I’ve been blogging about the things I’ve been watching almost all year (here’s the latest one, with links to all previous installments). As part of looking back at this year, below is a list of movies and TV shows I’ve enjoyed the most this year. Media that was released earlier but seen in 2019 and rewatches count as well. My post, my rules. Settle in; this will take a while. But it’ll be worth it.

Movies

I can’t really rank these because they are so diverse, so these are in just alphabetical order. They’re all great in their own ways and you should watch them.

Booksmart: The funny and smart teen movie of the year. I have some extremely minor gripes with it, but overall, I loved it.

Cruel Intentions: You couldn’t make this movie in 2019 for many reasons that become immediately obvious once you’ve seen it, so thank god they made it 20 years earlier. Pitch black teen comedy / drama, with great leads and a killer soundtrack. I loved almost everything about it.

Fast Color: An amazing superhero movie unlike any other, that is criminally unknown. Gives me hope that that this genre can contain multitudes.

Free Solo: One of the best documentaries I’ve seen in 2019, hands down.

General Magic: The other great documentary this year about the company you probably didn’t know about and yet influenced all the computing devices and gadgets you have today.

Good Boys: This was my laughing-out-loud-during-the-whole-time movie this year. It’s fucking hilarious with some really smart writing.

Long Shot: I guess this is more of an honorable mention, but really, who would have thought that Seth Rogen could make a smart and raunchy comedy in 2019? That’s good? Not me. And yet. It’s good.

Spotlight: A great movie about journalists doing their jobs and being great at it. Pure competence porn. Proves that you can make Oscar-bait but also make it actually good.

Toy Story 4: I really didn’t expect this to be one of my favorite movies this year but here we are. Possible the best one in the series. But like, Disney, don’t tempt fate by trying to make a fifth one.

Yesterday: I almost passed on this, and then watched it one day anyway and was so pleasantly surprised. It’s a great Richard Curtis movie (the guy who made Love Actually and About Time, for example.) How you feel about this will largely depend on how you feel about his other movies, and that’s all I’m going to say. I loved it.

Wag the Dog: A great black comedy in itself, but it becomes legendary once you watch it and learn that it was released a month before the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which makes it downright prophetic.

What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Deep Space Nine: I love Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and despite its faults, this documentary is a must-watch for anyone who’s a fan.

When Harry Met Sally…: Arguable the OG romcom of the modern era, that still holds up 30 years later. Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Nora Ephron, Rob Reiner — they are all great individually, but all of them together made something special.

Anime

I didn’t watch much anime at all this year. I tried out a couple of shows but never got into them. That being said I did a rewatch of Kimi No Na Wa and it’s still a great movie.

TV shows

Okay, so I’ll break this down into a couple of lists, because boy did I watch a LOT of television this year. First is a top 20 of things I’ve seen in 2019 and was released this year and/or it had a season released this year:

1. Russian Doll (season 1): An amazing show about trauma, connection, growing and so many other things. I wrote about it in detail with spoilers here. The second season is coming and I’m both excited and worried about it, but I think trust its creators enough not to fuck that up.
2. The End of the Fucking World (season 2): An amazing show about trauma, connection, growing and so many other things. Yes, I’m repeating myself. There are so many parallels between TEOTFW and Russian Doll, even though they are very different; I love them both and I thought about it a lot and I can’t decide which one would deserve the first place this is only in second place because markdown is stupid. This show managed to pull off a second season that’s possibly better than the first one; one I didn’t think it needed a second season the first place. I wrote about it a bit more without spoilers here.
3. Fleabag (seasons 1 and 2): Everything Phoebe Waller-Bridge touches turns to gold, and this is no exception. Another show about, yes, you know it, trauma, connection, growing and so many other things. So fucking good in every possible way.
4. The OA (seasons 1 and 2): Hey did you know that Netflix’s business strategy is canceling shows after two, or, at best, three seasons? That’s precisely what happened to The OA which was by far the most mind-bending thing I’ve seen this year. It’s gonna fuck with your head and then fuck with it a lot more, and you’ll enjoy it. And then it’s canceled because fuck Netflix. It’s still worth watching, though.
5. You’re The Worst (season 5): The final season of the best American fucked up couple on television. I’m still mad at its creators for mercilessly toying with my feelings until almost the last second, but it pays off tremendously. They pulled off a perfect ending, in every possible way. Kudos.
6. Chernobyl (miniseries): It’s brutal. You know from the start it’s not gonna end well. You know history (at least the basics). And yet, it’s five hours of great television, created by the guy who wrote *checks notes* The Hangover 2 and 3. People truly contain multitudes.
7. Catastrophe (season 4): The very likely final season of the best half-American, half-Irish fucked up couple on television. In each season the show got better and better and it ended on a high note.
8. Bonding (season 1): Short and sweet and heartwarming and funny, not at all what you’d expect at first. I really hope it somehow gets another season.
9. Succession (season 2): Part of me wanted to rank this higher but there were so many other good things this year. Still, the sophomore season of Succession was a great watch. Team Shiv for life.
10. The Morning Show (season 1): I’ve said this many times and I’ll say it again. Is this a good show? Eh, not really. Is it an entertaining show? with a few exceptions, extremely. And that’s why I love it.
11. Euphoria (season 1): This gave me all the feels, in many ways. I loved it, but I am worried if they can keep up the quality of the show. We’ll see next year.
12. High Maintenance (season 3): This show about the nameless weed delivery guy in New York started on Vimeo and eventually migrated to HBO. It delivers consistently great episodes with very human stories. In its latest season, the protagonist plays a slightly more prominent role than usual, but not to the detriment of the rest. I hope they’ll keep going for many more seasons.
13. The Mandalorian (season 1): If I put aside the fact that Baby Yoda is extremely cute — and he really is — there were only three episodes I liked this season (4, 6, 8). But those three were genuinely good and the last one makes me excited about what’s coming next.
14. Star Trek: Discovery (season 2): Woo boy, this was a mess, especially when they change showrunners mid-season. It was, however, pretty good overall, and it’s still the best second season any Star Trek show ever produced, with the possible exception of DS9.
15. Easy (seasons 1-3): Loosely connected stories of people in various stages of life and love in Chicago, done really well. I liked it a lot.
16. Tales of the City (2019 miniseries): So I watched this without even really knowing the previous series existed, but I still enjoyed it a lot. It’s a mess, but a very lovable mess.
17. Unbelievable (miniseries): This is an emotionally hard watch, especially the first two episodes, but it’s worth it. Great leads and a good story.
18. When They See Us (miniseries): The other hard watch; even if you know the story and know how it ends, it’s still brutal.
19. The Good Place (season 4, eps 1-9): This only gets on this list because of episode 8 and 9. The latter is a masterpiece that made me cry. But why did I have to suffer through 7 mediocre-at-best episodes first?
20. Silicon Valley (season 6): This show overstayed its welcome and the final season was uneven and mostly forgettable — except the series finale, which was really well done and very satisfying, so it gets to be on this list.

