Messages

1

art, music, etc. / Re: Live Performances

« on: April 03, 2026, 10:34:23 PM »

I'd always heard of this guy but never listened to anything from him. Probably wouldn't have liked it until now anyway. For the past year or so I've been getting into some jazz stuff here and there. This guy is RIDICULOUSLY talented. I don't think he's human, I think he's a biomechanical conduit through which an alien race broadcasts their music to us.

Jazz is "almost" like saying "ALL THE NOTES AT ANY TIME ARE POSSIBLE!" only... thats not entirely true. It's more like ALL the notes, but at DIFFERENT TIMES, and only THESE SELECT NOTES right now, and THOSE SELECT NOTES in the next second. In reality, you have the chords in a progression, and scales based on the notes of those chords,... easy enough... but then again, you can also have blue notes like in blues that aren't part of the scale, but if you play them at the right time, it's okay. And theres the thing about jazz: you have to pick up an instrument first and then MASTER it... and then when you've done that, you can start the journey learning how to play jazz without fucking up and sounding terrible.

I bet none of that makes any sense to anyone. Whatever. Listen to Allan Holdsworth. He's really good. Eddie Van Halen and Steve Vai both considered themselves hacks next to his playing. And they might be right.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX46MC8lfjQ

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/dev/random / Re: Whatcha listening to?

« on: April 02, 2026, 03:24:03 PM »

(Angine de Poitrine)

I've seen them all over youtube but I don't really pay attention to them.

Their weird style sort of reminds me of this other jazz fusion duo I came across. Domi & JD Beck. In my opinion, EONS more talented than those two, not that they suck by any means, but these two... WOW. Like the classical guitarists I posted above, they were also child prodigies, starting their music journeys as mere toddlers. She's every bit as good as Keith Emerson (of Emerson Lake and Palmer) ever was on keys. And JD Beck is mindblowing on drums. He goes with an old school jazz kit with just a snare, one tom and the kick, but can make it sound like 3 people playing at once, it's INSANE. He sounds like a machine.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4td2EImaG4

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/dev/random / Re: The last movie you saw....

« on: April 01, 2026, 03:32:57 AM »

I was chatting with Zether and others in the Tastyspleen discord channel about various Coen Brothers movies. There's so many really good ones, and I realized I hadn't seen some of them in a long time, so I went on a Coen Brothers binge - Decided I'd try to watch all of their films, earliest to latest, in order. Some of them I had never seen, or had seen only bits and pieces of them.

Their very first movie, Blood Simple (1984), was one I had never seen before. I figured with it being their very first movie, it wouldn't be very good. Very surprising though, because if you hadn't told me who directed it or that it was their writing and directorial debut, I would've never guessed it. Very well done. A twisted pulpy crime drama. I figured it would kinda suck. NOPE. Does not suck at all. A very underrated and un-talked about Coen Brothers movie.

Raising Arizona (1987), one of my favorites of theirs. A classic. And the scene with John Goodman hollering like a psycho as he's slowly being birthed up from the muddy hole in the rainy prison escape scene is still one of the most comically surreal things ever put to film. On the surface it seems like a silly hicksploitation kind of film, but there's a lot more going on.

Millers Crossing (1990) - a gangster kind of film. I'm not too fond of it.

Barton Fink (1991) and The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) I had never seen before. Probably wont ever watch them again. Didn't really like either one of them, moreso Hudsucker Proxy. Jennifer Jason Leigh with her horrible sounding 1920's accent/voice got on my nerves and ruined the whole movie.

Fargo (1996) - A great story. And while at times it clearly satirizes the whole Minnesotan/Canadian accent, it still strangely doesnt subtract from the real tragedy of the story. It's weird how good the Coen Brothers are at that kind of thing, blending a sort of surrealism and reality seamlessly.

Big Lebowski (1998) - Like I said, blending surrealism and reality. One of my favorite Coen Brothers movies. And again, John Goodman steals the show when he dumps out Donny's ashes from an old Folgers coffee can into the wind and it blows the ashes all over himself and The Dude.

