Let's roll some dice, watch some movies, or generally just geek out. New posts at 6:30 pm ET but only if I have something to say. Menu at the top. gsllc@chirp.enworld.org on Mastodon and @gsllc on Twitter.
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I’m in the unfortunate position of not being able to fully participate in my company’s Halloween costume contest. I have to wear something that can be quickly removed and put back on, so things like face paint are out of the question. In order for people even just to like my costume, I have to tell a story. Last year, I wore a prison jump suit. This year, I give you the prequel to that costume.
Did Jason wear dress shoes?
It’s hard to be scary when everyone knows they can outrun you.
This post is a bit convoluted because it’s dealing with two related topics that each deserve their own post, but I’m lazy, so you’re getting one that’s probably going to just as long as the two posts would be collectively if written separately.
Perhaps I’m not as clever as I think I am.
Topic One
About 5 years ago, I published a post about an apparent consensus among 80s music professionals that Boston’s first, and self-titled, album and Def Leppard’s Pyromania were perfect albums.
Topic Two
I love listening to entire albums at once. By doing so, you see where a band is in their current development as artists. Listen to more than one, and you see their evolution (for better or worse). Additionally, concept albums can be fascinating even in pure isolation. Finally, if you’re in the mood for Maiden, all you want to hear is Maiden (or whatever band is infecting your brain at the time. If you’re
The Convoluted Mess
As of late, I’ve been listening to entire albums on my commutes to and from work, inspired in no small part by several recent deaths of musicians that meant a lot to me. On my worst day, my commute is 25 minutes, so longer albums are spread among a few back and forths. I began to think about perfect albums. Boston and Pyromania may have been consensus “perfect” albums to a particular set of people at a particular point in time, but whether an album is “perfect” is obviously subjective. So, my list will differ from yours (perhaps drastically), but the theme will remain relevant. I should also add that the implied definition of “perfect album” is that 1) there were no bad songs, and 2) the album was ground-breaking or stupendous in its artistry. While that definition may make for some interesting discussions, I want to use a definition that has more practical value, and also opens up the door to a larger number of albums, thus encouraging even more of those interesting discussions. Nevertheless, the definition should still meet the commonly understood meaning of “perfect.”
An album is perfect if there isn’t a single song on the album that you want to skip when listening to the album, regardless of whether even a single one of those songs is what you consider “great.”
To help appreciate the subtle shift in new definition, my favorite Night Ranger album is Seven Wishes because in the aggregate, that album has their best collection of music, but it’s not a perfect album. I’ll skip a couple of songs on that album that I don’t like. On the other hand, I never have any desire to skip a single song on their Big Life album. Big Life is perfect by this definition, but it’s still not a desert island necessity. If given a choice between the two albums, I’ll take the imperfect Seven Wishes and spend my remaining days marooned on that desert island listening to only part of it.
I mentioned above that I may want to listen to an entire album simply to hear where a bad was at the time, but if I’m listening for nothing but pure entertainment value, I’ll skip through the stinkers.
This definition certainly opens up the door to more perfect albums, but it’s still a very high standard to meet. Many albums come very close, but if you think it through, they fall short. Perhaps the best example of that is True Blue by Madonna. Yesterday, I listened to that album (minus one song) for the second time in less than a week. It’s so good that I had to hear it again, but I never liked, La Isla Bonita. It just doesn’t do it for me. The same can be said for Madonna’s Like a Virgin. It has my favorite Madonna song, Material Girl, but I find myself skipping a few songs.
I just want to say why Material Girl is my favorite Madonna song. It’s a bouncy, ditzy, simplistic song with a horrible message. Though the music video shows that the message is being delivered sarcastically, it’s still just silly, bubble gum pop. But somehow, within that context, when that chorus kicks in, it drives. How does she pull that off? You have to respect that.
Sticking with 80s pop for a little while longer, I love the Outfield’s first album, Play Deep, but Nervous Alibi sounds like a song that they added to the end of the album just to make sure side one and side two were about the same length. Switching to some harder stuff but staying in the 80s, I feel the same way about Inside on Van Halen’s 5150. 5150 is one of my favorite 80s albums, but it ain’t perfect. Inside is boring, repetitive, and clearly a song for them, not me. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I’m going to skip it every time. My favorite Cars album is imperfect. Obviously, my favorite album of all time, Duke by Genesis, is perfect no matter the definition you use, but Genesis’s self-titled album from 1983 falls short for the opposite reason as Play Deep and 5150: it’s first song, Mama. Though very popular even among merely casual Genesis fans, I never liked it. Every other song on that album receives my full attention, but it’s not perfect.
It seems almost unfair.
