#actually i just zoomed in and it says 1996

[jessiesjaded]

Everyone come get a pikelet 😇💗

[callahanisms]

general ash headcanons

because the show didn't want ash to be an actual character. so here are some headcanons including some backstory elements because it actually pisses me off that they never developed her beyond a love interest.

i've been letting this stew and simmer for some time now.

♡ ash is short for ashley. she prefers ash because it's shorter. her name on canvas appears as "ashley de la cruz" and it took people a while to figure out it was her because on zoom it says "ash" and she has a meme profile picture.

♡ dad is mexican, mom is white. spent a lot of time with her dad's side of the family growing up. fluent in spanish. definitely has a younger brother that's way more spoiled than she is. as mentioned here, she peeled fruit with her grandparents a lot.

♡ raised catholic. baptized, communion, and confirmation. she deconstructed her faith while in high school. she doesn't go to mass unless she's forced to. but she still keeps her lady of guadalupe medal and her crucifix necklace.

♡ has a sourdough starter that she likes to feed.

♡ volunteers at the women's center on her own time. would probably end up taking over after ginger graduates.

♡ wears denim. lots of denim. her favorite denim jacket has embroidered flowers and a butterfly patch sewn onto it.

♡ freshman year she had long hair that reached her chest. and then she cut it while she was exploring her masc identity.

♡ knows how to use conditioner. i don't care what the show says. this girl knows how to use conditioner. does have minimal knowledge on makeup and skin care, but she's also fortunate enough not to have too many breakouts. she has definitely poked her eye once while doing eyeliner.

♡ big headphone person. when she's walking to class by herself she has them over her head.

♡ big big romantic. big into gift giving. big into getting you flowers. also big into acts of service. did you like the very pretty sourdough loaf she made for you?

♡ she pebbles. the people she cares about will always get something from her. "it made me think of you!"

♡ she can cook. but her specialty while at college is definitely tomato soup and sourdough grilled cheese using her homemade sourdough bread.

♡ big fan of wwe. she loves watching the straights' version of drag brunch. and also because her family were also big fans and they would watch the matches together.

♡ every two weeks, she goes on a day trip to the nearest ethnic grocery store. she gets homesick often and misses her family's food.

♡ part of the latine students union at essex college.

♡ had an intense homoerotic friendship with her best friend in high school and then they drifted apart. that's why she got really emotional when she watched y tu mamá también (2001) for a film class.

♡ unironically thinks showgirls (1995) is a masterpiece. first halloween at essex she was dressing up as nomi. her friend did her makeup for her.

♡ dressed as corky from bound (1996) for halloween.

♡ ash is very proud of her botanical lego collection.

♡ majoring in philosophy. which she does get a lot of flack for in her family. has enough credits for a minor in gender and sexuality studies though.

♡ does not need an outline for her papers. she can just write and she only does an outline if she's required to.

♡ did color guard for marching band when she was in high school. also was part of her high school's gay straight alliance.

[joshsilverseyebrow]

type o negative for Metal Maniacs Magazine (2000)

what it says for people who don’t want to zoom in:

DEATH IS ONLY THE BEGINNING by vincent n. cecolini

Manhattan's Chelsea Hotel is the bona fide landmark where Thomas Wolfe and Dylan Thomas stayed while slaving over eventual literary masterpieces; it's where the Red Hot Chili Peppers were evicted for skateboarding through its halls; it's notorious for being the place where Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious bludgeoned his girlfriend Nancy Spungen while stoned on heroin; and on this extremely hot early July affernoon, it's the place Roadrunner Records has chosen to preview Brooklyn doom‘n’gloom metallers Type O Negative’s latest offering, World Coming Down, to the assembled international media.

The 70+ minute epic & the band's most adventurous, containing its most decidedly uncommercial songs to date, an obvious about face from 1996's critically acclaimed October Rust.

After a your of media blackout, Pete Steele spoke to the European music press this past spring after returning from Iceland (the Brooklynite is of Icelandic and Polish descent) where he went to relax after the stress of songwriting for the new album had gotten to him. In the pre-album interviews, Steele distanced himself from October Rust, hinting that if the new album was not a commercial success, he would split Type O Negative and embark on a solo career.

“I was not really distancing myself from October Rust," he explains. “I was dissing myself for listening to the label and trying to write ‘singles.’ The singles that come off of the album did not have the impact of [Bloody Kisses’ singles] 'Christian Woman' and ‘Black No. 1’ We've learned that when we don't try so hard to do things, good things happen. And I had to go to Iceland, because I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown."

"He actually went to Islip (Long Islond), New York,” laughs guitarist Kenny Hickey.

*We needed a break," says keyboardist Josh Silver.

At album number four-five if you count the 65 minute Origin Of The Faces "EP"-you would expect Type O Negative to know its threshold for tension.

"[The creative process] is different each time," says Silver.

"We just took our time," interrupts Kenny. We began rehearsing a couple of times a week and then things began to pick up. But it still got to be too much.”

*We were rushed during October Rust,” says Steele, “We had just come off of five big tours and we were on a roll with [1993's] Bloody Kisses [both the band and Roadrunner Records’ biggest success to date] and the label wanted to capitalize on it. I don't think it hurt the album, I just didn't like working under those conditions."

It is hard to believe, but the band actually started work on World Coming Down way back in October 1998. “It took so long (to create this record) because of a lack of motivation,” says Steele. "We had been touring a lot for the previous four years- a year and a half alone in support of October Rust. And when we came home, we needed time off from each other.

“We had gotten beat up for four years,” adds guitarist Kenny.

“This time we just took [the extra time we needed]," says Steele. "It wasn't as if we dragged our asses. Yes, we could have worked faster, but we didn't take our sweet time."

Although the band began to demo new material last summer, Steele continued to write. The band finally headed into the studio this past April and finished recording the second week of July. World Coming Down is Type O Negative's darkest effort both musically and lyrically, which says a lot for a band known for its slow brooding songs about using red wine to ward off the spirits of dead relatives during the Christmas holidays and gothic women who enjoy looking at themselves in mirrors during sex.

"We didn't want to saturate the album like we did on October Rust," explains Steele.

“We wanted the bass and guitar to stand out more and we wanted to make the songs more riff-oriented as opposed to the last album, which was more chord-oriented.”

The band admits the album is heavily influenced by Black Sabbath, adding that the Doors, the Rolling Stones, Kiss, Pink Floyd and the Beatles are also inspirations. In fect, the album's requisite cover is supposed to be the Beatles "Day Tripper." Unfortunately, as happens whenever the band decides to cover a classic-Seals And Croft gave the band headaches when they wanted to change the lyrics of the 1970s staple “Summer Breeze”-Type O Negative are having trou-

ble obtaining permission. Evidently, Michael Jackson, who owns the rights to the Beatles catalogue, is charging an exorbitant price. To make matters worse, the band wants to include snippets of three other Beatles songs in its version. At press time, the situation has yet to be decided.

Ironically, in the band's attempt to turn a deaf ear to their label and write World Coming Down as an uncompromising, uncommercial rock record, they've created some songs which are actually among their most accessible efforts to date, including the potential single "Everything Dies,” a darkly humorous examination of our mortality,

"I wrote the song after my father's death and I'm not going to say that I've been obsessed with his passing, but it is a hard thing for me not to think about,” he admits.

"As you get older, people you love drop dead and there is nothing you can do about it. I come from a big family and it seems like every three months another relative dies." Although people have speculated that Steele maintained a day job with the New York City Parks Department well into the success of Bloody Kisses, due to his responsibility for his elderly parents, the frontman contends that he continued to work on the concourse under the Brooklyn Bridge because he "liked the job."

*It was cushy and I had a lot of freedom,” he says. "I liked the paycheck- I made $800 a week picking up human shit— and it had great benefits. But I had to make a decision because of that damned Motley Crue four a few years ago."

Although World Coming Down is not as musically busy as its predecessors, it continues the Type O Negative tradition of flowing one song into the next, leaving the listener with little, if any, time to catch their breath during its duration. The album’s theme is “No matter what you do, you are stil going to die.”

"Nothing makes me happy anymore," admits Steele. “I feel bad about that because I realize that I am a very fortunate person. And I am not just talking about the success of the band; I think anyone who can walk, talk and see has nothing to complain about. It's ironic and sad. The past three years have been very confusing for us. There have been a lot of changes in our lives. There has been a lot of death and turmoil, but rather than go out on the street and punch somebody out beceuse I'm mad at the world, I decided to write a bunch of lousy songs.”

Steele, like everyone it seems, also has an opinion about the millennium. “The year 2000 is arbitrary,” he says “People were also freaking out in 999, because they thought the year 1000 was significant. If and when the end of the worle comes and the bombs start dropping, I just hope one hits me.”

“What will probably happen is Brooklyn [New York] will be blown to bits while we're on tour in New Zealand,” says Hickey.

"Oh, when the bombs drop, there will be one for Brooklyn,” continues Steele.

"I have it waiting in my garage," laughs drummer Johnny Kelly.

Unlike bands who continually boast that they are from Brooklyn, but have moved to either Long Island, Staten Island or California, the members of Type O Negative have not ventured from the nest. Besides living in the borough, the band continues to record at Systems Two in Brooklyn, where they have recorded everything they've done (including pre-Type O Negative projects) since they were 6 years old. They shot the photos for the album's back cover of the East River piers in Greenpoint ("Brooklyn’s glass beaches," says Steele affectionately). And it is also the place where Steele continues to cruise around in his mutant monster car, “the Death Trap” which was built from parts of various cars and trucks. Roadrunner considered giving the vehicle away in a promotionol contest coinciding with the release of October Rust, but the label eventually decided against it when they realized the car was nearly inhabitable. A source of the label once joked that they feared wrongful death lawsuits from the families of the contest winner.

"He's still got the car, but one day that car is going to get him,” says Hickey.

“It looks great, but it's a rolling catastrophe,” adds Kelly.

Ironically, it was not until earlier in the day, when Kelly was paging through a magazine dropped off by a foreign journalist, that he noticed that Type O Negative would begin touring in Europe at the end of August. “We're going to tour as long as the album lasts,” he says.

*It all depends on the success of the record,” says Kelly. "Anyone who tells you anything else is lying to you,"

"It's a matter of opportunity,” continues Hickey. "If we don't have the opportunity to support a major touring act, we'll tour on our own until someone comes along. It depends on the singles and the feedback we get, It also depends on radio airplay."

"Part of our problem is that we have never fit into a particular radio format, " says Kelly,

“We have received airplay before, but who knows what is going to happen this time around."

Type O Negative is the band that time forgot,” says Steele. This is a real retro album. It’s an album that should have been released in the 1970s.”

"The album is a product of the time and place we came from," says Kelly: “It's constant stimulation. We never let you off the hook.”

"[When we began working] I didn't know how this album was going to turn out,” says Steele. "It could have gone in a thousand ways, each one cool, but it come out this way and that’s fine."

The album condudes with a backward message, which the band refuses to decipher.

"It says Keep God happy, kill a journalist,” laughs Steele. There was a backward messsage on the last album that said, “People who play their records backwards should find better things to do with their time.”

If the new album fails to return the band to Bloody Kisses-era glory, will Type O Negative split? Although the bond refuses to comment, Steele admits he already has a title for his solo debut.

“I’m gonna call it Give Pete A Chance."

[samobservessonic]

Why do you want to read Sonic the Comic?

The short answer is because it was my intro to the Sonic series as a whole, but I haven’t reread most of it since I was a kid. But I’ll go into a little more detail about that below the readmore, as well as outlining what I will and won’t be reading for this blog

Sonic the Comic issue #80 rewired my brain and changed my life

Now, the first issue of StC that I bought as a kid was #80. I should add a disclaimer here that there was a kid I knew back then who recommended me the comics - she had issues #78 and #79, so I probably at least glimpsed those as well. But #80 was the first issue that I had for myself (and I still have my copy!), so that’s the one that gave me my first impression of Sonic

I’m sure StC fans will know why this issue was a big one and even Sonic fans who have a casual familiarity with StC will probably see Super Sonic on the cover and guess that a lot of stuff happens in this issue… and you’d be right! I’ll save the review for when I actually get to this issue in my reread, but the basic premise is that Sonic goes to visit his friend Porker Lewis on the Floating Island (later known as Angel Island in the games), where the chaos emeralds and master emerald are kept suspended above a giant… hole thing that holds their power (kid me didn’t ask questions, adult me still doesn’t). Sonic fell in this hole and got a full whack of their power, turning him into the evil Super Sonic who’s hellbent on destroying the last person who’d been on Sonic’s mind, who happened to be Amy Rose

The story ends on this cliffhanger and I can pin-point this single image as the reason I got into Sonic in the first place

…Like, look at this!! The art is so cool! What’s going to happen to Amy Rose? Why has Sonic turned into a crazy powerful being who wants to kill her? I have to know more! I have to get the next issue and maybe devote my entire life to this series! Like, Super Sonic looks so powerful and Tails looks terrified of him! But Amy still looks quite calm and collected. Maybe she’s only just noticed Super Sonic zooming into the scene or maybe she’s just composed enough to not be as fearful of him as Tails is. Obviously, even without knowing anything about the series, I could tell that Amy is Sonic’s friend and I want her to be okay. But something about seeing her reaction in this panel made it seem like the “Next Issue: Amy vs Super Sonic!” advertised at the bottom of this page wouldn’t be as one-sided as some might expect it would be And that’s how, on (roughly) 21st June 1996, an 8-year-old who’d just spent their £1.20 pocket-money had their socks blown off by a Sonic comic (Out of curiosity, I looked up where Archie Sonic was at around this time and it was… issue #37! The Knuckles spin-off comics would also be released the month after this. But I wouldn’t know about the existence of either of these until later)

Now, 80 issues into an on-going series is obviously a late point to hop on, but I can honestly say that it never hindered me reading the comics as a kid. Every two weeks I’d get to see Sonic and his friends have adventures and sometimes they’d mention established lore that I might not have known, but it was easy just to write that off as something from an earlier issue and carry on Also, after a certain point, StC started to reprint older stories. Which was both a blessing and a curse, because on one hand it meant that I could catch up with older stories I hadn’t read before, but on the other hand it deprived the issues of newer stories, until the comic would eventually become entirely reprints from issue #185. Even so, I can confidently say that there are probably stories in the first 79 issues of the series that I’ve never read, so I’m looking forward to getting to those on my read-through So, will you stop reading at issue #184? While I intend to read from #1-184, the reprints issues do feature new covers from Richard Elson

Many of which show newer takes on earlier stories, featuring the green-eyed Sonic of the modern era. So while it’s far away now, I’ll most-likely do a post about these covers to conclude my read-through. Although man, looking at #185’s cover in particular puts me right back into being there as a kid, expecting to see new stories, only to open the comic and get entirely reprints…

Will you be reading the non-Sonic stories?

