Saturday Morning Brain Drain [25/11/23]

Sticks in Your Mind

What I watched:  Open Range, a 2003 Western with Kevin Costner, Robert Duvall and Annette Benning.  I hadn’t initially planned to watch this but Mrs. Butcher has a thing for Westerns, of all things, and she wanted to watch it.  A surprisingly good film with a solid plot and great chemistry among the primary cast.

What I read:  Holly, Stephen King’s latest book.  While King is quite open about the fact that Holly is his favorite character of all time, I find her one of the most annoying characters he’s ever created.  However, he is still a great story teller and has always had a sharp wit, so it makes the title character more palatable.

What I listened to:  Brittany Howard, from Alabama Shakes, put out a solo album in 2019 called Jaime.  Looks like she released a remixed version of the album in 2023, but the original is so much better.

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About butcherbakertoiletrymaker 602 Articles
When you can walk its length, and leave no trace, you will have learned.

20 Comments

  1. Hulu had the first two episodes of the new season of Fargo. I really liked them.

    Like every season, it’s a standalone season with no real connection to the movie or the other seasons, so it’s fine to watch out of order. It just shares a vibe of weird humor, violence, and people getting trapped by bad choices spiralling out of control.

    Juno Temple plays the lead character who is completely different from Keely in Ted Lasso and she’s great. It also has Jennifer Jason Leigh, John Hamm, Dave Foley and Joe (Steve from Stranger Things) Keery as odious people.

  2. I took a break from The Overstory and read The Quiet Tenant by Clemence Michallon. I knew it was a psychological thriller but it was not what I expected. From the short synopsis I read before borrowing it, I thought it was going to be a Pacific Heights kind of story. But it’s about a woman kept prisoner by a man.  And while the violence is implied rather than explicit I am completely over rape as entertainment. Even as a revenge tale.

    I watched The Gilded Age because I know some folks watching and wanted to participate in the conversation. I agree with Lymond that the costumes are ugly. I don’t know how historically accurate they are but the color combinations are terrible. The writing and acting aren’t that great either.

  3. …but of an odd mixture this week… operation fortune is a guy ritchie number with statham & sundry other familiar faces that’s pretty entertaining if you don’t expect too much from it

    …stiletto is the sequel to the rook (about the checquy) which was briefly a TV show & remains a fun tale of working for the government dealing with supernatural threats

    …the marvels was…well…it didn’t make any less sense than some of their most successful films…the leads were pretty great & the whole ms marvel family dynamic remains basically adorable…so I enjoyed it fine & people claiming it’s this or that kind of a disaster must have money riding on the box office or some other agenda…or just saw an entirely different film or some such unlikely explanation

    …& I finally got around to starting giri/haji…which so far is as good as I’d been led to expect…though I haven’t got far, I suppose

  4. I read Better Living through Birding, a memoir by Christian Cooper. He’s the dude that had the snotty karen call the police on him in Central Park for “threatening” her by simply existing while being a black man.

    Good read, easy to enjoy. Not really about birding so much as accepting yourself and finding ways to enjoy your life.

  5. Slowly watching ST:Lower Decks (at Ep5, S1) Definitely more entertaining that the previous shows because there is new territory to be covered with lower ranking folks.

    Still… why is everyone an officer in Star Fleet? It just seems so top heavy. Even the US Coast Guard (probably the closest to Star Fleet as an analogy because it is the least military organization and does a lot of non military tasks including science missions) has mostly enlisted making up the majority of its ships crews and that NCOs aka the Chiefs being the most experienced and supposedly capable experts in the systems they work on.

    Perhaps this is the wrong forum for that…

  6. I hoard my content (my precious) to feed the weekly BrainDrain requirements. Went downtown this morning for last minute gifts; an artist friend had a private open house and I finished up there. (Shop local.)

  7. isis astarte diana hecate demeter kali inanna

    to this day…i do not know if the witches have the right of it

    ….. i dont think they are wrong tho…..

    lifes a fucking set of scales and the only thing that matters is balance

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