Free Thread Forever
January 18, 2022 9:07 AM   Subscribe

It's another Monday, by which I mean it's a Tuesday, and so it's time for another Free Thread! Come on in and talk about whatever, tell folks about an interesting animal and/or mineral you know something about, discuss your progress along the Kübler-Ross "five stages of social media Wordle score posting discourse" journey, etc.

See the original post for a rundown on the idea; this thread is a chatty, low-stakes space for just saying howdy to one another and not having to bring any particular content to the table.
posted by cortex (293 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
For my part: I've been getting into Icarus lately, a new survive-o-craft game with a plot that doesn't make much sense but which has plenty of satisfying chopping down of trees and getting mauled by bears, and I'm having a lovely time with it.
posted by cortex at 9:12 AM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


Interviewing for jobs is super stressful.
posted by djseafood at 9:13 AM on January 18, 2022 [20 favorites]


61 days until the spring equinox!

(Why, yes – I do count down the days until the end of winter.)
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:13 AM on January 18, 2022 [17 favorites]


I totally lost Wordle today.
posted by toastyk at 9:14 AM on January 18, 2022 [11 favorites]


I'm just numb about everything at this point - constantly juggling staff schedules as people get sick/symptomatic; the continually barrage of bad news; the feeling of futility, that we've given up on trying to do anything as a society about the pandemic and have all been left to survive as best we can.

This morning wordle was not going well after my second guess (I had one yellow) so I gave up. It felt good to give up on something, though it is something unimportant. Maybe I've reached the acceptance stage with wordle.
posted by nubs at 9:15 AM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


My new neighbour sings soft lullabies to her dog without knowing she sings them to me too.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 9:17 AM on January 18, 2022 [68 favorites]


I snuck in an edit to a comment with 0:04 seconds to go before the window closed. What a rush!

.. I may need more enrichment in my life.
posted by fight or flight at 9:17 AM on January 18, 2022 [13 favorites]


did someone say Free Fred?
posted by lalochezia at 9:18 AM on January 18, 2022


I'm taking down the Christmas lights today. Our neighbors must think we're weird for leaving them up so long, but whatever. Maybe I'll hang more string lights inside for the rest of the winter.
posted by May Kasahara at 9:19 AM on January 18, 2022 [8 favorites]


What's up MeFi, it's been a minute. Things are Bleak but I saw a bunny in my neighborhood the other day and I'm still riding that high.
posted by trunk muffins at 9:21 AM on January 18, 2022 [15 favorites]


I still have my Halloween decorations from 2018 up. 🎃
I like Halloween.
posted by signal at 9:22 AM on January 18, 2022 [17 favorites]


I also watched a man cuddling a cheetah.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 9:23 AM on January 18, 2022 [7 favorites]


A year after posting an Ask about how to survive my annual review at my job I am once again preparing for the annual review at the same job and I have never in my life wanted so very badly to just walk into the sea.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:24 AM on January 18, 2022 [25 favorites]


PSA: Free Covid-19 test kits from USPS.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:24 AM on January 18, 2022 [36 favorites]


I almost posted a MetaTalk about this:

Does anyone else miss the US politics megathreads?

I, for one, got pretty burnt out on news and politics after Biden was inaugurated. It just became too stressful to stay engaged.

But I've been dipping my toe back in the water lately – and I've realized that I miss the megathreads.

Reading the headlines on Google News is one thing, but MeFites were really great about providing additional context, digging up the important stories that didn't get as much attention, refuting nonsense, etc.

I suspect that the megathreads went away because everyone else got burnt out, too. And I'm sure they were a beast to moderate. But they were helpful to me.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:24 AM on January 18, 2022 [40 favorites]


I do not miss the megathreads. A data point of one.

Winter is real, the sky is grey, the kid's school was cancelled, I pulled a muscle in my low back shoveling yesterday. Hibernation has never sounded better.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 9:28 AM on January 18, 2022 [8 favorites]


struggling a bit with pandemic negativity right now, so I ate a f*ckton of french fries last night. it didn't change my headspace but they were damn tasty.
posted by supermedusa at 9:28 AM on January 18, 2022 [13 favorites]


Can I ask a half-assed question here? Do you remember this post about the 7.5hr hd video of a Norwegian train ride? (btw, extremely Metafilter that one). I want the video for a project but seems like the torrent isn't working? Does anyone know how to get it? Maybe I am torrenting wrong?
posted by shothotbot at 9:29 AM on January 18, 2022 [5 favorites]


Wordle: a slightly misleading clue. Let's say I got a green letter, so I know its position in the target word. Let's pretend it's R. If my next guess has R in the correct position and another R elsewhere, you would expect that second R to be yellow, no? Letter is in the word but not at this position. It shows up there grey instead; green in its proper position. Thinking about it, I don't see how this little bug could mislead you. But it is an imperfection in an otherwise perfect game.
posted by theoriginalkdawson at 9:29 AM on January 18, 2022 [4 favorites]


This week, I accidentally discovered that my sushi rice isn't actually bad - it just needs to sit for a few hours in the refrigerator before you try to make sushi with it. It's pretty damned good after it sits.

I'm really enjoying winter. The ice on the lake is beautiful. I'm really not enjoying figuring out how to teach a 3 hour long hands-on robotics lab class remotely. (Remote is the right decision. But, perhaps remote and changing the class offerings would have been even better.)

I saw a really cute subway rat Sunday night. I couldn't work out what large object they were dragging along. (The bread from an entire submarine sandwich?) But, it was the equivalent of me pushing a car. An edible car.
posted by eotvos at 9:30 AM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


cortex's comment makes me think we need more gaming threads. I don't game a ton, but I'm always looking for something new/interesting, and I'm fascinated by games in general. During the pandemic I made a few games with my 10 year old son (2 web-based and one paper-based), and we both enjoyed it a lot.
posted by SNACKeR at 9:31 AM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


There are two separate memorial vigils tonight for people in NYC who were killed in horrible ways. I'm so sick of this shit.
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 9:32 AM on January 18, 2022 [9 favorites]


Whew, I got some kind of flu last week and it's been kicking my butt for days. High fevers, sweaty gross everything, don't want to eat, move, don't even want to whine! Well, maybe a little. But only about how everything is sweaty and smelly.

I did get some MeFi card club cards recently, including one from a famous Uber MeFite, and my friends were IMPRESSED. So I've got that going for me.
posted by kinsey at 9:32 AM on January 18, 2022 [5 favorites]


Since watching the first three Peacemaker episodes, I've had this song as my #1 earworm with a bullet. There are worse tunes to have running through your head; very 80s hair metal vibe (although it's from the early aughts).
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:33 AM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


A pretty amazing thing happened to me last night. I was sitting on our couch, sitting sideways with my cheek resting on the back of the couch.
There is a blanket over the couch.
I was enjoying my book and sort of distantly aware of something moving near me.
Eventually I realized that something had been moving right under my head, where it rested on the couch, and had been there for quite a while. About 20 minutes maybe.
Something small and soft and warm.
I pulled the blanket back and there was a tiny juvenile field mouse nestling there. A "streep muis" with four black stripes down its back and large, slightly worried eyes.
I tried to catch it so that I could release it somewhere outside, but it squirted out between my fingers like a watermelon pip.
I wonder why it was there, and why it stayed so long, so close to me?
Was it too terrified to move away from me, or was it just cozy and comfortable?
posted by Zumbador at 9:33 AM on January 18, 2022 [47 favorites]


I'm taking down the Christmas lights today. Our neighbors must think we're weird for leaving them up so long, but whatever. Maybe I'll hang more string lights inside for the rest of the winter.

Still have our eco-tree up on the wall (so the cat won't chew it to shreads). It's kind of abstract, so I'm very tempted to just leave it up, as a testament to suspended time...
posted by progosk at 9:34 AM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


@shothotbot try this magnet link: A Driver's eye view. Bergensbanen (Bergen - Oslo), Norway.

Update: This might be it on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_S_13TWn1c
posted by SNACKeR at 9:35 AM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


I'm startled to realize that I've posted more than 3400 words to the current incarnation* of my Pretty Good Word of the Day blog. The first post was cincture, back in 6 September 2005.

* It started a few years earlier on a forum long since closed, and its archives lost to the bitbucket.
posted by Quasirandom at 9:36 AM on January 18, 2022 [11 favorites]


I'm taking down the Christmas lights today.

My plan is to leave my (interior) Christmas lights up until around Easter because I like them, but I still want it to be special when I put them up
posted by shothotbot at 9:37 AM on January 18, 2022 [5 favorites]


I don't miss the politics megathreads, and am wary of too much engagement with any political news generally, these days. Too much of things I can't control or influence is inevitably terrible for mental/emotional health.

It's sunny and clear where I am this morning, a crisp 45 degrees (F), and I have a really nice short walk across the backyard these winter mornings when our orange tree has lots of fresh fruit, to pick one for breakfast. I'm especially grateful for that this morning, dozens of birds at the feeders, and that orange was delicious.

I'd like to share this awesome techno marching band that a friend hipped me to recently. The world needs more acoustic electronica.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:38 AM on January 18, 2022 [19 favorites]


I don't miss the mega threads.

For me, they helped feed the notion that the way out of the various crises of now is via political action and leadership. I don't think this is so. I think before we get anywhere useful, we need to find a way to reconnect with each other, to secure various bonds of trust that have been damaged over the past five (or more) years. This means things like reminding each other we do actually like the same bands, or if we don't, we at least enjoy arguing about the whys and why nots of them. Also movies, poetry, novels, recipes, dogs, cats, everything really, free and forever ... like this thread.

I wonder if these free threads may end up being the anti-mega-threads.
posted by philip-random at 9:42 AM on January 18, 2022 [10 favorites]


I have discovered the best — the bestgummy cola bottles in my search for the best gummy cola bottles. They have a satisfying chewiness to them that you don't get from the little drug store bags in their measly Haribo candy section. It's as if Haribo made jerky. Can't stop won't stop.
posted by emelenjr at 9:43 AM on January 18, 2022 [9 favorites]


I do not miss the politics megathreads in the slightest. People got way too fighty in there.

--

I watched Jerry Lewis' film The Ladies' Man for my blog this weekend, and y'all, this is now the second film (out of the 388 I've seen) that I've been anywhere near tempted to give up halfway through. I hated it with a passion; I was discussing my dislike with someone after, and made the analogy that Martin and Lewis were kind of like Lennon and McCartney in the sense that when they were teamed up, each kept the others' worst instincts in check, and so when the partnership broke up each could indulge in their worst habits unfettered; and thus, I said watching this film was "the cinematic equivalent of listening to Wonderful Christmastime for two solid hours."

--

I am currently trying to figure out how to make Outlook turn off some of the calendar notifications it sends me; I am a "delegate" on three people's calendars, but that's only so I can see what's on them, and I don't know how to turn off the "Hey, this person got an invitation" alerts for the others without turning off the alerts for the guy I do need.


....That is the state of the me.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:43 AM on January 18, 2022 [9 favorites]


I thought briefly about posting the new "Moon Knight" trailer as an FPP, which I've done for a lot of Marvel Studios projects over the past few years, but they have so many shows and movies in the works that doing a SLYT post for every one of them has started to feel so low-effort that I feel bad about it. Oscar Isaac, though!
posted by Ipsifendus at 9:44 AM on January 18, 2022 [5 favorites]


I'm procrastinating from talking to my school advisor about my pathological procrastination problem. Maybe I just really like stasis.
posted by coolxcool=rad at 9:44 AM on January 18, 2022 [5 favorites]


If my next guess has R in the correct position and another R elsewhere, you would expect that second R to be yellow, no?

I think that shows you that there is only 1 R in the puzzle. If it showed up as a green and a yellow it would imply there are 2 R's, 1 currently in the correct position and another in an incorrect position.
posted by Celatone at 9:45 AM on January 18, 2022 [9 favorites]


I was an avid reader of the mega-threads but have since realized it was somewhat of a negative feedback loop. Things (politically) aren't much better, but I don't think it's a place I need to go back to.
posted by msbutah at 9:45 AM on January 18, 2022 [4 favorites]


I would like to take this opportunity to officially announce that I will not be running for the office of Governor of the State of New York.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 9:46 AM on January 18, 2022 [14 favorites]


"the cinematic equivalent of listening to Wonderful Christmastime for two solid hours."

And now I know what Hell is.
posted by notoriety public at 9:47 AM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


it would imply there are 2 R's, 1 currently in the correct position and another in an incorrect position

But that is exactly the case for my guess.
posted by theoriginalkdawson at 9:47 AM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


So does this mean we're not having any more Site Updates over in MetaTalk? Because we're overdue for one -- the last one was on December 22nd.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 9:48 AM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


So does this mean we're not having any more Site Updates over in MetaTalk? Because we're overdue for one -- the last one was on December 22nd.

Totally unrelated; those are intended to continue, loup (like the rest of us, honestly) has been a little bogged down by the start of the year.
posted by cortex at 9:50 AM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


Well I kind of do miss the politics mega threads because to me as a non-American they were a window into a variety of views and reactions, and they often contained links and info I couldn't easily find in regular coverage, and I didn't mind the fightiness much. But then I didn't have to moderate them and I didn't have that fightiness too close to home so I understand the people who don't miss them.
posted by bitteschoen at 9:50 AM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


I have tickets for Bruce Dickinson's spoken word show in Raleigh on Monday. However they aren't checking vaccine cards for his show and a small theater full of metal fans is likely to skew high on the thinks vaccines are bullshit scale so I think I'm writing off that $75 and staying home. Even f they were checking vaccines I don't think I want to be a room with a couple of thousand people next week.

Note to self - stop buying tickets for stuff in advance, at least until the pandemic really is over.

In other news, I have worked out every workday this year so far, and went hiking both weekends.
posted by COD at 9:52 AM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


tell folks about an interesting animal and/or mineral you know something about

Fungi are somewhere between the two so: it's been an annus horribilis for most foraging spots here in central Italy, no "trombette di morto" (Craterellus cornucopioides) or "galletti" (Cantharellus cibarius) in November or December, no "finferle" (Craterellus lutescens) in December/January, and hardly any "lardaioli vinati" (Hygrophorus russula) or "cimballi" (Infundibulicybe geotropa) either - so it was a delight to find a bunch of prized ferlenghi (Pleurotus eryngii var. ferulae) the other day, pretty much out of season. How's everybody's mushroom year been?
posted by progosk at 9:52 AM on January 18, 2022 [11 favorites]


Thanks, LooseFilter, for the Meute link -- these guys are awesome!
posted by Quasirandom at 9:54 AM on January 18, 2022 [5 favorites]


I miss the politics megathreads in the sense that an addict who is staying clean misses their fix.

You know it’s a bad scene. You know it will make you feel terrible afterward. But the first few seconds of scratching that itch feel so good.
posted by notoriety public at 9:54 AM on January 18, 2022 [15 favorites]


A colleague used the word "synecdoche" in a Teams meeting today and it threw me - I realized that it was the first time I had actually heard anyone say the word out loud, I have apparently been mispronouncing it in my head all these years.