Early on in its run, StC featured stories from other SEGA titles of the time, before committing to being entirely about Sonic. While not to diminish the merits of these stories, I just don’t have the same familiarity with most of their source material that I do for Sonic, so I won’t be reading them. The exceptions being probably the Ecco stories (because I did play Ecco as a kid) and Decap Attack, because Decap Attack was still running after I started reading the comic and I remember enjoying it. But I won’t be blogging about either of these in the same way that I will be the Sonic comics themselves, so you won’t have to skim past posts about loads of other series to get to the Sonic stuff

What about the Sonic spin-offs?

I will absolutely be reading these once I find or make a good reading-order that slots them into their proper place. The above summer ‘96 special was also one of my first StC issues and I remember it fondly

What about the Captain Plunder stories?

Yep! Captain Plunder exists in Sonic’s universe and I enjoyed his standalone stories as a kid, so I’ll be including him in my reread Anything else?

For a time, StC included game reviews and ofc they also had a fanmail and fan art section, like Archie and IDW. For the most part, I’ll only be including small bits of these that I find interesting or relevant, but I won’t be talking about them wholesale. Though I’m sure that a Sonic comic’s reviews of Sonic games will be worth a look at

[quietbluejay]

Transformers: Escalation #3

"breakaway Soviet state of Brasnya"

sir, this is 2006

so as far as i understand it this is supposed to be pseudo-chechnya for those who have forgotten/didn't know/were just too young, this is actually pretty topical to 2006

quoth wikipedia:

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Checheno-Ingush ASSR split into two parts: the Republic of Ingushetia and the Chechen Republic. The latter proclaimed the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, which sought independence. Following the First Chechen War of 1994–1996 with Russia, Chechnya gained de facto independence as the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, although de jure it remained a part of Russia. Russian federal control was restored in the Second Chechen War of 1999–2009, with Chechen politics being dominated by Akhmad Kadyrov, and later his son Ramzan Kadyrov

he drives off...

surprise Megatron

he tells the two of them to give him room so he can do his mass displacement trick

(incidentally he addresses them as "Blitzwing and Skywarp". Guess Skywarp decided to dress like TC for the day)

gun

"You know what to do..."

Koska shoots the pipeline, which explodes

okay so "breakaway soviet state" is one thing like okay that's on the edge but you can use it to establish the history here but

furman serious question did you sleep through the 90s

ok ok back to the story

Skywarp gets ordered to leave while Blitzwing puts on a "chameleon mesh" that turns him invisible

that's new

and now over to the Ark in Lake Michigan

"Reinforcements?

Prowl: But-

Optimus: It's already done. With Megatron active on Earth, and Sunstreaker MIA, I had no choice but to pull resources from elsewhere

Optimus: I do not do so lightly

Prowl: of course. forgive me

Ironhide: Prime - while we're on the subject of resource allocation…

he wants to follow up on the Sunstreaker and Hunter thing

he feels like he owes it to him

also this optimus is pretty competent!

maybe getting nearly killed by Devastator scrambled his brain so postwar he reverted to bad old habits

Prowl takes over and starts giving people their orders

Ironhide...

prowl prowl what are you doing

back over to Brasnya

a jeep and some tanks are approaching the pipeline

oh gosh this dude has an ushanka and leetle spectacles

This Dude: Call it in - immediately! - before-

i am once again asking why you are not wearing a hat in winter

every time megatron fires it feels very anime

there's a huge explosion

a man goes flying

from the tanks that showed up, someone is radioing in that they're under attack and need backup now!!!

Megatron gloats that the Soviets (yes, Soviets, no I'm not gonna let this one go) will send tanks, which will get the Brasnyans upset

"at which point we...will make matters worse!"

back to the Ark

Ratchet isn't really sure what they're looking for, since they've already looked it over in detail

Jimmy says you'd be surprised...

for example, the chassis is made from an ultra-light alloy

which only has 3 domestic manufacturers

Ratchet goes hmm

He says, hmm I should take this to Prowl, but he'll either "sit on it or dismiss it".

"Question is, after my recent clutch of indiscretions, do I really want to stick my neck out?"

"Hm."

"I guess so."

quoth friend:

ratchet you can file a report and go galvanating off ratchet please you are going to give prowl grey hairs

Koska asks what's going to happen when they come. In his experience it usually leads to a standoff

Megatron: when they come?

Megatron: Blitzwing will be waiting!

it's some news from CNN about the tanks near Brasnya

Prowl exposits about it

Optimus: anything about it say Decepticon?

Prowl: Big time. This is the initial flashpoint...

Optimus: Megatron

Prowl zooms in on the shot of Koska with the gun

they've ID'ed him and figure he's the facsimile

"and, crazy as it sounds..."

"...we think this is Megatron"

he points at the gun

Optimus folds his arms

Optimus: Mass displacement. Haven't seen that in a long time. The energy expenditure must be colossal

Prowl: Ore-13?

Optimus: without a doubt

guess they decided to drop the energy expenditure when Megatron did the mass displacement thing again...

Prowl: stamp out the flames. Keep Megatron's attention on us, and preserve/contain the facsimile...at any cost!

Optimus: agreed

Optimus: ready your strike team

wow it's nice seeing them be functional

he puts down his binoculars

"Trust me…I've been a commissioned officer for sixteen years and haven't yet fired a shot in ang-"

no one expects invisible blitzwing

reasonable officer survived

he's lying on the snow talking into a radio

Reasonable Officer: I'm telling you - they're firing on us!

Reasonable Officer: Confirmed?! Who else could it be?

Reasonable Officer: yes, I understand. Hold on...

he pulls out a pair of binoculars and looks out through them

he sees a yellow tank through his binoculars

"That's confirmed. I repeat - we have Soviet armour firing on our position."

"Sir, I need a direct order here!"

there's another explosion

"Understood. All units…"

tank guns get into position

"...fire at will!"

Optimus: once I draw Megatron out…move in and isolate the target

he goes vehicle mode and his trailer follows behind him

Optimus: any local traffic, immobilize but do not engage

Optimus: we don't want to make matters worse

Prowl: you heard him, let's roll…

Prowl: Jazz - traction studs

as Optimus drives off, he says it's critical that they take the facsimile intact, because it's got the key to every facsimile on Earth

at the border, tanks are firing

Blitzwing:…

Megatron: Blitzwing?

Blitzwing: boss, you won't believe this

there's a shot of Optimus Prime through a red filter

Blitzwing:...but I've got Optimus Prime himself, bang in my sights

Blitzwing: should I take the shot?

Megatron: has he seen you?

Blitzwing: nope

Megatron: Make sure he doesn't. And when he's in range...

Megatron: take the shot

Megatron:…bring Astrotrain with you

yep Hot Rod has arrived to the main plot!

Jimmy points at the screen. There's two orders - a garage in Beaver, Utah, and a custom car outlet in Fort Wayne, Indiana

Verity: You know what this means, don't you?

"Road trip!" the two of them chorus

a voice from offscreen speaks and the three of them stare in alarm

Voice: I hope you weren't thinking of going anywhere?

next panel shows Ironhide, in shadow, with his arms crossed

Ironhide: ...without me!

and issue ends there

next time: Hunter suffering

some commentary on Autobots and Decepticons from me and friend:

friend: so what i'm reading here is that the autobots are a fairly competent military force but they're regularly anticipated and out maneuvered by decepticons, which is presicely why mavericking is so common and so socially acceptable decepticons by contrast have a tighter outfit but morale is rock bottom and preventing coups and desertions is an ongoing problem and active resource drain decepticons do exactly what they're assigned to do and no more because they don't want to be the next target autobots go the extra mile and give themselves extra work, even when thats a really bad idea me: the big question re: how did they manage to have a 4 million year long war is more re: resources but they actually feel functional and like they could basically have kept going for a while

[spinningbuster98]

Resident Evil (1996) Chris Part 1: A not so friendly place

It may not be spooky season, but I feel like playing something scary, so what better way to do that than with the game that pretty much kickstarted the whole genre?

As a heads up: I’m playing the Director’s Cut version of Resident Evil. No, not THAT Director’s Cut. Resident Evil 1 had 3 PS1 rereleases during the 90s: the vanilla version, whose international versions had a few differences when compared to the japanese original, such as stronger enemies, disabling auto aim and censored cutscenes. Then the Director’s Cut came out in 1997, restoring many of the japanese version’s features while also including an easy mode and an Arrange Mode, which mixes up items and camera angles. The Director’s Cut that most are probably more familiar with is a further rerelease that came out in 1998, also called the “Dualshock version”, as it featured analog controls, as well as a totally new soundtrack with some...interesting additions...

I’m playing as Chris for this playthrough. For those who don’t know, Chris is considered the Hard mode of the game, with Jill being the “Easy” option...though RE1 is not an easy game by any stretch as you’ll eventually find out

So the game starts and already the cheese is off the charts: the game features a live action cutscene as its intro and sweet Jesus...

These actors, with no offense, were clearly just random guys picked from off the streets, made to wear some cosplay suits, and then told to either just stand around a bit, scream, and make horrified faces that come off as stupid instead, all the while the camera zooms in every so often on the attacking zombie dogs’ teeth to show you how SHAAAAAARP AND DEAAAAAAADLYYYY they are. It is absolutely amazing, it just screams “cheap mid 90s horror movie fan project I filmed with stuff I found in my mom’s basement”.

And after recovering from that the game then immediately hits you with a showcase reel of each main character, with flaming letters and screen transitions, all the while rock music is blaring in the background and with a narrator calling out each character’s name and the game’s title in a voice that’s trying so hard to sound “raaaaaaaad”. Beautiful. This is why I love videogames guys

I’m not even going to comment on the actual voice acting (which, btw, the guys doing the in-game voices are not the live action actors), because the whole thing has been talked and memed about to death and beyond. I’ll just say that it’s exactly as unimaginably awful as you’ve heard about and that I also love it for this because it is absolutely peak meme material and, unintentionally or otherwise, it truly gives me that good ol’ goofy retro horror vibe. Also Chris is voiced by the same guy who voiced Richter Belmont in Symphony of the Night.

So about the structure of Classic Resident Evil: I suppose you could kind of think of it as a...pseudo Metroidvania of sorts. You’ll be mostly running around a labyrinthine structure (in this case an abandoned mansion), full of tight halls and whatnot, collecting stuff and backtracking a whole bunch in order to unlock previously unexplorable sections of the map. The main difference lies in the fact that you don’t collect power ups. You certainly collect new weapons as you progress so you do become more powerful as you play, but weapons are purely offensive in function, they don’t have any explorative applications, your characters don’t receive double jumps or increased speed or anything of the sort. Instead you’ll mostly be collecting various kinds of objects that are necessary to solve environmental puzzles, which will typically reward you with other types of objects that are necessary to access more parts of the world, like keys to open doors. This means that, much like games like Super Metroid and SOTN, having a good memory and creating a sort of internal map of the place will be important. Sure there is an in-game map, but you’ll have to remember yourself where every puzzle is located. For example there’s a room with a shotgun mounted on a wall, if you try to remove it the door will lock and the ceiling will start to lower until you put the shotgun back into place. Later in the game you can find a room with a broken shotgun. If you want the functioning one it’s up to you to figure out and remember about the room with it and that you have to switch the good shotgun with the broken one in order to add the former to your arsenal while being able to exit the room.

I will say that the Spencer Mansion (this game’s setting), is rather sensible in structure once you get the hang of it, being composed of two big wings, one eastern one western, both connected to a big main hall and both being separated into two floors. Of course later on in the game you’ll gain access to the basement, not to mention to the areas on the outside of the mansion, but all in due time

Of course getting around is only half of the gameplay loop here, the actual challenge lies in trying to actually stay alive as you journey through this madhouse and that...will be for next time’s video!

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Mission: Impossible (De Palma, 1996)

I like the Christopher McQuarrie entries and I think McQuarrie’s more perfunctory visual style lets the enormity of their set pieces and the lunatic stuntwork therein pop in a way a busier style might have obfuscated. But I like this one even more, and I think Brian De Palma bringing the full range of his visual tricks goes hand and hand with the heavier emphasis on actual spycraft and the intricacy of the schemes here. You get most if not all of your classic DePalmaVision touches: zooms, split diopters, pseudo-splitscreen, elaborately choreographed top down shots.

