TV 2019 Q1 TV GENERAL DISCUSSION

[Craig H]

I'm just going to take my thoughts to the Wire thread since someone thinks the Wire talk is cluttering things up.

[odessasteps]

I presume we are going to be on board with this Project Blue Book Show, between spookiness/creepiness and Aiden Gillen starring. 

 

[Bustronaut]

3 minutes ago, Craig H said:

I'm just going to take my thoughts to the Wire thread since someone thinks the Wire talk is cluttering things up.

HOMICIDE is 10x the show, but y'all never talk about IT

[Craig H]

9 minutes ago, Betsy Zeidler said:

HOMICIDE is 10x the show, but y'all never talk about IT

Network TV! No way could it better than a cable show.

I'm just cracking jokes, but that's usually the feeling I get about most network TV unless it's something made by Michael Schur.

[Raziel]

11 minutes ago, Betsy Zeidler said:

HOMICIDE is 10x the show, but y'all never talk about IT

Because IT goes in the movie thread.

[Craig H]

7 minutes ago, Raziel said:

Because IT goes in the movie thread.

We have a horror movie thread though..........

[Brian Fowler]

7 hours ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

Spoiler warning for a show that ended ten years ago because... this is the world we live in.

  Hide contents

She had a great arc and was one of the most memorable deaths in an all-time great show. What is there to be upset about? 

 

Legitimately one of the best episodes of television I've ever seen. The last great episode of Sopranos?

[John from Cincinnati]

1 minute ago, Brian Fowler said:

Legitimately one of the best episodes of television I've ever seen. The last great episode of Sopranos?

No. But it’s better than anything after it. 

[J.T.]

16 hours ago, Craig H said:

We have a horror movie thread though..........

Your sarcasm is not funny, Craig... okay maybe it is a little bit funny...

[Dolfan in NYC]

Since I can't be arsed to drag up the Stand Up Comedy thread and since he was more of a TV (and Radio) guy:

Artie Lange posted a picture on twitter showing he no longer has a septum because of years of snorting cocaine & heroin.  It is repugnant. 

He claims to have been sober for 41 days when he posted it, since he got dinged for coke use in November.  

I'm literally astonished he's not dead. 

[Dolfan in NYC]

Criminal Minds will end after it's next season, it's 15th(!)

 

 

[OSJ]

41 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

Since I can't be arsed to drag up the Stand Up Comedy thread and since he was more of a TV (and Radio) guy:

Artie Lange posted a picture on twitter showing he no longer has a septum because of years of snorting cocaine & heroin.  It is repugnant. 

He claims to have been sober for 41 days when he posted it, since he got dinged for coke use in November.  

I'm literally astonished he's not dead. 

Yikes. My septum is still intact and I probably snorted my weight in that shit before I got sober... Shit, I've had Artie in the celeb death pool for twenty years. One day it will just be cockroaches, Keith Richard, and Artie Lange. There's a pleasant thought to take with you through the day.

[supremebve]

35 minutes ago, OSJ said:

Yikes. My septum is still intact and I probably snorted my weight in that shit before I got sober... Shit, I've had Artie in the celeb death pool for twenty years. One day it will just be cockroaches, Keith Richard, and Artie Lange. There's a pleasant thought to take with you through the day.

The most effective anti-drug talk I ever heard went something like this.  There are a few people who can smoke crack, shoot heroin, and do cocaine and live for 100 years, but the vast majority of drug addicts will die broke and alone.  There is only one way to figure out which type of person you are and that is to start doing drugs and wait to see if you die.  

[OSJ]

That sort of works, though I can't think of too many teens who don't think that they're bullet-proof and invincible. How I made it through my teens and 20's is anyone's guess. I took every drug known to man and drank like a fish. The only thing I didn't do was shoot up, as I've never been fond of needles. The other day I was thinking of folks I knew in high school that didn't make it out of their 20's or 30's due to ODs, getting shot in deals gone wrong, etc. The body count is astronomical for a mostly white suburban school. How I managed to evade being one of that number is a fucking miracle. I quit everything at 31, and never looked back, I take oxy on a daily basis so that I can walk, but I am super careful with it. A far cry from the days when I believed that "use as directed" meant "take them all at once!"

[supremebve]

1 hour ago, OSJ said:

That sort of works, though I can't think of too many teens who don't think that they're bullet-proof and invincible. How I made it through my teens and 20's is anyone's guess. I took every drug known to man and drank like a fish. The only thing I didn't do was shoot up, as I've never been fond of needles. The other day I was thinking of folks I knew in high school that didn't make it out of their 20's or 30's due to ODs, getting shot in deals gone wrong, etc. The body count is astronomical for a mostly white suburban school. How I managed to evade being one of that number is a fucking miracle. I quit everything at 31, and never looked back, I take oxy on a daily basis so that I can walk, but I am super careful with it. A far cry from the days when I believed that "use as directed" meant "take them all at once!"