I figured it out, but it gave me several confused minutes trying to figure out why my colleague was talking about a town in New York...
posted by caution live frogs at 9:57 AM on January 18, 2022 [14 favorites]


I took the tree down yesterday. It had been over a week since I had last turned the lights on, and despite having ample water the tree was no longer taking it up. As much as it pained me to let the season go, it was becoming a fire hazard.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:58 AM on January 18, 2022 [4 favorites]


"It would make the cat jealous. 18 times."
Matt Berry reads a husband's plea to his wife about their intimate relations SLYT
posted by Glinn at 9:59 AM on January 18, 2022 [8 favorites]


I am really enjoying Abbott Elementary and am looking forward to watching the next episode tonight.
posted by bookmammal at 10:01 AM on January 18, 2022 [4 favorites]


How's everybody's mushroom year been?

we trespassed in the Lake Anza watershed this weekend, and altho we did find some mushrooms, nothing of exceptional interest and certainly nothing to forage. conditions weren't quite ideal, but it is often pretty easy to find chanterelles in the Bay Area. they are really tasty on a homemade pizza!
posted by supermedusa at 10:03 AM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


1.e4
posted by bondcliff at 10:03 AM on January 18, 2022 [5 favorites]


I thought briefly about posting the new "Moon Knight" trailer as an FPP

I knew holding on to that complete run of Moon Knight comics from my childhood would pay off! (See, Mom, the boxes were worth the storage space!)
posted by LooseFilter at 10:04 AM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


I signed a book contract today and I am OVER THE MOON but like, what now (I know.....writing the book).
posted by everybody had matching towels at 10:05 AM on January 18, 2022 [62 favorites]


I just had a book die on submission, and I'm supposed to be working on partials for two new submissions. Instead, I'm playing Minecraft and playing with my fidgets and watching cooking shows. Oh, and also playing on Metafilter. That's the state of my January, basically! I wish I could get Icarus on my Mac!
posted by headspace at 10:05 AM on January 18, 2022 [7 favorites]


I signed a book contract today

THAT IS AWESOME, congratulations!!
posted by LooseFilter at 10:06 AM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


I have been watching The Clone Wars while listening to the podcast "A More Civilized Time" and it's really scratching the itch of "more Star Wars but more critical thinking". Liking it a lot.

Last night I made five dozen cowboy cookies for my niece's wedding. Go me.

And I wrote many hundreds of words as part of the Three Sentence Ficathon going on over on Dreamwidth. So fun!
posted by suelac at 10:07 AM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


It's been an annus horribilis for most foraging spots here in central Italy

What's the queen got to do with it?
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 10:07 AM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


A colleague used the word "synecdoche" in a Teams meeting today
What? That's really how it's pronounced? I'm glad I've never tried to say it.
posted by eotvos at 10:08 AM on January 18, 2022 [7 favorites]


Did someone say minerals?

Well then, let's talk about Spodumene

Pronounced with a "g" sound, super fun to say, and grows into gigantic crystals.
posted by Windopaene at 10:11 AM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


I figured it out, but it gave me several confused minutes trying to figure out why my colleague was talking about a town in New York...

If you really want to confuse yourself, check out this movie (Kaufman's best, and one of my personal favorites).
posted by LooseFilter at 10:11 AM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


I pronounce it roughly "suh-NECK-duh-kee", which I definitely only started doing after either hearing it or looking up the pronunciation. For my life up to that point I'd said "SIN-eck-doke". The punny nature of "Synecdoche; New York" makes more sense with the standard pronunciation.
posted by cortex at 10:11 AM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


How's everybody's mushroom year been?

Nothing edible, but this guy came up in the yard (earmuffs for scale) and I found these by my kids play area.

and coming back from the coffee shop I spotted these
posted by Dr. Twist at 10:13 AM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


Anyone know what became of the Church of the Tree of Life in San Francisco that had 5,5meodmt as a sacrament? I can remember some really wild rides, then they just seemed to disappear.
posted by ackptui at 10:13 AM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


i live on a curvy and deceptively steep residential street. i can only see a small section of the road because it curves away and drops out of site following the contours of the terrain. the streets are still slushed out and, i imagine, frozen in spots where the sun is scarce.

the FedEx man just came walking up my street towards the main road, car keys in hand and looking very worried.
posted by glonous keming at 10:22 AM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


cortex's comment makes me think we need more gaming threads.

lazaruslong started up a fanfare club for video games and we have a few posts going -- join in! :)

Maybe I'll hang more string lights inside for the rest of the winter.

Since I started spending so much time at home, I put a couple strands of $5 white stringlights up around my living room and they are the only lights I use 90% of the time, I love them. I believe this makes me "extremely basic" and I'm totally okay with that. I've got another small strand in the bathroom wrapped around a tall IKEA corner stand, set on a timer and it's the perfect nightlight. Also have a colored wire-LED strand in another room.
posted by curious nu at 10:24 AM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


It's been an annus horribilis for most foraging spots here in central Italy

What's the queen got to do with it?


It's queendom fungi, dontchaknow?
posted by progosk at 10:24 AM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


I saw a really cute subway rat Sunday night. I couldn't work out what large object they were dragging along. (The bread from an entire submarine sandwich?)

Wait, was this a subway rat or a Subway rat?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:28 AM on January 18, 2022 [5 favorites]


Interviewing for jobs is super stressful.

I have always treated it like I was an investigative journalist trying to find out more about them then they ask about me.

That way I can be excited about the chance to dig into the company.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 10:29 AM on January 18, 2022 [7 favorites]


Are incandescent string lights still made? I've looked but I can't find any. The LEDs I've bought have all been either too harshly bright white or else kind of greenish and sickly. I want the warm glow.

tonycpsu,
thank you! I just ordered tests for both me and my partner.

I don't miss the mega threads. I didn't participate much but I read them obsessively and I wish I could get that time and headspace back. I don't think they were a force for good in my life.

On Sunday I had an almost completely successful device-free day, and it did me a world of good. I'm going to make a real effort to check out from the world more. I've spent most of my life trying to gather ever more information in an attempt to feel like I have some control, and it's not working for me. I need to spend more time in my body and less time in my head (well, you know what I mean).
posted by HotToddy at 10:34 AM on January 18, 2022 [4 favorites]


(and I mean incandescent fairy lights--I know about the incandescent party lights)
posted by HotToddy at 10:36 AM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


Finished reading The House in the Cerulean Sea earlier, which was just a very loving and sweet story.
Eating some Butterherzli cookies in Zurich and marvelling at the 19% butter content listed on the nutrition label, wishing that box snacks back home listed the % butter content, for, you know, science reasons.
posted by erattacorrige at 10:37 AM on January 18, 2022 [8 favorites]


I like dipping into these threads to see the metaphorical watercooler chat. Thanks y'all for being here!
posted by invokeuse at 10:38 AM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


japanese tire ski jump
posted by pyramid termite at 10:39 AM on January 18, 2022 [9 favorites]


Oooh, I don't know what I was doing wrong before that I couldn't find them, but they do exist! Here are some Wirecutter-approved ones.
posted by HotToddy at 10:41 AM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


i learned a lot -- and was exposed to a much broader swathe of sources of information than i could reliably maintain on my own -- from the megathreads, which also featured frequent fantastic rhetoric. don't feel i learn so much from rehashment of the leftist/centrist bile-sharing endeavors. still read 'em though. the rhetoric remains and there might be a pithy comment any moment now. back for chattiness later, perhaps.
posted by 20 year lurk at 10:43 AM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


EmpressCallipygos: I watched Jerry Lewis' film The Ladies' Man for my blog this weekend, and y'all, this is now the second film (out of the 388 I've seen) that I've been anywhere near tempted to give up halfway through. I hated it with a passion

Jerry Lewis' Ladies Man is very insufferable. Out of curiosity, what was the first?

The worst film I watched last year was this film OSS 117 prend des vacances. Terrible and poorly made on every account. And worse... boring. To put that statement into context, I like disasterpieces like Frozen Scream but also stuff like the 20th Century.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:44 AM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


Oh man, pyramid termite. I think I first saw that years ago from this post; am delighted to see it again. I will never get tired of the Japanese fake-sports announcer commitment to the bit.
posted by cortex at 10:46 AM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


Jerry Lewis' Ladies Man is very insufferable. Out of curiosity, what was the first?

A 1934 Will Rogers film named Judge Priest. It had a fairly star-powered cast and crew - Will Rogers played the lead, John Ford directed, it was an early role for Hattie McDaniel. But it had one of the most insultingly pandering scripts I had ever seen; it's set in post-Reconstruction Kentucky and Rogers is supposed to be a "fair-minded" sort who believes in "racial equality", but the only evidence I saw of that is that he occasionally sang along with his maid (Hattie McDaniel, whose character was given nothing to do but either sing or cook) and that he was sort of decent to a hapless chap around town played by Stepin Fetchit. There's a plot line about his nephew wanting to marry his childhood sweetheart, but his sister disapproves because no one knows who the girl's father was - and it turns out "the dad" was a Civil War veteran who's been keeping his parentage secret out of shame because he and the girl's mother weren't married. He overhears some dudes talking about how they could have their way with the girl since "no one knows who her pappy is" and he gets arrested for assault when he punches them - and Judge Priest takes on the duties of defense lawyer, and bribes Stepin Fetchit's character to stand with an accordion under the courthouse window playing "Dixie" while he's giving his final argument in an effort to sway the jury.

It was just so....insulting.

Apparently even John Ford hated it because he later completely remade it as The Sun Shines Bright and it looks like it fixed a lot of the stuff I objected to.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:56 AM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


This means things like reminding each other we do actually like the same bands, or if we don't, we at least enjoy arguing about the whys and why nots of them. Also movies, poetry, novels, recipes, dogs, cats, everything really, free and forever ... like this thread.

A couple of years ago, my partner and I were walking on a boardwalk along the marshy edge of a large pond. We spotted a heron standing perfectly still in shallow water, patiently waiting for a frog or a fish. We stopped to watch, and stayed long enough to see it strike and fail to catch anything, and then settle back down to perfect alert stillness.

A person came up beside me and also settled in to watch the heron. The three of us stayed there for quite awhile, enjoying the heron and talking about how much we like herons. The new person has marsh at the back of his property where herons hang out, and even though he sees them all the time, he still loves it every time. And clearly he does, because he's been there with us, watching this unmoving heron, for quite awhile.

We go on to talk about other birds wetlands birds. Then other birds in general. It's very pleasant.

Eventually, the heron strikes and gets a big fish, which it juggles a bit for alignment and then swallows impressively down. It then settles back into stillness, and then, after awhile, it launches itself into the air—very ungainly—and flies away.

"Well, I'd better get going," says the stranger next to me.

We all turn to look at each other for the first time. He is wearing a MAGA hat. My partner is wearing a Pride hat.

We all shake hands, and wish each other a good day.

We were united by our love of birds. In our bitterly divided country, during these difficult years, I felt that this was a good thing.
posted by Well I never at 10:57 AM on January 18, 2022 [49 favorites]


LooseFilter - thanks for the heads up on MEUTE - my new favorite thing ever.
posted by djseafood at 11:01 AM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


You know how Wordle makes a little comment when you find the solution? Today, I was down to the last chance and really wanted to keep my winning streak going. When all the letters came up green (the last two were the ones that I wasn't sure of), I said 'Phew!' out loud, then noticed that its comment was [Phew!] as well. So now I'm at 22 consequtive wins, yay!
posted by TwoToneRow at 11:05 AM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


One of my favorite video games of the past few years is Outer Wilds (often confused with The Outer Worlds). It's a science fiction game that's all about discovering and figuring out very cool surprises (and solving fairly difficult diegetic puzzles), so I will be vague in my descriptions. More than any game I've played, it's actually about crazy science-fiction what-if ideas rather than just using science fiction as the setting for an action game or whatever.

It's more like Subnautica than anything else I can think of. First person perspective and requires some of the movement skills of a first-person shooter, but doesn't have shooting. Piloting vehicles. Scary, but mostly not because of jump scares. Innovative ways of telling a story while allowing the player great freedom to explore the open world. Kind.

I got to play the original game with my kids when they were home from college and we had a wonderful time with it. It had a very complete, tightly-woven story. There was no possible way you could make a direct sequel or expansion.

They made an expansion. It's called Echoes of the Eye. The way they folded it into the original game is astonishingly good and seamless. When I first saw the thing that was added, I almost died of delight. Something I'd imagined many times in science-fiction but never seen this way. Certainly never experienced this way. And so well done. And many other great ideas and surprises. My kids and I had just enough time to play through it over Christmas break and we had a wonderful time with it. It even made the original game slightly better.
posted by straight at 11:07 AM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


I just received this information and don't know what else to do with it, so I am going to put it here:

Daniel Radcliffe is about to play the lead in a movie about Weird Al Yankovic.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:13 AM on January 18, 2022 [4 favorites]


Somebody I know and liked was jailed for abusing two teenage girls in a small community I belong to, and was just found dead in prison. I don't even know how to feel.
posted by Peach at 11:24 AM on January 18, 2022 [4 favorites]


So are people still having a hard time buying new cars?

I put down at deposit for a 2022 Volkswagen Golf R (my midlife crisis car) and it's been nothing but crickets from the dealership for months....
posted by kinsey at 11:29 AM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


LooseFilter: "I thought briefly about posting the new "Moon Knight" trailer as an FPP

I knew holding on to that complete run of Moon Knight comics from my childhood would pay off! (See, Mom, the boxes were worth the storage space!)
"

Somewhere in a storage box I have the first 5 or 6 of those... I guess get them out and sell them now?

My brother collected X-Men so when I decided to buy some comics I went with a different series neither of us had ever heard of. At last, I am victorious...

(What? They made X-Men movies too? Goddamnit)
posted by caution live frogs at 11:34 AM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


Daniel Radcliffe is about to play the lead in a movie about Weird Al Yankovic.

I saw Radcliffe in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying some years ago, and he's been great in Miracle Workers. He has excellent comic timing, a capable singing voice, and can do a pretty good American accent. One thing that makes him an odd choice, though: he's 7 inches shorter than Yankovic and might not have the same lanky weirdo physical presence.
posted by jedicus at 11:35 AM on January 18, 2022 [5 favorites]


Yes, but Radcliffe has the chops to move as if he's got a lanky weirdo physical presence.
posted by Quasirandom at 11:41 AM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]




I guess get them out and sell them now?

You could make tens of dollars!! (I went through my comics collection a few years ago, mostly late 70s through early 90s stuff, and made an estimate of what the most valuable 200 or so might sell for and it was...much less than young me had optimistically predicted. Still, they sure were fun to read and collect at the time.)
posted by LooseFilter at 11:47 AM on January 18, 2022 [5 favorites]


Somebody I know and liked was

Peach, that's terrible news all around. Reminds me of about thirty years ago. Somebody I knew and liked got busted for being a big deal heroin dealer. Which meant he had blood on his hands -- that many had died over the years from his product. It was a shock absolutely, particularly for some who were much closer to him than I. The key point being, we were all fooled. He was obviously very good at deception, had honed that particular skill over the years, really become expert at it. And one of his tactics was charm, being friendly, the kind of person you wanted around. It helped that he was well read, an excellent conversationalist. And, of course, he always had money, was generous with it, always willing to kick in for a good cause.

He didn't die in jail. He never even went to jail (beyond a few days waiting for bail etc). He hired a good lawyer, I guess. He did die last year. Pretty much forgotten by everybody.
posted by philip-random at 11:50 AM on January 18, 2022 [4 favorites]


Radcliffe is great, but Weird Al still looks so young that he could do the job himself. I'd really like to see a Wesley Willis or Daniel Johnson biopic, although that presents problems with ableism and all, or a Shaggs movie. They were talking about that for a while.