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A few more honorable mentions from this year:

Broad City (season 5): I feel like Broad City also overstayed its welcome but its final season was still pretty good.

Sex Education (season 1): This was pretty good, I just couldn’t find a place for it among all the other good shows. Season 2 is coming really soon.

Counterpart (season 2): The second season was uneven, even though the actors and the characters were great; but the writing didn’t quite live up to it. It got canceled, but it does have an ending.

Killing Eve (seasons 1 and 2): Look, the first season is almost a masterpiece; Phoebe Waller-Bridge was the showrunner and was involved heavily otherwise, and both Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh are great leads. But the quality drops sharply in season 2 and it ends in a way that undermines a lot of things it was building up towards which just pissed me off. I’ll still watch the next season; maybe it improves again.

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The show that I never rank but I love: Patriot Act which is always great, the best news entertainment show on TV right now. Check out the Deep Cuts on Youtube as well.

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Still with me? I’ve got a few more shows that I watched this year but were released earlier.

The Leftovers (seasons 1-3): I could write several pages about this show. The first season is extremely solid already, but the second one is one of the best seasons ever created in the history of television. The show is very overwhelming emotionally; I ugly-cried after the season 2 finale. But it was totally worth it. Season three is a mixed bag, and part of things the whole thing would have been better off being canceled after the second one. But it wraps things up in a way that’s very on-brand for The Leftovers and is ultimately worth watching.

Crashing (miniseries): A quick, funny show from Phobe Waller-Bridge from 2016. It should be binged in one sitting and you’ll be very satisfied.

Schtisel (seasons 1 and 2): This Israeli show was created a few years ago but it really blew up this year when Netflix picked it up. It’s complex with a great ensemble of characters. The writing is very uneven but I can’t help but love the show. It’s very different from what one’s used to with Western television. Thanks to its newfound popularity, a third season is now in the works.

Goliath (seasons 1-3): Billy Bob Thornton plays a mostly-high-functioning alcoholic down-on-his-luck lawyer, and he plays him brilliantly. Each season has a different feel to it; my favorite is probably the first one, but the second one was pretty great too. It gets uneven oftentimes, and some characters are criminally underused (particularly her daughter). I stopped watching the third season after a few episodes because it was too horror-ey for me. It’s coming back for its final season sometime in the future; I’ll check it out.

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And finally, the greatest disappointments of the year in no particular order (but I’ll definitely start with GoT first):

Game of Thrones (season 8): I mean. Looking back, things really started going off rails after they ran out of the books after season 5, but I think everyone kept making excuses for the show — including me — and hoped that the final season will be a worthy payoff. So much for that. We did get like two goodish episodes (the first two) but the rest is just, ugh. So bad. Not to mention you couldn’t see shit during the dark scenes and then they kept doubling down on that.

See (season 1): This show was never good to begin with, even though it had a really strong and unique concept. Any sort of hope I had after the first three episodes that things would get better got quickly disproved and it just kept going downhill. A shame.

The Expanse (season 4): Much of this was table setting for Season 5 — which is happening — with frustrating storylines, characters acting out of character and a very one-dimensional villain. I hope they do better next year.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (season 3): Yet another show with a season that was all over the place. It had its good parts but a fair amount was less than stellar. And then they shit the bed in the final 15 minutes. I don’t have high hopes for the next season, but I’ll check it out.

The Magicians (season 4): It was an uneven season but I will never get past the season finale and what they did there. It feels off and it feels wrong and it still makes me angry.

Veronica Mars (season 4): Ugh, yikes. This season was already weak and then they made things a whole lot worse in the final episode. Shouldn’t have been surprised given that the movie was not great either.

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If you’re still reading, thank you and I salute you; please leave a comment so I know there are people who appreciate 2380 words about stuff I watch. This was a good year for movies but an especially great one for television. We’ll see how 2020 will go.

I’ve had friends over two days ago and we got to talk about podcasts, so I figured I’d take stock and see what I’m listening to these days. I’m subscribed to 98 podcasts in PocketCasts, but the ones that are in active rotation are a fraction of that. I usually listen to podcasts when I went to bed because I need some sort of noise to fall asleep more often than not.

Some of these are also radio shows (like the ones by NPR, among others) but I’ll just refer to most of them as podcasts for simplicity’s sake. Quotes mean I took the description from directly the source.

