Patrick R

I think the single moment in the podcast's history that made me laugh the hardest was Danielle saying she headshotted an eagle. Last time I did mushrooms I played Columns for 3 hours while listening to Guided By Voices' Bee Thousand over and over. I won't say I walked away from that experience with much insight but I definitely got very good at Columns.

Whoa, this is awesome!

I didn't actually know that! I'll do that now.

I think my Steam id (soybomb43 or Patrick R, I forget which it is) is on here, which is cool, any of you can add me. But I also now am getting flooded by dummy accounts trying to get my TF2 stuff, so I'm systematically blocking friend requests from people who seem sketchy. So if you wanna add me as a Steam friend, send me a message here before you send a friend request.

That's kind of hard because part of what makes Twin Peaks so special is how there's nothing quite like it. I wouldn't call it "noir", exactly, but if you're alluding to it's cinematic presentation that's something that's especially hard to find on television. The Killing has is a similar premise but the tone is wildly different, much more somber. True Detective is kind of Twin Peaksy, in that it's an occasionally surreal mystery show with a highly eccentric lead detective. But again, tone is way different. Worth seeing either way, though. Northern Exposure was a show that sorta tried to cash in on Twin Peaks by aping it's environment (though it's Alaska, not Washington) and quirky side characters but making it broader and more palatable. But it's not a mystery show. There are probably way more shows that resemble X-Files than shows that resemble Twin Peaks, so even if you've already seen X-Files you might want to look at more shows like that? Roswell is one with an alright reputation. Lone Gunmen, Freaky Links don't have great reputations but there's probably some good episodes. You can always find a bootleg of the David Lynch pilot that later became Mulholland Dr. and imagine what the rest of the series would have been. I don't know if Mulholland Dr. has been discussed on the show (I'm about 12 episodes behind) but the pilot version is out there in less-legal places and I think it's a great counterpoint to Twin Peaks. I honestly think it works better as a pilot than as a completed film.

I am mostly not down with Pixels because it is basically a rip-off of a Futurama episode and there's no way it will have 1/10th the wit of that. EDIT: Well also because Adam Sandler.

Apologies if this has been mentioned in a previous episode's thread, but the director of this episode, Todd Holland, also directed

WHAT EDIT: oof, bad new page post.

The music was great! Sounded very inspired by 70's European horror movies even though the movie itself isn't really that. Yeah, it's weird. For one of the most anticipated films of the year it's only getting 5 total showings in the small screening room-sized theater at the Music Box.

Just saw the Duke of Burgundy. Incredible film, definitely the best I've seen this year. For a film about a kinky lesbian relationship directed by a man it's amazingly tasteful. Intesy sexual, but it's all psychological and there's no nudity and very little male gaze. I think even if you're completely foreign to kink the film has a lot to say about expectations and power dynamics in relationships. Also it's drop-dead gorgeous and weird and lightly surreal and really heartfelt.

In general synth instruments (and even plug-ins that use samples) rarely ever sound real, unless it's a plucked instrument like a harp or a large string section. Fruity Loops is definitely not good for this, it was always a pain making the piano sound like a real person was hitting the keys. I've never used hardware. I had a couple ambient tracks where I played pads live, but I just used my laptop's keyboard. I find it much much easier to program music than to play it live, but then I'm not much of a musician. The upside to hardware is stuff like I was talking about with trying to get a piano to sound real, because not every single finger hits every key in every chord at the same time with the same force. A keyboard makes that way easier because you don't have to try to simulate tiny imperfections. If it's a simple part, you could probably find a saxophone player on Craigslist for little money. But I would make sure you have a good recording set-up to get a clean high-quality recording, otherwise it's not gonna mix well with the electronic music. Unless you specifically want it to sound like a sample, like . EDIT: Also, while you're still learning I would try to focus more on experimentation than "MY EPIC SAXOPHONE TRIBUTE TO DIZZY THE ADVENTURER WILL NOT BE COMPROMISED FOR ANYTHING" because dragging the sound you dream of into reality is way harder than stumbling upon a sound you kinda like. But a trial by fire is also a way to learn, so, you know, it's up to you.

Remixing is actually probably a good place to start. You can learn a lot about music by trying to recreate sounds and melodies on your own. I basically taught myself how to play the piano by memorizing what minor and major chord shapes were on a key roll. I only ever stuck with the program I first learned on, so I can't claim to know which is actually the best, but have made all my music in Fruity Loops and have never felt restricted, whether I was making noise-driven drone tracks. percussive 4/4 glitchy techno, sample based rap beats, mash-ups or more poppy techno video game type stuff. I actually redownloaded the trial recently and couldn't figure out something really really basic (I used an older version back then) so maybe it's not a good rec or maybe I am dumb. BUT I found it pretty easy to teach myself most things in it over the years. And I found plug-ins and sound files really really easy to customize. Beyond that, I'd say I learned a lot listening to music I liked and trying to reproduce sounds in the program I was using. You learn a lot about how electronic sounds work going in and messing with wave shapes, attack, decay, sustain, etc. Actually, on that end http://www.bfxr.net/ is a cool place to start. EDIT: Fruity Loops is not cheap but I am, so I never bought it. What I did do, however, is use the Trial version which has most the features but does not allow you to save projects. BUT you can export stuff you make as MP3's, so my approach was to just make something in a single 1-3 hour session and export it. I did two entire electronica albums this way. The downside to this method is that you can't go back and correct the mixing, but mixing things to sound good and professional has always been the hardest thing for me to do, as someone who, like you, started with no musical experience or training.

