What I watched: The Patient, a super disturbing miniseries about a therapist who gets kidnapped by one of his patients…who happens to be a serial killer. This series really gave me a lot of respect for Steve Carrell’s acting chops in the same way that What’s Eating Gilbert Grape gave me for Leonardo DiCaprio.
What I read: The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke. The basic story line is the last city on Earth, billions of years in the future, where nobody is born or dies–they either appear out of the central computer or they go back to it. People’s lives get recycled over and over and over again…until one guy shows up who has never been “born” before and decides there must be more to explore out there. This was one of his first books and, honestly, it kind of reads like it. His later works were much more readable and had steadier plots. This one is a decent read but shows a lot of the telltale signs of a new author trying to find his feet.
What I listened to: Gov’t Mule’s Peace…Like a River album comes with a bonus EP if you buy the actual CD. It’s called Time of the Signs.
I stopped watching Murdoch Mysteries at the same time as others and for the same reasons… but I decided to catch up on it lately. It’s kind of lame for the previously mentioned reasons, but it’s also not as bad as they suggested.
There is barely any George Crabtree, but there’s a good reason for it. Jonny Harris went and did a show where he travels to small towns across Canada, learns about the history, and performs a stand-up routine for the communities he visits. It’s awesome. I don’t know if American’ts can stream it, but I believe it’s on CBC Gem. It’s called “Still Standing.”
…there’s a radio series/podcast from the BBC called mark steele’s in town that’s basically the same format?
What I will be watching tonight:
Did you know that Ryan Murphy’s “Feud,” about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, was not a one-off? No. There’s another one. “Feud: Truman Capote Vs. The Swans.” Oh my God. I’ll have to take extra blood pressure medication before I attempt this. The sheer fabulosity would kill a lesser man than me. Naomi Watts as Babe Paley. Diane Lane as Slim Keith. I’ve read “La Côte Basque, 1965,” a dozen times, of course I have, it’s available online. I’ve been to La Côte Basque, only twice, so it’s not like we’re regulars. I can’t wait.
https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/feud
[That’s weird. I can’t link this URL. Oh well, copy/paste away if you want to.]
We started The Tourist last night. It’s pretty good.
I saw American Fiction. I liked it, but it ends up as a quasi-fable, and I think it would have worked better either leaning harder into fable or family story.
Jeffrey Wright is as good as advertised, and it’s full of funny, well written scenes. It’s well directed too, with the pacing and setups executed well. But the balance between satire and drama is off a bit. It’s still a good movie, but not great.
…ok…so…on the one hand not everyone has broken their netflix algorithm to the point where it would so forcibly shove this one at you the instant it dropped…or possibly before then even if I paid more attention to the notifications it tries to send my way…but the house of ninjas is…unsurprisingly more japanese than the brothers sun…& not so much an odd couple dynamic as something like that one where michelle pfeiffer & de niro are parents of a mafia family in witsec…although even that sounds like I’m implying more humor than it arguably shoots for…still…pretty good?
…think there’s new bad batch & maybe something coming to disney soonish that I ought to remember to check back for…& I haven’t gotten around to orion & the dark…but…while I was failing to remember what else I stared at in the last week…I found I kept remembering that there were things I’d listened to that I seldom clump together on account of seeming like I’m on commission for the beeb…but…these are some series/podcasts I’d argue might be worth a listen or two?
What in the World
Rare Earth
File on 4
Trumped
[…that one’s about the scottish golf course & isn’t finished airing yet but this one is about comparisons with other presidents]
…then there’s the today program…the world at one…PM…the world tonight…today/this week in parliament…political thinking…just a slate of news/current affairs things…the moral maze…thinking aloud…bookclub stuff…the infinite monkey cage…a bunch of drama & comedy some of which is much better than other bits…lots of science & nature stuff…the briefing room…the history of the world in (possibly now more than) 100 objects…ian hislop in search of the oldest joke…natalie naynes stands up for the classics…podlitical for the scottish angle…& stuff like this
When it Hits the Fan
The Explanation
Three Million [the ’43 bengal famine spoken about by surivors, if you think you’re up to it]
…& I’m pretty sure more than a couple of folks hereabouts would appreciate this pair
The Gatekeepers
Things Fell Apart […think that might be coming back for a third season…go figure]
…so…uh…anyway…some of them are fun & or funny?