Anyway, I just moved and I got my TV out of storage, and the batteries in the remote leaked, which is my bad; I thought I took them out. So now I need a new remote, which I could only get as a "universal." This will take a little while and may or may not work when it gets here. Say what you will about the big old CRTs, you could use them just as well without remotes. There are a few buttons on the back of this one, but you can't look at the screen and work them at the same time.

Having a puppy in a new place has truly brought me to understand why bitter apple spray is sold in half-gallons.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:53 AM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


Oh, Daniel Radcliffe has the chops for sure. It's just a bit of a non-obvious choice.

...There is a small number of people in here who were first-hand witnesses to my own "THAT dude is in prison for WHAT?" moment - a few years back I was doing a bored Google-their-name browse for people I knew, and discovered that a dude I was involved with in the early 90s had just started a 5-year prison sentence for possession of child pornography.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:59 AM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


Had a four day weekend and knocked out some lingering post move tasks. The doors for the laundry closet have been stuck somewhere between Portland and Seattle for five days now, so that was one I didn't get to. I guess FedEx has been suffering badly with folks out sick.

Going to have some buddies over this weekend so we can relive the glory days of our early 30s playing poker and Halo on the original Xbox until dawn.. Can't believe that was 20 years ago.

The chocolate babka is no more, it was delicious.
posted by calamari kid at 12:00 PM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


My kid is getting into Pokémon - I don’t get it (other than there’s a battery of ‘stats’ and ‘facts’ to learn). Anyone know what am I missing?
posted by stanf at 12:05 PM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


On Wordle: Apparently y'all are playing it because of a group of New Zealanders on Twitter. The original tweet mentioned in that article that sparked it is from a fellow Metafilter user (but I am not going to link their real name and Twitter to their MeFi name without their permission and their Metafilter profile does not link to their Twitter)
posted by inflatablekiwi at 12:05 PM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


I had a three day weekend and spent yesterday on my bed, reading fiction, drinking tea and doing cross stitch while I looked at the pretty, pretty snow. It was heavenly.

"My kid is getting into Pokémon - I don’t get it (other than there’s a battery of ‘stats’ and ‘facts’ to learn). Anyone know what am I missing?"

If the card is rainbow or gold, do not allow your child to take it to school.

"...There is a small number of people in here who were first-hand witnesses to my own "THAT dude is in prison for WHAT?" moment"

I once received a letter from an incarcerated ex. I never found out why he was there (I elected not to write back) and only figured out he was not at liberty when I looked up the vague return address.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 12:17 PM on January 18, 2022 [4 favorites]


My kid is getting into Pokémon - I don’t get it (other than there’s a battery of ‘stats’ and ‘facts’ to learn). Anyone know what am I missing?

For some kids facts and stats and collecting is it's own reward. You can buy two decks and play the card game with them. The game is kind of complicated but not bad for 9 yo games. My kid's pokemon phase lasted maybe three years. He really liked the books which go through each pokemon and talks about what it evolves into plus a little foil pack is an easy small reward.
posted by shothotbot at 12:21 PM on January 18, 2022 [5 favorites]


I'm reading a crazy book called L'Anomalie / The Anomaly that a neighbour suggested to me: The neighbour and I share an affection for pulp fiction (he lived in the US for a couple years as a teen and has kept up his English since) and this book came up. As part of an attempt to improve my French I got a copy in the original and thought the beginning was not amazing, even kind junky. Then, into the last third, it suddenly got interesting in exactly the way I least expected - it's gently subversive of its own junky-ness, that is, its a little clever, even a little heartfelt. I didn't know the writer before this and can't say I will definitely go out of my way to read any of his other books but this is exactly what I was hungry for. (The French edition is Gallimard and looks damn serious - no fancy-schmancy illustrations, just the title author name a cool cream color, some lines for accent. You look at the book and think, "yeah, that's gotta be serious book." and I thought it was such junk that I kinda liked just that juxtaposition (imagine, I dunno, Dianne Steele published to look like a text-book.) Now that the book has taken this turn for the interesting it's settling into its imposing jacket a bit more.

This morning at 7:30 when I got up to usher a kid out of the house and off to school there was the slightest lightening of the sky I thought I was going to break out in song. It has been a remarkably grey grey grey couple of months (which it always is in Berlin from November to Jan/Feb but still, damn). If only it were cold enough to freeze the lakes so at least we could go skating.

An acorn I planted a month or so ago has sprouted - four leaves. Damn but it's inspiring - the potential of the thing.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:24 PM on January 18, 2022 [5 favorites]


For those who've recovered from Covid: I recently recovered from mild-ish Covid (chills, mild fever, headaches for a couple days followed by lingering cold symptoms and fatigue. Nothing major.) I did not lose my sense of taste or smell. I was double vaxxed (Pfizer) and boosted around Thanksgiving.

But it's been five-six weeks and my appetite is still almost non-existent. I have no desire to eat anything. I have been basically forcing down meals because I know it's in my best interest, and of course drinking plenty of fluids. I no longer even have the fatigue.

This is extremely annoying, as I am the main cook in the house between me and my wife. I just cannot think of anything I want to eat, ever. Later at night, I kinda get the munchies (probably because I've been eating less than normal) and I might have some snacks like ice cream or cookies.

Anyone else have this lingering symptom? I have not read about this particular issue anywhere else. My wife is thinking I'm a little nuts, but FFS, I just have zero desire for any food. I'm thin as it is, BTW. I'm 51 and don't even drink alcohol, if it matters. I'm usually very healthy. No other health issues.
posted by SoberHighland at 12:24 PM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


It has been a remarkably grey grey grey couple of months (which it always is in Berlin from November to Jan/Feb but still, damn).

Hey, From Bklyn, pure happenstance curiosity: have you come across Berlin Lobster, round your parts?
posted by progosk at 12:45 PM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


Martin and Lewis were kind of like Lennon and McCartney

No, please -- this is a false equivalence. Whyever would somebody choose to watch a Lewis-Martin 'comedy' now -- weren't you warned? Since, apparently not, here's the word: the only good film with Jerry Lewis is The King of Comedy (with bonus, Sandra Bernhard!)
posted by Rash at 12:53 PM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


Weird Al still looks so young that he could do the job himself.

That would be hilarious, have Weird Al play himself throughout his own biopic, at all ages, non-age-altered, with no explanation. (And then have someone else do voice-over, first-person narration, preferably with a voice as far from Al's as possible, maybe a woman with an English accent.)
posted by LooseFilter at 12:54 PM on January 18, 2022 [17 favorites]


That would be hilarious, have Weird Al play himself throughout his own biopic, at all ages, non-age-altered, with no explanation. (And then have someone else do voice-over, first-person narration, preferably with a voice as far from Al's as possible, maybe a woman with an English accent.)

I love it. A bit like PEN15's casting crossed with Never Have I Ever's John McEnroe narration.
posted by jedicus at 1:01 PM on January 18, 2022 [4 favorites]


> Martin and Lewis were kind of like Lennon and McCartney

No, please -- this is a false equivalence.


For the analogy I was trying to make, I think it works - each reins in the worst impulses of the other when they are a team.

Whyever would somebody choose to watch a Lewis-Martin 'comedy' now -- weren't you warned?

Take that up with the editors of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. They added one of the Martin/Lewis comedies to their list, along with this and The Nutty Professor.

...I do appreciate the chance to go all-out trash-talk on a review, though. Let's face it - the zero-star reviews Roger Ebert wrote were always the most baroque and thus the most fun to read, and probably the most fun for him to write.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:01 PM on January 18, 2022 [5 favorites]


My mom is doing Swedish Death Cleaning and sent me photos of a bunch of assorted jewelry and pins. One of the items in the album was an enamel pin from the Juliette Low Birthplace that she received when she chaperoned my Girl Scout troop's trip to Savannah in the middle 80s. I said I didn't need it, as I know I still have mine attached to my Juniors vest, but I know of a Girl Scout whose troop is raising funds for the Savannah trip this cookie season and I said I'd ask her mom if she'd like the vintage pin as a motivator. It turns out she would be delighted to receive it to enjoy as she works toward her goal. I haven't been able to participate in passing on the culture of Girl Scouting as I thought I would when I was younger, but I still care deeply about it as a venue in which I had a lot of great experiences, and it made my day to make that connection.
posted by jocelmeow at 1:06 PM on January 18, 2022 [16 favorites]


I finally joined the Wordle bandwagon this weekend. It's great! It's also uses the skills you develop doing American-style crossword puzzles, which means it makes me feel smart even though I'm a mediocre puzzler overall.

went through my comics collection a few years ago [ . . .] made an estimate of what the most valuable 200 or so might sell for and it was...much less than young me had optimistically predicted.

When I was a kid stories of the earliest comics selling for a lot inspired us, but of course it was because they were rare. Once people started collecting them the scarcity went away.

I still chuckle at the Onion description of some new Spider-Man launch from the '90s (I think), which included a line about collectors queuing up for a chance at the privilege of owning a copy of the least rare comic book ever made.
posted by mark k at 1:21 PM on January 18, 2022 [4 favorites]


...similar to a tumor... it doesn't sound _tasty_ and I like crayfish. I'd heard they had invaded the Tiergarden but wasn't up on this latest species. Frankly the most awesome part of the story is that they all come from one Ur-mother Crayfish. It's a little bit deep, frankly. Things are all over the world. Wasn't there some article about evolution favouring the crab? Wonder if these don't qualify.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:22 PM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


metafilter: evolution favoring the crab
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:26 PM on January 18, 2022 [5 favorites]


So I came across the Wiki History Game, which involves taking random things from wikipedia and placing them correctly on the timeline relative to each other.

Have fun.
posted by nubs at 1:37 PM on January 18, 2022 [7 favorites]


If my next guess has R in the correct position and another R elsewhere, you would expect that second R to be yellow, no?
I think that shows you that there is only 1 R in the puzzle. If it showed up as a green and a yellow it would imply there are 2 R's, 1 currently in the correct position and another in an incorrect position.
But that is exactly the case for my guess.

Haven't had a chance to check this in Wordle, but in Absurdle, I got a yellow E and a Green E on the same guess today. Maybe just a Wordle bug.
posted by MtDewd at 1:41 PM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


My spouse resigned from her borderline abusive job, and says she wants to cook meals again. Which made me do the math and realize we were spending almost as much on delivery food as she was earning. So, quitting is a win-win.

I'm learning to play the bass, or rather, bass ukulele (because the much shorter scale length and low-tension strings are really comfortable, and it has a cool upright bass-like sound, and I like being on the weird fringes of stuff anyway). I never realized what a huge geeky rabbit hole bass players have, or that so many bassists collect so many expensive, beautiful instruments. A lot of times in the synth community people flip out about consumerism, commodity fetishism, etc. but really, synth geeks have got nothing on bass geeks...

...anyway, my goal is (A) have fun and (B) play ambient/drone bass! Like I said, the weird fringes.
posted by Foosnark at 1:42 PM on January 18, 2022 [14 favorites]


I just finished reading a book that annoyed me to no end, but of course I had to see how it all ended. It was "The Trail: a true tale of the Camino" by Elizabeth Sheehan and by golly I wanted to grab her by her shoulders and shake the crap out of her throughout her memoir. I haven't been so annoyed since I slogged through "Ahab's Wife".

Phew. That felt good to type out. I needed to vent.
posted by annieb at 1:51 PM on January 18, 2022 [7 favorites]


I'm learning to play the bass, or rather, bass ukulele (because the much shorter scale length and low-tension strings are really comfortable, and it has a cool upright bass-like sound, and I like being on the weird fringes of stuff anyway). I never realized what a huge geeky rabbit hole bass players have, or that so many bassists collect so many expensive, beautiful instruments. A lot of times in the synth community people flip out about consumerism, commodity fetishism, etc. but really, synth geeks have got nothing on bass geeks...

JOIN US

I was trying one of them U-basses in a store and a guy came up "Oh man, can you slap on it?" uh, not really, no.

If you want to play a regular electric bass, there are a lot of short scale basses out now, they are having a moment I guess.

I bought an expensive bass last year. Not ridiculous but not at all affordable either.
posted by thelonius at 1:55 PM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


Wordle: a slightly misleading clue. Let's say I got a green letter, so I know its position in the target word. Let's pretend it's R. If my next guess has R in the correct position and another R elsewhere, you would expect that second R to be yellow, no? Letter is in the word but not at this position. It shows up there grey instead; green in its proper position.
As @MtDewd says, I think this is intentional. If you guess a word with an R in the 3rd place and another R in 4th, but the correct word has just 1 R in 3rd, the second R will be grey. But if the correct word has 2 Rs, one in 2nd and one in 3rd, your R in 3rd will be green and your R in 4th will be yellow to indicate there is a second R, just not in that spot.
posted by Tehhund at 2:03 PM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


Bass Uke sounds like a really fun way to get into playing bass! I think I might want one.
posted by straight at 2:14 PM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


GOOTS
posted by curious nu at 2:35 PM on January 18, 2022 [4 favorites]


Today while walking in the forest I found a dog's name tag that also had an address on it. So when I got home I dug out a little card with squirrels on it and sent the tag back addressed to Mollie the Dog with a note from the squirrels who "found" it.
posted by essexjan at 2:46 PM on January 18, 2022 [38 favorites]


WCityMike2: I'm a very new Wordle player. One of those suggested words is not in English. Does Wordle accept foreign words? I never thought about it that much, but maybe because that word is a common crossover word?

So far I'm 5/5, but I got my last two wins on the last guess.
posted by SoberHighland at 2:48 PM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


annieb! Ahab's Wife was a disappointment, wasn't it? For feminist reasons, we are not supposed to make fun of Mary Sues anymore, but that book was completely centered around one and it irritated me.

I just finished a book called Diana by R.F. Delderfield. It isn't famous or good. What it was was on sale for two bucks, and it had a certain readability, if only because I would be annoyed not to find out what happened.
posted by Countess Elena at 2:55 PM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


Possibly on the cusp of joining the normal 9-5 workforce after 25 years as a freelancer. Mixed feelings about that.
posted by El Curioso at 2:57 PM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


I love virtual doctors appointments. Had an appointment at 8. Was back asleep by 8:10.

I'm watching ET for the first time since elementary school. Currently at a very depressing part.

I working my way through the Apartment Therapy January Cure. Surprisingly, I'm doing well.

There's 18 inches of snow outside. I ended up with a snow day today because the boss forgot (?) to get the parking lot plowed. We were closed for the holiday yesterday. *shrug* Not going to argue with a snow day.

Baked stuffed bread yesterday. I made the dough Sunday and let it rise overnight. Did a loaf of pepperoni bread. One that was ham and swiss with relish (didn't have any pickles) and mustard. And a new version that has breakfast sausage, peppers, onions, eggs and cheese in it. All taste great.
posted by kathrynm at 3:01 PM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


I love virtual doctors appointments. Had an appointment at 8. Was back asleep by 8:10.

Wondering if you are the doctor in this story or the patient.
posted by straight at 3:02 PM on January 18, 2022 [11 favorites]


I was trying one of them U-basses in a store and a guy came up "Oh man, can you slap on it?" uh, not really, no.

