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THINGS I LIKED 2022
Things I Liked 2022
The below is an incomplete list of stuff, in no particular order, that caught my attention and/or I enjoyed this year. As always, my more general “what I’m reading online” content consumption feed is here. Happy holiday season and wishing you a better year ahead.
-MJG, December 2022
Rosalia had caught my attention with her previous album El Mal Querer, but MOTOMAMI truly is a complete package. The music production goes all over the place (but in a good way.) The songs range from TikTok dance fuel on CHICKEN TERIYAKI to a 2020’s love ballad on HENTAI. The visuals that then started coming out ahead of and following the album cemented it for me though. The music videos have a cohesive attitude and mood, the TikTok live performance then set the pace for what would become Rosalia’s live show. Throughout it all, Rosalia treats each element of the album with craft, utilizing vertical screens along with the catchy hooks and whiplash production techniques that make the album feel like a true forward looking moment for pop music.
I can’t say I was like, a huge Bad Bunny fan before. I knew a few songs and had probably played a handful while DJing or hanging out at the beach. As soon as this album came out, it felt like it was everywhere. At the beach, coming from passing by cars throughout the city, at a bar or restaurant. Bad Bunny is the biggest star in the world for a reason. The album makes you want to dance around, even if you (like me) have a limited spanish vocabulary.
Sad girl rock is back (again?) Mostly self produced and recorded at home, Preacher’s Daughter at times feels like you’re reading Cain’s diary entries. The content of the songs feel deeply personal and true. You can hear the Lana Del Rey influence throughout Cain’s album, with heavy cavernous reverb drenching most of the tracks and soft melodic vocals. The whole project (13 songs) just carries a beautiful weight to it.
Truly the best Star Wars show. So so so dang good. Impeccably written, beautifully directed, and finally filming back on real sets again. Impeccable performances from Diego Luna, and Stellan Skarsgard, but man give Andy Serkis his flowers for this one. If you haven’t watched yet, and even if you have, I can not recommend the listen-along series from the A More Civilized Age podcast to accompany the show enough. They really manage to capture the themes, dialogue, and politics that make this show so great and pick apart all the tiny details you may have missed.
Ok so get this: in the middle of a global pandemic, one of my favorite, most mind blowing things to watch is a TV show about the aftermath of a global pandemic. Station Eleven is a one-and-done miniseries that weaves together such a truly beautiful and inspiring story. A special shoutout to the costumes from Helen Huang that add an immense depth of storytelling and weight.
I know this isn’t a ranked list, but if I was picking a Game of the Year it's probably IMMORTALITY. It is by far the game I have thought about and discussed with friends the most this year. I haven’t played any of Sam Barlow’s FMV games before but there was enough critical reception to this one (plus it being day one on Game Pass) that I decided to check it out. The game immediately draws you in without much direction or introduction. When you start getting into the mechanics of the game, you start watching every clip in a new light. It's very hard to talk about this game without spoiling it but truly, go in as blind as possible if you can, and even if you don’t think you “like video games” this one is worth playing through.
The latest from the twangy guitar rock guy is real good. Runner especially is so dang catchy. Fantastically produced to sound warm and fuzzy in the best way.
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It feels like Big Thief have been teetering on the edge of mainstream success for years, and this year's long-titled release may have finally pushed them that last bit over the edge. I managed to catch the band live at Kings Theater on the tour for this album and it translates to live performance exceptionally well, kicking up the energy and even had people dancing in the aisles at times. The band’s sound continues to evolve, from soft dreamy indie rock to the range seen here, ranging from experimental looping to alt-Americana jams.
Look, I don’t think HYPER DEMON is a game for everyone. It is basically like a bad DMT trip as an FPS game. The premise sounds simple enough. You and enemies will spawn in the same spot every time, you start with ten seconds on a clock, every time you defeat an enemy it grants you an additional amount of seconds, the goal is to finish with the highest time/score possible. Ok now that you’ve read that go click the link and watch the trailer. This game looks insane. The default FOV is 100 degrees. Enemies are iridescent skull spiders that shoot purple gems at you. The soundtrack is like an industrial rave with the aux cord half plugged in. And yet for weeks I kept going back to this game, first to beat a friend's high score, and then to keep trying to top my own. It is a uniquely satisfying loop, figuring out little moves and tricks to get from one fight to another even faster and faster.