The big big big "EXCEPT" here is if Nick Breckon is on. Then all bets are off.

http://welcometotwinpeaks.com/news/david-lynch-twin-peaks-complications/ "David Lynch added it’s not a funding issue, but a trusted source told Welcome to Twin Peaks that while the scripts are finished after nearly four years in the making, contract negotiations aren’t going as expected."

For a movie with such a dumb premise, it really is exceedingly clever.

The worst part of Tubular is schlepping all the way to a level with a feather and back every time I die, which is all the time. I want to do this without save scumming so I can say I did but since lives don't really matter in Super Mario World I think I'm just gonna make a save state where I start the level with two feathers.

I'm rewatching the Final Destination series. Final Destination 1 is pretty terrible. The death scenes are really unconvincingly staged and the script has some insanely bad dialogue in it. Like, so bad you would think screenwriters James Wong and Glenn Morgan spoke English as a second language if you didn't know they wrote some of the greatest X-Files episodes. "My mom couldn't deal anymore. She married this asshole who my mom with my real dad would have crossed the street to avoid this guy." - actual line from Final Destination There's a couple moments like that, where basic syntax is mangled in confusing ways. Also wastes a lot of time with a "the cops think Devon Sawa's killing them all" sub-plot that goes nowhere. Final Destination 2 is easily one of the greatest horror films of the 00's. It's clever, economical, explores the concept to it's full potential and constantly keeps you guessing. . It's somehow way more ridiculous and way more convincing than the first. Big fan of this one. Final Destination 3 is the emotional Final Destination. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is the lead and the movie wastes a ton of time on her survivor's guilt and PTSD, as if it wanted to be a dumb dead teenager movie and Fearless at the same time. They're still trying to figure out what's going on an hour into the movie. And most of the effects are CGI-based, which is lame. Still some fun moments, though. Gonna have to watch Final Destination 4 (AKA The Final Destination) and 5 soon.

<anecdotal>I like the Ghost in the Shell movie.</anecdotal>

If that sort of thing is really detailed and well-observed it's my absolute favorite thing ever. Whisper of the Heart is a great example of that (well, not so much the friend part). But the generic version of this never ends up being interesting.

This might spiral out into conspiracy nut territory but I think Google has given Chrome a purposefully shitty spell-check that constantly misidentifies common words as misspelled so people will Google the correct way to spell it and boost ad revenue. Usually, like this example, if you right-click the word it doesn't offer a different spelling of "mundanites" but some word that's way out there, like "municipalities". I constantly deal with this. EDIT: ARGH GO TO HELL.

OH. MY. GOD.

They took an ensemble show and literally shot scenes where the actors were performing in front of green screens individually so their performances could be edited together into scenes. Dumb idea. It's kind of a miracle the season didn't turn out way worse than it did. Still, that's why you have to pay famous actors well for TV shows, so they can justify taking time out of their schedule to actually perform with each other.

Cara Ellison was a great guest!

Maybe you didn't contact Geico cuzzzzzzz... You committed suicide After hearing these rhymes Twenty thousand times My Youtube experience has gotten exponentially more terrible with the addition of and the Old Navy one with Julia Louis Dreyfuss.

Almost done watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and it's been a while since I've laughed this hard at a show. I couldn't care less about the characters and storylines, but man Tina Fey can write an amazing joke. It's only the weird racial stuff and general shallowness keeping me from being a wholehearted super-fan. I saw a Hungarian film called White God last night. It's basically Rise of the Planet of the Apes with dogs, which is way more appealing to me due to a lack of CGI and in general less nonsensical Hollywood stuff. and kind of promises something more interesting and thoughtful (the issue of immigration in Europe is way too complex to be represented here in any meaningful way) and I was disappointed by the non-ending. I don't often watch trailers or get swept up in pre-release hype, so this was a really interesting self-contained example where I first heard of the movie when I the trailer on Saturday, I got super excited, told all my friends, and then saw the movie the following Wednesday and got deflated. I felt that whole arc over the course of four days. I'd still recommend it, if only because it's a logistical miracle. The dog performances are incredible. And every dog in the movie who wasn't already an actor dog was a rescue who was adopted, which is nice. Not that that placated the animal lovers in the theater who were super upset by the dog-fighting subplot.