O Brother Where Art Thou (2000) - Didn't really like it. It's supposed to be a version of Homers Odyssey.

The Man who Wasnt There (2001) and Intolerable Cruelty (2003) - Meh. Not terrible. But not very good either. I had never seen them before. Don't think I'll bother watching them again either.

The Ladykillers (2004) - Another one I had never seen before. A strange one. A black comedy. I love the cast. Such a variety of characters. And I really liked the absurdity of the ending (i won't spoil it). Maybe not one the "best" Coen Brother Movies, but definitely a "good" one, at least in my opinion. Worth seeing at least once or twice.

No Country For Old Men (2007) - Their #1 best movie in my opinion. Lots of subtext involving the unpredictability of life and the inevitability of death. And that final scene with Tommy Lee Jones talking about the dream he had about his father... KA-POW. If that ending doesn't hit you in some way, then you aren't human.

(Several movies after that, most of them I didn't like.)

Burn After Reading (2008) and A Serious Man (2009) - Had never seen them before. Didn't like them. Meh.

True Grit (2010) - A great movie, I liked it. I thought Jeff Bridges was maybe one of the only guys who could've played a Rooster Cogburn type of character the way John Wayne did. I'm a big John Wayne fan, I've seen virtually EVERY SINGLE ONE of his movies (and he was in LOTS) and True Grit was maybe my #1 favorite Wayne movie. As good as this remake is, I still prefer the John Wayne original. There's just no contest. There was only one John Wayne.

And after being so bored by Burn After Reading and A Serious Man, I decided to skip Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) and Hail, Caesar! (2016). I watched the first 5 or 10 minutes of Inside Llewyn Davis, but in addition to it just being boring, it was shot with this fuzzy soft focus effect that drove me bananas. So I said fuck it and skipped it. Same for Hail Caesar. I'm not a fan of George Clooney as an actor. Didn't feel like sitting through 2 hours of his crappy acting.

Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) - Eh... interesting, yes. It's just a collection of little various western tales. It's "good", it's worth watching, but not my favorite.

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/dev/random / Re: Whatcha listening to?

« on: March 23, 2026, 01:18:08 PM »

Ana Vidocic, classical guitarist.

Absolutely FLAWLESS technique and she seems to play all of these pieces completely from memory. Just WOW.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e26zZ83Oh6Y&ab_channel=OmniFoundation

Ana Vidovic is immensely good. But I dunno, I think Thu Le might have her beat just slightly. El Choclo is a RIDICULOUSLY hard piece to play, and out of any 10 people who actually CAN play it, maybe only 1 of those 10 will play it flawlessly to where it sounds fluid and natural like Thu Le does.

How is she so good? Like Ana Vidovic, she started learning as a child (4 years old). That'll do it. Start doing anything that young and training hard at it every day of your life and by the time you're 25, you'll be a world-class master at whatever it is.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkdrX2UnzDQ

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/dev/random / Re: Whatcha listening to?

« on: March 22, 2026, 02:13:16 AM »

I was sort of a reluctant fan of country. When I was growing up, I was all about ROCK. "COUNTRY SUCKS!" That was the crap your grandparents listened to. But as I became a teenager, more and more people started listening to country. Then around 12 or 13, I got into playing guitar and it opened my mind to all sorts of different stuff - blues, smooth jazz, etc, and I even started giving country a chance. I started getting into classic country too especially, stuff like Hank Williams, Glen Campbell, Merle Haggard, Johnny Paycheck. I discovered that maybe the music wasn't always the best produced or most technically flawless and talented, but the songwriting was so good. They could employ a masterfully crafted economy of words in a few short verses to paint a vivid picture in the listeners head. Almost magical how they could make you see places you've never been and feel a certain way.