If you want to play a regular electric bass, there are a lot of short scale basses out now, they are having a moment I guess.


A couple of companies make flatwounds for U-bass and you can slap on them, though it's pretty different.

I've had a short-scale fretless for quite a while, but even that feels too big to me. I'm used to violin and then a bit of mandolin. Also I didn't realize some things about bass technique until recently -- violinists mostly try to stay in first position where the semitone spacing is more, while bassists will play up the neck to keep consistent fingering patterns regardless of the key and also frets are closer together. And that a lot of bassists don't try to cover the first 4 frets with 4 fingers.

But anyway, I like the overall feel of the U-bass. I'm also curious about the Wing or Miezo type of thing, 18" or 16" scale but an octave up from a regular bass. Seems like my kind of fun.
posted by Foosnark at 3:22 PM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


seanmpuckett: I took up watching Ted Lasso two days ago and I finally got to the episode where I know what you're talking about!

So I hate service work and my job. I hate that I'm always a wrong, bad person because my office/me personally/whoever failed again and again and again. My office is akin to the DMV. We have to mail a lot of stuff, a good chunk of it internationally, and that wasn't going well before the pandemic. I spend hours a day just on lost mail because what we're mailing out doesn't get tracking numbers and is awkwardly sized, so they're constantly lost. Someone wants to rip us a new asshole because they keep claiming they sent in their paperwork and money and talked to us multiple times. Nobody remembers this person and multiple people have not been able to find evidence of this (and asked, could you please send that stuff again, and she got SUPER OFFENDED) and she wants to file a grievance against us and is demanding that she get what she wants for free immediately. And what can I say? We suck. We try our best and it isn't good enough. We're bad and wrong every single day, just because mail is constantly failing, or tech fails, or we fail, any/all of the above. Just constant failure. It doesn't matter how many things we succeed at because it's what we failed at that counts. And gets people trying to get you fired over it. I'm beyond tired of this, but gave up job hunting years ago since I don't fit what anyone else wants or needs.

Oh yeah, here's why: she emailed us her credit card number and we had to delete it for security reasons. So she sent it, I had to delete it, and she never bothered to pay correctly and now she's screaming.
"ALL OF THIS FOR FIVE DOLLARS AND FIFTY CENTS?!" my boss just yelled.
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:24 PM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


I walked up 7 flights of stairs today. Well, 14 of them, I guess, but 7 of them were all at the same time.

A year ago I could barely walk around the block.
posted by jacquilynne at 3:28 PM on January 18, 2022 [33 favorites]


Didn't feel great last night, so I crawled into bed. My younger stopped in, curled up, and read to me, and you know what? It was wonderful.
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:29 PM on January 18, 2022 [9 favorites]


I have had to walk downtown for a meeting every Tuesday for the last 3 weeks. It’s not very far, but it’s kind of hilly, and every week, Tuesday has been the coldest day that week. It’s like nature is mocking me!
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:51 PM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


That would be hilarious, have Weird Al play himself throughout his own biopic, at all ages, non-age-altered, with no explanation.

That's one of the running gags in "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story", with John C. Reilly.
posted by hanov3r at 3:52 PM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


I slept poorly last night, but I've already made and eaten dinner, made the marinade for tomorrow's dinner and cleaned up the kitchen. I'm going to go to bed embarrassingly early and I'm extremely excited about it.
posted by the primroses were over at 3:57 PM on January 18, 2022 [11 favorites]


As a mycologist, I mildly dispute that fungi are between animals and minerals. Mildly.

The only movie I ever walked out of was "Gable and Lombard" starring James Brolin and Jill Clayburgh.

The two-dollar book I just bought that was totally worth it was "Beat the Reaper" by Josh Bazell
posted by acrasis at 4:22 PM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


Are incandescent string lights still made? I've looked but I can't find any. The LEDs I've bought have all been either too harshly bright white or else kind of greenish and sickly. I want the warm glow.

You want to search on youtube for "technology connections christmas lights."

tl;dr: In the US anyway, incandescents are still sold and you can get the big kind of Christmas lights using white LEDs inside the old-style stained/colored glass bulbs so they give almost-identical light.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 4:22 PM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


I bought incandescent string lights at a mom & pop hardware store in Chicago last month. They're still readily available at least here... they had tons of them. I agree that many of the LED lights are just too bright—especially for indoor use.
posted by SoberHighland at 4:27 PM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


I wanted to walk out of Mixed Nuts (1994 film with Steve Martin), but I was with a friend and thought she wanted to finish watching it. Turned out she wanted to walk out of it too.
posted by FencingGal at 4:29 PM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


Foraging: I found every kind of chanterelle that grows in my area this year, and put some of them into a lovely bacon jam. Found loads of shaggy manes and some suillus boletes, and hedgehogs for the first time. There’s a patch of shaggy parasol in the forest at my local park, but an unhoused neighbor made a campsite right on top of it this year. Not a bad year for mushrooms here.

My half-custody kid has been with me for a week, most of which she spent very sick with some stupid plague tests say isn’t Covid. She had four days of fever, aches, trouble breathing, no appetite, and fatigue. My weekend to-do list went up in smoke and I caught whatever this is and feel lousy. But I’m glad I was correct that I was prepared if isolation was necessary?
posted by centrifugal at 4:35 PM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


We got a robot vacuum. I love it but am surprised by the sense of foreboding that I feel when I'm in one room and hear the vacuum slowly whir closer and closerrrr.
posted by kitkatcathy at 4:37 PM on January 18, 2022 [10 favorites]


I am still proud I (and my date) walked out of "Shakespeare In Love" - what an atrocious bit of trash that was. Still shocked, SHOCKED, that it won an Oscar... much less SEVEN!?

I have also never seen "Titanic" and hopefully never will.
posted by djseafood at 4:38 PM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


I mildly dispute that fungi are between animals and minerals.

What's your alternative view?
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:39 PM on January 18, 2022


I saw Transformers 3 pretty much by accident. A friend and I decided to go to a dumb sumner movie, but it had closed and Transformers seemed big and dumb. About halfway through, my friend went to the bathroom for a really long time. After he got back, I had to go, and I stood at the sink for a long time staring distractedly into the mirror and enjoying how cool and bright and quiet the bathroom was. I didn’t want to go back to the theater, but my friend was there so I did. After the movie ended, he confided in me that he had also stood in the quiet bathroom and almost left, but decided to go back for me.

This is how bad movies win.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:43 PM on January 18, 2022 [5 favorites]


I am babysitting my grandson, who has covid, and seems like, tonsillitis. Bad sore throat, to have a 14 year old boy burst into tears. I told him be still a kid and it is OK to cry. So he had a therapustic lunch of Popeyes spicy chicken sandwich with sweet heat sauce. He felt great for about three hours after, remarking on how it didn't hurt a bit going down, and it took everything away.

I have been in a mask for a coupla days. Neighbors, including duplex neighbors, have covid. Family is isolated in the house, fully vaxxed, their workplaces both had covid over Christmas. I am going back to my place before they get home. I am fully vaxxed and boosted. Keeping my distance. Hey it is what it is.
posted by Oyéah at 4:46 PM on January 18, 2022 [7 favorites]


How's everybody's mushroom year been?

I always enjoyed hiking, and I've always noticed mushrooms – but it wasn't until 2020 (and COVID lockdown) that I fell in love with hiking, and also with mushrooms.

I'm fortunate enough to live within a 20-minute drive of a couple thousand acres of truly excellent hiking and mushrooming territory. So I spent a lot of spring/summer 2020/2021 in the woods. (And I'm very much looking forward to doing the same in 2022.)

In the last couple of seasons:

– I've grown two flushes of golden oysters at home (from the North Spore kits, which I highly recommend)

– I harvested, cooked, and ate my first batch of chicken-of-the-woods (they were meaty and delicious! I was very proud of myself!)

– I've found and photographed dozens of beautiful species (including chanterelles, porcinis, cauliflower mushrooms, witch's butter, viscid violet corts, lion's mane, destroying angels, yellow finger coral, unknown tiny jewel-red things, toadstools the size of dinner plates, and many more). They're like flowers, but goth. And they live in such peaceful, lovely places. I love them so much.

It's such a great hobby. I'm automatically inclined to trust mushroom people.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 4:57 PM on January 18, 2022 [12 favorites]


In October 2021 I left a job of 6 years, where I mainly silently communicated with plants and salamanders and birds and mushrooms and soil microbes, and have re-entered the design profession. My brain hurts as I am having to relearn:

1. How to communicate with people, consistently and in complete sentences
2. New kinds of construction details (focus focus focus)
3. 8 years of technological improvements and changes in the really complex software that I had to upgrade (whoa now, it is pretty amazing)

The good news is that I am booked out for at least a year!
posted by tarantula at 4:59 PM on January 18, 2022 [10 favorites]



It's such a great hobby. I'm automatically inclined to trust mushroom people.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 7:57 PM on January 18 [+] [!]


epiphylogenicalsterical
posted by vers at 5:00 PM on January 18, 2022 [7 favorites]


I mildly dispute that fungi are between animals and minerals.

What's your alternative view?

Aliens. And H.P. Lovecraft will back me up on this.

It's such a great hobby. I'm automatically inclined to trust mushroom people.

Yes, you keep believing that.
posted by acrasis at 5:03 PM on January 18, 2022 [8 favorites]


We got a robot vacuum. I love it but am surprised by the sense of foreboding that I feel when I'm in one room and hear the vacuum slowly whir closer and closerrrr.

Roomba? more like Doomba
posted by cortex at 5:07 PM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


I'm running out of people IRL to tell about our new COVID hobby, so maybe I can tell all y'all.

For Christmas 2020, I gave my son a beer-making kit from the homebrew supply store less than a mile from my house. On New Year's Day 2021, he came over and we brewed our first five gallon batch of beer. We cracked open our first bottles of homebrew on inauguration day and it was pretty good! So of course we were inspired to brew a second batch.

Soon the kid realized that with just a few extra pieces of equipment, we could have two batches (or three!) fermenting in the bathtub at the same time, and soon after that we were brewing a new batch every weekend. It just clicked with us as an activity - we would call it going into "beer mode" where we just worked together like a perfect ensemble and enjoyed every part of the process. My daughter said it was a perfect fit - two INTJs doing science projects together. Plus how many mid-twenties guys have hobbies with their mom.

A few months later, my son got a job at the beer supply place, and our equipment inventory rapidly expanded thanks to scratch and dent returns. We went from extract brews to full mash and experimented with recipes. We've had two minor explosions and two bad batches down the drain, but otherwise have received only rave reviews. There's a three-tap kegerator in my living room with a Pliny the Elder clone and a pineapple IPA currently on tap. We have our own logo and a light-up metal cut-out sign for the patio courtesy of mr. rekrap.

For Christmas this year, my son and I gave my daughter and her partner their very own membership in "Flight Club". Quarterly shipments of three brews, two bottles each shipped to them. (The first rule of Flight Club is you can talk all you want about Flight Club. Just don't tell USPS we're shipping beers.)
posted by rekrap at 5:12 PM on January 18, 2022 [26 favorites]


This morning I had two bad interactions with my usually-beloved, local pharmacy over BCBS's new "free COVID tests for everyone" plan that they don't care to understand, which purely isn't working. Also, they gouged me on a desperation purchase of two tests.

An hour later I had a simply lovely chat with a Tier 2 rep at BCBS about how the plan simply isn't working, and she's kicked my case up to her boss's boss.

And friends, I am sorely conflicted by this role reversal -- aaaaaand also out a bunch of cash while I wait for them to figure out their damn system and then fight to get my money back.
posted by wenestvedt at 5:18 PM on January 18, 2022 [4 favorites]


And that a lot of bassists don't try to cover the first 4 frets with 4 fingers.

I bought a used bass book this summer, Serious Electric Bass, by Joel Di Bartolo. I almost didn't even pick it up to leaf through it, because its kind of cheesy blurb made me suspect that it was a low-value dump of a few patterns written out in all 12 keys. But it is good, Di Bartolo was the real deal, long-time Tonight Show bassist and a well-respected educator. Anyway, it starts out with first position exercises, one finger per fret, and they kind of kicked my ass. Like all the intervals - every possible minor second through octave that you can play, using only open strings and the first four frets. I wish I had worked through that material a long time ago!
posted by thelonius at 5:19 PM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


think it was terence mckenna who suggested some sort of fungal panspermia theory of the origin of "consciousness" or maybe reason or something. i recently ran back to the mckenna books on the shelf looking for machine elfish language (and not really succeeding as clearly as i'd hoped), and probably won't try that again.

ah. here you go. or maybe this.

books. pshaw.
posted by 20 year lurk at 5:21 PM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


I wanted to walk out of Mixed Nuts (1994 film with Steve Martin), but I was with a friend and thought she wanted to finish watching it. Turned out she wanted to walk out of it too.

My partner and I did walk out of it. I think it was the first time we ever did that. Just like some people have to figure out that it's OK not to finish a book once you've started it, we needed Mixed Nuts to teach us that you didn't have to stay to watch an entire movie if you didn't want to—and, we figured out eventually, if you walk out early enough, you can get your ticket money back.

We used to see all the movies, when we were young and it was just the two of us. We'd discuss them after and rate them on a 10-point scale. To be a 10, it had to be a movie that, before it was over, we already knew we wanted to see it again. A 1 was "walked out." A 2 was "didn't walk out; regretted it."
posted by Well I never at 5:35 PM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


Solidarity and good fortune to my fellow job seekers!

I'm starting a new job next week and it's been an incredible experience in the early going. The whole interview process was a delight, the salary and benefits are good, and the onboarding has been executed with breathtaking friendliness and efficiency. The one fly in the ointment was that the recruiter warned me that they were a PC company and I've spent my entire 14 year professional career on a Mac. But then I got an email today asking did I want a PC or a Mac to be sent to me! Turns out that they're hardware agnostic! I don't have to spend the entire weekend watching YouTube videos designed for senior citizens! I was so happy I legit teared up.
posted by merriment at 5:39 PM on January 18, 2022 [13 favorites]


A 1 was "walked out." A 2 was "didn't walk out; regretted it."

Feel like those two categories could be switched.

In terms of Wordle, what are you guys using for your initial guess(es)? I've been favoring MATES and DOILY or something with an R to kind of final round Wheel of Fortune it. For words that length, the S and Y seem to be overrepresented (in particular the Y).
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 5:58 PM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


We were about of a third of a way through an art house screening of One From the Heart when my friend and I looked at each other and he whispered "let's just leave." We did and it was exhilarating.
posted by Morpeth at 6:25 PM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


The closest I came to walking out of a movie because it was bad was probably Reindeer Games, but as it was filmed in my hometown, I had dragged all of my university friends to see it with me so that was probably shame more than annoyance.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:38 PM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


My kid is getting into Pokémon - I don’t get it
Pokemon isn't just one thing. There's the card game but then there's the cartoon, console video games in multiple genres, mobile video games also in multiple genres, manga, and so many different toys. My son will always like watching the cartoons and his various Pokemon stuffies but he goes in and out of all the other stuff. Last week he started playing Pokken Tournament, which I had bought years ago and only played a bit, and has now finished the game and can pretty consistently beat me at it which is annoying because he's way too young to be beating me at video games but I really don't want to put any time on my own into learning the moves so I could beat him.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 6:45 PM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]




In terms of Wordle, what are you guys using for your initial guess(es)?

