Friday Ephemera
“Why is your mouth making that noise?” || 83 metres. || Today’s word is meaty. || The thrill of teapot-making. || Meanwhile, in fairness and inclusivity news. || The fine dining experience. || “The longest fart ever is over two and a half minutes long.” || You’re embarrassing him, you see. || Two-bed flat, Islington: “The underground bunker is very spacious.” (h/t, Things) || Rinse and repeat. || The thrill of tunnels. || How to hypnotise a crab. || And what do you do with your surplus pieces of wood? || Scenes from progressive utopia. || Progressive law enforcement. || A coincidence, I’m sure. || Customer feedback. (h/t, STG) || The wife will love it. || And finally, while it’s hard to be sure, I think fun is being had.
Really? I found the first two seasons anyway to be routinely gut-busting.
Well, it’s manic and meta, and sometimes clever, but the gags, while frequent, tend to be quite small ones. The kind of thing you might smile at, faintly, but not actually laugh at. I don’t think it’s bad, as such. The thing’s been sufficiently diverting for me to have watched five seasons of it; but I couldn’t say it’s actually very funny. I did laugh at Summer’s misguided attempt to use one of Rick’s devices to enlarge her breasts, with monstrous results; and I did like the “Dr Strange lab coat” gag; and the split-screen breaking of reality; but for the most part it’s a bit too sour and nihilistic to elicit deep laughter. In me, at least.
Read a book.
I am so ashamed. I shall read one while in the Correction Booth to educate myself and do better.
for the most part it’s a bit too sour and nihilistic
Fair. I’m not sure I could binge it, for that reason, but I do enjoy someone skewering the pretensions and simplistic assumptions of a lot of modern SF. Plus there’s often meta-humour; the voice casting of Kelsey Grammer as Morty’s adult Gazorpazorpan son had me literally LOLing.
I’ve rewatched the second film in Ridley’s “idiots in space” trilogy several times because it’s just so funny. From the suspended animation barbecue to “I assure you it’s perfectly safe” it’s a cracker. Also, when they go down to the planet it’s “lander one” but later on it’s “the lander” because they need an excuse to use the cargo lifter.
On that fine dining experience clip, with all due respect there must be a ton of videos out there now of overweight, badly-behaved women causing a mess in a fast food joint over bugger all, though in fairness the knockout blow was better than the average windmilling style we often see.
Maybe it will become an Olympic Sport, with categories for heaviest eater, highest counter climbed, most burgers thrown. My favourite technique would be the overhand coffee cup throw with incoherent screeching and full buttock cleft display. I might even watch that event.
On movie-development: I once knew a chap who was handsomely paid to write a Muppets movie and on delivering, learned it had been bought only to be put on a shelf and thus could be used as evidence should a rival film-maker consider daring to make a similar adventure.
The game is defending concepts and rights, not producing movies you might want to see.
I have some very old comics with ads for a selling-shoes-from-home business.
There’s an episode of M*A*S*H where Radar O’Reilly does just that. He sells wingtip shoes from the Style-Rite Shoe company. Their motto is “If your shoes aren’t becoming to you, you should becoming to us.” At the end everyone in the camp welcomes Col. Blake back from his trial while wearing Syle-Rite wingtip shoes. In my house we recall the motto every time someone buys shoes.
83 metres
….
Read a book.
So by odd coincidence I actually read one…recently…and it wasn’t some dusty old classic or history or philosophy book like I used to read…something by a popular author you all I’m sure are more familiar with than I…Jeffery Archer fictional biography about George Mallory Paths of Glory (not to be confused with the truly awesome Stanley Kubrick WWI film starring Kirk Douglas…not at all unfortunately). I went looking to verify this somehow but got lost in a lot of feminist BS. Archer presents Mallory as some sort of feminist of his day. The first dozen or so chapters had at least one reference to women’s suffrage or the lack of women in this or that institution or meeting or such. It was quite tiresome. If it hadn’t been recommended by The Wife and I hadn’t seen some blurb that said it upset the Kiwis I would have tossed it. Does anyone know if Mallory had this obsession? I tend to avoid historical fiction (and yes, it’s all fiction but that is kinda the problem) as it muddles with my understanding of serious facts. If anyone happens to be familiar with both subject and book I’d be curious to here a perspective.
The game is defending concepts and rights, not producing movies you might want to see.
If you dig up a recent print copy of William Goldman’s The Princess Bride, there’s a foreword where he talks about why it took so long for the book, having been optioned, to get made into a movie. Mostly due to internal studio politics.
