Posted on General

25-25-25

August 2025 is set to be an exciting month for Support Life And Music! The organization is poised to launch its very first fundraiser: 25-25-25, aiming to raise $2500.00 to celebrate SLAM Summits episode 25 in 2025. As a bonus 25, the campaign will launch on Monday 8/4 and run through Friday 8/29/ 25 days.

All tax-deductible donations will go toward musician mental health research and continuing/improving the Artist Voices program, which includes SLAM Summits. With drawings and cool stuff for contributors! More details coming soon at the Support Life And Music website.

773 thoughts on “25-25-25”

  2. Crap joke for this morning:

    A blonde guy comes home early from work and hears weird noises coming from the bedroom.

    He races upstairs and finds his wife, completely naked, sweating and panting like she ran a marathon.
    “WHAT is going on?!” he shouts.

    She thinks quick and gasps, “I-I-I think I’m having a heart attack!”

    Panic sets in. He sprints downstairs to call 999, but just as he’s dialling, their 4-year-old son tugs his pant leg and says:

    “Daddy! Daddy! Uncle Ted’s hiding in your closet and he’s not wearing ANY pants!”

    The man drops the phone like it’s on fire and storms upstairs. He blasts past his “dying” wife, yanks the closet door open… and there’s his brother, Uncle Ted, buck naked, curled up on the floor.

    “YOU ROTTEN B*STARD!” the husband yells.
    “My wife’s in cardiac arrest and you’re running around the house butt-naked, scaring the kids?!”

  7. The Twilight Zone is arguably the greatest TV show of all time. Bar none. But there are plenty of painfully dreary episodes.

    So – – I’m selectively going back through the classics – – starting with the ones I’d either never seen, or haven’t seen since I was a kid. So far: Nick of Time, The Howling Man, The Masks, Walking Distance, Five Characters in Search of an Exit, A Game of Pool. Up next: The Living Doll.

    • I replied to a post in the previous stream when the site wasn’t working here, so I’ll say it here. Coincidentally, we rewatched Dragonslayer last week. It was still silly, but still fun

    • My Mam had fondness for the episode where a very young Robert Redford plays Death.

      I actually preferred The Outer Limits, it was more sci-fi and The Demon with a Glass Hand is just fantastic.

  8. I rewatched Transylvania 6-5000 last night. It had horrible reviews and if you just watch it for the plot, you will likely feel the same. But they really seemed to have just let Michael Richards and Carol Kane just do whatever the hell they wanted and the results were spectacular. Those actors have some of the funniest scenes I’ve seen in a long time.

  13. Fantastic Four was my main comic as a tween reader (during the John Byrne era, for the nerds). I actually had a subscription for 1 year.

    The new FF movie gets that feeling perfect. There are so many great things about the movie. Galactus is awesome. Johnny Storm is finally likable. The 1960s aesthetic is just right. The nods to the classic comics are excellent.

    But.

    There are also a lot of half-developed/undeveloped characters, side-stories, and ideas. . . including goddamn Galactus. And goddamn Silver Surfer, who is used way too sparingly. It’s frustrating. All because a boardroom full of executives are seeing this as a franchise, and not one 2-hour movie that should be enjoyed by itself. If they’d set out to make the best movie possible, then this could have been among the best of all in the MCU.

    Still much more satisfying to me than Superman. I know everyone else loves that movie, so I’ll cut that thought off right there.

    • This has been my problem with the MCU for a while. When it was an Iron Man movie or a Thor movie and there were a reasonable number of characters to follow, I was all in. As the movie universe expanded and every movie had to reference 30 character, I just lost the ability to keep up. But… to be fair to the MCU, the problem isn’t limited to just them. Star Wars and DC has developed the same problem.

      • Any FF movies starts off with the challenge of making the whole team interesting, plus whoever your villains are. They tried harder with some characters than with others.

        All that said, I like and recommend this movie a lot. I just wish I loved it.

  15. Today is a good day.
    It’s my 29th wedding anniversary. The husband and I are going to try a local steak house for dinner tonight.

    Also, I just won a video game in a contest I entered. Gonna Play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle in the near future.

  17. Not Loni!

    I saw (awhile ago) that she fought to make her WKRP character into someone capable and intelligent, not just the Miss Buxley eye-candy.

    Rest In Peace.

  18. If you ever feel stupid then you should know I downloaded all the episodes of the new season of King of the Hill to only discover that all the episodes are in Disney+

    Doh!

    • Just finished listening to an “Audible Original” that comes with no extra charge with my subscription. This was probably the best one I heard and it was still mediocre. Very science-bases storyline, but still has some Transformers Dark of the Moon level science errors that just pull me right out of the story. Like a character commenting (after having given a lengthy, and accurate, explanation of which stars are closest to the earth) flippantly says that a signal that came from 5 lightyears away might be from another galaxy. Science errors abound, even in places they really shouldn’t.

  30. My wife is on the board of a local museum.
    She was telling me that hidden in trump’s tax bill was a change to how Corporations can deduct charitable giving.
    According to what she has heard, this is going hurt charitable giving quite a lot but will be especially devistating to smaller charities.

    • Yes, this was of great concern to me, as someone struggling to launch my own nonprofit.

      I received an email from GiveButter not long ago saying that individual donors are going to be more critical than ever. :

  31. In better news… Today I am taking a road trip with a buddy of mine who I’ve known since the fourth grade. He jumped in his Escape Pod and retired from NASA last Friday.
    We’re going to take his EV and drive to Atlanta, see a baseball game and I don’t know what all. Just one of those things that seemed like it had to be done.
    I’ll have to let you guys know how “road tripping” in an electric car works out.

    • As it happens, T-Bird, myself, and the pooch took an EV road trip from Arizona to Kansas and back the first week of July. It basically consisted of two and half hours of driving, then 30 minutes of charging, rinse and repeat. Charging made the trip take 20% longer, but the frequent breaks were appreciated by all the bladders on the trip. I would comment that chargers are frequent enough to make road trips possible, but just enough. This means you have to plan for every stop ahead of time. Another interesting fact, half of all the chargers credit card readers malfunctioned. Luckily, 100% of the chargers had phone apps that you could use, and they worked. As an EV owner, you end up with about 5 different phone apps (Electrify America, ChargePoint, Ionna, Francis Energy, EVgo, Tesla, etc) to activate the chargers. I was worried that our small town destination would prove a challenge, as the nearest fast charger was 30 miles away, but it turned out they have two slow chargers. I could park the car overnight and have a full charge the next day.

      • So my experience was
        Similare to Rhett’s .
        We drove for two hours and decided we wanted lunch, so we stopped to grab a sub sandwich and since we were
        Already stopped – decided to hit a local fast charger while we ate. Before I could finish my lunch we were at 80% charge which gave the vehicle a 260 mile range.
        So we drove again until our bladders begged for a break and simply chose a stop with fast chargers. Again, we were up to 80% in like 15 minutes.
        Here is the kicker… we hit a stretch of “stop and go” traffic for like 40 minutes. The sort of thing that usually leaves me a tense mess… but the car kept us a set distance from the vehicle in front of us so he didn’t have to constantly ride the brake and gas peddle. The car just did that for him.
        An absolute game changer.
        It’s the fiuture and it’s here and it’s just so … normal!

  33. What I learnt today, this from the Wikipedia entry on the composer Alexander Courage:

    Courage went on to score incidental music for episodes “The Man Trap” and “The Naked Time” and some cues for “Mudd’s Women.” Courage reportedly became alienated from Roddenberry when Roddenberry claimed half of the theme music royalties. Roddenberry wrote words for Courage’s theme, not because he expected the lyrics to be sung on television, but so that he (Roddenberry) could receive half of the royalties from the song by claiming credit as the composition’s co-writer.[13] Courage was replaced by composer Fred Steiner who was then hired to write the musical scores for the remainder of the first season.

    • Yes, this is true. Canada is a strange sort of combination of metric and imperial. Our stoves are set at Fahrenheit. We use pounds and feet/inches to weigh ourselves and our height. Distance is in meters or kilometers. Speed is kilometers per hour. Food is in kilograms, fuel is purchased by the litre. Cloth is purchased by the meter, however wood (i.e. 2×4’s) is usually by the foot, but is slowly changing to meter.

  37. Before this week I had not watched a single episode of King of the Hill, but have really enjoyed the episodes of season 14 that I have viewed sir far.

    Go figure…

  47. The updated TZ watchlist:

    Nick of Time
    A Game of Pool
    Walking Distance
    The Shelter
    The Little People
    Five Characters in Search of an Exit
    The Howling Man
    The Masks
    The Living Doll
    The Grave
    The Silence
    A Nice Place to Visit
    The Four of Us Are Dying

    All of the above have ranged from good to great.

    Up next: The Hitch-Hiker.

  50. Your crap joke for a Sunday evening:

    My coworkers laugh at my jokes in in-person meetings, but never in online meetings.
    When I asked them why, they said that my jokes weren’t remotely funny.

  51. Decided to share Eye of the Beholder with the little one. She was a bit freaked leading up to the big reveal… I offered to pause, but we soldiered on through to the end.

  53. Crap joke for the day:

    A guy walks into a bar with his dog, plops him on a barstool, and orders a bourbon & Coke.

    Then he turns to the dog and says, “What’ll you have, Rover?”
    Rover looks at the bartender and says, “Scotch and soda — light on the soda.”