I tend to try and knock out the vowels, so MAILE and HUMOR, or RAILS and EPOXY or EPOCH.
posted by curious nu at 7:12 PM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


Bassists: JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US

I am a 1-2-34 fingering player forever, having started on upright bass and later added bass guitar. I play my bass guitar with 1-2-34 on the frets. I like a high action on my strings (upright or electric) and it's legit hard to push down your ring finger on its own when you like your action high. On the upright I NEED a 3/4 together. (On electric 3 alone is fine, but I'm so used to 34 going together; it'd take too much re-training to get 3 to go alone, and then my upright playing would be all messed up!)

Wordle: I begin with ARISE and, if I don't get much from that, proceed to POUTY. Taz suggested EARTH as a first word and I kind-of love it!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:29 PM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


I use STAIR for Wordle as a first try as they're high frequency letters. I like EARTH too.

Our four foster kittens are now ready to be adopted, and I want to keep them all! I cannot tell my children who are also advocating to keep them but we do NOT need to be the crazy house of eight cats... again. They have gone from hiding under the bed and hissing to snuggling in with us at night for cuddles and racing around the house.

This weekend I applied for several jobs. I really like my current job, but the pay is only just meeting bills. I still feel imposterish about my work but I think that they want to extend my contract is a good sign.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 7:34 PM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


In terms of Wordle, what are you guys using for your initial guess(es)?

Hit 5 out of the 10 most common letters with any of heart, nerds, shine, stain, or train. I have read that some people knock out most of the vowels with adieu, but I haven't had luck with that strategy.
posted by theoriginalkdawson at 7:34 PM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


ackptui, The Church of the Tree of Life was incorporated in 1971, and dissolved sometime in the early 1990s.
posted by blob at 7:47 PM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


Went to see Six on Broadway with my teen and I can’t think of what would make me leave the theatre mid act but halfway through the first song we looked at each other and laughed and would have left if the cast wouldn’t have seen us
posted by shothotbot at 8:17 PM on January 18, 2022


saxofone por que choras by some guys just hanging out in the front yard after dinner, i guess

And now I'm back to wanting to add a clarinet to my collection of saxes, that I also wouldn't be able to practice in my apartment without enraging the neighbors...
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:32 PM on January 18, 2022




In terms of Wordle, what are you guys using for your initial guess(es)?

My seed words are ROUTE and SLAIN. The five major vowels and five common consonants (including E in the final position). Worked great yesterday and the day before, not so well today.
posted by SPrintF at 8:53 PM on January 18, 2022


Tonight I enjoyed trying a few Wordles in languages other than English--not sure how many might have been linked already: Le Mot / Wordle.at / Wörtle / Wordle (ES) / Par le / Ordel / Woordle
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:05 PM on January 18, 2022 [4 favorites]


I don't have any great openings based on other people's objectively good strategy. It just works better for me as long as I open with anything from P, S, or R. Also once I managed to figure out a Wordle after using 'penis'. This delighted me.

Anyway, I finally got my booster appointment date! Which is tomorrow. And I also said yes to a new side hustle, which makes my general work bubbles to be three (with one unpaid, being a volunteering role). This is very bizarre because my self-image is that I'm a lazy SOB. Not to mention I still keep up with my theatre side (I'm with a company now that does free readings every fortnight, and we hunt for works by women esp from outside the West, in English) and everytime we catch up, I'm reminded why trying to make acting/theatre work in a thirdworld economy is truly a bougie endeavour, that's just no real strata where being a jobbing actor pays off unless you're supported in some way.

In any case, side hustle money is going into my italki wallet - i really want to improve my conversational french and japanese, sigh.
posted by cendawanita at 9:09 PM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


Byrdle

Wordle, but the target words are all from early or choral music.
posted by clew at 9:23 PM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


I can't recall a movie walkout, but I did walk out of two shows: Seussical and I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change. The latter has a great title and literally no plot and we were bored stiff--and also saw some of my jerky relatives in the audience, so we left at intermission before they spotted us. Seussical was so dull that my mom asked if we could leave ten minutes into it and I said "no, wait until intermission" and it just did not get any better.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:19 PM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


Wordle 214 2/6

⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Yessssssssss!
posted by mochapickle at 11:20 PM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


Nice!

I've now done 4 Wordles and every single one is 4 guesses. I thought I might not make it at all this time after coming up blank early, but nope: 4 guesses.

⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨
🟨⬜🟩🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
posted by mark k at 12:07 AM on January 19, 2022 [2 favorites]


My kid is getting into Pokémon - I don’t get it

I mildly dispute that fungi are between animals and minerals.

What's your alternative view?


Just for maximum free thread convergence: Pokémon is like mushrooms/mycology / fungi are Pokémon.
posted by progosk at 12:50 AM on January 19, 2022 [4 favorites]


Friends, I greet you from a sodden summer evening east of the Great Divide and north of the Big Smoke. Today's been cool and wet, sweet relief from the blazing sun and enervating humidity of the past many days. The neighbour's cows are lowing, a distant kookaburra is tuning up for the twilight cackle.

Perhaps it's time for some AC/DC.

Nah, not to disturb this evening's bucolic peace but to see them in 1976 recording promos for Countdown at Sydney airport before they left for London and the bigtime.
posted by valetta at 1:26 AM on January 19, 2022 [2 favorites]


For Wordle, I use saber as my first word - just for fun, since that's my weapon.

Yesterday, I was notified that I have finally met the requirements for student loan forgiveness. So 26 years after dropping out of graduate school, at the age of 63, I am done. Yay!
posted by FencingGal at 4:33 AM on January 19, 2022 [22 favorites]


I am a 1-2-34 fingering player forever, having started on upright bass and later added bass guitar.

totally valid and not uncommon at all in folks who started on the upright and played electric later
posted by thelonius at 4:51 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


On the topic of bass technique, (electric), I found out where the old-school style of all thumb plucking - not slapping, like this - came from. Electric bass pioneer Monk Montgomery: who was his brother? It was Wes Montgomery, and Monk, when he was told to play electric in a band, just adopted Wes' thumb style to bass.
posted by thelonius at 5:41 AM on January 19, 2022


yeah, i use my thumb for bass AND guitar, although i can play with a pick and sometimes on guitar, the other fingers

it has a nice full tone that i like

i started on classical guitar a long time ago, so i learned some versatility that way

i used to play with a nickel as a pick, but it's rough on strings and doesn't seem to suit me anymore
posted by pyramid termite at 6:11 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


Ha ha. I was the patient in the story.
posted by kathrynm at 6:20 AM on January 19, 2022 [2 favorites]


Recorded a song that comes close(r) to achieving my semi-intentional goal of a Shearwater pastiche/fanart than ever, in many ways. But I need another take on the main vocal *and* I just can't get Ableton to render it satisfyingly for some reason. The melodica lines (yep) keep just disappearing. I'm going to try more bit depth and maybe a different compression strategy. Usually I just put up with it to a certain degree, but if I could get out of the DAW what the DAW is playing back (not rendering out), I'd be a lot happier...

Maybe it's just a volume thing. My hearing is very not perfect and I think some frequencies just don't make it to me unless the whole mix is a bit louder - (I think this is why songs 'open up' for me when they are a bit louder?) But I do think something weird is going down with the DAW's render. Time to try a few different things.
posted by aesop at 7:32 AM on January 19, 2022


Roomba, more like Doomba
Now I want a pint. But I'm 3000 miles away from one.
posted by aesop at 7:37 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


The only movie I can recall walking out of because it was awful was the execrable Chevy Chase vehicle "Funny Farm".

I've left three other movies mid-watch - I once left a showing of Disney's "Aladdin" because my date accidentally managed to open the seam on the side of the giant soda we were sharing, dumping almost an entire movie-theater-large soda in my lap, and I left showings of "The Day After Tomorrow" and "Cloverfield" because of I was feeling poorly, mostly unrelated to the content of the movies.
posted by hanov3r at 7:39 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


I actually kinda liked "Funny Farm...."

The one time I walked out on a movie was the first time I tried seeing A Clockwork Orange, but that was largely because I was on a date and he had suggested we see a double-feature of 2001 and that. This was not a very good idea for a first date.

I did have to leave a movie mid-film, but went back in later; I know I've mentioned this before, it was when I saw Terminator 2 and the scene with Sarah Connor's nuclear war nightmare freaked me out because I was having my own such nightmares and I totally did not know one of them was going to be given a film studio treatment like that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:43 AM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]


the boldness of the townie deer around here reached a new level the other day, they're cutting across the front step to avoid the snow drifts and the one paused to gawk back at me through the window. My partner approached the window and a staring contest commenced. have you seen a mule deer articulate its ears? I'm 99% sure it's sheer projection but it's hard not to read: studied indifference, bafflement, consternation, the list goes on.
posted by elkevelvet at 8:00 AM on January 19, 2022 [6 favorites]


A friend of mine told me, very briefly, about this great new movie called, "Fight Club." So, without knowing anything about the film, I very timidly asked someone to go to it on a first date. We moved in together later, so it wasn't a deal breaker. But, the conversation afterward was pretty challenging. Who knows, maybe it helped. (To be clear, I think many things about the film are good. I don't recommend it for a first-date film.) My second date with my spouse was a private screening of a shockingly bad, never-released, vanity film project their film-school friends worked on. The conversation afterward was great. So, maybe there's a dating strategy there. The choice is subtle, though.

Terminator 2 was filmed in the neighborhood where I grew up. I was born in the hospital that was redressed as the psychiatric institution. I watched them erect a fake guard tower and spray-paint the dead grass green from the school bus-stop when they were filming it. I used to buy ice cream from the bar where the motorbikes get knocked down. It's impossible for me to see that movie without just giggling at the depiction of the neighborhood. I know that happens a lot to anyone who lives in a city, but I was young enough that it had never happened to me before. It's hard to view the film as a film without remembering being astonished at it as a kid.
posted by eotvos at 8:03 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


I can only think of three movie walk outs, all when they were new releases.

Saturday Night Fever because I just didn't like disco music at all. Which I suppose I didn't fully realize until I was stuck in a movie theatre with it. I've since changed my mind.

True Lies because it was blatantly racist. And Arnold couldn't begin to pull off the subtleties of his part. But I probably would've stuck with it if EVERY villain wasn't more or less defined by their ethnicity.

Four Weddings and a Funeral because I'd recently spent time in Britain and no way was I going to be charmed by the passions and hi-jinks of the upper fucking class. I would however be interested in a remake that was set in Nazi Germany with all the key characters members of the Party, often as not in uniform, casually zeig-heiling each other ... and every now and then a mass arrest in the background.
posted by philip-random at 8:19 AM on January 19, 2022


I actually kinda liked "Funny Farm....

I did too. Saw it with a friend of mine at a movie theater when it came out. We pretty much had the theater to ourselves as Funny Farm was not a big hit, but we both enjoyed it and took some added amusement from a big standee in the lobby placed as an advertising tie in to the movie showing Chevy Chase on a Wheelhorse lawn tractor used in the movie.

A year or two later my friend, who has a tendency to vocalize whatever associations cross his mind, was working at the front desk of the hotel we both were employed at and noticed the person he was checking in worked for Wheelhorse, so, naturally, he blurted out "Hey, Chevy Chase drives a Wheelhorse!" to the guy. The fella looks at him blankly for a brief moment, then his eyes light up and he says "Yes! Yes he does!" as if my buddy had just validated the entire ad campaign through his mention. It was kinda lovely.

I still think about the ending of the movie every time I see those vanlife people, mombloggers, or other viral influencers. Sure we all know this lifestyle is completely phony, but you still want to believe you can have it.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:20 AM on January 19, 2022


(Regarding my above comment, on further reflection, please forget the bit about knocking motorcycles over and replace it with stealing clothes and a bike. Memory is hard. I'm not proud of what I think I confused that with. Everything else is true, as far as I know. The bar was definitely real, friendly, and catered to a much more racially diverse group of customers than depicted in the film. It's long gone. But, unless I'm also as bad at geography as memory of films, it's a really cool childrens' museum now.)
posted by eotvos at 8:20 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


I walked out of Creepshow, but close to the end, when the story about the cockroaches happened and I knew if I didn't leave, I'd throw up.

I have also never seen Titanic, and I think Love Actually is one of the worst films ever made. It. Is. Garbage.
posted by essexjan at 8:37 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


it wasn't a walk-out, but a film experience that sticks with me is the drive home with a friend from her place after viewing a rented copy of The Reflecting Skin. You know how friends watch movies then talk about them immediately, fun times right? I just remember that silent drive back to my apartment, the numb silence. I still don't know what the hell the movie was "about" (the nightmare of childhood?) but checking the trailer to link above, it doesn't surprise me that I completely forgot Viggo Mortensen was among the cast.
posted by elkevelvet at 9:04 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


Love Actually is one of the worst films ever made. It. Is. Garbage.

as per my comment on Four Weddings and a Funeral -- I suspect you could pull the same Nazi switch with Love Actually. You'd hardly have to change any of the actual dialogue. Just a few names and places. And the PM would become the Fuhrer, of course. I wonder if you could do it with all of Richard Curtis's Rom-Coms.
posted by philip-random at 9:05 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


I walked out of Creepshow, but close to the end, when the story about the cockroaches happened and I knew if I didn't leave, I'd throw up.

Stay away from the BBC Earth episode on caves......
posted by thelonius at 9:08 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


please forget the bit about knocking motorcycles over ... I'm not proud of what I think I confused that with.

Pee-Wee's Big Adventure?
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:21 AM on January 19, 2022 [2 favorites]


I followed the megathreads obsessively even though I wasn't a MeFi member at the time.

A large piece of wood is missing from the baby's crib. We can't find it. Did he eat it? No, surely he'd be in some distress if he had. That means it's still out there. What if he finds it later and eats it?

Oh also I'm supposed to be designing a wastewater treatment plant right now to do a physically impossible thing because that's what the manager who pitched the idea to the client said I would do.

I'm thinking more about the piece of wood.
posted by The Monster at the End of this Thread at 9:43 AM on January 19, 2022 [11 favorites]


Since many are listing films that they've walked out of (maybe a good question for the gray, come to think of it) here's mine, since I log every visit to the cinema, and some movies get appended with the notation 'w/o'. First, ancient, repertory films from the excellent Stanford, which, tragically, I've moved away from:
  • Mr Smith Goes to Washington
  • The Nun's Story
  • Alexander's Ragtime Band
  • For the Love of Mary
  • Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
and secondly, then-current films:
  • In the Mood For Love
  • Moulin Rouge!
  • Spun
  • Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift
  • Juno
Of course, it's been two years since I walked in to a movie theater, so that second group's kind of stale now.
posted by Rash at 9:55 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


Was out, probably with Omicron, for past couple of weeks. Started getting deeper into films from the late 30's through the mid 50's. The best part was seeing my wife's outrage at the storyline of Dial M for Murder. Also: The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker is nuts.
posted by zerobyproxy at 10:06 AM on January 19, 2022


I too loathe Love, Actually, but hate-watched it recently after listening to the audiobook version of Lindy West's Shit, Actually ( I recommend the whole book, but the link is to the original Jezebel essay). A good time was had by all.
posted by ikahime at 10:11 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


Just for maximum free thread convergence: Pokémon is like mushrooms/mycology / fungi are Pokémon.