Bands with Multiple Perfect Albums
Not many artists have perfect albums, and even fewer have multiple perfect albums. Being that Rush and Fleetwood Mac (with Stevie and Lindsey) are my favorite bands of all time, they obviously have several perfect albums. In fact, it’d take far less time to tell you which of their albums are not perfect, so let’s skip them. There are a couple of artists that are high on my list of favorite bands, and they fall into this category. I think that Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast, Powerslave, and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son are perfect. Piece of Mind and Senjutsu are close, but no cigar.
Ozzy has two: Blizzard of Oz and The Ultimate Sin. As with Play Deep and 5150, many albums fall short of perfect because of the last song on the album. In sharp contrast, The Ultimate Sin ends powerfully with Shot in the Dark. It’s almost daring you to call it imperfect, then says, “Sike!”
No More Tears is oh so close, but it’s ultimately imperfect.
Supertramp’s Breakfast in America is perfect. Billy Joel’s Glass Houses and Yes’s 90125 are perfect, though not their best albums overall. Jefferson Airplane/Starship is one of my favorite bands, but they don’t have a perfect album, and that bugs me. I feel like I failed them.
Overall, I have a small amount of fun revisiting albums with this question in mind. Maybe you will too.
Here’s something that in part is completely uncontroversial, but I still want to say it because I think some of it might encourage disagreement.
Old Guard was released 5 years ago. The sequel was released recently. I have zero recollection of the original beyond the basics, so I don’t fully appreciate the context, and I didn’t enjoy it. Releasing the sequel 5 years later is just fucking stupid. There’s far too much content we absorb to expect us to clearly remember the detailed context from a prior film that isn’t worthy of multiple rewatches over the years, and I’m not going to rewatch the original just to make sure I appreciate all the subtleties of the sequel that make it worth watching. And that’s for a movie. For a TV show, this is even dumber.
I saw a meme recently that I didn’t save, so I can’t reproduce it here. It pointed out that in the old days, there were 20-something episodes per season, with only a summer break between each season. Now it’s 10 episodes (or fewer) separated by at least a couple of years. In the age of the internet and streaming where release schedules should be more relaxed, this represents a massive failure by the creatives. I’m sure they, along with the suits in control, win with this arrangement: less work for more pay. In the meantime, people can be distracted by all the other content available.
I get the notion of Abe Simpson yelling at clouds. I’m very much self-aware of how I’m not part of the new culture when it comes to a lot of things. Unlike many people my age (57), I’m 100% fine with that. All of you do you, and don’t worry about the guy that isn’t in the most important demographic. But this is fucking stupid, and on this, I don’t know why the currently generation tolerates it. Maybe they don’t feel they have a choice, or perhaps ignorance is bliss, but if they’ve given this any thought and still think this is a reasonable option, then I really don’t get what the kids are thinking these days. In this narrow regard, it was much better in the old days. Considering we had only three viable channels, that’s crazy.
Note well that I’m not criticizing the content itself. Most people my age do, but that’s not what this is about. To the extent that I don’t like the creative direction of modern media, that’s generational, and my opinion should be ignored. I’m talking about something far more objective than personal taste. This is about structure, and the structure is shit.
Google chrome is my browser of choice, and it has several plug-ins that allow you to control the playback speed of certain streaming services, which are Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and Hulu for me. Netflix requires no such plug-in because it has the feature built into its platform. Apple TV is my only platform that doesn’t have an associated Chrome plug-in, though I get the impression that, like Netflix, its proprietary streaming software includes it. I wouldn’t know because I’m a PC guy. MACs are for people that to use computers without knowing how to use computers.
PC users are so cool.
Enough insults. My observation is that the speed at which TV shows and movies are presented is too slow for me. I often use 1.25x speed when watching a show even if I’m not in a hurry to get through it (though sometimes I bump it to 1.5x). My mind wanders if I watch them at normal speeds, and there are some shows that I would never have finished if it weren’t for being able to watch them at a higher speed. Maybe I have undiagnosed ADD. I don’t know. I’m not going to diagnose myself.
I don’t have this problem with my Paramount+ shows, which right now are Star Trek: Lower Decks and the new Beavis and Butthead. I have no idea if there’s a plug-in for Paramount+ because I have yet to need one. I also haven’t had the need to use the plug-in for Disney+. I’ve watched all the MCU and Star Wars series that have come out and not once noticed a problem with their pace. Maybe those shows are just better written. Or maybe I’m weird (maybe?!), and these plug-ins exist because people’s time to watch shows are limited.
Over a week ago — I’m waaaaay ahead of schedule on writing my posts — I finished a massive and tedious binging of Boston Legal. I had never seen the show before, but considering my love of so many of those actors, and the occasional scene hitting my social media streams, that’s surprising, but I’ve remedied it.
