Media
The Invincible
Very good walking simulator game based on a 1960s Polish hard sci fi novel. Everything looks so old and Soviet, very lonely desolate vibes. No health or game mechanics really but space still feels tense and threatening the whole time. Looks gorgeous and feels creepy in the best way.
The Book of Mormon Musical
It's taken me a while to write this review, I needed a few days after to think about it. When this musical first came out I was in high school, preparing to serve a mission, and I was as mormon as they reasonably come. I remember assuming it was just "anti-mormon" propaganda, but after the church used it as a springboard for a PR campaign, I also remember thinking, like the writer McKay Coppins, that all press is good press. Coppins, having never seen the play, was asked by a theater critic why he thought it was able to get away with explicitly mocking a minority religion. Coppins offered that the lukewarm backlash was a testament to the niceness of mormons, to which the critic replied, "No, it’s because your people have absolutely no cultural cachet." I think about that quote a lot. Mormonism more than almost anything inspired in me a deep need to be liked. Someone thinking I was bad would by extension mean they might think my religion was bad. Nothing could be worse to the anxious believer. It's been years since leaving the faith of my youth but that feeling has never quite left me. And so finally after all these years, watching this musical felt almost surreal. Looking around the packed Salt Lake theater I found myself asking, "Have any faithful mormons come here today? Would they?". The lights dimmed and I found myself laughing and enjoying myself almost immediately. The jokes are quick, the historical references are accurate, and the music is exaggerated to the point of intentionally parodying the very concept of musicals. But I kept thinking about if my formerly religious self was sitting next to me. I probably would have laughed along and chuckled with a hand over my mouth. I would have wanted to seem like a "good sport" who can take a joke. "I liked it", I would have lied to my friends afterwards. But secretly I would have felt dressed-down, humiliated, and guilty for even going. Knowing that made it feel just a bit too mean to have a good time laughing along knowing I have faithfully mormon friends and family who wouldn't be honest with me about how it actually made them feel. And to be clear, I don't even think this musical is even particularly antagonistic. It's obviously intended for a non-mormon audience and is more using mormonism as a convenient vehicle to criticize religion more broadly as a bunch of "hooey" for simpletons. I don't actually believe that about my religious friends, and I didn't like feeling like I was in a group of the cool kids gossiping about the nerds just out of earshot. The rush of being included with the popular crowd overrides that feeling in the moment but afterwards the guilt creeps in. In the end, I'm really glad I saw it finally. For what it's trying to do it does it really well and I can't deny I enjoyed it for what it was. But I think as far as art through which to engage with interesting ideas about religion and faith I'll stick with things in the ilk of "The Young Pope" and "The Leftovers".
The Original Halo Trilogy
A failure of modern shooters are the extensive features. I don't want a complicated UI devoted to leveling up my character. I don't want to have so many attacks that you can button mash your way through the levels. Halo avoids all of this. There are aliens. They are quasi-religious about some mysterious ancient rings. They are hell bent on blowing up the universe with said rings and you need to stop them. Some of the aliens lose their faith and join team Human. Sometimes there are zombies too. The weapons system is simple, but trial and error forces you to learn what weapons are most effective against particular enemies. All in all, pretty fun to shoot aliens and drive warthogs.
| Aliens | |
| Zombies | |
| Cortana | |
| The Arbiter | |
| Couch Rotting Post Graduation | |
Mahashmashana by Father John Misty
One of those transcendent works of art that makes you feel like no matter how much you labor and pine, you’ll never create anything of true artistic value in your entire life. Also very jazzy.
Death Stranding
Opens with 90 minutes of weird cutscenes before the first real gameplay which turns out to be hauling your mother's corpse up a mountain to be incinerated or else it's explodes in some sort of ghostly nuke thing. Also she was the president of the united states? And there's a little fetus in a jar that guides you around? And you stumble and fall and flop the whole way because the gameplay is just keeping your balance. And it's so self-serious and grim and miserable that I get why it was hit during the pandemic but actually it sucks bad!