Ongoing

• 30 for 30: “Original audio documentaries from the makers of the acclaimed 30 for 30 film series, featuring stories from the world of sports and beyond." Look I don’t care much about sports but so many of these stories are incredible.
  Episode to start with: OUT OF THE WOODS.
• 99% Invisible: “Design is everywhere in our lives, perhaps most importantly in the places where we’ve just stopped noticing. 99% Invisible is a weekly exploration of the process and power of design and architecture. From award winning producer Roman Mars."
  Episode to start with: 367- Peace Lines.
• David Tennant Does a Podcast With…: “David Tennant gets talking with the biggest names from TV, movies, comedy and elsewhere. Revealing conversation, surprise stories and lots of laughs." I’m not much for the celebrity interview genre but this one is an exception because almost all of these interviews are exceptionally good.
  Episode to start with: Olivia Colman.
• Extremities: “Why and how people live in earth’s most isolated and extreme settlements." Each season is about a different place: Pitcairn Island, Svalbard and Saint Helena in its latest season. It’s made by the guy who makes the Wendover Productions youtube videos.
  Episode to start with: Arrival on Pitcairn.
• Friendshipping: “Every week Jenn & Trin answer your questions about friendship." It’s a great podcast but it’s the one I put on when I really want to fall asleep; for some reason, it really does it for me.
  Episode to start with: any, really.
• Heavyweight: Stories of people who lived with regrets for years or even decades and want to find out what happened, or how to fix it. Its 4th season is the best so far, where almost every story is amazing.
  Episode to start with: #30 The Marshes.
• Hi-Phi Nation: “Hi-Phi Nation is philosophy in story-form, integrating narrative journalism with big ideas."
  Episode to start with: The Precrime Unit.
• Hidden Brain: “Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships."
  Episode to start with: Spoiler Alert.
• Invisibilia: “Unseeable forces control human behavior and shape our ideas, beliefs, and assumptions. Invisibilia—Latin for invisible things—fuses narrative storytelling with science that will make you see your own life differently."
  Episode to start with: Post, Shoot.
• Lingthusiasm: “A podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics by Gretchen McCulloch (All Things Linguistic) and Lauren Gawne (Superlinguo). A weird and deep conversation about language delivered right to your ears the third Thursday of every month." If you support their patreon, you also get a bonus episode each month which I highly recommend.
  Episode to start with: 26: Why do C and G come in hard and soft versions? Palatalization.
• Planet Money: “The economy explained." They are an incredible content machine, with almost a 1000 episodes, all of them pretty good.
  Episode to start with: #905: The Chicago Boys, Part I.
• Punch Up The Jam: “What if the greatest hits could be …greater? Every Thursday, comedian/musician…Miel…Bredouw…teams up with a special guest to revisit, review and revise the songs of our yesterdays, yestermonths or even (dare we) yesteryears." This was co-hosted by the amazing Demi Adejuyigbe up till recently.
  Episode to start with: “Africa” by Toto (w/ Zach Reino and Jessica McKenna) but also, “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jr. (w/ Open Mike Eagle & Neil Cicierega) which was recorded live at XOXO 2019.
• Reply All: "‘A podcast about the internet’ that is actually an unfailingly original exploration of modern life and how to survive it."
  Episode to start with: #149 30-50 Feral Hogs.
• The Boring Talks: “Behind every boring subject is another layer of boringness you could have never imagined." This show is the podcast version of the Boring Conference, something I’ve been to twice already and plan on going this year as well. A lot of the episodes are adopted from past talks.
  Episode to start with: #39 - Doormats.
• The Dream: The first season of this show explored the world of MLMs; the second season goes into all things wellness.
  Episode to start with: S1 E1: Wanna Swim in Cash?
• This American Life: A radio show going for almost 24 years now, with the most fascinating stories. It’s one of the most popular podcasts in the world, and it deserves that spot: a lot of other people in radio/podcasting started their carrier here. Each week they have a certain theme broken into several “acts”.
  Episode to start with: 24 Hours at the Golden Apple.
• Throughline: Exploring a current story through the lens of the past because history really likes repeating itself.
  Episode to start with: The Grid.
• You’re Wrong About…: “Mike and Sarah are journalists obsessed with the past. Every week they reconsider an event, person or phenomenon that’s been miscast in the public imagination." This is one of my favorite podcasts right now and I am so glad I saw them live and got to meet them at XOXO 2019.
  Episode to start with: Tonya Harding Part 1.

Limited/completed shows

• Alone: A Love Story: “Alone: A Love Story is an award-winning memoir by Michelle Parise. With candour and humour, Michelle delves into the deepest, darkest aspects of her divorce and her new life as a part-time parent, part-time partier." This is a complete series with three seasons. You’ll either love it or hate it. Or both.
  Episode to start with: Chapter 1: Not if, how.
• The Heart: “The Heart is an audio art project and podcast about intimacy and humanity." I’ve only listened to one episode so far but I will very likely go through its back catalog.
  Episode to start with: Pansy: Twirl.
• Launch: “Three out of five people dream of writing a book. Maybe you’re one of them. But what does it take to go from dream to launch? Screenwriter John August (Go, Big Fish, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory) sought to find out as he tackled something he’d only ever dreamed of: writing a novel. From Wondery, A Network Of Storytellers, this is a show about putting something out into the world. How will it turn out? You’ll know when we do." This was a limited series, but very much worth listening to.
  Episode to start with: A Boy in The Woods | 1.
• Startup: Startup chronicled (among other things) how Gimlet Media, one of the major podcast companies started five years ago. Its final season deals with its acquisition by Spotify.
  Episode to start with: Introducing StartUp: The Final Chapter
• The Chernobyl Podcast: A limited companion podcast for the TV show. Hosted by Peter Sagal, he talks with the show’s creator Craig Mazin about each episode.
  Episode to start with: 1:23:45.

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Whew! That’s a lot. I hope you’ll find something you like.

