📺 The Poison Rose 🌹 🌹🌹 🥀
A noir scored with spare, smoky jazz and set in genteel 70s Galveston, the laidback unfolding of this WhoDidWhat may have bored critics, but it drew me along OK.
Both Travoltas acted well-enough, but Famke J. and B. Fraser excelled in their roles.
🎶 “Stones In My Passway” - John Mellencamp
📺 Resident Evil ⭐️⭐️✨
The first half is so bad, the only tension is from the industrial noise soundtrack and whether you can withstand the bizarre cuts and lame exposition.
It gains some momentum once the zombies start shambling, further salvaged by repeated closeups on Milla.
📺 Suburban Gothic ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Quirky, campy story about a spirit in need of being settled to rest after an old grave is disturbed during lawn maintenance
Heaping doses of Ray Wise being cruel and creepy to Matthew Gray Gubler but never enough of Kat Dennings as heroin chic sidekick
📺 The Lost Boys ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨
Fun but thinly told plot. Jami Gertz is seductive, and Kiefer Sutherland has the sneer, but it is Jason Patric who epitomizes 80s cool in his leather jacket and wing-tipped shades. The soundtrack has always starred for me and I thought I knew the lyrics…
Flies and the undead go together like bullets and guns
🎶 Sail on through the night?
Sail.
On.
I’ve been singing it “Say Hello To” for ALL of the years. Seems way more goth to me… #LostBoys
The meet cute between the Two Corey’s in the comic book shop 🤪
Gonna blame Jami Gertz for distracting me from ever noticing Alex Winter before, but I was TODAY year’s old when I realized Bill from “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” is one of the vampire gang in “The Lost Boys”
🧛♀️🩸🎸
Y’all… I REALLY should have known this by now!
📺 A Quiet Place, Part II ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Tension you can chew!
Emily Blunt and her husband did a phenomenal job of channeling nightmares without being cheesy, dependent on stupid choices, or reveling in gore. There are really not enough superlatives for this pair of films. Shhh!
📺 The New Mutants
A Marvel film made in a horror-movie style… After the catastrophic emergence of Dani Moonstar’s power, she wakes in a creepily sparse group home with 4 other teenagers: Rahne, Sam, Roberto & Ilyana.
Killers every one.
Fan Service: Rahne watching Buffy 😍
📺 I did not expect much of “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” - but the cast is delightfully loaded: Rufus, Dominic, Jimmi, and the fascinating Mary Elizabeth (as Mary Todd, ‘natch.)
📚⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ “Razorblade Tears”
S.A. Cosby has a knack for translating the grime of a hard life into an emotional journey through a thicket of jeopardies where survival is all you can win, and very few do
app.thestorygraph.com/books/a6f…
Now I can tell you to kiss my entire ass
-S.A. Cosby, “Razorblade Tears” 📚
I just re-read #Foundation, so I can assure you this is not how the books read. The series for Apple TV is going to be very different than Asimov’s epic but, so far — in ways that augur well. 🚀📚📺
New jersey, who ‘dis? 🐏🏈1️⃣ #GDTBATH 💎
Disaster will convince people that the future holds no promise to them. Already they recall the lives of their grandfathers with envy. … The feeling … that only what a man can grasp for himself at that moment will be of any account.
“Foundation” - Asimov 📚🚀
📺 No Sudden Move ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ Cheadle and Del Toro lead a stellar cast through a warren of triple-twisted criminal connections that lead from the back room of a 1950s Detroit barbershop to a corporate boardroom where a poisonous secret threatens to end everyone and their payday plans
📰 0! For the optimism of the upstart publisher who, despising the incumbent “Tribune-Herald Daily Record” newspaper, naively proclaims “Two can play at this game” while launching their New Weekly Review 🗞
📺 The Bookshop ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ A manners drama set in the UK of 1959, when a widow opens a book store against opposition from a powerful local socialite (Patricia Clarkson)
Despite the presence of Bill Nighy as her gentleman supporter it does not end in a cliche May/November romance📚
📺 Another Round ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
(EN Sub) Mads Mikkelsen in a entertaining film about four middle-aged teachers experimenting with day drinking to enliven their pedagogy.
