Mar 12, 2024

Oscar Night Gets Noggin'd! 2024


Time to roll up that red carpet.  After a year of movies that almost didn't happen I take my hat off to the union workers.  Here's my completely uneducated review of what I guess were the top movies of the year.  

Oppenheimer was a textbook Oscar movie and I'm bored with how predictable it was that it would win. I was confused as to why I needed to see a bunch of people talking in IMAX. The explosion FX were lame. Also I'm just sick of loaded casts in movies. When every person in the movie is a huge recognizable star it takes me out of the story. Really, dude...Gary fucking Oldman?

Holdovers was a much superior movie to Oppenheimer in so many ways.  The story had heart and was original.  Also the production on this one was sneaky but so unique and cool.  I didn't notice while watching but the whole thing is filmed and edited as if it was made in the time it was set.  A nice call back to a golden age of American cinema. 

Poor Things was very original but suffered from too much sexual content. When it was over I felt like I had just watched a very weird porno.  In a theater.  With strangers.   Also Mark Ruffalo's accent was horrible but his character was good.

Anatomy of a Fall was a 2 hr episode of Law & Order.  That's all I'm gonna say. 
 
I originally left the theater not liking Zone of Interest but the more I tell people "it sucked" then go on to describe it I end up appreciating it more and more. I'm glad it won best sound design. That whole movie is long still shot after long still shot with all the action happening off camera. Brutal honesty in that one.

Past Lives felt like a dram-rom-com. I agreed to go see it because I like the ginger snaps they have at our theater. I had no idea it was a best pic nominee.

American Fiction was entertaining and had an almost too in-your-face message but it needed to be said. It didn't feel like an Oscar movie to me. 

Killers of the Flower Moon, while having an important subject matter was way too long. Again with the loaded casts. Especially Scorsese casts. Ugg. I think any good that should have come out of that was overshadowed by the "please nominate me" -ness of that film. Like Oppenheimer It just tried to hard.

Barbie was way more than people expected. I don't think Hollywood knew what was coming and wasn't ready for what hit them. Fucking adapted Screenplay tho? If you're going to have an award for that and not give it to the screenplay that wasn't based on an extensive piece of writing that already existed, but created out of thin air around a toy, then fuck you Academy.

The only one I didn't see was Maestro.  That's my review.  

Feb 23, 2024

Ok we need to talk about the new 2024 MLB uniforms.

You're ... probably gonna get sick.
Let me start this baseball uniform noggin by telling you a little story. Let's go back to the mid 1800s right around the time the great American pastime was starting to get going. A time well
before food regulations were established on a federal level. While some of the first baseball games were being played, babies started dying. It was an epidemic but no one knew why. Thousands and thousands were taking their last breath all over the newly formed cities all over the country. If that city had a baseball team you can almost guarantee babies and people were getting sick and dying from consuming store-bought milk. See, one of the many horrible things food producers did back then to cut corners was water down the cow's milk they bottled and sold. And since no one was looking, and they were so greedy they just used the crusty unfiltered pond water from their farm. But they had created another problem. It was too thin from the water so they then would add chalk or plaster to whiten it up. Oops, they added too much water so now there was no more cream in that fresh milk so they added something they had around the farm already. You guessed it, calf brains. You know, to give it that creamy milk texture. Ah darn, now that rotten, pond water, brain infested milk keeps going bad in the store. While pasteurization was a thing, they didn't bother and they did the next best thing to ensure a fresh tasty product would last.... they added formaldehyde. YUM! Which was the main culprit in all those 400,000 dead babies every year. What's this have to do with baseball uniforms you ask?
For the same reasons the commercial dairies were putting chalk and formaldehyde in the milk in the 1800s the MLB and Nike teamed up with the company known more for replica merchandise to produce an all new high tech uniform. Greed.


As soon as I saw that the backs of the new jerseys were all going to have the same font for the names and the numbers all had to fit in the same designated size I knew. I knew it was the MLB wanting to be able to mass produce shitty cheap jerseys to save on costs. It all has to fit into a t-shirt press template so they can crank them out. Now I'm seeing that patches and lettering isn't embroidered or stitched anymore. I saw literal fucking iron-on patches for the team logo. The jerseys are thinner and being touted as some new hi-tech cool material. That's bullshit. I bet it's some garbage cloth that they used to use on the K-Mart jerseys. And then they go and use this same paper-thin material on the pants. The first photos of the teams at Spring Training are coming out with the new uniforms and you can see their shirts tucked in under them. Their underwear and in some cases their balls. My team, the Giants just released a promo with Casey Schmidt with his balls showing. It's fucking embarrassing.

third pic from left you can see the nike logo from his boxer shorts. 

