James

I'm interested in how the image distorts when Phyllis Hastings is shot. The middle bows to the right, and it looks like several frames are merged. I was reminded of it by the distortion when Laura Palmer gets levitated away later in the episode, but it's hard to say whether it's a deliberate association (like the same force is acting in both cases), or if it's just an effect. Perhaps it's not meant to mean anything in the case of the shooting, and is just intended to intensify the moment. But it's not outside the realm of possibility that something more supernatural is going on, given Doppelgänger Cooper's nature. It's too early to say, of course. Hooray for over-analysis! Oh, and I guess it doesn't need mentioning that she ends up with the mirror image of the wound that her husband is accused of inflicting on Ruth Davenport. A literal eye for a literal eye?

For me that was probably the funniest thing in the show up to that point. I want that office.

I think it's understandable. I like Michael Cera, but I had trouble imagining a way for them to find a place for him that wasn't just "hey look at our famous friend". But it totally fit and was excellent.

The egassem isn't anything too interesting: egassem.mp3

The only time I've watched Inland Empire was after midnight one New Year's. I was struggling to stay awake while the end of that film descended into a screaming nightmare. It was a singular experience. I'm not sure if I'd recommend it, but it was quite something. I should watch it again when better-rested. Not that I expect there to be some clear plot that I missed.

I never actually finished watching Eraser head, but the new arm is awfully reminiscent of the baby in that, right? A silly micro-observation: the titles dwelling in silence for a moment on Laura's portrait before the music kicks in is very powerful to me.

Would interpreting the strange day-for-night-esque colour treatment of that scene as something to do with the significance of blue be a ridiculous reach? My brain wants to draw a line between that and the presence of Doppeldale, but I think that's probably silly and it's just blue to make it feel cold and ominous. Or they genuinely wanted it to be set in the evening in the most unconvincing way imaginable I guess.

I thought for a second that that might tie into the Vegas stuff by being some sort of "five of spades" thing, but that's probably too straightforward, and besides, those are shovels, not spades.

A detail I never would have noticed were it not for the warm-up podcast is that the bedcover and curtains in doppelgänger Cooper's motel room are blue. Granted, the whole show's colour pallette has changed, but that seemed like a very deliberate choice, particularly given what happens in there.

I recently re-listened to the podcast episode where they discuss Lynch's comfort with bad special effects and shitty image quality, so I was kind of OK with most of the wonky effects stuff, in a kind of "fine, whatever" sense. I did find Cooper's descent into oblivion a bit of a struggle, though, because they hang on it for so long, and it just looks 100% like Kyle MacLachlan waving his arms around on an outer space bedspread while somebody shakes a bad VHS camera around above him. I don't mind it being a bit shitty, but it just looks so flat and bad and we're given so long to contemplate it. But whatever, it's fine.

I haven't listened to episode one of the podcast yet, so sorry if this is retreading old territory. I've loved the season so far - the strangeness has been pretty much just right for me - but the warmth of Twin Peaks has definitely been largely absent. You see it in some characters, most notably Andy and Lucy, and I enjoyed Hawk and the Log Lady's comfortable, albeit pause-laden, conversation. It's interesting that as the self-seriousness is abating a little and making a bit of room for more comedy beyond some amusing but also quite tortuous awkward character moments, music is also creeping into the season. The eerie ambience is great, often giving a kind of feeling of age and tiredness that feels appropriate (you can imagine that perhaps Twin Peaks never fully bounced back from the events surrounding Laura Palmer's death), but having some music inject a bit of life into the atmosphere is very welcome. The fact that they held off so much makes it all the more effective: Laura's theme playing when Bobby saw her portrait wouldn't have had the same resonance if it had been all over the previous three parts. Michael Cera is so perfect for the Wally character. I guess he might be a one-off gag, but where other characters are simultaneously humorous and maddening in their awkwardness, he's just full on ridiculous and hilarious. Speaking of Michael Cera, I'm getting a bit of an Arrested Development season four vibe, in that characters seem to be siloed off into very discrete groups, possibly because of scheduling difficulties. It's justified in fiction by having things a lot more geographically dispersed, but it leaves the show of the sense of community so crucial to the previous seasons. That might well be deliberate, but I do hope the boundaries are at least somewhat porous. I'd be disappointed if it ends up being a rigidly-defined set of mini-ensembles with just Kyle MacLachlan bouncing between them. Anyway, like I said, I'm loving it so far, and am very hopeful (and impatient) for what's yet to come.