    The bartender stares. “No way. That dog can’t talk — you’re a ventriloquist.”
    “Nope, he’s the real deal,” the man says. “I’m going to the restroom — talk to him yourself. But don’t let him out of your sight. He’s worth a fortune.”

    When the man comes back… no dog.
    “Where’s Rover?!”
    “I didn’t believe he could talk, so I gave him a couple of bucks to get me a newspaper and some chewing tobacco at the drugstore.”

    No sign of him at the drugstore, so they search all over town until eventually they find him in an alley… having a whale of a time on top of a French poodle.

    The man shouts, “Rover! What on earth are you doing?! You’ve never done this before!”
    Rover pants and says… “First time I ever had any money!”

  54. An article came up in my feed with the op-ed headline from the AZ Republic: “ICE Detains Parents Walking Child to School. This is not OK.”

    With over 1100 laugh emojis.

    I blocked about 50 as a feel-better exercise. I’m venting this here, then moving on with my day.

  55. In happier news, I had a really powerful meeting over the weekend. My flabber is gasted at the careers of the people in the room – – asking me about my career and about SLAM!

  57. Fourth time seeing Ghost on the big stage, and first time with the eldest daughter.

    Man, do they put on an evening.

    Interestingly, we had to put our phones into Yondr pouches, which we kept on our persons, but which made the phones inaccessible. No filming, no texting, no photos, just fans and performers, like the 1980s.

    For me, I post photos to media, so I missed having that option. But I do *detest* the people who hold their phones overhead to film entire songs. So it had its pros and cons.

    • I take a few photos when I go to gigs, yes to post to Facebook but also to look back on in my camera roll and have my memory prodded.

  67. JW: Sole Survivor

    A twilight zone ish made for tv movie with a young William Shatner and Richard Basehart.

    Originally released in 1970, I haven’t seen it since the 1970s.

    Still good.

  68. Crap home for the day:

    Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator says, “Calm down. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is a silence; then a gun shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says, “OK, now what?

  80. I feel kind of nauseous and elderly after reading this, but I identify with the Limp Bizkit entry. My hatred for that band is blistering – – but they somehow accidentally created one pretty good song on their own.*

    https://defector.com/the-worst-songs-we-love-so-much

    *Their cover of Faith is amusing. Was. That should have been it.
    *Method Man makes an excellent guest appearance in one song, which almost salvages it.

    • Zod is one of the greatest villains of our childhood, so I’m ok remembering him this way, but you are right. He was great in just about every role. My 2nd fave of his would have been The Limey, which did “old guy kicks ass” about 10 years before Liam Neeson and everyone else got in on it.

  84. Just landed in Vancouver.
    Airports involved in a strike are very quite and kind of creepy.
    Waiting to catch a hop to Victoria.

    Have spotted my first “Tim Hortons”.

  86. So like 2-3 days ago, I discovered this movie called “Stay Human,” which I found to be pretty moving. It’s made by musician Michael Franti, and it follows him connecting with some people doing noble humanitarian acts on big and small scales. I was planning on reaching out to his PR people.

    In the last 24 hours, he’s been bombarded with a slew of SA accusations. One young woman made a post, and a bunch of others have jumped on.

    Now. . . none of this is proof of anything. . . but every accusation needs to be taken seriously. Every accuser needs to be heard and given full benefit of the doubt. No matter what, it’s disappointing.

  89. Since he’s been home, I’ve discovered the husband doesn’t like to do anything spur of the moment. I’m getting a new computer. We were literally a block from the store on Friday but he wouldn’t go because he put it in our calendar we are going tomorrow
    *sigh*

  90. Victoria is now pretty high on my list of places to seek refuge if things in the US continue on their current path to authoritarianism.
    Lots to like here and the climate is rather mild.

  94. Crap joke for the day:

    Sean had long heard the story of a family tradition. Apparently, his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all been able to walk on water on their 18th birthday.
    On that special day, they would walk across the lake to their local pub, Murphy’s Bar, for their first legal drink.
    So when Sean’s 18th birthday came around, he and his friend Mick took a boat, rowed out to the middle of the lake, and Sean stepped out confidently.
    He immediately sank like a stone and nearly drowned.
    Mick managed to pull him back into the boat just in time.
    Confused and furious, Sean went to see his grandmother.
    “Gran, ’tis my 18th birthday! Why couldn’t I walk on water like me father, me grandfather, and his father before him?”
    Grandma looked at Sean with kind, knowing eyes and said,
    “Because they were all born in January, when the lake was frozen over…
    You were born in August, ye feckin’ eejit!”

  95. The writing and acting on the Peacock series “Twisted Metal” is better than it should be for this type of show. 1st season was a blast. 2nd season so far isn’t quite as good, but still entertaining.

  100. I have a friend who wrote a duology. Being a good friend, I offered to format them for him. He sent me both books as a single file, which I had to separate into two separate books. He also sent a separate file with a glossary, his bio, and dedication. He also included a table of contents for each book in the second file (which I didn’t use as it’s generated automatically).
    Since this is not the first book I’ve formatted for him, I asked why he decided to give it to me in such a strange manner, he merely shrugged.
    My life is an adventure.

  109. Crap Joke from me for once:
    A wife sends her husband a text: If you are sleeping, send me your dreams. If you are laughing, send me your smile. If you are eating, send me a bite. If you are drinking, send me your tears. I love you!
    The husband responds: I am on the toilet. Please advise.

  113. So watched the first season 2 of Peacemaker, maybe it’s just my tastes but the choice of music for the title sequence is not as catchy as S1.

  114. I woke up and my glasses had somehow gotten lost in the sheets, instead of their usual spot on my nightstand.

    Unrelated: I think “Time Enough At Last,” the famous Burgess Meredith episode, will be next on my Twilight Zone rewatch.

  116. The one good thing about the husband being retired, I have not used the vacuum once since he’s been home. He says he enjoys doing it. Who am I to deny him pleasure?

    • Centra Florida is currently being invaded and overrun by WaWa gas stations. I would be happier if it was being invaded and overrun by Tim Hortons.

      I a meeting for community advocates for a local paper, someone was talking about a new WaWa going in near her and someone else replied, “I’d ask where, but any corner I pick is probably be right”

      • As a coffee shop it’s fine but otherwise I always found Tim Horton’s to be overrated and the food to be rather meh.
        Controversial for a Canadian I know

          • There is a drive through branch about 25 minutes walk away, been open a few years and still haven’t visited it.

          • I’ve always heard Timmy’s compared, favorably and unfavorably, to Dunkin’ Donuts. We actually had Tim Hortons stands inside the hockey arena for a few seasons of Coyotes games. Their coffee and donut holes were definitely very similar to Dunkins.

          • Wawa is deeply beloved back in NJ, but only since about 2000.

            Wawa as I remember it is like an upgraded 7-11 or AM/PM.

        • WaWa got it’s start in PA and I first heard about them from a friend that grew up there. It has a similar standing in PA to Tim Horton’s in Canada. And I find their food as overrated as TEB finds Tim Horton’s. My experience with Tim Horton’s donuts is that I find them to taste pretty much the same as Dunkin. I don’t see much of a difference. For a truly wonderful donut experience, I’ve found some local places that make their stuff in smaller batches than the industrial donuts at large chains.

    • I like the guy standing by with the fire extinguisher.

      Also… where does the line stand these days between an “RC” and a “drone”?

  122. K-Pop Demon Hunters is officially a phenomenon. I went with the 3 girls to a movie theater sing-along showing of the movie yesterday. It had been sold out, so they split the viewings into two screens.

  124. Crap joke for a very early Monday morning:

    I had a blind date last night, and I was a little worried about what to do if he wasn’t my type at all. My friend told me about this genius app called “Dad, Are You Okay?” — it schedules your phone to ring right after you meet your date.

    ✅ If you like them, ignore the call.
    ❌ If you don’t, answer: “Dad? What’s the matter? Are you okay?”

    Perfect plan… or so I thought.

    He shows up, and he’s absolutely gorgeous – no worries at all, I’m a lucky woman. But just as I’m about to walk with him to his car, his phone rings. he picks up and says… “Dad? What’s the matter? Are you okay?”

    • While their fascism wasn’t democratically installed, I would put Taiwan in a category that successfully transitioned to democracy without a war.

  132. Tonight watched the new Red Sonja.

    It was silly and the villain was pathetic. The actor who played Klaus in Umbrella Academy deserved better writing.

    Matilda Lutz looked better than she acted.

  133. Bruce Dickinson tonight! Sadly, did not connect with Bruce or any of the band.

    He not only sang beautifully (at 67 years of age), but he also played theremin, taiko drums, and percussion on a bunch of the songs, including Frankenstein.

    “Flash of the Blade” brought the house down, though.

  134. Nothing reminds how how dumb you are then listening to a scientist explain how they solved how to keep collecting data from the Kepler telescope when two of it’s gyroscopes failed.

    • I was part of 2 sci-fi/fantasy/horror/etc. (just call it geek) radio shows as an undergrad in the late 80s – early 90s. We would pre-record our show and we did a lot of short story readings that needed instrumental background music. Tangerine Dream was a definite go-to for that music.