The character ‘Specs’ will get you on the way up & back down, but it’s Mads ‘Martin’ you’ll end up rooting for
🎸 When you put on the ZZ Top documentary because you’ve seen it and can probably relax, fall right asleep…
Two hours later you’re both wired up and maudlin over some guys you have always never really known
📺 The 2021 award for Most Creative Use of an Anti-Personnel Explosive in Cinema goes to Nobody
🎶🎸 Redeemed when band covered Allman Brothers and Otis Redding (by way of the brothers Robinson…) and they blistered both, then rocked up “Lie to Me”, gender bent “Give Me One Reason To Stay Here” and then proved they have the chops to cover The Cult
Totally worth five bucks!
🎶 When the host at the bar says there’s a cover charge for the classic rock band, but you had your mouth set on their bacon burger, so you pay up; expecting Skynrd and Molly but then these soul-attacking fuckers open with Colective Soul followed by Three Doors Down
📷 🦌 Deer and Fawn
looking back at me as I was looking out to see them crossing through my back yard
📺”Forgotten Lady” ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Janet Leigh was effervescent as the aged starlet in this episode of Columbo (S5E1) with an extra twist or two.
I actually want to watch some of her old musicals now, as her charisma was clearly off the charts! Winsome is the word.
📺 ”Watching the Detectives” ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Cillian Murphy leads this quirky 2007 rom-com where the target of his obsession is an exceptionally manic “dream girl” played by then-39 year old Lucy Liu, who tortures him with her spontaneous and mysterious lifestyle.
Augusta, GA
The Ghostface Gangsters street gang … one of the fastest growing gangs in the country … made up of white supremacists.
87 People Arrested in Gang Bust
🎶 🎸🧠
“She’s got my name
(She’s got my name)
Tattooed on the backside of her brain”
- Faster Pussycat, “Tattoo”
Al-Khwārizmī lived in Baghdad, where he worked at the “House of Wisdom” (Dār al-Ḥikma) under the caliphate of al-Maʾmūn. The House of Wisdom acquired and translated scientific and philosophic treatises, particularly Greek, as well as publishing original research.
📺 “Gunpowder Milkshake” ⭐️⭐️⭐️
A neon camp take on John Wick style action with a female-forward cast. The library conceit is exactly as clever as the hotel one, but makes for easier puns. Guns, Slow-Mo and gore to excess. There is zero “woke” content, but lying fascists hate it
📚 “Project Hail Mary” ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
In the near-future, Earth is doomed due to a mysterious dimming of the Sun, but Andy Weir provides a new puzzle-solving hero to Science and Engineer the way out of certain death.
A better follow-up to Weir‘s “The Martian” than was “Artemis”
📷 🌈 I’m gonna get that pot of gold this time for sure…
Finished this rather insightful collection of Jim DeFilippi short stories : “Pals, Punks, and Pagans”
🎶🔊 if you love a groove you can screech along to, The Dead Weather might be just the thing; but “I Can’t Hear You”
📷 🦅 Soarin’ o’er Sugarloaf
📷🌱 “Feed me, Seymour!”
Industrious weaver prepares trap overnight while everyone else is sleeping
“The Tomorrow War” gets the Sci-Phi face-punch of action movie approval.
But that stinking Pratt still shouldn’t have made Yvonne cry. Jerk.
It doesn’t matter if you like motorcycles
It doesn’t matter if you liked the movie “Dumb & Dumber”
What matters is how much fun you’ll have watching these guys painstakingly recreate Harry & Lloyd’s trip to Aspen on a very insufficient “hog”
‘Fatale’ (2020)
“One mistake can change your life”
I rented this steamy thriller for Michael Ealy & Hilary Swank, and got a Mike Colter bonus. Ealy does a good job, but Swank will not be out-acted in any project.
A very twisty plot that never gets too deep : 3.5 ⭐️
For a remix of Highlander and Wanted, with a kickstart from Fast & Furious, Infinite just misses the sweet spot.
Chiwetel Ejiofor is awesomely villainous, but the protagonist as described by plot, does not match Wahlberg’s portrayal. He is also kept passive far too long.