My limited exposure to Hollywood production has convinced me that most studios are so disconnected from their market that they have absolutely no idea what people want to see, and this isn’t a recent wokeness phenomenon either. For decades, studios have been producing tons of absolute stinkers starring major talent that no one ever sees because having poured all that money into the bomb, when it flops at test screenings they bin it and it never sees the light of day. Fantastic amounts of money are wasted by studios doing this. I can’t help but think that if an independent studio put some serious effort into market research, writing, and crafting quality films for a general North American market, they would be able to carve out a nice living for themselves.
I suspect that’s actually happening, but it’s happening in long form television rather than film.
if an independent studio put some serious effort into market research, writing, and crafting quality films …
I believe you’re referring to Roger Corman and William Castle. They knew how to put on a show.
There are numerous instances of Hollywood moguls who didn’t know the marketplace, such as Louis B. Mayer telling his son-in-law producer not to buy “Gone With the Wind” because “no Civil War picture ever made a nickle.”
My favorite was “Casablanca,” which everyone — even the actors and screenwriters — saw as a quickie potboiler, a picture to show after the main feature. This was one of those rare occasions where the movie worked because the script was being written during production; Ingrid Bergman said she didn’t know if she was going off with Laslo or Rick in the end, so she had to play it as if either were possible.
It also helped that everyone had long experience in acting, producing, scoring, etc. so they did their job as best they could, and the result was magic.
“Mostly due to internal studio politics.”
That’s the problem with hiring screenwriters to work over a previous script. No one’s going to read someone else’s work and say, “This is fine. No, you don’t have to thank me. Just doing my job.”
A lady has an opinion about recent diktats. (NSFW language)
(NSFW language)
That’s funny, today my duly elected president told my totally free-market private employer to fire me because I’m NSFW.
Is…is this…is this how it feels to live in ‘straya?
That’s the problem with hiring screenwriters to work over a previous script. No one’s going to read someone else’s work and say, “This is fine…”
I have read that studio executives will even sabotage films made by their predecessors because they don’t want those predecessors to have successful films to boast of: “Everything done before me was crap.” Thus no advertising budget, poor distribution, etc.
“The Matrix sequels were the first time I realised that films might be absolutely brilliant despite the director(s) having no fucking clue why, or what they (or possibly just everyone else) were doing right.”
They’re all dreadful. Tacky, uninsightful recycling of Phil K Dick type of concepts without the mordant wit, and unpredictable intellect, of Dick. The whole plot hinges on gimmicks (oh, another black cat has gone past, ho hum, time for another fight scene) and uninteresting tableaus. The underworld of the Matrix escapees looks almost as boring as the actual cities of the Matrix. All given a superficial feeling of menace and the uncanny by Don Davis’s score.
Just about the only one worth repeating is the Animatrix, probably because it has the least to do with the Wachowskis.
(oh, another black cat has gone past, ho hum, time for another fight scene)
I’d ask why filmmakers (and writers) don’t realize that endless fight scenes are boring except that there does seem to be a substantial audience for them. 🙁
Regarding Mallory, I recently read Wade Davis’ awesome (and awesomely long) “Into the Silence” about the Great War, Mallory and Everest. I don’t recall anything about sufferage or Mallory being a proto-feminist. I do recall that there seemed to be an impressive amount of buggery going on in the public schools and Oxbridge in the pre-war period.
I’m curious, though – why would a book about Mallory piss-off the Kiwis? Does it suggest that Mallory and Irvine made it to the top?
I’d ask why filmmakers (and writers) don’t realize that endless fight scenes are boring except that there does seem to be a substantial audience for them. 🙁
Oh, the gratuitous violence is very quaintly traditional Hollywood. I object more to the world building on flimsy pretexts.
But perhaps not such seemingly continuous gratuitous violence.
But perhaps not such seemingly continuous gratuitous violence.
Fair. Unless it’s Big Biffs in Big Bifftown and Big Biffs in Big Bifftown 2: Electric Boogaloo, one wants at least a little bit of plot.
I gave up on the Matrix after the second film. As others have noted, just more of the same and from the trailer the new movie is even more of it.
I have been bitterly disappointed by Prometheus and whatever the hell the last one was called. Both films look marvellous but were utter dross.
What disappoints me most is that Hollywood doesn’t even bother trawling the wealth of sci-fi writing to nick ideas, but just rehashes the same crap. Don’t talk to me about the comic book superhero genre, which has LITERALLY JUST ONE FUCKING IDEA.
Serious for once.
The 83 metre clip reminds me of a work acquaintance whose son has been making news over the past couple of years for free-climbing various buildings including most famously the Shard. A period of incarceration has done nothing to persuade him to give up. The likely outcome of this obsession and the devastating effect it will have on those who care for him are plain to see.
pst314: re studio execs sabotaging their predecessors’ projects, as a possibly interesting behavioral side light, were you aware that male lions assuming the power position in a pride often kill all cubs sired by THEIR predecessors, freeing up the females to come back into heat and produce new cubs of the new bloodline.
