This blog entry is presented as shareware, please mail me $4 if you want the rest of this entry…
Greetings from my hovel on the shores of the Bow.
Today I am thinking about the MSDOS games I loved as a lad. Commander Keen! Crystal Caves! Jazz Jackrabbit! Duke Nukem (and later, Duke3D). Hugo’s House of Horrors! God, there were so many. Primitive, obviously, but I spent hundreds if not thousands of hours on them. Eventually there were CD compilations of hundreds of shareware games and I’d spend entire weekends just scrolling through those discs, occasionally finding some gem and spending hours playing the first installments.
I think of this mainly because one of the tiny anarchists who live in my house watches a lot of youtubers who play, what can ONLY be described as utterly dogshit advertisement delivery platforms in the guise of computer games. These “games” are janky, ugly and boring. Occasionally, I will cave and allow him to acquire and play one of these wretched things himself. Without exception they turn out to be garbage. One assumes the youtubers are being paid by the con-artists who develop these “games”. (the anarchist in question is also a devotee of Minecraft, lest you think he’s completely without taste). I hate that the software targeted at him are at best such lazy pieces of shit and at worst slot machines designed to deliver ads and extract money (shit’s locked down, he can’t actually spend any of my money).
I know every generation says “things was better in my day”, but in this very specific example? I think they probably were.
Currently Playing: LEIDUNGR – “Odainsacre”
Currently Reading: RECORD OF LODOSS WAR: THE GREY WITCH, Ryo Mizuno
Showed a friend Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure for the first time last night. That movie holds up INCREDIBLY well. It’s such a cute and above-all JOYFUL film. A delightful, lighthearted comedy from a time before cynicism and irony and sarcasm in mainstream comedy. Bill & Ted is the true antithesis of what I hate about modern comedies.
Everyone in modern comedies sounds alike, they’re all aloof and ironic and snide. The jokes are all mean-spirited (when there ARE jokes instead of lightly edited, shitty improv), the characters are all unlikable and every single one of the films is interchangeable. Bill & Ted, by contrast is this beautiful, slight adventure about being decent and sweet that is unlike anything else. I really hope the coming Bill & Ted Face the Music captures that same joy that Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey managed so effortlessly.
Also, Excellent Adventure gave us one of the all-time greatest lines in the history of cinema:
Currently Playing: Random Japanese 80s Citypop Compilations Currently Reading: THE FLOWERS OF EVIL COMPLETE EDITION VOL. 1, Shuzo Oshimi
Running low on instant ramen again… this is a problem
Greetings from my hovel on the shores of the Bow.
During the extra time I’ve spent in bed resting and recovering from surgery I started watching an anime called “Yuru Club” (anglicized as Laid Back Camp). This is the most relaxing, cozy thing I’ve ever seen. It’s about a group of high school girls and their love of camping. They go camping. They talk about camping. They buy camping stuff and test it out. Sometimes on the way to camping they go onsens and they cook and eat food while camping. There is no tension. There is no conflict. There is just cute, wholesome girls camping.
This might sound boring? But, I assure you it is not. Despite there being no conflict, interpersonal or otherwise, the characters all continue to develop throughout the season, the animation (particularly the background scenery) is gorgeous, the music is beautiful (I’ve been listening to the OST to fall asleep at night) and the fact that I only have 2 episodes left bums me out. If you want something funny, cute, calm and relaxing I give my highest recommendation to YURU CAMP. I’m watching it on Crunchyroll, but I’m not your dad, you watch it however you want.
Currently Playing: Various Artists – “YURUCAMP Original Soundtrack” Currently Reading: FLOWERS OF EVIL COMPLETE EDITION VOL. 1, Shuzo Oshimi
Greetings from my gurney on the shores of the Bow.
It’s been a minute. Remember last week when my big plan for the blog was to recommend a double-feature of movies every day? Well, about 4 hours after posting that I found my typically sore lower back was worse than usual. I had to replace a wax seal on one of the toilets in my house and after that chore was complete my back hurt even more! I began to grow concerned that I had possibly damaged myself. By 10pm I was in a level of pain I’d never experienced in my life and made the call to go to the emergency room.
The doctor who saw me diagnosed me with a ruptured disc! This was a bummer, she had recently recovered from the exact same injury so she gave me some pain meds, showed me a youtube channel that might help me to do some rehab once the initial pain subsided some and sent me home to convalesce for… probably months.
Cut to: the following day around noon. The pain was back, no medication was touching it and it was even worse than the night before! I was told that if certain things began to occur I should return to the ER and see if maybe things were worse than we thought. So, off I went. This time the doctor I saw was not a recovered back injury patient and almost immediately told me that they had some good news and some bad news. The good news: there was no reason to think I had actually injured my back at all! The bad news: I almost certainly had a kidney stone!