The thing all of the drug programs never understand is that the people who are most at risk for drug addiction are probably going to do drugs no matter what anyone tells them.  Then there are people like me, who grew up looking at the neighborhood drug addicts and thought, "Nope, I'm not doing that."  You may sway the people in between, but even then I'm not sure how many people any of these programs have actually helped.  

Speaking of drugs, my uncle was telling me about some dude he grew up with who's drug of choice was "anything."  When I say anything, I don't mean cocaine, heroin, weed, meth, I mean injecting random household products to see if they would get him high.  Let's just say his life didn't end well.

[Contentious C]

My favorite/saddest moment of living in Baltimore was walking down Baltimore Street towards my bank on St. Paul, and passing the godawful 7-11 near Royal Farms Arena (note: this is a 7-11 location that sells liquor without having a liquor license, because the city won't shut them down and they make more money off it than the fines are each month).  And I'm wearing my Man of Steel-logo t-shirt, and some old guy says to me (despite clearly ignoring him), "Hey, Superman, fly me away from here!  Fly me to the planet with all the cocaine!"

[Tabe]

1 hour ago, Contentious C said:

some old guy says to me (despite clearly ignoring him), "Hey, Superman, fly me away from here!  Fly me to the planet with all the cocaine!"

Well... did you?

[John from Cincinnati]

 

[OSJ]

2 hours ago, Contentious C said:

My favorite/saddest moment of living in Baltimore was walking down Baltimore Street towards my bank on St. Paul, and passing the godawful 7-11 near Royal Farms Arena (note: this is a 7-11 location that sells liquor without having a liquor license, because the city won't shut them down and they make more money off it than the fines are each month).  And I'm wearing my Man of Steel-logo t-shirt, and some old guy says to me (despite clearly ignoring him), "Hey, Superman, fly me away from here!  Fly me to the planet with all the cocaine!"

I don't usually malign other cities (except for Cleveland), but my visit to Baltimore was many years ago, and perhaps it's different now. I was at a World Fantasy Con at the Inner Harbor Marriott, a perfectly fine hotel. Anyway, there were several authors there who were in my first Darkside anthology and I brought the signature pages to get them all done in one place instead of mailing them all over the place. Anyway, someone asked if they could have a beer, and being a cheap bastard I wasn't about to pay $4.00 for a beer so I asked directions to the nearest package store... 

Holy shit, it was only three blocks but it was like walking through three blocks of Hell. I have never carried a piece, at 5'11 265 lbs. with twenty years of Muay Thai behind me, I may not be a tough guy, but I'm no joke, and can pretty well take care of myself. I don't mind admitting that I was fucking terrified, despite seeing two or three squad cars cruise down the street. If anything, The Wire makes the city seem more palatable than it is. (Unless it has been major league cleaned up like they did with Seattle's 1st Avenue, where you used to find bucket of blood taverns, they now have boutiques selling garden gnomes, I'm not real sure that that's an improvement, but it is what it is.)

[driver]

Whenever Artie is on Crashing he is great. 

[OSJ]

4 hours ago, supremebve said:

The thing all of the drug programs never understand is that the people who are most at risk for drug addiction are probably going to do drugs no matter what anyone tells them.  Then there are people like me, who grew up looking at the neighborhood drug addicts and thought, "Nope, I'm not doing that."  You may sway the people in between, but even then I'm not sure how many people any of these programs have actually helped.  

Speaking of drugs, my uncle was telling me about some dude he grew up with who's drug of choice was "anything."  When I say anything, I don't mean cocaine, heroin, weed, meth, I mean injecting random household products to see if they would get him high.  Let's just say his life didn't end well.

Sad thing is that for every guy like you that looks at the evidence and makes a value judgement based on it; there are a dozen people that will see exactly the same thing and say "It won't happen to me."  I have an IQ of over 160, so theoretically I'm no dummy, however, I'm Irish (and a bit Armenian) and likely have alcoholism in my family going back to the time of Brian Boru, (including an aunt who died in a sanitarium back in the 1950s, when that was the preferred treatment), so I should be smart enough to not drink, right? Fuck no, got my first taste at 12 and by 14 I was off and running. It's telling that my last night drinking I was also looking to shoot up, but the needle freaks that I knew figured I was already too fucked up and they didn't need a corpse to wake up to. This includes a dude that used to shoot Kool-aid, just because he liked the feel of the needle in his arm. Like I said, I'm one lucky sonofabitch.

[OSJ]

4 minutes ago, driver said:

Whenever Artie is on Crashing he is great. 

"Cocaine's a helluva drug!"

[driver]

As I have joked in the past "Rick James is a hell of a drug"-Cocaine. Just sub Artie for Rick. 

[Kuetsar]

The real reason Keith Richards is still alive is that he always used the best quality smack. I learned that when I read his book however many years ago it came out. That way he never had to adjust for when people cut it and that sort of thing. That's why, explained people OD is because you take a bunch of low quality shit, and when you do that with the good stuff you OD. My father, who died in August was an alcoholic for most of my life and scared me straight. I'm pretty much a social leper anyway, and relatively immune to peer pressure, so I've never really seriously drank(a beer here and there occasionally when I was younger), but otherwise I would have been an addict considering my family tree is addicts on both sides.

