Chris Brooks Newsletter 034
Welcome to February. We have a full house here in Napa as Jacob, Kaitlin, and Rory have all moved in with us while they work on a home remodel. It is amazing! We get to see and help with Rory just about every day.
My year of strength is going strong: still on my streak of three strength workouts a week. Also doing some track workouts with consuegro Matt.
1. 🚘 Where I've Been Traveling
No travel for me. Julie's had two trips to Kansas City: once for work, once to see her brother perform in Hairspray. March will be my big travel month.
2. 📖 What I've Been Reading
Articles:
- Hang out around me enough (especially if you go with me to get a haircut) and I'll rant about the licensing racket (WSJ article). As a software engineer I can work on life critical systems (artificial hearts, nuclear power plants, etc.) without any special licensing. But you want me to cut your hair? Absolutely not - thou must have a proper license! No surprise that licensing boards spend the vast amount of their energies pursuing those practicing without licenses, not dealing with incompetent licensed members.
Books:
- Hypermedia Systems has been helpful in my personal web project work as well as in my teaching at WOU. Nerd alert: looking for an alternative to big, fat Javascript libraries? Want dynamic web pages but yearn for the good old days of simpler HTML? Consider htmx and read this book.
- Re-reading (via audiobook) Mistborn: the Final Empire mainly because I've been playing the Mistborn Deckbuilding game and I forgot who the characters were and what the different metals do.
3. 🍿 What I've Been Watching
TV Shows:
- NY Times covered SNL commercial parodies, timely as the 50th anniversary of SNL is approaching.
- I completed my rewatch of all of Seinfeld. The last season was much better than I thought it would be, even with the sub-par series finale.
- Presumed Innocent was very good (thanks Maigen!).
- The Night Agent was not so good - abandoned after two episodes.
- You must watch The Diplomat! Yes, like West Wing and similar shows the characters are much too quick witted to be realistic human beings but the stories and acting are so good. Keri Russell always delivers and Rufus Sewell (who I will always see as an American Nazi) is so good as her husband.
- It would have been great to watch this during the Christmas season, but a final strong recommendation for Black Doves. Keira Knightley as a bad-ass spy - need I say more?
Movies:
Quite a few, again.
- The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (thanks Maigen!) was a fun diversion, sort of a modern take on The Dirty Dozen.
- Inspired by the episode on a History of rock music in 500 songs, I wanted to see the newish Little Richard: I Am Everything. A great telling of the tortured life he led (I'm gay and proud! I'm not gay and never was, praise Jesus!) and definitely worth a watch.
- The Old Oak is a low budget talky drama about a northern English town in bad shape (an "S-Town" if you will) that takes in a group of Syrian refugees. Excellent if you like this sort of thing.
- I liked but didn't love The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, a story that I don't want to spoil but I'll say this: a posthumous love letter to a disabled gamer.
- Really good western (and horror): Bone Tomahawk.
- Really average western: Dead for a Dollar.
- Documentary on F1 driver Senna was excellent.
- Julie and I saw The Brutalist in the theater. Great music and cinematography. We both enjoyed this epic (long enough for an intermission!).
- Rob Peace was pretty good.
4. 🎶 What I've Been Listening To
Music:
- Nick Drake has been on my mind lately so I've been listening to his limited catalog. - Joe Boyd was his patron and producer for much of his career, and this recent interview is worth a listen - If you like the 500 songs podcast I refer to all the time, become a Patreon and you can listen to an episode about Nick.
- Jim and I talked at length about Highway 61 Revisited
Podcast:
- I did not know there was a Wilco podcast: Shoving Wilco. Pretty good stuff here, and good timing with the 20th anniversary big box re-issue of A Ghost Is Born.
5. 🎮 What I've Been Playing
I achieved all of my Balatro goals, so now I'm playing a game Jacob gave me for my birthday: UFO 50. This isn't just one game, it is 50 1980s style console games. Some are very good. Some are indecipherable.
Played a solo session of Mistborn: the Deckbuilding Game. Played two games on Rally the Troops with my friend Don: Washington's War (lost badly maybe three times in a row?) and 1989: the Dawn of Freedom (lost even more badly). I'm concerned that I have lost my ability to win boardgames.
6. What's Coming Next?
In early March I fly to Chile to meet up with friends and hike the O Circuit in Torres del Paine (Patagonia). I'll fly from Chile to Arizona to play in a golf tournament with one of my Keuka Lake friends. Two or three weeks after that Julie and I will begin our drive back east to New York, via Tulsa OK and maybe via Florida.
See you in March!
-Chris