We’re back! Sick Stuff: November 6, 2022
This is Sick Stuff, a newsletter about sick stuff to watch, play, read, or listen to from your favorite sick girl.
Hello friends! I didn’t mean for so much time to elapse since our last installment, but I’ve had a lot going on the past few months. From travel for family commitments, to getting Covid after successfully avoiding it for 2.5 years, I just haven’t had the energy to share any media recommendations, but I’ve still been consuming lots of stuff, and have plenty of things to share with you over the coming weeks.
Watching
Since our last installment, we’ve slipped solidly into Fall, a time when I return to my old habits of consuming basically every British mystery series (sometimes period dramas) I can find that I haven’t watched before, the moodier the better for our dreary Portland days. This particular habit is one I inherited from my mother, who reads nothing but mystery novels and enjoys the tv adaptations just as much. I’ve been up to my old tricks, watching seasons upon seasons of the stuff from the good to the bad, it’s definitely a comfort watch for me.
I took a little break from all the series, for a slight twist on the genre, See How They Run, now streaming on HBOmax. A charming and amusing, if imperfect, take on the traditional whodunnit, inspired by incredibly long running West End show The Mousetrap, which features prominently in the film. The cast is brilliant, the setting in 1950s London is aesthetically lush, and the movie is good (but not great). Not the best movie I’ve seen this year, but an enjoyable way to spend a Fall evening.
The other break I’ve taken from moody British mystery series, is to watch the first 4 available episodes of season 2 of HBO’s Avenue 5. I feel like a lot of folks are familiar with this one, but then I’m always surprised when people aren’t so just in case you missed it: it’s one to watch. This absurdist comedy about tourist space travel in the future is just incredibly funny. It’s bizzare, and sometimes pretty inappropriate, but I just laugh so hard. Hugh Laurie is great, but so is the rest of the cast. Zach Woods (Silicon Valley) is as funny as ever, and I particularly love Lenora Chrichlow (Being Human) as Billie, chief science officer, aka exasperated, smartest girl in the room. I really enjoyed season 1, and so far season 2 is just hitting a sweet spot for me. I’ve truly been in hysterics during every episode.
Listening
I’ve finished listening to a few books worth sharing since our last installment but for today let’s focus on Cult Classic by Sloan Crosley. I think there’s been a decent amount of hype about this book, and while I don’t really follow many bookstagram accounts, I have seen it pop up a few places like the Orchard Street Reading Society. Set in New York, this book is funny and yet suspenseful with a tongue-in-cheek mystery vibe, but not of the murder variety. Instead our main character Lola is mysteriously confronted with seemingly coincidental run ins with ex boyfriend after ex boyfriend, until she’s not so sure it’s a coincidence at all. This book is hard to describe in a way that does it justice, because it is contemplative but clever, flippant and yet thoughtful. While the tone is pretty different than the books I read most often, when all is said and done it comes off as incredibly smart and I really enjoyed it.
Playing
I’ve been talking to friends a fair bit about this game, and playing it for over a month. I have a love/hate relationship with Bear & Breakfast and I want to be clear that I have been playing the Switch version because a lot of the things that bring on the hate are related to the Switch version of the game.
Ok let’s start with the good: Bear & Breakfast is a very satisfying management sim with a wonderful art style. You play as Hank, a bear, who ends up fulfilling the demands of a mysterious shark robot with a disembodied voice. This shark bot gives him orders to repair various accommodations and bring humans back to the valley where Hank lives. There are lots of fun characters to interact with, and very satisfying goals to steadily tick off, all while you grow you little hotel empire. Some management sims can get stressful, but this one has built in mechanics to automate certain aspects of your duties the further you get into developing your various properties. By now you are all probably starting to figure out that I love a cozy game that gives you a sense of accomplishment; one with plenty of tasks and goals to work you way through. And every time I sit down with this game, the game play and feel is just super satisfying.
BUT then there’s the bad: my number one complaint about this game on the Nintendo Switch is that it is just super unstable. It crashes A LOT. This might not be such a huge deal if there was a way to save in game without navigating out to the main menu and dealing with long load screens, but you are entirely dependent on a pretty inconsistent auto save function or quitting to main menu to save. There was an update a few weeks ago which was supposed to improve stability, and I will say my game crashes less since that update, but it still crashes, and still way too much. I have to assume the devs are still working on this, but in the meantime it’s a drag and has kept me from playing the last 10 days or so. My other complaint with the Switch version is the controls are not good. This is clearly a point and click PC game, and the way they have reworked those controls for Switch is cumbersome and not intuitive.
So here’s my takeaway: If you have the option of playing the PC version, run, do not walk to buy this game (disclaimer, I haven’t played the PC version but I’ve heard it’s not suffering from these issue). Otherwise, add it to your Switch wishlist and wait until the devs sort out some of the issues on that console. It is a GREAT game, but these issues make it a real drag.
Alright that is all for today! Let’s hope it’s not too long before our next installment, when I bring you more Sick Stuff.
Count me in as one of those that didn't know about Avenue 5! It sounds right up my alley and I'm excited to jump on it!