Not only are the players worried about the peek-a-boo pants but they say there's no more custom tailoring. The MLB is the big time for these guys which should come with perks. One of which is custom tailored uniforms. You know so they can play at top-level performance. Apparently the MLB is turning down players who want their pants to fit them properly. So, now you've got cheap assembly line jerseys, cheap logo patches, and shitty material but now they have to get their uniforms off the rack like a pleb.
Every change I see just screams "cheaper to manufacture" to me. Team logos are iron-ons.  Trash.  And you have to make due with M, L, XL, XXL like a fucking store. These are fucking retail uniforms. Now I'm also seeing that they're not even consistent from jersey to jersey. Oh and the white isn't white any more, it's like a yellowish cream color. White must be too expensive. Welcome to "The Big Show" Rookie.

L: Old Gilbert jersey on the left, new Kirby on the right. Differences are subtle but all the little differences are a clear sign they're saving a ton of money on the manufacturing.  R:  shows two teammates with completely different cuffs on their jerseys. 
But it gets worse. If you're a fan and wan't a fan version, of which many say these on-field player worn jerseys feel like, you now have to pay up to $100 more than the old ones. And if you actually want a real MLB player quality (quality LOL) jersey they're around $400. An iron-on, assembly line piece of shit jersey for $400.


After all the new stupid rules last year the MLB, in trying to appeal to the luddite morons of the country are ruining the last sacred pastime we have left. Let baseball be uncool. Leave it alone. Money ruins everything. Some of this is probably me exaggerating and wrong but I don't care. I have a disclaimer in the sidebar.

Feb 20, 2024

What If...? – We Did Slip Into a New Timeline and This Was The Better Option

The Watcher from Marvel's 'What If...?'

I often joke and wonder if we slipped into an alternate timeline around the time Trump got elected because everything has just felt wrong ever since then.  Trump has gone on to become a messiah for the stupid and angry.  It’s polluted the entire Republican party.   But like, the Cubs finally won the World Series.  That’s not supposed to happen.  Hadn’t happened in over 100 years.  But in this timeline it does.  There’s other things I remember hearing about and I'm sure there's tons of write-ups on why people think this to the point that it’s kind of been a running joke to shitty things that seem to keep happening.  “well, in the Trumpverse it happens”    My sci-fi brain started wondering what would have caused the universe to shift in the first place. 



A lot of people like to say that it was David Bowie dying or the crazy theory about a weasel and the Hadron Collider that caused the ripple in the fabric of reality.  While funny and interesting I don't think that's it.   I got to thinking, did someone go back in time and change something that led us to this shitty future?  Was it the Butterfly Effect or something more deliberate and sinister? or what if...?   


But then I thought, holy shit maybe this is the better future.  Perhaps in the original timeline, Bernie Sanders or Hilary Clinton became president and caused something that spun us into disaster.  Right wing backlash could have spawned a civil war or a great depression and disrupted the entire world economy launching us into global unrest or a nuclear world war.  Maybe there was immediately an assassination and replaced by someone way worse.   How bad did it have to be that the reality we are in now was the better option? All of the bullshit we've gone through because of Trump.  I picture some scientists and historians in the future running calculations on advanced quantum AI computers in a bunker deep underground searching for the best option.  After evaluating all the results finally seeing this version of reality and going “fuck, Trump has to win” 


12 Monkeys(1995)
Maybe we needed to come to a breaking point in order to reset somehow.  As if it’s a ‘gotta get worse before it gets better’ kind of situation.   Similar to the movie 12 Monkeys could there have been one guy that’s sent back in time and has to convince some important people pulling the strings that Trump has to win for the sake of humanity.   Poor fucker.  “Trust me, I’m from the future”  Since he keeps failing, obviously, and getting sent back to try again.  Every time trying different points in time trying different ways to convince people.   Finally going back to the late 1970’s to help influence the modern republican party.  Get Reagan elected and over decades create an electorate of right wing conservatives, racists, evangelicals and every day idiots who are radicalized by talk radio and Fox news that ultimately gets Trump elected…. (barfing in my mouth a little as I type this) to save the future of humanity.  Saving it by creating the worst outcome that we could feasibly come back from. An outcome that doesn't end in near extinction of the human race.   So yea, it sucks but I guess it could be worse and maybe it was. Time travel was somehow invented and this is the fix. 
   
Sorry for all the doom and gloom on a stormy Tuesday morning. Sometimes I just think of shit like this.  