In the set pieces especially he brings a thrilling sense of geometry. All his visual choices work in concert with the weird Death Star decor of the vault sequence, while Rolf Saxon’s nausea and trips to the bathroom provide comic punctuation and gently mock the sense of stillness and tension. And in the train-helicopter climax, the lateral and perpendicular motion helps ground the dodgier effects into something genuinely thrilling. 

So De Palma foregrounds his style in the usual sense through its boldness, but also in the narrative. Without revealing too much, let’s just say that one of the schemes here depends on careful staging and framing to trick the hero into thinking he sees something that might not be entirely the case. So while this might not be his most personal movie, this element does echo the director as villain and filmmaking angle of Body Double. One of the reveals might also provide fodder for those prone to lob accusations of misogyny at De Palma’s work, but I didn’t find it out of line in this genre. 

I also think there’s a certain meanness here that the series would get away from but helps assert his dominance over the movie. Subsequent entries would become more overtly in the service of their star Tom Cruise, but here Cruise is very much at the mercy of De Palma and the plot. When the movie is willing to kill off a whole bunch of name actors in its first act, everyone becomes expendable.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #663

Top Ten Beautiful South Songs

Another pretty simple one this week. I’m ranking my favourite songs by The Beautiful South. Why? Well, because I like them, that’s why.

I do kinda struggle to write about music the way I can write about, say, movies, because music has always just been background to me, whereas film and stuff I’ve followed. I know the difference between a track and a zoom, but sometimes the words escape me when describing songs. However, the Beautiful South has moved and delighted me for about thirty years now – maybe even longer, because I do remember back when Paul Heaton was in the Housemartins. But they possess a mix of lyricism, working-class grit, earnestness, and humour that feels not only quintessentially British but also very specifically Northern. They – and let’s be honest, when I say “they” I really mean “Paul Heaton”, because whilst I do not want to diminish the endeavours of everyone else in this band, he’s been the constant and also the main creative poohbah across, well, sort of three bands now I guess – craft beautiful ballads of loss and hope, with the most exquisite lyrics, but also manage to be wildly entertaining most of the time (Artificial Flowers is a hell of a downer, though).

As is often the case with music, it’s the lyrics that really get me. Heaton is a fabulous lyricist, and is songs would rank really highly if I ever did a Top Ten Lyrics of All Time post. Often there’s a sense of tragedy, or at least melancholy, to his words; you’ll see this in the likes of Alone. But there’s also tremendous love and heart, which is shot through with a dose of realism; everything from Prettiest Eyes to I’ll Sail This Ship Alone shows this. And then, on top of it all, there’s humour; whether it’s bawdy (Perfect 10) or dark (Old Red Eyes is Back), it’s prevalent throughout. And it’s this mix that I adore in all their work. And like I said before, it just feels so delightfully Northern.

Anyway that’s enough preamble. Let’s get to the words with numbers in front of them.

Prettiest Eyes (1994): a beautiful and tender song about love and romance, told from the point of view of an older couple. It’s rare that a love story of any kind celebrates long-lasting love over the passion of new romance, but the tender and sexy reminiscing, combined with the humorous gags about crow’s feet, make this a gorgeous ballad.

A Little Time (1990): on the flipside, a song about failed love; chronicling the exploits of a horrid cheating little bugger and his suffering partner. The selfish depiction of the adulterous man – wanting to have his cake and eat it – feels depressingly true; but the joy of the thing is the glorious rise to power of the spurned woman. It’s a thrilling and somewhat amusing end to a song rife with emotion.

Alone (1996): talking about dark, this is a pean to wasted life; a sad but somehow also romantic song about crippling loneliness and regret. Heaton’s voice is especially gravelly, suggesting a misspent life of cigarettes and alcohol. But circling back to the lyrics, this song contains one of my favourites of all time: “Hearts built like reservoirs, words built like dams / Thoughts built like juggernauts, our actions built like prams.” Blimey.

Song for Whoever (1989): thankfully we can get a bit more humorous now, with this early and very funny hit for the band. Unpicking and satirising the way songwriters (and any writer, I guess, now I come to think about it) can use their lives, and the lives of those closest to them, as raw material for creation. And, of course, amidst that potentially serious morass, we have Heaton hilariously listing tons of women’s names and thanking them for their tears. Lol.

Don’t Marry Her (1996): a song that manages to be very funny but also rather poignant and sad. Yes, it’s funny how Jacqui Abbott contrasts the thought of a passionate affair with domesticity; yes, it’s hilarious how she swears. But this contrast actually speaks to a greater sadness, a more profound emotion; despite the talk of Sandra Bullocks, it’s a powerful song.

Perfect 10 (1998): a bit like Don’t Marry Her, this is on one hand a rather funny song but also speaks to a greater truth. It’s simultaneously a love letter to imperfection and the sort of passion that persists in long-running relationships. And, look, the lyrics are hilarious.

Just a Few Things That I Ain’t (1989): again we have a very funny song with a deeper and more melancholy meaning. The long, delightfully jaunty list Heaton gives – comparing himself unfavourably to Bono and Sting, talking about being insulted by teachers – is great on one level, but also speaks to the sorts of insecurities instilled in the working classes by those in power.

One Last Love Song (1994): a tender and emotive ballad that also pokes fun at tender and emotive ballads and those who sing them; like many of Heaton’s songs, it’s amusing and emotive at the same time. There’s a tenderness to it – I love the line “farewell my sweet Northern Rose” – but also a self-deprecating tone that’s fantastic.

I’ll Sail This Ship Alone (1989): there’s a beautiful contrast between the rather upbeat, almost jaunty tone, and the lyrics, which are bitingly sad. The notion of carrying on after heartbreak is an optimistic one, but the repeated refrain of sending love letters that are burnt speaks to a tragic desperation that undercuts the optimism.

Old Red Eyes is Back (1991): rather than a sweet song with hidden depths or humour, this is a broadly funny song that’s got deeper sadness and darkness. It’s a tale of a an old drunk and the misery in his life, but sung in such a way as to seem amusing or endearing. The tragic end – “Old Red he died / And every single landlord in the district cried” – is also told in hilarious fashion, but again we have those undercurrents.

Y’know, almost all of these songs I could have just written “it’s really funny but also really sad and musically it’s beautiful”. Would have saved me time.

Also, I'm pretty sure the gif is actually the Housemartins? It's literally the only thing I found on Tumblr that had Paul Heaton on it. You'd think someone would have made a gif of, like, the Little Time video or something.

[eternalstargazer]

Upon doing some digging, I want to point out that I think the following image that's being shared on various websites and social media sites is potentially misleading.

I should've checked it myself first, and before I go any further, I want to apologize.

If you go to bandai's Japanese website: https://www.bandai.co.jp/candy/pokemonkids/

You'll see that the Ash/Goh portion of the image is actually part of the website header (if that's the correct term, it may not be), and not directly connected with the S/V merch. The S/V merch is part of a carousel/slider.

People are screencapping the slider when it's on the S/V merch and because Goh is viewable at the top, are connecting the two and treating that as some sort of confirmation. But...

See how these other slides paint a different picture? No S/V Pokémon, but Ash/Goh are still in the image... because the Ash/Goh figures aren't directly connected to the new line of merch.

Zoom out on the page and you can see all three slides:

I want Goh to remain a part of the anime and anyone that has talked to me or has looked at even just a dozen or so of my blog posts knows I love the character. I'm not looking for reasons to argue he won't return.

But I'm not going to pass off something potentially disingenuous as possible confirmation. The image being spread is possibly misleading, although I can't say for a fact it is because I don't know Japanese, and the translators I use aren't perfect.

As of right now, it's important to remember we do not know anything about the S/V anime, or even if there will be a S/V anime. Goh isn't confirmed to be returning, or leaving, so please be careful when viewing websites, forums, and social media, because what's being said/shared may not give the whole picture, or even be accurate in the slightest.

Once again, I apologize for this post and will be editing it to include a link to this one. As I said, I should've done my own checking rather than simply going along with what others were saying and posting.

[mostlymovieswithmax]

Movies I watched in May

Sadly, I kind of skipped writing a post for April. It was a mad month with so much going on: lots of emails sent and lots of stress. I started a new job so I’m getting to grips with that... and even then, I still watched a bunch of movies. But this is about what I watched in May and, yeah�� still a bunch. So if you’re looking to get into some other movies - possibly some you’ve thought about watching but didn’t know what they were like, or maybe like the look of something you’ve never heard of - then this may help! So here’s every film I watched from the 1st to the 31st of May 2021 Tenet (2020) - 8/10 This was my third time watching Christopher Nolan’s most Christopher Nolan movie ever and it makes no sense but I still love it. The spectacle of it all is truly like nothing I’ve ever seen. I had also watched it four days prior to this watch also, only this time I had enabled audio description for the visually impaired, thinking it would make it funny… It didn’t.

Nomadland (2020) - 6/10 Chloé Zhao’s new movie got a lot of awards attention. Everyone was hyped for this and when it got put out on Disney+ I was eager to see what all the fuss was about. Seeing these real nomads certainly gave the film an authenticity, along with McDormand’s ever-praisable acting. But generally I found it quite underwhelming and lacking a lot in its pacing. Nomadland surely has its moments of captivating cinematography and enticing commentary on the culture of these people, but it felt like it went on forever without any kind of forward direction or goal. The Prince of Egypt (1998) - 6/10 I reviewed this on my podcast, The Sunday Movie Marathon. For what it is, it’s pretty fun but nowhere near as good as some of the best DreamWorks movies.

Chinatown (1974) - 8/10 What a fantastic and wonderfully unpredictable mystery crime film! I regret to say I’ve not seen many Jack Nicholson performances but he steals the show. Despite Polanski’s infamy, it’d be a lie to claim this wasn’t truly masterful. Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) - 8/10 Admittedly I was half asleep as I curled up on the sofa to watch this again on a whim. I watched this with someone who demanded the dubbed version over the subtitled version and while I objected heavily, I knew I’d seen the movie before so it didn’t matter too much. That person also fell asleep about 20 minutes in, so how pointless an argument it was. Howl’s Moving Castle boasts superb animation, the likes of which I’ve only come to expect of Miyazaki. The story is so unique and the colours are absolutely gorgeous. This may not be my favourite from the legendary director but there’s no denying its splendour.

Bāhubali: The Beginning (2015) - 3/10 The next morning I watched some absolute trash. This crazy, over the top Indian movie is hilarious and I could perhaps recommend it if it weren’t so long. That being said, Bāhubali was not a dumpster fire; it has a lot of good-looking visual effects and it’s easy to see the ambition for this epic story, it just doesn’t come together. There’s fun to be had with how the main character is basically the strongest man in the world and yet still comes across as just a lucky dumbass, along with all the dancing that makes no sense but is still entertaining to watch. Seven Samurai (1954) - 10/10 If it wasn’t obvious already, Seven Samurai is a masterpiece. I reviewed this on The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast, so more thoughts can be found there. Red Road (2006) - 6/10 Another recommendation on episode 30 of the podcast. Red Road really captures the authentic British working class experience. Before Sunrise (1995) - 10/10 One of the best romances put to film. The first in Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy is undoubtedly my favourite, despite its counterparts being almost equally as good. It tells the story of a young couple travelling through Europe, who happen to meet on a train and spend the day together. It is gloriously shot on location in Vienna and features some of the most interesting dialogue I’ve ever seen put to film. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

Tokyo Story (1953) - 9/10 This Japanese classic - along with being visually and sonically masterful - is a lot about appreciating the people in your life and taking the time to show them that you love them. It’s about knowing it’s never too late to rekindle old relationships if you truly want to, which is something I’ve been able to relate to in recent years. It broke my heart in two. Tokyo Story will make you want to call your mother. Before Sunset (2004) - 10/10 Almost a decade after Sunrise, Sunset carries a sombre yet relieving feeling. Again, the performances from Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke take me away, evoking nostalgic feelings as they stroll through the contemporary Parisian streets. There is no regret in me for buying the Criterion blu-ray boxset for this trilogy. Before Midnight (2013) - 10/10 Here, Linklater cements this trilogy as one of the best in film history. It’s certainly not the ending I expected, yet it’s an ending I appreciate endlessly. Because it doesn’t really end. Midnight shows the troubling times of a strained relationship; one that has endured so long and despite initially feeling almost dreamlike in how idealistically that first encounter was portrayed, the cracks appear as the film forces you to come to terms with the fact that fairy-tale romances just don’t exist. Relationships require effort and sacrifice and sometimes the ones that truly work are those that endure through all the rough patches to emerge stronger. The Holy Mountain (1973) - 10/10 Jodorowsky’s masterpiece is absolute insanity. I talked more about it on The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) - 10/10 Another watch for Grand Budapest because I bought the Criterion blu-ray. As unalterably perfect as ever. Blue Jay (2016) - 6/10 Rather good up to a point. My co-hosts and I did not agree on how good this movie was, which is a discussion you can listen to on my podcast. Shadow and Bone: The Afterparty (2021) - 3/10 For what it’s worth, I really enjoyed the first season of Shadow and Bone, which is why I wanted to see what ‘The Afterparty’ was about. This could have been a lot better and much less annoying if all those terrible comedians weren’t hosting and telling bad jokes. I don’t want to see Fortune Feimster attempt to tell a joke about oiling her body as the cast of the show sit awkwardly in their homes over Zoom. If it had simply been a half hour, 45 minute chat with the cast and crew about how they made the show and their thoughts on it, a lot of embarrassment and time-wasting could have been spared. Wadjda (2012) - 6/10 Another recommendation discussed at length on The Sunday Movie Marathon. Wadjda was pretty interesting from a cultural perspective but largely familiar in terms of story structure.

