Every Friday I share 5 things I enjoyed this week. Also, high fives are inherently cool, and I think we can all agree Friday is the bestest day. Hence the Friday High Five. šš»
Before we get into all the high-fiving, I want to thank everyone for all the condolences after my aunt passed away. I read every message and appreciated them all. It really meant a lot.
High fives all around.
My Favorite Thing
Recording My First Podcast
After a few weeks of procrastinating and psyching myself out, I finally recorded the first episode of the All the Fanfare podcast this week.
Now Iām obsessively re-listening to it to decide if itās any good. I think itās alright? Like, I hate the sound of my own voice, and at times I wonder if the person Iām listening to has ever talked out loud before, but on the whole, Iām happy. I am reminded that thereās a reason Iām a writer, where I have literally all the time to make myself sound clever. Thereās only so much you can fix in post.
As promised, the first episode is about season 1 of The Wire. It comes in at just under 30 minutes. I was kinda surprised by that, but probably not for the reason you think. I can talk for this kind of stuff for hours. No, what surprised me was how quickly it went by, and even how fun it was. Iām already looking forward to episode 2.
You may be wondering: When can I hear it?
Soon!
My plan is to record several episodes and build up a safety net / backlog, which will help me stick to a weekly cadence. I want to have 4 episodes in the can before I launch in May.
Iāll be sharing more details about the podcastāprobably next weekāincluding launch details, the initial line-up, and plans for the future. Iāll also be giving paid subscribers a sneak preview and will be soliciting feedback on topics theyād like to see covered. Much more to come.
Other Things I Enjoyed
The Accountant
This is an interesting film. And by interesting, I obviously mean weird.
So Ben Affleck stars as Christian Wolff, a man with high-functioning autism who has somehow channeled his condition into a kind of superpower, one which enables him to perform Beautiful Mind type calculations and also to murder people with the kind of cold calculus typically reserved for Terminators and wives of cheating husbands. Heās a man living two lives, a respectable businessman by day and an assassin-cum-vigilante by night.
You realize who that sounds like, right?
Bruce Wayne is he clearly not autistic, but he also is clearly more than a little messed up. And he, too, uses his psychosis to fuel his nighttime activities. We can actually stretch this even furtherāThe Accountant came out in the middle of Affleckās Batman run:
March 25, 2016: Batman v. Superman
October 14, 2016: The Accountant
November 17, 2017: Justice League
The two donāt really have anything to do with the other, but the coincidence is too rich to ignore. Anyway, Iāve wrung entire articles out of flimsier premises.
The Accountant is a traumatic action film. Hereās what I mean by that: The action is on par with John Wick, but itās not as flashy or disposable. Thereās a weight to it. Which is interesting because Wolff is entirely undisturbed by it all.
Perennial my-guy Jon Bernthal co-stars and man, this dude can act.1 I suppose he was bound to look good playing off the personification of a cardboard cutoutāno disrespect to Affleck, heās great, thereās just not much emotion in his scriptābut I challenge you to find anyone who looks manlier when crying than Bernthal. It canāt be done.
I feel like the real missed opportunity with this movie is not once does Affleck kill someone while telling them their taxes are due.
Lunchtime Dungeons & Dragons
I semi-regularly mention D&D in this space because itās the greatest invention known to man. Feel free to scroll on by if you donāt like awesome things.
By the byāIāll probably also be talking about D&D next Friday. My friend has an April birthday and it is now customary to celebrate our name days with an entire day of dice and merriment. As Khaleesiās desert handmaidens like to say: It is known.
We play from 11:30-1 every other Monday. Currently, the party is exploring a vast dungeon complex in search of wealth, and in the process, have allied with a displaced tribe of goblins against some damn dirty orcs. The goblin leader, who calls himself Bone King and wears a Mr. T style necklace of bones, sent one of his goblins with the party to act as a guide.
It should be noted that my games include a hefty dose of silly.
The guide has proven an indispensable source of knowledge to the party. That didnāt stop them from tricking him into kamikazing himself.
The partyās wizard muttered some mumbo jumbo and convinced the goblin he was impervious to fire. And then they had him run into a room full of orcs and spike a flask of oil into a roaring fire.
Hereās the replay:
Shortly thereafter, the party encountered a small army of short, scaly creatures armed with mops and brooms. The creatures operate as custodians of the dungeon, for reasons that arenāt super clear, and each of them wears a āHi, My Name isā¦ā name tag.
The creatures were super salty about all the death and destruction the party has unleashed in the dungeon, and were even less happy when the party pointed them toward their latest mess. When they departed, the creatures left the party with a scroll that had a survey on it. Stuff like: āPlease rate your satisfaction with the cleanliness of the dungeon.ā
In my experience, D&D is best when it leans into the hysterical.
Harrison Ford on Conan OāBrienās Podcast
I think Conan OāBrien is hilarious. Iāve even talked about him previously in this space. Last week, I finally got around to listening to his podcast episode with Harrison Ford, which my friend
pointed me to some months ago.Longtime readers know that Harrison is a my-guy, if not the my-guy. He gave us Han Solo and Indiana Jones when I was young and impressionable. Heās been my favorite actor since.
This episode is a bit weird, admittedly. Youāre getting the full Conan experience, which Iām down for, but it can be an acquired taste. If you enjoyed discovering Harrisonās snarky side in Shrinking, youāll enjoy this episode. I also found his stories about his earliest days in Hollywood delightful.
Red Notice
This is one of those āwhat the hell moviesā we all tend to accumulate in our streaming queues. You know the kind. You add them because they look interesting but they end up sitting in your watchlist for years. Then one day you find them buried and think, āwhat the hellāthis looks okay.ā
Red Notice is a splashy Netflix release that came out during our Covid-lean film years, and somehow I still didnāt watch it until 2024. It stars Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne Johnson, and Gal Gadot in a comedic action movie about thieves and priceless artifacts. Imagine Uncharted, but funny, and also pretty good.
Itās not the best movie or anything, but upon ending the film, I immediately googled āred notice 2ā and was happy to see a sequel is planned for 2025. If thatās not an endorsement, I got nothing for ya.
Reynolds definitely has a schtick, and Red Notice leans all the way into it. He also apparently ad-libbed one of the movieās funniest lines.2
On a lark, I googled ājon bernthal timothy olyphantā to see if theyād ever been in anything together. They havenāt, but I was happy to see my site was the second result. Iāll keep putting this out into the universe until it happens, or at least until my site has all the results.
Seriously though: What was the costume designer thinking putting a hairnet on the Rock?
POD! POD! POD! POD!!! I cannot WAIT!!! You come at the Wire, you best not miss :) And I know you won't..YAY!!!!
Looking forward to the podcast ... but an entire issue dedicated to D&D? Brilliant. Loved that game back in the, well ... early 80s. And haven't played it properly since then. But it still informs far too many of my interests!