956 thoughts on “As You Requested

    • I, personally, dig it. Though, I’m probably more tolerant of Ben Stiller’s style than is typical for Deadpan.

      • I was a HUGE fan of the surreal/absurdist comic that the Mystery Men got their start in … so while the movie could have been a little less clumsy in it’s execution, in a lot of ways it surpassed expectations.
        Frankly, when I heard that they were giving the Mystery Men their own movie I was surprised.
        I just didn’t see how they could translate the idea into a film that could appeal to a financially viable segment of the public.

        Turns out it was as hard as I thought.

  1. Incidentally, I’ll join in commiseration about the current orange state of things, if others want to vent, but I have zero intention of getting heavy into politics next weekend. I won’t be the one to start it.

    I will make wisecracks, though.

  2. “I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record. Because you know, look, I only need this space. They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records. Really we do it without like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical: the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth. Right? The brain, more important than the mouth, is the brain. The brain is much more important.”

  3. So we visited Dan tonight. He was drugged and sleepy, but things are looking better. He’s still got a long way to go, and nothing’s certain, but the situation is better than it was.

  4. Tickets bought for Ant Man and Wasp.

    Really looking forward to this one, especially after the heavy (but awesomeness) of Infinity War. All signs point to a super light and fun romp.

  5. Just go home from Mastodon/Primus! We should discuss.

    Is it ironic that a tweaker bumped into me while pushing through the pit?

    Both bands should have consulted with me before choosing their set lists.

    Bands shouldn’t do goddamn abridged versions of your most popular songs. Just play Jerry in it’s entirety, FFS.

    How does Mastodon do a show without playing Oblivion?

    Les Claypool is one of a kind. It was still a great night of music.

    • Oh… oh that doesnt sound the best. I mean they are playing Desaturating Seven in its entirety this tour, so if you arent a fan of that album you arent going to like 2/3 of the set

      • That Desaturating Seven album has grown on me, although the last 2 tracks are a little sleepy. It was a treat to hear it live, with all of the goblin visuals on their screens.

  6. A shit load of grammatically themed crap jokes:

    A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

    A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

    An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

    Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

    A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

    Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

    A question mark walks into a bar?

    A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

    Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out — we don’t serve your type.”

    A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

    A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

    Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

    A synonym strolls into a tavern.

    At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar — fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

    A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

    Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

    A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

    An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

    The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

    A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

    The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

    A dyslexic walks into a bra.

    A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

    An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television getting drunk and smoking cigars.

    A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

    A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

    A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.

  7. I have taken a few days to watch a documentary, 30 for 30 film, Hillsbourough.

    Wow. Astonishing, this tragedy.

    and wow, the lack of responsibility by the police and the police chief- Duckenfield.

    I was not familiar with this event and it is just so sad.

  8. CD: Sweating like the proverbially pig.

    Getting too old for changing fucking terminals within 50 minutes shit.

    Just saying.

  9. I was going to reply to a post by Desert Pixie on Facebook but stopped because I wondered if she would get the Douglas Adams reference.

    Odin was fond of clean sheets everyday,

  10. 1:15pm local AZ time. Where my peeps at?

    Speaking for Desert Pixie and myself: we’re at home, taking care of business. I’m logged into work a few more hours, and then we’re off to the rink.

  11. Well, I’m all packed up and ready to catch my red eye in the morning. All systems go, Major Tom.

    Happy Birthday, TEB!

  12. Morning, Pan! Yes, there were great reunions yesterday. My favorite parts were Mellow Mushroom and movies at Cj’s in the morning.

    I’m feeling rested and ready for more adventures!

  13. Two elderly ladies meet at the launderette after not seeing one another for some time. After inquiring about each other’s health, one asked how the other’s husband was doing.”Oh! Ted died last week. He went out to the garden to dig up a cabbage for dinner, had a heart attack and dropped down dead right there in the middle of the vegetable patch!”…”Oh dear! I’m so very sorry,” replied her friend. “What did you do?”
    “Opened a can of peas instead.”

  14. I have to admit one of the worse parts of holidays is packing.

    I’m going to have a shower to put off packing for half an hour.

    • Yes! I am home safely. I had to go straight back to work, which sucked as much as I expected, but I had to go back to the overnight-shift sleep schedule somehow.

      It was a wonderful MMMMMeetup weekend! When I have more time later, I’ll write up my notes from gaming.