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This year I finally managed to get to an F1 race live in person down in Austin. It is a radically different experience going through a race weekend on the ground to say the least. We managed to catch practice sessions and qualifying from a few different spots on track, and showed up basically as soon as the gates were open to stake out a spot to watch the GP from the top of the hill at turn one. I may not be super interested in going to COTA again but would probably make a trip out of going somewhere else to catch a race if the timing works out right.
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While down in Austin for the race we managed to eat and drink quite well but for me the highlight was Birdie’s by far. Out of the way, next to a church, the restaurant has a great wine list which we took advantage of while waiting for a table. The menu is effectively simple, simple dishes using fresh ingredients done very, very well. The service was excellent, the food tasted great, the atmosphere was extremely relaxed for as slammed as they seemed to be. Would go back and will recommend to anyone else passing through Austin.
I think when describing Elden Ring to my brother, who does not really play video games, I said it was “the most video game-ass video game ever made” because “you’re just a little guy, with a sword and a shield, running around fighting big monsters.” All of that is true but Elden Ring might be the peak of this era of video games. I still never beat the final bosses, but some of the setting, enemy designs, environments, and mechanics left my jaw on the floor multiple times. It is a steep uphill battle to “git gud” as with most Fromsoft games, but well worth the experience.
A beautiful movie about mother-daughter relationships, bagels, rocks, the multiverse, and kung fu.
Fortnite, one of the most popular PC games and mainstay in the battle royale genre, somehow found a new surge in popularity by removing its most differentiating feature: building. Until earlier this year, in every match you played you’d spend time hitting things to gather materials and then using those materials to build ramps, walls, and staircases both to get yourself around the map as well as to provide cover during a fight. Basically no matter how good you were at shooting, if you couldn’t build you’d get your ass kicked. By removing the ability to build, Fortnite opened the doors for a lot of other gamers who never quite got the hang of it or could never react fast enough (I’d like to think I fell into the latter camp.) Multiple groups of friends who had either fallen off the game or put off trying it now were playing it on a regular basis. Combine this with, later in the year, adding Goku to Fortnite and Epic found themselves reaching new peak numbers of players.
Ok, if Elden Ring is the most “video game-ass video game” of the year, then RRR might be the most movie-ass movie this year. Truly an epic saga of friendship, love, revenge, and justice… and dancing. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend taking a night this holiday season to take it all in.
Otway, a nearby restaurant, started selling their house bread out of their coffee window during the pandemic and it became such a thing that they eventually managed to snag some real estate up the block and open a full bakery. Still not as great as the pastries at Lodi, but very very nice to have fresh bread and both sweet and savory treats within walking distance of me.
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Turnstile (Live)
Managed to see Turnstile twice this year, once at Knockdown Center, a venue I still don’t love, and another at Brooklyn Mirage, which was truly an awful experience getting into but an unbelievable show. It felt great to be in a throng of people, in the cold rain, jumping together to very loud music.
Who would’ve guessed that one of the best commentaries on labor and work in today’s society would come from Apple TV+? The premise sounds simple on paper: what if you could fully disassociate your work life from your personal life? Like, the second you enter the office you black out and then you come back to when you’re walking to your car. Would you opt in to that kind of life? Would others?
The creator of Neon White self-described it as “a game for sickos” which feels apt. The game is a first person shooter, with a card based system, designed for speed running. You play an anime assassin, equipped with a katana, trying to get from the start of each level to the end while clearing every enemy in sight as fast as possible. The genius of the game is that it shows you your place on both the global leaderboards and against your friends list. When you beat a level and feel like you did it in a great time, and then see that a buddy of yours somehow did a full six seconds faster, you begin to look at the game differently. Is there a jump you can skip over? A faster way to get through a pack of enemies? You start trying to deconstruct levels in your mind and jumping through hoops to skip entire parts of stages trying to beat your own time or others.
Look, it's not technically a new Radiohead album, but it's as close as you can get.