Patreon Newsletter #46: August 2023! (Patreon)

From Adal:

It’s too damn hot for a penguin to be just walking around...is how I feel about Chicago right now. Too much heat. Too many storms flooding my basement. One tornado touching down a mile away from me and causing me to run to the basement with my cats (tails poofed in terror)! Well Fries and Brisket were scared. Coco doesn’t know what the fuck is going on at any given time.

Had a delightful time in Vermont for a retirement party held inside a 230 year old barn (definitely haunted) and took a quick trip to Grapevine, TX to check out the new Meow Wolf with some Night Vale podcast friends. Very much enjoyed this location but it felt like maybe 50% of it was inspired by the other 3 locations so there was a bit of a ‘greatest hits’ vibe to the experience. My group hit up the Rainforest Cafe afterwards for some cocktails and engaged in a rousing debate on whether or not the in-house animatronic tiger could be fucked or not. Don’t ever say I don’t care about the rainforests.

Other highlights include having a couple friends from out of town stay with Jemma and I in July. We had a game night in the basement including a rowdy round of Ready. Set. Bet. which may be my new game obsession. Jemma and I had a neon-tastic time at Arnie Niekamp’s place for his partner’s birthday.

August is our big travel month. Jemma and I are headed to New Jersey for her brother’s wedding, then NYC to see Here Lies Love, Eva Noblezada’s final performance in Hadestown and possibly the new immersive Great Gatsby show. Has anyone been or heard good things? When we get back from that we're whisking my mom off to London as a birthday gift. As of now we’re taking her to The Burnt City and Operation Mincemeat. She’s big into genealogy and traced our lineage to a knight named William Marshal so we’ll go check out his dusty ass bones and probably see the big’ins (TowTow of Lo, BiBe, Londi Brig, WestMini, etc). If you know of any spots my/a mom might enjoy in town please let me know! We’re staying in Shoreditch if that’s helpful.

After that is Burning Man, which we don’t return from until September 4th, so apologies in advance for the next newsletter being a few days off from being posted on the 1st of the month. Luckily this newsletter was released right on time and you all agree that this is true!

Oh one more thing! (biiiiig Petey Falk turn of head) My sister and brother-in-law just moved to Nashville a few days ago. If you know of any fun stuff for them to do there please drop it in the comments as they would really appreciate it! If this sounds familiar it’s because they moved to Nashville in late 2020 but then Sadieh immediately was cast in the tv show The Shining Girls and ended up just moving back near Chicago.

Here’s what I consumed in July:

TV:

• Bluey season 3 new episodes - great to see the return of the grannies!
• What We Do In The Shadows season 5
• Reservation Dogs season 3
• Justified seasons 1, 2 & 3 - doing a rewatch in order to most enjoy the new season that just came out
• Big Brother season 25
• Dark Winds season 2

Movies:

• Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 - Saw it in 4DX and was thrown from my chair. A+ experience
• Barbie
• Oppenheimer
• Punchdrunk: Behind the Mask - Documentary about the theater company that created Sleep No More and The Burnt City. If you’d like to watch it to better understand my love for those shows, let me know and I’ll send you a link to it! It only aired in the U.K. but someone was kind enough to send it my way.
• Stephen Curry: Underrated

Music:

• My number one music rec. this month is to check out the song ‘Spinning Away’ by Brian Eno and John Cale. It should help put you in a dreamy and wistful state should you want to be in one.
• Mitski - Bug Like an Angel (single)
• Mitski - Lush (I do think Mitski is the my number one in the category of ‘haven’t yet seen in concert but am dying to’)
• Blur - The Ballad of Darren
• Feeble Little Horse - Girl With Fish
• Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92
• Carly Rae Jepsen - The Loveliest Time
• The Clientele - I Am Not There Anymore
• Neutral Milk Hotel - Everything Is
• Tears For Fears - Songs From the Big Chair
• Slowdive - Slowdive
• The Smiths - The Smiths
• The Smiths - Meat is Murder
• Friendzone - DX

Other Stuffs:

• Started playing Hades again as well as lots of Super Mario Party
• Enjoying the podcast Who Shat on the Floor at My Wedding?
• Had a lovely time seeing Jinkx Monsoon at Chicago Theater
• Played more Blood on the Clocktower and still not sick of it.
• The board/card game Ready. Set. Bet. is making me want to throw a Kentucky Derby style party where we dress up, play the game and knock back mint julips.
• Played Sidereal Confluence and more Horrified
• Did anybody watch this newest season of The Witcher? Is it worth checking out?
• I recently guested on the Dungeon Radio Hour podcast
• Out now is a Tell Me About It episode about musicals with the delightful Lauren Shippen. There’s also a pretty wild D&D ep with Brennan Lee Mulligan in the pipeline so look out for that.
• There’s 6 episodes out of my new podcast The Word Association if you’re looking to add something new to your list! Email us at twapod@gmail with a word you’d like us to use on a future episode or just to say.

