Saturday Morning Brain Drain [17/10/20]

17/10/20 Hannibal 22

October is a great opportunity to indulge my love of horror.

I watched – The Haunting of Bly Manor on Netflix. A retelling of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, created by Mike Flanagan, who also developed and directed the scarier Haunting of Hill House. Some of the cast of Hill House return, including Victoria Pedretti, Carla Gugino, and Henry Thomas. There’s lots of suspense, some jump scares, a couple of very creepy children, but no gore, so it’s pretty safe if you’re squeamish.

I read – Alice Isn’t Dead by Joseph Fink. It’s the novelization of the very creepy podcast. You may recognize Fink as one of the co-creators of Welcome To Night Vale, but there is nothing funny about this story. Keisha Taylor begins seeing her dead wife on news broadcasts from around the country. She sets off on a road trip looking for answers to Alice’s disappearance and the truth about their life together. She finds much more than she bargained for in the horrible Thistle Men.

I listened to – Lovecraft Country soundtrack.

Marilyn Manson – Killing Strangers

Moses Sumney – Lonely World

Alice Smith – Sinnerman

What did you get into this week?

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22 Comments

    • I used to work on Music Row and Shania was basically the poster child for pitch correction software.  The last straw was when she embarrassed herself on the CMAs one year and couldn’t stay in key to save her life (back then, they didn’t have the technology to do pitch correction in real time).  So, over the next year or two, she really buckled down and studied and practiced with a voice coach until she was able to sing without the pitch correction in a live environment.  I’m not a fan of her stuff, but I do appreciate her willingness to do what she needed to do to be a better singer.

        • As the engineers I used to work with would say, “nothing beats starting with a good performance on tape.”  There’s less to “fix in the mix.”  I had one mentor who would say, “you can’t polish a turd, because all you get is a shiny turd.”
           
          There’s a reason why the music from before the 70’s sounds so much better, performance-wise:  because they didn’t have all the tech to hide a bad take.

    • oh god…i hate that song so much….hated it when it was new…still hate it…not even nostalgia is making me not hate that
      unlike the spice girls…i quite enjoy them now…lol

  3. Hi Hannibal! I watched last night’s baking show, read the latest Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter book, and listened to a bunch of 80’s pop on DUAN. 

  5. Watching:  Just wrapping up season three of Asshole Abbey.   I think the one thing that annoys me most about the show is all of the Deus Ex Machina bullshit that takes place all the time.  If the writers wanted a fantasy show then she should have just used elves and wizards.  Yes, still hate watching.
     
    Read:  DeadSplinter
     
    Listened:  I’ve been slowly but surely converting all of the old DATs from my pro audio days to CD and listening to them.  Some are definitely better than others, and some of the tapes simply didn’t last, so there are digital errors or straight up dropouts on some of them, but most of the tapes were salvageable.  I spent yesterday listening to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

      • The clothes, and the dog, are probably the only redeeming features of the show.  Between the godawful story lines, and the terrible characters (Bates, the Eternal Sucker; Lord Grantham, the Big Fucking Baby Who Understands Nothing About the Real World; O’Brien, the Shitbag Who Caused the Miscarriage; all the middle school bullshit that takes place downstairs, I could go on and on.) it’s all I can do to stay in the room.  They should feature the dog more, and not just as a pawn in Barrow’s twisted plan to get promoted.

        • Hey. Hey hey hey! I am an Asshole Abbey superfan, obviously. Where do you think I got this username from? One of the things I loved about the series was Julian Fellowes’s unique ability to introduce a plot line that could have conceivably been carried through for the entire series, but instead was dismissed within the confines of a single episode, or even not resolved at all but never brought up again. Meanwhile incredibly tedious plot lines were clung to for years. The first season opens with the sinking of the Titanic in April, 1912, and ends with the declaration of War with Germany, which would have been August, 1914. SPOILER ALERT! But then the war itself only lasts for three or four episodes, even though it was a grueling 4-year slog. There’s one season that seems to take place entirely within a single, unremarkable month (but not for the family or the larger household.)
           
          The series ends SPOILER ALERT sometime around 1925 or 1926. It’s always a little vague. Then they made a movie as a follow-up. I was hoping that the TV series would follow them into the Depression, at least, but it didn’t. In the movie there’s a brief mention of the General Strike of 1926 (SPOILER ALERT) which crippled Britain but is dismissed quickly with a character saying, “Oh it didn’t affect us much up here in Yorkshire.” Of course it did, you idiots. 
           
          Rant over. 

          • I was hoping you’d weigh in, lol. And you are right. But I still enjoyed it. Some of us Americans, myself and I think you, are fascinated by all things British. To hell with the plot holes, it had Maggie Smith, Penelope Wilton, Dan Stevens! And don’t we all want a Mr Carson to love and protect us even when we’re horrible little shits?  

            • HUGE SPOILER ALERT:
               
              As with most British series there’s an opening double-episode, the brief series, a finale, and then a Christmas special that is the “finale finale”. When Cousin Matthew proposes to Lady Mary in the snow outside Downton I completely lost it, to the point where The Better Half came into the office where I was streaming it to ask what was wrong. “Nothing. Cousin Matthew…”
               
              “You do realize these are fictional characters and not close relatives, don’t you?”
               
              It was soap opera at its finest. Speaking of, I’m hotly anticipating Season 4 of “The Crown,” which is set to be released on Netflix 11/15.

              • That’s a great scene and a few years ago I went up to Winterthur to see the Downton Abbey costume show and they had their outfits on display with the scene on a loop behind it and NGL I watched it for a long time. 

  6. hello!
    ive overworked meself running about town doing chores and bothering people about their face peens so obviously now im even more hyper active than usual
    anyhoo..currently reading…still the lost fleet..tho im on beyond the frontier now
    watching…well…about to actually.. battle royale…just to remind meself the hunger games was kind of crap
    currently nomming on… rolmops… or pickled herring wrapped around pickled gherkin and pickled onion… and once ive finished all the fishies ima drink the pickle juice…coz its fucking delicious..and apparently good for me *shrugs*
    and listening to

    • I just got back from my about town errands, hoping to not leave the house again for the week. I’ll got outside to walk Fanny but not in and out of buildings. I haven’t seen Battle Royale, I can’t bring myself to watch any dystopian dramas right now. Everything feel apocalyptic enough. Maybe if we vote the orange pus bag out of office I can finally finish The Man in the High Castle. Enjoy your briny snack. 

  7. arrrrrrgh!
    Sorry, I had a different comment started, buuuut I’m at the “too many tabs open!” point on my phone again.
    So here’s the tweet I was gonna share;


    I’d HIGHLY recommend that interview–it’s FASCINATING,and the band brings footnotes😉💖🤗
    I’m not all the way through yet, and probably won’t get it all read before work today, ‘cuz I need to leave soon… but so far it’s GOOD–the receipts brought on other bands’ nazi-symbolism history, the historical origins of Antifa, the American Labor history (known by a GREEK band!)–it’s a COOL interview so far😉😁
    I dunno how their music sounds–no time to listen quite yet.
    But it’s interesting & pretty neat, and I gotta admit, I LOVE when bands get all “Poly-Sci Major”/”Historian Twitter”-ish in interviews😉

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