*** SPOILERS BELOW *** .
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*taps mic*

*takes a deep breath*

GODDAMMIT JJ I AM A 100% FINE WITH YOU MAKING TWO HOURS OF FANSERVICE BUT THEN FUCKING COMMIT TO IT

*rubs temples*

Now that the new trilogy is complete, it makes me reevaluate the previous movies. The Force Awakens was pure fanservice; didn’t innovate much, stuck to well-known tropes, and yet it was heaps of fun. I remember leaving the movie theater, grinning.

Rian with The Last Jedi decided to do something completely different and, hell, innovative, with mixed results. I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as TFA, but it wasn’t bad either. I do have a number of gripes with it; the pacing and the tone felt off sometimes as well as bits of the story (noone will ever convince me that the half-hour+ detour to that casino planet wasn’t an unnecessary dead-end in the story, for starters.)

And then they gave the final movie back to JJ, who did something different again. It’s a cliche but in an attempt to please everyone he managed to please noone. That being said it takes skills to be able to piss off both the Reylo crowd and the “Your Reylo ship is problematic” crowd at the same time. Congrats JJ, you pulled that one off.

Look, I’m a normie amount of invested in Star Wars. Despite alluding to the fandom above, I don’t think I’ve read any Star Wars fanfiction — though now I might because I need someone to fix this goddamn mess of a movie and ending.

I didn’t care about the whole Reylo thing at all until I sat down in the movie theater for The Rise of Skywalker, but it was made clear within the first few minutes: that’s where we’re headed. And I was like, sure, why not, I can see that. I got emotionally invested; I was happy with Kylo slowly turning back to Ben. Rey rightly defeats Palpatine, Ben saves him, they kiss, hooray!

And then JJ FUCKING KILLS HIM OFF.

It was completely unnecessary, though even that was foreshadowed about 15 minutes before that with the “Leia saw his son die” line. They could have just, like, not do that! You made us invest in Reylo for the whole goddamn movie just to break our hearts. Fuck you, JJ.

As for the rest, Jesus, where do I even start?

Everything happens so fast and everything is so easy. Obstacles come, our heroes overcome it after a few minutes in a very convenient way, and keep trodding forward. Chewie fake-dies, which was just stupid, and out of character for Rey to blow up a ship with him in it, even though I know what point they were making with it. Character development is nowhere to be seen, except for Ben and Rey. But even that’s half-assed. Rey faces her dark side in a Return of the Jedi way for, uh, half a minute and then moves on? What was that about? Ben has a change of heart because Leia reaches out to him, but, like, couldn’t she have done it, I don’t know, sooner? Also Jedis have magical healing powers now, and that’s fine, and it comes with little to no repercussions now except when JJ wants to kill Ben.

Finn gets to meet a fellow Stormtrooper escapee, and that’s great, she’s great, and I even saw some bonding there that could have lead to romance but no we don’t have time for that. Palpatine’s fleet has a single point of failure, of course, a staple in Star Wars, except they don’t, except they do! All Is Lost, the classic trope goes up to 11 in the final act but of course our heroes get saved by the galaxy.

Speaking of. Palpatine being back? That felt like the most cliche thing ever and an utter lack of creativity. Rey being his granddaughter was, like, not the worst choice, in the grand scheme of things, though.

Lando Calrissian is back but because this movie is cramming a million things into two hours and change we don’t get to see much of him. I was never a big Rose fan but they did her dirty in TROS; a grand total of what, two minutes of screen time?

The new droid was cute, but they should have used it more.

And look, an actual good thing, the first same-sex kiss in the Star Wars universe! For a second, in the background, between Unnamed Lesbian 1 and Unnamed Lesbian 2. Cool. Diversity quota fulfilled, JJ crosses it off his list, moves on.

Rey becoming a Skywalker in the last scene, making a new lightsaber with a new(?) color was pretty cool, for what it’s worth.

I could go on but I already wrote 700 words and change.

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In retrospect, Disney should have given the whole trilogy to either JJ or Rian — pick you fave — and that could have possibly given us something better and more consistent. Zigzagging between the two directors were clearly a mistake. TLJ changes the tone, takes the story to one direction, then JJ comes back and dismisses most of what TLJ did and goes yet another direction.

Fuck Disney. Abolish Disney. Not just for this, but for a million other things as well, of course. But I digress.

I’m kind of angry, but that will pass and I’ll move on. But I am also very, very disappointed.

One thing is for sure, my headcanon is that Ben doesn’t die in the end and they live happily ever after with Rey.
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*** END OF SPOILERS ***

(Previously: Prologue, Part 1 - Monday, Part 2 - Tuesday, Part 3 - Wednesday, Part 4 - Thursday, Part 5 - Friday, Part 6 - Saturday, Part 7 - Sunday, Part 8 - Monday (after))

As I mentioned in the very first post, XOXO caught me at a particularly vulnerable and bad time, mental health-wise. Despite that, I had an overall amazing time at XOXO and for most of it, I managed to forget at least some of my worries and focus on spending time with all the amazing people in this community.

I got to spend time with a lot of amazing people, have great conversations, heard a bunch of good conference talks, watched great performances at Story and so much more.

I got to work on a couple of projects which I thoroughly enjoyed and others did too — my portraits and the prints of them, the XOXO bingo and the XOXO calendar.

This was the third XOXO I’ve been to and it was decidedly the best one. The festival gets refined every year, and it shows. There really isn’t anything I can complain about except to suggest having more Karaoke next year.

I hope to be back — the lottery willing — in 2020 as well. The XOXO community means so much to me: it’s an important part of my online, and for a small time of a year, offline social life, full of people I love spending time with (and they seem to like me too?)

XOXO gives me a special feeling: the feeling of “finding my people”. It just sucks that most of the people I want to hang out and spend time with live so far away.

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To close things up, here is a non-exhaustive list of people and things I’m grateful for.

Sarah, thank you for telling me that “XOXO doesn’t start for me until I see you”. I love you and you are the best XOXO mom and person I know. Thank you for the karaoke as well.

