PEOPLE.

Dark Dungeons is free to watch on Amazon Prime!!!

Dark Dungeons is apparently an officially licensed adaptation of the titular Chick tract. (Despite my enduring love of those delightfully awful little comics, I hadn't heard of the film until a recent convo with several Rudes members.) I am suuuuper excited to watch.

(Btw, re: the Rudes -- I did mention that I joined a theater troupe this year, didn't I? I guess I might not have. I joined a theater troupe -- the Rude Mechanicals -- and have been in two plays. And now, as mentioned below, I'm apprentice directing. Huzzah!)

I mention this in part because I am apprentice directing a show -- Uncle Vanya! -- to start laying the groundwork and gaining the necessary experience and knowledge to someday direct a show myself. I really, really want to see a community theater incarnation of a Chick tract/Hell House/Judgement House type production, and part of me is thinking that if I want to see that I'd have to direct it myself. (But part of me is thinking I'd also need to write it -- which I could totally do; working title: "Tarnation House" -- which would potentially complicate matters. Hm.) (more...)

I like to think I'm a pretty predictable person -- at least insofar as I'm able to anticipate my own actions (frex, I know how much I appreciate alliteration) -- but even I would not have guessed that I'd be watching anthro pony demonic transformations in multiple languages at 5 o'clock on a Monday morning.

It's also perpetually fascinating to me how *familiar* German sounds to me. Granted, I don't actually understand the language (stock phrases and memorized Doro Pesch lyrics excepted), and we moved back to the US in the summer of '88 -- making it a full 30 years since I lived overseas. Notwithstanding these facts, the language and even German accents still somehow strike me as sounds of home.

So last night I dreamed that I was somehow affiliated with/employed by a crime boss. Said crime boss: Lucien LaCroix, of Forever Knight fame. Just as I wasn't entirely sure what I did for him even in the dream -- he'd summoned me to his 10th floor condo for some unknown purpose; ultimately all he did was pat me on the shoulder and tell me to have a good night -- I wasn't sure whether he was really a vampire or not.

Also in the dream: his top assassin, Mercy (in the dream, Mercy was played by Missy Peregrym; also why are so many assassins named "Mercy"?). Mercy also apparently served as a kind of doorman/guide in LaCroix's building, since she retrieved me from my cab (after she shot the driver in the head; that one really freaked me out) and walked with me up the stairs to the boss's condo. For some reason the thought of taking an elevator didn't occur to us. (more...)

So right now I have a free Sirius XM trial going on. I generally enjoy these trials -- if nothing else, they give me new artists and songs to search for on Freegal -- but occasionally they'll devote significant airtime to a song that I can't flipping stand. (I realize this is a problem with radio in general; I just don't tend to listen to the radio outside of free Sirius trials. 😛 )

Anyway, currently I'm hating on "Finest Hour" by Cash Cash and featuring Abir. It actually has a decent sound -- it's the lyrics that bug the flip out of me, or maybe it's that the lyrics don't fit the sound. Like, I get how the song could be identifiable to a lot of listeners; we all probably have moments when we know we're not at our best and would probably prefer to just keep drinking and forget about everything even as with slurred voices we beg our loved ones not to give up on us. As a more melancholy-sounding track (and perhaps ideally one I wasn't hearing while driving), this would work for me.

But "Finest Hour" is apparently a dance track since they keep playing it on BPM and it never fails to tick me off. To me, dance tracks in general should be stuff I can rock out to and identify with in the moment, and in the moment I rarely feel like I am fucking up -- that's generally quieter, past-tense reflection. (For an "I fucked up" song I enjoy: try "Jack's Lament" from the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack, and even that ends on a comparatively triumphant note.) And if I do feel like I am fucking up in the moment, it's not a feeling that makes me want to dance (or bounce around in my seat as I zoom down the highway with the windows open). It is a feeling that makes me want to pour myself another drink or write sad posts on social media or maybe go to sleep regardless of the hour, and this bouncy shit decidedly lacks lullaby appeal.

Tl;dr: I dislike this song immensely and intensely.

So... Roseanne.

I'd been meaning to post about the Muslim episode that aired on 5/8, since I watched that a few weeks ago -- and I guess this is as good a time as any to comment on it! It was... odd. Like, on the one hand, it presented the Muslim couple in a mostly positive light. Although they were on food stamps (not that there's anything wrong with that, but I imagine many conservative viewers have a different opinion, even though Roseanne's family on the show receives the same assistance), they were friendly and helpful neighbors (despite being woken up by Roseanne and company at 2AM) and loving parents. And they were baseball fans, so hey! VERY AMERICAN!

On the other hand, Roseanne's ignorance in this episode was pronounced, mostly played for laughs, and never truly examined or unequivocally rejected. The episode began with her spying on her neighbors and speculating about their terrorist plots, her every utterance punctuated with a smattering of laughter. Later, when the family's internet service was disconnected (because the Conners couldn't pay the bill), they sat around trying to guess the Muslim neighbors' password: Roseanne cleverly suggested "deathtoamerica123." Cue laugh track! (more...)