  15. CD: waiting to board.

    Sod’s Law of international travel:

    There will be no queue at the security checkpoint when you have plenty of time.

  16. Yes, I did make it back!

    Landed a bit before midnight local…slept in until about 10 am this morning 🙂 Amazing what sleeping on one’s own mattress can do for you. Though, the bed at the hotel actually wasn’t bad. I’m sure getting back to my own time zone had an impact as well.

    Great visits and gaming with everyone! I declare the weekend a success.

  17. Crap joke for the day:

    There was an exhibitionist who was taking a trip on an airplane.At the top of the stairs there was a stewardess collecting tickets.When the man got to the top of the stairs, he opened his coat and exposed himself. The stewardess said, “I’m sorry sir. You have to show your ticket here, not your stub.”

  18. So the Marriott wanted me to take a survey so I happily told them them their billing methods have made me think choice about them again.

  19. Whatever they are doing at our hosting site, I don’t think it’s working. I just hope she did a backup of my website before messing with it. If I have to do the whole thing from scratch, I’ll not be happy.

  20. So – – I do want to give a big thank you to everyone who accommodated our family and traveled to Phoenix, aka the surface of the sun, for this year’s MMMmmmeetup. I also want to shout out to those who were unable to be here in person, but supported the cause in other ways – – you were missed.
    Big specific thanks also to the Hastings for hosting our group on Sunday!
    Specific thanks to Cj, Tiffany, and Ryah for taxiing folks around.
    And specific thanks to Ed, Amy, Van, and Ryah for coming out to cheer on our figure skater!
    Thanks everyone for a fun MMMmmmeetup weekend! I already look forward to next year!

  21. From my mobile phone company:

    Wow! You’ve saved £3,106.55 using your phone abroad at no extra cost last month! Impressed?

    Well no since I would have just kept the phone in aeroplane mode, but nice I can save that.

    • Interesting conundrum.
      I think the braver move from Disney (in this case) would have been to keep him on, after his explanation. The jokes that I saw were shitty and indefensible, but were clearly just tasteless jokes from 10 years ago. He has disowned them now. Lots of popular comedians have gone to similar places with their comedy, and they’re still accepted by the masses.

      I don’t know. What do you think?

      • I thought it was interesting Disney (who by all accounts knew about the offensive tweets) caved into a bunch of right wingers.

        • As much as I hat right wingers, I think it’s really misplaced to think they are behind the zero tolerance political correctness craze that has any comments people have made in their past practically a crime worthy of incarceration. My big fear at this point is that if the craze continues, no one will be left alive that can have a career any more.

          • Yeah. Honestly I have made just as bad if not worse jokes in my life. It just happens that I’m not a world famous director.

            Disney has a lot to think about here.

          • BTW, and I promise this is it… these tweets came out in 2012 a full 2 years before Guardians. So Disney knew about them and still chose him to direct.

            And while I absolutely abhor the term “tranny”, the tweets he used these in was 10 years ago – a time where the term was not yet rightfully vilified

            The whole thing just sucks on so many levels.

          • Hypocrisy is as common as misspellings in politically-motivated hit pieces – – but I agree that it’s appalling in this case, with right wing media dicks applauding every shitty, hateful, mean thing tweeted or said by the rump family, while claiming outrage at Gunn’s dumbass inappropriate jokes. . . Especially since they seem to just be retaliating against him for speaking out against their orange-skinned idol.

      • I kept trying to figure out why the Pike actor looked familiar….then I realized that he was that constantly constipated looking fellow from the ill-fated “Inhumans” TV show last year.

        Looks like he gets to have facial expressions in Discovery.

    • Intriguing idea – – but I have zero faith in in M. Night Shmcsbcffjdurdfndcsybd to do it right. Maybe he surprises me.

      I would never ever have bothered with Split though, and now I’m contemplating it – – so it’s also a clever marketing move.

      • That’s kind of like asking if you need to watch Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back before you watch Return of the Jedi

    • This is all I wanted him to do. He promised and Unbreakable trilogy and instead we go everything after Signs. Better late than never. Unbreakable is still goddamn fantastic

  22. Saw ‘First Reformed’ today, the latest film directed by Paul Schrader.

    Good acting from Ethan Hawke and the story is good at subverting your expectations but the 4:3 aspect ratio just makes Schrader look like an old fart.