And I looked, and beheld, and lo, there is nothing new under the sun.
The underworld of the Matrix escapees looks almost as boring as the actual cities of the Matrix.
Yes, by the time we reached The Rave At The End Of The World, I was gnawing through my restraints.
Richard Cranium – you asked me a question about travellers to SA. Currently Aus residents overseas can’t return to Aus – naturally a cause of great angst, and we don’t know when it may be resolved.
SA residents returning home from interstate isolate at home until the tests they endure give them the all clear.
You mentioned gun control and confiscation. I don’t want to go there. Both would be as effective as illicit drug control and total elimination of Covid 19 and its mutants. Anything I might say on any of these issues would somehow be construed as bigotry and racism – because they can. Thank you for your interest.
Does it suggest that Mallory and Irvine made it to the top?
Yes. The story is told such that they died on the way down, gosh darn it. I suspect the Kiwis, any who should be taken seriously anyway…which I’m beginning to believe is not a very large number because why would serious people be concentrated in NZ…but I digress…wouldn’t take the book itself seriously. It probably is just typical book hype BS. As Jeffery Archer is a familiar name to me and I was vaguely aware of his being a conservative…”conservative”, the harping on feminism in the context of mountain climbing seemed even more odd. It wasn’t so much the casual reference to suffrage or whatever, it was imbuing a historical figure with such passion for the subject when I see no references to it being the case. Like writing such a story about George Armstrong Custer and filling it with references to his position on tariffs or something.
If I may offer a respite from the madness of the world, I finally picked up my new puppy.
https://imgur.com/B7nULKn
His name is Bronx and he is a blue Weimaraner. I grew up with Weims and as an adult, this is my fourth.
And just in time, too. Yesterday I took him on the walk on my property I would do with my late Weims and discovered black bear scat on the trail. I had been warned about a year ago by a TN wildlife ranger that their population has grown exponentially so expect more encounters in the outskirts of Knoxville.
The cat is warming up to Bronx . . . slowly.
His name is Bronx and he is a blue Weimaraner.
I am available for puppy-fussing duties.
Just sayin’.
[ Added: ]
Obviously, all the ‘back-end’ work will be handled by my glamorous assistant.
[ Rummages under bar, hands Stephanie bejewelled gown. ]
The likely outcome of this obsession and the devastating effect it will have on those who care for him are plain to see.
@John Lewis I know this is a sensitive subject, but the young adult son of a former colleague of mine fell to his death trying to free climb the metal framework of a gas holder.
As Jeffery Archer is a familiar name to me and I was vaguely aware of his being a conservative…”conservative”, the harping on feminism in the context of mountain climbing seemed even more odd … imbuing a historical figure with such passion for the subject when I see no references to it being the case.
While in recent years I’ve come to realise that many of those portrayed as villains in the media when I was growing up actually often turn out to have done nothing more serious than decline the offer of taking the one true path as a fellow traveller.
Many plays, novels, and films from the 1920s and especially from the end of the second world war that were presented to me as modern classics are, in fact, shit; in fact, they are either shite, but carrying messages approved of by the aforementioned fellow travellers, or, despite everything, actually compelling and affecting as an added bonus to their carrying messages approved of by the aforementioned fellow travellers.
I mention all this only to make it clear that this one of those broken-clocks-being-right-twice-a-day situations.
In other words, while it’s true that Jeffery Archer would have received abuse and bad reviews in the media regardless of the quality of his writing, he is nevertheless an odious human being and a hack writer.
But like those other talent wastelands, Dan Brown and E. L. James, this does not mean he can’t also be successful.
Fiction of any kind is mostly read by women, not men, and my guess is that Archer is simply throwing in whatever he thinks will make it appealing to the profile of an ideal reader for his book. I’m only surprised there isn’t also an environmental message of a kind St Greta might approve of.
Hence, any references to Mallory’s homosexuality have been expunged, and his one, literally fatal mistake, is to keep on climbing rather than settle down with the love of his life.
Former US special forces medic and transwoman MMA fighter surprises everyone by winning debut fight while sporting a T-shirt with the legend, “End Trans Genocide”.
“If we want to see more trans athletes, if we want to see more opportunities for trans kids, we’re going to have to work our way into those spaces and make it happen.”
“If we want to see more trans athletes,
If.
transwoman MMA fighter surprises everyone by winning debut fight
Or, “Man beats up woman. Now applaud, you bigots.”
