Saturday Morning Brain Drain [10/8/24]

10/8/24 Elliecoo 31
Image via mcbastardsmausoleum

What I Watched:  The Horror of Party Beach. It was filmed in only three weeks, and you can tell! It stars actors John Lyon and his sister Alice Lyon, who play eventual love interests. Alice was married to Hugh Dudley Auchincloss, Jr., stepbrother of Jacqueline Kennedy. Also, spoiler alert, the “bad girl” gets killed first – by the sea monster with for-real hotdog teeth.

From IMBd: While the hot-rodders and motorcyclists are having a rock-and-roll beach party, a barrel of radioactive material is unloaded from a passing ship, plunges to the bottom, and splits against a jagged rock. A black liquid oozes out and covers a shapeless mass on the ocean floor, which suddenly moves and becomes an encrusted vicious monster. Soon there are several monsters who must have human blood to survive. Tina is the first victim, and football hero Hank Green and airhead Elaine Gavin enlist the aid of her science-professor father, Dr. Gavin, to find and capture the killer. Not working fast enough to prevent the attack on 20 teenagers at a slumber party or the killing of three girl motorists, Dr. Gavin finds an arm lost by one of the monsters and discovers that only sodium will destroy the monsters, whose composition is mostly water. Can they gather enough salt in southern California to put an end to this horror?

Here is the trailer.

What I Read: Regency Summer Weddings: A Regency Romance Summer Anthology by Arietta Richmond, Regina Jeffers, Janis Susan May, Olivia Marwood, Victoria Hins. Ms. Richmond has multiple anthologies for every season and holiday; they are often on sale for 99 cents. These books are your basic Regency romance fluff – they are a good vacation read, or if you need something to wipe the current political shenanigans out of your mind for a moment.

What I Listened To: Chris Ballew – Made of Plastic; Ari Rivera & Billy Lemos – House of Pies; and Joe Goddard featuring Hayden Thorpe – Summon:

Thank you for playing Brain Drain! How are you, Darling DeadSplinterites? What’s going on, dearest ones? Please do share with us!

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About Elliecoo 602 Articles
Four dogs, one partner. The dogs win.

31 Comments

  1. …finally got around to the last episode of acolyte…which I reckon wound up being a potentially interesting direction they could take some things…so hopefully there’ll be more of that at some point

    …& remembered I’d forgotten about shogun…but got distracted by anime…there’s more of that one about a “shield hero” & I probably started two or three others at least one of which isn’t new…but I forget where I am with which…but if anyone’s interested I could probably figure it out by next week…& might be done with shogun by then, too…which still seems to be more than doing justice to its source material in the sense of the book…opinion might be divided on that in re: culture/history/whatnot…but it seems to try not to be too egregious with that & the cast are pretty great

    …also reminding myself that I like some of nk jemisen’s stuff a lot more than other bits…but the broken earth stuff has some interesting riffs on the novitiate-learns-dark-secrets-behind-institution thing overlapping with geological wizadry

    …as of about now-ish, though…I expect I’ll just be semi-transfixed by the men’s version of the olympic breakdance competition for pretty much the duration…which is gonna be nuts if the rounds escalate the way they did with the women…because the first round is already pretty nuts?

    • …ok…I get that it’s impressive there’s a guy from kazakhstan…& he has a whole backstory & everything…the guy from taiwan sorry…chinese taipei…got robbed if you ask me

      …the US favorite seems to be a dude who goes by victor but I dunno…could be he’s keeping his powder dry but I think some have been better & got less votes…at least one of those being a french dude…but I think of the US guys I’d say jeffro looked better than victor…& the japanese still seem like they have the smoothest competitors in the crop?

      • …if the taiwanese guy had been up against victor I might have still said he deserved to go through more than the american but he got the better of kazakhstan’s guy…& jeffro still struck me as having the edge over victor’s showing so far but they gave it to the local guy (danny dan) which I can’t fault them on any more than the dude himself

        …the last 1/4 final could have gone to lee from the netherlands but canada’s phil wizard is pretty much of a wizard so seems like he faces shigekix of japan who took out the other dutch fella

        …feel like the final should probably be shigekix vs danny dan based on so far…but who knows?

        • …so phil wizard takes on danny dan for the gold/silver &…no offense but shigekix seriously deserves the bronze more than victor seems to for me…he might have all the flex & the big moves but he doesn’t seem to have the sort of feel for the music that the other three (& some who didn’t get that far) seem to…even if he is world champion currently?