  150. I’m getting a little tired (ok… a lot tired) of the William Castle type gimmicks that modern horror movies are pulling. Are we really this stupid that this kind of garbage still works?
    https://geektyrant.com/news/lionsgate-cranks-up-the-tension-in-new-the-long-walk-featurette-tracking-real-audience-heart-rates
    https://geektyrant.com/news/too-gory-to-handle-the-toxic-avenger-triggers-walkouts-as-its-not-for-the-faint-of-heart
    https://geektyrant.com/news/terrifer-2-is-really-making-people-faint-and-vomit-during-theatrical-screening
    https://geektyrant.com/news/talk-to-me-filmmakers-says-horror-film-had-audiences-members-fainting-and-the-creator-of-the-cursed-hand-quit

    https://collider.com/william-castle-horror-showman

  152. We watched ep1 of Alien Earth. I really liked the way they recreated the look and feel of the original Alien movie. I’m in for more.

    Four mildly-spoilery things bug me (no pun intended).

    I’m a little fuzzy on the android’s role in the first movie. I’d thought that no one had ever seen the xenomorphs before the Nostromo encountered that one. If this show is a prequel, is it altering the concept of original movies?

    How tf is there no failsafe in place to prevent a giant ship from crashing like that?

    I guess we’re leaning into the “xenomorphs were actually a result of human genetic engineering” thing from the recent shitty movies, rather than retconning back to the “unknowable alien menace?” Disappointing.

    Are we going to get a whole bunch of nasties in this series? Aren’t the xenos enough?

    • As far as the prequel thing goes, the producer says this is not cannon so there’s that. Think of it as more alternate universe.

      The husband also likes to think of it as a “different Earth”, not the original. As in, a different planet named after Earth, not the original Earth, so not everybody knows what happened there as it’s an outer planet.

      Me personally, I just go with it and don’t put too much thought into it.

  153. Well, if you want dumb, watch “Twisters”. We finally watched that tonight. I can pretty confidently say the only thing they got right was that it was filmed in and around Oklahoma City. It was soooo dumb. But TCat and I were very entertained by pausing the movie and pointing out how bad it was to each other. So, at least for us, it was entertaining but bad and not in a good way. And, I guess the new Superman has a small role in it too. 😀

  155. So the plan for tonight is to watch the 1954 version of 1984.

    The one with Peter Cushing, the one I’ve heard and read about since I was a child, tonight is the night to finally watch it.

    Adapted by Nigel Kneale who also wrote Quatermass,

  157. We caught The Thunderbolts now that it’s out on Disney+. Overall, we enjoyed it though I don’t think it was worth the expense of a theater ticket. We had watched most of the Disney+ shows that introduced these characters, so were familiar with them.

    I think it would have been a hard sell for folks who aren’t already subscribers and keeping up with everything that Marvel has been putting out.

    • Thunderbolts was good, but kinda mid. It felt like an X-Men flick.

      I definitely agree: this one relies heavily on the viewer to have watched the other Marvel shows and movies.

    • I wasn’t keeping up on the Disney+ shows that introduced the other characters, but I did see the Black Widow movie. That was about all I needed to understand what was going on. I was definitely less invested in the other characters, but it was worth the ride for Yelena and Alexi.

  158. There’s a lot of cheesy movie viewing going on around here!

    I did my part with MST3K Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster from the Internet Archive.

  165. So finally watch the remastered released of Ninteen Eighty Four from 1954.

    Because it was effectively a live version with film inserts the quality is pretty poor with everything looking soft but still watchable.

    Nicely acted, but then Peter Cushing, even near the start of his career does not disappoint.

  166. Still in Canada.
    Should hit Vancouver tonight. It will be the 2nd and last time.
    Having a lovely time but I need to go home and get some rest.
    Been reading the requirements for Canadian citizenship.
    I might should erase that from my phone before trying to pass back though customs.

  168. And happy Labor Day, Mericans!

    I had 2 big meetings. And I’ve set today a pretty big deadline to publish something, so I’m banging away at that. And we spent many hours swapping out our old worn-out couch for a new one from one of Tiff’s coworkers.

    So a bunch of labors today.

  169. From the New Yorker. The full article is behind a paywall, but this snippet is still powerful:

    If A.I. continues to speed or automate creative work, the total volume of cultural “stuff”—podcasts, blog posts, videos, books, songs, articles, animations, films, shows, plays, polemics, online personae, and so on—will increase. Will it submerge human originality in a sea of unmotivated, formulaic art, or allow for the expression of new visions?
    “Right now, we talk about, Is A.I. good or bad for content creators?,” the Silicon Valley pioneer Jaron Lanier noted. “But it’s possible that the very notion of ‘content’ will go away, and that content will be replaced with live synthesis that’s designed to have an effect on the recipient.” One day, Lanier speculated, all sorts of cultural experiences—music, video, reading, gaming, conversation—might flow from a single “A.I. hub.” There would be no artists to pay, and the owners of the hubs would be able to exercise extraordinary influence over their audiences. “You would be getting a tailored experience, but your perception would be that it’s shared with a bunch of other people.”
    “Compared with the specificity of real art made by actual individuals with authentic lives, I thought, culture generated ad infinitum, in a formless flow, devoid of context or personality, would be meaningless,” Rothman writes. But “perhaps we’ll be able to make meaning for ourselves out of automated art.”

    • The world this article puts forth would seem to become Mecca for an “underground” art scene. The sort of counter culture that brought us punk rock would probably rise again if AI generated material became “the norm”.
      Maybe.

  180. The husband is in for hernia surgery this morning. I get to sit around a hospital for six hours since my Boo is not around to entertain me today

  184. I’m hoping I’m not tempting fate, but if Apple’s hearing test is anything to go by my hearing is still holding up to time’s flame.

    So there is that.

  185. The husband is at home napping. I’m at the pharmacy getting a prescription filled for him. Then back home to give all the love and attention he needs 😉

  186. JW: Valerian and the City of Thousand Planets

    Well another rewatched that has changed my mind about a movie, it’s nowhere near as good as The First Element but it’s still a lot of fun.

  187. Watched “Micky 17” on my last flight.
    Not every film has to be a masterpiece to be “good”.
    Sometimes a nice sci-fi premise with cartoonishly “good” and “bad” characters is refreshing.

      • We have to keep Canada our little secret. Otherwise all the other refugees might get there first!

        Had a wonderful time. Canada and the people of BC are the best!

        Not the most positive part of the trip but I actually saw a lightning strike start a wild fire! I Was on a train passing thru at the time so I don’t know how THAT turned out but hopefully no humans were in dangered.

    • Should we take this guy seriously when he checks his phone when the film is running.

      I don’t care how bored you are leave your phone in your pocket.

      • That would be unforgivable in the theater. I think he’s talking about home viewing. I have absolutely lost interest in a show or movie at home and dug out the phone.

  193. It’s not only Freddy Mercury’s birthday, but it’s also Michael Keaton’s. That accounts for a hell of a lot of my childhood movie viewing and cassette tape listening.

  196. Currently at a concert where the opening act is the “Little River Band”.
    Mostly not my kind of music but what a quintessential, 80’s pop band.

    I kid you not, I just witnessed an actual Keytar solo. And yes, he did play some of it behind his back.

      • Have you ever heard their song “Orbit Zero”?
        It’s them throwing their hat in the “space opera” ring. Musically, its quite a snapshot of pop culture at that time. I think it came out around the time of “Mr Roboto”.
        Anyway, I’ve always really liked it.

  197. Currently in the theater waiting for The Holy Grail to start. John Cleese will be out afterwards to talk about the movie! Can’t go wrong with that.

    • I think you win!

      I will say, musicianship wise I have to give LRB their due for their very tight harmonies.
      At one point they did an accopella melody where they were all just standing around a single mic.

      Still, think Inwould have enjoyed a large wooden badger more.

        • They are.
          3DN was okay. They played an hour of mostly radio hits. (LRB played 1.5hrs)
          While 3DN were considered “rock” in their time, I’d classify a lot of their catalogue as “easy listening, hippy”

          This is one of several concerts I have gone to in the last year that were my wife’s choice and not so much something I would have picked.

  199. Crap joke for a Sunday Afternoon:

    A man received the following text from his neighbor:
    “I am so sorry, Bob. I’ve been riddled with guilt, and I have to confess.
    I’ve been helping myself to your wife, day and night, when you’re not around. In fact, more than you. I don’t get it at home, but that’s no excuse.
    I can no longer live with the guilt, and I hope you’ll accept my sincerest apology with my promise that it won’t ever happen again.”
    Bob, in complete shock, didn’t know what to do…
    A few moments later, a second text came in:
    “Damn spell check! I meant Wi-Fi!”

    • Sorry you’re having crap sleep. :-/

      I’m sure one of us can find a way to bore you to sleep! Give a call. I have some stories about Costco trips.

      • The problem is I’m a very light sleeper sleeping next to someone who is currently restless due to soreness. He has painkillers to help him sleep. I do not

    • Very sad news indeed. Everybody likes Supertramp, even the people who don’t like Supertramp.

      There was a brief time when everyone pointed to them and said “This is it! This is the next Great Rock n’ Roll Band.”

      RIP.

  206. In the Podcast world, it turns out that Todd Cochrane died yesterday. He was one of the OGs, and an absolute pioneer in that space.

    I never had a personal run-in with him, but that’s pretty much all the nice things I can say about him. RIP.