Freddy Got Fingered (2001) - 2/10 A truly terrible movie with maybe one or two scenes that stop it from being a complete catastrophe. Tom Green tried to create something that almost holds a middle finger to everyone who watches it and to some that could be a fun experience, but to me it just came across as utterly irritating. It’s simply a bunch of scenes threaded together with an incredibly loose plot. He wears the skin of a dead deer, smacks a disabled woman over and over again on the legs to turn her on, and he swings a newborn baby around a hospital room by its umbilical cord (that part was actually pretty funny). I cannot believe I watched this again, although I think I repressed a lot of it since having seen it for the first time around five years ago. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 - (2011) I have to say, these movies seem to get better with each instalment. They’re still not very good though. That being said, I’m amazed at how many times I’ve watched each of the Twilight movies at this point. This time around, I watched Breaking Dawn - Part 1 with a YMS commentary track on YouTube and that made the experience a lot more entertaining. Otherwise, this film is super dumb but pretty entertaining. I would recommend watching these movies with friends. Solaris (1972) - 8/10 Andrei Tarkovsky’s grand sci-fi epic about the emotional crises of a crew on the space station orbiting the fictional planet Solaris is much as strange and creepy as you might expect from the master Russian auter. I had wanted to watch this for a while so I bought the Criterion blu-ray and it’s just stunning. It’s clear to see the 2001: A Space Odyssey inspiration but Solaris is quite a different beast entirely. Jaws (1975) - 4/10 I really tried to get into this classic movie, but Jaws exhibits basically everything I don’t like about Steven Spielberg’s directing. For sure, the effects are crazily good but the story itself is poorly handled and largely uninteresting. It was just a massive slog to get through.

Darkman (1990) - 6/10 Sam Raimi’s superhero movie is so much fun, albeit massively stupid. Further discussion on Darkman can be found on episode 32 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast. Darkman II: The Return of Durant (1995) - 1/10 Abysmal. I forgot the movie as I watched it. This was part of a marathon my friends and I did for episode 32 of our podcast. Darkman III: Die Darkman Die (1996) - 1/10 Perhaps this trilogy is not so great after all. Only marginally better than Darkman II but still pretty terrible. More thoughts on episode 32 of my podcast. F For Fake (1973) - 8/10 Rewatching this proved to be a worthwhile decision. Albeit slightly boring, there’s no denying how crazy the story of this documentary about art forgers is. The standout however, is the director himself. Orson Welles makes a lot of this film about himself and how hot his girlfriend is and it is hilarious.

The Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021) - 4/10 More style over substance, Sony’s new animated adventure wants so much to be in trend with the current internet culture but it simply doesn’t understand what it’s emulating. There’s a nyan cat reference, for crying out loud. For every joke that works, there are about ten more that do not and were it not for the wonderful animation, it simply wouldn’t be getting so much praise. Taxi Driver (1976) - 10/10 The first movie I’ve seen in a cinema since 2020 and damn it was good to be back! I’ve already reviewed Taxi Driver in my March wrap-up but seeing it in the cinema was a real treat. Irreversible (2002) - 8/10 One of the most viscerally horrendous experiences I’ve ever had while watching a movie. I cannot believe a friend of mine gave me the DVD to watch. More thoughts on episode 32 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast. Don’t watch it with the family. The Golden Compass (2007) - 1/10 I had no recollection of this being as bad as it is. The Golden Compass is the definition of a factory mandated movie. Nothing it does on its own is worth any kind of merit. I would say, if you wanted an experience like what this tries to communicate, a better option by far is the BBC series, His Dark Materials. More of my thoughts can be found in the review I wrote on Letterboxd.

Antichrist (2009) - 8/10 Lars von Trier is nothing if not provocative and I can understand why someone would not like Antichrist, but I enjoyed it quite a lot. After watching it, I wrote a slightly disjointed summary of my interpretations of this highly metaphorical movie in the group chat, so fair warning for a bit of spoilers and graphic descriptions: It's like, the patriarchy, man! Oppression! Men are the rational thinkers with big brains and the women just cry and be emotional. So she's seen as crazy when she's smashing his cock and driving a drill through his leg to keep him weighted down. Like, how does he like it, ya know? So then she mutilates herself like she did with him and now they're both wounded, but the animals crowd around her (and the crow that he couldn't kill because it's Mother nature, not Father nature, duh). Then he kills her, even though she could've killed him loads of times but didn't. So it's like "haha big win for the man who was subjected to such horrific torture. Victory!" And then all the women with no faces come out of the woods because it's like a constant cycle. Manchester By The Sea (2016) - 6/10 Great performances in this super sad movie. I can’t say I got too much out of it though. Roar (1981) - 9/10 Watching Roar again was still as terrifying an experience as the first time. If you want to watch something that’s loose on plot with poor acting but with real big cats getting in the way of production and physically attacking people, look no further. This is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen because it’s all basically real. Cannot recommend it enough. Eyes Without A Face (1960) - 8/10 I’m glad I checked this old French movie out again. There’s a lot to marvel at in so many aspects, what with the premise itself - a mad surgeon taking the faces from unsuspecting women and transplanting them onto another - being incredibly unique for the time. Short, sweet and entertaining!

Se7en (1995) - 10/10 The first in a David Fincher marathon we did for The Sunday Movie Marathon, episode 33. Zodiac (2007) - 10/10 Second in the marathon, as it was getting late, we decided to watch half that evening and the last half on the following evening. Zodiac is a brilliant movie and you can hear more of my thoughts on the podcast (though I apologise; my audio is not the best in this episode). Gone Girl (2014) - 10/10 My favourite Fincher movie. More insights into this masterpiece in episode 33 of the podcast. Friends: The Reunion (2021) - 6/10 It was heartwarming to see the old actors for this great show together again. I talked about the Friends reunion film at length in episode 33 of my podcast.

Wolfwalkers (2020) - 10/10 I reviewed this in an earlier post but would like to reiterate just how wonderful Wolfwalkers is. If you get the chance, please see it in the cinema. I couldn’t stop crying from how beautiful it was. Raya and The Last Dragon (2021) - 6/10 After watching Wolfwalkers, I decided I didn’t want to go home. So I had lunch in town and booked a ticket for Disney’s Raya and The Last Dragon. A child was coughing directly behind me the entire time. Again, I reviewed this in an earlier post but generally it was decent but I have so many problems with the execution. The Princess Bride (1987) - 9/10 Clearly I underrated this the last time I watched it. The Princess Bride is warm and hilarious with some delightfully memorable characters. A real classic!

The Invisible Kid (1988) - 1/10 About as good as you’d expect a movie with that name to be, The Invisible Kid was a pick for The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast, the discussion for which you can listen to in episode 34. Babel (2006) - 9/10 The same night that I watched The Invisible Kid, I watched a masterful and dour drama from the director of Birdman and The Revenant. Babel calls back to an earlier movie of Iñárritu’s, called Amores Perros and as I was informed while we watched this for the podcast, it turns out Babel is part of a trilogy alongside the aforementioned film. More thoughts in episode 34 of the podcast. Snake Eyes (1998) - 1/10 After feeling thoroughly emotionally wiped out after Babel, we immediately watched another recommendation for the podcast: Snake Eyes, starring Nicolas Cage. This was a truly underwhelming experience and for more of a breakdown into what makes this movie so bad, you can listen to us talk about it on the podcast.

[kingofthehilltoday]

King of the hill review s1e1 "Pilot"

(I'm gonna start watching koth and typing these out season by season, depending on my work schedule/metnal healt will depend on how often I put them out, with the occasional single episode ones like this one which I've already typed up so much for. A lot of people seemed to like just the Meer idea of this so im gonna finish this one and post it)

We're introduced to the main characters surrounding a truck with the hood up. The first lines of dialogue they have in the series is their iconique "yep" "yep" "yep" "mhm" followed by a short silence (aside from the alcohol consumption).

Bill is the one to break the silence and demonstrates his understanding of automobile engines.

He is followed by Dale who demonstrates himself as an idiot. "Ford stands for: Fix It Again Tony."

Boomhauer, who without subtitles i wouldn't have been able to understand, also demonstrates he understands automobiles.

Hank who does not have the courtesy of subtitles does not understand what Boomhauer says and brushes him off and instead dribbles on about George Bush in Japan? This establishes his conservativeness/dumbness (if there's that much of a difference between the two.)

Hank grabs more beer and Dale breaks off into asking about a new episode of Seinfeld dating the beginning of the show.

Boomhauer immediately starts squaking about it.

This episode of Koth aired January 12 1997, although it doesn't seem to take place in a winter month. Most likely a spring one. I want to say the episode that Boomhauer is talking about is The Wig Master (April 4, 1996) as it is an episode that features Kramer and Kramer is the subject of Boomhauers tangent.

Boomhauer ends his giggling with "Just a show about nothin." And the theme song begins to play. A good introduction into what King of the Hill is about, and so far a great way to start the show off.

Theme song ends and Hank enters Bobby's room, despite Bobby telling him he wouldn't like it Hank decides to listen to Bobby's music to find: he doesn't like it. Admittedly because it isn't music (which Hank claims to like new generation music) but because instead it's just a fart? Bobby for some reason just listens to farts.... I guess this does establish that the boy ain't right....

Hank leaves Bobby's room telling him to get ready for the game, which Bobby is clearly already dressed for?

Luanne shows she hasn't learned how to lock the bathroom door when Hank busts in to a fully toweled Luanne. He still avoids looking at her the entire time after the initial door opening. Luanne gives slight exposition by explaining her parents are currently fighting, giving her a reason to be in the Hill House.

Hank, Bobby, and Peggy pile into a car and head to the game. Peggy tells Bobby to do his best and Hank insists he should give it 110% instead of 100%. They then keep suggest 1% higher until Peggy says 13 is an unlucky number. The driving scene ends with Hank miffed saying "just give it 112%."

At the game Bobby shows his inability to play baseball and Hank shows how overzealous he is about getting Bobby to play. Bobby gets hit with a ball when he's not paying attention giving set up for future events within the episode.

Hank Hill stops at the Mega Lo Mart for WD-40. Its not that important that I mention the WD-40. I just like the way he says Dubya Dee Fordy.

Two gossips see Hank interact with Buckley (who doesn't seem to recognize Hank, let alone where he even is in the store) along with Bobby who has a black eye following close behind him.

As Hank gets more and more frustrated with Buckley, Bobby begins swinging a cardboard tube around like a baseball bat. The gossips see Hank with his temper and wonder if he gave Bobby the black eye (theyre voiced by Nancy and Peggy without changing the voices even a little bit). Bobby swings the bat a little too close to some cans and knocks them over prompting Hank to scream YOU'RE FIRED (???? who gave Hank the authority???) at Buckley when he tells Hank that he'll have to pay for the damages.

The two gossips' words spread around and eventually get to the erroneously named Arlen County Child Protective Services (I suppose Heimlich County hasn't been established yet). And we're introduced to Anthony Page whos proportions make him look like he's in the wrong cartoon.

We cut back to hank and friends and Dale goes on his rant about Glo-Bal warming. He says we'll grow oranges in Alaska. Hank calls him a giblet head and tells Dale he'll hold him personally responsible if Texas gets any hotter in the summer. His anger is further pushed by a thumping noise.

Which we see is Bobby playing ball in the house while watching TV. He accidentally smacks his mother in the face with it when she pauses to lament about a man on TV who had botched surgery.

Bobby is once again throwing the ball in the house, enter the social worker, and Hank fixing his truck. The sound distracts Dale from pointing the flashlight correctly which then causes Hank to screw up and the hood of his car to fall on him and Dale runs off instead.

"Hank is as gentle as a lamb," says Peggy followed by Hank barging in, grabbing the baseball and throwing it screaming, "STOP BOUNCING THAT BALL!" Note: the ball zoomed past Mr. Page and into the street making a glass shattering noise. What glass he could have shattered at that angle I'm not quite sure of.

After Tony insinuates the bruise on Peggy's head was caused by the same ball they told him hit Bobby in the eye, he asks if Bobby is their only child. Peggy manages to tell this random dude about Hank's narrow urethra and Hank gets loud.

Our Italian alien looking friend tells Hank "Loud is not Allowed." This sets Hank off on a rant about how he works for a living as opposed to writing down nonsense. This is the first mention of Hank's job selling Propane and Propane Accessories.

Hank's face turns visibly red as talks about his tax dollars going to fund... CPS? I understand that twig boy is very much not doing any actual investigation and is completely biased but... come on now Hank? Chuld protective services?? Anyways Hank asks for some B.C. Headache Powder and a glass of water. He then proceeds to yell at Anthony again and threatens him to get out before he gives HIM a black eye. Not the best choice of words there Hank. Also both of these rants are set to the National Anthem for some reason.

Our self proclaimed hero of this story then goes on to interview neighbors about Hank. Starting with Dale who is interrupted by Nancy leaving to get a headache treatment from John Redcorn. "You've been going to that healer for 12 years and you still get headaches every night." Imagine getting dicked down roughly 4380 days in a row.

After Nancy leaves it goes back to our city slicker asking if Hank has ever hit his child which Dale explains that Bobby is his pride and joy because of his Narrow Urethra. Very interesting world where Dale knows Hank has a narrow urethra but not that his own wife is cheating on him. Joseph is introduced and the paper white boy does a double take as he's the spitting image of John Redcorn.

Boomhauer has mistaken the defunct social worker as??? Someone whos there to do something about a barking dog? Once again if not for the subtitles I'd be lost on what he's saying but what the hell is he talking about. Our pencil pusher backs away slowly.