I watched a very silly movie, Killing Gunther with Ahhhnold. It is very silly but had a few funny moments.
Listening to more of the EZ Band, I like this version better than the original.
As a Canadian, I felt seen by that movie when this scene popped up… America missed out on this power ballad.
Gowan.
On last night’s episode of “Hawaii 5-0”:
It is 1978 so King Tut fever is running high. Alicia Warren is a sculptor so she forged the death mask herself! Meanwhile she has a couple of lion sculptures and McGarrett has a hunch and he takes a knife and carves off the head of one of them, et voilà, there’s the original mask.
It couldn’t be more fabulous. The cars, the houses, the apartments, the bars and lounges…where did we all go so wrong?
So my buddy calls me yesterday from Hawaii. His niece was visiting from the mainland & staying with my niece. My niece had to work but sent her daughter with them to do the tourist thing on the northshore. They are driving along and she yells that she saw the Rock. Nobody believed her but she didn’t care so turned around and sure enough, they saw the Rock. They ended up following him and got a picture with him. They said he was very nice. My buddy was very excited to tell him what a big fan he was of his grandfather Peter Maivia. He used to go watch him wrestle when he was a kid.
Just to reply to myself:
You know where we went wrong? The smoking bans. When I was over in Deutschland we’d put our packs of Zigaretten on the Bierstube table and if the pack was yours you’d get a “Darf ich?” and you would say, “Sicher.” If only I were straight. I had this German female friend, toward whom I had never expressed romantic feelings, who basically asked me to marry her. I was very flattered, but I already had the American boyfriend and the German boyfriend, and the last thing I needed was a German wife…
What was the point of this?
…spicing up our lives with a dash of variety & a certain je ne sais quoi?
Very flattering, but I’m definitely slipping into Grandpa Simpson territory.
…there was a user I miss hearing from in the groupthink era who went by oldwomanyellsatclods
…it’s a perfectly respectable trade if you ask me…& abe simpson’s napping abilities I would…some days…probably not kill for…but a felony or two…maybe a little light treason…cheap at the price…so…there are worse fates?
She was one of my buddies! We had a lively on-going conversation about her “cottage” somewhere around Toronto.
…had a good line in “by the way, we’re fucking this bit of nature up if anyone’s interested” links, too
…I miss a bunch of those folks
I miss all of them. I had so many friends over at Jezebel but I don’t know where they went.
I love the idea that someone could just forge that mask.
With modern paintings, just about the first things authenticators do is flip the painting over and check the canvas. If it doesn’t match what the painter used, it’s immediately suspect.
With an ancient death mask, it doesn’t matter how perfect the front is, the back has to match too, and that’s even harder to manage by a lot.
Not that it matters for TV purposes, of course. It falls into the category of parking places always being available right where they’re needed.
Finished Griselda (Netflix mini series)
It ended as poorly as I figured it would for the real life characters.
I watched it because the woman was the boss, but she fell into the same trap as most drug lords stories (fiction or real) I’ve seen where she got high on her own supply. I got twitchy a little near the end when Griselda goes 100% coke paranoid because Cokehead Narcissist believed she was a powerful drug lord and she wanted me (briefly) as her flunky (I never rated higher than that) but any possible dreams of being someone’s little drug flunky ended with her nasty paranoia streak when she was on the shit. I was accused of a lot of thing I never did. She never had actual proof I did, but she kept saying she did. However, I toughed that mild rough patch out. Even a mild form of PTSD can be a real bastard sometimes, you know?
Anyway, another story of someone rising from the ashes to fall back into something even way worse.
Props to Sofia Vegara for being a pretty decent dramatic actress too.
Watching something happier. “It’s A Wonderful Day In the Neighborhood”
So I’m not an Elvis fan, typically I like remakes of his songs more than his versions.