Artie Lang needs to donate his body to science because to do that much coke and be walking around is incredible.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Alright. Since we're talking blow, Baltimore, and guys from Jersey...

So, some years back, my ex-wife and I decided to treat ourselves to a long weekend getaway.

To Baltimore.

Now to be fair, just like OSJ, we were staying at a very nice hotel in the Inner Harbor. We took the ferry from Cape May to Delaware and drove the rest of the way. Stopping only to eat at a Hardee's. I was so excited. We didn't have Hardee's in Jersey, and when I was in Sophomore year at U of L, it was my favorite. I ate breakfast at the one right off campus whenever I could afford it. Which wasn't often, since I had quit bagging groceries part time at the Kroger and supported myself through poker and the fact that I'd drive to the bad part of town to get booze. It was a disappointment. No, it was a disaster. I had hyped it up to Marsha, that's the ex..obviously, and it was just shitty , messy, burgers that had an aftertaste of crumbled Delaware Meth teeth.

After arriving in Baltimore we went to check into the Hyatt, I believe, and when we went to our room, it wasn't the queen sized bed we reserved. It was two doubles. After nicely pointing that out to the desk clerk, she sent us to an other room, which also was two fucking doubles. At this point, I was ready to just give in and say "Fuck it." But not my ex, she wasn't taking this shit. She went almost full Marsha, (Its a thing), on the clerk and we got our room. Oh, we got it, but after a two hour wait that we spent drinking in some bar at Inner Harbor. By 10 pm we were just getting lubricated and Inner Harbor shuts down. So, of course... we walk into the city proper to find a bar. We find one that was calm and not a total dive. Marsha deescalates via Goldschlagger. 

After I tuck her in back at the Hyatt, I'm still awake and wanting to hit a bar. The only bar at the hotel was ultra ritzy and not for this Deadhead on vacation in Baltimore. So, I went back to the first bar, hung around for a bit, and watched some basketball . I got bored and left, and I was pretty drunk. There was nothing but dark streets all around but in the immediate distance I saw a glow of neon. I figured, "Hey, gotta be something going on over there. What could happen? I'm just a drunk white guy wandering the streets of Baltimore."

That's when I discovered "The Block."

The Block was, and probably still is, this condensed area of sin, vice, danger, and Chinese food . There were two adult bookstore/ jack shacks across the street from each other and what had to be 23 strip clubs just jam packed into two city blocks. It was a full on party in the streets, or that's what it felt like, and I was the only dopey white asshole there. I was having a smoke when this dude, who obviously was some criminal of status, came up to me and asked me for a cigarette. I said, "Sure thing, man. Here ya go." and also lit it for him. I was drunk, not stupid. We started chatting and hit it off. That's when it was confirmed to me that he was a pimp, as he brought over his two girls and asked me if I was interested, assuming that's why I was there. When I told him that I wasn't, and that I was here with my wife but I just wanted to get out of the hotel..he adopted me? Look, all I know was that he told me to have fun and I saw him signal dudes keeping watch on each corner that I was "OK." So, I knew I was under some kind of protection.

So I bought a gram of blow and did it in a jack booth at one of the adult bookstores. It was the only sensible place.  I wandered in and out of various bars and the Chinese place, and then I gained a pal. A crack whore, who looked like skin stretched over a skeleton. I don't use the term "crack whore" disparagingly, it was her job description. She approached me and said, "Want Yo dick sucked?" 

I said, "No, no thank you." Seriously.

She said, "You sure? I'm good!"

I replied, and this is the truth, "I'm sure you are. I'm happily married.",  while coked out of my gourd. Somehow, this made her my sidekick. She just followed me around as I wandered The Block. The Pimp asked me if I wanted him to get rid of her and when I answered, "Nah, she's harmless.", he looked at me with a look that made me realize that I was totally safe in the middle of all this despair, weirdness, and chaos. After awhile, coked up Yogi and crackhead Boo Boo saw the only other white guy on The Block. He was about 59 and was leaving the adult bookstore from the other side of the street, in a fucking trench coat, I kid you not, head bowed down in shame. Boo Boo looks up at me for approval for some reason, I give her a nod, and she scurries across the street and they disappeared  behind a dumpster. True love. 

There's a lot more to this story, But the kicker is, around 2 am, two cop cars appear at the end of each block and they announce over the cop speakers/ megaphone shit.."All right, that's it." and everyone either disappeared into the alleys or into the restaurants. It felt like the attitude  was "We're gonna ignore the open drug and hooker market as long as it stays in this block, and it ends at 2." So then coked up me goes back to the Hyatt, knowing that I'm never telling Marsha about this, but also knowing I didn't do anything all that bad, I just watched. It's a cop out, but it worked for me.