Pikachu, staring coolly into the barrel of a gun: "you cannot kill me in a way that matters"
posted by cortex at 10:11 AM on January 19, 2022 [2 favorites]


think i've only walked out of war of the roses, though i cannot seem to stay awake through a screening of wings of desire.
posted by 20 year lurk at 10:12 AM on January 19, 2022


I started Babylon Berlin last week. I took three years of German in high school a lifetime ago. Surprised I still recognize some of the language. Very little, if I’m being honest with myself . But still.

I know subtitles aren’t for everyone, but I’m loving this show. I highly recommend.
posted by MorgansAmoebas at 10:18 AM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]


Memorable almost-walkouts:

Arachnophobia (1990): My girlfriend leaned over and asked, "Wait, is this going to be about spiders?" It was going to be about spiders. Her family moved even further away that summer, but I don't think it was related.

Prospero's Books (1991): My English teacher mentioned the new movie, based on Shakespeare's The Tempest, and offered extra credit for going to see it. So a friend of mine and I went, and ended up at the same screening as our teacher, who was embarrassed beyond belief.
posted by emelenjr at 10:23 AM on January 19, 2022 [2 favorites]


he boldness of the townie deer around here reached a new level the other day, they're cutting across the front step to avoid the snow drifts and the one paused to gawk back at me through the window. My partner approached the window and a staring contest commenced. have you seen a mule deer articulate its ears? I'm 99% sure it's sheer projection but it's hard not to read: studied indifference, bafflement, consternation, the list goes on.

I once lived in a place where if we didn't give them a sleeve of saltines in the morning, they would not let us out of the driveway. I feel your pain.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 10:31 AM on January 19, 2022 [4 favorites]


I'm going to apply for a permanent position in the office that I'm temping in and everyone in the office that I tell is very supportive and excited. That helps assuage my impostor syndrome, but now I'm nervous about my resume. I feel like my brain is like, "nicely done short-circuiting my first anxiety hurdle, here's a fresh new anxiety! Sucker!"

Also, today is the first day my wife and I have been able to get out of our house since a big winter storm dumped a foot and a half of snow and ice in our rural mountain neighborhood...
posted by schyler523 at 10:36 AM on January 19, 2022 [2 favorites]


Trying to spread the word here, since I know there are writers on MeFi....

So....there are apparently a whole ton of ghostwriting web sites which are claiming other legit authors' works as their own on their web sites.

It was "UrsulaV" on Twitter who noticed first, with this thread where she discovered one of her own works on one site and reached out to someone in livechat to ask "what the fuck". They were apologetic, but blocked her in chat. She found another one soon after.

Soon other commenters found other sites doing the same thing - and other authors on Twitter started spotting their own books as well, or fans alerted them when they caught them. (I gave Neil Gaiman a heads-up that one site is passing off his "A View From The Cheap Seats" as one of theirs, and he responded that he's siccing lawyers on them.)

So - Mefi Writers may want to have a quick glance through some of the following web sites and see if you catch anything hinky....

Genesis Bookwriting
The Bookwriting Corp
Superior Writing Hub
Creative Book Writers
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:37 AM on January 19, 2022 [8 favorites]


I have walked out of two movies, both because the violence got to be too much for me. One was Slumdog Millionaire (I think there was a scene where a little boy was going to be blinded?) and the other was Kingsman: The Secret Service (some epically long fight scene in a church).

My current fun is learning how to cross country ski. I went a few times last year using rentals, then bought my own set this fall and have made it out 6 or 7 times so far this winter. I'm not very good at it, especially the whole snowplowing down hills thing (so many falls!) but it's weirdly fun and I'm really excited to get better! Now I'm one of those people who is always monitoring the weather report for new snow, checking out trail reports, etc. Luckily there are a few places in my area with manmade snow, but they're more of a drive than the natural trails near my house.
posted by leftover_scrabble_rack at 10:43 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


A group of us walked out of My Dinner With Andre. I’m still bitter at Siskel and Ebert over that one. Best film of the year, my ass.
posted by MorgansAmoebas at 10:48 AM on January 19, 2022


I think that I've walked out on more than one movie--I've certainly abandoned watching more than one at home very early on--but the only one that I can remember doing so at an actual theater was It's Pat. 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, and that only because they can't go into negatives.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:03 AM on January 19, 2022


I don't think I've ever walked out of a movie, but that's because I've hardly ever walked into a movie. I'm just too sensitive to how loud they are, especially these days. I walk out of the room when movies are being played on the television in my house, because my husband likes a lot of stuff I just can't deal with, like the various incarnations of James Bond.
posted by Daily Alice at 11:04 AM on January 19, 2022 [2 favorites]


a thread of anime data discs
posted by curious nu at 11:05 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


eotvos: Terminator 2 was filmed in the neighborhood where I grew up. I was born in the hospital that was redressed as the psychiatric institution. I watched them erect a fake guard tower and spray-paint the dead grass green from the school bus-stop when they were filming it. I used to buy ice cream from the bar where the motorbikes get knocked down.

Now I'm imagining the recently-timetraveled Arnie walking into the place, only to see a bunch of kids either slack-jawed or pointing at him and giggling. Cut to Arnie in a severely overstressed jumper, pedaling furiously away on a Big Wheel.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:10 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


It was "UrsulaV" on Twitter who noticed first

Not really related, but I saw this on tiwtter because UrsulaV = Ursula Vernon, aka T. Kingfisher, and if you like fantasy novels with paladins, meet cutes involving magic swords, or furry animals, you really should be reading her stuff.

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking and Nine Goblins are great stand alone novels; the Saint of Steel series is 3 short-ish novels (so far) and a little more serious in tone, but still immense fun.
posted by mark k at 11:26 AM on January 19, 2022 [2 favorites]


Confession: I only figured out in the last week that one of the lovely pieces of handmade pottery gifted to me by my Secret Bean in 2020 was a spoon rest.

I've only walked out of one movie, and that was Gremlins. I was eleven, I found it terrifying (still do) and my mom removed me from the theater. As we were on vacation, my siblings (who loved the film) were also forced to leave as my mom did not feel comfortable leaving me alone.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 11:27 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


Weird Al still looks so young that he could do the job himself.

...but the only one that I can remember doing so at an actual theater was It's Pat.

More free thread convergence: Weird Al and Julia Sweeney play themselves in the delightful series Work in Progress by Abby McEnany.
*spoiler alert* Pat makes an appearance and it's awful and great!
posted by Celatone at 11:42 AM on January 19, 2022 [2 favorites]


Local DSA (Dem Soc of Amer) had a walk-in vax & booster clinic yesterday evening. I am so happy to have that accomplished. I couldn't figure out a joke for hoping I'd be contagious with Dem. Socialism. I love that they are doing community service. Worked a few hours, now I have a fever and am going to bed with a mug of tea that will just sit and get cold.

Maine has had seasonally-appropriate single-digit temps, dipping into sub-zero F, and 40F+, wild swings are typical. It was v. cold last night, so when I woke during the night, I fed the wood stove. Now it's just about freezing, predicted to stay at least in the 20s, so I don't need to worry about the pipes.

Like most of the world, I'm experiencing some real Screw Covid, I Want To Be Done, to which Covid replies, Whatever, We Do What We Do. I needed to say this somewhere.
posted by theora55 at 12:09 PM on January 19, 2022 [6 favorites]


I went to see Contact at a theater with 5 other people. Afterwards it quickly became apparent that two of us hated the movie and wanted to complain about it, two of us thought it was hilariously bad and wanted to make fun of it, and two of us had been profoundly moved. This was awkward.

I ended up going home, writing a four-page parody, and posting it to my favorite Usenet group to get the stifled snark out of my system.
posted by straight at 12:17 PM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]


Ask me about perimenopause. GO AHEAD.

Ha.

(Celatone I loooove Work in Progress; check out Somebody, Somewhere if you can)
posted by wellred at 12:26 PM on January 19, 2022 [4 favorites]


Our mom took my sister and me to see a double-bill of My Dinner with Andre and Deathtrap when we were in our teens. I was fascinated by the first movie, but both my sister and I hated the potboiler Deathtrap so much - especially after the heady My Dinner - that we made mom leave partway through. I've never been a big fan of thriller/murder/horror movies.

In conclusion, movie taste is a land of contrasts.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:43 PM on January 19, 2022


I was forced to walk out of Titanic because the filmstrip broke. It was in a cute little rural movie theater and there were hardly any of us there because it was in the middle of an epic snowstorm. They gave us all vouchers and we walked outside into the most amazing snowdrifts.

I also "walked out" of Outlander because it was so horrifically violent.

Are we talking about perimenopause? Because I have a lot to say!
posted by HotToddy at 1:28 PM on January 19, 2022 [4 favorites]


Possibly eponysterical! What’s up?
posted by clew at 1:36 PM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


I had to walk out of The Hunger Games and Beasts of the Southern Wild -- but that was because both of them used too much shakey-cam and I got horribly nauseated.

Perimenopause kind of sucked, and I feel that women don't get enough warning about all the possible shit that can happen. I was NOT PREPARED for the menstrual flooding and so forth.

Menopause is much better, but it's taken several years for the hot flashes to die back.
posted by suelac at 1:44 PM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]


Two years ago I would have told you that perimenopause was the worst, but I now think I was having thyroid problems that were only diagnosed some months after that. Possibly I was having both! Thyroid problems are also something ladies of this age are not warned about enough.

Right now I am not having a drink in the evening. It is fine, not having a drink in the evening. I used to not have drinks in the evening all the time. It's good. It's good of me. I'm not stressed about it or anything. If I was stressed about it, that would mean I had a Drinking Problem and would have to live a life of sparkling cider and iced tea, which I don't even like. So I am cool with it, extremely cool with it, the being here without a drink now. I just felt I needed to tell somebody that.
posted by Countess Elena at 2:11 PM on January 19, 2022 [12 favorites]


Oh it's eponysterical all right. How could you possibly prepare anyone for the intensity and suddenness of hot flashes? How you will be snuggled up to your sweetie to get warm and in the space of one second you'll go from cozy to throwing off all the covers and flinging yourself over to the cold side of the bed because otherwise you would BURST INTO FLAMES? And how it's such a bizarrely intense, angry heat, not anything like being hot on a summer day or too hot under the covers. The closest thing is like opening the oven when it's at 550 degrees but this is way, way hotter and it's not just hot air in your face, it's emanating from the core of your body. It feels exactly like a space heater inside that doesn't know when to turn off and if you don't do something you will just keep getting hotter and hotter until you actually spontaneously combust. Words are so inadequate to describe this feeling. Partners of perimenopausal people, you should be really, really nice to them!

Countess Elena, is the drink comment related to the perimenopause comment? Because drinking (any amount) definitely is triggering these hot flashes and I'm mad about that too.
posted by HotToddy at 2:41 PM on January 19, 2022 [5 favorites]


I had to walk out of ... because both of them used too much shakey-cam and I got horribly nauseated.

Forgot one of those, which should be on my list: Rachael Getting Married. Once I realized the whole film was going to be like that I had to exit -- early enough, I think, that I was able to get my money back.

That's a thing, you know -- if you leave within like 10-15 minutes of start-time they'll refund your ticket price, if you ask. Hold up your phone and mumble something about getting the call, if necessary.
posted by Rash at 2:49 PM on January 19, 2022 [2 favorites]


Nearly 5 years ago I was put into instant menopause b/c of breast cancer treatment. In June I'll be officially "cured". Crossed fingers it stays that way. Talked to the NP in December about next steps. If I haven't gone into menopause naturally, then I'm letting them remove my lady parts. I used to get menstrual migraines and took continuous bc. I can't do that anymore.


I have a new baby at work. He's almost 8 mo olds and is an old soul. I think his hair is just starting to come in. It's very bristly. Kinda like my brother's hair when he needs to shave his head again.
posted by kathrynm at 4:33 PM on January 19, 2022 [9 favorites]


i cannot seem to stay awake through a screening of wings of desire.

One of my favorite movies ever. Definitely shows that taste can vary a lot.
posted by FencingGal at 4:35 PM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]


...does anyone read the comments down here we don't work from home anymore, we live at work....
posted by ersatzkat at 4:43 PM on January 19, 2022 [5 favorites]


I may have walked out of a movie but I don't remember. However, there are so many movies I never walked into. Now I can't think of a reason to back up and watch them. But I did binge watch ALL of Star Trek, over a couple of years and I am gearing up to watch the last season of The Expanse.

My grandson is recovering nicely from his covid, I made sure he was vaxxed and as soon as the booster was authorised, i tried to get him in. Too late but he is OK. He is off all over the counter stuff. His was like severe tonsillitis, I can't say enough about warm, salt water gargle, and the occasional teaspoon of Crystal Hot Sauce or Tabasco. He was nearly normal today, but the laughing with his game friends, still made him cough. Anyway best to you all.
posted by Oyéah at 6:55 PM on January 19, 2022 [4 favorites]


I walked out of and back into and back out of a couple of movies that were playing a midnight show at a multiplex. "Black and Blue"(a concert film that cut between scenes of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin) just wasn't doing it for me, so I stepped out and into the next theater where "Go Tell the Spartans" was playing.

Books get about 50 pages to pique my interest. Almost didn't read "The Golden Compass" because of that. I think it was page 53 when that one hooked me.
posted by coppertop at 7:29 PM on January 19, 2022 [2 favorites]


I'm really interested in the comments on alcohol and menopause. I don't usually drink, but I had some alcohol at Christmas and I'm only now connecting it to a big surge in horrid symptoms at that time.
sort of hope it was the alcohol because that would be easy to avoid.
I've started escitalopram because of anxiety and apparently that also helps with hot flushes? I have not experienced those yet.
So odd what affects one. When I learned that my brother was on the same anxiety meds, I was touched that he told me, and comforted that I was not alone.
When I found out my sister was also taking them I was really upset and angry. For some reason it sent me into a whole "why am I so broken" spiral again.
Weird brain is weird.
My current blissful evening ritual is lying in my hammock outside in our backyard, watching Critical Role, and with all four my rats cuddling inside my nightgown.
The hammock is over my new fish pond water feature, which makes the most soothing watery sounds.
Utter bliss.
posted by Zumbador at 7:54 PM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


I don't think I've ever walked out of a movie, but I also never really went to a movie casually or without having a pretty good idea what I was going to see. It's almost always been a little bit of a special occasion; I think the most "ah, what the hell" theater experience I had was seeing "Surrogates" on a whim while traveling in 2009 for the big MeFi meetup junket thing I did when Jetblue had that sale, having a few hours to kill in one or another city. It was alright.

I did walk out on a book recently, which I don't do much; I was excited to finally get around to reading Masters of Doom because I'd been vaguely aware of it for, well, two decades now and find the story of id Software interesting and deeply relevant to my formative gamer years. But it turned out to be not at all what I wanted; way too much sort of indulgent chronicling of obnoxious early twenty-somethings, not nearly as much technical insight as I wanted, and all of it in a kind of clumsy prose.

