Contentious C

At this point, the NBA better pray the Pacers make it out of the East, because neither of the other two teams left play with enough tempo to stand a chance against OKC right now. At least the team that keeps stealing games might keep things from getting embarrassing like that third quarter.

3 wins away on each side from getting the We Gave Up on Paul George Finals we deserve. Last year, it was the We Gave Up on Grant Williams Finals, which is much less interesting.

I'm guessing you mean the ranged weapon/stance/thrown object quick switching, and yeah, even after 40 hours, it still hangs me up once in a while. The stances are probably the worst of the three just because there are times when they're necessary but relatively few of those times. But there are also the duels, where all you can do is block or dodge or fight. For me, it's the platforming I can live without.

I'm not going to finish this season on time, because my cheap subscription from Black Friday expires, well, today, but that first scene of Ep 6???? FUUUUUUUUUUCK YOU, Pig Miller. "Do a little better"? Doing better is not having kids if all you're going to do is inflict your trauma again. Like listening to my own POS excuse for a sperm donor. To me, it's akin to walking out of the crowd and onto the field of the Summer Olympics High Jump medal ceremony and awarding yourself the Gold because, along the way, you stepped over a phone book.

Well, at least one of these series is going to be entertaining.

Welp, guess I'm going to play Veilguard at some point, since I just found out there are all sorts of animals you can pet and hug. Giving head rubs to foxes has been a GoT highlight since the first playthrough. Just gotta wait for a PS5 copy to get cheap enough.

Crank Out Loaves and Fishes

His hometown liquor stores about to take a 20% drop in sales.

I dunno if any of you mess around with Framed (aka Film Wordle), but today's 6 still frames were so bizarre that I'm going to have to track down today's guess (Monkeybone). Luckily it's on Hoopla. That is, if I finish The Brutalist before 2026.

I hesitate to put it in the Olympics thread because it doesn't deserve the oxygen of credibility, but evidently someone is proposing an "Enhanced Games" for 2026, where steroid use is encouraged. If you don't correctly guess where they're held on the first try, you have to go there and help everyone with their injections. No word on how many tendon and ligament surgeons will be on standby for all the inevitable injuries.

They should rename HBO Max to "TOO LATE TO WASH AWAY THE STINK OF GARBAGE", just for something actually new that isn't any less dumb than changing the name back.

In further Tsushima news: Poor Kage. Fuck Lord Shimura. I can't believe this lets you cosplay as Let Me Solo Her.

I bought Ghost of Tsushima as the first PS5 game I really wanted after finally getting the system. But 3 partial playthroughs later, I'd only made it some of the way through Toyotama because the combat felt repetitive. But, I thought I understood the hype for the game even if I wasn't enthusiastic about finishing it. And, until this playthrough, I hadn't done the Yarikawa quest lines in the second act. But then I unlocked Ghost Stance. *Now* I understand the hype.

Not to sound too weird about it, but I figured all along that Porzingis wasn't right because he had POTS, which is a fairly rare response to COVID or the vaccine that seems to affect very healthy individuals. I say this because I had it myself off and on for part of about 4 months in late 2023/early 2024, when I was arguably at my physically fittest since turning 40, and the way he played - and more to the point, labored - looked incredibly familiar. I guess it's the fact that he's under 30 and has excellent care that let him compete at all, because there were times I struggled to walk to the kitchen without getting winded. It was fucking miserable. Having said all that, it didn't dissuade me in the least from the booster I had last fall, and I've had no symptoms since February, so eventually he'll clear whatever hurdle it's causing. But, it's no fun. Terrible timing.

My brain saw "Kevin" and "Servo" near each other spatially and said to itself, "Wait, what did Kevin Sorbo have to do with MST3K?"

Welp, guess I'm cheering for the Pacers just for something different. I won't mind OKC actually being the winner, but it feels like getting squashed by the Borg already and I don't want the next 3-4 years to feel the same.

Except the comedy half of that comes from how we're laughing at the screenwriter, because what the fuck does Death have going on that makes it necessary to be in a big hurry to kill folks? You're Death! Just...take a nap, they all get there anyway! Or does the comedy come from laughing all the way to the bank for taking money off of stupids for the seventieth time from the exact same premise?

If OKC advances, we're guaranteed a 7th new champ in a row. Boston beat themselves with how they played G1 & 2, but I'm never going to forgive the Knicks for this fucking series.

A million for every pick before him.

It's kinda too bad we can't clone Denver's team and do some Baseball Stars-style renaming, because the game would be better if every series were as crazy as the two they've had so far.

