Blackmoor Vituperative

I am contemplating writing a script to generate headlines for the news. Each day, it will randomly choose three of these:

[random number] dead and [random number] injured in mass shooting

Republicans in [random state] propose legislation to prevent off-white people from voting

[movie industry person #1] reveals that [movie industry person #2] was a jerk to them

[random number] dead and [2x random number] injured in mass shooting

Senate Republicans [random traitorous act]

[random country] extends state of emergency due to the pandemic

Republicans in [random state] propose legislation to deprive poor people of what little government support they still get

[music industry person] says something obnoxious and stupid

[2x random number] dead and [random number] injured in mass shooting

Republicans in [random state] stage protest against literally anything that might shorten the pandemic

Warner Brothers releases a new superhero movie, which earns hundreds of millions despite being terrible

Scientists say that the world is warming faster than anyone predicted, but there is still time to do something about it

[random Republican] compares a minor inconvenience to being a Jew in Nazi Germany

Tonight’s movie was “Cruella” (2021). We both really enjoyed this. It’s a heist movie, it’s a revenge movie, it’s an antihero movie, and the costumes and makeup are FABULOUS. I had low expectations, so maybe that is why I am so enamoured of it, but still when you get the chance, watch this. Also, the soundtrack is freaking brilliant.

Fun fact! I have never seen the “One Hundred And One Dalmatians” (1961) cartoon. But I intend to see it soon. Tomorrow, if it’s on Disney+.

Taking a brief break from my parking pergola project, so I am watching “Magnetic Monster” (1953). I estimate that one-third of the movie is stock footage accompanied by a monotone voiceover. This is not a very good movie, but it has a remarkable cast. Every scene has a face you’ll recognize (well, if you are horribly, horribly old).

The plot reminds me a bit of “Monolith Monsters” (1957).

[Later…] Hey, this was directed and co-written by Curt Siodmak! Son of a gun. I sometimes get Curt Siodmak confused with Clifford Simak, who wrote one of my favourite books, “City” (1952).

RiffTrax recently announced a soon-to-be-released riff of the Gumby movie. (Is it “a” Gumby movie? Did Gumby do more than one?) I asked if it was the actual movie, or if 10-20 minutes had been cut from it for the RiffTrax riff. No one seemed to know, but a number of “fans” complained that I would ask such a thing. “Good luck with that.” “Maybe RiffTrax isn’t for you.” “Maybe it’s time to move on.” etc.

I think these must be newer RiffTrax fans. That makes me happy (yay, new fans!), but also a little sad. Because you know, for about a decade, “is this the movie you say it is?” wasn’t even something you needed to ask. You could buy a riff knowing nothing else than it was from RiffTrax, and be happy you did. If they said they had riffed the movie, you could trust that it was true. “We don’t make movies: we make them funny.” Those were some good times.

Is it time to move on?

Someone in the above discussion said something like “they’ll survive without your ten dollars”, which got me thinking: how much have I been spending on this? I’ve been buying RiffTrax since the beginning (14 or 15 years, I think), but my current records only go back about six years. In the past six years, I have been supporting RiffTrax at the cost of $400 per year ($398.33, to be exact). I was happy to pay that, for all of those years… until this recent trend of selling incomplete riffs became the norm. And it is the norm, I am sad to admit: they have said point-blank that this is what they do now. It’s their livelihood, and they have to do what they think is best for the business. So I guess the question is if what they do now is still worth that much to me. And I think I have known this for a while, but I just didn’t want to admit it: it’s not.

Thank you, RiffTrax crew (and Film Crew, before that), for over a decade of good times. I wish you and your new fans nothing but the best.

P.S. They cut about 15 minutes from that Gumby movie.

Is good news even a thing anymore? Not “making the best of it” news. Not “people staving off doom for one more day” news. Not “here’s some trivia about some stranger’s personal life” news. Not “be thankful things aren’t even worse” news. Actual good news.

That would be nice.