Anyway, Merle Haggard was always one of those guys. He passed away back in 2016. His youngest son, Ben, followed much of the family and got into music. He sounds a lot like his dad, but a lot more agile with his voice, and actually... he sounds better than his old man in my opinion. Maybe not a better guitar player though, I dunno. Merle was as brilliant of a telecaster player as he was a songwriter.

Anyway, came across this watching a musical tribute Merle's family did a few years ago. His son Ben did a fantastic little version of one of my favorite Merle songs, It's All in the Movies.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqjE4Nx4IIQ

Speaking of guitars, Merle had THE NUMBER 1 best looking signature Fender telecaster in my opinion. Velvety looking quilted maple top. I usually don't like the 2-color black to wood stain color sunburst finishes (I prefer the 3 color sunburst that transitions from black to brown with more subtlety), but with that super deep looking quilted figuring to the maple top, it looks perfect. Neck is actually a glued-on set neck whereas other telecasters are almost always bolt on neck. White body binding, nice walnut stained stripe down the center line of the body, gold hardware, pearl button tuners. This guitar is a work of art and looks like a million bucks. And almost costs about that, they go for $10,000 these days.

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/dev/random / Re: The last movie you saw....

« on: March 16, 2026, 05:32:27 PM »

Dunno why it took me this long to get around to watching this one. I've seen bits of it before on movie channels, but I've never seen it start to finish.



The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) starring Sam Rockwell, Martin Freeman, Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, Bill Nighy, John Malkovich, voice talents of Alan Rickman, Stephen Fry, Bill Bailey, Thomas Lennon, Helen Mirren. Loads of great people in it.

Comedy Sci-fi kind of thing, absurdism, surrealism, take your pick. Very off the wall in a very good way. Sam Rockwell was a perfect pick for this movie, he plays crazy better than anyone and he's one of my favorite actors. Other great movies he's done that I'd recommend: Green Mile (1999), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Moon (2009), Seven Psychopaths (2012). I have another one of his movies I've yet to watch called Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (2025). Looks like he plays another sort of wacky crazy character in that one too. The few reviews I've read about it have been kinda mixed.

Anyway, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy... kind of silly at times, but very entertaining. To describe it.... it's like if Terry Gilliam from Monty Python made a sci-fi movie. Would definitely recommend. Solid 9/10.

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/dev/random / Re: The last movie you saw....

« on: March 16, 2026, 12:36:23 AM »

I tried watching an old Peter Weller movie. A really strange one.



Naked Lunch (1991) starring Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands, Roy Scheider.

I love the cast. I've always liked Peter Weller as an actor and thought his talents went largely unnoticed and wasted. Ian Holm has had so many fantastic roles. Julian Sands is a cult favorite of mine, especially for his horror/fantasy classic Warlock, a really fun movie to watch at Halloween time. He was an avid hiker and backpacker. Sadly he died of most likely frostbite and exposure, possibly due to being caught in an avalanche in the San Gabriel Mountains of California in January 2023. Roy Scheider, another fantastic actor. He had a great career, but it still could've been better. The Deer Hunter starring Robert DeNiro and Christopher Walken... Roy Scheider was originally supposed to play the lead. If you've ever seen the whole thing, its a movie with an ending that hits you like a truck. And it was a great movie. But in my opinion, it would've been much better with Roy in the lead. DeNiro's done plenty of good movies, but I'm sorry, he just doesn't have the ability to convey emotion the same way Roy Scheider did. When you think about DeNiro, he's done lots of mobster movies, and he's good at that kinda thing. But lets face it, mobsters arent the kind of characters that show sadness and remorse because they're psychopaths, therefore someone like DeNiro (who can't do sadness and remorse worth a shit) flourishes in those roles. He's overrated. Just my opinion.

