R.CAllen

Well, in that case, you’re welcome — or I’m sorry! whichever applies best in this situation! — for that too!

Thanks! I spoilered my takes — so hot! — for that very reason. Easily ignorable! Easily skippable! Easily dismissable! You’re welcome.

My unchanging prediction of long duration is that both President Donald John Trump and President Joseph Robinette Biden will be joining the President Stephen Grover Cleveland club. I think it’s the stupidest possible outcome so it’s what’s going to happen. Only thing more stupider — as I learned during my sojourns to planet Jupiter — would be for one or both of them to die either before November 5th or before January 20th. Not ruling that out!

Haven’t seen the movie.

Gary Graham died. The human cop in Alien Nation (‘89-’90, ‘94, ‘95, ‘96, ‘96, ‘97). Ambassador Soval on Enterprise (‘01-’05) + that one episode of Star Trek: Voyager (‘95-’01) where they found the Caretaker’s mate. 73!

I’m all caught up.

I don’t much care for when other art is inexpertly larded into the substance of the art I’m experiencing. I’m thinking of ... the thing where a book will have two opening epigraphs, one from a highbrow source and one from something lowbrow. Or when a movie will try to class up the joint by quoting from some poetry e.g. Skyfall (2012), Oblivion (2013), Interstellar (2014). Or when characters will drop a reference in dialogue which just don’t feel right, just don’t feel like the sort of thing that character would say, even when the character has JUST said it!!!!1! BUT One thing I do like is when you get a little piece of another movie inside of your movie. Now that’s just good value for money! Examples, examples, let’s see. The Limey (1999) repurposing that old Ken Loach film. That little piece of Star Wars (1977) inside 500 Days of Summer (2009). The Great Escape (1963) reworked within Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019).

Norman Jewison died. I thought he was already dead! Kind of an understandable mistake. 97! Norman Jewison : wasn’t dead, wasn’t Jewish, 100% Canadian. I don’t know. I really like Agnes of God (1985). I’ve seen it ... three times? I think I’ve seen it three times. I’ve seen it twice definitely. I saw it for the first time in university, rented it once, I think I’ve seen it at least one other time. I should watch it again. Great movie!

Nerene Virgin died. Jodie from Today’s Special (‘81-’87). 78!

The reason the other thread was chockablock with people chiming in from jump with all the things they dislike about art and this thread is mostly silent is actually a pretty simple one. It’s easier to notice what we think is bad than what’s good. Even I — the world’s most important person, need I remind you, the man whose opinions REALLY MATTER! — find it to be a struggle. Here are my best guesses:

Howard Waldrop died. ‘The Ugly Chickens’, yeah, but so many more. ‘Save a Place in the Lifeboat for Me’, ‘Ike at the Mike’, ‘Der Untergang des Abendlandesmenschen’, ‘Horror, We Got’. 77!

Terry Bisson died. ‘They’re Made Out of Meat’, of course, but the thing that sticks in my memory are the (pointless?) cash grabs. The work for hire stuff. The Johnny Mnemonic novelization. The Galaxy Quest novelization. Why did they ... well, I read them. I read the copies my library ordered. I don’t think I read the young Boba Fett books he did. The ones which came out after AotC. But they were on my radar then and now. They came to mind to me upon learning he’d passed beyond the veil. Oh well. 81!

Tracy Tormé died. ‘Conspiracy’ from Season 1 of TNG! (Wait, he was Mel Tormé’s son!?!?1? Bing Crosby’s kid. Mel Tormé’s kid. Kind of a dr._doofenshmirtz_meme.jpeg situation.) 64! Terrible.

Tom Wilkinson died. Great actor! Really great in The Governess (1998), as the money in Shakespeare In Love (1998), in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Michael Clayton (2007), Ben Franklin in John Adams (‘08), James Baker in Recount (2008) — I have a soft spot for those modern day politics movies Jay Roach and Danny Strong tricked Dr Pepper® into paying for —, in Valkyrie (2008) — “I will hear you say it, Colonel.” —, 44 Inch Chest (2009), in The Green Hornet (2011) and The Lone Ranger (2013), as Joe Kenedy in The Kennedys (‘11), in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011), Belle (2013), in the closest-to-outermost framing sequences of The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) oh wait I am actually unsure where his scenes are fitted into that but I obviously remember the bit with the pellet gun, LBJ in Selma (2014), as the older member of the trio in Unfinished Business (2015), wait, is that the most recent thing I remember him from, I saw Snowden (2016) but I don’t remember him in that. Hmm. 75! He just made everything better. One of the great balances between “Oh, it’s him!” and the total belief that he was now whomever he was onscreen.

