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Post by Mezzaphor on May 2, 2019 20:53:37 GMT
I'm not planning on seeing Endgame. I fell off the MCU bandwagon after Age of Ultron or Guardians of the Galaxy (whichever came after, I don't remember) and I don't really care to get back on.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Apr 15, 2019 4:54:55 GMT
Yeah, some of the voices sound pretty much the same. And a few of the characters are very clearly counterparts to ones from H*R. Hector is totally just Homestar as an elementary schooler with real arms. Joshow is just Coach Z, if instead of a wannabe rapper, he were a wannabe arts & crafts guy with a Youtube show. And Dooble, the closest thing to a main character in Two More Eggs, is some kind of fusion of Homsar and Senor Cardgage. (And in one episode, Dooble refers to a coffee can as his "grandmoosche", so he might actually be Homsar's son.)
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Post by Mezzaphor on Apr 14, 2019 22:37:41 GMT
All the talk about Homestar Runner last week led me to dive back into the H*R Wiki (because I was trying to find if they had some sort of big timeline of when every cartoon was released; no dice). And that led me to look up Two More Eggs, the series of shorts that Mike and Matt Chapman did for one of Disney's channels. It's almost exactly the same sort of surreal humor as H*R, just starting from scratch with a brand new set of characters.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Apr 13, 2019 16:46:02 GMT
Really hoping JJ doesn't back down from some of the controversial story choices from TLJ. Like, I know everyone at Lucasfilm said they stood behind Rian Johnson' s choices, but who knows how much of that was the truth and how much was just PR.
I do appreciate that paralleling ROTJ means they’re apparently revisiting the wreckage of the Death Star II rather than just having the First Order build another planet destroying superweapon.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Apr 13, 2019 5:47:58 GMT
I'm really looking forward to the dramatic title drop. Finn will hug Rey and say, "Rey, your parents may have been complete nobodies... but to me, you'll always be the Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker."
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Post by Mezzaphor on Apr 5, 2019 1:30:23 GMT
Bluh. I just found out my brother and his wife separated earlier this week. I don't know all the details, but it sounds like she just took off, out of the blue. Ugh. It was a bit of a surreal flash series that basically encapsulated the internet humor of the early 2000s. They're probably best known for the Strong Bad Emails. That, and they avoided profanities, sex jokes, and gore, just because the creators thought "cute cartoon characters doing R-rated things" was a worn-out cliche in internet comedy. So H*R attracted a big following in part because it was one of the few internet series that kids could watch without needing to hide it from mom and dad. And the crazy thing is, even though those kids who sang along with the Trogdor song in middle school are old enough to have kids of their own, H*R is still updating. A lot slower than back in their heyday, of course, but they're still putting out new cartoons every few months or so. It's still just as funny, and just as weird, as it ever was.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Mar 26, 2019 4:49:27 GMT
Hey, look, Applelight. A completely accurate summary of Warhammer 40K background information for people new to the franchise:
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Post by Mezzaphor on Mar 13, 2019 20:30:10 GMT
That's great to hear.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Mar 10, 2019 23:49:44 GMT
Yeah, I really don't trust anything to do with gambling. So if it were me, I'd stay far away from that.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Mar 4, 2019 2:12:36 GMT
Cool. That's really good news.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Feb 28, 2019 7:31:33 GMT
As for Richard Swift, he was a singer-songwriter type, but was also really busy as a producer and studio musician (particularly as a keyboard wizard) for other people's albums. At various points he was a member of The Shins, The Arcs, The Black Keys, and (most importantly to me) Starflyer 59. His solo albums were a smorgasbord of American pop styles, mainly pre-Beatles stuff like doo-wop, garage rock, surf, and Tin Pan Alley. I think the high points of his discography were Walking Without Effort, The Novelist, and Dressed Up for the Letdown. I lost interest in Swift's stuff after Dressed Up (and that was also when he seemed to spend more time producing other people's music than making his own). But his unfortunate death finally got Swift some attention in the music press, and the writeups convinced me to give his final album a chance. It's good stuff, but I'm not sure yet if it's on the same level as the aforementioned high points. Still need some more listens. Also I'm not sure how much of my reaction is based on the music itself, and how much is based on the real-life context behind the album. "Nancy" at least is a song for the ages, even if it's a depressing one. In other news: Speaking of Starflyer 59, HOLY CARP THEY'RE PUTTING OUT A NEW ALBUM IN APRIL!
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Post by Mezzaphor on Feb 28, 2019 5:48:16 GMT
Talk Talk was one of those 80s new wave / synthpop groups, but unlike most of their peers, they mostly used keyboards because they couldn't afford the acoustic instruments they really wanted. So after their first two albums got them a few hits and enough clout to start asking for favors from their record label, they hired a bunch of guest musicians to make their third album The Colour of Spring sound more acoustic than electronic. That wound up being their best-reviewed and best-selling album ever. So Mark Hollis went mad with power and created the two albums that would guarantee Talk Talk's rock immortality. The band just set up jam sessions to improvise for hours or days on end, with a bunch of guest musicians joining in again, then Hollis and producer Tim Friese-Greene edited the recordings into something that kind of sounded like songs. The resulting album, Spirit of Eden, was an aggressively unmarketable piece that drew from rock, jazz, and classical, but didn't fit into any category. And then they did exactly the same thing again for Laughing Stock, and it was even better.
Those last two albums (plus Slint's album Spiderland) are basically ground zero for the whole post-rock genre. The likes of Sigur Ros, Mogwai, and Explosions in the Sky probably wouldn't exist without Talk Talk, or at least they'd sound completely different.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Feb 28, 2019 5:01:07 GMT
I've got no idea what the city's like over there, so no idea what to recommend, sorry.
Here in the US, though, having a car is nearly mandatory unless you live in the very largest cities. Outside those, public transportation is generally way too inconvenient.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Feb 27, 2019 2:53:58 GMT
Mark Hollis, former frontman of Talk Talk, just died. Listening to Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock in memory.
I've also got Richard Swift's The Hex in my CD changer, recorded just a few months before his untimely passing last year and released posthumously. Maybe I should add Bowie's Blackstar to the mix and make this a proper death album collection.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Feb 17, 2019 2:42:50 GMT
Yeah. I'll miss the show, but I'd still rather they end the show on a strong note and start something different, instead of letting this show become a zombie.
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