Bobby and Joseph are trying to get pebbles into the exhaust of the truck in the next scene, impressively they make a few shots. Joseph asks to reassure that Hank does not in fact hit him and Bobby confirms that Hank is all Bark and proceeds to mock the propane salesman. Joseph proceeds to try and while he's making fake threats in Hank's voice our Valiant Savior overhears and somehow mistakes his voice to actually be Hank's....

Cut to the actual Hank and he's found Luanne's panties. They're very cute pink ones. Peggy calls Luanne in to Hank's protests and she comes in crying and expositions about her mother attempting to stab her father with a fork then being sent to jail. She says her trailer was tipped over but does not elaborate as to how. Although she does say it will be on a TV show! Kind of wish theyd make an episode out of that alone.

Hank assures Luanne as best he can and lets her know she can stay with them until her mom comes home. Hank offers to let her use power tools to style a wig that was also damaged in the process of the trailer being flipped over. This immediately calms Ms. Platter.

A doorbell is heard and the Hills (minus Luanne) answer the door to find Our Holy King making his return to try to get our Poor Abused Child to come outside and go live with a family in North Arlen (not even gonna try to find somewhere in a different town??) Hank tries to offer him Luanne instead. The social worker makes an effort to try to get Bobby to come with him but Bobby clearly doesn't care or want to go. Hank chases him away and even hits his car, Ladybird making her first appearance running with him and barking at Anthony.

Mr. Page is confronted by his boss about not having found any actual abuse but recommending state custody. He called the entire neighborhood redneck city to a man with a strong country accent, bruh. The boss asks him if he talked to the little league coach, WHICH THE BOSS KNOWS BY NAME (Harvey) and our Los Angeles boy is sweatin fierce.

Cut back to Hank and Peggy with their ears covered they come outside to BOBBY WITH A STOP SIGN HE CUT DOWN USING A DRILL THAT HE'S HITTING WITH A HAMMER??? How did he get a Fucking Stop Sign??? Hank immediately yells at Bobby about this and Bobby calmly states back that Hank can't yell at him or the state will take him away. This frustrates Hank but he does his best not to outburst again after Bobby picks up the stop sign and runs away dragging it behind him.

Once inside the house Bobby answers a call from CPS, they inform him the case has been dropped and our boy from L.A. will be heading back home. He chooses not to tell his parents instead opting to tell them it was a wrong number. After this scene the stop sign is never seen again 😔.

Hank apparently makes bacon and mayo sandwiches. Hold the bacon grease. No wait he adds the bacon grease back. Luanne comes into the kitchen and demonstrates that she knows more about cars than any of the guys as she has fixed his truck's problem: a clogged fuel line.

We cut to Hank outside the garage asking Bobby to plug in a power tool in the garage, Robert (with Joseph in tow) agrees and does so but also grabs the opener and starts opening and closing the door on his father. Hank begins to yell again and Bobby reminds him that it isn't proper adult-child conversation. Hank settles down a bit and through gritted teeth asks Bobby to return it to factory setting of down and walks away. Joseph is very pleased by this.

We then see a montage of similar things happening in succession. Bobby knocking a fence down with a bat, dressing ladybird up and taking pics of her on his mower, and finally spraying Hank with a hose. As he does this the Anthony's ex boss comes over and knocks on the door.

We cut over to Bobby in his bed making sound effects. He is informed by Peggy that the man came over and told them the investigation was off. Bobby says he likes his father better this way he can "make him love me even when I screw up" and Peggy asks if he really thinks that.

Peggy is shown going into the bedroom (not really sure if this is their bedroom... there is a picture of cotton on the wall [pre shin loss] and it doesn't look like their bedroom in future episodes) and she insists Hank vocally tell Bobby that he loves him. Hank explains that he can't do that "you know how I was raised" followed by a flashback of a young Hank and a shinless Cotton telling Hank not to cry about his knee scrape.

Hank heads out to the porch to talk to Bobby who is sitting on lawn furniture. And Hank stumbles over words trying to explain to Bobby that he cares for him. Bobby doesn't understand and Hank makes some weird voice cracking sound. "You.... family." Hank then, after little bit more stumbling, manages to blurt out "ILoveYouNoMatterWhatYouDo." And then offers food.

Bobby asks if he's not a disappointment and Hank assures him that he's proud of him and cares for him. He then play fights with Bobby and the city boy sees it and proclaims he was right but is cut off by another passenger and says "never mind." And the episode fades to black. Cue theme song.

The quoted line at the end of the episode is blank. This episode predates that tradition apparently.

Okay so now for some more of my own thoughts

I joked around a lot but I do see where the social worker is coming from on some level. He believed he was investigating a case of abuse. He just wasn't very smart about it. He really should have talked to the coach immediately after hearing about the baseball incident. Or literally anyone that could have been at the game that day. That's all it would have taken and he would have still have had a job. But it's a good thing he doesn't anymore because his own negligence could have separated a family.

I won't claim they're the most functional family. But if the most Hank does (up until this point, not gonna count that awful smoking ep just yet) is simply yell at Bobby then they're a much better family than I had growing up. Does Hank need to work on his anger issues? From this episode alone I'd say a solid Yes. He was a dick to a store employee which is very much not a cool thing to do. There was some justification in being angry at Bobby, I mean the kid tortured him at the end there, but he should have sought a better release than the one he had.

Overall I'd say this is a really good episode to start the series on, it's entertaining and funny and properly builds up the world.

[fuckyeahstephensondheim]

Rick Pender knows his Sondheim from A to Z

If the word “encyclopedia” conjures for you a 26-volume compendium of information ranging from history to science and beyond, you may find the notion of a Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia perplexing. But if you have ever looked at a bookshelf full of book after book about (and occasionally by) the premiere musical theatre composer-lyricist of our era and wished all that information could be synthesized and indexed in one place, maybe the idea of a Sondheim encyclopedia will start to make a little more sense to you. It did to Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, an independent publisher that’s made encyclopedias such as this one of their calling cards, offering tomes on everyone from Marie Curie to Akira Kurasowa. Several years ago, they approached Rick Pender, longtime managing editor of the gone but never forgotten Sondheim Review and now, after years of research, writing, and pandemic-related delays, the The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia is finally hitting shelves. I sat down with Rick (via Zoom) to chat about this unique, massive project.

FYSS: I want to really focus on the new book, but we should start with your history with Sondheim and The Sondheim Review. How did you become so enmeshed in this work?

RP: As a teenager, the first LP that I bought was the soundtrack from West Side Story, and I didn't have any clue about who much of anybody was, particularly not Stephen Sondheim. But I loved the lyrics for the songs, especially “Something’s Coming” and “Gee, Officer Krupke.” These are just fabulous lyrics.

Then, of course, in the ‘70s it was hard as time went by not to have some awareness of Sondheim. I saw a wonderful production of Night Music in northeast Ohio, and I again just thought these lyrics are incredible, and I love the music from that particular show. Fast forward a little further in the late ‘80s, I was laid up with some surgery and I knew I was going to be bedridden for a week or two anyway, so I went to the public library and grabbed up a handful of CDs, and in that batch was A Collector's Sondheim, the three-disc set of stuff up through about 1985, and I must have listened to that a hundred times, I swear, because it had material on it that I didn't know anything about like Evening Primrose or Stavisky. So that really opened my eyes.

Later, my son had moved to Chicago. He's a scenic carpenter and a union stagehand. He worked at the Goodman Theatre, and I went to see a production when they were still performing in a theater space at the Art Institute of Chicago, and they had a gift shop there. And lo and behold in the rack I saw a copy of a magazine called The Sondheim Review! I thought, oh my gosh, I've got to subscribe to this! This would have been about 1996, probably, so I subscribed and enjoyed it immediately. A quarterly magazine about just about Stephen Sondheim struck me as kind of amazing.

In 1997-98 the Cincinnati Playhouse did a production of Sweeney Todd in which Pamela Myers, all grown up, played Mrs. Lovett, and so I wrote to the editor of the magazine and said, “Would you like me to review this?” That started me down a path for a couple of years of making fairly regular contributions to the magazine. Then in 2004 that editor retired, and I was asked to become the managing editor, which I did from 2004 to 2016. It went off the rails for some business reasons, but it lasted for 22 years which I think is pretty remarkable.

I tried to sustain it in an alternative form with a website called Everything Sondheim. We put stuff up online for about 18 months, and we published three print issues that look very much like The Sondheim Review, but we were not able to sustain it beyond that.

FYSS: How did the Encyclopedia project originate?

RP: The publisher asked me to write an encyclopedia about Stephen Sondheim! I envisioned that I would be sort of the general editor who coordinated a bunch of writers to put this together, but they said no, we're thinking of you as being the sole author. They had done a couple of other encyclopedias particularly of film directors, and those were all done by one person, so they sent me a contract asking me to generate 300,000 words for this book, and after I regained consciousness, I said all right, I'll give it a try.

It took me about two years – most of 2018 and ‘19 – to generate that content. I sent it off in the fall of ‘19, and then, well, the world stopped because of the pandemic. It was supposed to come out April a year ago, and they had just furloughed a bunch of their editors and everything stalled. But now it's coming out mid-April 2021.

FYSS: What was the research and writing process like?

RP: This project came about in part because the publisher initially approached another writer, Mark Horowitz, who's at the Library of Congress and who had done a Sondheim book of Sondheim on Music. Mark and I had become quite close because he wrote a number of wonderful features about different Sondheim songs for The Sondheim Review. When I heard that that he had put my name out there, I went back to him after I had agreed to do this and said, Mark, could we use some of that material that you wrote for the magazine about those songs? And he said, sure do with them whatever you wish. And I was glad he said that, because they were really long pieces, and I've reduced each of them to about 1500-2000 words, which I thought was probably about the maximum length that people would really want to read in a reference volume.

But other than that, I generated everything else myself. I relied upon plenty of material within the 22 years of back issues of The Sondheim Review. Another great resource was Sondheim's own lyric studies, the two-volume set which provides so much information about the production of shows and that sort of thing.

Of the 131 entries I wrote for this, 18 of them are lengthy pieces about each of the original productions, so again Sondheim's books were certainly useful for that, and other books like Ted Chapin's book about Follies.

I also spent some time in Washington, D.C. at the Library of Congress, and Mark loaned me a quite a bit of material that he had collected – not archival material but scrapbooks of clippings that he put into ring binders of stuff about Sondheim's shows.

I came back to Cincinnati with about four or five cartons of materials, and I could really dig through that stuff as I was working on these. And then I have, as I'm sure you and lots of other Sondheim fans have, a bookcase with a shelf or two of Sondheim books, and those were all things that I relied upon, too.

I actually generated a list with lots and lots of topics, probably over 200, and I knew that was going to be more than I could do. Eventually, some things were consolidated, like an actor who perhaps performed in just one Sondheim show wasn't going to get a biographical entry, but I would talk about them in the particular show that they were involved in. So, I was able to collapse some of those kinds of things. But as I said, I did end up with 131 entries in the publication, and it turned out to be 636 pages, so that's a big fat reference book.

FYSS: Who is the intended audience for a work like this? RP: The book is really intended to be a reference volume more than a coffee-table book. It does have photography in it, but it's black and white and more meant to be illustrative than to wallow in the glories of Sondheim. There is an extensive bibliography in it, and all the material is really thoroughly sourced so people can find ways to dig into more.

FYSS: Sometimes memories diverge or change over time. Did you come across any contradictions in your research, and how did you resolve them?

RP: I can't say that I can recall anything like that. I relied very heavily on Sondheim's recollections in Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat because he's got a memory like a steel trap. Once in a while I would email him with a question and get very quick response on things. I really used him as my touchstone for making sure of that kind of thing.

I also found that Secrest’s biography was very thoroughly researched, and I could rely on that. But I can't say that I found a lot of discrepancy, and some of those kinds of things were a little too much inside baseball for me to be including in the encyclopedia.

FYSS: For figures with long and broad histories, how did you decide what to include? George Abbott, for example, is the first entry in the book and he worked for nine decades! How important was writing about an individual as they relate to Sondheim vs. who they were more generally?

RP: To use George Abbott as an example, I would say that the first things that I did was to go back to the lyric studies and to the Secrest biography and just look up references to Abbott. I mean, it was George Abbott who said that he wanted more hummable songs from Sondheim, so you know that was certainly an anecdote that was worth including because, of course you know, it becomes a little bit of the lyric in Merrily We Roll Along. 

So you know, I would look for those kinds of things, but I also wanted to put Sondheim in context because Abbott was well into his career when he finally directed Forum which, since it was Sondheim's first show as a composer and a lyricist, is significant. That was very much the focus of that entry, but I wanted to lay a foundation in talking about Abbott, about all the things that he had done before that. I mean, he was sort of the Hal Prince of his era in in terms of his engagement in so many different kinds of things – writing plays, directing musicals, doctoring shows, all of that.

FYSS: Did any entries stick out to you as being the hardest to write?

I think the most complicated one to write about probably was Bounce/Road Show because it's got a complicated history, and Sondheim has so much to say about it. And because it's not a show that people know so much about, I wanted to treat it appropriately, but not as expansively as all of that background material might have suggested. So I kind of had to weave my way through that one. It also was a little tough to write about, because how do you write a synopsis of a show that has had several incarnations quite different from one another, and musical material that has changed from one to the other? With shows like that, I particularly tried to resort to the licensed versions of the shows. 

FYSS: I haven't had a chance to read the book cover-to-cover yet, but I did read the Follies and the Into the Woods entries to try to get a sense of how you covered individual shows, and both of those are shows that had significant revisions at different times. And I thought you made it very clear what they were and also where to go for a reader who wants to learn more.