          • …they gave him the bronze…I dunno…he just wasn’t better than shigekix for me…it’s breaking not popping &/or locking & all…but he hadn’t the range outside of the power move stuff that the french guy who beat him did…which arguably is the side of things that got the japanese lady gold over the lithuanian teen…so…japan took gold in the women’s & deserved a medal in the men’s the way it looked to me

            …the final though…they should just split both medals in half & take one of each each…but the canadian got gold

  2. I’ve been reading a lot lately because the genocide is all I see when I look at screens. Debbie Downer over here. Variety pack of cozy novel I think Ellie will enjoy, depressing fictional coming of age, interesting world building fantasy, fantasy school for gifted students with a graduation deadline, and depressing but beautifully humanizing story which begins with forced displacement from Palestine.

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55040182-miss-percy-s-pocket-guide-to-the-care-and-feeding-of-british-dragons

    Miss Mildred Percy is a spinster. She does not dance, she has long stopped dreaming, and she certainly does not have adventures. That is, until her great uncle has the audacity to leave her an inheritance, one that includes a dragon’s egg.

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36586697-queenie

    Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth.

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68428.The_Final_Empire

    For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler, the “Sliver of Infinity,” reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible. Then, when hope was so long lost that not even its memory remained, a terribly scarred, heart-broken half-Skaa rediscovered it in the depths of the Lord Ruler’s most hellish prison. Kelsier “snapped” and found in himself the powers of a Mistborn. A brilliant thief and natural leader, he turned his talents to the ultimate caper, with the Lord Ruler himself as the mark.

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50548197-a-deadly-education

    A Deadly Education is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death (for real) — until one girl, El, begins to unlock its many secrets.

    There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate… or die! The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere.

    El is uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out millions. It would be easy enough for El to defeat the monsters that prowl the school. The problem? Her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students.

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30971664-salt-houses

    On the eve of her daughter Alia’s wedding, Salma reads the girl’s future in a cup of coffee dregs. She sees an unsettled life for Alia and her children; she also sees travel, and luck. While she chooses to keep her predictions to herself that day, they will all soon come to pass when the family is uprooted in the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967.

    Salma is forced to leave her home in Nablus; Alia’s brother gets pulled into a politically militarized world he can’t escape; and Alia and her gentle-spirited husband move to Kuwait City, where they reluctantly build a life with their three children. When Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait in 1990, Alia and her family once again lose their home, their land, and their story as they know it, scattering to Beirut, Paris, Boston, and beyond. Soon Alia’s children begin families of their own, once again navigating the burdens (and blessings) of assimilation in foreign cities.

     

    • …the mistborn ones are one of the constellation of series or whatever one might call them that feed into that cosmere effort of sanderson’s…the guy’s becoming a one-top staple part of that genre-diet & I’m pretty sure I intend that as a compliment?

      …& the scholomance ones I enjoyed a good bit, too…so I might make a note of those first two along with ellie?

      • I think Mistborn was the first book in the Cosmere universe (possibly before it was even a universe). I’ve also read Elantris which was a bit of a drag and don’t recommend. Tres was a cute and fun standalone novel in the Cosmere universe.

        I’m not sure if Queenie will appeal. I read it to branch out of my typical genres and found it really depressing for multiple reasons. The protagonist makes all kinds of bad choices which we slowly find out stem from childhood trauma. It’s hard to swallow even with the peppering of witty jokes.

        • …sometimes that works but it’s fair to say I don’t want my downers too close to reality in my escapist fantasy genre delving…so I’ll consider myself warned

          …& if tres is the one on the ocean of beads then I liked that along with the sunlit man…the metal alloys/alchemy ones were sort of fine but somehow less satisfying than the stormlight ones even though it all seems to be intended to be “investiture” of some sort underlying the local magical idiom…so definitely some are more my speed than others of his?

  3. For the hundredth time I watched this scene from “The Crown.” Seldom have I been more moved but also kind of…Here, we see Princess Elizabeth with her husband, Dr. Who, returning to Buck House. They were on a colonial tour of Africa when word reached them that her father, King George VI, had died.

    That’s Churchill speaking. The guy with the mustache giving the whole proceedings the hairy eyeball is Sir Anthony Eden, who himself, despite being in grave health, would accede to Prime Minister post. He was a disaster.

    So there she is, in her new role. Philip/Dr. Who with historical accuracy remains three steps behind his wife. When she emerges her family greets her. First up is her mother, who became the Queen Mother, who has just lost her husband. Then is her sister, Princess Margaret, who has also lost her father. Then, most chilling of all, comes Queen Mary, Betty’s Maw-Maw, who has just lost her son. They all curtsy deferentially to the new Queen.

    Much as I imagine that I would enjoy people bowing and scraping before me I bet it gets tedious after a while.

  4. I saw The Bank Job which is loosely based on a real bank robbery in London in the 70s.

    It’s true that crooks tunneled into a bank and cleaned out a bunch of safe deposit boxes and got a ton of loot. The movie claims they were also set up by the British government to steal photos of Princess Margaret having illicit sex.

