Happy Friday, everyone! Riley here. It was a short week, if you live in America, but also felt like a long week, so I'm excited the weekend is here yet again. Will this be the weekend I give my kitchen the deep clean I keep threatening it with? Probably not, but don't I sound productive suggesting it?
It's been (another) pretty grim week for journalism, with Vice ceasing publishing, layoffs at Endgadget, and local-to-me news outlet DCist shutting down literally while I was typing this sentence. We started Aftermath to try to find a new path forward in this difficult industry, and if you believe in that mission and are enjoying what we do, we'd love to have your help. | Kazuma Kiryu's Long Goodbye
Luke takes a deep look at Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth and the Yakuza star the series can't let go of.
| | It Really, Truly Does Not Matter That The New York Times Spoiled Final Fantasy VII
Nathan talks about the latest spoiler culture debate and what it says about how we interact with games, movies, and art in general.
| | Why Am I Down Here?
There was a shot in the trailer for the Borderlands movie that looked awfully familiar to me, and now I see it everywhere. (Also, not enough people are appreciating my URL.)
| | |  |  |  |  | I Am A Ukulele Guy Now
Last weekend I bought a ukulele! As I've written before, I'm a pretty crap guitarist, and a demoralized YouTube research hole about how I might ever get better at it led me to consider swapping to an instrument that might be a little more approachable for my small hands and aging wrists. The people at a local instrument shop were super helpful, and I came home with this tiny new friend.
The uke definitely has a reputation, but I am finding it to be a total delight: its unique sound never fails to make me smile, and all the self-serious punk songs I can play on guitar turn into jaunty vaudeville romps when transferred over. It's conceptually similar to the guitar, but it has less strings with different tunings, and you shape all the chords differently. So there's a lot to learn, but I'm not starting totally from scratch.
One thing I'm determined to do on the uke is get out of the bad, lazy habits I developed on guitar, where it was so easy to learn four basic chords and go to town that I never took the time to really practice it like an instrument. (This is probably one of the reasons I'm so mediocre at it.) So I've been going all the way back to basics, really thinking about my posture and the shape of my fretting hand and practicing different strumming techniques and patterns. It's been a little demoralizing--the clearer, smaller space of the uke makes it obvious I'm wretched at strumming--but it's also rekindled that sense of studious accomplishment I felt learning instruments as a kid. Last night I spent hours carefully picking my way through "Can't Help Falling In Love With You" by Elvis, a song I never would have played but which is teaching me new core skills that will carry over into the future, and by the end of the night it felt so good to really hear and feel the improvement. It's been years since I studied music theory, but I'm going to get some books and try to learn the fretboard as a collection of notes rather than a series of numbers and hand shapes, so that I can really play music on the uke and not just roll the dice on hoping I find a good tab for a song online.
So I'm having an awesome time, even if I get too deep in and suddenly it's 1am and my upstairs neighbors are stomping conspicuously across the floor. My uke is next to me on the couch right now, and it's taking everything in me not to keep putting aside this newsletter to mess with it. I hope I have good progress reports for you in the future. | Some stuff I liked on the internet this week:
- Our pals at Hell Gate talked to Vice journalists dealing with their ghoulish owners' latest meltdown. It's this kind of swift reporting, highlighting the voices of those affected, that independent local journalism was made for.
- Rather than judge last week's unhinged The Cut article of a writer being scammed out of 50K, our Defector friends laid their own shame on the table.
- There's a lot I don't miss about the company that would eventually become G/O Media, but man I worked with some of the best sickos.
| Aftermath has two podcasts: Aftermath Hours, where we discuss the week's biggest gaming news, and 52 Pickup, where Gita Jackson and Alex Jaffe take you through the world of the greatest DC Comics series you've never heard of. Check them out on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. | And that's it! I'm off to play ukulele and pretend my upstairs neighbors' angry stomping is related to something else. Have a good weekend! | | | | |
