Contentious C

We have our Big Loser of the night.

Well, everyone lost THAT prop bet.

Candy and real estate, both equally garbage ways to make money. Ah, who am I kidding? Real estate is way worse.

Greenlaw, no less. Fucking field turf.

I wonder if Kelce bodies Taylor like he did Reid and yells "Keep me in!" I'm a sick bastard.

Well, that FanDuel commercial has me depressed.

His last, overly throaty, smoke-drowned, chewing-gravel-the-whole-time gasp. God, Lohan's voice is what I'm going to be hearing when I end up in Hell.

Hey, hadn't done this in a minute. New page, good time as any. The Duellists - Too bad House of Gucci didn't involve Adam Driver and Jared Leto chopping flaps of skin off each other. I'm not usually a fan of any Carradines in basically any capacity, but this is one of Keith's best roles, if not his best. And cripes, is this a beautiful film, and coming from a guy who would be known for stunning visuals as much as anything else. But...there's really something about how much he let the scenery participate or even dominate the rest of what was there. Given the flack that Napoleon caught, it sounds like Ridley's first movie in the era might be better than his last one. Heck of a debut. I could do without the narration, but it makes an interesting double-bill with French Lieutenant's Woman as grimier portrayals of past Britain than what we'd eventually get out of the Merchant-Ivory lot. The Canyons - You know, at 27:04 when that UPS truck comes into the shot, I was really hoping it just...wouldn't turn, and it would spare us all from this bullshit. Somehow, of all the movies out there that have ended up with some kind of strange critical reappraisal, this is, stupefyingly, one of them. But there isn't a moment of this all-too-serious, badly acted, hacked together, stakes-free whiskey dick of a movie that deserves to be held up as having something to say. The gutted theaters and vacant buildings don't have any legs to them, since they're throwaway non sequiturs that reflect and/or symbolize precisely fuck-all within the context of the film itself. Even if the casting had somehow been immaculate - and it would take a literal miracle for anyone with a brain and a pulse to have willingly worked on this film - the characters themselves are written so poorly and have so little emotional resonance that you want them all to fail, miserably, as though their only-talked-about horror film were real and they became its victims. And the rest of the script...Jesus tapdancing Christ, Bret, why did you think kink or swinging was going to shock or interest anyone? I really don't know what Paul Schrader was thinking, choosing to work on this. I can only imagine that he, in fact, managed to murder a yoga instructor in Century City sometime in the 80s, and Bret Easton Ellis helped him hide the body, so his payback for that favor was to shart out this bathwater-quality dramatization of their youthful hijinx. Ugh. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE quit sniffing directors' farts and telling them they're gold. Still not as bad as The Crow: Wicked Prayer, though. You Hurt My Feelings - I still can't really get too far past the wannabe-Woody Allen feel of Nicole Holofcener's movies: truly, how many upper-classers in New York City need movies made about them? Really, I want an answer, hopefully one that isn't evidently, "every fucking one of them". Please Give was an interesting-at-times look at white guilt, and there's a little of that here, but the overarching story is only just all right. What does work here is the humor, but it's just a little too bad that the initial scene between the actually-married David Cross & Amber Tamblyn is a bit of a highlight in terms of laughs, rather than merely a prelude to bigger things to come. Still, you may laugh your ass off in a few places, so maybe it isn't a waste of your time. A Knight's Tale - Wait, so...this was just proto-Slumdog Millionaire with more anachronisms and a less perverse morality system? Huh. That's a thing, I guess. But this is just way too long, not terribly well-written, and it only has, I dunno, 2 or 3 scenes in the whole movie that aren't a snooze? It's also just a really strange stylistic choice to have your entire cast casually singing along with the 70s tracks being overlaid because otherwise average American dummies won't find it amusing, I suppose. Oh, and Edward the Black Prince was the Black Prince for a fucking reason: Rufus Sewell's whole "Aldhemar" character may as well be based on shit Edward actually *did* and people Edward supported (or certainly didn't condemn), so face-turning him is, well, sort of ridiculous. But hey, we're just here for silly bullshit and making money off the poor dumb Americans, so, mission accomplished, maybe?

Of course this week was a deload and OF COURSE this is the week I pull a muscle in my ass. Luckily I'm giving myself another 2 days off (had 2 off, L/P/P deload through this afternoon, tomorrow & Monday are the next 2), so we'll see if I'm not limping for nearly the stupidest reason ever on Tuesday.