  23. I (kinda) survived my first go at DnD RPG, with the assistance from my Main Squeeze and a lot of patience from our party and DM. It was online, so not in person. J and I also had a five month old to entertain, while we hacked and stomped and charmed our way out of the cavern with more gold than we could carry and a bunch of village kids.

    YAY us!

    • I enjoyed it. But, I (in general) like the cheap-ass SyFy movies and this (as someone here already pointed out) was just like one of those with better special effects. And it’s always great to see Jeffrey Dean Morgan in playing yet another total asshole. He does it so damn well.

  24. I thought the series finale of Sense8 was (mostly) well-done and it was wonderful to get closure on this experience. I loved how these episodes were shot and the running theme of love and tolerance

  25. Ed’s link above inspired me to break out my copy of Unbreakable as well as Redbox Split again. Those two films are utter joys and complete dichotomies of each other which is kind of brilliant. And if you are off of the M Night Shyamalan train, like I have been, I highly recommend that you watch his last two films, The Visitor and Split. Both are low budget and quite good. It’s possible that you will regain some faith in him again.

          • Ehh, IMHO, it’s fair to lose 100% faith in an artist after a string of bullshit. There are folks whose stuff I used to take on faith, but that I now wait for trusted word of mouth. Like Metallica and M Night Shtamlagnmsgnabjfydagodon.

          • That’s fine to lose faith but to say that one is basically unredeemable is crap. Whether you believe it or not M Night has had an audience and critical resurgence with The Visit and Split. And Id say that includes his produced Devil as well – at least with audiences

          • Oh come on. I do that with every long name. I would have called him M. Night Shmlanelhjpoejf even when I was there at the theater, stoked to watch The Village.

      • So my unfair and narrow minded statement isn’t based on The Last Airbender alone. It’s based on continual dissapointment in every movie he made after The Sixth Sense. The Last Airbender was the last straw for me, making watching any more of his movies impossible. As someone who is on here all the time trashing artists of all types, calling my dislike of this director unfair and narrow minded seems quite a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. Just because you like him, doesn’t mean the rest of us have to.

    • 😀

      To beat this topic to death: I became a superfan after Unbreakable. Loved Signs – – never understood the hate for it. I actually got away from the grips of a psychotic person to go see The Village by myself – – I was so psyched. It was an utter failure. Then the mermaid one! Was an interesting failure. . . I’m OK with it. Then, I don’t know, the evil trees attacking Marky Mark? I’m out. Didn’t see the next few.

      “Hey everyone, The Visit is great! He’s back!” OK. . . . Kids wanted to see it, so we went. It was. . . fine. Dirty diapers.

      I’m open to Split and Glass, just with little confidence. I feel slightly more curious about them than I feel about Lucas’s Red Tails movie.

      • Here’s where I stand.
        I haven’t seen all of M. Knight’s work. Not because I have any issues one way or another, simply because it either didn’t interest me, or I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

        Yes, some of his work has been better than others, but you can say that about almost every director, actor, musician, artist, etc.

        *shrug* I’ll watch, or not, depending upon my mood at the time.

        • As for the name thing, as someone with a name nobody can spell right if they hear it pronounced, or do not pronounce right if they just see it written, I will not deliberately get another’s wrong. Accidentally yes, I get and accept that on my name all the time, but if it’s deliberate, and not a joke (as opposed to slam which is usually a case in M. Knight’s case), I don’t like it so I won’t do it.

          • I hate signs because the aliens were dumb. Water kills us so let’s invade Earth with has loads of freaking water!!

            It’s as bad as aliens in V coming to Earth for water and ignoring the bloody Oort Cloud.

          • As for the name thing, I’ve done that for years for super long names I assumed I was going to misspell. I also typically do that for Zach Galifaniakis. It’s just a cheap, comedic way to avoid googling. It seemed harmless to me, but maybe not?

  26. Switching topics, since I’m staying out of the Battle Royale, I have just finished watching the reboot of Space Battleship Yamato (aka Star Blazers). 2199 is one of the rare cases of a reboot surpassing the original, and I’m a big fan of the original.

  27. We did watch the Hannah Gadsby “Nanette” Netflix comedy speical that’s all the buzz right now. I like her comedy, but the jokes aren’t what it’s about. Powerful and exactly as unsettling and thought-provoking and affecting and emotional as she intended it to be. This is one you digest after viewing.

      • The show makes an interesting mess, to start things off. I’m not confident they’ll pull it off. Especially with dialogue like that.