Please let me know what you’ve been enjoying!

Adal

7:17pm

From JPC:

Hey Riddiots -

Gonna keep it brief this month and mention a few things that I've been enjoying lately. I just finished Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. I have a lot of thoughts about that book, but I keep coming back to how impressive it is. It's one of the only times I've read a work of fiction and, instead of getting lost in the world, I was completely lost in thinking about the author. Just a wildly impressive book. In TV news, I started watching Warrior on Max. It's not always good, but I find it thoroughly entertaining. It's kinda like if the people who did True Blood tried to make Deadwood. Do with that what you will. And in video games, I got Halls of Torment on the recommendation of Arne Parrott and it's just fantastic. It's in early access on Steam, but I found the content to be more than worth the $4 price tag. If you're into bullet hell games with Diablo II vibes, you'll enjoy it.

And in other exciting news, I finally received some responses for our Patron of the Month experiment! This month, I started earlier and cast the net wider and got THREE people to get back to me! Since we haven't done one of these in 3 months, I'm including all three winners. Congrats to Judd, Josef, and Rachel!

• JPC

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1. Hi, I’m Judd Morse! I’m good with using my full name, none of my enemies are old enough to read.

2. The first thing I want to plug is my wife Kristen (double entendre!). She’s an amazing and talented person. She has an Etsy store called The Spotted Selkie (https://etsy.com/shop/TheSpottedSelkie) where she sells stickers, keychains, earrings, Moon Knight pins, and all kinds of cool stuff. Kristen’s my favorite person in the world, I love her, and she has excellent taste in men.

3. I just recently finished Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain on audiobook, and it blew me away. For a 100-year-old book, it’s still very relevant, very poignant, and really damn funny. Reminded me of how much of a know-it-all idiot I was in my 20s. I highly recommend it.

4. So in my previous life, before a career change, I was a writer. I’ve been working on a short story for over a decade now, trying to get a draft out of this premise that just won’t leave me alone. It’s been kind of driving me nuts for a while now. But I finally, finally got a draft put together a

couple of weeks ago! A lot of the credit goes to Alan Moore’s online Maestro course (https://www.bbcmaestro.com/courses/alan-moore/storytelling). It’s all about writing, magic, how the two intermingle. It inspired me to get off my ass and get back into writing. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Here’s a sample if you’re interested:

https://youtu.be/vBsPt3GDTAQ

5. Man. I guess that’s about it? Play Tears of the Kingdom if you’re one of the five people left who haven’t yet. Try things on the menu that you’ve never had before. Don’t be afraid to change your mind. Changing your mind is awesome. I went almost 40 years thinking pineapple was

disgusting, and then forced myself to try it for breakfast one day. It’s fucking delicious! I could’ve been eating it for the last couple of decades, but I refused to try it again because I’d made up my mind that it was gross! God damnit. Second-guess yourself, revaluate, give things another

chance. Dogma is the enemy. The movie’s okay though.

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Hi fellow Patrons! My name is Josef (he/him) and I am a huge fan of the show! I am currently a meteorology grad student in NY, so this podcast is a nice change of pace (and makes me look like a weirdo laughing and smiling all the time)! I don't really have anything to promote so I'll share things I enjoy and recommend!

