If you can call that thing at night with an eight-week-old baby in a crib next to your bed, sleep. The young one has outgrown her newborn onesies already. This will be the last time we do all this baby stuff. It’s a mix of emotions; glad to see your baby growing and thriving, but also saying a tearful goodbye to life phases. I’m back to being iPhone photography Dad, but now with two kids to capture the ever-fleeting moments in time, for my 1 Second Everyday.
What I’m playing
Pokémon Sleep
Ever wanted to gamify sleep? No, well Nintendo doesn’t care and can’t wait for you to spend real dollars on in-game currencies and premium sleep passes. My four-year-old enjoys the teeth-brushing app which has no monetization whatsoever so I was rather shocked to see so many free-to-play mechanics in full force here. By putting your phone face down next to your pillow it does the basics of showing how deep a sleep you are in and at what time, but many apps can do that, like Sleep Cycle. The various ways of making friendships with other Pokémon are tenuously connected to the act of sleeping, with you meeting a Snorlax (a Pokémon fond of sleeping, naturally) who draws Pokémon in during your sleep so you can discover various Pokémon “sleep styles.” It’s a game of menus but without the actual game part. The game is sleeping.
Dave the Diver
This little indie made a big splash (don’t worry, I’m cringing too). It’s a mashup of genres, with you scuba diving and hunting fish, with a gun, of course. And then at night, you take your haul over to your sushi restaurant, where the game becomes a restaurant sim, where you hire staff and rush to complete meal orders Diner Dash style. There is a story featuring mermaid folks from an Atlantis-type civilization, which I could take or leave, but it does provide some momentum going forward. I played for a good amount of hours but I’m still discovering new mechanics. The latest gadget lets me pry away boulders and pipes to discover new areas, and now I have an aquarium where I can raise different species of fish (hopefully to slaughter for my restaurant. That’s capitalism, baby). It may also be a game of menus, but at least there’s actual gameplay in between its nori sheets.
Viewfinder
I’ve graduated from the demo to the full-fledged version of this Portal-like puzzler. You are armed with an instant film camera, capturing polaroids and placing sections of the world you can walk into. The aesthetic is a little plain as you travel across floating concrete islands suspended in the air, but it kind of has to be as the game starts to play with perspective. The story is told by scientists through disparate Post-it notes and audio recordings. To be honest, I’m not really following it, and there’s a droll-talking cat who I try to ignore. But the puzzles are smart and so far I haven’t gotten completely stuck on a solution. My four-year-old is impressed by my genius, and heck, that’s what really matters.
Picross
MinMax recently put out a podcast episode with a section all about Picross games. Of course, I would think I was unique in enjoying these scary-looking number games, but they’re addictive for a reason. Yes, there are numbers, but there’s no long division here. For the most part, you’re counting along squares. And as the hosts of MinMaxx say, they’re much easier than Sudoku. With Picross, you’re not banging your head against a wall. It’s a more relaxing activity of checking off boxes and coming to a solution, resulting in a pretty picture as your reward. After listening to the pod I picked up Konami Pixel Puzzle Collection on iOS, and PictoQuest & Piczle Cross Adventure on Switch. I may even get back into Murder by Numbers, and the Picross S series. Now instead of firing up social media when I pick up my phone, say something like Threads, I’ll do a little Picross puzzle instead.
What I’m watching
I’m a Virgo
Since his incredible indie film Sorry to Bother You, I’ve been waiting for the next project from Boots Riley (rocking name). That project is I’m a Virgo, a story about Cootie, a 13-foot-tall Black man who’s been hidden away in secret, revealing himself to the world for the first time. The series has the absurd moments Boots Riley is known for. In I’m a Virgo, Cootie watches a creepy animated show (a show within a show) that causes viewers to disassociate, and a bedraggled superhero that is more of a super cop, played by Walton Goggins, helping to enforce landlord evictions. While it may not have the budget of an Ant-Man, the practical effects really make this project sing. You can just feel the time and care put into both the enormous and tiny props. Unfortunately, movies like Sorry to Bother You are harder to justify to movie studios these days unless you’re based on a Mattel toy or a videogame. And for streamers, they just want everything to be television. Which is where we land here. And I think I’m a Virgo would’ve made for a better movie. Even at 7 half-hour episodes, it feels overly too long. Boots is known for his communist activism and it's ironic that Amazon, one of the biggest companies in the world green-lit this project about general strikes and the evils of capitalism. Boots isn’t one for subtlety but maybe, in today’s world, that’s exactly what we need.
Secret Invasion
This one’s a slog. I would’ve fallen off if it weren’t for the fact I was looking forward to this for so long and for whatever reason I’m still trying to keep up with the Marvel machine. Characters are killed off and I feel nothing. I live in hope there will be a pay-off, but as weeks go by, it’s looking less and less likely.
Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One
Fun action scenes with tedious exposition and plotting. I fell for spending extra on IMAX when this one wasn’t actually filmed with IMAX cameras. Should’ve saved that for Oppenheimer. And it sits along Across the Spiderverse and Fast X as the first of a two-parter this blockbuster season.
Justified: Season 2
Timothy Olyphant, our modern cowboy. A series revival named City Primeval has just started airing but it may be some time before I get to that as I’ve just begun my watch of the entire series. I could’ve timed this better but I’ve just come off my binge of Halt and Catch Fire. I actually tried to get into Justified a few years back but with the whole Disney-Fox merger it disappeared off of Neon and didn’t come onto Disney+ until recently.
Never Have I Ever: Season 4
As is Netflix’s way, after 4 seasons you’re done. Heck, these days, you’re lucky to get more than 2. This was a charming high school series from Mindy Kaling about an Indian-American finding her place in the world. This final season closes the book at the end of high school so we won’t get an awkward Buffy goes to college season. But I will miss these characters.
The AfterParty: Season 2
Although I don’t always find it funny, I’m back for another go around because of the sheer creativity of presenting a character’s testimony through different film genres. In the first three episodes, I’ve seen a Pride and Prejudice period drama and a hard-boiled detective mystery in black and white. If only the mystery part was more interesting.