Feb 2, 2024

Old Photo Friday (haircut book edition)

I used to get my haircut at this place that was close to my old house that looked like boobs.  Yes, I said boobs.  The building was two single story geodesic domes connected in the middle.  They're right on a main road in town and everyone calls them the boobs.  Apparently it used to be a video store.  Dang remember video stores?  I'm not talking about Blockbuster or Hollywood but real old fashioned family run mom & pop video stores.  I remember going to Muir Video and getting scary movies to watch at friend's houses on the weekend.  Well, it's a hair salon now run by this kooky old Korean lady.  She's gotten a bit too kooky lately and raised her prices so I just cut my own hair now.   While I would wait for a chair or wait for Meg to have her hair done I would sit and thumb through magazines or whatever.  Then one day I found these hilarious hair cut photo books.  I started to imagine who these people were so I started making up names and little captions.   It was a hit on facebook so many years later I'm sharing them with you here. 
























Originally I figured "teenagers adolescents" was enough but I think he needs a name.  Let's call him Zach. He loves Fortnite, drank a beer last year at a his cousins' bar mitzvah and he thinks his new haircut is SICK! 


Jan 18, 2024

Happy New Year! Good Ol' Photo Friday

 It's been a minute.  Fucking 2024. Trump's cult is going to bypass democracy and make him king.  So that's great.  We had to put Rosco down. RIP dickbutt.  Then we got a puppy, I had a really fucked up New Year's Eve but my band played which totally made up for it.  Here's some shit. 


There was an eclipse right after we got home from Italy.  


Halloween was fun.  


Great Men In Black costume guys!  I have no recollection of this happening tho. Something about swamp gas.  


Had a very intimate Friendsgiving ... way too much food. 



Set up the Tama at Benji's new pad.  Function Dungeon 3.0.  We've played together twice since Travis moved.  I miss my band.  :( 


Last pic of Rosco before he went over the Rainbow Bridge.  RIP You were a good pooch.  

Franklin still Franklin.  The pup is annoying the shit out of him tho. 

VOTE FOR APRIL!   Friend is running for Humboldt County Judge. I designed her campaign signs and stuff. 
Running against the incumbent who's a turd. 

Crossing the strait into Martinez for Xmas.  

Then last min we drove to SFO to fly to.... 


Phoenix Arizona!   Saw Jim & Michelle then picked up our new puppy!!  


Funny story.  We reserved a Prius to drive the puppy back to Martinez but they weren't available for one-way so they offered a full size sedan or mid-size SUV.  We figured with the dog crate we could use the extra room of an SUV.  The picture showed a Honda Pilot but when we got to the lot it was Meg's car.  Meg drives a white Jeep Grand Cherokee almost exactly like this one.  We had a laugh. 


World, meet Benson!   This is him on his little bed on my lap right after we got him.  Before he met Bruce and all the cats.  He runs the place now.

Rosie made me a stamp!  I'm official.  @kirkiscool 

Travis got zombied at the NYE party we played at.  

Creepy Ring girl took over my drums.  

I dug out this old cymbal. 22" Medium-thin crash.  It's kind of an odd 70's creation from Zildjian.    I bought it for $50 in 1992 used at a music store that no longer exists.  It's a motherfucker of a cymbal but I cracked it a while back.  If you look close you can see my poor attempt at a repair.  

New Year's eve day I was putting away luggage in the garage and fell off the ladder and landed on my side view mirror.  Busted it clean off. I duct taped it back on so I could drive to the NYE party we were playing.  Later that night backing out of a steep dark driveway after loading my drums I drove straight into part of the gate and smashed my back bumper.  All this happening while hella sick.  

But hey, really faint rainbows.  

I ordered a new mirror and installed it myself.  I also kinda fixed my bumper so it doesnt look like total shit. 

Saw this piece of shit at the gas station.  Sorry 'bout your peen, dude. 

Benny! 

He made himself into a sandwich. 


Oh yea, then we got fucking Covid.  


I saw this and then the car pulled into the hospital.   Proctologist? 

Bruce was fully asleep here.  Eyes WIDE open.  Creepy as fuck. 

Sometimes they get along. 

This dude was just cruising down our street.  


In line at the pharmacy.  This guy needs a prescription for a fucking belt. 


Have no idea what this key is for.  We have keys for all our friend's houses just in case and our friends were locked out so I went to the drawer and this is the only one that I didn't know for sure so I figured it must be theirs.... nope.  Mystery key. 

You park like an asshole.  

New Dipper hat!  I saw it at Disneyland CA Adventure and wanted to get it but didn't... then the last time we went they didn't have it anymore.  My Disneyland guru friend, Becky found it and got it for me for Xmas!   Thanks!!!