magictavern

Patreon Newsletter #18: April 2023!

Added 2023-04-04 14:53:18 +0000 UTC

From Arnie

Spent the first half of the month still kind of recovering from what was supposed to be a minor surgery. I’m totally fine (thanks for asking) but if you’re someone, like me, who is constantly juggling A LOT of stuff in your life… if you suddenly have to stop, let all the balls drop, and take a minute… it can be slow work getting back up to pace.

Emily and I took a lovely trip to the Florida Keys, where I mostly rested by a pool and read comic books on my iPad.

TV – In no particular order.

Escape to the Chateau
The Last of Us
Psychodyssey

Movies – Best to… less best.

The Iron Giant
Sunshine
Creed
Creed 2
The Aviator
House of Games
Creed 3
Koyaanisqatsi
Key Largo
The Spy Who Loved Me
Knock at the Cabin
Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Video Games

Stardew Valley - This may be most of what I play for the foreseeable future
Psychonauts 2
TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge

Reading

As I mentioned above I read a bunch of comic books on my trip. I’m not sure why. I think I wanted something light and disposable so as I waited to board the flight I downloaded Marvel Unlimited and ended up reading a lot of Hickman-era X-Men and X-Men adjacent stuff. I’ve actually never been a big X-Men person (although I’ve listened to a lot of Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men) but sometimes it’s fun to try to read everything in a big crossover event. The individual comics still often leave me a little cold but I continue to be intrigued by the messy process of continually reinventing an overly expansive universe.

Appearances

Here’s the twitch stream for Jackbox Games where we played and talked about making Party Pack 3 (I directed Trivia Murder Party and Fakin’ It. Crazy to think what a busy year that was. I also directed Drawful 2 that same year, and pitched the game that became TeeKO, but I didn’t direct that one). We’re doing the same thing for Party Pack 4 in April.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1780135468

Arnie

From Matt:

Had some fun Improvised Shakespeare shows this month. Come by and check one out if you’re in Chicago. I’m not always playing, but you can see me on April 22nd and 29th coming up. Looking forward to getting away for a couple of days with Arnie and Adal to talk shop (and grill and play some board games).

TV/Movies/Web stuff:

I’ve seen bits and pieces of Veep over the years, but we’re finally watching it properly. We just started Season 3. Wonderfully uncomfortable. Always have my finger on the pulse. Really want to finish Gundam Wing, but need to be in the mood for angsty anime boys.

Games:

Breath of the Wild. Still. Always. Until Tears of the Kingdom. Downloaded Delete After Reading on Steam, but haven’t been able to get it to work yet. Then I started playing BotW again (again).

Collecting:

Managed to get my hands on a few holy grails this month:

Fans Toys Parkour (Cliffjumper) filled in a hole in my Transformers collection. I’m closing in on a completed set of original G1 masterpiece-scale characters from Seasons 1 and 2 of the cartoon.
Picked up some older Macross toys produced by Yamato. I’ve had a VF-1S Valkyrie in 1/48 scale for 15(?) years (or more?). Finally ebayed a set of armor parts for it and a VF-1J (Hikaru TV deco) in the same scale.
On a slightly different note, I finished clicking together two HG Gundam kits and picked up some MG kits too that I will at least click together someday. Maybe even paint and customize if I’m feeling wild and suddenly somehow have free time.

Does anyone care about this other than me? Probably not. Too in-depth? Definitely.

Food:

Haven’t been eating out much. Trying to be healthier and lose some weight. Though when we do indulge, it’s often an old standby here in Chicago, Hopleaf. Great food. Amazing beer selection. Always happy to end up there. Stayed with my mom for a few days to help her out, and we defrosted some steaks she didn’t know what to do with so I made them in a pan on the stove. Not as ideal as grilling but I’ve gotten much better at it.

From Adal:

Jemma and I have had an incredible 2 weeks traveling and are pretty much burnt out and ready to get home after we stop in LA. It’s almost 1am Wednesday morning in Sydney at the moment and we leave in a few hours to travel back in time. I’m too tired to recap everything but I’m excited to give a run down in next month's newsletter. In quick summary; Tokyo is a marvel and my new favorite city. I’m already trying to crunch the numbers to try and get back in the next year or so. Australia has been a delight but I can’t sleep for more than an hour before I jolt awake because I think I feel a spider on me. I’m like Indiana Jones but instead of snakes it’s spiders….but I also hate snakes.

March 7th we celebrated our little Coco as he turned one year old! Coco aka Coconut, aka Coco Bean, aka Scream Bean, aka Scream Machine, aka Loco Coco, aka Special Fatty Tuna. He’s still pretty rowdy but we love him dearly.

Jemma and I watched and cheered on the Princeton men’s and women’s basketball team as they did INCREDIBLY well in March Madness. If anyone was at the Magic Tavern Discord Meet n’ Greet then you’ll know I ate my fucking words as I said the men’s team would absolutely get bounced the first round. Jemma’s taking me to Princeton next month for ‘Reunions’ and I’m mostly excited to eat more Hoagie Haven.

I’m excited to do a Magic Tavern retreat next week and then Jemma and I are headed back to London at the end of the month to go see The Burnt City a few more times as well as check out some other immersive events; including Phantom Peak. Other than that, I'm looking forward to spending as much time as humanly possible at home with the boyz (Fries, Brisket & Coco…..aka…you know).

Very excited to see JPC & Erin (and some of you!) in person this Friday for the Hey Riddle Riddle live show in LA. There’s a handful of in person tickets left and unlimited Livestream tickets to be purchased here: https://www.heyriddleriddle.com/live

Here’s what I consumed in March:

TV:

Band of Brothers - I saw it all in college when it first came out but had never revisited and I gotta say it’s really fantastic. There’s also an embarrassing amount of famous UK actors sprinkled across all the eps; many who I think were pretty much unknown at the time at least to American audiences (Damien Lewis, Simon Pegg, Michael Fassbender, Tom Hardy SWOON!, James McAvoy, Stephen Graham, Dominic Cooper, Andrew Scott and more)
Mandalorian season 3
Ted Lasso season 3
Survivor season 44
Top Chef season 20
Lucky Hank
History of the World: Part 2
2023 Oscars

Movies:

Triangle of Sadness
Luther: The Fallen Sun

Other Stuffs:

I was a guest again on The Restricted Section podcast (one of my favorites to pop in on!), I also did a quick guest audio spot on Nature Talks podcast and was interviewed on Content & Capable podcast
I started reading the book Feral Creatures (the sequel to Hollow Kingdom)
I’ve been enjoying the album Untrue by Burial and listening to lots of Gorillaz lately.
Had fun but was very bad my first time playing Among Us for JPC’s fundraising stream (although him and I had a killer round towards the end).

Please let me know what you’ve been enjoying!

Love & Large Please

Adal