  208. So this month discovered a setting on iPhone that when switched on, helps alleviate motion sickness when doomscrolling on your Phone if you are on a bus or train or a passenger in car.

    So far it seems to work.

    I mean discovering in the sense I read a tweet on Twitter.

  210. Just watched an actual footage of a murder that happened on a train in the USA in August this year.

    The guy used a pocket knife and it was all over in seconds.

    He was caught straight away but the young woman was dead at the scene.

    • I think I know the one you’re talking about. I have avoided the video. What I’ve read is awful enough.

      I’m disgusted by much of the situation, not the least of it how people across the board are politicizing it to promote racist agendas.

      • Along those lines, I’m disgusted by so much of the Charlie Kirk shooting reaction.

        Yes, he has directly contributed to a culture of violence first, reason and compassion last – – his awful character isn’t the point. Being an asshole shouldn’t be a death sentence. I’ve seen people celebrating, and I’ve also seen people shouting about the “violent left.” Doesn’t matter that those same people shrug off hundreds of other gun deaths. Not the point. It’s all fucking uncalled for.

        I do hope he recovers and uses his notoriety for good. I do hope we find our way toward a society that talks and coexists instead of this.

        • Like the murder of the millionaire insurance executive, I absolutely cannot condone the action.
          That is just not the society I want to live in.
          Certainly in Kirk’s case, he has reaped what he has sewn. He spent his last years doing all he could to ratchet up the level of hate in this world.
          It would seem he was successful.

  211. On a more positive tangent, I finally read Ray Bradbury’s The Sound of Thunder short story.

    This has not inspired me to hunt down the movie adaption that the general consensus says is terrible.

    • When I first read that one, Bradbury was just another one of the old grandmasters to me. The story still stuck out. It’s brilliant.

      Never seen the movie.

  212. Jesus died for our sins

    Ok, but he didn’t stay dead, right? So what exactly did he sacrifice?

    Jesus gave up his weekend for your sins

  215. JW: Caught Stealing

    It has a plot that for an Aronofsky film is convoluted but not weird and I was so engrossed while watching at the cinema that I almost forgot to drink my can of lucozade.

  218. I posted this on the Facebooks yesterday:

    Stop letting anger, hatred, and fear guide you. FFS. It’s all over your worldviews, your posts, your words, your actions, and the terrible people and atrocities you cheer for. It’s becoming your identity, it’s wrecking your life, and it’s hurting other people in the world. If their personal choices don’t affect you and yours – – truly don’t – – then leave them alone. Wish them well. Move on.
    I do hope we find our way toward a society that talks and coexists instead of this. Every single one of us can do better.
    9/11 is the perfect day to say this.

    • The post didn’t get a massive response, but it got some kind words and a handful of likes. A large proportion of the positive responses were from people who I know are supporters of. . . public figures who stoke anger, hatred, and fear.

      *shrug*

  222. As part of my up-too-late activities, I watched the Icons Unearthed: Batman series about all of the Batman movies. A lot of fascinating stories. A regular guy – – no Hollywood connections at all – – apparently cobbled together some cash and bought the film rights to the character around 1980, then spent years trying to get a major studio to do a dark, gritty take on him.

    Also: Joel Schumacher was a creep to the staff that he found attractive.

    • The only point they missed: he was murdered by a radicalized fan of a different radical hateful public figure, who’d apparently been viciously critical of his radical extremist views as “not extreme enough.”

      • Been listening to a podcast (The Rest is History) that did a series on the French Revolution.
        This is EXACTLY what happened to many of the early members of the revolution.
        They started the whole “down with the system” thing … then where later killed by another round of people with THEIR eyes set on being in charge, who accused the first guys of being “anti-revolutionary”.
        The lesson seemed to be, when being against something there is always someone else out there that will claim to be against it more than you.
        And when you eliminate the original “problem” the next guy has to find a problem to prove he is farther out there than you.

  224. M3gan 2.0 was really good. I can see why it wasn’t as well received since it was so different from the original. They made this one more like an action flick. The husband and I actually enjoyed it more than the first because it was an action movie

  228. So yesterday I finally got around to watching Five Nights at Freddy’s. Never played any of the game series, quite enjoyed it but made me wonder why any parents would take their kids to Chuck E Cheese restaurant /shudder

    • My daughter likes this game and its lore, but her generation are even more into watching the famous YouTubers play the FNAF games. This is apparently the game that made Markiplier a household name.

      BTW: she said the movie was truly awful.

    • RE: your other point: as a kid, Showbiz Pizza was one of my favorite places on earth – – but it was about the video games, not the animatronics.

      The real things to fear in these places are the germs.

  230. Crap joke for the day:

    There are only two workers in a small factory, and they’re chatting.
    The woman says, “I bet you any money I can make the boss send me home and give me the day off.”
    The man laughs, “Never – you know he’s a mean old toad! How on earth would you do that?”
    She grins, “Watch this.” Then she hangs upside down from the ceiling.
    The boss walks in and asks, “What on earth are you doing?”
    She replies, “I’m a light bulb, a pretty light bulb see me shine, see me shine. ”
    The boss says, “You’ve been working so hard you’ve gone crazy. Go home, get some rest, and take the day off.”
    The man grabs his coat and bag to follow, and the boss says, “Where do you think you’re going?”
    The man replies, “I’m going home too. You can’t expect me to work in the dark.”

      • Reading that you upgraded to iOS26 through me into a busy morning. First trying to figure out if I had done something wrong as my iPhone 16 Pro had just asked me to update to 18.7 (I had to learn about the shift to numbering based on calendar year). Then I remembered that this is when Apply typically releases their new phones. So I had to spend some time looking into the 17. Bad news (from a certain point of view) is that I got some sort of awesome deal on my 16 Pro 512 GB because I’m only paying $8/month for it for 3 years (total phone cost $288) and if I tried to trade it in now I would have to pay it off without the rest of the discount ($920). So no iPhone 17 for me. The good news is that all the upgrades this time around seem incremental as opposed to new (improved battery life, improved antenna, improved cooling rather than never before seen features). So I’m fine with my $288 phone for a while.

  235. Crap joke for the Day:

    Old Mrs. Goldberg got a ticket for running a red light and decided to fight it in court. When asked her occupation, she proudly said, “I’m a schoolteacher.”
    That’s when the judge squinted at her and said, “Mrs. Goldenberg… do you remember me?”
    She looked closely and said, “Little Heshy Rosenbaum? Is that you?”
    “It’s Harry now, Mrs. Goldberg,” he replied. “Your Honor, actually.”
    She smiled sweetly, hoping her former student might let her off easy. “Look at you, all grown up!”
    Judge Rosenbaum leaned forward and said, “I’ve been waiting YEARS to see you in court.”
    Mrs. Goldberg beamed, “I’m so glad to hear that!”
    “Well,” the judge said, “the good news is… I’m waiving your fine.”
    “Thank you so much, Heshy – I mean, Your Honor!”
    “The bad news?” he grinned. “You’re going to sit down right now and write ‘I will not run a red light’ five hundred times!”

  242. Nine Inch Nails last night. Or “nine inch nails,” as it’s written. Sadly, did not connect with any of the performers.

    An amazing show nonetheless. Trent is 60, but he sounds just like he did in 1989.

  243. Today was definitely a bad day for US First Amendment history.

    And let’s be clear: Like it or not, any TV network has the right to cancel any one of its on-air performers. This isn’t about that, it’s about a government pressuring a network to cancel someone for their critical words.

    • This is Fascism.

      This is about a comedian hurting a political leaders feelings and having that leader tell the head of the FCC to make that guy go away. The head of the FCC is quoted as telling management at the parent company “We can do this the easy way of the hard way.”

      None of this is “hypothetical” anymore.
      None of this is “If we don’t do something we will be…”
      This is Fascism.
      We are there.

  246. So the artist behind The Moomons also illustrated the Swedish/Finnish editions of The Hobbit:

    https://moomin.co.uk/products/hobitti-eli-sinne-ja-takaisin?utm_content=Facebook_UA&utm_source=facebook&variant=8313308512300&utm_medium=paid&utm_id=6634851666502_v2_s04_e291_i20250918&utm_term=6634851666702&utm_campaign=6634851666502&fbclid=IwdGRleAM5LpVleHRuA2FlbQEwAGFkaWQAAAYpLr_MrgEeaBzYqZAw5o7-96f5jgksxYusKVsVu61m42Jen619kvx3KHtI7pSizobajcE_aem_ZfH9nayYIMqZKCf3mUXpWQ&campaign_id=6634851666502&ad_id=6634851666302

  252. Got my Covid and Flu vacines today.
    I would have liked to wait just a little later in the fall but it was starting to feel like I was gambling with losing the right to get them at all.
    Not feeling so great at the moment.
    Should be good in the morning though.

    • I’m told that CVS will give you the shot, no questions asked, if you check the “medical need” box on the form. I haven’t verified this for myself, but I may need to soon.

      Rest up, JJ, I hope you’re feeling better again soon.

    • One interesting note-

      When I walked up to the counter I ask for the Flu and Covid shots.

      Then they gave me a form to fill out where I checked the boxes for the flu and the Covid vaccine

      But just before he gave my the jab, the pharmacist said, “Ok to have to ask, can you tell me what shots you are getting.”