RP: Let me say one other thing this is not directly on this topic, but it sort of relates, and that is that in writing an encyclopedia, I didn't want to overlay a lot of my very individual opinions about things, but with each of the show entries I tried to review the critical comments that were made about the show in its original form, perhaps with significant revivals and that sort of thing, and then to source those remarks from critics at those various points in time. And of course, my own objectivity (or lack thereof) had something to do with what I was selecting, but I thought that was a good way to represent the range of opinion without having to make it all my own opinion.

FYSS: Did you feel any responsibility with regards to canonization when you made choices about what to include or exclude? What made the First National Tour of Into the Woods more significant than the Fiasco production, for example? Why do Side by Side by Sondheim & Sondheim on Sondheim get individual entries, but Putting It Together is relegated to the omnibus entry on revues?

RP: I guess that now you are lifting the curtain on some of my own subjectivity with that question. I tried to identify things that were particularly significant. I mean with the revues for instance, several of those shows – you know, particularly Side by Side by Sondheim, the very early ones – they were the ones I think that elevated him in people’s awareness. So, I think that to me was part of what drove that. And then shows that that were early touring productions struck me as being things that maybe needed a little bit more coverage. I think the Fiasco production was a really interesting one, but with the more recent productions of shows I just felt like there's no end to it if I begin to include a lot of that sort of thing.

FYSS: I mean it's so subjective. I'm not the kind of person who clutches my pearls and screams oh my goodness, how could you not talk about this or that. But I was surprised to see in your Follies entry that the Paper Mill Playhouse album was not listed among the recordings, for example. I imagine that once this book hits shelves you're going to be bombarded with people asking about their pet favorites.

RP: Oh, I'm sure, and maybe that will be a reason to do a second edition, which I’m totally ready to do.

The Sondheim Encyclopedia hits bookstore shelves April 15. It’s available wherever you buy books, but Rick has provided a special discount code for readers of Fuck Yeah Stephen Sondheim to receive 30% off when you order directly from the publisher. To order, visit www.rowman.com, call 800-462-6420, and use code RLFANDF30.

Celebrate the launch of The Sondheim Encyclopedia with a free, live online event featuring Rick Pender in conversation with Broadway Nation’s David Armstrong Friday, April 16 from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. Eastern. More information and register here.

[majingojira]

Brief Review of Every Dinosaur/Prehistoric Documentary/Educational Short I’ve ever seen (1923-1996).

And thanks to a certain project, I’ve seen a LOT! 

Evolution (1923) - This is the oldest of the bunch, a silent film.  Mostly it uses modern animals to represent ancient forms, with a few statues and brief animated bits to fill things out. The only real highlight?  Seeing where some of the “film real” segment from Gigantis the Fire Monster comes from! 

Monsters from the Past (1923) - A short documentary with original stop motion (this was pre-The Lost World, so that’s to be expected).  Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus, and Brontosaurus are the key creatures. Included as an extra on the second DVD release of The Lost World. 

Prehistoric Animals (1938) - Reuses footage from The Lost World (1925) for its prehistoric segments. This will not be the last time it happens. 

Prehistoric Times: The World Before Man (1952) - This thing is so quintessentially 1950s, it’s highly riff-able.  It uses a mix of paintings, sculptures and some live animals to represent prehistoric life.  

A World Is Born (1955) - Ya know what Fantasia needed?  Overbearing Narration! That’s it.  That’s what this documentary is.  I saw this thing rebroadcast in the 90s on the Disney Channel, believe it or not. 

The Animal World (1956) - Ray Harryhausen.  Willis O’Brian. Their stop motion segment is the ONLY notable part of this documentary.  This is also the only part that has seen some release in modern times, as a bonus feature on the DVD of The Black Scorpion.  

Prehistoric Animals of the Tar Pits (1956) - Black and white, but also quintessentially 50s and riff-able.  Aside from the bones, it shows some wooden models to represent the animals. 

Journey into Time (1960) - Fantasia this is not, but it TRIES to be.  Lord it tries.  Or, rather, there’s a Fantasia-adjacent thing elsewhere which does the same thing.  Has some unique choices for animals to represent, including showing Permian forms like Scutusaurus and Inostrancevia. 

Dem Dry Bones: Archaeology, Paleontology, Identification, and Preservation (1966) - This was a lucky find, it was on Youtube for half a second.  And not worth digging out, really.  Stuffy, dry, and mildly condescending.  It was still interesting looking at the dinosaur hall of the Smithsonian back in the 1950s. 

Dinosaurs - The Terrible Lizard (1970) - The stop motion here is pretty neat, if slow and plodding, it’s refreshing after all this crap. The puppets for many of these would later be re-used for The Land of the Lost.  Including Grumpy, Alice, and Spot. 

NOVA: The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs (1977) - Robert Bakker’s first appearance in a documentary.  HE HAS SUCH LONG HAIR!  Not bad, a little dry, with National Geographic titles.  It reminds me of 1990s documentaries, just so show how long it’s taken for various ideas to filter down.  Currently, it’s available on Archive.org. 

Dinosaurs: A First Film (1978) - The art style for this half-animated 70s abomination makes identifying various prehistoric animals almost impossible.  Almost painful to sit through. Stops with the Dinosaurs. 

Dinosaurs: The Age of the Terrible Lizards (1978) - Similar to the above, but available from Rifftrax, so much more watchable.  Also, it’s actually animated!

Dinosaur (1980) - Wil Vinton Claymation with Dinosaurs.  A few edits of this exist, the latter works a bit better, but the original is interesting to track down. Most of the edits are audio only, so you aren’t missing anything.  The dinosaur sin this are top notch for color and design.  They even have Corythosaurus and Tyrannosaurus not dragging their tails! 

Cosmos (1980) - the animated segment covering Evolution is still wonderful if only for the narration from Carl Sagan. 

The Age of Mammals (1981) - A follow up of sorts to Dinosaurs: The Age of Reptiles.  Decent stop motion if a little slow.  Decent variety for the time. 

64,000,000 Years Ago (1981) - A solid stop motion short film.  Still worth checking out for stop motion fans.  Available on Youtube legally! 

Dinosaurs: Fun, Facts, and Fantasy (1981) - Nostalgic for some, but aimed at a rather young audience.  Some interesting stop motion bits in here too... if awkward in that way British stop motion can be outside Aardman Studios. 

Reading Rainbow “Digging up Dinosaurs” (1983) - Definitely nostalgic for me.  Besides, it’s Reading Rainbow!  And opens with a clip from One Million Years B.C.!  What’s not to love?

Prehistoric Beast (1984) - One of the best stop motion shorts on this list.  Included because it INSPIRED a documentary from it.  Phil Tippett firing on all cylinders.  Well worth watching.  And he uploaded it on Youtube himself! 

Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs (1985), More Dinosaurs (1985), Son of Dinosaur (1988),  Prehistoric World (1993) - Gary Owens and Eric Boardman have a series of documentaries on dinosaurs and prehistoric life.  The presenters are what really make these work. Colorful, fun, and yes, silly, these still hold a nostalgic gleam for people like me.  The last one has Dougal Dixon talk about his After Man speculations.  Fun times. 

Dinosaur! (1985) - Hosted by Christopher Reeve, this is one of the best documentaries of its time.  Reeves loved dinosaurs and was happy to work on this project with Phil Tippet behind the animation.  Covers a lot in its hour long format, and well worth watching.  Do you know how good this special was?  When Reeve died in 2004, the Discovery Channel (or similar station) re-aired this thing as a tribute.  It holds up that well! 

Tell Me Why: Pre-Historic Animals, Reptiles and Amphibians (1986) - This is something I had when I was a little kid.  Dry, straight forward, a “Video Babysitter” at it’s best. It consists of a narrator while looking at pictures of the Invicta Dinosaur Toys that were also on the poster. 

Dinosaurs! A Fun-Filled Trip Back in Time (1987) - Wil Vinton’s Dinosaurs! tied with a short setup/framing device with the kid from the Wonder Years involving a low-animation music video (this was the MTV age) and a guide through art from various dinosaur books from the 1950s through the 1980s.  Rather meh, but Wil Vinton is why we are here.  This was the only way to get Wil Vinton’s short back in the day, and is the version of the short shown in Museums like The Academy of Natural Sciences.  

Digging Dinosaurs (PBS-WHYY) (1988) - Something I managed to record of TV back in the day, though not much of it, about the uncovering and preparation of Avaceratops. Bone Dry. 

Maia: A Dinosaur Grows Up (1988) - A VHS version of the picture book, with narration and the whole spiel.  Actually not to bad for what it is, but it is what it is.  The art for that book is rather wonderful. 

Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives (1988) - David.  Attenburrough. Need I say more?  Not one of his best, but still wonderful. Hard to track down.  

Dinosaurs (1989) - From the Smithsonian Institute, one of the video followups sold in various museums (I have one from the Royal Tyrell, but haven’t been able to track it down).  Not great, but I’ve seen worse. 

Infinite Voyage: The Great Dinosaur Hunt (1989) - A rather dry documentary, but one I find extremely relaxing and calming.  Very nostalgic for me.  But still dry. 

Vestie Video Sitter: Dinosaurs (1989) - This is for babies. It hurt to watch. 

In November, 1990, Jurassic Park (novel) was released, and thus began the great shift. 

In Search of the Dragon: The Great Dinosaur Hunt of the Century (1991) - a.k.a. The Dinosaur Project, The Great Dinosaur Hunt, The Hunt for China’s Dinosaurs.  Edited into a 1 hour NOVA special from a nearly two hour documentary, all about the joint Canadian/Chinese Gobi Desert Expedition in the 1980s that gave us Mamenchisaurus among many other species.  With another stop in the Arctic for good measure.  Some good stop motion and pencil animation for Troodon round this one out. 

A&E’s Dinosuar! (1991) - There’s so many things named “Dinosaur” that I have to specify.  Hosted by Walter Cronkite, this is rather dry, but still entertaining documentary series has some nightmare-fuel puppet-work.  The ‘sad’ music gets caught in my head sometimes when I think about it.  It is 4 episodes long.  “The Tale of a Tooth”, “The Tale of a Bone”, “The Tale of an Egg”, and “The Tale of a Feather”

T. Rex: Exposed (1991) - a Nova Documentary on T. Rex.  Not too bad overall, focusing on the Wrankle Rex unearthing. Parts of it are available on Youtube, but not all of it.  

The Case of the Flying Dinosaur (1991) - the third in the “NOVA” 91 trilogy, this covers the bird-dinosaur connection as it was still contentious at the time. 

PBS’ The Dinosaurs! (1992) - A gold standard for documentaries on dinosaurs. The hand drawn animation with colored pencil style still hold up today. The narrator has a bit of an accent and pronounces “Dinosaur” oddly, but that is the only complaint I can really give. It has 4 episodes: “The Monsters Emerge”, “Flesh on the Bones”, “The Nature of the Beast”, “Death of the Dinosaurs.”

Muttaburrasaurus: Life in Gondwana (1993) - A half-hour short about dinosuars and mesozoic life in Australia. Solid stop motion animation. Australian Accents makes it fun to listen too.

NOVA: The Real Jurassic Park (1993) - Jeff Goldblum narrates this bit of scientists going on about “But what if we really did it?” Quite fun, lotta fun details the movies and even the books didn’t get into. My favorite bit had Robert Bakker talking to a game keeper at the Rockefeller Refuge in a Louisiana Cypress Swamp about what could happen if they kept a few dinosaur there (Edmontosaurus, Triceratops, and T. Rex).  Namely, he talks about housing ‘about a thousand” Edmontosaurs on the 86K acre facility, with 2 or 3 mated pairs of Rexes.  It’s fun getting numbers like that. 

Bill Nye the Science Guy “Dinosaurs” (1993) - BILL! BILL! BILL! BILL! BILL!  Not a bad kids entry for documentaries. Available from Netflix. 

Paleoworld (1994-1997) - Running originally for 4 years, and being revamps once along the way, this rather dry, “Zoom in on paleoart” style of documentary was a good holdover for bigger things, and covered some pretty niche topics.  Much of the later version has been uploaded to youtube. 

Dinosaur Digs: A Fossil Finders Tour (1994), Dinosaurs: Next Exit (1994) - These films hurt me.  They hurt me so much.  I’ve seen some painful things, but these are hour long tour advertisements for road trips with annoyingly earworms.  Available on youtube, but I ain’t linking anything! 

Eyewitness: Dinosaur (1994) - Not a bad documentary, but I still hold a grudge on it for replacing Wil Vinton’s work at my local museum! Still, it is narrated by Martin Sheen. The clip selection is wide and varied, but we’re still getting The Lost World (1925) footage. 

Planet of Life (1995) - This documentary series is rather dry, but boasts some interesting coverage of topics.  Though some of it’s conclusions regarding dinosaurs are... not great.  Still, the episode “Ancient Oceans” is a favorite of mine. 

Once Upon Australia (1995) - The bests stop motion documentary on Australia’s prehistory. Has some humor to is, and Australian fauna that it does cover is solid.  Though finding out how one of the animals is spelled, ( Ngapakaldia) drove me nuts for literally decades. 

Dinosaurs: Myths and Reality (1995) - Like a little more polished episode of Paleoworld, with a lighter-voiced narration, this covers common myths about dinosaurs. Overall, a Meh.  But it has a LOT of movie clips. Which makes sense given it was funded by the Disney Channel! 

