Joe Walsh

Ghostbusters: Afterlife: A surprisingly enjoyable decades-later sequel. Nothing will recapture the magic of the original, but this was very well done.

That would be really nice. I sure hope it comes to pass. In other news, do we need to start a monkeypox thread? 😩

It's so great that one month later the Patreon is up to 46 members!

Finished S1 of Minx (HBOMax). It's very well done, with the early 70s setting and specifically 70s SoCal well represented. And it's a fresh take on the feminist movement of the time. But keep in mind you have to be prepared for quite a bit of full frontal male nudity to watch this series. Also finished S1 of Our Flag Means Death (HBOMax). While the first couple of episodes of this pirate-themed fish-out-of-water series are weak, and there are several points in the series (especially in the final episode of the season) where you can see the writer's hands quite obviously in the plot, it's overall a true delight to watch. I appreciate the way they fictionalized the historic characters, with the broad outlines still fitting into the historic record but with the characters as presented being appropriate for this story. Plenty of laughs, and lots of great characters. Nicely done. And we finished S2 of Deadwood (HBOMax). That is one of the finest seasons of TV I've ever seen. Wow.

The Dropout (Hulu). I'm always leery of these sorts of biopics, but this one was pretty good. I liked the pace of the miniseries and enjoyed the acting. I was glad it didn't try to build empathy for Holmes or her partner in crime, and didn't try to minimize what they did.

10 dead, 3 wounded in shooting by self-described white supremacist whose manifesto tells us he believes the racist replacement theory that non-whites are being brought into the country to replace white people. Since this garbage is frequently pushed by Tucker Carlson, should he, his sponsors, and Fox News be held to account?

Well, as the author of the letter said, "Still worse is the fact that you have executive power at your fingertips that could, at the bare minimum, preserve abortion rights on federal property in every state, and yet you refuse to use it. You could save our lives with the stroke of a pen, but instead you are signing off on exorbitant supplies of weaponry for a war half a world away." Besides, isn't there always a rotating villain? It was Joe Lieberman for a long time. Now it's Joe Manchin. Dems offer endless excuses and then say "Vote for us." 50 years of voting "blue no matter who" has gotten us to this point, where we're on the verge of theocratic fascism. Yet Biden does nothing at all. Despite all the pre-election talk of his years in the senate giving him a unique ability to get his agenda passed, he claims helplessness in the face of a party member's intransigence. Heck, he nominated Manchin's wife for a cushy job. Every opportunity to tie his agenda to must-pass legislation, he's split it off and left it for dead. But even outside of the legislature, Biden could take steps to make things better and improve Dem's chances in the fall. In addition to the steps on abortion mentioned in the quote above, he could forgive at least some student loan debt, as promised during the campaign. But he's refused to do that. People waited in line for hours to give Dems the power they now enjoy. But all the Dems have given in return is an endless stream of excuses. That will surely result in a Republican landslide this fall, and then it's just one more election before we lose everything.

I wish Biden and the Dem leadership would read and heed this "Dear Joe" open letter to the President: https://newsletterwithecm.substack.com/p/dear-joe?r=56osa&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web An excerpt:

My order's in, too, and I'm so happy -- I never thought I'd be able to own this melding of my two favorite RPGs, since the Traveller HERO books go for so much on the secondary market!

I haven't heard anything new about this in a month or so. Did I miss out?

Last night we finished S1 of Perry Mason (2020, HBOMax). The season ending episode was great and very well done, like the rest of the series. I appreciate the after-the-trial sequences that wrapped up a good number of loose ends. I'm so looking forward to season 2!

An an index at least as good as the one Stanley A. Mitchell produced in the early 90s!

Well, there's this to look forward to if you do: https://twitter.com/socialistdogmom/status/1522641655081361408?s=20&t=zzbK7Nx9LVTXAdCLYHnPbw

For more than two weeks now Billy Joel's "My Life" has been on infinite repeat in my head and I'm not a Billy Joel fan and haven't heard that song in years. Help! Make it stop.

I watched pre-release versions of the first three episodes of MST3K Season 13 (Gizmoplex.com via the Roku and FireTV apps): Santo in The Treasure of Dracula, Robot Wars, and Beyond Atlantis. The new season's starting strong! I like that they have two different SoL crews, and I'm really looking forward to the return of Joel Robinson in a later episode. To me, the first and third episodes are the strongest so far, but all three are very funny and well worth watching. I also watched a bunch of old MST3K shorts on Gizmoplex. A few kind of drag, but most of them remain as hilarious as any of their riffs.

Anyone else geeking out about the new MST3K Gizmoplex and Season 13? I love that we're going to be able to stream all 150+ available classic episodes on-demand, for free, finally. (Available = episodes that the movie rights owners haven't clawed back.) And as a backer of the Kickstarter, it's been fun watching them pull it all together and experiment with their Season 13 livestreams. Anyone else looking forward to the public launch of Season 13 and the Gizmoplex tomorrow?

Moon Knight was right in there with the better Marvel Disney+ series. Not quite as good as Daredevil, Jessica Jones, or WandaVision, but very good indeed. Well worth a second watch sometime.

Champions 2e was our entry point, but it was the whole HERO System that kept us coming back instead of growing tired of the game and moving on like we did with so many others. Without Champions, I doubt we would have played any supers RPG for very long. FASERIP was fun for a while. These days, it'd be Supers! RED for occasional one-offs, I suspect.

It was nothing really special, but my favorite was when I got to see Bay Area heavy metal favorite Y&T during the Mean Streak tour. First of all, they were great at playing live. But then you get the hometown fan vibe on top of it, and it was just awesome.

Wow, having watched 5 of 10 episodes, Minx (HBOMax) is hilarious and awesome! As for our other watched-5-of-10 episodes series, Our Flag Means Death (HBOMax), it's gotten much better since Blackbeard became a main character. Much, much better.

It seems so. The 'originalists' appear to be OK with (conditional) rights to privacy from the 1st, 3rd, and 5th Amendments, but their reading of the 9th and 14th Amendments seem to be pretty darned narrow when it comes to privacy.

Oh, they have a whole menu to choose from based on the draft. Gay marriage, anti-sodomy laws, interracial marriage, contraception... It seems clear to me that, if they aren't stopped, they'll get to them all, in time, and more. And Democrats, in control of the other two branches of government, aren't even talking about eliminating the filibuster, let alone expanding the court. All they're saying is to send them more money and vote harder (curiously, voting rights are another issue they've refused to use their power on). Dems have had 50 years to codify abortion rights into law, but never did so. Now they're saying that if we just wait until the next election and give them more money and vote for them, then this time surely they'll do what's needed. I don't have a lot of hope for avoiding an increasingly fascist, anti-democratic future.

Hmm. That sounds like the 600dpi "Christian Fasy" version that's available on DTRPG and which weighs in at 49.9 mb. I think I got my copy through a Bundle of Holding offer.

Sounds great! And as a fellow married man, I completely understand. We have to plan in years what others plan in months or days. 😅