Patrick R

I'm aware I'm generalizing but when literally all I've seen of anime (television) is 90% magic chosen one stuff and also Cowboy Bebop, that's all I really have to work with, so all I can say is "I'm not an anime person, but..." There are plenty of Miyazaki/Ghibli movies that don't have chosen one stuff. Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service, Whisper of the Heart, Castle of Cagliostro, The Wind Rises, From Up On Poppy Hill... Akira doesn't feel like chosen one stuff to me (I thought Akira and Kaneda sort of stumbled into the whole situation accidentally), though I could be misremembering details as it's been 5 or so years. At any rate, "chosen one" stuff is a little more tolerable in films than it is in TV series that demand more of my time. I am cool with schoolgirls (love Whisper of the Heart) but am not cool with super sexualized school girls or super silly Japanese humor. Speaking of which, I forgot I've also seen a handful of episodes of High School of the Dead. No chosen one stuff! Lame story and fan service stuff. I would love to see a really scary anime. Also mushishi sounds like it's my jam.

That's why I try to establish that I'm just not an anime person generally, because there probably is a whole culture and history to even tropes like that in anime that people who are actually into it can appreciate way more than I can. The same way all death metal just sounds like the same shouty noise to someone who doesn't listen to death metal. The way people who don't listen to much rap have to assume that Kanye West records are masterpieces because, of the four rap albums a year they listen to, those are the most interesting. The problem is I'm actually REALLY into the anime aesthetic and the minimalist animation. I think it's just gorgeous. It's just that it's usually utilized to tell stories I couldn't care less about.

Yeah, sorry for being so vague/dumb. Not being an anime-person it's hard to put into words what I mean. ANIME I HAVE WATCHED Dragonball Z. Endless chosen one super power power stone power level chosen one super power stuff. Liked it when I was 9 but, yeah. I brought up Blue Gender because the entirety of the first half of the series is just mad dash after mad dash to escape the planet Earth, the protagonists numbers thinning out as giant Starship Trooper bugs kill them off. Just dumb exciting fun where the only real goal is "stay alive and keep moving". Then immediately after they escape Earth it turns into "You are a chosen one with a magical gift for piloting these mechs, you are Earth's last hope, you must save Earth with your magical mech piloting powers." Trigun I liked when I was 13 but have been sheepish about returning to.because...I liked it when I was 13. I rewatched the first two episodes a couple years ago, they were pretty good but they were also far away from the magic chosen one fated save the planet chosen one magic chosen one powers mythology stuff that consumes the later episodes. Outlaw Star was another series I watched that seemed to be like Cowboy Bebop (if less cool) that eventually shifted from "fun, single stories about catching different criminals" to "You are the chosen robot you have the chosen robot powers, you are the universe's one last hope as the chosen robot with chosen robot powers now here's a fan service episode with anime boobs". The only other anime series I've seen in it's entirety is Evangelion, in which I loved all of the smaller observational stuff about being a lonely adolescent and completely hated all the chosen one philosophical stuff about chosen ones and chosen robots and the chosen on and chosen robot magic powers to pilot mechs. I started watching Shiki last year and got about 13 episodes in. That side-stepped most of the problems I have with anime but the plotting was so slow. It took forever for anything to happen, so I eventually ran out of steam and stopped watching it. Anime films I am more familiar with and tend to enjoy. Akira, Ghost in the Shell, most Ghibli stuff, Millenium Actress, etc. Good stuff. I will have to check out Kids on the Slope. That seems to be more up my alley.