Josh and Angela, thank you for being my friends, I always enjoy hanging with you, and I wish we could do it more often.

Julia and Riley, it was fun working with you on the bingo, let’s do it again next year.

Emory, it was fun traveling with you; I hope we get to do that again.

Jonah, it was great to finally meet, hang out and talk shop about infrastructure/sysadmin things, which I don’t get to do very often.

Everyone who came to that #ptsd meetup; it meant a lot to me.

Becky, Josh May, Eliza, Juan, Crystal, Dan, Lyndsey, Joel, Joshua Blunt, Danielle, Liene, Earl, Skyler, Jonathan, Dunja, Robert, Dylan, Tina, Vale, Doug, Jim and all the other people I got to hang out with, thank you for your company and often your kind words. They mean a lot to me.

And finally, Andy, Andy, Rachel, everyone else on the production team and all the volunteers, thank you for making XOXO an amazing experience for us.

(Previously: Prologue, Part 1 - Monday, Part 2 - Tuesday, Part 3 - Wednesday, Part 4 - Thursday, Part 5 - Friday, Part 6 - Saturday, Part 7 - Sunday)

I woke up way too early, around 7:30 and checked the Slack as the previous night there were talks of having breakfast together with the people who were still in town. After returning the coats I got from Pendelton, I made my way to La Luna Cafe where we basically took over the whole place. I had some really great conversations with Tina and Liene about America, exceptionalism and different perspectives. I got a great compliment from Dylan, as he turned to someone: “You don’t know Tamas? Tamas is like a hub [for people].” Liene also gave me a compliment: “You’re an includer and I appreciate that.” All of this means a lot to me.

Afterward I got an invite to a lunch with a bunch of other people, which meant a lot to me (you know who you are.) I had a great time there as well, though anxiety started setting in again and the fact that XOXO is, in fact, over. I said goodbye to a few more people then went back to our Airbnb with Emory to check out. He was headed home, while my flight was the next day. I was staying at a kind XOXOer’s place who offered to host me for a night back when my travel plans changed.

I dropped off my things, Josh brought me a T-shirt that I ordered and arrived; we also said our goodbyes.

I took a bus to downtown, then scooted around to get a bunch of shopping done as well as return something to Amazon. I got a year’s worth of Omega 3 capsules that cost me peanuts compared to what I pay in Hungary; a couple of tiny bottles of Tylenol and Advil because I love those tiny bottles (and they are useful). At one point I ran into Dunja downtown and made plans to get dinner later.

I went by Powell’s to look for the kind of stickers Skyler gave me but unfortunately didn’t find any; then I scooted to REI to get a bunch of water bottles and socks I needed.

I met up with Dunja, Robert and Djordje at Sizzle Pie for dinner — they had decent slices but nothing special. We played with the Panic sign then said goodbye; I’ll see Robert back home next week and Dunja is just a short flight away in Berlin.

I went back to the place I was staying at and then, XOXO was really over. I had a flight the next morning home, a trip almost 2 days long for a variety of reasons.

To wrap things up, I have one more post, with a few closing thoughts and a bunch of #gratitude.

(Previously: Prologue, Part 1 - Monday, Part 2 - Tuesday, Part 3 - Wednesday, Part 4 - Thursday, Part 5 - Friday, Part 6 - Saturday)

After getting to bed so late, I decided to sleep in, so I set an alarm for 10:45 am. The last few days have been eventful, and I was started getting sad about it being the last day of XOXO.

I got to Rev Hall short after 11. I got Pip’s for breakfast; I joined Dunja and some of her friends who offered me a scone with a jam made from a local berry; I think it might have been marionberry. In any case, it was really tasty.

I caught Lindsay Ellis’ talk, then went back to the park to hang out with Danielle who makes the app Dialup. It has groups (“lines”) you can join which have usually one call scheduled a week and it connects you with a random person in that group. I’m a huge fan of the app and I was already part of the XOXO line; I had a good call with Liene a few weeks before the festival. I also ran into Dieter (who writes for The Verge) and his wife Lisa at the same time. We had a great conversation; Danielle also gave us one of her cool custom floppy business cards and talked about how she found random old data on them when buying them from eBay, stuff like someone’s old thesis.

I ran into Emory again who was sitting next to Jessica; she organized a really cool pre-xoxo party in 2018. We talked quite a bit about mental health and different medications.

And then it started pouring rain and we all ran back to Rev Hall. I gave Lyndsey back a couple of her things I was safekeeping from the day before; I also ran into Dylan, Max and Sarah in the bar.

I went to Martha’s to get my daily writing done, then had a really good chat with Jonah about all things infrastructure, trading all kinds of war stories and geeking out over the stuff I don’t usually get to with people.

I went back to watch the last two talks; Jenny Odell’s was okay I guess — it didn’t say anything new if you’ve been following her — and also listened to Rhea Butcher doing standup which fell really flat for me.

The closing address was great as usual.

I went for dinner to a nearby pub with Sarah, Dylan, Tim and someone else, but the place had literally nothing I could eat so I took a Lyft back to Rev Hall. I started saying goodbye to a few people, since I didn’t know if we’d meet again at the closing party or the next day.

I had dinner in the Show Bar, went by the Karaoke place but they were still setting things up. I made the mistake of not getting my name on the list right then.

Back at the bar, I watched a bit of the interactive album debut of Neil Cicierega in which you could post things in a Slack channel and it would show up on the projector. It was pretty cool though I could barely hear any of the music.

The highlight of the day was, of course, the Karaoke by Baby Ketten: there were so many good performances, by Open Mike Eagle, Lindsay Ellis, Demi Adejuyigbe and a lot more people I forget right now. Joel closed up the evening with Ghostbusters. I was on the list, but like a lot of other people, didn’t get to sing, which kind of sucked; I was really set on doing karaoke at XOXO.

