Just A Peck 0047 // Friends, Flicks, Flats

5/31/26

Welcome to the latest issue of Just A Peck. I'm glad you're here!

JOURNAL

We had friends over for a Memorial Day weekend hangout on the deck. It seemed like the weather was going to be nice, but the wind off the lake shifted and it got so cold that we had to take shelter inside — which we luckily did before a very brief downpour and hailstorm hit!

Jody and I took advantage of our day off on Monday and went to a 10am movie. Turns out finding movie theater parking at 10am is not an issue.

We window shopped at a few Memorial Day sales near the mall before heading home and experiencing this wild 33-degree difference between the top of the hill and the bottom.

A 33-degree difference: 81°F at the airport atop the hill versus 48°F at Sky Harbor by the lake

About halfway between 81° and 48° we passed an adorable lemonade stand manned by a young brother and sister. As is our rule, we each purchased a lemonade, and mine came with a free mandarin orange slice with a paper umbrella.

Kaylee spent the weekend helping her grandparents, and got a flat tire on the way home. After some logistical wrangling she made it back to Duluth, and I spent some of the day on Tuesday working from the lobby of Firestone. (What's that smell? Tires. It's tires.)

Kaylee's flat tire on the drive back from my parents' place

We had some visitors around the house this week. The two deer sitting in the shade under the trees next to our house didn't even bother to get up when the postman drove down to deliver a package. They just watched calmly while munching dandelions. The woodchuck was a bit more skittish.

WHAT I WATCHED THIS WEEK

Backrooms (2026). A liminal horror feature adaptation of a web series based on a sprawling online fandom with its roots in subreddits and 4chan. If you ignore all of that, there's still something really fascinating about this. Much of the human element is serviceable but not great, despite the involvement of some top caliber actors, but everything else is astonishingly good. Layers of social and cultural references in feedback loops. When you learn that the web series was made by a teenager and that this film is his feature debut at the ripe old age of twenty, it's even more impressive. More experimental, form-bending, weird art like this please!

I Love Boosters (2026). Boots Riley at his Boots Rileyest. Absolutely bonkers. Old school stop motion and creature effects. Incredible costume and art design. Crazy fun gonzo maximalism. Offensive in all the best ways.

Lumière, Le Cinéma! (2024). Incredible restorations of hundreds of Lumière films arranged to tell the story of the birth of cinema. Beautiful.

The Sheep Detectives (2026). This was better than I expected it to be. I even got a little teary. "God is a shepherd, but he's also a lamb. And he's also invisible. And he's made of bread."

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK

Finished:

Babel, by R. F. Kuang. A fantasy novel (is "historic fantasy" a thing?) where the act of translation magically powers the British Empire. A really intriguing premise that starts like Harry Potter and ends with bloody violence as Kuang uses her fantasy premise to explore racism, colonialism, and the ways in which language is often inextricably linked to subjugation.

In Progress:

Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hofstadter
Hollywood: The Oral History, Basinger, Wasson
Writing as a Way of Life, Morton
Hark! A Vagrant, Beaton

MEMORIES

Fifteen Years Ago:
Alex graduated! Lots of tears, lots of celebrating — including a combined grad party at the Quam Theatre with a song in the rotating playlist that started a flash mob.

QUICK LINKS

WHAT I'M EXCITED ABOUT

This has been secret for over a year and in a soft preview state for a month, but this weekend is the official grand opening of BigBadGameStore in the east metro. If you're in the Twin Cities and into tabletop gaming, check it out! (Stay tuned for more awesomeness from our team at BigBadToyStore coming later this year...)

MY FAVORITE QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that. Shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass."

— Ray Bradbury

That's it for this week. Stay safe, friends. Thanks for reading!

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