’ Alongside ads for x-ray specs and what I believe were called joy buzzers.’
And don’t forget the ‘sea monkeys’..!
Daniel Ream: ’ If you dig up a recent print copy of William Goldman’s The Princess Bride…’
Still haven’t forgiven him for ‘The Ghost And The Darkness’…
Look at the picture. The woman on the left is a well-toned female athlete. The purple head on the right with its hands raised in victory is…………a bloke.
Funny how in the MCU even the smallest woman is capable of beating up 2 or 3 grown men. Real life is somewhat different (the clue is the word “real”).
Or, “Man beats up woman. Now applaud, you bigots.”
Heh.
In a nutshell, that is pretty much the formula for all activism of the last decade or so.
What disappoints me most is that Hollywood doesn’t even bother trawling the wealth of sci-fi writing to nick ideas
Harlan Ellison wrote, many years ago, of at least one Hollywood producer who boasted that he didn’t need to pay writers to come up with plot ideas because he had a collection of old science fiction books and magazines from which he could steal. If Hollywood is not even bothering to do that anymore, then, well….
@wtp
I was vaguely aware of his being a conservative.
That would be conservative with a big C (Limey politics dontchakno), Archer being a total phony, fuckwit and arsehole.
Declaration of non-interest: Despite that assessment, I do tend to prefer the big C lot as opposed to the big L crowd.
In a nutshell, that is pretty much the formula for all activism of the last decade or so.
A formula for provoking anger and hate. Accidental? Not likely.
Wasn’t Archer the bloke who paid for a lady’s services with a personal check? If so, that’s the level of intelligence we’re dealing with here.
She’s right you know, if there is anything Islamists hate, it is heteropatriarchal systems.
Of course she is a professor, silly.
“The game is defending concepts and rights, not producing movies you might want to see.” … “internal studio politics.”
It’s a tradition that runs deep. Some of the most bizarre and genuinely satirical stuff PG Wodehouse ever wrote was inspired by his brief time in Hollywood, which I think was in the 1920s, maybe the early ’30s. I seem to recall one story in which writers were literally chained to their desks. Really quite dark when you stop to think about it, although he managed to make it funny.
“That’s funny, today my duly elected president told my totally free-market private employer to fire me because I’m NSFW.”
Ouch. I hope your employer intends to tell the President to get bent.
“His name is Bronx and he is a blue Weimaraner.”
You owe me a cute-o-meter. Mine just exploded. 🙂
She’s right you know, if there is anything Islamists hate, it is heteropatriarchal systems.
That’s Darwin Award level stupidity.
Of course she is a professor, silly.
Now there’s a head you wouldn’t want to be trapped inside. Again, if you could somehow subtract from woke-ism the inversion, displacement and projection, along with the teetering vanity, I’m not sure there’d be much left.
Accidental? Not likely.
I would go as far as to say not even remotely.
For example, I forget who it was exactly as I have a feeling it involved more than one individual performing pretty much the same deception, but for sake of argument, let’s say it was a certain Mz P. Dreadful.
Dreadful put out a Tweet to the effect that “It is impossible for a woman to have an opinion in pubic without being deluged with hate.”
Since the very message itself blatantly undermined the premise on which it was based, naturally it received a deluge of messages explaining precisely that point.
Notwithstanding the widespread use of avatars and pseudonyms of varying degrees of ridiculousness, therefore making it impossible to determine the age, gender, nationality, social class, etc. of the senders, this prompted Dreadful to triumphantly declare something along the lines of:
You see? What did I tell you!?!”
The only parallels to this that I can think of in terms of sophistication are “I know you, but what am I?” and “He who smelt it, dealt it.”
And these are people who are demanding we put them in charge?
have an opinion in pubic
I do not believe in Freud.
Also, “in public” was what I was going for.
I do not believe in Freud.
Acknowledged. But on the other hand, there are a lot of radical feminists who do seem to think with their pubic regions–as demonstrated by those pussy hats they like to wear.
I would go as far as to say not even remotely.
I am willing to consider the possibility that most liberals may not consciously intend to create enemies, because liberals really are shit-for-brains ignorant and stupid. But they are tools of the far left which does seek to polarize society until open war is inevitable.
@judijg, thank you for your reply. I would not care to live under those constraints, which doesn’t imply that you do.
If I see one more leftist, especially the oh-im-not-a-leftist-leftist type who wilts at thoughts of actually doing something to stand up against leftism, especially those that I know personally post ONE MORE “9/11 Never Forget” post, I just may go postal myself. This day has become harder and harder for me to endure the more and more obvious the things that I predicted back then that would happen, the things some people argued or rolled their eyes about, have actually happened.