First thought: This is a weird thing for an Oscar winner to do 10 years after the sitcom she kind of starred in went off the air. Second thought: Dobby's so cool! www.radiotimes.com/tv/entertain...

I have become completely disconnected this week from the delusion that anyone could give two fucks about anything I have to say about anything but that should be fine as long as my job isn't entirely predicated on that oh noooooooooooooooooooooooo

When life feels out of control, bake

Thinking a lot about TGA today. (This Guy Actually [Beat Baby Steps])

Streaming tonight at 8 p.m. We have ascended The Man-Breaker. What other horrors can Baby Steps still hold?

If this is not the farthest you can fall in a single go in Baby Steps, it's gotta be pretty damn close.

I keep forgetting that the new Park Chan-wook film, No Other Choice, is based on Donald Westlake's very dark The Ax. At some point there might be a piece to write about how incredibly varied Westlake adaptations have been - Robert Redford comedies, Mel Gibson crime thrillers, and more.

One of the great things about streaming is that I can hear the exact sounds I'd make right before dropping a priceless vase or fossil, and then preserve them for all time. www.twitch.tv/plumberduck/...

Streaming more Baby Steps tonight at 8 p.m.. I'll be honest: It has been a shitty, tiring day, so I reserve the right to pull the plug and switch to something that is NOT literally called "The Man-breaker" once the stress starts to get to me.

I have to poke into Twitter periodically for work and take it as read that people are not doing great with the fact that the bad guys in One Battle After Another are meant to be both absurd AND terrifying

You might reasonably ask, is this the dumbest headline I'll write today? To which we can only answer: Day's still young. www.avclub.com/labubu-shark...

Dear Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Imprisonment: I did not boot up a Zelda-themed Dynasty Warriors game to watch long cutscenes where people process trauma www.avclub.com/game-theory-...

Today is Jeremy Greer's birthday, cohost of the Monster of the Week podcast. When MOTW finished the SPN series, I made them a book with all of the ep art, song lyrics & letters from listeners. I'm selling it in soft cover to benefit a charity J would've liked. Info here: for-jeremy-greer.square.site

I was trying to explain Timothy Olyphant's whole deal to my wife and the best I could come up with is that he got big playing sexy murderers who keep trying to stop fucking and killing people but dang if the world won't let him.

Shadow drop! Here is my brand new (first) video game: YOU'RE EMAIL. It's a text adventure about sending an email. You have two options for who you can email. I haven't gone through it to see if anything's broken because I wrote it and I know what happens. sbarsanti.itch.io/youre-email

Damn, Princeton wrote a book about @plumberduck.bsky.social

The "Obsessively Watching Cutthroat Kitchen To Getting Back Into Baking" pipeline is going strong. (Coconut cream pie!)

No Kings (except Conrad Bumpus the cat)

Grace and compassion are beautiful things, and there is no greater expression of either than when I dump a 30-second word salad ramble of ideas onto an interview subject's doorstep and they graciously respond to it like it was an actual question.

Interesting thread! Paet of why Balatro is cool is because it demonstrates that poker is a much more fun "game" once you give players tools to break free of chance as a determining factor - i.e., what makes the game lucrative as a gambling operation. Which I don't think most of its imitators get.

In which we ask: Is IT from IT: Welcome To Derry un-scary and too camp by accident, or on purpose? www.avclub.com/it-welcome-t...

Back on @theatlantic.com's SNL beat today, discussing the firehose approach to the political cold open and how it's tailored to James Austin Johnson's skillset

Oh I get it, Vince Gilligan has imagined a world where EVERYBODY acts like they're in a Vince Gilligan-style "People quietly and efficiently doing something extremely complicated and process-orientated" cold open.

Streaming tonight at 8 p.m., as our battle against Baby Steps' Man-Breaker continues. Current stats: 2.5 hours of climbing time 65 falls 2 men broken (came that way)

A basic thing you need to know about me is that I love spite. I don't, in the real world, like when people act on it, because I recoil from people being hurt. But the spiteful impulse is so beautifully human to me.

Now that Frankenstein is streaming I will finally be able to find my true people: Those willing to admit that it gets a little boring any time Oscar Isaac isn't on the screen.

