Chris Brooks Newsletter 036
Hi folks - in the van, driving from Napa to Keuka Lake via Tulsa (for a wedding) and Florida (for some family time). With plenty of stops in between.
1. 🚘 Where I've Been Traveling
The big trip last month was my journey to Chile to hike the O circuit in Torres del Paine. I flew from Santiago back to Phoenix to spend about 5 days in Scottsdale playing in a golf tournament with a good Keuka Lake friend.
We closed out our time in Napa with quality family time, playing some games, enjoying taking care of Rory, and playing some golf (got my first hole in one).
2. 📖 What I've Been Reading
Articles:
- Kevin Drum RIP – one of my favorite journalists, and an original blogger. I'll miss his insight. John Gruber wrote a great remembrance.
- Utah has way fewer restaurants, adjusted for size, than the US as a whole – possibly tied to lower alcohol consumption in the state, and a possible harbinger for future restaurant business everywhere?
- Florida Man At Rest, combine this with the recent Onion article
- Jamey Stegmaier did a first-rate forecast on the impact of tariffs on the tabletop game industry, and a follow-up with a deeper dive into the math.
- AI 2027 – I've done a first pass on this but need more time to process and report.
- America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufacturing Back
- Corvids be smart
- Tim, don't kill my vibe – I built a vanity / vibe iOS app recently to use on my iPhone to help with some financial option data for some trading. I can confirm that Apple is making it very difficult to benefit from this sort of work. I reverted to using a web app instead because of the difficulties keeping the app working on my personal phone.
Books:
- I finished the audiobook for The Hero of Ages. Still surprised at how much I did not remember from the Mistborn trilogy.
3. 🍿 What I've Been Watching
TV Shows:
- Like many folks we finished the latest seasons of Severance and White Lotus. Parker Posey stole the show, amiright?
Movies:
- Woman of the Hour (on an airplane) was just OK.
- Elvis (2022) could have been very good but just wasn't. Tom Hanks was weird as Col Tom Parker. Highlights were the scenes with Elvis' influences: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, B.B. King, Little Richard, Mahalia Jackson.
- Sing Sing was a good airplane watch.
- I monitor for new Criterion Blueray releases, and snagged Winchester 73 from my local library for a first viewing. Good, not great, with plenty of the early western cliches. Cinematography was phenomenal and I think it was a wise to choice to do this in black and white.
- Same story for Punch-Drunk Love, a movie I had never seen but had a Criterion release in 2016. Sandler at his dramatic best, and Jacob and I both quickly tuned into the score. More on that below.
4. 🎶 What I've Been Listening To
Music:
- I have a never-quite-satisfied obsession with Big Star and Alex Chilton (and to be fair, Chris Bell), so I was thrilled to see that the latest Patreon bonus episode from Andrew Hickey was on "The Letter" by The Box Tops. My gift to you is an Apple Music playlist with Box Tops / Big Star / influences / influenced-bys.
- Jim and I discussed Wilco's The Whole Love in our latest album club. Maybe this is my favorite Wilco album? It is so good, and finishes with my favorite Wilco song (nice words on the song here). Another evergreen Wilco album is A Ghost is Born, recently treated with a 20th anniversary box set release: How Wilco’s Massive ‘A Ghost Is Born’ Box Set Complicates the Album’s Harrowing Myth. This version of Spiders (Kidsmoke) is the best I've heard.
- The score for Punch-Drunk Love was made by Jon Brion,and the Criterion DVD had a great interview with him. As we were watching the movie Jacob and I both noticed how remarkable the music was, and after checking I looked Jon up on Wikipedia. I had no idea he was part of The Grays. Their only album Ro Sham Bo was definitely in "top 10 listened to albums" of the decade by Julie and me. Still holds up and worth a listen.
5. 🎮 What I've Been Playing
- Back into Baldur's Gate 3 on my Steam Deck, this time doing a tactician run with a plain old fighter.
- Ticket to Ride Legacy
- GMT released the third edition of Fields of Fire, making this my third discrete attempt to learn and play the game. I'm happy to report that the supporting materials (rulebook, playbooks, examples of play) are so much better this time around and that I'm enjoying the game.
6. 🚐 Adventures Ahead
Our next big adventure will be a family and friend trip (16 people!) to Scotland at the end of June. We have a number of other trips in various states of imagination and conception:
- Return to Africa for more over-landing and wildlife viewing
- Backpacking in The Maze
- A return to Ireland with some golf emphasis
- We tend to hunker down at Keuka Lake in the summer, but we have some summer-only trips we'd like to do: North Cascades, Nova Scotia / PEI, golfing and hiking in northern Michigan.
-Chris
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