Feels like that could be a minor villain from Captain America’s Silver Age rogues gallery.

Not OP but overexplaining jokes is my PaSsIoN.

If you do a raw substitution of Roman numerals for Arabic numerals when writing FF15, you wind up with FFIV. Of course, because of the way Roman numerals work, FFIV ≠ FF15 (as that is properly written as FFXV). Instead, FFIV refers to Final Fantasy 4.

The joke is that the only way you can make FF15 (or FFXV, if you prefer) good is to misunderstand the numbering and play a different game instead.

Edit: aw beans someone beat me to it.

I get it, context and all, but it’s very funny to me that you say you got bummed out by couple seconds of advertising for a cancer drug or treatment interrupting your video of bumbling hack frauds shouting about AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDS. Hell, Mike literally can’t help but laugh at geriatric women describing their health problems.

Sympathies. That tightrope walk of dealing with someone who is misinformed but not malicious is tough. It’s important to challenge them, but not so stridently as to teach them not to engage with you, as you don’t want them to retreat further into that space. I wish I were more successful at it, but my mouth tends to outrun my brain. How did your colleague react to that reality check?

The desperate helplessness in that man’s voice during that call never fails to make me laugh.

He just seems like a guy I could have a beer with, y’know?

Multiple decades on this earth, decent schooling, undergraduate degree in history, and yet today is the day I discover why the cotton gin is called that. Wild. Thank you for sharing.

Does it smell like a steak and seat 35?

It’s been several years since I read it, so I’m fuzzy on the exact characterizations, but the notion the author seems to lean into is that most bassists are (as you say) nerds who aren’t interested in the spotlight, but they provide a fundamental bridge between melody and rhythm that enhances the other performers without necessarily standing out on its own. Meanwhile, the “drummer” character in this book is less Ringo Star and much more Jon Bonham or Neil Peart. He’s got, if not an active desire, at least no aversion to the spotlight.

Of course exceptions to every stereotype exist, and there’s a very valid argument to be made that a rock drummer ought to be the archetypical support class, but the division of stereotypes made sense to me while reading.

Oooo! Reading recommendation for you, if you’re not aware of the title: Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames. The author said that he envisioned the various roles musicians tend to take in a band, and he mapped those stereotypes onto an adventuring party. So, the hot-headed character wielding an enchanted axe is the lead guitarist, the sword and board tank is a bassist, the rogue dual-wielding daggers is a drummer, the mage is a keyboard/synth player, and so on. The conceit is moreso for flavor and world-building than actual plot motivation, so these analogies aren’t necessarily explicit, but it’s still a fun set of character dynamics to hang an adventure story on.

Idk man, could be I’m just projecting on you conversations I’ve had with myself, but fondly remembering the sense of discovery you had with the Infinity Engine games while being sour on BG3 because it was “spoiled” for you seems like it has a lot more to do with your sense of nostalgia than any rational critique. Don’t get me wrong, I’m the sorta person who will break out my soapbox to yell about Morrowind’s virtues vs Oblivion or Skyrim, and I’ve also attempted to cajole several friends into giving BG1 a shot in the lead up to and wake of BG3’s release, so I’m sympathetic to your broader point. I just think, unless you’ve been out here reading reviews, watching Let’s Plays, opening discussion threads, and sucking down all in-house marketing Larian did, you vastly overestimate how much of the game is spoiled for you. And, frankly, if you’ve been doing all of those things, then the real culprit is how you spend your time online, not being online in and of itself.

Besides, the game is massive. Even watching multiple Let’s Plays of Act 1 would still leave room for discovery, simply because there are so many paths to pursue, many of them mutually exclusive. Hell, my big critique of the game is that I find the plethora of choices to be overwhelming, as I’m the sort that likes to consume all content in a single playthrough, and that’s literally impossible.

Are you really so arrogant as to believe that perception of socio-economic class is exclusively an American consideration when it comes to dating?

this is an older performance of theirs, but is one I frequently throw on while choring about the house. Perfect vibes.

You might like Burn Notice, depending on your tolerance for network television tropes of the mid-aughts. It’s a “monster of the week” format, rather than the serialized approach of Reacher, but it typically includes a scene or two referencing the season arc in any given episode, so you still feel like the narrative is advancing, even if the majority of the episode was a side quest.

The gist is that a US government spy gets “burned” and turned loose in Miami. He, and the few contacts he has who will still speak with him (which include his mother, an ex-gf with a bombastic personality, and Bruce Campbell at the height of his smarmy powers), attempt to figure out who burned him, while also getting wrapped up in “favors” for various folks about town that inevitably wind up more complicated than was initially let on. Antagonists run the gamut from international terrorists to con artists who target the geriatric (it is, after all, set in Florida).

It’s not high art, but it’s got a winning cast, decent action (for network television), and, on occasion, I think some pretty clever solutions for problems which leverage the “spycraft” gimmick. Worth a shot.

For what it is worth, I found it thrilling as a snot nosed teen who watched it in class for some reason or another. It suffers a little from its reputation as “the greatest film ever made”, but, it remains a very good character drama. Interest in the history of film and filmmaking will also go a long way towards making the movie compelling.

Demolition Man was such a treat for me when I finally got around to watching it during the pandemic. So much fun.

Absolutely horrifying illustration…I love it and crave sprite now. Can we get this in front of whatever ad agency Sony hired to produce this?

Good News sounds interesting. I am curious at how well I’d be able to read the comedy in the performances. I’m no stranger to Asian cinema, but typically more of the straight action variety.

I assume your tongue is fairly firmly in your cheek, but I can’t think of a better example for “mediocre movie” than Mortal Kombat. Lots of stuff to like about it (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Robin Shou’s hair, Goro, several of the sets, etc), mixed in with mostly underwhelming martial arts and cinematography, with characters whose depth reflects their origins. Don’t get me wrong, I like it, but I’m not crusading to convince people of Paul W.S. Anderson’s misunderstood genius lol