I've moved on to Fabien Sanglard's Game Engine Black Book: Doom, which is much much more what I was hoping for. So that worked out.
posted by cortex at 8:00 PM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


My sister moved overseas and made a habit of seeing as many movies as possible when she came back to visit. On one such trip she really wanted to see Mr. Holland's Opus and convinced me to go along. We didn't leave, but as soon as it ended she said, "I am so, so sorry." I said, "at one point I almost said we should leave," and she replied that if I'd actually said something she'd have left.
posted by fedward at 9:08 PM on January 19, 2022 [2 favorites]


We've just discovereds Letterkenny and have been laughing our asses off for the last two weeks. Currently in season 3.

I went to the hospital last week for chest pain (was stented 10 years ago) and was found to have severe anemia from bleeding in my stomach. Got the bleeding stopped but the anemia will take weeks to resolve. Couldn't get a cardiac cath cuz the cath lab had had a party and half of them were out with Covid. I see cardiology next week. Meanwhile, I can't do much without getting chest pain and short of breath. Today I changed out two litter boxes (one in the basement) and that wore me out. Working half days at home this week. If I die, Cold Chef will let you know.

Lately, I've been consumed with Pluto and am reading this gigantic book (which is technical). A good book about Pluto for the lay reader is Chasing New Horizons. Also good is Mike Brown's How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming.

You may be surprised to learn that Pluto is one of over 3000 known transneptunian objects. So if Pluto's not a planet, there are 8 planets. If Pluto is a planet, there are 3008 planets so far.
posted by neuron at 9:34 PM on January 19, 2022 [8 favorites]


Couldn't get a cardiac cath cuz the cath lab had had a party and half of them were out with Covid.

Fuck's sake, that is horrifying. When will people start taking this seriously. Particularly people working in a hospital.
posted by essexjan at 10:24 PM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]


Berlin Lobster previously.

please forget the bit about knocking motorcycles over ... I'm not proud of what I think I confused that with.

Pee-Wee's Big Adventure?

Every Which Way but Loose?

Where's the shame in that? It was on TV so much during a certain era, it would have been hard not to see it.
posted by jamjam at 10:41 PM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]


I just got out of a 60 day stint in rehab. I did not want to go, I was essentially coerced by my work, but now I think it was the best thing that could have happened to me at this point in my life.
I have a history of liquidy comments on the blue, so yeah, alcohol, maybe not the best for lucid thinking.
Sober for 68 days now and feeling better than I have in years.
Just felt like sharing that with all you fine folks who make the web much more bearable.
Also, if anyone here is dealing with an issue around addiction please feel free to pm me; perhaps I can help in some way though I am still freshly sober.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 11:51 PM on January 19, 2022 [40 favorites]


That's wonderful. What an incredible feeling, I started to feel ten years younger after a few months with no drinking.
posted by thelonius at 3:22 AM on January 20, 2022 [3 favorites]


We've just discovereds Letterkenny and have been laughing our asses off for the last two weeks. Currently in season 3.

Season 3 is my favorite! Sushis and sashimis! Fishin' in Kwee-beck.

My 40th birthday party was going to be a super soft birthday party but Covid...
posted by schyler523 at 5:15 AM on January 20, 2022


Only film I ever walked out on in a cinema (because of the film) was Eraserhead.

It wasn't the weirdness. It was just too bleak. A nihilistic vortex. I felt kind of violated.

Being in B&W might have exacerbated the effect.

I have 'walked out' on quite a few movies while watching them at home.
posted by Pouteria at 6:49 AM on January 20, 2022


I've never walked out on a movie, but I once had a movie "walk out" on me.

During a screening of the second Indiana Jones film (Temple of Doom), there was a sudden and confusing jump in the plot. Turns out, the theater had received two copies of the third reel and no copy of the second. Since the theater was packed, the management just decided to run with what they had and gave out refunds to those (like myself) who complained. Weird.
posted by SPrintF at 7:22 AM on January 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


Can people who hated Mr. Holland's Opus describe why they can't stand that film? I'm not sure what bugs me about this film (is it purely the saccharine-ity?), and I know some people loved it, but I'd put the whole thing safely into a dark memory hole prior to reading fedward's comment and it raises so many questions now. I never watched the film in its entirety and I'm suspicious of my negative reaction, but I see at least two other people didn't care for it.

In terms of the inspirational teaching/teacher genre, I have never seen anything better than Etre et avoir (documentary) and I do have a soft spot for these films.. Happy Go Lucky, even Half Nelson
posted by elkevelvet at 7:38 AM on January 20, 2022


In terms of the inspirational teaching/teacher genre, I have never seen anything better than......

Farewell Mr. Bunting
posted by thelonius at 7:50 AM on January 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


You may be surprised to learn that Pluto is one of over 3000 known transneptunian objects. So if Pluto's not a planet, there are 8 planets. If Pluto is a planet, there are 3008 planets so far.

I believe the fault lies not in our stars, but in our taxonomy.
posted by nubs at 7:52 AM on January 20, 2022 [6 favorites]


Stand and Deliver has a place in my heart just for the throwaway line of “You’re like a blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat that isn’t there!”

I was in high school when it came out, taking Calculus, as well. Our teacher had a little bit of inside baseball knowledge about the twist (in the real life school which the movie was based on) where they were accused of cheating. Apparently they all got one question wrong, in the same suspiciously similar fashion. Which basically doesn’t happen except through collusion. However, when they retested under much stricter supervision, they definitely showed that they could do it for real.

I guess only the rich kids get to cheat without getting caught. It was an open secret even way back in my high school days, that the rich kid schools cheated like crazy on all the standardized testing.
posted by notoriety public at 7:53 AM on January 20, 2022


Definitely shows that taste can vary a lot

not, as far as i can tell, an expression of taste, FencingGal, which would require remaining conscious long enough to see the film. no, i mean simply that i have been unable to remain awake despite several attempts to watch it, attempts undertaken because of such regard for the film as you express.
posted by 20 year lurk at 7:59 AM on January 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


My fandom of Mr Holland’s Opus comes strictly from having a huge crush on Alicia Witt in the 90’s.
posted by notoriety public at 8:09 AM on January 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


I walked out of um, Run D.M.C. Tougher Than Leather, less than 15 minutes in. Maybe it got better later. O_o

Meanwhile, another awesome clip from the Gardiner Brothers Another One Bites the Dust
(SLYT 0:48)
posted by Glinn at 8:14 AM on January 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


I believe the fault lies not in our stars, but in our taxonomy.

So many definitions and classifications--even in science--are just historical quirks. I would have had zero problems with the IAU saying: The definition of a planet is one of the following bodies: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. If you find something new, we'll decide if it's a planet or not. That's what we do. And no, just being bigger than Pluto isn't enough.

I admit the approach they came up with is pretty elegant and manages to neatly include both the inner planets and the gas giants with One Neat Trick. But since they don't have the courage to apply it to other solar systems I'm not sure it was necessary.
posted by mark k at 8:22 AM on January 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


Mr. Holland's Opus made me feel a bit seen as a lifelong music teacher, but also mad (like most of the 'aren't teachers AMAZING' genre of movies) because what we always need more than accolades is simply better funding and facilities (and better pay would be cool, too). If our jobs are so beloved and important, please materially treat them that way.

The movies I've walked out of say more about my bad judgment going in than anything: Tomb Raider (orig. version w/Jolie; maybe ten minutes in I thought, 'why the fuck did I buy a ticket to this? what did I expect?' and went and got my money back); Con Air (summer group thing, chosen by consensus, I finally noped out in the last act as the plane was crashing into the Vegas strip, and waited for my friends in the lobby); Powder (unexpected pederastic content, bye); The Secret Life of Pets (mid-week matinee escape from a summer music camp, just wanted to sit in the AC for a bit and the movie was so stupid I couldn't even enjoy the cool, climate-controlled air).

This weekend I turned off Ghostbusters: Afterlife not even halfway in, because it was so boring.

(OTOH, the Yellowjackets season finale was terrific. What a wonderfully macabre show.)
posted by LooseFilter at 8:28 AM on January 20, 2022


The Secret Life of Pets (mid-week matinee escape from a summer music camp, just wanted to sit in the AC for a bit and the movie was so stupid I couldn't even enjoy the cool, climate-controlled air).

Dang, I had way better luck when I did the "hell, at least the movie theater will have air conditioning" thing - that was how I ended up seeing Smoke, which was a jewel of a film.

Since I seem to have kicked off a "Movies I walked out of" thread - 95% of my movie viewing content is at home, since most of it is stuff I'm watching for my blog and I can only get it via Netflix or Amazon anyway (and most of that is only on Netflix's DVD service; I'm one of those weirdos they talk about in the "hey, did you know some people still use Netflix for their DVDs" articles they do once a year or so).

So it's a little easier to "walk out", but - I also ran a playwriting contest for 10 years and have developed the instinct to keep going and see if a bad thing gets even worse. Which somehow makes it even more telling if something is bad enough to even short circuit that instinct.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:54 AM on January 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


I've walked out on a few films, but always stuff at festivals that nobody has ever heard of. (Unless you made them or curated them, in which case you don't want me to complain about them.) I don't think I've done it in an ordinary movie theater. Well, except for the Snakes on a Plane midnight premier, but that's only 'cause I'd had more to drink than one should and decided sleeping under a tree would be a more productive use of my time.

I walked out of a half-day-long stage production hosted by an internationally known Shakespeare theater a few years back at the first intermission. It's hard to really describe just how bad it was. The premise was basically, "let's take only the fight scenes from a dozen plays and dramatically over-act each of them with no context. And let's add random, jarring sound and light effects." The flyer sure made it sound a lot more interesting than what they did. (Most of what that theater produces themselves isn't actually very good. But, it's always been at least watchable, and they went so big promoting this one I was convinced to buy stupidly expensive tickets. To their credit, they often host really great visiting shows, so I'm glad they exist.)
posted by eotvos at 8:58 AM on January 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


I really wanted to walk out of a contemporary opera I went to see in which all of the singers were multiple characters while also all wearing the same clothing as each other so you couldn't tell them apart to start with. It was so very, very boring and I quickly made a mental plan to leave at Intermission.

Narrator: there was no intermission.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:06 AM on January 20, 2022 [4 favorites]


but what if there was an intermission and this is the intermission and some day in the future a set of doors will swing open and there you will find yourself, once more entombed with these mediocre and same-faced operatists, and this time when the doors close behind you they remain closed forever more
posted by cortex at 9:09 AM on January 20, 2022 [7 favorites]


wait sorry i thought we were doing lovecraftian shitposting
posted by cortex at 9:10 AM on January 20, 2022 [3 favorites]


Dang it, cortex, this was supposed to be a quick break from work. Now I'm going to be ROFLing for ten minutes.
posted by Quasirandom at 9:14 AM on January 20, 2022


TBH it’s been so long that I don’t remember the specific reasons I hated Mr. Holland’s Opus other than a low tolerance for schmaltz and the physical reaction I had to how bad the actual composition was when the movie finally got to it.

Years later my sister’s movie choice in similar circumstances was The Imitation Game and for that one at least my wife was sitting next to me. The whole extended family was there and everyone but us loved it, so we had an experience of shared suffering from which we gained a new, silent way to communicate when something is particularly heavy handed. Hold your hand flat a couple inches over your partner’s hand or leg, then allow it to fall and press down firmly. We use it a lot with live theater.
posted by fedward at 9:22 AM on January 20, 2022


Someone mentioned contemporary opera: we didn't walk out, but we were vastly amused by the 2006 opera adaptation of Grendel which Julie Taymor directed.

New York's reviewers had already given it mixed reviews, and we were going to see it because a friend is a Beowulf buff. The reviewers and theater fan buzz all made mention of the fact that there was an enormous set piece that took up most of the stage, and that it seemed to be the source of a lot of the show's problems; it was a big 26-foot-high, 47-foot-long fake rock with platforms and fake caves and such for characters to climb on and hide in and such, and it was also built on a rotating platform so it could be spun around so actors could appear on different platforms or in different caves or what not.

However - this fake rock also weighed eighteen tons, and the existing mechanism in Lincoln Center's opera house couldn't handle it easily. So several times in the show, everyone in the audience just kind of had to sit there and watch this enormous fake rock s-l-o-w-l-y pivot in place, the orchestra frantically vamping with dramatic music for as long as they could stretch it to cover for it. This, of course, got funnier and funnier each time.

Oh, and at the end we finally see Beowulf - and during his solo, the actor was given these bizarre hand and arm gestures to do around his face that made it look for all the world like Beowulf was voguing.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:26 AM on January 20, 2022 [7 favorites]


I walked out of and back into and back out of a couple of movies

Yeah, me too. Antonioni's Red Desert, and Joel Schumacher's Phantom of the Opera.
posted by Rash at 9:29 AM on January 20, 2022


the physical reaction I had to how bad the actual composition was when the movie finally got to it

I had forgotten that, it really is so terribly bad that it's a punchline: he waited his whole life to produce that? I also now remember how much I resent the story's framing, that through Mr. Holland's whole life as a music teacher he felt like a total chump because he wasn't a composer (¿Por qué no los dos?) and because only failures have to teach, ugh. The movie sort of condescendingly esteems teaching as a profession. ('He didn't get to have a real career, but that's OK! Because he Helped Kids and Stuff!')

Music this morning so far:
Dang! - Mac Miller feat. Anderson .Paak (I especially love when Mac shifts his flow right at 1:20, from a downbeat emphasis to tying rhythms over downbeats, it makes the vocal feel really slippery; bonus Miller, Good News is understated and lovely.)

Harry Styles' terrific live cover of Sledgehammer (his comment about So being the best-mixed album ever got me listening to the original a couple of times, too. What a jam.)

String Quartet (1931), Ruth Crawford Seeger (an exceptionally weird and wonderful piece, and just stuffed full of interesting ideas, each movement its own sound-world; far more influential than is generally credited.)
posted by LooseFilter at 10:04 AM on January 20, 2022 [6 favorites]


Returning to the alcohol-and-peri/menopause question: yes. Alcohol absolutely exacerbates my hot flashes and insomnia.

It's a real issue, a known issue.

I'm doing Dry January and it has been nice in that way, although I'm looking forward to tasting some of the Irish whisky in my garage on Feb 1...
posted by suelac at 10:27 AM on January 20, 2022 [3 favorites]


I had caught a bit of the the general discussion of it when it was going around, but I finally this morning got around to actually watching the People Make Games Roblox expose and their more recent followup, and, oofa doofa it's just an intense amount exploitative corporate what-the-fuckery. Relatively short, well made, utterly infuriating couple of videos about an IPO-bound tens-of-billions video game corp built explicitly on turning preteens into coal mine company game devs. Barf by the gallon.
posted by cortex at 11:08 AM on January 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


'kay - I do like Harry Styles well enough, but come on, "Sledgehammer" needs to have actual horns for the horn section, not just a synth. "Sledgehammer" was Peter Gabriel's fanboy homage to Motown and Stax Records and you need actual horns for that, dangit.

This moment of performative indignance brought to you by Mentos!
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:38 AM on January 20, 2022 [5 favorites]


With you there with the four liters of barfing, cortex. We're hesitantly okay with the Randomlet continuing to play Roblox, but if they ever show signs of wanting to do game dev, it's won't be on that platform.

Meanwhile, I just came across my favorite YouTube comment of the week, on a high school performance of the Echo Sonata for Two Unfriendly Groups of Instruments: "I still think this masterwork was actually written by P.D.Q.'s younger sister, O.M.G. Bach."