To start, I’ll say that I’m most certainly not one of those people that complains how badly movies and TV shows get things wrong. I have a physics degree. I’ve worked in software engineering for almost a decade. I have a law degree, and have worked as an attorney for more than twice that time. Some of you have medical degrees. Many of us have practical, professional experience that makes us experts in our respective fields. Every single expertise seems downright ridiculed by entertainment media, and sometimes experts get uptight about that. I don’t. I get it. Most people are not experts in any given area, so most people don’t notice the ridiculousness in any given show. That means that, even if what’s presented is utterly ridiculous, most viewers won’t know or won’t care. Moreover, experts in one area will be annoyed by only those shows getting their expertise wrong, meaning that they’ll usually wind up in the category of not knowing or caring. It’s about playing the odds, and the odds are stacked in favor of drama over reality. That makes sense. There’s nothing wrong with it.
But c’mon! Sneaking firearms into court and firing them off, and not getting disbarred and thrown in jail!? Are non-attorneys not annoyed by that?! Really?! There were just so many insane things that happened that would land these “lawyers” in jail long before the state bars could disbar them, though that would happen eventually.
But okay, okay! It’s fine. It was a fun show. The political pontificating was annoying at times, but it helped me relive the emotion of those days which are over a decade behind us. It genuinely triggered my nostalgia. Having my favorite actor, William Shatner, as one of the main characters certainly helped.
I recently took to to social media to whine about how disappointed I am with Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s final season.
@nbcbrooklyn99's last season is exactly what I expected: terrible. Because of the strict limits the writers place on their comedy, they ran out of material long ago. Each season is more tedious than the last due to fear of being funny. This is the future of #comedy. #Brooklyn99
— Rob Bodine, #Attorney by Day, #Nerd by Day & Night (@GSLLC) August 29, 2021
This led to a quick back and forth. Two friends agreed but characterized the failure as jumping the shark. I don’t think they’re wrong, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. There are very few new ideas under the sun. Moreover, as I reminded you on Monday, there are only seven stories one can tell. While there can be other factors, putting this together, jumping the shark occurs when the stories a show can tell run their course among their particular set of characters and settings. In other words, the combination of characters, settings, and stories grow stale even if, as with Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Office, and Parks & Recreation, the show has talented writers. It often manifests itself with desperate attempts to try something new that stray too far from the show’s premise. When Happy Days did this, it gave the phenomenon its name.
Now that comedy is being killed by a small minority of the perpetually and intentionally outraged, writers are afraid to take any risks, giving rise to a new way in which jumping the shark manifests. They don’t just take stupid chances to keep the show interesting. They also choose to exclude a wide variety of available stories for fear of losing their positions in the industry due to the controversy they cause. That means that shark-jumping occurs far earlier in the life of a series (c.f., Community), and it manifests as recycling the same tired themes with only meaningless differences from episode to episode.
In my humble opinion, with only a few exceptions, Brooklyn Nine-Nine started to lose its originality somewhere around season three, which isn’t even halfway through its life. (I keep watching because I can’t help but finish things I start.) Sure, we remained attached to some clever, well-delivered one-liners (Bingpot!), and the Halloween competition as a recurring theme, but overall the episodes, and even the characters’ personalities, grew tiresome and/or annoying long before the final season started. (I’ve wanted to punch Charles Boyle in the neck for months now.) The writers on that show both recycled themes and also, by the last season, strayed too far from the premise. I fear the stagnation of shows will only accelerate as we continue to fear those that are offended by everything. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the current crop of writers are among those demanding these changes. In that case, they’re wasting their own talent.
Much like another phenomenon that involves premature action, the cause is often psychological.
Having worked in intellectual property law, I like to give proper credit where it’s due. I found this meme and was looking for an excuse to use it.
As I was doing my research as to who produced this, I ran into an issue. I saw this shared on Facebook by a connection (I don’t remember whom), but they shared it from another source, so that person shouldn’t get credit. It looks like they got it from thekratorianchronicles via Instagram, but based on a signature of sorts within the image, thekratorianchronicles doesn’t seem to have created it, so they also shouldn’t get credit.
So, credit belongs to “HORRORFLIX,” but who are they? Searches via Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook yielded far too many entities for me to figure out who owned it. With no logo, Twitter handle, URL, or other unambiguous identifier as part of the signature, I can’t give proper credit despite how important I think that is.
I’ve seen a lot of (private) censorship going on by Facebook, and now it’s hit me right in the nuts. My “posting and replying privileges” were suspended for 24 hours because I made two jokes over the course of thirteen days that “violated community standards.”
RJS: “I have a long list of things I’d like to see improved with the coming administration, but one thing on that list, and I’m not going to say where it falls, is the decriminalization of a certain substance. Can’t. Wait.”
JD: “Okay now for sure if you and I ever both make the insane decision to attend a con in person, and it happens to be the same con at the same time…. Yeah, that.”
Me: “Hippies.”