📷 🚙 A 1930s Plymouth and a 2000s Jaguar at the same take out joint in 2021.
Another bush gives mostly blue flowers 🌱
Color range on these flowers is kinda crazy
Update : The pittie was claimed by her owner just after Animal Control had loaded her onto the truck
Somebody’s girl pittie has gone wandering and trapped my neighbor in her car with infants. Very persistent, probably hungry & thirsty.
I lured her away with a couple franks, and got her tethered beneath a tree in front yard. Called animal control to take it from here.
“The Rhythm Section” featuring Blake Lively & Jude Law, is more of a slow-burn Spy drama but my expectation was set for a bombastic actioneer, akin to a Bond film.
The training sequences and hunt for revenge worked well enough, up through a sputtering denouement.
3.5/5 ⭐️
The Carolina Trifecta :
Bojangles, Krispy Kreme, and Cheerwine
🎶 🥁 “I’m not a bum cause the TV’s on I’m not crazy because I take the right pills - Every day”
‘Salt Sweat Sugar’ -Jimmy Eat World
There are almost no “filler” characters in “Better Call Saul” (“Breaking Bad”)
Jimmy, Kim, Mike, Gus, Chuck, Nacho, Lalo - they are all very detailed people, not just roles.
Kim alone : She traces a sublime arc through the wobbles of noble intentions versus human motivations.
Iced Coffee, The Cure on shuffle, and… productizing a half-baked six year old Java prototype?
#AlmostWinning
New stereo works if I hot-wire the harness to the battery, so it’s not MY wiring that’s at fault…
Century
Crossing, nine creeks, reckless slithers through each pinch of stone bollards, wide then to pass a cropper’s mule against a Quaker’s surrey.
Falling, gravity’s swain, snaking downhill off the ridge to the high river crossing, trading rustic hayricks for rusted factories
De Niro squints and sights on the tail rotor. A few phenomenally well-placed shots later, the helicopter spins out of control and explodes against the canyon walls.
The pilot and the assassin, shooting from the landing strut at Grodin, presumably die fiery deaths.
A nearby rural lakeshore has a public beach which reopens today. The county vaccination rate for adults is under 24%
That beach will be crowded with unvaccinated adults and children, yelling to be heard over the boats from the cordoned launch ramp only yards away.
Good Luck!
Sex is great and all, but…
Have you ever had sweet southern cole slaw from the bottom of the bowl after it’s been refrigerated an extra day?
Odds that John Q. Satoshi here does NOT have the COVID vaccine inside him seem very high indeed
The quote beneath the brake light is populist Q faux-revolution drivel …
Mom was a bit of a challenge today, mood-wise. 🤷
Everybody else had a good time, so I’m calling it a success. 💐
I found my fully-vaccinated self seated in a customer-free Indian restaurant, next to the gas station the fuel light had demanded I stop at. Samosas, naan, & a spicy serving of butter chicken were enjoyed 😋
📷 🐮 I’m not saying it’s a country store, I’m just saying they have a Cow of the Month pinup calendar
📺 🍿 “Lucky Day” (2019)
The poster caught my eye, then Nina Dobrev, but Crispin Glover is, as always, a reason to watch anything.
Clifton Collins & David Hewlett are treats in support of this bloody revenge rampage mashed up with an ex-con’s romance fairy tale.
✨📖✨
“There is no promised land — anywhere. No heaven for Black folks hovering above the Mason-Dixon line. If I am not safe anywhere, then why don’t I just come back home?”
www.nashvillescene.com/arts-cult…
Browser Fact of the Day :
More people are now using an Opera browser (> 2014) than any IE version from 6-11 (< 2013)
Approximately 1.32% vs 1.10% of Global Browser Usage, per CanIUse
Tests are green again, and it’s after Midnight GMT, so that makes it both* Taco Tuesday and Cinco de Mayo (If you hold your mouth right…)
*Don’t ruin this with any joyless pedantry, just celebrate Zaragoza’s victory over the French!
Improvised standing desk for working on the deck while the spring weather is pleasant (I predict about 3 weeks until it’ll be too humid)
Had a discussion about the need to deliver WebP instead of JPEG, literally millions of our images will need converting.
