Friday Ephemera
Be prepared. (h/t, Damian) || Electrodeposition and other chemical reactions. || That time in 1972 when a quarter of a million hippies attended a festival sited on swamp land, with lots of bad acid, and only six toilets. || Marie Curie and her x-ray vehicles. || Marvel goes Afro-futurist. || Impress your houseguests with a towel elephant. || Why penguins’ feet don’t freeze. || Jordan Peterson on the temptations of activism. || Short trip. || This is one of these. || Drawing logos from memory is harder than you might think. (h/t, Coudal) || Giant robot duel. || This. || Today’s word is socialist. || Today’s other word is woke. || The punchline cometh. || It came out of their toilet. || And finally, via Obnoxio, let’s play a guessing game: Is this the work of toddlers, or college students racking up debt?
I’m not sure I could handle two hours of Look At My Glorious Unfathomable Blackness.
The basic plotline is Hamlet; it’ll be interesting to see whether that’s acknowledged, inverted, or weighed down with tedious moralizing.
Given that despite being kind of tepid and dull Luke Cage avoided pretty much all the contemporary BLM drivel strongly indicates that Marvel knows that in media where people actually pay money this stuff doesn’t sell tickets.
I have a new guilty pleasure.
You’re full of surprises.
You’re full of surprises.
After hours of being immersed in the inflated micro-dramas of campus radicals, it’s a kind of mental detox. Comfort TV, of a sort. And it’s pleasing to see demoralised businesses turned around.
I have worse vices.
You’re full of surprises.
Was thinking similar. For whatever reason, I presumed you to be more of a city guy but then car stuff pops up here moderately often. Not that the two are totally exclusive of each other…But to your pleasure of seeing demoralized businesses turn around, are you familiar with the US show The Profit?
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/08/14/the-profit-top-moments-that-made-us-cringe.html
I enjoy it whenever I run across it. I should make the effort to record it to fill my down time but I hadn’t seen it nor references to it in quite a while and kinda forgot about it. Then lately I’ve seen Marcus’s face on billboards and such, so it looks like they’re still making shows.
despite being kind of tepid and dull Luke Cage avoided pretty much all the contemporary BLM drivel
Glad to hear it. Though I’ve steered clear of the Marvel TV stuff. I like my escapism shiny, loud and big budget. I recently saw a few minutes of Inhumans and was mesmerised by how cheap and awful it looks. How can you make a show featuring a city on the Moon, a woman with telescopic prehensile hair, and a giant teleporting bulldog, and it still not be entertaining? Yet they found a way.
Was thinking similar.
The Other Half is the car enthusiast so I sort of got sucked into it, distractedly at first. But it’s grown on me. Not least as a mental palate cleanser.
are you familiar with the US show The Profit?
“This content is not available in your location.” So, no.
“This content is not available in your location.” So, no.
Heh…thought you guys’ BBC were the only ones who played that game. It is on CNBC, sooo…don’t know. Well, just as well for the link as I only looked at that specific one after I posted it and the clips have a certain PC segment/quality to them such that I should have picked something else…Anyway, if you find it pleasing to see demoralised businesses turned around, what this guy Marcus Lemonsomethinggreek does is he provides the capital, and more importantly, the business knowledge to small, usually family-owned businesses that at one time were successful but have lost their mojo for whatever reason. Usually it’s a second generation thing or a family squabble or an unnoticed market shift. Sometimes, and he usually doesn’t discover this until he gets somewhat involved, a drug or alcohol problem. Some of the businesses have a significant number of employees. I think one I saw had 50 people working for it. He doesn’t do it as charity per se. He makes it clear (or at least for the couple dozen episodes that I have seen) that he is in it to make money and he must have control of the company to effect the necessary change.
Don’t know if there’s a way around the content availability problem but it’s a great show if you’re into that sort of thing. Here’s the wiki link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Profit_(TV_series)
This is one of these.
Scroll down a ways and you can see the shop from “Open All Hours.” G-g-g-g-granville, fetch yer cloth!
Tiangong-1: Chinese space station will crash to Earth within months
. . . said announcement made just in time for the big Chinese Communist gettogether to proclaim such . . . ah . . . glowing . . . results.
I like my escapism shiny, loud and big budget.
You can safely avoid the Defenders shows, then. I like them more often than not, Daredevil and Jessica Jones were extremely well done for what they are. But what they are is a kind of throwback to 1970’s Death Wish style vigilante revenge melodrama. That doesn’t sound like it’s in your wheelhouse.
You may like The Great Wall, then, which despite starring Matt Damon was surprisingly fun.
I recently saw a few minutes of Inhumans and was mesmerised by how cheap and awful it looks.
They’re trying to do MCU on a TV show budget. It reminded me a bit of Mutant X…
Inside word is that since MarDisVelNey can’t get the rights to the X-Men back from Fox that they were trying to set up the Inhumans as their equivalent franchise, complete with all the persecution melodrama. So far it’s not doing well.
Given the critical reviews of the last couple of Defenders shows, the Inhumans flop, and the profound indifference that the Justice League movie is now generating, I’m standing by my prediction that we’ve already hit peak superhero. When the most bankable properties are parodies of the genre, it’s done.
Just saw a trailer today for a movie that apparently came out in 2015. The trailer looked amusing (though often enough the trailer is the best part of the movie), so I thought I’d mention it. If anyone has seen it, an opinion would be welcome.
What We Do In The Shadows
It’s…all right. The core premise has been done, and better, by both the UK and US versions of Being Human and the indie film Netherbeast, Inc.
That said, if you’ve not seen any of those it’s an amusing watch. They’re clearly going for a deadpan Spinal Tap vibe.
Glenn Loury and John McWhorter discuss Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Tim Newman on the woes of the modern British man.
That said, if you’ve not seen any of those it’s an amusing watch.
Thanks Daniel. I have not seen either of the two programs, but I work at a library, so the collection may see an expansion in that direction soon:-).
That said, is there any way to get typepad to notify commenters of responses to our comments? I only checked this thread on a whim as it appeared largely defunct.