Anyway, Naked Lunch. This movie is insane. Obviously theres all kinds of subtext going on, but the surreal shit that happens on screen completely distracts you from being able to think any deeper than what is right in front of you. Also... I've had poison ivy recently and I've been on meds for it: antihistamines that make me loopy, prednisone that effects mood, also hydroxyzine which is something I take to alleviate itching at night so I can sleep better, but it's also used as an anti-anxiety kinda thing, I dunno it's weird, but they tell you DO NOT DRIVE WHILE TAKING THIS... so about 30 minutes to the end of it, I start dozing off, but waking back up every few minutes with the tv right in front of me and just absolutely FREAKING THE FUCK OUT, partly because of the weird shit that was on the screen at the time, and partly because of the really fucked up dreams and thoughts I was having before jolting awake again. I dunno, I think this movie has the ability to screw you up though. Probably don't watch it. DEFINITELY don't watch it right before you go to sleep. It makes no sense anyway. You can sit there and really try to make an honest effort to make sense of it... but theres NO WAY you will be able to.

The tagline for the movie is "exterminate all rational thought." That describes the movie pretty well. Things happen, normal sensible behavior... but then big talking bugs or an alien appears and you're like "why?".. the bug expects him to write a report on what has happened... but why?... Someone is an agent, he is an agent... agent of what and why? It's like the movie gets off on not letting you know everything that is happening and why. That's no way to make a movie. So yeah, not a fan of this one. I'm not convinced that the subtext is just too deep for me. It's more like a script based on the drug addled musings of a junkie that people have convinced themselves is a form of high art and I simply disagree. And from what I've seen about this movie, most people who saw it on release tend to agree with me. It did well with the hoity-toity critics, but bombed at the box office.

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/dev/random / Re: The last movie you saw....

« on: March 09, 2026, 08:29:32 PM »

I'm seeing now why Lorenzo Lamas always had so many haters.

I've always liked him. I was a bit of a fan of his tv show back in the 90's called Renegade. It wasn't terrific, but it was a cops and bounty hunters action movie kind of show, shit that a teenager like me was into. I also kinda liked his trilogy of SnakeEater action movies. I never saw any of his other movies. On a whim I've been watching a few of them that I haven't seen before. And yeah, most of them are pretty bad. The SnakeEater series certainly qualifies as "bad action movie" stuff, but honestly, if you had to pick the best Lorenzo Lamas movies, the SnakeEater ones would be it, particularly SnakeEater III, my favorite of the series, co-starring old ECW wrestler Bam Bam Bigelow as a bad guy biker.

A sort-of popular one that I've seen listed in the tv guide of different channels throughout the years or advertised various places...

CIA: Code Name Alexa (1992) starring Lorenzo Lamas, Kathleen Kinmont, Oj Simpson.

YEP. GOOD OLE MURDERIN' OJ SIMPSON. Holy crap. Watching anything with him in it is suuuuuuuch a fuckin' bummer. It's impossible not to think about what he did and it just ruins every movie he did. But in this movies case, it was garbage ALREADY, so OJ Simpson didn't make it all that much worse. WOW THIS THING SUCKS. But wait theres more... THEN THEY MADE A SEQUEL! Haven't watched the sequel yet. I know it doesn't have OJ in it though... so... I'm crossing my fingers and hoping not to be bored into falling asleep before its over.

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/dev/random / Re: The last movie you saw....

« on: February 23, 2026, 06:23:23 AM »

You should watch this one 
(Rubber)

Looks pretty silly. Hell I watched Cocaine Bear. And yesterday I finally watched the Deathstalker remake. They don't make many "good" movies anymore, so I guess we gotta settle for silly now.

   

Yeah. Deathstalker. See, we all know [BTF]Deathstalker is just the greatest dude on earth, and that's obviously why they named the movie after him back in 1983. But [BTF]Deathstalker was so awesome that one movie named after him just wasn't enough, so they went and made a sequel named after him again, and this one was co-starring the lovely Monique Gabrielle. Both were great movies,... and both of Monique Gabrielle's boobs are great boobs. Sure, both movies were nothing Oscar worthy, but they were definitely worthy of cult status.



However, this remake...

I dunno. It's pretty goofy. The comic book nerdism gets a little oppressive at times. I see shades of Army of Darkness in it at times, same kind of gore, monster makeup and humor.