Not wanting the evening to end also wanting to do karaoke, a bunch of us went to Baby Ketten’s newly opened bar with Sarah, Jim and someone else; the place slowly filled up with more XOXOers. I got to see Kevin sing Common People; both Jim and Sarah sang Pet Shop Boys songs, while I ended up opting for — after changing my mind several times — Sweet Child of Mine, which was… a bit too ambitious in retrospect, but I did my best.

Let this blurry image be enough. I have a video of my full performance but I can’t bring myself to watch it.

By then it was 1 am or so, and I was getting tired. I said goodbye to Sarah who told me a few more kind words and went back to my Airbnb. I was profoundly sad that XOXO was over; but as learned the next day, it really wasn’t just yet.

(A postscript: a few days after a festival, someone posted on the slack about PSB’s new album, and one thing led to another and now I’m going to a PSB arena concert in London next May with a bunch of XOXO people.)

(Previously: Prologue, Part 1 - Monday, Part 2 - Tuesday, Part 3 - Wednesday, Part 4 - Thursday, Part 5 - Friday)

I woke up around 8:30 to a horrible nightmare, in which I was banned from XOXO because I tried to sneak someone I know in who’s an asshole. On the way to Rev Hall, I took a duckface selfie for Jan, who couldn’t come this year.

I got to the venue around 9:30 and got breakfast once again at Fried Egg I’m in Love. It felt like the first day of fall: instead of shorts and sandals, I wore jeans and my new shoe, that needed some breaking in.

I took quite a few portraits that morning, including this one of Max, that’s one of my favorites:

I also ran into Avi, Dunja, Djordje and Robert as well.

Avi

Dunja

I was about to get Pip’s for dessert when I ran into a group of people giving away free Blue Star donuts; they were quite good.

I went to Martha’s to get my usual morning coffee (a decaf iced latte) and to watch the simulcast of the conference; turns out it was only streamed to the other bar. I went over there but as it turns out, watching a talk and trying to write just doesn’t work, so back to Martha’s to finish the day’s post.

I do want to make note of the emcees’ “Who’s the Andy” joke, which was really funny.

Once I was done, I went back to watch Harry Brewis’ talk, which was not bad, though I somehow expected more than just the recap of his famous livestream last year. I also caught the tail end of Emma Kinema’s talk about game industry unions before that.

After the morning talks, we took a group photo of all the bald people we could gather, organized by Elly:

In the lunch break, I took more portraits. I also met F6x and got to thank him for the help he gives us.

Becky and Josh

Emory and Eliza

Lyndsey

Sarah

Around 2 pm, we did an encore of Tim Tam Slam Jam, showing more people this now-tradition. Afterwards I got to chat a bit with Michael Hobbs and Sarah Marshall, hosts of one of my favorite podcast, You’re wrong about… Michael also tried slamming and liked it a lot. I also took their picture.

In the afternoon, I watched most of the talks: a couple of them were okay, the one that really stood out for me was by Hundred Rabbits; they talked about sailing around the world and all the challenges that come with that.

After the conference ended, I headed to Martha’s for a break where I ran into Doug Hanke. We talked like an hour about various life stuff and it was just a really great and meaningful conversation.

Before Story, I had a good chat with Elina Levkovskaya about fashion, and got to tell Matthew Bogart that I love Incredible Doom (I should finish reading it, now that the entire first volume is up online.)

I got a front seat for Story that started with You’re Wrong About. They talked about the Janet Jackson Superbowl Halftime Controversy and it was really great to see them live. This was followed by Everything is Alive that interviewed a chainsaw; it was surprisingly entertaining. I took a small break to find my favorite tote bag that I managed to lose twice one day, then went back and caught most of Yo, is this racist?, where Demi and Miel were guests. They had some really touching questions from the audience in the end.

Next, Helen Zaltzman talked about pronouns in a live production of The Allusionist. The final show that night was arguably the best one: the last episode of Punch up the Jam with Demi in it; they had Neil Cicierega and Open Mike Eagle for guests. The whole thing is up on Youtube and you should watch it; it’s laugh-out-loud hilarious. I don’t remember the last time I laughed that much listening to — well, watching — a podcast. They talked about the Ghostbusters theme song which turned into an in-joke for the rest of the conference. I even made a tribute page for it that lives at ghostbuste.rs.

The day was not yet over; earlier that night I got invited to a house party by Juan, so that was my next stop. The party was great but loud and that’s not my kind of thing so I ended up resting in a quieter room. Jonah ordered a bunch of pizza us; he also gave me another 90s temporary tattoo and I got two more for the future: one “Under Construction” and another that says “Sign My Guestbook.”

It was at that party I got to talk with Vale — who’s now a regular here at WriteTogether — about life, freelancing, 3D printing a fuck machine and she also showed her 3D-printed glow-in-the-dark Luigis on the cross with the Evangelion spear in their chest. I managed to get one of them in the form of a fridge magnet the next day.

I got home around 2:15 am and went to sleep around 3. It was also the first day that I wore my new sneakers, and they were not really comfortable; ultimately it turned out they are just not a good fit at all.

(Previously: Prologue, Part 1 - Monday, Part 2 - Tuesday, Part 3 - Wednesday, Part 4 - Thursday)

Friday was Social, which is probably my favorite day and the highlight of XOXO, with all the community-organized events.

I got to Rev Hall early so I got my daily writing done, then went to a cafe nearby for the off-the-books #ptsd channel meetup. I was on the fence about going but I’m really glad I did; it was one of the best ones I’ve attended. It was great to connect with other people there, learn about several interesting resources and share experiences. The place also had really good vegan chocolate chip cookies.

After the meetup, I went back to Rev Hall for the second half of my breakfast; I got a Yolko Ono from Fried Egg I’m in Love. They were one of the highlights of XOXO 2016 and their breakfast sandwiches were almost as good as I remembered, which is to say, still pretty damn good.

