I have spent a significant portion of the 2020s playing the online Doctor Who: Thirteen game on the doctorwho.tv website. It's a variation on the classic 2048 game, where you have to slide tiles to double numbers, only they do it with all the Doctors. I have played it hundreds and hundreds of times, and I have never come close to getting to the 13th Doctor.
The screenshot above is as close as I ever got, up to the 12th, but was nowhere near getting all the other Doctors needed for that last regeneration. I do actually get 13 Doctors, because they count the War Doctor, but there's no Jodie Whittaker for me.
I'll keep trying, though. The Doctor wouldn't give up, no matter what number they were.
The ongoing demonization of immigrants around the world drives me crazy, and I am constantly disappointed by political parties that profess to be on the side of justice and compassion, but still use immigration as an obvious scapegoat to appease all the moronic bigots in society.
I am ridiculously pro-immigration, the people who move into a new community bring vibrancy and life to the places they join. The school my kids go to is full of families from dozens of different nations, and I adore their exposure to all new traditions and histories and cultures and ways of thinking about the world.
But if I had to choose one small example of how fucked up the entire global immigration system is, it's in the sad death of MF Doom.
Doom was a terrific artist, his beats were epic and his wordplay was sublime. There was depth to his music, an intelligence and humanity lurking beneath that stark metal mask. His work with Czarface was legit my single favourite album of the past decade.
And you had this guy who did wonderful music, and his words were poetry, and he died far away from home, kicked out of America by the dullest of bureaucracies.
What kind of a society is that, when you can just dispose of artistic genius like it is nothing? Doom's history of nationhood was complicated, but every life is complicated, all pounded into submission by the brute force of the system, and there was no recourse for Doom to get back to his family, his friends, the world he grew up in.
When societies treat their greatest artists like this, those societies are worth nothing. And all this happened to Doom before the current shitshow that is the ICE nightmare gripping the US, and there will inevitably be more great minds and great people currently being forced to leave the place they love, because John Q Fucknuckle doesn't like how many brown people are working in his fast food joints.
Borders are just lines on paper, that fuckwits use to justify their own feelings of superiority and cruelty. Because if you can't see the value of keeping poets like MF Doom in your nation, you are no nation of worth at all.
There was a grimly fascinating exercise in human behaviour at the local bakery in the past couple of months, and I got to see what really matters to my friends and neighbours, and I am honestly not surprised by the clear result of it all.
It's a very bougie bakery, with $12 pies that are, admittedly, fucking excellent. Of course I tried them, I have very serious opinions about meat pies, and had to see if their special Philly Cheesesteak pies were really worth $12.
And then the store shut down for a week, and I thought they were just on holiday or something, but it turned out they had a cockroach infestation. And despite a quick clean up and the prominent display of a 'A' health rating in the front window, it definitely had an impact on business. There used to be constant lines out the door for their terrific pies and excellent sourdough options, now there was only ever one or two people in there.
It was never empty, but it certainly wasn't as popular any more. If you're going to pay premium prices for your grub, you want to know it won't have a cockroach leg in it or something. I didn't think it would last much longer - fancy eateries must have massive overheads - and I did feel quite bad for them, and then the NZ pie awards were announced last week.
I'm not the only one in Aotearoa to have strong opinions about pies, all five million of us have very clear judgements. My five year old has some extremely valid thoughts about what makes a good pie. So the pie awards have great weight.
Even my own apathy towards all awards everywheer is tempered slightly by the pie angle, and it is always interesting to see what comes out on top, and watch the inevitable feeding frenzy that follows, as fairweather pie fans descend on the award winner.
And when that tarnished local store won the Supreme Award for its bacon and egg pie, I had to see if it had an impact on business, and for the last few days it has been back to lines out the door
I wasn't going to get into line - I think bacon and egg pies are not quite an abomination, but they are definitely getting there - but I got my kicks on seeing all those pie loves snake down the street again. Because a health code violation is all well and good, but if some randoms say it's the best in the country, maybe that's more important than a cockroach or two.
I am nowhere near as emotionally invested in House of the Dragon as I was in Game of Thrones - mainly because every single character in the new series is just a total cunt - but I am so happy for Tommy Flanagan getting one of the top five death scenes in all of the Song of Ice and Fire.
I don't know these people, and clearly most of them are irredeemable dickheads who would be absolute pains in the ass in real life, but I did feel genuinely sad when the last Jackass film wrapped up.
They always say it's the last one, but it seems like they really mean it this time, especially with the greatest hits aspect.
If it is the end, it really is the end of an era, because Jackass has been a constant presence in my life for the 21st century. I still think their films are funny, charming and occasionally really clever. And if it's ever taught me anything, it's that if you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough.
It came in as the end of another era - Jackass was one of the last video tape phenomenons I remember. There really wasn't any of the internet video options we have today, so unless it was broadcast on television, the only way you could see the earliest Jackass films were on video, which could only be found down at the weird local skate/head store, or through a mate who copied it from another mate who got it from the ninth version of hell, judging by the quality of the final product I saw.