I still read books. I don’t have a reading goal for the year. I don’t think I have any good book recommendations — sorry! — I can never really manage to narrow it down.

Wolfgang Schäuble died. Plenty of rough deaths this year but I’m chalking that one up in the column beneath Henry Kissinger. To quote the words of Gotham City district attorney Harvey Dent as written by Jeph Loeb and drawn by Tim Sale OB”M in The Long Halloween : “If you ask me, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

There’s lots of things in art I dislike. I’m just not sure they necessarily count as tropes. Shoddy craftsmanship, failed attempts at profundity, the apparently unthinking regurgitation of idées reçues, unfunny humour, unsexy titillation, unthrilling action, the elevation of structure above style and substance, when I have a longstanding grudge against whomever made the art because reasons, I could go on. But, I have a confession to make. I don’t know what a trope is. What’s a trope? What isn’t a trope? When it comes to art — when it comes to a lot of things! — I like it when things are good and don’t like it when things are bad. If the thing is good I don’t care what the thing is. I don’t care if I’ve seen it before. I don’t care if I’ll see it again. I’m not going to complain that I’m getting too much of a good thing. It can be the hoariest cliché but if it’s well executed I’m going to clap, I’m going to hoot, I’m going to holler. Oh, an anvil fell on your head and three bumps have grown atop your scalp and you go cross-eyed and stumble about in a daze as little baby blue birds fly in elegant pirouettes around you as they chirp and tweet? Hell yeah! Oh, you’ve disabled the bomb when it was just moments away from exploding? Hell yeah! Oh, you’ve just this very day turned eighteen and you’ve ordered pizza from the pizza parlour but have no cash on hand to tip the delivery driver? Hell yeah! I come to this stuff with an open heart. My eyes aren’t closed. My ears are clear. Show me what you can do with what there is! They say that it’s a poor carpenter what blames his tools but as far as I’m concerned I’m a customer and what kind of, uh, tool would exchange the pleasure of sitting at a well wrought table for the meagre joys of pointing at various tools in a toolbox and excitedly declaiming “That’s a bad tool. I have seen this tool before.” Not me! There are only so many tools! Look. I don’t want to go all the way with this and decry the malign influence of Television Tropes Dot Organization on the world or whatever. It’s a nice wiki. I’ve had fun looking at its pages. Sure! I just don’t think there’s much of anything fun for me — the world’s most important person, as we all well know, the man whose opinions REALLY MATTER! — in cataloguing all the ways art can be familiar. Please don’t mistake this stance as some kind of dumb dumb ‘never yuck a yum’ ‘let people enjoy things’ ‘Josh Radnor from How I Met Your Mother (‘05-’14) took some of his sitcom money and paid an Olsen Triplet to mouth his dumb words’ sort of deal. I am all about yucking other people’s yums! If I could stop other people from enjoying things — I can’t! — you know I would. I dislike Josh Radnor!!!1!! What’s my point? My point is I’m describing the way I feel about things. If other people feel differently, sure, go ahead and talk about the tropes you can’t stand. Do you need my permission? If so, you have it. If not, fly free!

Ian Gibson is dead. Dying? Well, his family said he is “in the last hours before he starts his new adventure.” No, wait, I think he’s gone. Halo Jones, of course, but I also have a fondness for that Boba Fett thing he did with John Wagner. What is it people say? I hope he enjoyed his time here.

Norman Lear died. BD”E. 101! I guess that means he was ... 93 when I heard him on a podcast.

I think that maybe George Santos and Madison Cawthorn are brought back to power on swamp draining duty for the federal branch in the next administration. And while I don’t think Santos has the juice to rise much higher than that I still think President Madison Cawthorn is in the offing. (This is all description and not endorsement. Of course! I’m not talking about what I want to happen. I’m talking about what I think will happen.)

Damn. Henry Kissinger שר"י. What can you say? What can I say? What can one say? What can little Cambodian children dead from unexploded ordnance say!? I guess the answer to all four of these questions is nothing more than “Not much!”. A hundred years! This is one of those things like the Red Sox winning the World Series or Deep Throat being revealed. God shutting the book of the twentieth century close at long last.

Mike of Mike’s Amazing World of Comics died. Awful!

Elliot Silverstein died. BD”E. 96! He directed ‘The Obsolete Man’ and ‘The Trade-Ins’ and a few others. But those two there are the Twilight Zones he did that I really really really like. They made the list.

Three (3) things about the new season.