri, I took Rowan down a train station to Mister Donut.

I sold my PS4 to Book Off. When I sold my Wii U last year, I’d got ¥8,000 yen or so and was expecting something similar. Nope! They paid me six-hundred and seventy-one yen! I used their ‘I’ll take whatever price you give me’ service which was clearly a mistake. The Wii U did have one or two games thrown in but still.

One of my favourite things about the apartment when I first saw it was the small back yard it had. As it turns out, I don’t have much interest in maintaining a garden and so have neglected it for most of our time here. However, it got bad enough over the summer that I went out one morning last week and did the bare minimum to stop it looking completely unkempt. I got a blister on my finger from pulling weeds and so have learnt the appropriate lesson: make sure the next place has no garden.

I finally finished another book! I mostly enjoyed Fredrik deBoer’s the Cult of Smart but did feel like it petered out towards the end.

I was wondering about the ‘rules’ regarding band names. There are no special rules; it’s just trade mark law. I suppose this isn’t a surprise but is a bit of a let-down. I’d imagined there was some sort of code of musicians or something.

Speaking of let-downs, how about an essay on George Lucas? I guess this just goes to show how disconnected from Star Wars ‘discourse’ because I’d somehow gone more than ten years without ever seeing someone even mention Tom Simon’s piece about the value of creative discomfort.

I started the seventh season of Seinfeld and immediately missed the lack of an overarching story that was a hallmark of the sixth season. I never particularly liked the Susan character and especially didn’t enjoy the engagement storyline when I first saw the show. I realise the logical conclusion of a resistance to character development is the stasis of the Simpsons and infinitely prefer what Larry David & Co chose but it was a little disappointing (which I guess is the theme of this week?) to realise that I’ve probably passed the high point of the show. Come back next week to see what hot takes I have about a 30-year-old show!

While I’m being all out of touch, have you seen that Hot Ones show on the YouTube? I watched the interview with Matt Damon from a few years ago and was surprised at how good it was. Part of that is Damon giving thoughtful answers but credit to Sean Evans for being a great interviewer. I think this thing might really have legs.

In what feels like an incredibly ‘me’ thing: the reason I watched the Damon interview was because of a clip from it that’s used in Patrick Willems’ 90-minute exegesis on what’s killing cinema.

Am I going to be the umpteenth person linking to Taylor Swift’s release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) (Apple Music)? I guess I am.