November 20: A flurry of labor for a moment of tasting

The weekend before Thanksgiving in America feels like the long breath before a plunge, a collective inhale as we all prepare for the holiday season rush. Perhaps that’s why some of this week’s recommendations hover around themes of quiet meditation while others brace for difficult conversations and chaotic jumbles of noise.

Visiting family during the holidays can sometimes have the feeling of moving backwards, like re-visiting an old apartment and finding to your surprise that you’d left some things you always loved behind. Finding also that you remember the layout of the living room well, but something has changed in the porch, the kitchen, the bathroom, and you can’t quite put your finger on it. It’s uncanny.

For the luckiest of us, the visit home is warm and inviting, a way to rest and reconnect not just to the people who love us, but to our selves. We play board games not seen for years, we watch sports that we don’t usually put on the TV, and we eat things that make us remember old family friends and the many furnishings of childhood.

I hope that you have some warmth to return to this week, and if not, that you find ways to make it yourself with the people you’ve found along the way.

Unpacking by Witch Beam Games for Xbox, PC, and Switch

It’s been a busy few weeks in the video game world for me between Forza Horizon 5, which I talked about last week, and the Halo Infinite multiplayer beta, which has me jonesing for my Mountain Dew Code Red years, there hasn’t been a ton of space for just trying one-off game designs out. For Unpacking, however, I’ve made space because it is exactly the kind of meditative, contemplative experience I’ve been looking for in the cracks between high speed chases and bouts of slayer.

Unpacking has you doing just that: unpacking from a move. Across a series of levels, each beautifully realized in isometric pixel art, you help an unseen character move into their new place by taking, one-by-one, an item from a cardboard box and arranging it somewhere in the new apartment. There are wrong answers - you can’t progress to the next level if you leave a shoe on the countertop, for instance - but there aren’t really right answers either. Think that Votlron figure looks better on the dining room shelf than by your bedside? Go for it. Not sure whether to put the big put in the space beneath the counter or the pantry? Totally up to you, so take your time. And you should take your time if you can, because it’s a nice place to be, that moment of new beginnings, where you are settling in for the first time and deciding what parts of you have made the move and what parts you’ve left behind.

Oxidized by Frontierer

I’ve rarely hesitated on a recommendation as much as this one, not because I’m unsure of my opinion - I love this thing - but because it’s probably the least approachable music I’ve offered here at The Crossover Appeal. With Oxidized, Frontierer has released one of 2021’s most destructive and ferocious albums. It’s fifty minutes of blistering aural assault with very little room to breathe, replete with screeching vocals that melt into screeching feedback, constant, huge double-kicks, and a remarkably mathy take on the rhythmic, djenty sounds that have overtaken so much of metalcore in the last decade. Not to say there aren’t any dynamics or atmosphere on Oxidized, there are. Look to “LK WX” where unearthly howls give way to a stark, electronic backdrop for a moment’s respite in the dark before storming back for the track’s conclusion. There’s also a surprising amount of groove to the record given its aggression. Despite the chaos, the songwriting maintains the idea of a hook; if you heard these songs live you wouldn’t be confused about when to bang your head. There are also these incredible, piercing riffs that punctuate songs across the album’s runtime, sounding like they’ve arrived in the middle of your song from another planet. Frontierer has crafted a record that is equal parts barrage and buffet that somehow crashes its many influences into a cogent experience that demands your attention at every step.

How NOT to Be an Ally by F.D Signifier

I stumbled across this video on the Nebula platform this week - a service that I should probably talk about here at some point - and despite its long runtime I couldn’t stop watching once I’d started. I am, as a rule, suspicious of conversations around white allyship because (1) it doesn’t seem like a useful framework for pursuing racial justice to me and (2) it provides a lot of opportunity to center white experience in spaces where the exact opposite is needed. What Signifier does with this video, however, is to center the idea of allyship with a really helpful taxonomy that he explores with perfect clarity through popular culture tropes. The video outlines three types of allies, each with their own drawbacks and strengths: the Homie, the Partner, and the Savior. As Signifier walks through the taxonomy he pulls in examples from Blindspotting, Django Unchained, The Green Book, and Philadelphia, highlighting the ways each form of allyship interacts with white responsibility, interracial friendships and loyalties, and privilege. Signifier’s approach to analysis is direct, vested, and deeply embedded in conversation which he foregrounds through interviews throughout the video. Don’t miss this.

How to Wash the Dishes by Peter Miller

I hate washing dishes. In my thirty-three years I’ve lived with a working dishwasher for maybe five of them, five glorious years. Otherwise I’ve only ever known dishwashing as an annoying chore at best and soul-crushingly tedious task at worst. I don’t know what it is I hate so much about it, but whenever I wash the dishes it feels like time slows down so that every second is three and my whole life dissolves into the watched pot, afraid to boil. It’s dramatic, I know, but what can I say, I really really hate doing the dishes.

Which is why this short little meditation on dishwashing has me floored. Miller’s clear, elegant prose transforms the task of washing the dishes into a quiet revelation. This book is, genuinely, what it says it is - a long form essay on how to wash the dishes. Within its pages you will find a series of step-by-step instructions as well as bits of advice and commentary for your dishwashing journey; there are seemingly no ulterior motives. But why then after reading it across two short sessions did I feel so at peace? Maybe it’s in the framing Miller chooses for washing the dishes, alternately a gracious act of hosting, a centering meditation practice, and a tactical battlefield. Maybe it’s in the charming, unpretentious voice that miller marshals in service of this ridiculous-seeming idea. Or, maybe it’s in the possibility this book opens up for me personally, that there could be another side to the dishwashing misery. Whatever it is, I loved this book and I think you might too.

As dubious a holiday Thanksgiving is, I do want you to know how much gratitude I have for you - for reading this newsletter, for subscribing, for sharing, for interacting. It's the highlight of my week and I hope, occasionally, it's the highlight of yours too.

Jordan Cassidy