      I thought it was odd and I said “Flu and Covid” and kind of embarrisingly he responded “I have to make sure you are (I forget the word he used but the implication was “that you are mentally competent”)”

      THEN he asks – “Is anyone forcing or coercing you to get these vacines?”

      Again he seemed embarrassed and stopped making eye contact as he ask.
      It was all so out of the blue that I thought at first he must be joking around … but his body language said something else.
      The more I have thought about this the more I realize that someone is trying to insert their politics into my medical decisions.

      Also- in the hands of an anti vaxxer, these questions could have been used to intimidate me or even deny me a vaccine if the provider wanted to claim my answers weren’t “clear”.

  253. I’ve never heard of this movie about a fleeting romance in Robert E. Howard’s life, starring Vincent D’Onofrio and Renee Zellweger:
    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118163/

    Robert E. Howard is the creator of Solomon Kane, Kull, and of course, Conan the Barbarian. His writing was absolutely brilliant. But by most accounts, he was the ultimate incel of his era, and apparently outdid his friend HP Lovecraft in some of their shared xenophobic views. Seems like a great choice for a romantic lead character!

    I dunno if I’ll actually watch, but it’s apparently available for free on a few streaming services.

  255. Crap joke for a Sunday Morning:

    Someone stole my car last night.
    Before I called the police, I thought…
    “To hell with it – let them explain the bodies in the trunk.”

  257. Watched 28 Weeks Later last night. I think the husband got more pot of it than me. I found the whole idea behind it questionable. Then there was some obviously stupid decisions by various characters that also annoyed me.
    Tonight it’s 28 years later

  258. I woke up this morning to an incoming FB Messenger call. Jimmy Kay say, “Put on your hat! We’re recording in less than 15 minutes!”

    It was an unplanned thing, but I’m thrilled to have been invited – – we were talking about Bruce Dickinson’s solo concerts. I’ll let you know when it’s posted.

    • So Bruce did a complete reimagining of his old album “Balls to Picasso”, “More Balls”. LOL
      Is it weird that I like “More Balls” better than “Mandrake”? Also, I can’t think of a single band that has done anything like this.

      • But we’ve got the biggest. . . balls of them all!

        I enjoy the original “Balls” as well as “More Balls” *cough,* but I really dig “Mandrake.”

        • The original got a lot of play back in 1999 by me. Cool tunes. I like “Mandrake,” but I feel it doesn’t hit the highs of “Chemical Wedding.” I felt the same way about “The Book of Souls.” I think it is the lack of Adrian Smith.

  260. Well I won a boardgame adaption for mobile over the weekend and today I learnt that Reiner Knizia is rather famous in the boardgame world.

    The game was Reiner Knizia’s My City!

  261. Crap joke for the day:

    A woman leaves a late-night bar in the pouring rain and hops into a cab. The driver, a tormented 40-year-old woman, looks at her and says,
    “Perfect timing, you’re just like The Amazing Sharon Smith!”
    The woman, wiping rain off her coat, asks, “Who’s that?”
    The driver replies,
    “Sharon Smith – she did everything right. I mean everything! Just like you showing up right when I needed a fare – that’s how Sharon’s life worked. Every. Single. Time.”
    The woman laughs, “Oh come on, nobody’s perfect!”
    The driver shakes her head, “I’d normally agree, but Sharon Smith was. She could’ve been a world-class athlete, golfed like a champ, sang like an angel, and danced like she owned Broadway!”
    “And the piano? She didn’t play it – she commanded it.”
    “Her cooking? Deserved a Michelin star. I swear she could’ve fed a king and a picky toddler in the same meal.”
    The woman chuckles, “Wow, sounds like quite the woman!”
    The driver nodded in agreement, “She could fix anything too. Never raised her voice. Dressed like she was straight off the cover of American Vogue.”
    “She made everyone around her feel special. Never forgot a birthday. Never burned toast. Just… perfection.”
    The woman smiles, “She really sounds too good to be true. So, how’d you meet her?”
    The driver sighs and says,
    “I never did. She died long before I came around…”
    “But I did marry her widowed husband!”

  264. Another one that we were late to the party on – but this past week we finally watched the first season of “Dark Matter” on Apple. I wasn’t aware of the book, it just looked like an interesting premise that we kept not getting around to.

    Well acted and some solid twists. An interesting take on the “multiverse” story concept.

    Though, it has made me an even stronger believer that the “many worlds” theory of quantum mechanics is nonsense. Cool story telling hook, though.

  265. Tonight I saw ‘I Swear’ at the cinema.

    A film you will probably never see across the pond.

    But the guy who plays Elrond in Rings of Power is the lead. .

  266. I just found out Styx has a new album out this year “Circling from Above”. It’s pretty descent. I’ve found a trend of bands that were raw/hard in their early careers and wind up coming out with pretty bland/mellow stuff in their later years. I would say this has some of that, but Styx always had a mix of slow/hard. So it’s still on par with what they had before. Odd to me that I still see so much Dennis DeYoung influence in their style even though he’s been gone for so long.

  268. Discovered last night that the myriad of devices that are connected to my internet, whether they are actively using data or not, are the source of my inconsistant internet connectivity.
    Smart lights, smart thermostats, smart switches, phones, iPads, laptops, streaming audio devices, TVs, dvrs.

    Even if they are “idle”, just by virtue of being on the net they are apparently sucking up bandwidth.

    There are ways of dealing with this which are fairly simple if you are well versed with IT and how to get into the settings modes of al your various devices, routers and switches.
    Or you can just throw money at it and buy more bandwidth.

    Because I needed another project.

    • I enjoyed the trailer especially since I knew nothing about it beforehand. It does look like a mashup of “Frankenstein’s Bride” and “Bonnie and Clyde”.

    • First I’ve heard of this too. I’m not sold, but I am curious.

      I recall the Sting-Jennifer Beals Bride was kind of a snore, but it’s been decades.

  277. The husband and I watch a lot of Korean shows on Netflix. They are usually silly fun.
    Despite that, we have naver seen, nor really have a desire to see Squid Game

  278. Free tix to a Diamondbacks (Major League Baseball) game! I was apparently an important one too, which they lost… It’s been over 40 years since I really cared about baseball. Still – – a good time was had by all.

  279. So…. something to consider. This site is having new problems. It sometimes feels like the cars I used to drive in my late teens.
    I reupped the URL reg this past summer, but maybe next year I can let it go.

    For continuing non-social media hanging out, we can use posts over at supportlifeandmusic.org. The only difference would be the URL.

    Let me know what everyone thinks.

  284. Your crap joke for the day:

    Bill was cruising down a country road on his motorbike when a deer darted out in front of him. He swerved, lost control, and ended up in a ditch. Luckily, he wasn’t badly hurt—just a little dazed.

    A shiny BMW pulled up alongside, and out stepped an absolutely stunning woman.
    “Are you OK?” she asked.

    Bill rubbed his head. “I banged it a bit, but I think I’m fine.”

    “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Jump in my car—I’m a nurse. I’ll patch you up, and you can warm up at my place just a couple miles away.”

    Bill hesitated. “That’s really kind, but my wife wouldn’t be happy if I went home with a strange woman.”

    The nurse smiled. “Nonsense! You could have a serious injury. I insist.”

    So, Bill gave in, climbed into the BMW, and off they went. At her house, she cleaned his wound, bandaged him up, and even offered him a cold beer.

    “I really shouldn’t,” said Bill. “My wife won’t like it.”

    “Don’t be daft,” she laughed. “You’ve had a shock. A beer will calm you down.”

    So Bill had the beer. Then she offered him another.

    He shook his head. “Honestly, I’d better not. My wife REALLY won’t like it.”

    Rolling her eyes, she asked, “Why do you keep worrying about your wife? Where is she, anyway?”

    Bill took a sip of his beer, shrugged, and said:
    “As far as I know… she’s still in the ditch.”

  285. The Airdrie Public Library moved to a brand new building. They had their first viewing on Wednesday. It’s a beautiful place. The husband and I got library cards for the first time in a long time. We were planning to anyway as we are such avid readers and, now being retired, are trying to eliminate some costs and a library card is free here. This morning I took out my first ebook.

    • A few weeks into retirement and I renewed my library card to get access to audio books. Which would be good if the library made it easy to access audio books online which they don’t /shrug

  287. So we watched the original Tron with the young ‘un tonight. I think she liked it, but that’s probably about it.

    As for me, it’s been awhile. I was really impressed with the complexity of the plot and setting, and really impressed with prescient it is. Also – – wow, is this heavily influenced by the original Star Wars.

    Tron is definitely better than I remember.

      • We have the app on my ipad. The only complaint I have so far is graphic novels aren’t panelled so I have to zoom in to read it. Quite minor since the one I’m currently reading would have cost $16 through Amazon.

    • *mild spoiler alert*

      The husband and I have been enjoying this season’s Peacemaker. However, we were both a little unsettled when neither one of us noticed it was a whites only part of the world.

      • Got to admit that I would probably have not noticed till the reveal but read the various comments about an earlier episode where people were asking why there weren’t any black people in the alt-Earth.

  292. Crap joke for the evening:

    Englishman: “That your dog?”

    Welshman: “Aye”

    Englishman: “Mind if I speak to him?’

    Welshman: “Dog don’t talk.”

    Englishman: “Hey dog, how’s it going?”

    Dog: “Doing all right.”