I suppose my verdict would be more on the positive side. I dislike the idea of resurrecting old cult franchises like this, but I suppose it did properly. What would be the alternative? A SERIOUS sword and sorcery movie? I don't think anyone WANTS one of those anymore. You have Game of Thrones or Vikings for things like that.

Anyway, yeah, worth a watch I suppose. Don't expect much though.

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/dev/random / Re: UFO SPACECRAFT CONFIRMED BY USA

« on: February 20, 2026, 03:09:35 AM »

I dunno why everyone is jumping ahead of themselves on this completely random statement. It's not like we don't know how Trump operates. His purpose in saying anything was to troll both the lefty media and Obama. "He's disclosing classified info." By saying that,.... HE'S the one disclosing it. It's a silly jab at Obama, nothing more. He didn't admit aliens are real. He didn't deny it either... but "refusing to confirm or deny" something isn't some kind of reliable code to prove that something is true.

What SHOULD BE the real takeaway from this, no one is mentioning. The fact that Obama said "There are no underground bunkers at Area 51."



Yeah. That's why they have a fence a hundred miles around the place and if you come close to it, you'll be arrested by military police with heavy machine guns mounted to their trucks in less than 5 minutes.... because there's nothing there.

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/dev/random / Re: The last movie you saw....

« on: February 06, 2026, 02:24:09 AM »

Back in the 90's, I used to swing by Hollywood Video about once a week and rent some crap to watch. My ma would spend her time going through the new releases... meanwhile I'd usually hit the older sections, mostly action movies and music. I think the new releases were rented out for 3 days at about 5 to 7 dollars each, whereas the older stuff was either 5 days or 7 days and was only 99 cents per video. So I'd get 4 or 5 at a time. Saw a lot of great stuff back then. It's how I discovered old Sonny Chiba kung fu movies as well as other kung fu guys like Gordon Liu, Carter Wong, etc. Mostly what I rented was the major action stars of the day though: Van Damme, Segal, Dolph Lundgren, etc.

One of the movies I always saw sitting on the shelf and never got around to renting...



RavenHawk (1995) starring Rachel McLish 

The tagline on the box cover as pictured reads: "Justice has never been this beautiful."    ROLL MY FUCKING EYES.


Finally saw this pile of crap. God I wish I hadn't.

In real life she was apparently some kind of female pro body builder. She looks kinda native american, I dunno if she really is, I haven't researched her, but considering this was the mid-90's, its entirely possible she was not native american AT ALL and they just cast her as that. You gotta remember, these were the days when they'd cast guys from India as arab terrorists without batting an eye, lol.

And the plot? Boring and PREDICTABLE AS FUCK.

Starts off, she's a young girl. The rich assholes come and want to build a factory on indian reservation land. Her parents wont sell, so they come in the night, kill them, frame their little girl for it. Shes traumatized and stops talking (conveniently never tells the cops what happened). When she's older, they go to transfer her to a full blown prison, but the prison bus crashes (predictably), oh and also now shes talking too (conveniently can talk to other characters in the movie again). She escapes the bus crash, but everyone thinks everyone died in the crash (conveniently) . So this factory they built... apparently just makes... pollution. Of course it does, it always does, that's just what rich assholes do, they build smokestacks and pollute shit just for the helluvit, dontchaknow. Anyway, really stupid story made short, she hunts down the guys that killed her family and gets revenge, the end.

Most action movies follow a pretty predictable formula. They keep using the formula because it works. Even "bad" action movies are generally entertaining enough to watch. But sometimes they're exceptionally bad. Like this one. Action movies are simple. You just have fighting, some shooting, maybe a few explosions, and as long as you make it look real enough, you have a movie worth watching. But the action in this thing is so poorly done and JUST PLAIN DULL. You spend the whole movie looking at your watch going, "Okay, how many more minutes until this pile of crap is over?"