        However – – and I say this with no knowledge or the comics or spoilers – – but when I see a badass character with a missing arm, then I assume it’s only a matter of time until they get a high-powered bionic arm.

    • Yeah, I don’t think a resurrection of that one would do so well today. Cheers, Fraiser, Friends, even Night Court – products of their time that would probably work as well today as a reboot of Happy Days or Laverne and Shirley.

  28. What is the infatuation about The Purge all about? First there were a couple of movies (maybe just one?), then the new movie this summer, and now a 10-part series on TV.

    I think I know, but I don’t get it and I don’t like it. Not. One. Bit.

    • I’ve seen none of them. Every generation seems to have its mainstream Horror needs. Yuppies needed visceral slasher gore, Gen X needed ironic, self-aware Scream killers, Gen Y needed their Horror with a found footage “authentic” feeling, and Millenials need socio-political allegory in their mainstream Horror.

      /Pure speculation from Jack, who is likely full of shit.

      • I think I’d enjoy it a lot more if in the reboot, Buffy was a white male. Maybe a ‘roided up muscle-guy who cracks cheesy one-liners while dispensing bad guys in strip club fight scenes.

      • Hotel Transylvania would be the selling out part. But again, take that work if it gets you money and gives you the opportunity to do offbeat passion projects. Like Heavy Metal.

        • It’s a very different economy today than it was 20 or 30 years ago. I’m extremely reluctant to say anyone is selling out. With the margins nowadays, I think artists of any medium need to do what they can to make a steady paycheck.

  29. Crap joke for the day:

    A guy goes to see his Doctor for an annual check up.

    “You need to stop masturbating” says the Doctor

    “Why?” Asks the man.

    The Doctor replies;

    “Because i’m Trying to examine you”

  30. I got to see MI: Fallout last night. What a fun, excitng action-packed action flick! It was a buttpucker of suspense for me. I enjoyed it all.

    I felt they took the “Impossible” and stretched it the farthest they’ve ever done in the MI franchise, with some ridiculous multi-tasking during a countdown sequence; but I dont care- it was a fun ride, with good villians.

  31. Crap joke for the day:

    I found my German Shepherd, Hondo, with the neighbor’s pet rabbit in its mouth. The rabbit was dead, and I panicked.. I took the dirty, chewed-up rabbit into the house. I gave it a bath, blew dried its fur, and put it back into the cage at the neighbor’s house, hoping they would think it died of natural causes.

    A few days later, the neighbor asked me, “Don, did you hear that Fluffy died?”

    I said, “Um… no… what happened?”

    The neighbor replied, “We found him dead in his cage one day, but the weird thing is that the day after we buried him, someone had dug him up, gave him a bath, and put him back into the cage. There are some real sick people out there!”

  32. PSA from twitter:

    If you see an X in a Chinese person’s name it’s an ‘sh’ sound so like Xiao is pronounced “shiao” or Xu is pronounced “shoe” or Xi Jinping is “she jin ping”

    If you see a Q it’s a ‘ch’ sound so Qing is “Ching”

    Way easier than it seems.

    -Eric Hu

  33. I really enjoyed watching The Offspring live tonight. I’m here with my 15year old nephew, who says he is a fan (yet knew none of the songs.) They were fun and what a great setlist!

    The guitarist kept calling the crowd, “sexy MFers.”

    Then the lead singer said, “I know Phoenix is a dry heat, but you guys are making me moist.”

    Next up is 311! Another great setlist. I’m all excited.

  34. So, I finished my reread of The Call of Cthulhu yesterday (the actual OG Lovecraft story, not the game or the plushy or the Ktulu Metallica song). It’s actually an effectively brilliant, imaginative piece of writing. Especially considering it’s almost 100 years old. Readers during the 1920s must have had their minds utterly blown. It’s easy to see why HP was so influential, and still is today.

  35. Did anyone else know this? Play Tool’s 10,000 Days and at the same time play Wings For Marie followed by Viginti Tres. They apparently sync up perfectly.

  36. We seem to have become a house divided on Luke Cage season 2. We both agree that the first 2 episodes were hokey as shit, but it’s really turned a corner (for me) since. Even with the hokey bionic arm. Five episodes in, I’m curious to see how the story is going to play, I’m loving the main villain, and I’m really loving the musical guests. I haven’t looked ahead for spoilers, but I do see that KRS-One and Rakim are in future episodes. Can’t wait.

