DO NOT PANIC HERE WE ARE

Ahoy! Welcome to November! As we teeter on the edge of our sanity and bodily autonomy let’s all take a few minutes to relax and think about some feel good nerdy shit. This is a trying time for all of us, and it turns out it sucks to live through history. Le’s give our brains a good wash before we return to the horrors.

As always, we've also included things to watch out for in the upcoming month, and a look at what's happening on our Patreon & Discord (which you can join for ~as little as a dollar~).

Buckle up, friends, it's time to get to the f e e l i n g s

STELLA:

The last dregs of wedding season have been dragging my ass around town and as such I haven’t had much energy to, I don’t know, enjoy my life? But here are a few things I truly cobbled together that gave me a bit of joy. 

The movie Dracula 2000. Yeah you heard me right. I can’t get into the Halloween spirit this year, but I can get into bad horror movies. That movie is pure 2000s trash, but it’s perfect trash. Complete with rockstar cast (quite literally if we are being generous to Vitamin C), christian blasphemy, whatever the hell Gerad Butler was doing with this face and, blatant Virgin Megastore propaganda, perhaps most importantly, Jeri Ryan as a hot vampire bride. 

Speaking of Johnny Lee Miller (he is in Dracula 2000 - it’s a good segway!), have you heard about my lord and savior Elementary? It is THE comfort show in my household so we’ve been rewatching it religiously every night to regulate our stress with the world’s best platonic friendship between Lucy Lui’s Joan Watson and Johnny Lee Miller’s Sherlock. Seriously, it’s the best representation of a female/male friendship without any sexual tension on tv - perhaps in all media?? I will absolutely DIE on this hill - Johnny Lee Miller is the greatest Sherlock Holmes of all time. Full. Stop. Plus, Chicago theater titan Jon Micheal Hill is a series regular and I love that! It threads the line of watchable procedural tv and extremely clever storytelling. They deserved EMMYS!

I am still getting to the gym here and there, but the energy, she has been waning with the sun. So while I am still rocking with the screaming ladies at the gym, I’m constantly listening to Laufey at all other times. Specifically, her song, “Let You Break My Heart Again.” Her music is perfect for cultivating that introspective, romantic, fall atmosphere. 

Did you know that Bruce Wayne is a horse?

I’m in the middle of several novels so I don’t have any recs on that front, but I do have a comic book rec specifically for our X-Treks listeners. If you are a comic book fan and/or a Star Trek fan I cannot recommend the current Star Trek comics enough! Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing are doing some top tier comic book writing and clearly have so much love for the source material. Who knows if Paramount considers these books canon, but I do know that the authors make painstaking choices to keep all of their actions in universe. Complaining that Sisko hasn’t gotten the nostalgia bump that Picard and Janeway have recently? Then this is the series for you because he’s back in the Captain’s chair full of a patchwork crew from every other series. There is something for everyone! And selfishly I want more people to read this so I can talk to someone about it. 

The holiday season is rapidly approaching. Consider sponsoring a family with a Thanksgiving meal or carrying extra cash around specifically earmarked for people who need it. Small things always help!

ERIN:

I got my last tattoo of 2024! I set a limit of 4 this year and i maliciously complied hard as hell by getting a giant backpiece, a big ass side & stomach piece, and two palm sized tattoos. Micro tattoo?? I don't know her 💁🏼‍♀️ Also notable about this year, all of my artists were women or non-binary which feels incredible since it was an extremely cis male profession when i started getting tattoos almost 20 years ago. I've linked all of their Instagrams here as well. 

Liv Leonardi (backpiece)

Natasha Bertram (Grease [not pictured])

Kate Ullrich (circus cowgirl)

Jenn Trok (cicada/Birds mashup)

Some videos that gave me emotions:

- Emotional Growth! Even children can do it! "i thought i couldn't do it, i just couldn't do it yet" like wtf i am an adult why does this bang so hard!!

- This America/Call Me Maybe mashup that i put in the Discord but honestly everyone should watch it.

- Really lovely interview clip where Lisa Kudrow talks about Matthew Perry.

Music mood: Haiku Hands - are you interested in some Australians absolutely fucking you up? These women whip ass and make awesome hip hop electronica music. Hook this shit directly into my veins.

Can you guess my favorite part of this reel Stella sent me.

Also notable this month, I took a Bob Fosse masterclass with Kim Morgan Green and it absolutely kicked my ass. I was about 40% terrible, but she looked me dead in the eye, pointed directly into my soul and told me I was doing great character work and “you look like you have a secret” and I will be living inside this compliment for the rest of my LIFE.

PRODUCER BOBBY:

This month our family has been blessed with a recent addition... a PSVR2 headset! So my video game recommendations include spooky VR games now like Propagation: Paradise Hotel, Switchback VR, and the Hellblade VR edition. VR is overwhelming... but so is real life.

For watch recommendations, yes I HAVE been watching all the horror and horror adjacent movies but some of my top prospects have yet to be released so I’ll go a little obscure instead. The world of youtube horror and ARGs have been a longstanding, old internet interest of mind so I’d love to point you towards the channel Local 58 if you’ve never! 

On the music recommendations front, it may be 80 degrees but it’s still October so I’m moodily sweating in my black metal hoodie and listening to the new Ghost of Glaciers and Blood Incantation records released this month. 

On the reading front, I read The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling and did NOT like it at all but then started I’m Beginning To Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin and am having a better time! So I guess books are ok... sometimes. 

dO YoU tHiNk I’m SPoOkY

Things coming this month:

Have we descended into fascism? Who knows! New Not Your Demo is pushed back to the second Wednesday in November, as our current schedule would have us record the day before the election and release the day after. We recorded on election night 2016, and you know what they say: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, won’t get fooled again.

If you are in Chicago, Plan 9’s final show of the year is November 16th! All of us will be there and ⅔ of us will understand the RPG references. Join us for the sigh of relief or the plunge into despair - we’ll all find out together!

Xtreks episodes!!! It’s true! They’re back!

Make our roads safer! NHTSA has public comments open until Nov 18 where you can voice your support for lowering the height of car hoods. This proposal is specifically to combat the number of head to grill collisions caused by the massive car bloat of the last several years. There are a lot of other things that need to be addressed about these ridiculous trucks BUT this is a huge start and i recommend everyone commenting in favor of this new regulation, it will make all of our lives better and will show the support there is for continued regulation of these tanks.

Exclusive to our Patreon & Discord (for as little as a dollar!):

• Erin is truly making her presence the Discord everyone else's problem - come for the memes, stay for Stella and Producer Bobby talking about Critical Role (and still the memes obvs). Also, show us your Daylists, we are having a great time with those.

• Notes for xtreks, featuring the truly insane episode summaries that we can barely get through at this point.

• New SFW NYD After Dark??

• Book club pick (We’re doing a graphic novel next!)Do I have a punchy kicker for this edition of our newsletter? No!