I still remember the one piece of footage that sold me on Jackass forever - it was the one where Danger Ehren dressed up as a football player, intercepted peoples' fast food orders and ran off with them. Which was mean and cruel and really, really funny, but the best part about it was the spiking of the food on the ground in front of the victim. Just so dumb and silly, and full of life and joy and celebration.
And it's this joy that has made it endlessly watchable. They have exquisite comic timing (nothing is better than the giant high five in the third film), some truly radical ideas (the bungee jump with Wee Man and Preston that actually pays off) and a fearlessness that it actually admirable (everything else). There is real pleasure in the laughter of the people watching their mates do terrible things to their scrotum, only beaten by the endlessly wonderful 'why do I have to be Steve-O' whine.
But it's the joy of the thing, the kick of doing something that makes your best friends fall on the floor laughing. The hugs and concern at the end of something properly painful, and the sheer glory of loving life and living it as hard as you can.
And we've grown old with them over the years, and each film has had its own vibe - I think there is a weirdly obvious order of quality in the movies and it's 3, 1, 4, 5, 2 - and we all feel those aches and pains, and didn't need to crash a giant shopping trolley to get them
And all the things that happen when you grow old, fall out with friends, or just lose touch, or there is genuine loss - RIP Ryan. All that partying is having a definite impact, and the hair is a lot greyer, even as Chris Pontius remains forever ageless, so maybe it really is time to call it a night.
There is a lot of work in moving into a new house, and my wife absolutely hates the whole moving process. But I have to bite my tongue when she makes her entirely justifiable complaints, because I'm already so very bad at hiding how much I love it.
It's back-breaking and frustrating and I am getting way too old to lift all those boxes full of Judge Dredd Megazines. It's financially draining, and requires stupid amounts of paperwork, and you have to figure out the new rubbish bin times, and how you're going to mow the fucking lawn.
But I've lived in 42 houses in my life so far, and I'm not just used to the process, I'm actively into it. I love sorting everything out, I love figuring out the new configurations for the bookshelves. I love consolidating and sharpening the collection of nerd shit I have. I love working out where everything can go. Where it all fits.
We have finally moved from renters to homeowners, so we won't be going very far anytime soon, but I still desperately sorting out the massive piles of Comics Journal issues, and work out where they are going to go, as fast as I can. Setting out a little space on this piece of land for my pile of Doctor Who novels.
I almost got crushed by several bins of 90s music mags while sorting them out the other day. It would be a truly dumb and extremely fitting way to exit this world, but for a split second there I thought the last thing I would ever see was a NME cover with the lovely Louise Wener on it.
I'm making some real progress sorting all this out, but I still haven't felt the sense that this is my land, and instead of all my earnings going to a landlord, it's going into this property that can go to my kids one day. And everyone keeps telling me that I will be so invested in things like property taxes and interest rates, but I never gave a shit about any of that before, and have no desire to start now.
But I do recognise this feeling of getting all my shit together - and I've got a lot of shit - on a property that is a lot smaller than the past few places we've been in. It's a lot of sorting, of getting everything together and working out what I actually need to keep handy, and what I need to show off, and I'll never get sick of that feeling, no matter how decrepit my aging body gets.
I have now been a parent for exactly seven years today, and it has absolutely been the best seven years of my life, and it really has felt like it's been seven seconds.
Sometimes, when I'm standing around waiting for something, I'll have my hands behind my back, and I'll make the hand gestures that Doctor Strange makes behind his back towards the end of the original Infinity Gauntlet, as drawn by the mighty Ron Lim.
I do it without even thinking about it, as an unconscious thing, but I haven't managed to open any portals with my mystical gesturing. Not yet, anyway.
I've been a fool for Tarantino films since the start, when me and my mates all walked into Reservoir Dogs as innocent 18-year-olds, and all walked out cinephiles for life. His films are smart and witty and clever and stylish, and sometimes they get quite emotional - but the end of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the only one to bring me to tears.
It was the last movie I saw before I became a parent - quite literally, the wife and I saw it the day before our eldest was born, and I spent a large part of the long run time hoping our little treasure would stay put for a few more minutes. And then the real life tragedy of what happened to Sharon Tate and her friends in that house is avoided, and the world of the film is just a tiny bit brighter because of it.
The main characters' righteous violence against the Manson murderers who invade their home is initially hard to take, with big men murdering much smaller women with their flamethrowers, attack dogs and bare hands.
But when you know what really happened - that they carved up a heavily pregnant woman in the most horrific way possible, a dog biting off their face in this fictional context is getting off lightly. Watching it that first time, with the most pregnant woman in the world sitting next to me, I cheered on the carnage.
And when it's all over, and Rick Dalton is invited into the Tate household and greeted with love and hugs, it's heartbreaking. It's the ultimate Hollywood ending, where the good guys win, and the most awful tragedy is avoided. And there is real sadness in the fact that this isn't what happened in real life, that those more people in the Tate house had the most awful of endings.
Those final moments are the quietest of conclusions to a Tarantino film, and the weight of real history weighs heavily on this happy ending.
But if Hollywood is a place of dreams, this is the most pleasant of them, where the Manson killers pick the wrong fuckin' house to crash, and the world isn't poisoned by their stupid cruelty. That's worth a tear or two.
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