So, I have long held the assumption that Cowboy Bebop is the anime for people (like myself) who "don't like anime". Which is to say, it's very inspired by western culture (jazz, westerns, noir) and it's mainly episodic, not serially driven the way most animes are. Also it lacks most "mythic, fantasy, chosen one, power gemstone magic dumb humor magic" kind of mythology that turns me off most anime. It's more palatable to mainstream audiences than most anime, because it's much more familiar. But I've often wondered: how is Cowboy Bebop received among people who like anime? Is it considered "the best anime ever" or "pretty good" or "overrated" or what? Also, is there any anime that captures the feeling Cowboy Bebop did? I am a massive fan of the anime aesthetic but have been burned too many times by stories that fly up their own butt with mythology magic chosen one power gemstone chosen one magic BS. Any suggestions of anime that captures that Cowboy Bebop feeling? I was also super into Blue Gender until they got off Earth and every became "chosen one power magic power hero's journey Magic" BS. Also, I realize I am being a dick and generalizing an entire culture of fiction in an unfavorable way. It's not how I mean to come across, it's just what it feels like to me, as a person who generally doesn't understand anime but is really into Cowboy Bebop.

Well now I've fallen down a hole of watching videos from Homicide on YouTube and I'm gonna have to watch it again. (This episode was written by David Simon and David Mills and takes place entirely from the perspective of the husband of a tourist murder victim. Amazing.)

Yeah, it's been since overshadowed by Law & Order. The first season isn't even available to buy on Amazon right now, weirdly. A good example of the level of acting in Homicide, and how good Braugher was.

If you want to watch a good cop procedural with Andre Braugher (being funny, sporadically), you have to check out the first season of Homicide: Life on the Streets. It's based on David Simon's book "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets" (which in turn was no small source of inspiration when he created The Wire). The second season on the show gets a little more traditional, but that first season did all sorts of fascinating subversive stuff. Most episodes focus on the characters, not cases, so it almost feels like a workplace comedy like Brooklyn Nine Nine at times. There's one episode that takes place entirely in the office, on the hottest night of the year, that has no casework at all, another where the entire episode is centered on a single interrogation. What's hilarious is that Braugher looks the exact same as he did back in the 90's (except that he was slimmer then) but when they cut back to his "old days on the force" on Nine Nine he has a jheri curls. Anyway, just thought I'd plug the most underrated drama show of the 90's. Lot of great actors on that show, like Yaphet Kotto and Richard Belzer (it was the show where Detective Munch originated) Coen favorite Joe Polito, and Ned Beatty.

There is a certain kind of liberation in realizing that you don't know the first thing about whiskey and getting a 9 dollar bottle and being fine with that.

I have found it extremely difficult to contribute to this conversation at all without sharing my experiences and breaking some boundaries, but yeah, this. I'll leave it at this: I've been in dom & sub roles with male, female, and genderqueer partners and the reason for that is that has 100% of the time been because that's what my partner and I wanted. It starts with communication always. You can try to psychoanalyze why someone likes what they like, but it's usually as impossible to prescribe as why someone is like what they are like. As a queer person I find that there's a lot of grey area between what is considered orientation and what is considered fetish (or even proclivities, like "I like bald men" or "I like red-headed women"), and I think trying to determine nature vs. nurture on either is usually a backwards approach. I think most things that define who a person is usually comes down to a messy mixture of both. As long as individuals are expressing their sexuality in safe environments with consenting partners*, I think one kind of sex tends to be as healthy as another. But that's on a micro level. On a macro level you can probably look at porn and draw conclusions about how healthy depictions of power dynamics and kink tend to be. And a study on how that feeds into forming people's ideas of what sex is and their ideas of what their sexuality should be would be fascinating, for sure. *That said, once you put money into the picture I think things become trickier. Would someone who is not into humiliation but desperately needs money signing a contract to appear in a porn like Argobot described be a consenting party, really? I support sex workers 100% but not all sex workers have equal opportunities or that exploitation doesn't happen in those industries. Capitalism: still the ruiner of all things!

If getting rid of a lot of money is Notch's goal, there is a good documentary that could help him out.

I recommend going through the whole thing to get the sense of arcs, but if you have to skip ahead, Episode 16, "The Party" is the funniest episode of the season.

I saw the first three episodes of Kimmy, and while it improves from the pilot, the pilot is a good representation of the show as a whole. So if you aren't sold you might want to move on. Personally I thought it was really funny. It was nice to get that nice 30 Rock mix of speed and light surreality again.