Last month I watched the Baz Luhrman Elvis movie, which would have been good as a biopic had Baz Luhrman just stopped trying to do the same stuff he does for every single movie all the time. Also, worst acting I’ve seen from Tom Hanks. Genuinely surprised at how bad it was at times. The whole drug/dream sequences of his character were not good in my opinion.
Last night I watched Priscilla, directed by Sofia Coppola. It made me angry how all the adults around her failed her. How everyone was like sure Elvis is infatuated with controlling every aspect of this girl’s life who he started grooming at age 14, this is fine. I mean I get it, famous people get away with shit. But also wow.
Not for nothing but roughly 99% of Elvis’ recordings were covers from black blues artists.
More importantly, he never wrote a single song!
finally finished reading leviathan falls last night…..now im sad im all out of expanse
that sucks… welp..guess tonight i start on the house witch series and see how we go with that
didnt really watch anything as all my free time im not using to dig up music is currently being eaten by no mans sky
aaand this songs been stuck in my head since it came along on the radio a few days ago
…so, I know a guy who isn’t really a gamer but bought a playstation…4 I guess it must have been…around when no man’s sky came out & it came with the thing…they run a set-up where there’s a projector instead of a screen so you can make it take up most of a whole wall…&…I know there were a lot of disappointed people around the launch…but the procedurally generated angle + online multiplayer suggests that it’s so open world you can’t reasonably expect to see more than a fraction of it in a way I kind of want to be amazing
…but the only time I ever saw anyone trying to play it they basically fumbled about zapping rocks to farm resources to play a prettier version of elite with…&…if I had enough time to get to the part where elite was less grinding & more playing intergalactic pirate with dog-fights in space…that would be pretty cool, even…but…it seemed clunky?
…I know there’s been a lot of patches & updates & maybe some DLC stuff since then…but I’m really curious to know what makes no man’s sky a thing you’re happy to sink time into?
…also…have you made some amazing oppo-worthy space-hoonigan?
honestly as ive only just started out really…im just happy to be zooming about in a space ship exploring stuff and being totally overwhelmed by all the crafting options and base building….i havent even gotten to the multiplayer yet where i suspect the main longevity of the game lives
it just came along at just the right time for me to scratch that space itch i didnt know i had
we’ll see how long it keeps me interested once ive actually worked out how everything works lol
…this from reddit made it sound like your first step is to camp in a “wealthy” system for long enough to get a high “class” variant of a design you like as a starting point to presumably customize at least some things about
…but this
https://nms.center
…seems like there’s maybe a way to get directions to something that matches your preferences as best they can be?
…but…this guy thought it was worth updating this from the video he made in ’22?
…so…uhhh…happy trails?
…or should that be shiny for the firefly reference?
eh tbh my prefered way of playing anything is bumbling about till i figure shit out for myself
so scuse me for skipping the reddit and the starship guide
efficiency is for work days
playtime means chaos….and probably explosions
most likely panic too when i accidentally agro everything again
…oh, sure…skip away
…I only found those links while I was wondering to myself what a farscy-approved spaceship would look like…because…you know…build a spaceship?
…actually…that one might be cooler than it looks?
welp…how it would look…is anyones guess
but just assume anything i build is going to be fast and be totally unbalanced when it comes to offensive and defensive capabilities
by which i mean BANZAI! what are shields? man i love that energy weapons dont need ammo coz i really didnt think about where to put all that shit when shoving all these weapons on the nose!
Elite! A game still dear to my heart and inner Han Solo.
Just returned from lunch with some dear friends as the Coffin. Tres twee and goth. The menu includes the Chesus Crist grilled cheese and wines under Communion. The old church rehabilitated alters, goat head pentagram wallpaper, and coffin check boxes were fun. The servers are goth and lean into it hard. My goat balls (sautéed breaded goat cheese) were superb. The coffee martini came topped with a floated coffee bean cross. The experience was to die for . . . @MegMegMcGee, we shall go there the next time you are in town!