I’d had one kidney stone before, years ago, but it was so small that I didn’t even realize I had it until I passed it. It hurt for a second and then I saw a tiny little 1mm stone and I shrugged and went “huh! weird!”.
One CT scan later confirmed I did indeed have a ~4mm stone. 4mm is on the bigger side of the ones you can usually pass without assistance so I was told I’d probably be sent home but that they were going to send the scan to a Urologist just to be sure. Couple hours later the Urologist informed us that the stone was stuck and I wasn’t going to be able to pass it and I would need emergency surgery.
I was transferred to the hospital where they do this sort of thing (you know what sucks? riding in an ambulance while nauseous due to the hydromorphone you’ve been given for the pain) and got all admitted and cozy. This was actually the nicest part of the whole experience as the stone had decided to sit still for a bit and the pain meds were doing their job AND I got to remove my mask! Plus, the tv in my room had TCM so I got to watch old movies, always a plus.
The following day I got my surgery, the stone was removed (I named him Henry), a ureteral stent was inserted and I was sent home to rest with instructions to remove the stent myself 96 hours later. Sounds like everything is going to be A-OK!
Well, not quite. My body REALLY didn’t like having that stent. Like at all. Like… I was more uncomfortable and in pain than I ever was with the stone. Sleeping was very rare. Painful urination was pretty much constant and I basically started panicking. Nothing I’d read or been told prepared me for how much my body would dislike this stent and as my panic ramped up my recovery slowed down and before you know it… back in the ER.
The ER doc would later send me home with some stronger meds and a lot of reassurement that while what I was experiencing was awful and pretty uncommon it was not unheard-of and my body was healing the way it was supposed to. So home I went and began what basically amounted to a 3-day panic attack.
To cut a long story short the stent came out on sunday and I instantly felt better. I’m far from 100%, (to be honest I’m probably not even 50% of normal capacity) but I’m a hell of a lot better than I was.
I count myself SO lucky that I live in this country where when people are sick we take care of them. There are resources and things available to people who need mental health support. Also, the hugest of huge shoutouts to all the health-care workers out there. Every single person I encountered in my last week at three separate hospitals was absolutely wonderful. So kind. So caring. They took wonderful care of me and one volunteer at one ER even came and held my hand while I was sitting in a wheelchair waiting to be admitted, in agony and terrified. I will never forget that person as long as I live and I wish I could tell them directly how much they meant to me in that moment.
Tomorrow hopefully I can get back to talking about manga or something.
The title has nothing to do with anything, I just saw the title of the film “Wife VS Secretary” and thought of the perfect way to improve it. Creativity in action.
Greetings from my hovel on the shores of the Bow.
This week, let’s pretend I am King and my first decree is to force everyone to watch movie double features of my choosing! Here’s today’s:
DUCK SOUP (1933) Directed by Leo McCarey. Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx) is named president/dictator of the country of Freedonia and they end up declaring war on the country of Sylvania and it’s chaos and it’s hilarious and Groucho packs more jokes into 30 seconds than most modern comedies have in their entire runtimes… and speaking of countries being run by buffoons who don’t know what they’re doing resulting in millions of people who aren’t them dying horribly…
DR. STRANGELOVE, OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964) Directed by Stanley Kubrick One of the funniest films of all time, and one that sadly never stops feeling completely relevant. This would also pair nicely with Terry Gilliam’s BRAZIL if you wanted to extend to a triple feature. Basically, nobody is driving, the people in charge don’t know what the hell they’re doing and it’s going to end up getting everybody killed! The feel-good comedy of the season.
Currently Playing: Tosca Tango Orchestra – “Waking Life Original Soundtrack” Currently Reading: I’ll get back to ya.
Read three quick and dirty crime novels this week before my brain shifted gears and I started spending more downtime watching movies.
THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE, Ed McBain THE BLACK ICE SCORE, Richard Stark THE SOUR LEMON SCORE, Richard Stark
GUTTER AND THE GRAVE was my first McBain I think. It was exactly the sort of fast-paced and grim book I needed at that moment. Going to finally dive into some of the 87th precinct books this year I think. It was also great to dip back into the fairly sizable collection of the Hard Case Crime imprint. I love what they do.
The two Starks were volume 11 and 12 of the Parker series. Parker is my favorite series of criminal novels ever. THE HUNTER placing high on my list of favorite novels of all-time. Black Ice was not as good as they usual are, there were some things to do with race that have aged poorly, but Sour Lemon was a great return to what I love about these novels. Just the unstoppable force that is Parker chasing down a guy who screwed him and stole money from him. I started DEADLY EDGE which is the 13th in the series, but have barely begun. Movies have begun to interfere.