I just ran through Super Mario World for the dozenth or so time, and save scummed my way through Super Mario Bros, just because it was there on Mario All-Stars and I was curious about the last 10 or so levels I never saw. I was surprised by the presence of more puzzling levels, like the last one where you have to figure out which way through the level it wants you to traverse. I remember being impressed by that in Chocolate Island 2 when I first played Super Mario World, I had no idea it had been in the series the whole time. Now I think I wanna go back to Super Mario World and get 100% of the exits. In all my time playing that game, I never could beat Star World.

Sorry. Taking raw chicken wings, cutting them up into wingettes and drumettes, marinating them, cooking them. Buffalo wing recipes. I don't have the capacity to deep fry them, so oven baked is probably my only way to go. I am wondering if anyone's done this and if they have tips because I am paranoid about fucking them up.

Does anyone here have experience making chicken wings? I was about to pull the trigger today and got intimidated.

I would love to be involved in this but I don't think my dinky laptop could run programs like Unity or Unreal? Maybe I could Twine it. I can for sure offer to do music for a game or two. At the very least I am going to play all these games.

Tina Fey is producing a new show on Netflix called Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. It's tone is really close to 30 Rock, and it's just about as funny. Then Still really funny show, but that unfortunate choice bums me out.

I tend to think of Toadstool/Peach either as Mario Bros. 2 or as Super Mario 64.

But you probably watched that movie several times when you were 13, right?

http://blog.sfgate.com/parenting/2011/01/06/its-on-like-donkey-kong-a-comprehensive-history/ Anyway, I showed up to say... The Princess Toadstool/Peach in Super Mario World is crazy off-brand. Just gross. EDIT:

I think it explodes in the air right after they detach from it. But I seem to remember that all it takes to detach from the rocket is for Buzz to activate his wings which is weird. But maybe he still needed Woody because before he saw the commercial he would assume the rocket is real and not explode and after he saw the commercial he needed Woody to talk him out of being suicidal. But "they" didn't even see the rocket, only Woody did. The other toys were trying to save Buzz from the bush with monkeys and then after that gave up, I guess.

How many episodes of the documentary are there?

So here's a puzzle I've been pondering in my idle moments for the past 20 years. When I was growing up my church St. Bernadette used to have a fundraising fair ever year. Among the bucket tosses, raffles, and other traditional church fair stuff they had A Nintendo Contest, which I was enamored with. For some dadly reason the competition focused around Super Mario World. But instead of being a Wizard-like competition, there was one system, one cartridge. and the scoring was point based. The way it worked was that each player had 10 minutes starting from a brand new save game to get as high a score as possible. As someone who didn't own a Super Nintendo and didn't understand the concept of going for a high score, I just played it the way I would normally and tried to beat as many levels as I can and never came close to winning the contest. I look back on this and think "Oh, how stupid of me, I should have..." and then trail off because I don't actually know what the optimal strategy for this contest would be. So I pose it to you: outside of insane speed-running prowess, how would one score the most points in 10 minutes in Super Mario World, starting from a brand new save? The best idea I have right now is to immediately speed through (the first level on the right when you start) and then keep restarting it, constantly killing the row of koopas with the shell. Each time you do that nets you 16,400 points, so I figure a steady stream of that followed by start+select for 10 minutes would get me a ton of points. But maybe there's a better way? I think a capable Super Mario World player could probably beat Iggy's castle in 4 minutes? I dunno, what do you think? EDIT: This contest only lasted one year before they switched to the way more reasonable Mario Kart time trials.

Wait did I miss something, did Nick leave after the first part or is he just being completely mute? Or, as was way back when, is Nick giving interjections that I am internalizing as Gaynor because I have trouble telling their voices apart sometimes? EDIT: Nevermind, he chirps up at the end. Classic Breckon.

As someone with a podcast that frequently has far-flung guests, I feel you with the Skype frustration. I imagine the auto-muting is so a grandma Skyping her grandkids on Christmas doesn't accidentally deafen them all with a feedback loop but is BEYOND STUPID that, in a world of earbuds, there is no option to turn it off. G-Chat is a little better for this, in the unfortunate and unlikely event you ever have to do this in the future.