I should've known better. I saw it sitting there every time I'd go to the video store, and every time it was there on the shelf available. No one ever rented it.

Directed by Albert Pyun. That name was familiar so I looked it up. He also did...

Sword and the Sorcerer - Not a very good movie, but a staple of the "sword and sorcery" genre that was kinda popular in the 80s.
Cyborg - I think this was Van Damme's first movie. Really super low budget, and pretty bad in my opinion, but it's a cult classic.
Captain America - The bad Marvel movie that everyone forgot and almost no one saw. I saw it. It kinda sucked, but 10 or 12 year old me didn't mind it that much at the time.

And lots of others, none of them are any better though. A couple of Nemesis movies, a couple of the Kickboxer movies. He had another kind of obscure one with Lance Henrikson called Spitfire that I saw a while back that was okay.

He's got a knack for making bad movies.

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/dev/random / Re: The last movie you saw....

« on: January 30, 2026, 07:47:58 PM »

Tron (1982)



Downloaded it from a torrent - not sure what the source was. Did they update this thing or something? Maybe it's just been so long that I don't remember it, but it seems like they rearranged parts of the movie, added scenes, etc, I'm not really sure. It had a couple of parts in it with animations that looked a little out of place and too advanced, but then again... this movie was WAY ahead of it's time when it came out. It was one of my favorite movies as a kid although I so seldom watched it because they so rarely ever played the whole thing on the Disney channel back in the 80's, and I didn't have a VHS copy of it. It's just a great all around movie. Kids and casual moviegoers like it because of all the stuff about video games and the cool special effects. But there's also plenty of embedded religious and philosophical subtext to unpack as well if you're into examining movies that deeply.

Also... Looking at it now, it makes me wonder if the story wasn't a veiled representation of the evil corporate Bill Gates (Dillinger) vs the heroic independent Steve Jobs (Flynn).

Some "prophesy" from the movies dialogue:

Dr. Walter Gibbs: "After all, computers are just machines, they can't think."
Alan Bradley: "Some programs will be thinking soon."
Dr. Walter Gibbs: "Won't that be grand... computers and the programs will start thinking, and the people will stop."

Yep. That's social media alright.

Just wanted to highlight that in yellow to reiterate my point I made to 2dum in his Palestinian Victimhood thread about him relying on ai assistant apps. 

But back on topic...

Always been a fan of the original Tron since i was a kid. They did a sequel back in 2010 called Tron: Legacy that was really good too. Surprisingly, it was almost as good as the original.

They made a 3rd one last year, Tron: Ares, starring Jared Leto. As of writing this, I'm a little less than halfway through the movie and my verdict so far... not good.

I saw that the opening credits mentioned Trent Reznor as some kinda executive producer or something so I looked up some info on the movie and apparently Disney specifically commissioned "Nine Inch Nails" (THE band name, not just Trent, they want THE BAND NAME attached to the movie) did the music, and it's the first music score Nine Inch Nails as the band name has done since the Quake1 soundtrack. And it's still not enough to save this movie. The plot is pretty bad. I've seen reviews that seem to like what this movie did with the Tron narrative, but... no. I disagree So far it's just bad. Very simplistic and dumbed down story. So far its just rehashed tron cycles and light suits with too many greenscreen effects and animation. And being that it's Disney in 2025, of course they gotta add their woke racial subtext... the bad guy (grandson who runs Dillinger corp) is a white male tyrant, who for no apparent reason starts to look more sickly with dark circles under his eyes like he's going psychotic with greed. Meanwhile the good girl (who runs Flynn) is a female (feminist box CHECKED), asian (ethnic box CHECKED), only interested in doing good and serving others (collectivism good, altruism good... and yet Christianity and loving thy neighbor as thyself is somehow evil and wrong), and of course all of her coworkers and friends are very nonconspicuously diverse... so very diverse. Yeah, lets make sure we all notice how diverse they are... but pretend that "diversity" is a normal thing even though it was obviously a conscious decision here. And theres nothing wrong with selecting people based on their race... because somehow that isn't racist if it's done "properly." Yes, apparently there's a right way and wrong way to pick people based on their race.