Not bad. The cinematics are wayyyyyy too long, but the premise and gameplay are actually pretty fun. It made for a great podcast game where I could just zone in and out any time.
The Wicked Press Tour
It has been 6 months of the most unwell women you’ve ever seen pawing at each other and never forming a single coherent sentence. It’s like a game show where contestants have to survive high doses of carbon monoxide. There have been phrases spoken on this tour that have now permanently entered my lexicon and I have watched them enough times to make up the full runtime of the actual film. I keep expecting the next interview to be shot from two hospital beds complete with IV drips and the sound of a heart rate monitor flatlining.
Call of Duty Black Ops 6
CoD has been scraping the bottom of the barrel for a while but this slop really takes the cake. It's terrible!
Wicked The Musical on Broadway
Felt like a time capsule of a simpler time in the 2000’s. The overall theme seems to be “Maybe the baddies are good if you look at it the right way”. That’s a totally reasonable message in the cultural context of a world that was actively debating Islam in America, gay marriage, whether or not to go to war in the Middle East, etc. It feels less culturally relevant now so it has to stand on its merits as a musical alone. On that front, not bad, but also not my favorite personally. Awesome costumes and set design but sorta bland music minus the one song everyone knows. I had the equivalent of 4 glasses of wine while watching and had a great time even if I’m more of a sucker for musicals about the oppression of Eastern European Jews.
| Music | |
| Set design | |
| Story | |
Oh Mary! starring Cole Escola
Surpassed all expectations that I didn’t even have
Every play should be a little weirdo’s silly bit that got out of hand and made it on Broadway somehow.
The Talos Principle 2
A great sequel to a great puzzle game, though it lacks the moody mysterious loneliness of the original it makes up for it in the new mechanics that make the first game feel like tic tac toe.
Really intriguing and moving in a way I didn’t really expect. Saying something meaningful in the medium of video games is really difficult, but the Kryatzes managed to pull it off. It’s so rare to see media about techno optimism, and seeing a valorization of man over nature felt extremely refreshing. That aside, the puzzle mechanics are also top notch, I never found myself getting bored.
1870: Railroading Across the Trans Mississippi
The best 18xx train game around. A few simple changes from the stock rules of 1830 leads to an incredible 4 hour brain melter. Deeply strategic stock trading meets unforgiving track engineering. Perfect.
143 by Katy Perry
I really wanted to like this album. I’m a contrarian by nature and seeing people decide ahead of time that it would be bad because they dislike Katy Perry for obscure sociopolitical reasons had me primed to call it a masterpiece, but there’s maybe 3 songs on this album total that even deserve a repeat listen. Just sort of nothing really. Already forgot I heard it. I would love a Perryssance but it’s going to take more than a couple 4x4 house tracks.
“Sweet Thang” The third track on Shuggie Otis’ 1971 album ‘Freedom Flight’
Really good for driving. Make a man feel as though one of these days God’s punishment will come both just and swift but it ain’t today, today you can just keep on driving.
Patty Reviews
I like it, but I can’t give it a full 5 stars because there is a part of me, a very small amount though, that feels just a tiny little bit narcissistic about thinking me and my family members have the most interesting opinions on everything.
Perfect for anyone who’s ever thought “the Pattys have the best opinions on everything, I wish I had a catalog of everything they’ve ever had an opinion on”
We're right about everything so of course this is 5/5
I made this site so by all rights I should give it 5 stars, but there's a certain level of narcissism involved in spending an ungodly amount of time making a site to catalog mine and my family's opinions so I'm taking a star off as penance.
Basically Facebook at this point.
Rebecca refuses to like anything on Twitter but when you tell her a funny little anecdote she says “oh yeah I saw your tweet”
I basically only read my siblings tweets. Then I pretend that I'm not even on social media these days even though I send them likes. So far I have fooled them.
Yeah, it has gone down hill fo sho.
Not nearly as fun as it used to be.