#179 An act of hubris
Money. Laughs. Cars. Time. Questions.
6 AUGUST 2025
Hello.
There are celebrations in the Mead household this week.
Earlier in the year I applied to the Arts Council for their Develop Your Creative Practice grant. I wanted the time and space to explore the connections I’ve started to see between natural movement and improv.
AND THEY ONLY WENT AND AWARDED ME THE GRANT!!!
So next year I get to pay myself as an artist to explore this extremely fertile and aspirational space. I honestly can’t believe how lucky I am.
Obviously, loads more to come about this in the pages of this very newsletter but for now I’d like to thank (and recommend) Daniel Nicholas - who, for an extremely modest fee, took me through the whole process and crafted my application for me. If you’d like him to do the same for you, you can contact him on dan@discerningnights.co.uk or visit his website here.
I can’t recommend him highly enough.
And talking of recommendations ...
Great segue, Chris, really smooth (just ignore this line or it doesn’t work)
Rule of three
[Movie] The Naked Gun
I grew up on Zucker Abrahams Zucker films like Airplane! and Top Secret! but they also made movies without exclamation marks. The most famous of these was The Naked Gun. I remember watching it with my dad and my sister and actually literally falling off the sofa I was laughing so much. I also remember just as clearly, my mum sitting next to us lamenting What are you all laughing at? This isn’t funny.
And so to the new version of The Naked Gun, this time written and directed by Akiva Schaffer (my favourite of the Lonely Island trio). I’m so pleased it’s getting such great reviews, including this one from serious-minded cinephile mag Little White Lies. The joke density here is off the charts, there are more jokes stuffed into every frame of this than any comedy I can remember in the last five years. The key thing to remember though, they are not all good jokes. But if something doesn’t make you laugh, rest assured another joke will be along in a nano-second (or there’ll already be a second visual gag happening in the background simultaneously).
[Game] Fumes
It’s nostalgia week, here at Pretend Post. Another thing I enjoyed in my youth was the video game Twisted Metal, where you strapped big guns to cars and tooled around a post-apocalyptic landscape shooting each other. That game is now a pretty-good TV series (the second season has just launched) but today I want to talk about a new game called Fumes that aims to bring the retro-charms of Twisted Metal to a modern audience. I’ve been playing it a whole bunch on my Steam Deck and it’s already great but the exciting thing is - it’s still in Early Access. That means the game isn’t finished. It’s about a year away from being done. I love this model. Players get to experience an early version of the game and actually influence the development through the game’s Discord server. You see and contribute to the game’s evolution in real time. Vroom!
[Article] The Neuroscience of Time
I wish all my newsletters were this cohesive. Because my last recommendation (after all that nostalgia bait) is this article about the neuroscience of how we experience the flow of time as we get older. Thanks to Franzi Maciej for the recommendation.
Spotlight
What are you doing on 12th September?
Would you like to see an improvised Shakespeare show at a beautiful playhouse in Ealing?
If so, please book today, we’ve hired a 300 seat theatre and would really love to fill it to a point where that ambition doesn’t feel like an act of hubris.
I know people tend to book last minute but if you’re intending to come, could I ask that you consider getting your tickets now?
This is the link to buy tickets.
For reference, this is what the theatre currently looks like in terms of audience. Haha!
Longform thoughts
What is your most recent major new understanding about yourself?
Here, I offer a long list of Semi-intimate questions, for scene prompts or ice-breakers, curated from literally hundreds of student questions over the years.
Parsnippets
Welcome to the Pretend Company Extended Universe, Parsnip - Liam’s brand new Golden Doodle puppy.
Her duo show with Radio is already in development.