Thinking I might start recapping the week’s movie watching too, just as soon as I think of a stupid series title I like as much as Read Icculus.
Is it really shameless self-promotion if it’s on your own blog?
Greetings from my hovel on the shores of the Bow.
I spent the morning wrestling with my stupid wordpress set up for my podcast. We’ve been doing the podcast for a very long time now and as a result it’s sort of frankenstein’d together out of various different sites, feeds, settings, plugins etc and getting them all to play nice together every month is becoming a real source of frustration. I think it might be time to just wipe everything and import all the existing episodes to something like anchor. We have a big 100th episode spectacular planned for the end of July so maybe that’s a good time to plan for the move. I’m just tired of banging my head against things I barely understand or understand with dated information every month. I just want to record the show and click upload and schedule it.
Incidentally, if you want to listen to said podcast you can do so! The show is The Bride of the Creature. You can find it on your podcatcher of choice or visit the website. www.brideofthecreature.com
The Bride and I watch a horror movie every month, we fully and hopefully humorously recap the entire film in full spoiler-filled glory and then talk about if we liked it.
Currently Playing: Kill Bill Original Soundtrack Currently Reading: Nothing. Catching up on my podcasts.
He’s been murdered by me and then I covered him up with a blanket and hat so you’d think he was sleeping on this 11 hour flight while I escape through the landing gear and rescue my daughter before her captors realize I’m not on this plane.
Greetings from my hovel on the shores of the Bow.
So, yeah. I watched COMMANDO (1985) for the first time. That’s a pretty incredible movie. The stunts are great and it takes itself seriously, but not so seriously that it’s joyless and laughable. It’s sort of like the platonic ideal of 80s tough-guy action. The stunts are great, the one-liners walk the line between cool and hilarious perfectly. When things begin to get a little too testosteroney there’s a character to cut to who will make a joke about how absurdly macho what is happening is and lets us know that the movie is in on it. It’s really quite a remarkable piece of action writing… plus, Arnold Schwarzenegger kills like a zillion dudes with a machine gun. I want someone to lift me up and play with me like Arnold does to baby Alyssa Milano in that movie…
The reason I watched it was I watched two documentaries about action movies. IN SEARCH OF THE LAST ACTION HERO (2019) and IRON FISTS AND KUNG FU KICKS (2019). Between the two I’d recommend the latter more as I was more interested in hearing about martial arts movies, but they’re both worth a watch.
Currently Playing: Phish – “Sigma Oasis” Currently Reading: DEADLY EDGE, Richard Stark
Finished the Mandalorian. Noone is more surprised than me by how much I ended up liking it. Man, it sure feels nice to like a Star War again.
Been watching the new Undertaker: The Last Ride documentary that came out. It’s still weird to see The Undertaker out of character (well, it’s still a WWE produced thing, so who knows HOW real it is, but he’s more out of character than usual), but it’s pretty good. It’s very un-WWE to actually have a person on camera talking about how bad a WWE match or thing was. This is the company who will talk about utter dogshit being “the greatest of all time” with stunning regularity, so that is interesting.
All of a sudden I smell grass clippings? In my basement? Is that a symptom of something terminal? I gotta go figure out what the hell I’m smelling. I guess if I’m back tomorrow we’ll know whether it was serious.
Wasteland dispatches are dead. Long live references to semi-obscure Nintendo 64 games!
Greetings from my hovel on the shores of the Bow.
Retiring the Wasteland Dispatches series. With no likely end in sight for my confinement I’m tired of it. Time for something else.
I started watching The Mandalorian. I hated Force Awakens a LOT (watch it again, now that your excitement of new Star Wars has worn off and you’ll see what a terrible movie it is) so I never bothered with Last Jedi (though my most trusted sources inform me it’s even worse) and I skipped Rogue One because of a moral repulsion to the concept of putting CGI Peter Cushing in a movie. (Peter Cushing is my favorite actor of all time and the idea of putting dead people in movies is a repugnant one). When the trailer for Skywalker’s Rise Up 2 The Streets or whatever the hell it was called came out I watched it and didn’t even feel curious about it. That’s not something I expected. I have loved Star Wars as long as I can remember loving things. I even like the prequels!
Anyway, Star Wars, even when it’s shit, LOOKS cool. Amazing costumes and sets and just general production design. So when I got a weird hankering to look at some Star Wars stuff I figured I’d give the Mandalorian a shot, plus this thing’s got Werner Herzog AND Carl Weathers! How bad could it be?! After one episode I think my answer is: “It’s fine.” It’s not bad, it’s not great, but it does bring the great set/costume shit I was looking for… and Werner Herzog, so I guess I’ll watch the rest. But if CGI Peter Cushing shows up? I’m gonna go nuts… fucking Disney.
joezone 