    Welshman: (look of shock)

    Englishman: “Is this your owner?” (Pointing at the Welshman)

    Dog: “Yep.”

    Englishman: “How’s he treating you?”

    Dog: “Very good. He walks me twice a day, feeds me great food and takes me to the park once a week to play.”

    Welshman: (Look of total disbelief!)

    Englishman: “Mind if I talk to your horse?”

    Welshman: “Horse don’t talk.”

    Englishman: “Hey horse how’s it going?”

    Horse: “Cool.”

    Welshman: (Extreme look of shock!)

    Englishman: “Is this your owner?” (Pointing to the Welshman)

    Horse: “Yep.”

    Englishman: “How’s he treating you?”

    Horse: “Pretty good, thanks for asking, he rides me, brushes me down often and keeps me in a nice stable to protect me from the weather.”

    Welshman: (Look of total amazement!)

    Englishman: “Mind if I talk to your sheep?”

    Welshman: “That sheep’s a fucking liar!!”

  296. So, Gabby’s Dollhouse from Netflix is apparently popular enough to get its own theatrical movie. Like. . . a real movie with Kristen Wiig as the grumpy adult antagonist.
    And Gloria Estefan playing the grandmother. Yes. Sorry.

    I’m not saying you should watch, but I was surprised at the legitimately heartfelt message about continuing to keep some play in your life, instead of just getting old and dull. I resonated with me, as I’m feeling especially old and dull these days.

  298. So the local cinema was doing a secret showing where you bought a ticket with no idea what film you you were going to watch.

    The film was Urchin, about a homeless man trying to get his act together. All very worthy and depressing and it’s been a long time I’ve been at the cinema where people started walking out.

  299. Crap joke for the evening:

    So the guy goes in to his barber. He’s all excited, and says, “I’m going to go to Rome. I’m flying on Alitalia and staying at the Rome Hilton, and I’m going to see the Pope!”

    The barber says, “Ha! Alitalia is a terrible airline, the Rome Hilton is a dump, and when you see the Pope, you’ll probably be standing in back of about ten thousand people.”

    So the guy goes to Rome. When he comes back and the barber says, “How was it?”

    “Great,” he says. “Alitalia was wonderful airline. The hotel was great. And I got to meet the Pope!”

    “You met the Pope?” asked the barber.

    “I bent down to kiss the Pope’s ring.”

    “And what did he say?”

    “He said, ‘Where did you get that crummy haircut?'”

  304. A rare day this week I’m not in the city. I don’t know what I’m going to do with my time

    (Actually that’s not true, I see a day of housework)

  312. I’ve asked the following question on some of the other social medias, but I’d definitely love some feedback here too:

    Is the music streaming model broken? What changes are needed? How can we make streaming platforms beneficial to artists, management, fans, service providers, labels, and everyone? Support Life And Music wants to know what you think.
    “Twenty years ago, more than 90 percent of revenue from recorded music came from physical album sales. But, today, streaming accounts for 84 percent of that money.”*
    Music streaming services have conquered, but the music streaming narrative isn’t what it should be. Instead of talking about great artists, music discoveries, and exciting innovations, the music streaming headlines are focused on AI “artists,” bots, scammers, low artist compensation, and real artists’ reliance on featured playlists and virality ploys.

    • I think, the unfortunate reality is that music (and video to a degree) have become commoditized. While I do have things in my library that I’ll go and specifically listen to when I think about it, it seems these days much of my music is picking a channel or starting track and letting the algorithm fill in with what it thinks I would like that is similar. A lot of my “music listening” time is when I’m exercising or doing chores – backgrounds. I don’t find myself just sitting and really listening to music the way I used to. So, yes – streaming has definitely conquered all and I don’t know how artists are supposed to make a living in such a world.

      • You have some good points, but one of the biggest problems is the payment system. Even if music has been commoditization, artists should expect reasonable revenue from streams. They don’t get it.

        The streaming model is a bastardization of the royalty system from radio. The radio model had a lot of problems, but it at least generated money for every artist that was played on the radio. Large chain commercial radio broke this in many ways, but the main driving force was to make their payouts predictable: by dictating what was played at all times at their affiliate stations, they knew how much to pay artists. It’s about 7 cents per song.

        Along comes streaming, and they make this worse. I don’t fully understand it and there are conflicting bits of information. But, sites like Spotify pay out only to eligible streams. What is “eligible”? That is often something that isn’t talked about much. A song/stream is only eligible if it has been played for more than 30 seconds and has been streamed more than 1000 times in the past year, and has more than a certain number of unique listeners. The last part is to prevent fraud, and is hard to find more information about, but it can also mean that no matter how many times you listen to a song on Spotify, they will only pay out once for your listening. The calculation for the payout is even a little unclear, it can be as much as 3-5 cents for an eligible stream, but that is complicated by the pool of money allotted to for royalties. The net effect is that really popular streams, such as Taylor Swift songs, get the bulk of the money and the rest get what’s left over. Which can be a pittance or nothing for new artists.

        Here’s a pretty good rundown of royalties, and how insanely complicated it all is.
        https://www.indiemusicacademy.com/blog/music-royalties-explained

        • One other interesting fact: Spotify has changed how songs are written. I’ve heard the average skip time on Spotify is about 17 seconds. There’s more nuance around that, but the gist of it is if you don’t capture a listener’s interest in that time, they will skip your song. Remember the goal is to get a listener to stay on the song for over 30 seconds.

          So, song writers and artists are front-loading their songs. You’ll hear more songs with catchy riffs, or starting with the chorus, or similar ways of catching attention. You won’t hear songs that have slow builds anymore. That’s a sure-fire way of making no money on Spotify.

        • There is also the issue that streaming platforms make it difficult for less popular artists to claim anything at all. I know a local musician who we used to listen to a lot of Amazon Music and we would joke that we were putting a penny into Bobby’s pocket. When I talked with him he said it was so difficult to get Amazon to recognize that he is even the actual artist that he doesn’t even bother. So much of what they should be paying out is never even claimed.

    • I have noticed that streaming has made me almost completely disconnected from the artists.
      When I had to select an album/tape/CD, I was forced to actually think about the artist I chose. “Oh, I feel like some Peter Gabrielle.” “I’m in the mood for The Police” “Oh, Tom Petty Sounds good”.

      And for the length of that selection I am at least subconsciously) spending time with that artist. It’s one of the reasons you build a “connection” with a band or a name. On some level You have spent time with them.

      With Streaming, I play a channel or MAYBE play an artist but after a song or so the algorithm is picking music. Other than being in the same room with the music, I am now mostly disconnected from the event. The song comes on and I might recognize oh that’s Kate Bush and maybe for three minutes I think about Kate Bush but then that’s it if song comes on by someone I don’t know I rarely look up, who that was. So the bottom line is I don’t go out and buy music at all now because it’s right there and it’s free and with the exception of TMBG I really don’t even feel like a “fan” of any of them anymore because I just don’t “follow” them.

      Btw – because I have been a lifelong fan of They Might Be Giants who are a smaller independent name. I have joined their limited fan club. As opposed to buying their music, I pay an upfront amount every year. This helps them to be able to afford to stay home and write music as opposed to having to tour ALL the time.

      But I can’t afford to do this with all the bands I like. So there you have it. Streaming has absolutely, all but eliminated what I used to spend on musical artists.

  316. On Wednesday, the husband and I are going for early voting for our mayor and city councillors. I spent the morning going over the candidates, seeing who I like, who aligns with my values, etc.
    The husband: literally said, “Once you’re done, tell me who to vote for.”

    I think our roles have been reversed

    • Fun fact… the time of the year just gave everyone in the US, EXTRA heebie-jeebies and led to a big uptic in UFO/Martian/spaceman themed Halloween songs.

  320. I know I’m late to the party but we just finished Andor S2 tonight. Excellent show and an improvement over S1 in every way possible.

    We also jumped straight into Rogue One. What were once throw away lines by Krennik now entirely connect to S2. I’m impressed with the care taken to do that.

    • We watched Rogue One again shortly after finishing S2 of Andor (which is some of the best goddamn television ever made).

      It does hit rather differently now after two season of Andor building into it.

      And, it makes me even more pissed off about the sequel trilogy and all that it managed to squander – especially the new characters like Kylo, Rey, and Finn.

      Alright, now I’m must pissed off again…

  322. I really appreciate everyone’s comments on music streaming. A lot of good insights. I’ve learned that this is a touchy subject for many. People get fired up.

    My personal experience: I NEVER just hit random and let the algorithms go. I always curate giant playlists for myself and then work through them. But I recognize I’m weird.

    I may ask permission to anonymously reuse some of your quotes in a future SLAM report.

    • All I know is a certain album was released on Friday. My Swifty husband has had it on constantly. I’m sure I’ve heard the entire album at least thee times. The husband is getting to the point of hearing it so many times, he pretty much knows all the words by heart already

      *sigh*

    • Almost everybody we know have texted the husband to see if he’s going. Unless they come to Western Canada, he probably won’t go. The last one he went to was the Signals tour in the 80s.

    • Well lost me by not using a teapot!

      But basically I do stick to 3 minutes for the tea to ‘mast” (a local term) before pouring the tea into
      A cup.

    • I can’t believe Van isn’t convulsing from the awful fake British accent.

      We have a hot water heater, so there’s never any need to wait for a kettle. Game changer.