Why?
Google decreed that any sites with JPEGs will be penalized in search results.
Where are those antitrust calls?
Does the market decide or does Google?
Hungry Heart
🌎 🌞
A hollowed-out tree trunk hangs by a twisted fiber along the trail at Pilot Mountain state park #EarthDay
Have had the “Dark Yonder” anthology capping off my tsundoko a while, finally finished it.
The last story, “Not Enough To Drink” by Rob Pierce, was the darkest. Perfect ending. Would have been at home in an homage to Flannery O’Connor.
🟣🎸Prince’s phenomenal guitar solo at the end of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (in tribute to George Harrison)
Location, location, location.
Parabellum Pandemic Response
One simple brick to make car dealerships love you! 💵 🛻
Second Shot of Moderna in my arm! #Vax
“Worth the deuce” #KissARMY
Endeavour S06 E03 :
Forget the chocolates, murder, and tragedy : There is no way anyone would believe Olivia Chenery’s husband would leave her.
🎶🎸🥁🎤 C’mon start a fire / in my electric chair / Baby cross my wires / Light up my hair / Overload my circuits / Let me feel the juice / Make me an offer / That I can’t refuse / BLOW MY FUSE
If life’s lessons could be reduced to single sentences, there would be no need for fiction.
- Scott Turow, author and lawyer (b. 12 Apr 1949)
🌸📷 Solo bulb is sus, tbh. I don’t remember it from last year…
🌸📷 Sprung : three weeks ago this was all grey sticks and brown mulch L
If phi is zero, then the system doesn’t exist for itself; anything with Φ^max greater than zero exists for itself, has an inner view, and has some degree of irreducibility
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/is-consci…
“We’re told that Tony Stark and Pepper Potts are an item, but no actual romantic or sexual chemistry between them is shown in the films.” - BloodKnife . com
Rebuttal: The dance scene from Iron Man (2008)
📷 🔵🐦 party beneath the bird feeder.
Too heavy to land on the perches themselves, three blues scavenge for spilled seed below.
🎶 Dave Grohl plays his hit song ‘Everlong’ on acoustic guitar (after a personal seven minute story about writing it…) 🎸🥁 #FooFighters #Everlong
Saturday morning is the perfect time to say that if you’re missing WandaVision this weekend, you can get a good version of The Vision‘s origin from the 2012 cartoon “The Avengers : Earths Mightiest Heroes”
You can jump right in to the four episode arc E14 - E17 in S2
“Billy Butcher” Motivational Poster by ‘ButcherBilly’
Last night’s prototype for a lamp shade idea… Just popped it into that existing shade as a test
Living Blindly
Happy Valentines Day to all you “Sexy MF-ers” from The Purple One 🎶🥁🎷💕
📚🇫🇷 My knowledge of Napoleonic France comes from reading the unabridged ‘Count of Monte Cristo’ by Dumas. Napoleon’s return from exile on Elba provided the intrigue that underpin the titular Dantès’ betrayal
America today feels how I imagine France did in those ‘Hundred Days’
🎙🍲 If you need something lovely this morning, I want to recommend the velvet voice of NPR’s Noel King as she charmingly learns to make Thai Chicken with Basil 🥰
Good night nodeJS.
I will most likely kill you tomorrow.
🎶 ‘Just Like Heaven’
Someone who shall remain blameless kept referencing The Cure, so I was inspired to put my faves on shuffle…
All I am saying is in the 25th century, somewhere there is a very rich salesman for a defense contractor who laughs every time he sees a Federation ship, and he absolutely refuses to step foot aboard one of them.
Streaming the next episode of Voyager which begins with a space battle that severely damages the ship.
A crewman dies after “his console exploded in his face” … from external damage?
I hate when these stupid little cliches are egregious enough to mar otherwise great episodes.
Musings on the New New Deal : Skill Plus Green
📺 ‘Save Yourselves!’
An existential crisis for a young couple leads them to disconnect from the internet & leave NYC for a week in the woods - the same week that aliens invade!
