morganth

Spider Robinson once wrote “Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased — thus do we refute entropy.”

I went to see “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” tonight at a theater in Manhattan. The theater was clearly full of Dolly Parton fans. We all laughed and cheered, and yes, cried together. And our pain was lessened and our joy was enhanced. RIP Dolly.

#movies

I know I’ve posted on here about how sick I am of movies that are just “hey, you know that thing you love? Here it is again”. And I am genuinely sick of them.

But yes, I’m going to see “Street Fighter”, because I want to see live-action versions of Ryu throwing fireballs and Guile doing that upside down spinning kick and so on, and the trailer promises that.

If that makes me a hypocrite then I guess I’m a hypocrite.

#movies

How is it that horror movies figured out ages ago that, in most cases, you should give the viewer a taste of the horror before getting to the backstory, but video games haven’t figured out that they should give players a taste of the gameplay before getting to the backstory? So annoyingly many video games start with a huge lump of backstory before you ever get to push a button.

This video of the Integrity crew naming craters is just--well, have your hankies ready.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnEKyV4W6G4

#artemis2

Don't speak.

I’ve been rewatching “The Critic”, many years since it aired, and I understand now why it failed. Imagine the pitch: “It’s a bit like The Simpsons, except that it’s targeted to people who live in NYC and LA and think they’re smarter and more sophisticated than people in the rest of the US.”

I mean, yes, that’s me, absolutely, but you can’t build a network show on that audience.

#nyc #theCritic

Hey, friends who play D&D, question for you: Has anyone developed a system that can adapt existing D&D settings and characters with radically simplified rules?

I've been DMing for a quarter century now, and I'm getting increasingly exhausted by the complexity of the rules and the time I have to devote to them. I'm increasingly drawn to games like Dread with very simple rules. But my current campaign has been going for well over a decade, so my players have a lot invested in their characters--spells, gear, all of that--that I don't want to take away for them. Also I'm not done with the story yet so I don't want to just end the game.

Some kind of "instead of this, do that" rules document would be brilliant, if it exists.

Boosts welcome.

#dnd

Aww, "Zits" (the comic strip) is ending! Sad to see it. I enjoyed it when I was close to Jeremy's age, and I still enjoyed it when I was close to his parents' age. But newspaper comic strips are a dying business just in general, with reruns sticking around because they're cheaper than paying for new material. At least Scott Adams is gone, I guess?

(That's uncharitable of me. I actually really enjoyed "Dilbert" for a while. But he went off the deep end with his beliefs, and the more they bled into the comics the less enjoyable the comics were, and I had to stop reading.)

#comics #zits #dilbert

Apple Music, in its latest version, has added the ability to generate a playlist based on a prompt. Their suggestions were simple things like “songs to drink coffee to”, but I decided to have more fun than that as I tried it out.

“We’re in the library of an English country house in the Jazz Age. A butler is handing out drinks, and a gramophone is playing.” produced a set of upbeat 1930s jazz.

“I’m a 19 year-old skateboarder in Southern California in the 1990s, and I’m blasting music as I pull off sick moves.” produced a list of era-appropriate alternative and punk. I would have added some SoCal-specific stuff, especially West Coast hip-hop, but it’s pretty good.

In the icebox system, the plums are desired by two separate but equally important people: The host, who put the plums in the icebox, and William Carlos Williams, who ate them.

These are their stories.

*dunk dunk*

(My wife and I are making dinner.)

Me, to my wife: I’m chopping up some cilantro, because fresh cilantro makes everything better. Except birthday cake.

*pause*

And even then I’d try it.

Y'all, please help me find a joke that has been nagging at my brain for a while. I think it was from a sitcom but I couldn't swear to it. It was a character who was described as "the (adjective) (noun)", and objected to it with something to the effect of "I'm not (adjective), I'm not (noun), and I'm certainly not THE!" With the funny bit being the denial of "the".

Unsurprisingly it's very difficult to search.

Boosts welcome.

I genuinely don’t know how to review “Buddy”, because I saw it next to a kid who…I don’t know, I’m terrible at kid ages…I’m guessing was between 10 and 14. And she was freaking. The crap. Out. Squealing and screaming and grabbing at her face and grabbing at her mom. So I wasn’t so much experiencing the movie as I was experiencing her experiencing the movie.

I’ll try to put together my own thoughts later but for now my review of the movie is hers:

“No, don’t do that!” (Scream that is also kind of a laugh) (Grabs Mom)

Knowing what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Who even does that?