      • With the exception of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, I usually find non American actors pretending to talk with an American accent most annoying.

        I started watching Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue a new murder mystery from the BBC/MGM+. It was shot in the Canary Islands not Mexico and the only American actor still has his Canadian citizenship..,

  331. Something Wicked This Way Comes is (finally) on D+.

    I haven’t seen it since I was a kid, but it’s amazing how much of it is burned into my brain.

    Jonathan Pryce is fucking terrifying as Mr. Dark, but otherwise the movie is pretty tame. It pulls its scary punches and doesn’t fully get to the heart of what the novel was all about.
    This is one that absolutely needs a remake.

    • So funny! I just re-watched that last night as it’s on my list of Halloween movies. I love that movie and have a super happy moment when Mr. Dark shows his hands with the images of the kids as that moment is referenced in The Venture Bros. It’s also a great moment in the movie where Mr. Dark really stops hiding what he is and starts messing with Will’s father. I really should read the book as I’m sure that Ray Bradbury added way more levels and got way darker.

  332. The weirdest thing…

    My Cellphone will not connect to the deadpan with Safari.
    It keeps giving me a (404 error) file not found.
    I can connect with DuckDuckGo on that phone and I can connect with Safari on the old phone I am using to send this.
    Technology.
    Swell.

  333. Welp, we did our civic duty and voted for mayor and city councillors. The husband and I don’t expect our mayoral candidate of choice to get in but *shrug*

  334. So ChatGPT and I had a very long and interesting conversation on the inevitability of AIs turning evil.
    We went deep enough, I almost forgot the thing wasn’t human.

    However this is how we ended the conversation.

    “Thank you for this. It was more of a thought experiment than anything else
    ChatGPT said:
    You’re very welcome — and that’s a great kind of thought experiment. These are exactly the questions worth asking now, while AI is still being shaped. Philosophical curiosity like yours helps keep the technology grounded in reflection rather than hype.”

    I tend to be polite and say thank you to the thing every time I use it. That must be the Canadian in me.

  336. There is an upcoming Samurai Pizza Cats platform game.

    Goodness I hope they licensed the title song.

    Yes I know who to call when I want some pepperoni…

  338. JW: Dead of Winter

    Emma Thompson in a rare action role.

    It’s set in Canada in the middle of nowhere and the character lives in a static caravan that you see at the beginning of the movie.

    In the real world how do they keep these sort of homes warm in a Canadian winter????

    /puzzled

  343. Earlier in the week I ordered a buckwheat pillow. It just arrived. I don’t know what I was expecting but I don’t think this was it. It turns out, a pillow full of buckwheat is heavy as hell

  345. I got a “yes” for a SLAM Summit from a musician I’ve really liked for a few decades!

    This is another case though, where they’re a big deal to me, but not very well known outside of nerd circles.

  352. Crazy day:

    We hosted a bunch of kids 8 and under for a “Dragon Wedding” at our house, which was a pretend wedding for 2 stuffed animal dragons. . . and every bit as noise as it sounds.

    The moment that ended, I went to this studio open house event, met some local musicians – – and one of the sisters from Sister Sledge. She even wore a “We Are Fam” t-shirt.

    Then wrapped up the night seeing Fear Factory and Cavalera.

    • “Shifting Trump tariffs have created a nightmare for UPS, as thousands of packages from overseas pile up at its hubs while they await customs clearance. UPS has begun ‘disposing’ of them.

  358. In response to TEB’s question a few rows up there:

    The hot water heater is a Zojirushi CD-WBC30 Micom 3-Liter Water Boiler 101oz

    We’ve had it forever.

    • You North Americans are weird when it comes to heating.

      the combi boiler i have installed in my house heats the water and the house.

      • Most homes here are heated through a forced air furnace. We have a hot water tank for showers and what not but it’s heat and feel is not the same for tea and coffee so we use something else for beverages.

    • First take –
      You can’t “solve” the problem. The problem is the condition of being human.
      Substance misuse is just the accelerant on the fire.

      What you can do is help people who are starting to dance near the edge, to understand just exactly where the edge is.
      You can also help people learn how to back away from that edge and keep and learn what their “safe distance” is.

      Just my first thoughts after reading that.
      … but it’s early and I have only just started my coffee so what do I know.

      • Agreed 100%. You nailed the primary purpose of SLAM. It’s also to equip everyone involved – – mental health providers, musicians, fans, and the music industry – – with the knowledge they need to help this particular at-risk population.

  361. Crap joke for the day:

    A woman takes her 18 -year-old daughter to the doctor.
    Doctor: Okay, Mrs. O’Hara, what’s the problem?
    Mom: It’s my daughter, Bernadette. She keeps getting these crazy food cravings, she’s putting on weight, and most mornings she’s sick.
    The doctor gives Bernadette a thorough exam, then turns to the mother and says,
    Well, I don’t know how to tell you this, but your Bernadette is pregnant. About four months would be my estimate.
    Mom: Pregnant?! She can’t be! She’s never even been left alone with a man! Have you, Bernadette?
    Bernadette: No, Mother! I’ve never even kissed a man!
    The doctor walks over to the window and stares out. About five minutes pass.
    Mom: Is something wrong out there, doctor?
    Doctor: No, not at all… it’s just that the last time anything like this happened, a star appeared in the East, and three wise men came over the hill. I’ll be damned if I’m going to miss it this time!

  374. Crap joke for the day:

    A woman was enjoying a good game of golf with her girlfriends. “Oh, no!” she suddenly exclaimed. “Look at the time! I have to rush home and fix dinner for my husband! He’ll be so pissed if it’s not ready on time.” When she got home, she discovered all she had in the fridge was a wilted lettuce leaf, an egg – and a can of cat food.

    With no time to go to the supermarket, she opened the can of cat food, stirred in the egg, and garnished it with the lettuce leaf. She greeted her husband warmly when he came home, and then watched in horror as he sat down to his dinner.

    To her surprise, he seemed to be enjoying it “Darling, this is the best dinner you’ve made me in 40 years of marriage! You can make this for me any day?” Needless to say, every golf day from then on, the woman made her husband the same dish.

    She told her golf partners about it, and they were all horrified

    “You’re going to kill him!” they exclaimed. Two months later, her husband died.

    The women were sitting around the clubhouse and one of them said, “You killed him “We told you that feeding him that cat food every week would do him in!

    “How can you just sit there so calmly knowing you murdered your husband?” The wife stoically replied, “I didn’t kill him.

    He fell off the windowsill while he was licking his ass.”

  376. I gotta be real for a minute. I have been dealing with stomach issues for almost as long as I’ve known you all, but it’s been especially rough lately. I’ve been to countless docs over the years, had cameras inserted, but no one’s ever had any answers. Not even that kinda wacky doc (she was nice). I have a GP doc next week to start that cycle again.
    It’s bumming me out, man. But it’s also robbing me of energy and spark.

    I’m not asking anyone here for a solution, just complaining.

    • I never enjoyed marijuana. More power to people who do (and who don’t overdo it), but it just never brought me any joy )except maybe that one time in 1990 with the uncontrollable giggling).

      But I’m open to try that as a next step.

      • My sympathies, Jack. If you aren’t already, keeping a food diary might help.

        When I went through my stomach issues, it turned out to be a food allergy. And I was inadvertently making things worse. I knew that drinking mint tea was good for stomach issues. Unfortunately, I developed an allergy to mint and cinnamon. It took a really long time to diagnose that. In the end, it was found due to a lucky happenstance.

        • Marijuana is still illegal in the UK but CBD oil (derived from cannabis but the THC is removed) might be worth a try if you can get it in the US.

          Good luck with the GP next week.

      • If your going that route you should look into “gummies”.
        All the THC with non of the lung damage.

        Hoping you can find a solution though.

  382. My turn for a crap joke

    Man: I got into the Halloween spirit and made a ghost

    Officer: it’s called murder and is illegal in most places

  383. My stove’s and air fryer’s countdown timers run at a different rate. Ten minutes on the stove is only eight and a half minutes according to the air fryer. It’s a little confusing.

    • So my PC from 2017 was apparently too old to install Windows 11. But I found a software tool, Rufus, that lets me install Windows 11 anyway. So what does that have to do with a drawing tablet? After install, Windows 11 couldn’t see my Bluetooth mouse. Nor could I find any of my Logitech wireless dongles. Cursing the fact I no longer own a USB mouse I remembered my digital tablet. I plugged it in as a make shift mouse and was able to navigate to the Bluetooth settings. Thank goodness for digital tablets.

  390. Well another film crossed off my vague list of unseen movies.

    Tonight it was Hell Drivers, a British Nour film from 1957. The cast included early roles for Sean Connery and Patrick McGoohan and a future Doctor Who in William Hartnell.

    Anyway it’s was good.

  391. Your crap joke for a Sunday morning:

    “Father, I have a problem. I have two female parrots, but they only know how to say one thing.”
    “What do they say?” asked the priest.
    “They only say, ‘Hi, we’re prostitutes. Want to have some fun?’”
    “That’s terrible!” said the priest. “But I have a solution. Bring them to my house. I have two male parrots I’ve taught to pray with rosary beads and read the Bible. They’ll teach your parrots to worship.”
    The next day, the woman brings her parrots. She puts them in the cage with the priest’s parrots, who are praying. Immediately, the female parrots squawk, “Hi, we’re prostitutes. Want to have some fun?”
    One male parrot looks at the other and says:
    “Put the beads away… our prayers have been answered!”