Sunita Mani (‘GLOW’, ‘Mr Robot’) is the best part of this mildly entertaining, offbeat comedy
📺 Motherless Brooklyn ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Edward Norton did everything in adapting this for film and it has a cohesive quality as a result.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw warms every scene she is in, an ingenue worthy of the definition.
Alec Baldwin as Randolph has a line which damns in recent echoes
“the systemic nature of crime in underprivileged communities is often driven by the inability of the powerful to empathize and address the concerns of the powerless. Submission to the powerful is often more important than the humanity of the powerless”
-The Way of the Laser
The four horseman of “I ain’t got no dipping sauce”
The Big Sleep (1978)
I’d seen the 1946 Bogart & Bacall version a few times, but never Robert Mitchum’s, who quips well, but fails to menace as Marlowe should.
The transplant from LA to the English countryside was odd, but otherwise the plot is faithful to the novel.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
On Kiva, you can loan money to alleviate poverty around the world.
This morning I added the Dominican Republic and Mali to the countries where I’ve made a loan to help someone help themselves.
Mine is only one drop in the ocean, add yours
Good Morning America! 🇺🇸
It’s a great day to wake up refreshed and push progress forward for the least of us everywhere
🎶🥁’Who Owns Who’ - Prophets of Rage
Stealing More Than Ardent Glances
📺 Thoughts on WandaVision S1 E1
🎶🎸”Goodbye Year, Goodbye” - ‘X’
The most prophetic song released in 2020…
“The Blurred Odyssey” - ‘The Sh-Booms’
(2019 Soul/Funk/Blues)
1️⃣ This year is The One! Happy New Year 🥳 2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣1️⃣ 🎉
The moral of the story is to never look behind the drop ceiling… 🙈🚧
Imagine posting a list of “Essential Episodes of ‘The Expanse’” 🤪🤓😜
You gotta watch EVERY episode AT LEAST TWICE! 🚀👽⭕️☄️
📺🎄OK, “Fatman” let’s do this…
Golden Shuffle?
Thunderkiss ’65 - Rob Zombie Black Shuck - The Darkness Arcane Montane - The Sword So Easy - Eagles of Death Metal
Lo the bare branches of winter Begun to reveal The demense of his lordship Looking down from high upon the hill
Lenny’s scream to kick off that horn outro over the epic groove : the last 30 seconds of ‘Always on the Run’ is in the pantheon.
Danger, Disappointment, and Duty in ‘The Cloud’
🎶 Straight to Hell by Drivin’ N’ Cryin’🎸
🔗 Trump has, thoroughly and completely, lost the 2020 election. Now who’s going to tell the Republican base?
Or more to the point, who’s going to tell them they’re being scammed? #μβ www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/…
📺🖖‘Phage’ Star Trek : Voyager S1E05 Crew-mate Neelix has had his LUNGS stolen by a mystery alien… so the hologram doctor invents HoloLungs because they can’t replicate replacements for his organs. Except they replicated them every time he has used the transporter… ⭐️ 6.5/10
📺 👽 🚀 My rewatch of Star Trek has reached the point (DS9 S3E12) where I get to start interleaving Voyager episodes!
Tuvok, Paris, Kim, Torres, Chakotay - Janeway ended up with a great crew (and the show had a very likable cast right out of the gate)
🎸 Every time I go on another Prince jag I veer ever closer to starting a religion on what you could learn from studying his paisley life:
“How many want to get deep tonight? How many y’all want to stay on the shore though?”
Many people will struggle this winter, but you can help them to have a “Holiday without Hunger” for five bucks a box at your local Food Lion grocery 🦃 🥣 🥖
If no Food Lion nearby, please RT with your local equivalent
🎶 ”Take The Power Back”
📷 Backyard Colors
❔Hypothetical Question:
If you REALLY believed an election had just been stolen from you, would you go play golf for two straight days or would you be elbow deep in work; fighting hard to prevent the political coup? 🗳
Dead things have fallen, and we need to put together new tools to gather them up and throw them out
🎵 “In the pines, in the pines”
🎵 Starting the day off bumping to the Jamiroquai throwback ‘Virtual Insanity’