Calling people hippies is something I’m known to do whenever someone disagrees with me (a la Eric Cartman), but it seemed particularly appropriate here. Continuing . . .
RJS: “Frog enthusiasts.”
This, of course, meant that RJS and JD licked toads. Unfortunately, I had a brain fart and thought he was referring to me as a frog enthusiast, and that I was missing some sort of reference. Mea culpa. So, not knowing what he was talking about, I responded, “Mais je deteste les Francais” (“But I hate the French.”). Get it? The French are frogs. Not my best work, I know, but it was just a goofy response to something I didn’t immediately understand.
That was deemed hate speech. Here’s some discussion on it from a subsequent post, again if you have access.
First concert – Billy Joel Last concert – 38 Special (with Erik Nowak) Best Concert – Iron Maiden Worst concert – Jimmy Buffett Loudest concert – Iron Maiden (I was on the floor) Seen the most – Billy Joel (twice) Most surprising – Cowboy Mouth (soooo good) Next concert – It’ll be a while. I’m not a huge concertgoer. Wish I could have seen – Fleetwood Mac, RUSH, Genesis, George Benson
Someone responded “’Last’ sounds so final. Perhaps ‘most recent’?” I replied, “I plan to kill everyone who responds.” I assume that was deemed terroristic threatening.
Basically, Facebook’s algorithm (and apparently the humans that perform the follow up review) can’t distinguish obvious humor from actual hate speech or terrorism. Of course, neither can many people nowadays, so I guess there’s always going to be a market for Facebook’s humorless bubble. However, if you’re in that group, you’re a tiny minority. Most people get it, and the only way Facebook will learn to stop catering to such a small minority is for people to either reduce their presence or leave altogether.
I think I’m going to do my part. I’ve been looking for an excuse to part ways with Facebook, and they just handed me one. My presence is going to be greatly reduced until I settle on another option. I’ll refocus my efforts towards Twitter and my blogs, so if you want to connect on Twitter, just send me a Facebook private message. I have several different handles that deal with different subject matter (geekdom, sports, politics, and law) in order to reduce the noise. As long as I’m still on Facebook, if I see something interesting there, I’ll respond via my Twitter feeds (quick responses) and blog sites (verbose responses). I’ll link to my posts via the Facebook news feed but won’t engage in discussions there, relying only on my posts’ comments sections. I don’t mind discussion on my Facebook wall; I’m just saying I won’t be part of that discussion or even follow it. Will you really miss me though?
No one seemed to miss me for the 24 hours.
This Isn’t the End of the World, but It’s No Small Matter
I’m an attorney. I’m well aware of the distinction between private and public censorship. Private censorship is almost always legal, and public censorship is almost always illegal. Facebook, Twitter, and other “microblogging platforms” are private entities largely permitted to suppress speech, but they’re clearly heading for (if not already there) an oligopoly (i.e., a monopoly, but where there are a tiny number of providers rather than just one), which means antitrust law applies.
While many of you hate the people who joined Parler, don’t you still find it troublesome that, the moment a competitor started to gain a serious foothold in the market, one of Twitter’s companions, Amazon Web Services, effectively bankrupted them by cutting off their access with a 30-hour notice? If MeWe gets too popular, they could be next. Facebook and Twitter could cut out all competition, leaving you no other options, and once that happens, who knows what rules they’ll impose? The fact that one’s access to the primary avenue to communicate with others (i.e., speech), in a pandemic no less, is the precise service being suppressed makes this even more troublesome regardless of whether the government is doing it.
Each of these cases turn on their facts, so I’m not going to condemn or complement the Court’s denial of an injunction in Parler’s suit. Also, this one incident isn’t the end of the world. I’m simply pointing out the immense market power these companies have and how they’re making sure they never lose it. Sooner or later, that will result in an antitrust violation, and the violation will be to everyone’s primary means to connect in the Internet Age. Everyone thinks they’re virtuous, but these giants could easily come for you next. Whether they’re destined to throw you out, or you’re destined to get sick of it and leave by own free will, maybe it’s time to form an exit plan just in case. While doing so, don’t be your own worst enemy by letting these guys off the hook.
My exit plan is under construction. The fact that one is even necessary is evidence advancing my argument.
I have a strict no politics rule on this blog. However, it’s Election Day, so I can’t help but violate that rule today. This cause is just too important.
Of course, this comes from a member of the Nihilism Party.
Sundays are now lazy days for me. Going forward, I’m just going to re-post other people’s work or just do something silly. Today, it’s supposedly one of the 20 funniest YouTube videos according to Mashable. The list is over two years old, and the entries aren’t all original YouTube works (i.e., they’re direct copies of another show without even modifications), but I still find it somewhat lacking. Here’s an example:
This one’s my favorite.
Here’s another:
Look at the complete list and form your own opinion.
Play What You Want 