Yeah, IMDB has the rating on this thing at 6.2/10.  No way. The plot is simplistic and juvenile, like someone tried to dumb down Tron for kids. 3 or 4 from me so far. Will add more when I finish the movie.


ADDED:

NOPE! Didn't really get any better. Silly nonsense plot stays pretty nonsense. It's just that the other two movies had something DEEPER going on with them. Sure there was the idea of this whole other world inside the machine, but when you try to put programs from inside the machine into the outside world... plausibility disappears and that suspension of disbelief is impossible to maintain. A laser that can 3D print a real tree with real oranges growing on it! SURE! They obviously had a group of people with a cursory knowledge of computers devise a story where they said, "Okay... THIS TIME... they go OUT of the computer grid! AMAZING, RIGHT!?!" NO! It's a stupid premise! Can't believe Jared Leto did this movie. Can't believe Trent Reznor put his name and music on it too.

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/dev/random / Re: Whatcha watchin'/streamin'...

« on: December 30, 2025, 09:57:04 PM »

Watched the original Naked Gun trilogy of movies starring Leslie Neilsen.

They used to be some of my favorite comedies as a kid. They should rightly be classics. Are they? I dunno. Do they get enough play to be called that anymore? And with OJ Simpson as a character in all 3, it kinda soils them.

OJ, you fuckin' prick. What he did completely shits on the legacy of these 3 great movies. So sad.

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/dev/random / Re: Whatcha watchin'/streamin'...

« on: December 14, 2025, 05:45:57 PM »

The Sopranos

Im @ the beginning of the 6th season.

Living right near Washington D.C now, im in New York and New Jersey 5 times a month, so I got inspired to watch the series for some reason.

I thought it was a good show, but I had 2 complaints:

1. How they wrote it into the Chris Moltisanti character that he would aspire to be an actor. It kinda broke the feeling and flow of the show during those scenes. An actor playing a gangster that wants to be an actor? It was just ridiculous.

2. Meadow Soprano's boyfriend Noah... who comes off as so very entirely gay... but apparently is not gay. And NOT a decent actor either. Every scene with him trashes the show.

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/dev/random / Re: The Official Inclusive Non-denominational Holidays 2020 (and forever) Thread

« on: December 02, 2025, 01:20:20 PM »

The older I get, the more I enjoy Christmas. These days, I go out of my way to decorate the outside of the house with lights and stuff (maybe I'll get some pics soon).

No pics of the outside yet.

But I did spend a few hours taking out my old It's A Wonderful Life Christmas village and train set. They used to sell these pieces at Target from about 1987 until about 1997 I believe. My mom started collecting it and would display it on top of the upright piano in the living room every Christmas. By the early 2000's, she had collected so much Christmas crap that she didn't have the room to store all of it, and she considered throwing the village set away. I always enjoyed it as a kid so I held on it to it. But I've never gotten it out to display at christmas time because... I have kinda the same problem: TOO MUCH STUFF. By the time I get everything else set out, I have no more table space big enough.

But this year I was feeling nostalgic, so I said I'd finally break it out and let it see the light of day after more than 20 years being packed away. Unfortunately, I'll have to put it all back into boxes and pack it away again before christmas day so the family will have a place to eat when everyone gets here that morning.



My cameras really old and it sucks.

The train runs on 4 AA batteries that are stored in the coal car just behind the engine (you can see the little red switch on the top rear of the coal car that turns it on and off). My mom had packed it away with batteries still inside. When I opened it up, they were of course crusty and corroded. The expiration date on the batteries said 2011. Amazingly, none of the little figurines or cars were broken even though they were all packed into one single big ziplock bag inside a box. I've moved the container in and out of the basement 20 Christmases, dropping it, bumping it, beating it around, not knowing how poorly the ceramic figures were packed, and somehow it all survived.