Streaming tonight at 8 p.m. We have reached The Manbreaker in Baby Steps. Man-breaking will continue until morale improves.

My Space Quest site, Roger Wilco's Virtual Broomcloset, launched 30 years ago this month. That makes it one of the oldest video game fan sites on the web. To celebrate the milestone, I've updated the site for the first time in ages with tons of new content. Check it out! wiw.org/~jess/roger.html

Tried to dial in to why I had such a profoundly unpleasant time with ARC Raiders. www.avclub.com/game-theory-...

Tried to dial in to why I had such a profoundly unpleasant time with ARC Raiders. www.avclub.com/game-theory-...

I watched this whole bad thing so I could write about it from an informed perspective, and it was bad. collider.com/star-trek-ge...

I've been trying to poke at ARC Raiders but it turns out that an environment where you have to quickly determine whether actual human strangers want to shoot you (acceptable) or talk to you (panic attack) is not my speed.

DUCKSTREAM IS COMING. HELP SUBSIDIZE THE MINOR EVILS I COMMIT ALL YEAR BY MAKING THIS ONE LARGE CHARITABLE GESTURE WORK

Played this last night and it's a very good Roottree-like. (Although setting a game like this in modern times introduces weird logistical hurdles; by the end I wanted to fire my assistant for sending me more clever fake Letterboxd reviews instead of cast lists for movies I was investigating.)

Reposting this because it's been a minute and there hasn't been much movement. Please consider giving her some help, she's been a wonderful friend to Olivia during some really crappy times and even kicking a few bucks in could help.

Streaming tonight at 8 p.m., as @tethilus.bsky.social keeps me company while I Baby Steps. Last week I spent two hours trying to accomplish something before failing at literally the last step. What will it take from me this time?

You obsessively re-post Mr. Autumn Man because you like roasting friends in sweaters; I obsessively re-post Mr. Autumn man because I really, really miss working with @erikadams.bsky.social. We are not the same. (READ ERIK'S CHAIR COMPANY REVIEWS)

When assembling a last-minute costume the trick is to think of the scariest thing you can in the moment and just go with it.

Also, I'll probably column about it soon but I finished Séance Of Blake Manor, and after a rough start it won me over. Not the best mystery game I've ever played - it goes a little light on letting the player work out its big, cool epiphanies - but overall a very solid effort.

Reminder that I'm going to a Halloween party after my work shift tonight, so no streams. See you tomorrow, for the somber vibes of NOVEMBER

You're already an RPG. Stop making me do parkour! www.avclub.com/game-theory-...

On the scale of modern injustices this only rates at like a 6 but it sucks that we let them take "grok" from us. That was a real good word to drop in a conversation to let people know what a fucking dweeb you are.

In case you missed it, I wrote a little ode to Richard Bachman, Stephen King's pissed-off, nihilist alter ego who is speaking to all of us this year www.avclub.com/stephen-king...

I liked Welcome To Derry's second episode quite a bit more than its first - unburdened by the need to spend like two-thirds of its time setting up a "big, shocking twist," it actually has room to be genuinely unsettling www.avclub.com/it-welcome-t...

You can tell I have a good brain that works well because it's currently fixated on the fact that every Getty Images picture of Claire Danes and Kate Winslet together contains a man named Hugh, but not always the SAME man named Hugh

Middle age is primarily about opening a new kitchen sponge and going "this is much better"

This story is very funny to me (besides just being obviously Good) because I imagine you try not to obsess about your donor because you've got a life to live but imagine being halfway out the door and the nurse is like "By the way, that's Jesse Eisenberg's old kidney" WELP GUESS THAT'S MY STORY NOW.

1985's The Mist is not a good video game. There are no good Stephen King video games. 1985's The Mist helps explain WHY there are no good Stephen King video games.

We started our Stephen King retrospective with a look at why The Stand seems to defy adaptation. Now here's @plumberduck.bsky.social with a corker of a piece on why a successful video game based on King's work remains even further out of reach.

Sometimes my brain just spits out a random phrase that would have killed on Weird Twitter like nine years ago and today it's "Got kicked out of the webring for writing a fanfic where Captain Jack Sparrow respects women TOO much."