Crossword Puzzles Are A Gateway Drug
My coworkers have gotten me hooked on the New York Times mini crossword. Each day, they would share these random times in our work chat, so I finally asked about it and—cue my latest obsession. I wake up every morning and eat crosswords* for breakfast now. I go to sleep with a brace on my thumbs and dream of crossword squares.
*I’m really not good at crosswords but I’d like to think I am.
I’m the kind of person who gets absorbed into a new thing every few months, so while crosswords are my jam right now, they probably won’t be in a few weeks. This is partly due to the endless barrage of content that is shoved down all of our throats on a weekly basis, but mainly because of my addictive personality.
So, when you grow up consuming an endless stream of content that is constantly changing and getting easily addicted to it, you end up nostalgic for a lot of stuff. For example: I sometimes get nostalgic for my first iPod. First of all, add iPod's to the “list of things that will make me sound old to my son” list. Second, I miss my iPod. I always had the latest iPod Classic and I would do my absolute best to pack it full of movies, TV, and music. My friends and I would then pass around and compare all of this content to their own iPods—because part of your social status in high school was dictated by a) how much music you had on your iPod and b) if it was good. Bonus points if you had a hit movie or TV show. Ah, such a simpler time.
The Catch
Today, corporations know how nostalgic we are. They reboot, remaster, and re-release anything at their disposal to monetize our nostalgia. Unfortunately, it works on me almost every time.
Sometimes I love that. Take this last week for example: Nintendo surprise released game boy games, game boy advance games, and a remaster of Metroid Prime all on the Switch--all on the same day. Wow Nintendo, let’s just quickly release most of my favorite games of the early 2000s in one night, shall we? As if my poor nostalgia-ridden-brain could resist that. To top that, the new Hogwarts Legacy* game also released this week. What a time for Millennials am I right?
*My wife hasn’t been able to put this one down. Pretty much every time the baby is napping she is playing it.
There are other times when there's a shameless cash grab that I’ll fall prey to, and I’ll sit and wonder to myself:
A recent example of this is the remake of The Last of Us Part 1 that came out last fall. This game is 10 years old but has already been remastered, remade, and adapted into a TV show. Even though I gush about it every week in this newsletter even I know a cash grab when I see it. My girl Samus Aran* just got her first remaster this week for a 20 year-old game that was originally a spin-off of her original series.
*Metroid Prime Remaster is what I'm referring to here for the uninitiated.
It Ain’t Hard To Try
Good or bad, after the hit of nostalgia wears off I always feel like a mouse chasing food through a carefully crafted maze of nostalgia. I can just imagine the marketing execs at Amazon going, “Oh interesting, Billy didn’t go for the Pokémon Yellow remaster but he sure ate up The Rings of Power. Send more fantasy shit at him” (please don’t...but please do). When I do get what I was looking for, it’s never as good as I remember it and I’m left looking for the next hit of nostalgia. Oh well, nostalgia's a bitch and then ya die.
What To Watch This Weekend: Superbowl Edition
I wasn’t sure I’d get a newsletter out this week, but i’m sure I know what everyone will be watching this weekend. I grew up in SLC, UT which had no NFL teams. This means you either align yourself with Utah or BYU, but that does no favors for the NFL. Back in ‘04, I really liked Donovan McNabb—and that’s when my Eagles fandom began. So I think this goes without saying but, GO BIRDS!
In honor of the birds playing today, here is a clip of one of my favorite episodes of What We Do In The Shadows.