Yeah, every trailer from this interminable decade of their overwrought dross looked like some kind of sanitized Looney Tunes/Three Stooges bunch of bullshit that I already saw when I was 6 and had no interest in revisiting as a grown-ass adult, except in its original form.

I'm proud to have seen none of them. Even with my scattershot-at-best tastes and viewing habits, I see no need to change that.

Xavier Tillman to the Cs for a couple of 2nds and a back-bench guy. I'm here for it. Hopefully his shot turns around, but then again, it'd be hard for it not to if he's playing with a better unit than the MASH squad Memphis had going.

All right, well...

And then in between those contracts and jobs, pay me shitloads of money to be an announcer despite the fact that my voice sounds like a rhino being murdered with a galaxy-sized belt sander.

Arez looks like Balder from God of War after he finally decided to have the really good shrooms he was saving for Ragnarok.

Granted, he basically is a walking prostate, so any cancer in his case would be prostate cancer.

I was Yesterday years old when I learned that adopting a child doesn't count towards the "assist the people of the ____" quests (the Pale one is oddly difficult compared to others). Fuck adoption.

Well, so much for Zach Lavine as a big trade target: out for the rest of the year with foot surgery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_from_the_South

Curt says just enough left-field stuff that I probably have 10 or so things on my Letterboxd watch list because of it. The power of Curt compels you! The power of Curt compels you!

Watching through the recent Dexter is hitting a little close to home, piece-of-shit dad-wise. Well, minus the serial killing. I think. Mostly because he's too lazy and not smart enough to get away with it.

Maybe you did? Director's cut that no one likes?

Man, I was just thinking last week, "Wait, he's still alive?" and now he isn't.

I did a very silly thing. I decided to watch Dexter: New Blood. Granted, if Julia Jones is in it, I will watch it just to ogle her. I had even forgotten she was in any of the Twilight movies so, *sigh* that might be a reason to rewatch them and see if they're as stupid as I remember. But, my real burning question about this limited series is, how the Hell did Brock Purdy find time in between football seasons to portray Dexter's kid? Luckily, True Detective has 3 more episodes and is getting goodweird just in time.

I realized at some point that even small, valuable, productive "Creations" like the USSEP break achievements (and yes, there's a mod for that, but all my mods had been acting a little funky lately), so...uh, yeah. I started another new character. Another new character named Bob Newhart, at that. I'm to Level 56 and back to creaming my way through the game with Free Magic Cheese. For anyone curious, hopefully the following section does someone some good: If you want to use the Fortify Restoration exploit to get yourself some Fortify Enchant potions that are in the 300%+ increase range (aka, where 25% reduction becomes 100+% for magic), then you're looking for a Fortify Restoration potion in the ~1700-2000% range (this is with 100 Alchemy & 4 gear pieces at max enchant/25% improved potions). Some guides will tell you you're better off making a potion, drink, re-equip, make a second, and then Wait for 1 hour to erase the first potion's effects before drinking the second. However, this is totally unimportant if all you're trying to do is make Fortify Enchant potions. You just need 1 in the right range and then enough ingredients to make your 20 or 30+ Enchants. I had a potion around FR 1540s that ended up giving FE 292% - close but no cigar - and then a 2099% FR potion that gave me 345% FE. The bumps for things like Sneak/Pickpocket/etc. were around 215% with that, which are not bad. I usually end up with 322% Fort. Enchants that give about 171% on Sneak, et al. Of course, you can manipulate the potions to go as high as you want, but it's really unnecessary; anything enchanted beyond those sorts of limits is so high an already far-too-easy game becomes even duller. But the truly goofy thing I did was knocking out all the Civil War achievements. Man, oh man, the Civil War quest is the *fucking worst*, because it takes so much color and intrigue out of the game and it could have been *so* much more thought-provoking than it was. You really are just better off ignoring it. But, I did it, and I ousted Ulfric, and then Brunwulf Free-Winter was A-OK with me becoming a homeowner in Windhelm. So, I bought Hjerim, and then....hmmm, I can't decorate my home? This is strange. *walks over* *unlocks the door* AW SHIT I haven't evicted the serial killer yet and THEY SOLD ME A MURDER HOUSE! As that one lady in the Helgen scene says: "You Imperial bastards!"