The Ultimate Guide: T. Rex (1995) - The Ultimate Guide series of docs were overall rather solid, as was the Tyrannosaurus one.  Stop Motion animation along with puppets and some minor CG help round out the normal talking heads and skeleton mounts.  Along with a solid narrator, it has a real mood to it.  

The Magic School Bus “The Busasaurus” (1995) - The original Magic School Bus was a solid series, and their episode on Dinosaurs bucks trends even the reboot didn’t cover.  The core thrust here wasn’t just dinosaur information, but the idea that Dinosaurs were not Monsters, but animals.  And they conveyed it in a unique way.  

I may do more of these mini-reviews, but there are a LOT of documentaries post The Lost World: Jurassic Park that don’t have as much easy access.  Like, I’ve seen them, but digging out links/citing places to watch them is a lot harder. 

[oneweekoneband]

I’m slightly nauseous already with knowing I’m going to say this, but what does “self-awareness”  even mean? In modern parlance, as a descriptive phrase, as a comment on art? I’m asking in earnest, like, I’ve been Googling lately, which for me is basically on par with doctoral study in terms of academic rigor. The self is king, anyway, tyrant, so where is the line of distinction between material that intentionally is nodding at some truth about the artist’s life and what’s just, like, all the rest of the regular navel-gazing bullshit. I mean, I’m all self, I am guilty here. I can’t get it out of my poems or even make it more quiet. This is the tenth time I’ve invoked “I” in the space of six sentences. Processing art has always necessitated a certain amount of grappling with the creator, but the busywork of it lately grows more and more tedious. Joy drains out of my body parsing marks left behind not just in stylistic tendencies and themes, but in literal, intentional tags like graffiti on a water tower. This feels an age old and moth-holed complaint, dull, and I am no historian, or really a serious thinker of any kind. I’ve now complained at some length about self-referential art, but didn’t I love how Martin Scorsese nodded to the famous Goodfellas Copacabana tracking shot with the opening frames of last year’s The Irishman? Didn’t I find that terribly fun and sort of sweet? So there’s distinctions. I’m only saying I don’t know with certainty what they even are. I’m unreliable, and someone smarter than me has likely already solved my quandary about why self-knowledge often transforms into overly precious self-reflexivity in such a way that the knowledge is diminished and obscured, leaving only cutesy Easter eggs behind. Postmodernism has birthed a moralizing culture where art exists to be termed either “self-aware Good” or “self-aware Bad”.  Self-referentiality in media is so commonplace, so much the standard, that what was once credited as metatextual inventiveness often feels lazy now. In 1996, Scream was revitalizing a genre. Today, two thirds of all horror movies spend half their running time making sure that you know that they know they’re a horror movie, which is fine, I guess, except sometimes you just wanna watch someone get butchered with an axe in peace. 

This is all to say that in 2020 Taylor Swift looked long and hard upon her image in the reflecting pool of her heart and has written yet another song about Gone Girl.

“mirrorball” is a very good piece of Gone Girl —feels insane to tell anyone reading a post on a blog what Gone Girl is but, you know, the extremely popular 2012 novel about a woman who pretends to have been murdered and frames her husband for it, and subsequently the 2014 film adaption where you kinda see Ben Affleck’s dick for a second—fanfiction. It would be a fine song, a good song, really, even if it weren’t that, if it were just something normal and not unhinged written by a chill person who behaves in a regular way, but we need to acknowledge the facts for what they are. When Taylor Swift watched Rosamund Pike toss her freshly self-bobbed hair out of her face and hiss, “You think you’d be happy with some nice Midwestern girl? No way, baby. I’m it!” her brain lit up like a Christmas tree, and she’s never been the same. If you Google “taylor swift gone girl” there waiting for you will be a medium sized lake’s worth of articles speculating about how Gone Girl influenced and is referenced in past Swift singles “Blank Space” and “Look What You Made Me Do”. This is not new behavior, and if anything it’s getting a bit troubling to think that it’s been this long since Taylor’s read another book. Still, while the prior offerings were a fair attempt at this particular feat of depravity, “mirrorball” has brought Taylor’s Amy Elliott Dunne deification to stunning new heights. And most importantly, Taylor has done a service to every person alive with more than six brain cells and a Internet connection by putting an end to the “Cool Girl” discourse once and for all. By the power invested in “mirrorball”, it is hereby decreed that the Cool Girl speech from Gone Girl is neither feminist or antifeminist, not ironic nor aspirational. No. It’s something much better than all that. It’s a threat. I ! Can ! Change ! Everything ! About ! Me ! To ! Fit ! In !

Gone Girl (2012) by Gillian Flynn

“mirrorball” (2020) by Taylor Swift

When the twinkly musical stylings of Jack Antonoff, a man I distinctly distrust, but for no one specific reason, whirl to life at the beginning of this song I feel instantly entranced, blurry-brained and pleasure-pickled like an infant beneath a light-up crib mobile or, I guess, myself in the old times, the outside times, three tequila sodas deep under the disco lights at The Short Stop. Under a mirrorball in my head. I know very little about music, as a craft, and I really don’t care to know more. I’m happy in a world of pure, dumb sensation. I’m not even sure what kind of instruments are making these jangly little sounds. I just like it. I am vibing. We may not ever be able to behave badly in a club again, but I can sway to my stupid Taylor Swift-and-the-brother-of-the-lady-who-makes-like-those-sweatshirts-with-little-sayings-or-like-vulvas-which-famous-white-women-wear-on-instagram-you-know-what-I-mean song, pressing up onto my tiptoes on the linoleum tile of our kitchen floor and can feel for a second or two something approaching bliss. “mirrorball” is a lush sound bath that I like a lot and then also it’s about being all things to all people, chameleoning at a second’s notice, doing Oscar worthy work on every Zoom call, performing the you who is good, performing the you who is funny, performing the you who draws a liter of your own blood and throws it around the kitchen then cleans it up badly all to get your husband sent to jail for sleeping with a college student... Too much talk about making and unmaking of the self is way too, like, 2012 Tumblr for me now, and I start hearing the word “praxis” ring threateningly in my head, but I’m not yet so evolved that I don’t feel a pull. Musings on the disorganized self—on how we are new all the time, and not just because of all the fresh skin coming up under the dead, personhood in the end so frighteningly flexible—are always going to compel me, I’m afraid, but that goes double for musings on the disorganized self which posit that Taylor Swift still thinks Amy Dunne made some points.

Because on “mirrorball” Taylor is for once not hamfistedly addressing some “hater”, in the quiet and the lack of embarrassing martyrdom it actually offers an interesting answer to the complaint that Taylor is insufficiently self-aware. This criticism emerges often in tandem with claiming to have discovered some crack in the chassis of Swift’s public self, revealing the sweetness to be insincere. My instinct is to dismiss this more or less out of hand as just a mutation of the school of thought that presumes all work by women must be autobiography. And, regardless, it is made altogether laughable by the fact that anyone actually paying attention has known since at least Speak Now, a delightful record populated by the most appalling, horrible characters imaginable, and all of them written by a twenty year old Taylor Swift, that this woman is a pure weirdo. To accuse Taylor Swift of lacking in self-awareness is a reductive misunderstanding, I think, of artifice. Being a fake bitch takes work. Which is to say, if we agree that her public self is a calculated performance—eliding the fact that all public selves are a performance to avoid getting too in the weeds yadda yadda— why, then, should it be presumed that performance is rooted in ignorance? Would it not make more sense that, in fact, someone able to contort themselves so ably into various shapes for public consumption would have a certain understanding of the basic materials they’re working with and concealing? Taylor Swift, in a decade and a half of fame, has presented herself from inside a number of distinct packages. The gangly teenager draped in long curls like climbing wisteria who wrote lyrics down her arms in glitter paint gave way to red lipstick, a Diet Coke campaign, and bad dancing at awards shows. There was the period where she was surrounded constantly by a gaggle of models, then suddenly wasn’t anymore, and that rough interlude with the bleached hair. The whole Polaroid thing. Last year she boldly revealed she’s a democrat. Now it’s the end of the world and she’s got frizzy bangs and flannels and muted little piano songs. Perhaps this endless shape-shifting contradicts or undermines, for some, the pose of tender authenticity which has remained static through each phase, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been doing it all on purpose the entire time. I’ve never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try...

In the Disney+ documentary—which, in order to watch, I had to grudgingly give the vile mouse seven dollars, because the login information that I’d begged off of my little sister didn’t work and I was too embarrassed to bring it up a second time—Taylor referred to “mirrorball” as the first time on the album where she explicitly addressed the pandemic, referring to the lyrics that start, “And they called off the circus, Burned the disco down,” and end with “I’m still on that tightrope, I’m still trying everything to get you laughing at me,” which actually did made me laugh, feeling sort of warmly foolish and a little fond, because it never would have occurred to me that she was trying to be literal there. I suppose we really do all contain multitudes. Hate that.

[dailyaudiobible]

01/12/2021 DAB Transcript

Genesis 26:17-27:46, Matthew 9:1-17, Psalms 10:16-18, Proverbs 3:9-10

Today is the 12th day of January welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I'm Brian it is great to be here with you today…today as we continue our journey forward in and through the…the first month of this year, the month of January. And we are…we’re well on our way. And, so, as is our custom day by day step-by-step, we enter into a rhythm that allows us to come around this Global Campfire as a community and hear the Scriptures spoken over us, and give some things to think about and meditate upon and to know that we’re not alone in this endeavor no matter what time you might be listening to Daily Audio Bible no matter what time you click play somebody else in the world is also there. There's never a time when this isn’t…when this isn’t just going out into the world. And, so, that is a beautiful thing to know. We’re not in this together and we’re pushing into this second week approaching in a few days the center of the first month. And we are on a journey and we’re not alone and that is a beautiful thing. So, let's dive in and take that next step. We…we’re reading about Jacob and Esau yesterday and sort of the conniving of a birthright away from the firstborn son Esau that was given to Jacob and…well… we’ll continue that story. Genesis chapter 26 verse 17 through 27 verse 46. And we’re reading from the New Living Translation this week.

Commentary:

Okay. Once again, the book of Proverbs, the voice of wisdom is speaking to us and we can hear these phrases and these stanzas of wisdom and take them to hearty, actually pay close close attention to what's being said and promised, or just kinda let it go by us and “yeah yeah yeah, I kinda know that. I know I should honor the Lord with my wealth. Like I’ve been told that all along.” And yeah, we probably have. But there's more to this story. “Honor the Lord with your wealth and the best part of everything you produce.” In other words, your best…your best goes to God and in exchange he will fill your barns with grain and your vats will overflow with good wine. And we may be like, “well…I don't need a barn of grain.” If you were in the time that these words…that these words are being spoken that would be a promise that you're going to be okay, that your needs will not only be met but you will have a surplus and you will be able to use that surplus wisely to not only care for and preserve your own family, but to care for and preserve others. So what God is essentially telling us, what wisdom is speaking to us is of our utter dependence upon God. What we may be able to accumulate in this life on our own without God, the Bible will tell us over and over things like “that will be moth-eaten, that will be destroyed, that will disappear like a vapor.” But walking with God the most-high, who owns the earth, like created the earth has a claim to the planet as well as the universe and all of its resources. Like we have all these boundary lines for our planets. And God permits all of this is if we have ownership, but this is God's world, He made it, He owns it. So, certainly he can get us the resources that we need if we trust in Him by giving our best first. And again we can just look at wisdom here and the voice of wisdom and we could say, “I don't believe that” and not try, not even…not even make an attempt to see if it's real or we can listen to the voice of wisdom and watch it play out in our lives.

And then we zoom back to where we began today in the book of Genesis and we traveled along with Isaac and him having to move around and find a settled place where he could be with his family. And then we watched the animosity grow between Jacob and Esau. And we are at the point now where Jacob has finagled the birthright and the blessing of the firstborn for himself. And Esau is obviously furious, so furious that he's consoling himself by making plans to kill his brother. And, so, Rebekah, Jacob's mother, wants Jacob to flee back to her family, back to her brother and his name is Laban. And we met Laban. Remember when the servant of Abraham went to find Rebekah and when he put the nose ring and the bracelets on her, and she went home. It was Laban who came to see the servant and make the inquiries. So, Rebekah is telling her son Jacob, “go back to my brother Laban” and that's what he's going to do. And we are also starting to get a small sense of geography. Some places are being named. And again, you know, you read the place names or even the people names in the Bible and it's…there so unfamiliar to the culture that we live in and we just kind of glaze over it all. We don't have a map. We don't know the geography. We don't know where things are. And, so, we just imagine in our minds but we’re beginning to hear of places, places like Beersheba, the well of the oath. That's an important place that actually until this very day still exists, and it will become the southern border of a future nation of Israel - from Dan to Beersheba. So, we’re starting to get a sense that Beersheba’s here in the South. And it is. It's right on…right on the edge of the desert. These places exist. You can see many of the places that we’re gonna visit in the Bible in a resource that we…that we worked on for five years. It's called Promised Land and it’s in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. We’ll send you some…a couple of DVDs but we’ll also give you the digital version of it right on the spot. And basically, what it is is over 70 different locations that are biblical verified archaeological locations that…that major things happen in in the Bible, like Beersheba. That's one of them. And, so, you can see these places, not just in a static kind of one-dimensional photograph, but actually filmed where you can kinda get a sense of the scope and the space all around it. More like a 360 kind of view of what the place looks like today and that the place existed and has stories that have been told for thousands of years from that place. So, there is a resource in the Daily Audio Bible shop that can take this journey even deeper and give you a visual of many of the places that we are reading about and will read about in the Bible. So, check that out.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for all of the different nuances and all of the different complexions, all of the different angles that it comes to us in, whether that be a narrative story or whether that be in spoken wisdom unfiltered into our lives or whether that be in stanzas of adoration and worship in the Psalms. All of the issues of life begin to emerge as we immerse ourselves in the Bible. And, so, we open ourselves and say, Holy Spirit come plant the words in our lives that we might yield the fruit of the Holy Spirit in…in our lives and that it may be visible transformation to those around us we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it’s the website, it’s where you find what's going on around here.