    There’s a complicated mix of corrupt cops, a drug smuggling Black nationalist, and a porn selling crime lord. It’s a mess but it ends up getting more entertaining as it builds toward the end.

    • …it’s a fun flick…& the rumors about the royal angle weren’t newly invented for the film although I haven’t the foggiest how true, untrue, plausible or otherwise they might have been?

      …another strong cast, though

      • There was a book preceding the movie but the whole supposed scheme is just ludicrously complicated. If British intelligence wanted to get in a safe deposit box, they’d work something out with one person at the bank, not try a quadruple bank shot with 20 times as many people involved, all of them untrustworthy lowlifes.

        But whatever, it’s fun to watch it all unfold.

        • …for sure…I forget exactly but if it weren’t the intelligence services that wanted to shut down the blackmail but some “faces” from the other side of the tracks…it’s sort of quasi-plausible that they’d tap some old hands to a plausibly profitable job & hope to trade the compromising stuff one of them could pass on on the down-low for a bit of legitimacy/get-out-of-jail grace & favor…which is a better yarn

          …definitely not the way gary oldman’s slow horses character would solve that one, though

  5. We’ve been watching some grim Scandinavian crime show called The Bridge.  It’s about a bridge.  Specifically the bridge between Denmark and Sweden.  There’s a frumpy Danish detective and a hot but neuroatypical Swedish detective.  The crimes are gruesome and the vibe is tense.  It’s pretty good and keeps you awake.

    Also watching a bunch of sports and trying to pretend that the next three months aren’t going to be a constant deluge of political shit-flinging.  I’m jacked about voting, but I’m not looking forward to the run up to the election (or the weeks of whinging after) to come.

    • …the bridge is great…from the eerie theme tune on up…it seemed to take off with the killing but the scandi noir police shows are/were pretty great on the whole

      …borgen was a politics one rather than murder that was good too, if you want to take your mind off the real-world sort…& there were some french ones about the same vintage that were fun & varying degrees of bonkers…from braquo which was very to engrenages (spiral on the BBC) which was not so

      …but it’s hard to top saga…so don’t watch the tunnel which was basically meant to be the bridge but with the channel tunnel…or the remake of the killing that just wasn’t as good, either?

        • …they’re a bit chalk & cheese that pair…everyone’s very grown up about things in borgen while braquo is a lot of “poor life decisions” & considerably more frenetic

          …engrenages kind of veered between being more like one to more like the other sometimes but averaged out a lot nearer borgen than braquo?

    • If you want low key Swedish crime comedy, Peter Stormare’s Swedish Dicks is worth watching.

      https://www.cwtv.com/shows/swedish-dicks/

      He plays a washed up Swedish private detective in LA who has a hopelessly sunny Swedish DJ as his partner. Keanu Reeves makes occasional appearances.

      I wouldn’t call it wildly hilarious, but it’s pretty good for some chuckles and general parody of dour Swedishness.

    • …I think amazon prime might be your friend…but it’s also possible you need to look for it under “the raid” which I think is how the title got translated the same way “spiral” works better as a search term than engrenages?

      • Amazon Prime has it, but it’s “not available in your area”.  I’ll keep it on my watchlist because sometimes these Canal+ things later become available on Mhz.

        It’s like Astrid.  Amazon has all four seasons, but the fourth is not available for us Americans.  It’s probably just France fucking with us for fun.

         

        • …they’re still mad about the freedom fries/cheese-eating surrender-monkeys thing

          …not to mention the belgians make better beer & claim to have invented pommes frites

          …makes ’em crabby

  7. I did see Deadpool and Wolverine and loved it! I wanted it to be about 15 minutes longer because I wanted a little more character time.

    Also still watching a ton of Olympics and being consistently amazed at what the human body can do.

    Signed,

    I’ve been complaining about 2 blisters since Wednesday.

  8. Dr. Gavin finds an arm lost by one of the monsters and discovers that only sodium will destroy the monsters, whose composition is mostly water

    Yet they came out of the Pacific Ocean…

    Sigh, I have become my dad. He used to irritate me and make fun of the TV shows I watched because they were stupid and the plots didn’t make sense or follow any sort of science (Space 1999… Buck Rodgers… but mostly Space 1999.)

  9. sorry i have nothing to add to braindrain again today….just needed to say something @myopicprophet my interwebs craps out on oppo if theres too many youtube vids embedded too….didnt notice before…coz they rarely post more than one or two vids in a post

    dont really have things like the duan over there

    anyways…looks like the problem is on my end so dont worry yourself about it….

    could even be that my not compatible with windows 11 pc just cant hack loading in that many videos at a time

    the interwebs does get ever more demanding on a pc after all…even if i have the internet speed to handle it

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