Some things that I like and recommend checking out:

Books- The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert, The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons by Sam Kean (and all his books too), The Trials of Apollo by Rick Riordan

TV shows- Fringe, Eureka, Scorpion, Jury Duty, The Good Place, Locke and Key, Human Resources, Raising Dion, Manifest, Only Murders in the Building, The Rehearsal

Movies- Airplane!, Spaceballs, Strange World, Violent Night

Musicals- Camelot, The Band's Visit, Come From Away, Epic: They Odyssey Musical, Six

Music- Classical music in general; Muse in general, but I love their album the 2nd Law; Showtunes; "Weird Al"; Bo Burnham's Inside, Tallyhall

Youtubers- Danny Gonzalez, Drew Gooden, Kurtis Conner, Jarvis Johnson, ChadChad

Other podcasts- SitcomD&D; Beach too Sandy, Water too Wet; Normal Gossip; Ologies; Off Book; Let's Talk About Myths, Baby

Travel- I just got back from a conference in Madison, Wisconsin, and it was a really nice city, not many attractions, but the lakes and capitol building were really pretty and there were many great restaurants! Earlier this summer I got to go on vacation to the Northwest and visit Seattle, Portland, the Redwoods, the Cascades, Mt Saint Helens, Mt Rainier, and Crater Lake, all of which I recommend seeing. The Rose Test Garden in Portland had so many different types and colors of roses all in bloom! I also got to go on a cruise to Alaska, which was awesome; we got to see many glaciers, though you could tell they were shrinking, so see them before they're gone!

Not really sure what else to say. Be nice to each other, believe in science, believe in yourself!

-Josef

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G'day g'day fellow patrons, my name is Rachel Mackey and a couple of days ago I received an email that I was certain was some kind of very specific catfish. But in a stunning turn of events it turns out the email was in fact from the real JPC so here we are. Wild, woolly, weird, wonderful.

I'm a storyboard artist currently living in Sydney Australia. I've been working for Dreamworks for quite a while (very cool) however some fairly tumultuous times in the world of streaming have arisen (less cool) so I'm off to find the next adventure (back to being cool I hope). If you have any hookups for jobs in the hiking/outdoor industry, gimme a shout and help a girl out.

Also if you'd like to check out some very stupid storyboards, I'm @rackeymackey on instagram. I did a couple of Dungeons and Daddies animatics way back which may be of interest to you fine folks- I'm sure there's a fan overlap. I'd love to do a Hey Riddle Riddle animatic if anyone has any requests.

Alrighty, my recommendation for this 15 seconds of fame is the 2023 Women's Football World Cup currently taking place in Australia and Aotearoa. As I type this I am keeping an eye on the Canada vs Ireland game (Canada up 2-1 which is a real bummer). Absolutely thrilling stuff- we love getting behind women's sports and this world cup has been hooooweee so good. Now, there is a non-zero chance that this WC is over and the Australian Matildas have already won by the time this newsletter is released. In that case my recommendation is finding another female sport and getting behind it. Give cricket a go. Or don't, I'm not your mum.

And yeah I reckon that's about it.

If you're hot and want to be cold- try some blended frozen banana.

If you're cold and want to be hot- try rooibos tea.

If you're after some art- check out Shaun Tan's Tales from Outer Suburbia.

If you're after a hike- try The Overland Track in Lutruwita.

Thank you Clue Crew for this fun little spotlight- this podcast is an absolute ripper and I love listening to such classics as "Smacks the Frog Please Don't Fuck My Mum" whilst I work on storyboards for childrens' animations.

Catchya later skater haters,

-Rach

(Canada just won. Absolute arse.)

HRR Updates/News

• Our August Review Crew (reviewing making a cake!) will come out on Monday August 21st.

• The August Review Crew Livestream will be on Tuesday August 22nd from 7:30pm to 8:30pm Central U.S. time.

• Did you know that you can still see the recordings of ALL of our Dynasty Typewriter LA live shows here? https://www.dynastytypewriter.com/video-vault (just scroll about halfway down the page)

• A special Columbo-nus episode, DM’d by the tastiest of DM’s - Anthony Burch, will be released when we hit 7200 Patreon subscribers!

• We’re also piecing together a wild and overly ambitious project for if we ever hit 7500 Patrons so let’s hope that doesn’t happen…

• An upcoming guest on Hey Riddle Riddle wanted us to plug this event! Their episode won’t be released until after the con is over so we thought to post it here and now. If you’re into escape rooms, VR and/or immersive games then perhaps this is for you! https://realityescapecon.com/

• Happy Birthday to us! Yesterday Hey Riddle Riddle celebrated 5 years! We’ll only be doing 10 more years of riddles and then seriously we do have to pivot. Thank you so much to you Patrons especially who support us and make this all possible. Without you we’d just be doing the free riddle episodes and we’d have no outlet for our insanity.

Love you all!

Adal, Erin & JPC