What I watched: The Boys in the Boat. An uplifting, if fairly predictable, film based on the true story of a college rowing crew who end up competing at the 1936 Olympics. The acting and writing is good, but you absolutely know what’s going to happen next.
What I read: The Ringworld Throne by Larry Niven. Third in the series. Shit goes sideways in this one and it has a lot more action than the previous two. We have the same core cast of characters from the second book, plus a ton of new ones. The most interesting in the series so far.
What I listened to: Lance Lopez, Trouble is Good.
Hand over the recommendations, Deadsplinters, and nobody gets hurt.
I’ve been meaning to watch The Boys in the Boat just to see how the rowing is. In general it’s about as realistic as screen boxing.
…I liked the ringworld stuff a good bit but it’s been a long time since I read those…always sort of assumed iain m banks was nodding in that direction with the one that had shellworlds in it…lotta scope for interesting shit in galactic-scale megastructures beyond the scope of our engineering created by some mysterious civilisaztion that left no instructions
…& the boys in the boat was a pretty solid flick, I’d agree…saw it with some people who who grew up with people who cared about rowing in the 30s, at least one of which had read the book…so I was comparatively clueless about what actually happened…& I imagine there was a fair bit that fleshed out the book in ways that didn’t fit into the runtime so it feels like it would be a cheap shot to say it oversimplifies the working-class americans sneaking through the legacy advantage of the ivy league crews to beat not only the pride of italian & german nascent fascism but the oxbridge varient of snooty types…at a thing the latter basically think is “theirs”…like…I dunno…polo, or something…on account of that’s a pretty satisfying narative arc?
Grace Kelly’s dad was banned from rowing in the Henley in 1920 because the organizers ruled he had violated the rules on amateurism because he had once been a bricklayer.
Binge watched Kevin Can Go Fuck Himself. S1 and S2 (s1 was only on prime, had to find “other” questionable sources to see s2.) I quite enjoyed it despite the fact it was slightly traumatic because of in the past living with real life irresponsible sitcom man/boys (including university, but I wasn’t any better I just had slightly higher standards of cleanliness compared to my housemates.)
I recommend the series if you can watch the whole thing.
I’m guessing a lot of “Alpha” ‘males’ hated the show because of how it portrayed men. To be “fair”, I can seen how it would enrage them, but they’re not the target demographic and it should enrage them. The problem of course, they ARE Kevins. However, it shows how an irresponsible narcissistic jackass (cough Trump cough) can fuck up other peoples lives and their moron/feeb enablers.
Watched the GreenBook. Despite accusations of being a “white savior” story, I didn’t find the trope in this as bad as say James Cameron’s Avatard, er Avatar aka Smurfs In Space aka Spaces With Wolves. It is a sad commentary that a musical genius such as Don Shirley was treated like shit because of his skin color and that he was forced to hire a white driver (a nearly unrecognizable Viggo Mortensen.)
Not my usual cup of tea, but I like a good story and I thought this was a good story. I also like fucking with the Netflix algorithm as it tries to pin my entertainment tastes down.
…dances with smurfs is also accepted as a correct answer in some places I frequent
I think I mentioned this before. When my Black parents-in-law got married they bought or were given a Green Book. They couldn’t host a wedding and their relatives (and there were tons of them) didn’t have the means to travel to them anyway.
When my mother-in-law died we were cleaning out her house and I came across the Green Book. It was incredible. It wasn’t just a guide to navigate the Jim Crow South. It covered the whole country. They lived in Boston in the early 1950s and they might as well have lived in a more hostile Mississippi County, that would have been more humane. The stories they had.
The Green Book served as a guide and a diary. My mother-in-law was somewhat of a food critic so when they weren’t being fed by a relative (rare) they would stop at a “colored” diner and she had all sorts of commentary. Tart and to the point. “Bad.” “My okra is better.”
I begged Better Half to take it with us, but he refused. “At least donate it to a museum or a research library.” “These are my parents. It’s private.” Into the dumpster it went.
😠I would have secreted it away (because I’m a hoarder but also for the historical value of it). What an important part of our collective history.
…I saw a couple or so things with a bit of a running french theme…there’s a pretty ropey thing called la cage that’s like an MMA version of karate kid spliced with la haine…but heavy on the MMA & light on most of what made the latter more of a heavyweight contender
…& fairly fun but equally predictable movie called GTmax…the basic conceit of which I can’t decide if I love or hate…because I like “sleepers”…it’s the capability+understatement thing…& I accept that french people will make a moped it isn’t daft to talk about racing…but I kinda hate the things they hack up into macguffin-bikes…so…I was pretty conflicted about the whole thing
…on a similarly predictable but arguably more satisfying note there were a pair of films called street flow (or banlieusards which maybe doesn’t exactly translate that way but sort of means suburbanite with a side of commuter so there’s arguably more game in that bit of word play than they memorably managed for shopping trolleys of fire back in the day)…figure those make it over the bar into the above rather than below average riffs on the “hip hop” life in the projects type deal
…also…being animated might put some off…& it might over-hype the execution to compare it to person of interest…but there’s an AMC thing called pantheon that’s about the possible way things might go if anyone ever figures out how to write a human consciousness out of the organic matter that grew it & into a server bank…that had some stuff going for it to me…but I might be unhelpfully biased about that & I don’t object to cartoons
…kinda feel like there was another movie in there somewhere in the last week but I’ll be damned if I know what that would have been, apparently?
Played the early release of “Go-Go Town!” (Steam) which is like an Animal Crossing Rollercoaster Tycoon hybrid. Love it but it’s not well balanced yet (too easy even though there are not enough characters to fill the jobs).
I’m halfway through “Eila and Something Shiny” which is a super cute single player choose your adventure boardgame. Loving it too! My neighbor is a big boardgamer and he lent it to me. He has a whole boardgame pantry in his boardgame room. He’s living one of my dream lives (sans enfants). The game’s box is very large. While the packaging adds to the appeal, it is unnecessary and I wonder how small the target market is that has room for multiple games that size.
i just picked up this
is it going to help my chaotic ass get shit done….fuck knows…..but we are going to find out
figure if it doesnt help…..at least i get some sweet lo-fi for my space cadetting
course…i also picked up borderlands 3 for like a fiver…..so it might be a minute before i remember to get shit done
Halfway through the new JonBenet Ramsay doc on Netflix.
The Boulder Police had no fucking clue how to investigate a homicide and also definitely the rich, white family did not expect to get treated like that by the cops. Real asshole things like knowing within 3 weeks that the male DNA evidence found on her was no one in the family, but not releasing that info to anyone (including the DA). Making up slanderous shit and leaking it to the papers like “well the father flew his own jet to Atlanta with her coffin on the plane” when the father didn’t own a jet and couldn’t fly one. Or you know, not actually searching the basement and finding her body down there for hours after being on the scene.
Like whatever chance they had of actually solving that case was ruined in the first 48 hours by their incompetence.
We watched a movie from a couple years ago, The Outfit, starring Mark Rylance. It all takes place in one room and it’s pretty impressive. My wife really enjoyed it. Tonight we’ll get back to Candice Renoir. I’m getting a little tired of it to be honest, but it’s a good time waster until some other good stuff shows up.
…I liked that film a lot…if I failed to ever mention it here, that’s my bad
Yeah the acting and writing made it so easy to forget that the scenery doesn’t change.