It’s been a bit quiet here in blog-land the last few months because I have been in art show mode. I can’t watch new things when I’m working and my brain was too frazzled for much reading, so I rewatched all of Schitt’s Creek and full YouTube play-throughs of the games Dark Souls and Alien Isolation on Eurogamer and the Blades in the Dark RPG on Outside Xtra. Plus, for some reason, I had My Chemical Romance’s 2006 The Black Parade album on a loop for MANY weeks.
MOVIES
Minari
Almost exactly a year since I saw my last movie in a theater in 2020, I sat in a dark auditorium in March to watch Minari. It was a press screening, so only 3 other people in the theater, but it still felt very strange. Despite that strangeness, I’m so glad I saw this movie. It’s a beautiful story, inspired by Director Lee Isaac Chung’s own childhood, about a Korean-American family trying to start a farm in rural Arkansas. All of the elements of the film - acting, cinematography, script, direction - are great.
GAMES
Picross S6
When I get really stressed, I find that puzzle games are a good way to zone out for a little bit. I played a lot of Two Dots on my phone in March and April and also picked up Picross S6 for the Nintendo Switch. I love picross and this game has a nice collection of puzzles, including color picross and “mega picross” which are probably fun but way too complex for my current brain.
BOOKS
Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
This one is hard to sum up; it is stories upon stories, interwoven together in complex ways. Starless Sea follows Zachary, a grad student who picks up a strange book in the library and discovers one of the chapters is about his childhood. Interspersed with Starless Sea’s main story are a number of fables, fairy tales, and journal entries that connect in obvious and less-obvious ways. In an attempt to figure out how an old book from the library can specifically describe his own life, Zachary ends up on a strange adventure that takes him to a magical place outside of time where all stories are kept. There he meets a number of people working to protect the magical place, and also a group trying to destroy it.
I don’t want to say much more than that because part of the joy of this book is how things unfold and connect and become clear much later on. It’s a bit abstract and took me a little while to get through because it required me to properly pay attention. But even when things were nebulous and non-linear, I always enjoyed the journey and would definitely recommend this one.
One extra little anecdote about Starless Sea: It was very surreal, when reading about a person who finds his own story in a book, to come across the phrase “bunny pirates” a bunch of times. At multiple points in this book, Zachary talks about a painting of a boat helmed by a group of nautical rabbits, or as he describes them, “bunny pirates”.
A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T Kingfisher
A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Magic contains just the right combination of darkness, kindness, optimism, and melancholy. 14-year-old Mona works in her aunt’s bakery, which is great since she is a wizard whose magic only works on baked goods. She can make gingerbread cookies dance, tell bread not to burn, and once accidentally imbued a sourdough starter with sentience (it lives in the basement now). Mona is thrust into a dangerous series of events when she finds a dead girl in the bakery and is promptly accused of murder. An assassin is roaming the streets attacking magic people, a looming threat is approaching the city, and Mona and her bread-based-magic might be the only thing that can save the day.
The Princess Trap by Talia Hibbert
The Princess Trap is a fun, well written character-based romance with a “fake engagement” set-up. When Cherry first meets Prince Ruben, she doesn’t realize he’s Scandinavian royalty. After a paparazzi takes some racy photos of the pair, the prince explains who he is and proposes a fake engagement to protect their reputations. It’s a romance, so you can probably guess where things go from there, but what makes Princess Trap stand out are the strong characters. Cherry is really great - she’s empathetic, stands up for herself, and doesn’t tolerate jerks - and Ruben is well developed with believable baggage from his royal family. The characters and relationships take priority, so the intrigue/plot stuff doesn’t really come into play until the third act, which is totally fine.
Blind Tiger by Jordan L Hawk
Jordan L. Hawk’s paranormal romances are always fast, entertaining reads. Blind Tiger starts a new series in Hawk’s shapeshifter/magic Hexworld universe, focusing on hex-maker Sam and cheetah-shifter Alistair. This series is set in 1920s Chicago, so a lot of the action centers around organized crime, bootleg liquor, and speakeasies. After Sam flees his confining, conservative small town for the big city, he is almost immediately surrounded by drama when his cousin is murdered and a magic hex disappears. Enter Alistair and the other owners of The Pride, a shapeshifter/queer-friendly speakeasy, who become embroiled in the mystery.
MUSIC
Like I said…
And also Lil Nas X’s “Montero”. That was on repeat a lot as well.
ART
There is an insidious part of my brain that keeps telling me I should have gotten more work done in the time I spent getting ready for this show, but then I remind myself we’ve been in a pandemic for over a year and the world is stressful and I accomplished a lot. Be kind to yourself, even when you have a bad brain.
All of this work is for FLORA & FAUNA, a two-person show at Gallery 9 with me and painter Jan Lang. It will be on display through the month of May.