  37. “I have great respect for the U.K. United Kingdom. Great respect. People call it Britain. They call it Great Britain. They used to call it England, different parts.”

    • He can’t have many years left in him, but I applaud the move. Picard was always the best part of TNG for me, often the only good part (sorry).

      I hope the show doesn’t waste him.

  38. Just visited Dan Shaurette. He’s at a rehab center now, and doing amazingly well. He has a long way to go, but it’s great to see how far he’s come.

    • I experienced that with Levi. Once he hit his sophomore level of advanced math I told him it would be faster for him to review his notes than the time it would take for me to come up to speed reading through his textbook. After that I was completely lost. I haven’t had much opportunity to apply the advanced math I took in high school to remember it.

  39. They are predicting today will be the hottest day in Calgaey’s history. Not the hottest August 10th, but the hottest day ever. I’m so glad I’ll be in an air conditioned hotel today.

  40. Yeah this is the first day of the convention and it may be my first and last con.

    Never felt as lonely in my life among a throng of genre fans.

  41. That’s a bummer, Van. A Con is better with friends in tow. I hope you find some good panels to sit in on – – those sessions can be great, with the right panelists.

    Other than that, I might recommend checking out the scene at the bar.

    • Best part of that article:
      “Correction: A previous version of this article described Ralph as “analog.” He’s not. He’s a fictional character that lives inside a video game. We deeply regret this error.”

  42. Crap joke for the day:

    Trump has a heart attack and dies. He goes to Hell where the Devil is waiting for him.

    “I don’t know what to do,” says the Devil. “You’re on my list but I have no room for you. But you definitely have to stay here, so I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’ve got three people here who weren’t quite as bad as you. I’ll let one of them go, but you have to take their place. I’ll even let YOU decide who leaves.”

    Trump thought that sounded pretty good so he agreed.

    The devil opened the first room. In it was Richard Nixon and a large pool of water. He kept diving in and surfacing empty handed over and over and over, such was his fate in Hell.

    “No!” Trump said. “I don’t think so. I’m not a good swimmer and I don’t think I could do that all day long.”

    The Devil led him to the next room. In it was Tony Blair with a sledgehammer and a room full of rocks. All he did was swing that hammer, time after time after time.

    “No! I’ve got this problem with my shoulder. I would be in constant agony if all I could do was break rocks all day!” commented Trump.

    The Devil opened a third door. In it, Trump saw Bill Clinton lying naked on the floor with his arms staked over his head and his legs staked in spread-eagle pose. Bent over him was Monica Lewinsky, doing what she does best.

    Trump looked at this in disbelief for a while and finally said, “Yeah, I can handle this.”

    The Devil smiled and said, “Monica, you’re free to go!”

    • So, playing politics, what did Monica do to get in that situation. If you say her affair with Clinton, you will get a Me Too argument about men in power and young girls.

  43. So, I don’t know why, but now, whenever the page reloads and I try to leave a comment, I have to reenter my name and email every time. It used to be autofilled (presumably from the cookies). Haven’t been seeing this issue with other sites.

    How is it working for everyone else here? Just started noticing this in the last week or so.

  44. Met some super nice people from Wales today (didn’t call them British). They invited us to visit – – we may have to get over to that part of the world one of these days. Mayb visit northern England too. . .

  45. I didn’t see the setting in the Admin pages causing our recent frustration with names, email, website not persisting, but I did make one other change to have the most recent comments at the top. Let me know if you like this, or prefer the old way.

    And hopefully the other thing just automagically fixed itself.

  46. I was walking home last night and decided to take a short cut through the cemetery…
    Three girls walked up to me and explained that they were scared to walk past the cemetery at night, so I agreed to let them walk along with me.
    We we went, I told them, “That’s ok, I used to get freaked out too, when I was alive.”
    I never saw anyone run so fast.

  47. Honestly, I’m not fond of the comments being at the top. Simply because I still have to scroll to the bottom to type in my comments.
    *shrug* Not life changing but still a bit of a pain.

  48. Pip pip, cheerio! Wot’s all this then? Blimey, care for cuppa at the pub with some biscuits and marmalade?

    OK, to my knowledge, Van has never said any of those things.

    • Oy gov! Whicha want with the tea an tort then? Smackle me high, whydontcha!

      It’s fun to make up stuff because you truly don’t know if it’s a real Brit saying or not.

      Porkle me piffer!