(Yeah, I know, why am I even looking at the comments on YT ... )
posted by Quasirandom at 11:43 AM on January 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


Oh good I'm not alone being disappointed by the synths on the horn parts. I'm impossible.

That said I really loved the use of color in the "Dang!" video, but by the end I was wondering if they stocked up on quarters or if renting the laundromat for the shoot included access to "free" cycles, because, again, I'm impossible.
posted by fedward at 11:52 AM on January 20, 2022


I don't have the heart to post it myself, but if somebody wants to do an FPP on DirecTV's decision not to renew its contract with One America News (you know, the contract that summoned OAN into existence in the first place) then you can have the title I'd use, "Dig Your OAN Hole."
posted by fedward at 12:07 PM on January 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


Oh good I'm not alone being disappointed by the synths on the horn parts [for Harry Styles' "Sledgehammer"].

I did, however, like his story about being in Gabriel's Real World Studios to record his own album, and sheepishly asking if he and his band could try playing "Sledgehammer" in it just once and all the recording techs just kind of sighing and saying "yeah, everyone asks us that, sure go ahead...."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:20 PM on January 20, 2022 [4 favorites]


Same.
posted by fedward at 12:30 PM on January 20, 2022


In more stupid camera news (see here and here), I had some success with my grandfather's old camera bodies. The two were in pretty poor shape when I pulled them out of the basement, and after running a roll of film through one of them I noticed many of the shots were blank. I took both to a "local" camera guy (I use quotes there only because he's way down in Rhode Island and is apparently the only person in the area still working on old junk like this) who told me they weren't salvageable. "Even if I had the parts, it would be hundreds of dollars in labor - these are going on Ebay for like twenty bucks, just get another one that works."

Instead of doing that, I found a guy out in Illinois that claims he specializes in this particular camera body. I mailed them out last Friday (so they probably didn't even get to him until Tuesday at the earliest), and I've already got a shipping notification that they're coming back to me. One is definitely not repairable, but the camera I tested with film was fixed and cleaned up and should be good as new. The work statement was as long as a CVS receipt but he only charged sixty bucks!

I've taken the Crown Graphic out for a couple of test photos, but haven't developed anything yet. It's been either cold, windy, rainy, or all three around here for the past couple of weeks so it's been difficult to get outside. I've been hoping to stockpile negatives in need of development; B&W developer is about $10/gallon and the tank needs 55 ounces to properly develop negatives this size, so I wanted to fill up all the available slots in the tank before dumping five bucks of chemistry into it.
posted by backseatpilot at 5:36 AM on January 21, 2022 [4 favorites]


I formed a static image, in the late 80's, that So came out "about three years ago". This endured until I was jarred by hearing of its 10th anniversary.

I saw Peter Gabriel on the David Letterman show once. He had gone bald and had a little white beard. When the chat part came, Letterman asked like what's the deal with you all being bald? (I guess Tony Levin was there and had adequate clout to bump Will Lee off of bass chores). Gabriel stared at him like he was an idiot and said "We got old".
posted by thelonius at 5:59 AM on January 21, 2022 [4 favorites]


@backseatpilot, you should maybe give a look at the LomoGraflok.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 6:47 AM on January 21, 2022


you should maybe give a look at the LomoGraflok.

It's on my list! I have one of those standalone Instax printers (my digital system is all Fuji, so it all works seamlessly) and I really like the images it produces. My current problem is that despite having a drawer full of flash sync cables, none of them have the right connectors on them. The lens that came with the Graphic is ancient and has the old bi-post sync port on it (understandable), but I got a newer portrait lens with a proper PC port on it... and it turns out at some point flash units stopped using the "micro" plug (2 mm?) and adopted the "mini" plug (3.5 mm). All of my cables are some form of PC-to-2mm or PC-to-PC. So, back to the camera store I must go!
posted by backseatpilot at 7:09 AM on January 21, 2022


Peggy Ann Jones Backseatpilot, I just wanted to make you aware of the work of this artist that works with a lot of pinhole and sculptural objects to make photographs, since you may be able to make images with the old camera you can't get refurbished. I hope you find it interesting.
posted by effluvia at 3:05 PM on January 21, 2022


Does anyone know what's going on with the Washington Post website, right now? It's redirecting to aws.amazon.com. Do I get my money back if the paper dies in darkness?
posted by Selena777 at 5:58 PM on January 21, 2022


Who could play Columbo in a prestige era reboot. I can see Ian McShane
posted by shothotbot at 8:50 PM on January 21, 2022


I dunno, I'm not sure he has the requisite underlying goofiness.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:07 PM on January 21, 2022


I continue to support the notion of a Natasha Lyonne version of Columbo, which, uh, holy shit sort of?
posted by cortex at 9:16 PM on January 21, 2022 [7 favorites]


Idea for show reboot: Dr. Pangloss, Medicine Woman
posted by thelonius at 6:21 AM on January 22, 2022 [1 favorite]


Who could play Columbo in a prestige era reboot.

Obviously...
posted by 1970s Antihero at 7:00 AM on January 22, 2022 [2 favorites]


My mom took me to see Robin Hood: Men In Tights when I was 9, and made us leave during the statue fondling scene. I guess she hadn't seen many Mel Brooks movies if that surprised her. We ended up watching Surf Ninjas instead which I suspect is not great but I liked it because I was 9.

I went to see Franz Ferdinand when they toured with Death Cab for Cutie. I knew nothing about Death Cab, who played second, and after 3 songs I left to get drunk in my dorm. My friends who stayed said they wished they had left with me. I've never listened to Death Cab and I don't remember if I hated their live show or if it was fine but not as fun as getting drunk with my friends.
posted by Tehhund at 9:53 AM on January 22, 2022


I too loathe Love, Actually, but hate-watched it recently after listening to the audiobook version of Lindy West's Shit, Actually
@ikahime, for a second I thought you meant an alternative audio that syncs up with Love, Actually à la Dark Side of the Rainbow.

Maybe MetaFilter should make that alternative audio
posted by Tehhund at 10:17 AM on January 22, 2022 [1 favorite]


My show is back on! We got to perform it yesterday! Fingers crossed we make it through the rest of the run. I also got my shirt for the show and it's beautiful. And they filmed it last night, so we will have evidence that it existed and I can show it to my friends who won't go during Covid later.

On the other hand, I did not sleep well last night, I did not get to GO back to sleep well, and I've had to do things all morning/afternoon and can't go nap. Blech!
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:55 PM on January 22, 2022 [5 favorites]


WCityMike2 -- I am sorry to hear things are rough. I empathize, as I think I have some sense of how you feel: a decade ago I realized that my emotional support rested principally on four people. One moved across an ocean years ago now; two others were women who are now in relationships with deeply insecure guys who cannot believe I, a straight white man, can have any interest in them other than carnal; the last works huge and stressful hours in health care and mostly just comes home to collapse into sleep and start all over again the next day. Total amount of time I have spent with these four people, all of whom I love, in the last five years: about six hours.

Of course, if there is anything I can do, you need only ask.


During a screening of the second Indiana Jones film (Temple of Doom), there was a sudden and confusing jump in the plot. Turns out, the theater had received two copies of the third reel and no copy of the second. Since the theater was packed, the management just decided to run with what they had and gave out refunds to those (like myself) who complained. Weird.

In the late eighties and early nineties I managed a rep cinema. On a night off, I was there taking in the early feature, the largely forgotten 1989 period drama Old Gringo. It was a passable enough film, although a little opaque in its narrative choices: at least one major plot point left unresolved, another character perishing offscreen and appearing as a corpse in a subsequent scene with no explanation of how he died.

I sat in the back row, as was my wont. When the credits rolled, I jumped up and propped open the exit door to the lobby to let the audience back out. The manager on duty that evening hissed at me, "What are you doing?!?" I replied that I was propping open the doors to let the audience out, obviously. She said, "No, there is still twenty minutes left!" I looked back over my shoulder: credits still rolling, orchestral music swelling, audience standing up and leaving. The thing had come to a bumpy end but it was definitely telegraphed as the end of the story.

Later I learned that the projectionist had inadvertently omitted the penultimate reel, shortening a two-hour runtime to 1h 40 m. To this day, I have only ever seen 83% of that movie.

And I am fascinated to read what movies people have walked out of. I have perhaps a higher tolerance than many; in literally thousands of screenings in my life, I have left maybe a dozen movies early, and almost always at the insistence of the person I was with (my sweetie of the time was nauseated by 28 Days Later; my then-girlfriend-now-wife loathed Bruno). There was a grim independent movie called Cutting Moments that involved very convincing onscreen self-mutilation that made me feel unwell, and if I had not been in the middle of a full row, I might have considered dodging out. I did leave Michael Bay's Transformers early because of course I did. Life is too short.

In the rep cinema days, we occasionally had patrons requesting a refund because a movie grated at them (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover was a big one... actually, any Greenaway movie was). Sometimes it was too... explicit -- I seem to recall the first two and a half minutes of Beineix's Betty Blue is just one long shot of a man and woman on a bed, enthusiastically fucking.

I do recall the only thing in my time that had the widest possible range of reactions: Bruce Robinson's second film How To Get Ahead in Advertising had people storm out angrily al most every night, and often as not the audience remaining at the end applauded.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:14 PM on January 22, 2022 [1 favorite]


Other than the one I mentioned upthread, I don't generally walk out of movies; usually I sit there critiquing/making fun of it just loud enough for my companion to hear. That ends up making my companion as annoyed at me as I am at the movie, and balance is once again restored to the universe.

The execrable 2001 Planet of the Apes with Mark Wahlberg comes to mind...
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:34 PM on January 22, 2022 [1 favorite]


Last night...My cats woke me up at 1:30 AM. I got up for a drink of water, then went back to sleep until 4:30 AM, the cats again, I really don't know what was bothering them. But, I got up, made the bed put on coffee, and stepped outside to see what was up. Kitty corner across the street, the five white chihuahuas, were out barking, and the neighbor with them. Straight across the street, the neighbor was sweeping the walk, and next door, the guy was watching TV and had let his shepherd puppies out. I was out standing on my sidewalk for a moment. It was as dark as F, and 4:30 AM! SATURDAY MORNING, I mean, what is with these people, I am barely awake now? This neighborhood is full of pets and early risers.
posted by Oyéah at 8:58 PM on January 22, 2022 [4 favorites]


Oh lord, seriously! I'm not a morning person, so for me it's one of life's great luxuries to be able to sleep in until a civilized hour - say, 9am - on weekends. Except that frequently my neighbors can barely contain themselves to wait until 8am to start doing all manner of noisy things like loudly chatting with passers-by from their front porches, running air compressors/leaf blowers/lawnmowers, allowing their dogs to bark without restraint.... Bloody humans, can't stand the lot of 'em.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:44 PM on January 22, 2022 [2 favorites]


I've become a morning person by default; I am not capable of sleeping past about 7:30 or 8 am any more. And to add insult to injury, my roommate is a night owl, and noise carries far in this place - so if I wake up at 8 am on the weekend I can't really do any extended noise-making activity around the house until about 9:30 or 10.

In practical reality, it's encouraged me to schedule any outdoors errands for earlier in the morning, so I get out and about and then my roommate is awake when I get back; and that's ultimately been good at getting me out of the house and moving about more often. But - my roommate went on a spontaneous staycation in a local hotel this weekend, and boy I liked being able to start my cleaning at 9 am yesterday and get up and get moving on home stuff. The house was clean by 11 am yesterday.

And one of the big cleaning projects involved cleaning out the freezer - and that involved finally doing something with the packages of Irish bacon and sausages, and the black and white puddings, all of which have been lingering in the freezer since I got a gift "Irish Breakfast For 8" package. I wasn't quite able to host a brunch for 8 in my old apartment, and I sure as hell am not able to do it now, so I finally split that up into smaller packages; and I treated myself to a very elaborate fry-up this morning.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:57 AM on January 23, 2022


Only movie I’ve (we’ve) ever walked out of was Abbas Kiarostami’s 1997 Taste of Cherry. It just… I have an extremely high tolerance for films being/doing the unexpected, but that one just seemed… the negation of cinema, as such?
posted by progosk at 1:19 PM on January 23, 2022


Movie walk-outs: A Zed and Two Noughts. Just a bunch of decomposing bodies. Also one of the Indiana Jones movies, the bit where a villain walks into helicopter blades. Some Tarkovsky film (you know the one, it was like WATCHING GRASS GROW)... I forget the title, not the science fiction one which I quite enjoyed.

Regret not walking out: John Wick, Eyes Wide Shut. Pshhhh, it's like I should exercise better judgment before leaving the house, or something.
posted by Coaticass at 4:49 PM on January 23, 2022


We made it through the entire weekend, got it filmed, and had a lot more audience show up! Huzzah!
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:00 PM on January 23, 2022 [8 favorites]


Huzzah!

Anyone else find something slightly off in the writing/direction of ep 6 (latest one just released here in Europe) of Season 2 of the otherwise raucously wonderful The Great?
posted by progosk at 12:01 AM on January 24, 2022


My BonaFide masks shipment (from free threads a few threads ago, remember that?) finally shipped today, after my filing a(nother) complaint with PayPal a few days ago. Huzzah! Only took a month, I ...guess. I also got my government covid tests after a week (surprise there) and the fancy-ass earrings I ordered, so that worked out.

On a related note, like 4 work-related packages are lost right now and I got told the office mail doesn't have them, to which I'm inclined to call shenanigans since other packages with another carrier went out that day and they lost several of them for weeks before in the past. Another one we're supposed to be receiving and remailing and the person is all dire emergency about it, but we still haven't gotten it. MAIL SUCKS.

A friend of mine loooooooooves John Wick and I finally watched it and was all "well, it's okay, I get what you like about the mythology stuff and watching someone get whaled on because of dog murder is kinda fun, I guess," but I watched John Wick 2 over vacation and was all "ummmm...what is going on with this?" I said so to the friend and they were all "Yeah, I guess the second one wasn't as good."

I am now rehearsing for Urinetown, a show in which one does the pee pee dance onstage. Last night's rehearsal involved one poor girl literally sitting in a chair doing nothing but making deer-in-headlights eyes for HOURS while we dance around taunting her. And she gets to do that in two dance numbers, I think? It's an interesting show, but also pretty nutterpants--which was the appeal for me, I suppose :P
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:33 PM on January 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


Urinetown started out as a show in New York's Fringe Festival - and 94% of the world didn't even know what the Fringe Festival was until Urinetown won a TONY. All the press after that talked about how "and it got its start at this New York indie theater festival called the Fringe Festival!"

I actually met the creators - my friend C whom I co-ran a playwriting contest with knew them himself; they'd both been frequent fliers in the Fringe circuit, and he'd helped them with a couple of other shows. Nice guys.

Also - I was a volunteer adjudicator for the Fringe once, and wrote reviews of Fringe shows for several years for a now-defunct local NYC theater site. Before Urinetown there was a huge variety in the kinds of submissions the Fringe got - but after Urinetown, there was a huge uptick in "nutterpants ironic musicals", that always amused me.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:01 AM on January 27, 2022 [1 favorite]


I suppose I didn't link the new Free Thread when I posted it; it's not the, uh, newest one now but for posterity here was the next one.
posted by cortex at 12:55 PM on February 1, 2022


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