Now Playing: Part 19

Welcome to February's Now Playing — a preview of this month's contributors, what they've been playing lately, and why: 

Erin Slaughter
I’m drastically under-exposed when it comes to film. Basically, 85% of the movies people talk about, contemporary or classic, I haven’t watched, and many I haven’t even heard of. I’ve been trying to rectify this lately by switching out my 5+ year routine of rewatching The Office with watching more movies. The last one I saw was The Lobster, which I’d been putting off because a friend in grad school assured me it would destroy me emotionally (I was in a tumultuous period of unrequited love back then, and most things did). Anyway, it turns out that The Lobster is a great movie, and only destroyed me very mildly. It does a wonderful job at creatively exploring the complexities of romantic relationships and our societal expectations surrounding them, but the main thing I’ve taken away from it is one image I can’t get out of my head: the wet, wrung bodies of wild rabbits, killed and collected in the woods. There’s something so earthy and visceral and lovely about that image. I’ve written it into my last three poems. I’m obsessed with those rabbits, and—as with all the best and weirdest obsessions—I have no real idea as to why. 

Christopher Allen
The last thing I listened to was three hours of Britain's Got Talent Golden Buzzers on YouTube because that's my happy place. Watching people have this incredible moment of success gives me so much energy and peace at the same time.

John Carr Walker
A few months ago, the Pathfinder/Dungeons & Dragons party I play in with four friends and my teenage son finished our four year Dragonlance campaign. I feel both relief and sadness. I'm glad for the chance of starting a fresh story, but there are so many possible scenarios one thinks through playing tabletop RPGs that do not come to pass, and so many things one's character ends up not doing, that leaving the imaginary world and those imaginary people behind is bittersweet. Whatever. We slayed dragons. With lances. While riding on the backs of other dragons.