And, yeah, the Daily Audio Bible Shop, we were just talking about this. This is where you can find resources like the Promised Land films and take your journey as deep as you want to go and as wide as you want to go. But dive in. The Bible is also intriguing and so powerful in our lives if we hadn't noticed that already. The Bible’s been speaking volumes to us right out of the gate and it doesn't stop it just continues to speak all the way through the year. And, so, often it speaks things that we need right when we need them. And that has just so profoundly beautiful to watch, just to watch God work through it in us so that we’re hearing things when we need to hear them and they’re changing us. So, check out the resources in the Daily Audio Bible Shop.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that dailyaudiobible.com as well. There is a link on the homepage and grateful, humbly grateful for everyone who has clicked that link. If you are using the Daily Audio Bible app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if that's your preference, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement you can hit the Hotline button in the app, the little red button up at the top and share from there, or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Good morning DAB family God bless you all. Jeff Scepter, a longtime listener but your wife is a newbie and she just completed I think you said her first year or something like that. I am praying for the wisdom of the Lord to be upon her in the name of Jesus and I’m believing in the name of Jesus that she is going to thrive in this community as you have been. Praise you Jesus. And welcome, welcome, welcome to your wife in the name of Jesus. Hallelujah Lita. Grace filled DeCastro you’re returning to work as a teaching assistant. I am praying for you sister in the name of Jesus for you and those around you. I am praying for the children in the name of Jesus. Hope from the Heartland you first called in to share you know how much you enjoyed doing Instacart and listening to the Christmas party and then your following message was about losing your mom. I am so so sorry. I am praying for the peace of God to be upon you all. I am praying for that comforter to just cover you in His love in the name of Jesus. Airport Missionary you called in sharing your gratitude and how thankful you are in regard to the job that had been prayed for for you and how interesting the experience has been. And I am praying with you sister I am praying for you and I am praying for all those lives that you are touching along the way. Zinab from London God bless you. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I can just say welcome. You know, the DAB community has been amazing in my life and I know it will be for yours and your double DABber. Hooray. Yay! God bless you. Esther from Orlando. I love you all.

Hey DAB family this is Tiffany in New Mexico. I wanted to call in because yesterday I was sick. I’m actually still a little sick but after spending half the morning just laying in bed watching Hallmark movies it suddenly dawned on me that I could be better spending my time getting on the app and going to the Prayer Wall and praying for people. And I know that Brian mentions it quite frequently, but I just wanted to remind you guys that there are so many prayer needs on the Prayer Wall. And it’s…it’s the people that may be afraid to actually call in with a prayer request or some people just need more immediate prayer. So, I just wanted to encourage each of you that if you just have a couple minutes each day to go on to the Prayer Wall and just meet some of these prayer needs because that’s what we are, where a family that prays for one another. So, anyway it blessed my…the rest of my day yesterday being sick in bed and I just thought I might remind you guys that it could also be a blessing for you as well. So, anyway. Love you all. Take care. Bye.

Happy new year Brian and fellow DABbers and I’m so deeply invested in this community that I am now a triple DABber. The saying goes that the third time is a charm and I was definitely charmed by little Ezekiel at DABK. Oh, my word Zeke is a wonder kid I tell you. It warms my heart to hear him read in such pureness and innocence and he is so eager to read the Bible. The interaction with his mom is just adorable. Good job Brian and Jill. God bless you. Okay a big shout out to those who continue to pray for our children and grandchildren, especially Duane who has been so consistent over the years. Know that I pray for your voice too. And Rose, I love your prayers. I offer up a yes and amen for all the prayers that come in for kids and grandkids. Okay, the Christmas party was off the chart. Like Cherry I enjoyed the party with an active imagination sitting by the campfire throwing on the log here and there and partying without even having to practice social distancing. How about that? One last thing before I run out of time. Mike, that was a beautiful statement you made to Brian and I join thoughts with you to continue praying that the Lord will protect him from burnout. When you mentioned that he’s always here for the community I thought of the…the post man, the postman slogan which says rain sleet or snow nothing stops this man of God. And Brian you are very much appreciated and loved. Well, I gotta go running out of time. So, Charm DABber out. Peace on.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible community this is Diane Olive Braun, and I am an encourager, just one of many, many, many, many. So, I so love this community and I’m gathering around the campfire and putting my logs on warming my hands and my heart. Oh, today I listened to the January 7th 2021. O, what can I say? What can I say? Forgiveness. Oh, thank you Brian, thank you Jill, thank you Ezekiel. Oh Ezekiel, breathing in and say Jesus forgives me. Breathe out all this junk. I just…I’m so sorry. I’ve been so touchy, fretful, resentful. I’ve been so offended. When someone offends me, I get so angry. Jesus says take no offense. And Abraham and Sarah, they were so quick to obey. I’ve been slow to obey. I’m gonna delight myself in…

Hello, I’m Metoo and I’m coming from India, a small place named New Bombay. This is the very first time that I’m listening to the Daily Audio Bible and this has been seven days now and I’m listening to Brian and it has been very encouraging. And also, has been guiding me as well. I look forward to complete the…the whole Bible and towards the end of the year and I look forward and believe that there will be a lot of books and the words from God from the Lord that will guide us each day. This has been a really good seven days and I look forward to hearing each and every session of the Daily Audio Bible. Thank you so much. God bless you all for doing such a great job. God bless you all with wisdom and I thank you…

Hi DAB family this is Lisa from Missouri. I’m calling in because two years ago today I started listening to the DAB. I accidentally came across the app, downloaded it and started listening. I caught up for the six days that I missed. Listening to the DAB and listening to Brian and listening to the prayers of the community and the encouragement and the stories that the DAB community has shared has played a huge part in what God has done in my life over the last two years, how God has transformed my heart and transformed me from the inside out. I re-dedicated my heart can’t May…in May of 2019. I grew up in a Christian home. I went to church. I was saved at a young age but because…but I did stray from that for some years and…but God drew me back and I just want to thank Brian. Thank you Brian for your faithfulness to us, for teaching us and showing us who God really is and how much he loves us. If you’re new to this community and you just started listening, hang in there. Keep listening. God will move in your life. He will open your heart and you will receive so much from him. Hang in there. Keep listening. God bless everyone. Have a…

[aion-rsa]

Star Wars: What the Boba Fett Disney+ Series Could Be About

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Boba Fett has long been one of the most iconic and controversial characters in Star Wars. Thanks to a killer character design that launched a thousand cosplays, Boba Fett has long outlived the importance of his role–and unceremonious apparent death–in the Original Trilogy. But as most Star Wars fans know, those films are rarely the be all and end all of a Star Wars character’s story.

The Legends continuity of Expanded Universe books and comics spent a lot of time exploring Boba Fett’s later adventures after Return of the Jedi, and while those stories are no longer canon, it’s clear that Disney has long wanted to follow suit on screen — originally with a live-action movie and now with The Mandalorian. But it seems the infamous bounty hunter’s return won’t just be contained to one popular Disney+ series.

Deadline reports that there may also be a Boba Fett spin-off series in the works for the streaming service. You might be wondering just what that might look like. Well, we have some theories.

Stream your Star Wars favorites right here!

How Did Boba Get Out of that Sarlacc Pit? 

Ever since Boba Fett revealed himself in the final seconds of The Mandalorian‘s “The Passenger,” fans have been wondering just what he’s doing on the show. Played by Temuera Morrison, the actor who played Jango Fett and the clone troopers in the Prequel Trilogy, Boba Fett only appears briefly, watching from a cliff as Din Djarin and the Child zoom through the Tatooine desert, a permanent scowl on his scarred face.

It’s impossible to tell from this scene what exactly his motivations are at this point. We know The Mandalorian takes place five years after Boba Fett took a dive into the sarlacc pit, which probably means he’s been roaming the desert for quite a while since his escape. Why hasn’t he gotten his armor back after all of this time? And how did he escape the Great Pit of Carkoon in the first place? The Legends continuity endeavored to answer the latter question and it could possibly hint at the way Disney will approach the subject.

Boba Fett first escaped the sarlacc pit in the 1991 comic book event Dark Empire by Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy. It’s revealed in the book that the bounty hunter’s armor protected him from the beast’s digestive system long enough for him to fight his way out. In the 1996 short story collection Tales From Jabba’s Palace, J.D. Montgomery penned a story about that very same escape. “A Barve Like That: The Tale of Boba Fett“ is a far-out story that reveals the bounty hunter was able to establish a telepathic connection with the sarlacc’s consciousness and use concussion grenades to blow up the monster’s insides. Then the 1998 novel The Mandalorian Armor by K.W. Jeter explored the direct aftermath of his escape, revealing that it was rival bounty hunter Dengar who found the half-dead Boba Fett in the desert and nursed him back to health.

In the past, Disney has canonized elements of the Legends continuity when they fit the modern timeline (see: Grand Admiral Thrawn), so it’s not too far-fetched to say we could see a version of the aforementioned stories at the start of a Boba Fett spin-off. For example, we’d love to see the show’s creative team adapt Montgomery’s completely unconventional take on the sarlacc escape. Imagine this as your pilot episode: the fierce bounty hunter suspended from the walls of the sarlacc’s intestines while in constant telepathic conversation with the creature that is currently digesting him. Sounds pretty cool, interestingly gross, and a big statement for a first episode. Plus, you’d finally get to see Boba Fett actually blow stuff up, something he didn’t have time to do in the movies that made him famous.

Mrs. Boba Fett & Boba Fett Jr. 

Seeing as in the Original Trilogy he was a true loner who was only really connected to Han Solo, Jabba the Hutt, and Darth Vader, it seems like there aren’t many people left in the saga who’d even remember who Boba Fett was, let alone welcome him back. But if Legends is any indication, it’s possible Boba actually has a family to turn to.

Published in the Legends comic Star Wars Tales #7, the story “Outbid But Never Outgunned“ follows Boba on a mission. But when he comes across Kiffar bounty hunter Sintas Vel, a dual blaster-wielding badass that he simply calls “Sin,” the shape of the tale changes. In a big final act reveal, we learn that the pair were once romantically involved and even had a child together. 

Read more

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Star Wars: Rare Boba Fett Toy Hits Market at Staggering Price

By Chris Cummins

There’s no reason Boba’s family couldn’t be reimagined for the new spin-off series. Maybe we could learn about a family Boba sired and loved after he escaped the pit? This would explain why the bounty hunter hasn’t left Tatooine after all of these years. Or this could be a story about the bounty hunter attempting to reconnect with his loved ones after his escape. There’s plenty to draw from in the stories that followed Tales #7, including one of my favorite tidbits–that Sintas was frozen in carbonite for almost 40 years and forgotten in the belongings of a space criminal. She was eventually saved by her granddaughter Mirta Gev decades after being imprisoned, so basically there are generations of incredible Fett women who could offer up a new perspective on this line of bounty hunters. 

Could Fett be looking for his family in the spin-off series? Maybe that’s what has put him on the path of Din Djarin? Or could Din’s hunt for fellow Mandalorians lead him to Sintas Vel or perhaps her daughter with Boba, Ailyn? Introducing Boba’s daughter would be a really cool twist, and while it’s unlikely we’ll see the characters directly adapted, many current Star Wars characters are heavily inspired by their Legends counterparts. We only need to look at how similar Ben Solo is to Jacen Solo, Han and Leia’s son in the old continuity, to see how easily Disney could do the same with Boba’s story. 

To the Sand or to the Stars? 

The lone wolf nature of the bounty hunter life means that Boba’s story will likely pick up at least some of the Western and Samurai-inspired storytelling we’ve seen done so well in The Mandalorian. After all, these influences are especially connected to Boba’s origin: George Lucas based the anti-hero on Sergio Leone’s Man with No Name. But if we look at the Legends stories in which Boba featured heavily, there’s also another rather exciting stylistic route that the series could go. 

Many of these Legends stories leaned into the sci-fi space operas–like Dune–that inspired the films. Space royalty, glittering intergalactic cities, intricate politics; basically that good pulpy science fantasy that would set the tone of a Boba show apart from The Mandalorian. With Mando already doing a great job at a Lone Wolf and Cub-inspired Samurai Western, maybe Boba Fett will be featured in more of a pure sci-fi adventure filled with nefarious alien princes, strange creatures, and exotic locales. 

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The other option is of course to focus on Boba’s career. The Mandalorian is very much a story about a reluctant hero and his beautiful adopted alien son going on a journey of self-discovery, which means there’s still space (heh heh) for a more procedural look at bounty hunting. Star Wars has a long tradition of playing with genre and tone, so it’s possible the spinoff will focus on the assassin/spy element of Boba’s character. A crime or target of the week would be a simple way to give fans the badass Boba Fett that they’ve always wanted to see on the screen. 

Of course, I still dream of an animated Boba Fett series, leaning into the Moebius-inspired 2D aesthetic of his first appearance in the much maligned Star Wars Holiday Special. For now, though, whichever route the creative team takes, it’s clear fans are thirsty for a proper Boba-centric story, especially one that will stay in canon for the foreseeable future.

The post Star Wars: What the Boba Fett Disney+ Series Could Be About appeared first on Den of Geek.

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