Anyway. The Heartbreak Kid (2007) - The original is not exactly one of my favorite comedies, since it's a painfully awkward prototype of the "anxiety-com" we've had a lot of the in the last couple of decades (the kind of stuff that gives rise to the likes of Rick & Morty, for instance). But goddamn if this remake doesn't completely miss every single point of the original. Stiller is too likable - Hell, Malin Akerman is too likable for her role! At least in the original, you could understand why Charles Grodin would instantly get sick of Jeannie Berlin, who hammed it up admirably for the whole film. The ending might be a little bit of an improvement, since it centers the selfishness and misogyny of Eddie/Lenny where it belongs, rather than painting him as a victim of any kind, but the film also falters every other step of the way with Michelle Monaghan being, again, too likable, rather than an insane, manipulative asshat the way Cybill Shepherd played the role. Just...no. Crazy Rich Asians - People of different cultures and ethnicities have a lot going on, but you know who doesn't? Rich people. All those motherfuckers are the fucking same. In all seriousness, though, the more I think about this movie, the more insulting it seems. I think its actual cultural commentary is less "The Real Joy Luck Club" and closer to that of Get Out, displaying a subset of Asians absolutely *obsessed* with consumption of American culture but who want nothing at all to do with American bodies, even when those bodies are "banana" bodies. I can't say for certain that that was the intent with all the musical remixes, or if they simply wanted to draw Whitey to the theater by tossing them some scraps to clap for, but Coldplay in Mandarin? Who asked for that? Nobody wants to listen to them in English. And how, pray tell, is Rachel some kind of badass? The closest thing to what the kids these days call a "flex" is that she read another rich person's article in Forbes or something? Big deal. So did about 200,000 other people. Oh, and she won a game of mahjong. Can't forget that. Astrid's character arc is frankly a Hell of a lot more believable, relatable, and compelling than Rachel's. It's kinda too bad Rachel doesn't accomplish something really meaningful, like audit the fucking company's books and show them that someone's embezzling or something. But no, we get this. Fine. An Officer and a Gentleman - OK, I guess I know where that Joe Cocker song is from now. And wow, did Richard Gere truly coast longer than *absolutely anyone* on a single good performance. I do kinda like this as an anti-Top Gun, since that film is, you know, Tony Scott turning everything into a fucking MTV Video like he did for all of his movies, and this is at least a bit more authentic, even if everyone in it is also really, really shitty for the most part. But it hasn't aged well generally, and it's hardly a must-see unless you like picking off a few "before they were stars" moments. Really wish the whole movie had been GI Jane before GI Jane and had been about Seeger's character, instead. Klute - This is a rewatch from about 20 years ago, and I can't say I really appreciated it enough back then. Jane Fonda is just fucking incredible in this. The mystery part? Who cares. Donald Sutherland? Fucking mannequin. Dead people? Incidental. But Jane Fonda probably got the Best Actress "belt" for at least a couple years off of this role. Worth watching just for her, and pretty ahead of its time in its depiction of sex workers. The Windigo - This is a shoestring horror film from last year, and, yeah, they did not have the aglet ready for this one. Just generally badly done, boring script, flat characters, bad acting. Not "worst of the worst" territory, but so utterly skippable that any of you who watch this because I put it on your radar are probably going to wish you hadn't. There could be an interesting idea here, just not in the hands of this creative team. To Live and Die in L.A. - I can't think of a director I run more hot-and-cold on than William Friedkin. Maybe PTA is close, but PTA has fewer movies I just can't stand, whereas I can actually skip some of Friedkin's most famous movies altogether and not mind. I think this lands closer to the "hot" range, but it's no Sorcerer. I doubt he was someone to take a page from Stephen King's playbook and co-direct with Our Pal Cocaine, but the movie feels like that's what he did, and that's to his credit. It's becoming a national travesty - in a nation full of them - that Willem Dafoe still doesn't have an Academy Award, and this is one of those first times where you might have said, "Yeah, he's getting one someday." William Petersen, on the other hand, could be in literally nothing ever again and the world would do fine without him. This was no exception. The ending seems consequence- and logic-free in a way I couldn't stand, though. I can see why some people love this so much; I just don't think I'm quite one of those people. Sinners - I think if the movie didn't fall apart a bit when it has to get to all the shooty-shooty and stabby-stabby, it would live up to the hype. But damn if this isn't a big, big, big swing and it hits WAY more than it misses. And it definitely succeeds in saying what it's trying to say. I'm not really the biggest Michael B. Jordan fan - I still think he he peaked with Fruitvale Station - but he's pretty good, even if he's just sort of a balancing point for everyone else to outperform him, especially Delroy Lindo, who I wouldn't be surprised to see get a Best Supporting nom out of this. The music is great, the sound mixing is great, the blend of period drama and musical and pulpiness is great. See this.

Settle down, WilfredBrimletico.

Just pretend Fellini directed it in the 60s.

Or Minnesota.

It's fun as Hell, knowing that Boston isn't advancing, to watch Luke Kornet just be all, "Nah" on a bunch of NY shots. Also really strange that he started in Chicago as a three-point shooting big and yet never shoots them on this team. Granted, everyone else is probably better at it. I love this team for a lot of reasons, but I'm good with them trading Holiday and Porzingis while they have value next year, semi-tank, and aim for 26-27 onward. White, Brown, and Tatum are enough to build around.