We watched “Incredible Hulk” (2008) and “Avengers” (2012) last night, as part of our attempt to watch all of the recent(ish) Marvel movies in the chronological order of the events in the movies. The Hulk movie was slightly out of order, because it took me a while to track it down — it’s not on Disney+, for some reason.

I enjoyed both movies. Hulk is an incredibly straightforward plot: Army general psychopath finds Hulk, attacks, people get hurt. Army general psychopath finds Hulk again, attacks, people get hurt. Army general psychopath finds Hulk a third time, attacks, people get hurt. I think professional wrestling has more complicated plots than that.

Avengers went the complete opposite direction. I think they based the plot on a quote from the philosopher Didactylos: “Things just happen. What the hell.” It did have a couple of scenes I love, where Black Widow uses people’s vanity and arrogance against them (and let’s face it — people that vain and arrogant are men almost all of the time), and gets them to start monologuing. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

It also has one of my favourite scenes of ordinary people defying power. (You have seen it, even if you’ve never seen the movie — it’s a meme. “There are always men like you.”)

And it has perhaps the most painful description of humanity I’ve ever heard. “They are unruly, and therefore cannot be ruled.” Because “unruly” is a two-edged sword.

“Unruly” means standing up to fascists, sure. But it also means storming the capitol building because you believe the lies of fascists. It means refusing to wear a mask or get vaccinated because of ridiculous conspiracy theories. It means ignoring the effects that human activity has on the planet, while the world slowly burns.

I think we could afford to be a bit less unruly.

Oh, and “Captain Marvel” (2019) is better than I remember. I still think Brie Larson was hilariously mis-cast. Her acting style is incredibly subtle — and they cast her in a superhero movie. But it’s a pretty decent movie, and the supporting cast is great, even the kid. I think my expectations were just too high the first time I saw it.

We really enjoyed the “Falcon And The Winter Soldier” miniseries (or as we like to call it, “The Falcon And The Snowman”). I think this measures up to the best of the Marvel movies, and is far better than any of the previous Marvel TV shows and/or miniseries (although “Agent Carter” was pretty decent).

And now, apparently, we are watching all of the Marvel movies we have already seen (which is all of them), but in the chronological order of the events portrayed in them. Fortunately for us, someone has already figured out what that order is.

So first up is “Captain America”, and then “Captain Marvel”. Which reminds me of what a disappointment “Captain Marvel” was. It could have been another “Wonder Woman”, if they had cast someone better to carry the movie. Samara Weaving, for example. Such a missed opportunity. I mean, sure, it made over 6x its budget at the box office (over a billion dollars), but it could have been GREAT, as good as “Captain America”, with just one change.

Ah, well.

“Captain America”, on the other hand, is truly a great movie. Not just a great superhero movie — a great movie, of any kind. Perfectly cast. Perfectly executed.

Current version of Karelia map, for my maybe-I-will-maybe-I-won’t D&D game. I like the overall look, but I am bumping into limitations in Inkarnate (which is what I used to draw this). namely, there is no way to group objects into, say, “Labels”, or “Rivers”, and change the size, colour, font, etc. in a simple way. Photoshop can do that fairly easily (no great surprise), so I am thinking about doing the landmasses in Inkarnate (which is easy to do with its built-in textures and POI icons) and then doing the rivers and labels in Photoshop.

Alternately, I am playing with the idea of loading this map into Campaign Cartographer (from ProFantasy), and re-drawing it in that program. Campaign Cartographer is a much more powerful mapping program than Inkarnate, and can do everything (or nearly everything) I would like to do in Photoshop. I have owned Campaign Cartographer for literally decades, and have subscribed to their monthly “Cartographer’s Annual” since 2007, but I have never taken the dive into learning it. It has a steep learning curve.

On the other other hand, I am wondering if perhaps I have gone down a rabbit hole on this whole map thing. Maybe I should just declare it “good enough”, and move on to planning the actual game. Maybe.

If you liked “Scream”, you may like “Freaky” (2020). It’s funny and gory, and Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton both deliver effective performances. I enjoyed it.