By then it was time for the opening remarks, so I got a front-row seat in the Auditorium. The Andys were funny as usual, insert joke here about Andy Baio’s bathroom.

The Tim Tam Slam Jam kicked off the Social meetups for me, for which a sizable crowd had formed, one that was much bigger than 2018. I sort of assumed that quite a few people would bring Tim Tams and felt like the 12 boxes I got a few weeks before were overkill. That wasn’t the case; we only had a few more boxes on top of it. Someone said they were hard to come by in Portland.

And so we slammed and it was heaps of fun as usual; people keep saying that the caramel one is not that good for slamming but I disagree, they are my favorites.

Having gotten my sugar fix, I hung out with Skyler, Jonathan, Inness and Megan. We had a good conversation, Megan gave us her zine about not freaking out, and Jonathan showed off his interactive two-person story thing that uses Airpods. I got to try it last year at XOXO 2018 and was excited about the progress he made; the demo he showed was pretty fun.

Jonathan

Inness

Skyler

I walked to the #visual-art meetup with Jonathan and Inness. On the way there, Jonathan talked about living in Venice Beach and all the scooters there.

The meetup was nice, in a small art gallery, with a lot of people drawing. There was also a lot of cool art on exhibition. I took a few portraits there, including one of Eler that turned out particularly well. I ran into Kevin there and bought an XOXO mug from Julia.

Eler

Kevin

julia’s mug Julia’s mug

Next, I went to Glitch’s Appy Hour. I ran into Lyndsey there again as well as a few other friends. I watched Nicole He’s cool demo for her upcoming interactive project and a Powerpoint Karaoke that was fun. I got to talk with one of my Internet Heroes, Jason Kottke; we had a good chat. He told me to email him the link to my portraits after the festival, if I somehow end up on kottke.org I can die happy (so far it hasn’t happened.)

I took a scooter back to Rev Hall to check out Playdate, Panic’s upcoming quirky game console. They only had one game you could play it, and it’s a cool device but a lot will depend on the games people will develop for it. I finally got to meet Mike and got to know Vlad; I obviously took their portraits as well.

Mike

Vlad

I ran into Skyler again and she told me about Earl’s concert at 4 at #music-making so after hanging out a bit in the park, that was my next stop. We watched him do some chill electro music (he has a soundcloud), it was pretty great and a good way to take a break from this marathon of a day. By then it was around 4:30 pm, so I decided to get a late lunch and got a grilled cheese (again.)

Afterwards I took a scooter to the #adhd meetup, where I got a 3D printed empathy emoji that I jury-rigged to my badge; earlier that day Lyndsey showed me the trick to sticking the pronoun pin to my badge so now my badge looked a lot better. I also took the chance to print out and stick my avatar there and wrote all the projects I did under my name as well.

My XOXO badge, now complete

Several people told me over the past few days that they liked my pictures and thanked me for the calendar I made, which felt great.

I didn’t stay too long at the #adhd meetup as I was getting a bit tired and peopled out. I stopped by the ADX open house for a bit before going back to Rev Hall for all the evening activities.

I talked on twitter with Jillian who had Snax, her zine with her. I bought one and it’s great; you should read it if you have the chance. It has an essay from Summer Farah that’s literally one of the best things I’ve read this month.

The food trucks were opening a bit late, so I hung out more with people and finally ran into Josh, who I’ve been meaning to meet for quite a while. We had a good conversation and he told me that “you have a whole vibe” which I took as a high compliment.

After getting dinner once again from the Filippino cart, I walked around Arcade and checked out the games. I caught Nerdwriter at Video, then went to check out Tabletop. There were some cool games, however the place was very noisy and cramped and it was around that time my brain started shutting down.

I went back to Video to see Earworm (and ran into Sarah again); they showed a video that I’ve seen before but it was still fun to watch it with others on the big screen. I went back to Arcade again and took pictures of the games I wanted to check out later, then back to Video for the final act, Unraveled. He showed a video about calculating your pet’s HP and it was hilarious, well worth staying up late.

Then I took a Lyft home, showered and went to sleep.

(Previously: Prologue, Part 1 - Monday, Part 2 - Tuesday, Part 3 - Wednesday)

The excitement from the previous night lasted till the next morning as I woke up way too early, around 6 am. I had a Skype session with my therapist, then went to the La Luna Cafe for breakfast. The past week or so, I kept inviting XOXO friends, both old and new for a pre-registration breakfast. A lot of them came: Dan, Emory, Eliza, Georgie, her husband Nick, her friend Kylie, Andrew, Jim, Ben, Joel, Tiffany and I might be forgetting people. The food was the delicious and the company was great; by the end, though, I was a bit peopled out, and earlier that day something triggered my anxiety again, and I was starting to feel that.

The breakfast crew

The previous night I somehow managed to knock down my entire nightstand and my glasses got slightly bent, so I went to Myopic Optometry to fix them (you guessed it, someone recommended them on Slack.) Jim gave me a ride back to Revolution Hall for registration; we arrived almost at noon sharp. After picking up my badge and the swag, I started taking and printing portraits. I also met old and new friends as people started trickling in.

It’s on!

Jim

Crystal

I was planning on staying there for a couple of hours, but the sun was literally burning my skin, so after a lunch at Meat Cheese Bread where I got way too many grilled cheese sandwiches, I went to Push X Pull a couple blocks away to take a break. I hung out with Lyndsey a bit there, then got some writing done. Georgie and Nick arrived shortly after, but we mostly just enjoyed each other’s company in silence, if that’s a thing (it’s a thing.)

Georgie and Nick

The printed photos

I went to the Metafilter meetup afterwards, though I didn’t stay too long. I did take this portrait of Josh and Phil, though:

Josh and Phil

The lack of sleep and the high anxiety was really getting to me, so I went back to my Airbnb. I took a long bath and a nap; they helped a bit.