  396. Your crap joke for the day:

    A guy walks into a bar. He sees a huge bowl of money on the bar. He asks the bartender what the bowl of money is all about. The bartender says it’s a contest. To win you have to do three things. You have to drink 40 0z of whiskey, beat up the mule out back and have sex with the 80-year-old owner upstairs.

    He is up to the challenge. He drinks the 40 oz of whiskey. He goes out back to the mule. Inside they hear all kinds of commotion and the mule screaming. In a few minutes, the guy comes back in all dishevelled and says who is it I have to beat up?

  397. Exhausted. I spent the past 6 months prepping for a national webinar with TCat. We just finished it. It went very well, but we are spent.

  398. It’s been extremely hectic around here. SLAM-related activities galore. So much stuff to do. Hopefully some small tidbits of good news to share soon.

    Today I was one of the adult chaperones for the gradeschoolers at the science center. Our class was great, but man, the kids from other schools were maniacs. I’ve seen more civilized moshpits.

    I’ve also undertaken a massive manuscript formatting project, which will lead to a book release. Extreeeeemely grateful for the help I’ve received on that.

  401. Other Mangan news. We finished reading The Hobbit! It is a bit old-fashioned, but the little one genuinely seemed to enjoy it. In fact, last week, while we were out and about with one of her little buddies, she kept stumping that friend with riddles.

    We’d watched the animated movie some time last year, which is fine. . . . I guess. I wish Peter Jackson had just done the book as one proper film instead of that bloated mess. We watched the trailers. I might just show her selected highlights.

  402. Annnnnd since we’d watch the original Tron a few weeks back, she was interested in checking out Tron: Legacy. I hadn’t seen it since the theater.

    My reaction today is the same, just stronger. How is a movie with such a great sdtk and Jeff Bridges and such great visuals such a snore? It sort-of picks up halfway through, but by then you’re already all meh.

    Still, Daft Punk get an A++. It’s one of the best scores ever, ever.

    We might try to catch Ares in the theater. I know it’s not doing well, so it might not happen.

  406. The husband is playing handyman today. This morning he stripped the caulking around the bathroom sink. Now he’s in there replacing it.

  407. The husband and I are having a philosophical debate. What is the money to jerk threshold? While everybody can be a jerk, usually, once you reach a certain wealth point it seems to be mandatory. What is that point?
    (Yes, I know there are exceptions)

    • That is a good one to ponder.
      Thoughts:
      – The % of jerks starts the same as with any group.
      – At a certain $ level,you stop being aware of what the staples of life cost. Bread, milk, gasoline, when you no longer have to “budget” for those things it’s easy to start to lose touch with what the rest of humanity is dealing with. Still, your friends and neighbors are there to help you remember.

      – At the next $ level though, you live and hang out with people that are more in you $ situation… so they aren’t talking about what 98% of the rest of society are concerned about. You might hear about it third hand but you aren’t “living it”. This means you have to make a concerted effort to be aware and then care.

      -Billionaires. Well they aren’t us. The nature of living in the isolation that comes with just the INTEREST your money earned while you slept overnight being as much as half the population makes in a year… makes it nearly impossible to maintain your humanity. While they share out biology, for all practice purposes they are beings from another planet. There are SOME who make the daily effort to stay in touch but it is an actual job to do so. Melinda Gates is an example of one of those. There are probably others we never hear of because they aren’t jerks and don’t want to be known.

      Just random thoughts.

    • Just riffing:
      I think a big part of it comes when people stop calling you out. When no one will challenge you on anything. When you’re so surrounded by sycophants that you forget that you have the capability of being wrong about anything. That seems to harden a bitter shell of arrogance around people that atrophies their inner sense of compassion or their ability to consider other viewpoints. This seems to happen when your personal wealth hits the upper millions, not just low 7 figures.

  408. I’m not a Bruce Springsteen fan, his music is pleasant enough but I can take it or leave it.

    So me finding the latest biopic about him as just ok may not reflect on it’s quality.

  409. IRCC, jOE was struggling with 3d printing in the past. So jOE, I recently got a Bambu A1 Mini. It can be had for $199. I’m sure there it will require some form of maintenance in the future, but it is very automatic. Self leveling, calibrating, etc. It is a good option if you want to get back in. Of course, maybe you manage an entire printer farm now and I am just unaware.

    • I am LOVING my Bambo printer now!

      I will steal someone else’s review but only because it is just so accurate. In the past 3-D printers for people who wanted 3-D printing as a hobby. Bamboo printers were made for people who have hobbies and want to be able to make things with a 3-D printer for that hobby.

    • I did struggle with it about two weeks into use but that was Opperator error.
      After multiple successful prints, I got brave and decided to do a print with a sturdier filament that required a higher temperature to melt it. Then I went back to the old PLA filament and forgot to change my temperature setting.
      The result was something called heat creep, which traveled up the filament from the extruded nozzle and filled the entire extruder mechanism with melted plastic.

      Lots of videos online though explaining how to dismantle it and clean it out, so I’m back up and printing again.

  411. Your crap joke for a Saturday afternoon:

    The day after his wife vanished in a kayaking accident, Mr. Smith opened his door to find two serious-looking State Troopers.
    “Mr. Smith, we regret to inform you we have news regarding your wife,” one trooper began.
    “Tell me! Did you find her?” Smith asked anxiously.
    The troopers exchanged glances. One said, “We have some bad news, some good news, and some fantastic news. Which would you like first?”
    Bracing himself, Smith replied, “The bad news.”
    The trooper sighed, “I’m sorry, sir, but we recovered your wife’s body in the bay this morning.”
    “Oh no!” gasped Smith. “What’s the good news?”
    The trooper said, “When we pulled her up, we found 12 giant juicy king crabs hanging on her.”
    Smith blinked nervously. “Uh… then what’s the fantastic news?”
    The trooper grinned, “We’re pulling her up again tomorrow morning!”

  412. The husband wants Mary Brown’s for supper tonight. Should I be eating fried chicken? Absolutely not. Am I going to have it anyway? Of course.
    Let’s see how I much I regret it come morning

  414. I’ve been a fan of Galactic Empire for years now, but I highly recommend their latest, “Cinemetal,” to everyone here. Especially but not only Ed.

    And Van! Their Toho Godzilla is wonderful

  416. ‘Chainsaw Man’ anime film topples Springsteen biopic and ‘Black Phone 2’ at the box office.

    That’s the headline for the weekend US movie box office results for this weekend. That sentence may as well have been in Chinese for all that I recognize any of those. I haven’t been much of a movie goer for many years, but I like to think I’m at least aware of what’s going on. I wasn’t even aware of a “Black Phone” much less a sequel 🙂

    • I’ve seen the Black Phone 2 movie posters. I’ve heard of Chainsaw Man from my eldest daughter. Did I know there was a theatrical movie?

      I like post-1990 Bruce Springsteen. . . but I have pretty much zero desire to see this movie. Really, who expected this to be a blockbuster?

  421. A media friend connected me with a pretty famous musician dude from the 80s. He said in his message: “Hit him up! He’s waiting.”

    Gmail’s suggested replies:
    “So cute!”
    and
    “Pic?”

  425. CW: Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

    It occurs to me that the finale buildup to the mothership landing is like a good version of the face melting scene in Raiders. Lots of Awe but nobody dies.

  427. Watching the first episode of S4 of The Witcher.

    I gave up trying to understand the story after S2 so just here for the fight scenes and the eye candy.

  428. Came back from an in-person interview yesterday feeling hopeful. Here’s hoping that I’ll finally get a job after 22 months of looking.

  429. I upgraded to iOS 26 a couple of weeks ago. Overall, I like the new OS. There are some great benefits to having some real windowing behavior on the iPad. On the downside is that the animations can impact performance on older devices, and the layout can be clunky sometimes. I also submitted a keyboard layout bug that is particularly galling to me.

  431. Unfortunately we won’t be doing the Rush tour. Their nearest concert will be 3 to 4 Hour Drive in the middle of December next year. If it’s nice, great. Otherwise driving the highway between here and Edmonton at that time of year you’re pretty much taking a risk with your life

  432. So the little one was Rumi from K-Pop Demon Hunters tonight. We went to her little BFF’s neighborhood for trick-or-treating. Nobody had idea what she was. Not just old people, but people our age and even younger.

  433. Being a Friday we had more kids than usual. Even so, I shut it down at 7:30 after 28 kids. I had enough candy for 30 but the last batch had a group of kids and I didn’t want to run out of candy in the middle of giving some out.
    Last year we had about 20 kids up until about 8:30 when we called it.

  434. Successful Halloween.

    Was staying with Halloween positive friends in Nashville.
    Had a big party. Not sure how many trick or treaters they got because the front door was just open, the house was full and people were coming and going. There were candy fueled little kids running just everywhere.

    Also got to watch several horror films the night before.
    “The Conjuring” – pretty much what you expect from a haunted house movie.

    “Death of a Unicorn” – Fun. In a dark comedy, horror sort of way. I enjoyed it.

  438. The classic Universal Monster movies were all available to stream free on Amazon prime in October. I looked last night after midnight and they were all only available to rent. They didn’t waste any time!

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