I arrived back at Revolution Hall around 6. While waiting I ran into Annika and her friends, got a Fronds pin and I admired her Raspberry Pi Zero/e-ink display project that she was wearing: it was showing stats from the XOXO Mastodon server that she’s running. I took a few more portraits, including a really good one of Joel.

Annika’s project

Aaron had a similar thing going

Annika

Joel

More people trickled in. I ran into Dylan and had a random chat with someone who was also waiting for the park to open.

Once the clock hit 7 pm and the park opened for the opening party, I went straight for the food carts. I got dinner from the Filippino place and it was extremely good food. Rice, noodles, skewers of chicken and two pork egg rolls, all of them excellent. I topped them with a copious amount of sweet and sour/soy sauce.

For dessert I went to the Churros truck which did not disappoint either; it pains me that we only had them for the first two days.

I got to hang out with a lot of people at the opening party. I met Skyler and her friends: got a cute turtle sticker from her for my badge. I got to know Earl who was having a small concert the next day. I chatted with with Liene, who I knew from the Slack but we didn’t talk much in real life before. I met Max, with whom we helped to save/migrate one of Andy McMillan’s old sites a few weeks before; later I would take one of my favorite portraits of him. And I finally got to hang out with Sarah; we kind of knew each other from Twitter but never met before.

The turtle is really cute.

By 9 pm I was getting tired — the glass of wine I had didn’t help — so I sat down at a table, where I met with Dunja again. She wasn’t feeling that great either and it was great to commiserate with someone together over shared anxieties and such.

In the big tent, people were playing Johann Sebastian Joust; it looked fun, but there were a lot of people waiting for it, so I called it an evening just before 10 pm, went back to my Airbnb, took a shower, went to sleep.

(Previously: Prologue, Part 1 - Monday, Part 2 - Tuesday)

I’ve had an idea for a T-shirt for years, and the week before XOXO I finally acted on it. I wanted to have a T-shirt with “Helvetica” in big, bold letters. Here, this is how it looks like:

It’s cool, right? At first, it’s nothing special. It’s just “Helvetica” in Helvetica. Right?

There, I zoomed in a bit. Can you see it yet?

If you’re just confused right now, seriously, good for you. If you’re a person who knows a thing or two about typography, however, your eyes might start twitching. That’s because the font here is Arial, and this T-shirt is designed to piss off a certain kind of font nerd.

Anyways, it arrived the day before, so I decided it’s a good day to wear it.

---

The day started with breakfast at Zell’s Cafe with Emory. The place was highly rated, but the food was somewhat disappointing: way too much cheese on my eggs, disappointing fries, bread that tasted weird. For dessert, we took scooters to Voodoo Donuts, which I still prefer over Blue Star, don’t @ me (we can all agree that Pip’s is excellent, though, right?)

We wanted to check out the Panic sign since Emory has never seen it before. I managed to lead us six blocks the wrong way, so Emory took over GPS duties for the rest of the trip. I kept getting/feeling slightly lost in Portland throughout my whole stay and couldn’t quite get a handle of the city — even though I’ve been there twice before. My stress and anxiety might have had something to do with that.

We did get to the Panic sign eventually, but as it turns out, it’s not much fun during daytime; you can barely see the colors.

Our next stop was the nearby Pendelton store, where I got not one but two coats for a redacted amount of money. They were beautiful coats, but I ended up returning both of them after the festival, as neither of them was quite the right cut for my weird body shape. If I’m spending that much money on a cloth item, they better be a good fit.

I took a break at Powell’s cafe, carefully not taking a look at the books because I have a giant backlog of them already. I did finally pick up Amy Baio’s You Think You Know Me, though. It is, in a way, an investment in my future as I don’t have too many people I can play it with right now.

It was around that time I connected with Dunja, Robert and Djordje, who arrived the day before; we met up in front of Revolution Hall just before 2 pm. I met Dunja at XOXO 2016; she was one of the few people from Eastern Europe. She introduced me to Robert in 2018, who’s also from Hungary; we hung out a bunch the past year. I haven’t met Djordje before; it was his first XOXO. He was Dunja’s friend from Serbia.

I saw on Twitter that Andrew just got in town and was looking for something to do so I invited him along.

We walked around the city, north on SE 13th St. then turned right on E Burnside St, wandering around and exploring the city for at least an hour. We ended up in Laurelhurst Park, which was pretty beautiful. After a short break, we each went our separate ways: Andrew to a museum, Dunja & co to get SIM cards and I walked to Belmont to get a late lunch.

I found a place called Straight From New York Pizza, and they had decent slices, though the New York part felt like a bit of a stretch.

Anticipating a high anxiety day as something triggered that the day before, I booked a massage at the Common Ground Wellness Co-op that someone recommended on the Slack. They were my next stop; I took a Lyft there. After checking in, I got undressed — the place is clothing optional — and had a great massage I really needed. Afterwards, I relaxed in their hot tub. It was a great place, and I would probably be a regular if I’d be living in Portland.

Once done, I took another Lyft back to APEX, for the now-traditional pre-XOXO Wednesday night beers. I got to have a great conversation with Andy McMillan, Jonah, Crystal, Dan and a few other people whose name escape me right now. Andy told us about his zero-proof cocktail bar, and we also learned quite a bit about Northern Ireland. For dinner, I got a rice bowl from a Vietnamese place across the street; it was pretty okay. It was a fantastic evening; it was there where I started feeling the energy XOXO gives you, and that carried me through the rest of the week. That, and all the fantastic people.

Andy and Henry. So cute. Henry, that is (Andy if you’re reading this you look great as well.)

I got back to my Airbnb around 11, and it took me a while to fall asleep: I was pretty excited about the next few days. XOXO would be (officially) starting the next day.