The obvious solution would have been the rotating production duties approach taken by the Bombcast while Drew was still there, if Vinny weren't the host of the whole dang show. I hope she's in a bunch of stuff, regardless. Both she and Ben seem like great fits.

Secret option D - You recommend something you don't like. Chaos ensues. ±NaN points

I imagine that that's because those characters were presumably initially conceived of as goof delivery vessels. In as much as they were conceived at all, that is, rather than improvised. A campaign with a better idea of what it might eventually become (rather than something that started as a one-off filler episode) should stand a better chance of coherence in that regard, but I'm still not convinced that drama is something I want from the McElroys.

To a large extent it's a matter of a self-selecting audience: the people who will have the strongest opinions about an upcoming adaptation will be the people who liked the original the most, and having liked the original so much, the prospect of change brings the risk of diminishing what they enjoyed. Of course, that isn't guaranteed to be the case (different media have different requirements, after all), but it's the fear. Also, if you're particularly steeped in the original, you might find deviations distracting – even if the change isn't actually for the worse, you might find yourself pedantically thinking "Hey, that isn't how it went", taking you out of the flow of things. I do agree with you that seeing something new is a good thing, but I also am guilty of "I preferred the original" -itis. Perhaps it's an easy example, since the film wasn't regarded as a success by any measure, but I was disappointed by the loss of the clear symmetrical structure in Cloud Atlas' transition from book to movie. It's quite possible that that simply didn't work on screen; perhaps with it being a visual medium it made sense to drive home the parallels by cutting back and forth continuously; but as someone who specifically enjoyed the boldness of that device, I really missed it in the adaptation. But perhaps the problem isn't that it was changed, but rather that it wasn't improved.

To be fair to Griffin, I do feel some sympathy for the fact that the two main criticisms levelled against him are pushing him in exactly opposite directions: on the one hand, people hate that he let things like the Kravitz plot get sidelined; on the other, people get mad that he funnels things along too much. But that doesn't affect how I feel about the final result. The latest TTAZZ crystallised a lot of this for me: what they described as the podcast coming into its own and really starting in earnest was an almost exact inverse of my enjoyment of it. Clint's explanation for Merle's antagonism towards Angus was pretty nice, mind you. That Justin tweet makes me want to unsubscribe, though. Jesus.

Jeff Goldbug?

The Adventure Zone, a comedy podcast: pretty good. The Adventure Zone, a lore-laden festival of dramatic earnestness: kind of a drag. I mean, I'm being an arse about it, but that's kind of how I feel. Obviously a lot of people get a whole lot of joy from the direction TAZ has taken, which is great, but I really struggle to care about any of the stuff that's been going on lately. Even if I were more on board for something serious, I think I'd want a smaller story. All this end-of-the-world parallel universe Chosen Ones stuff is really unappealing to me, particularly when the characters started out as and to some extent still are lovable goofuses. The McElroys are proven comedians, but I'm not necessarily convinced of their chops as storytellers. At this point I'm much more enthused about the Flop House guest episodes, though perhaps if they were produced regularly they'd go down the same kind of road. I don't know. I don't mean to step on anyone else's enjoyment of the show. It's great that they've struck such a nerve with their fans. But I kind of miss the early days. Maybe it's just not for me any more.

I'm glad you did. It's a good one.

I have both, but I don't really know the right way to do flash photography, and I still find the controls on those things a bit confusing, so I kind of flail around until something works. The flashgun in particular has seemingly endless and pages and sub-levels of incomprehensible menus, as well as several only barely comprehensible modes. Sorry I can't be of more assistance. Your test shot looks great, anyway. It has become removed.png

I remember BBC 2 ads for The Simpsons that classified it as cult television back in the late '90s, so I think usage of the term has been pretty loose for some time now. I guess it has/had a core of devotees, but it was at that time an astronomically popular show. Maybe "cult" was a euphemism for "nerd bait". Although I'd agree that both exist on a continuum, I'm pretty sure there are specific nefarious practices that set cults apart. For example, urging people to separate themselves from their family and existing social circles, or give up a huge portion of their money to the cause. I suppose you could argue that each of those – particularly the latter – can exist in religion to varying degrees, but I believe there is a meaningful distinction to be made, even if it is one of degrees. It may be the case that the softening of these edges is a function of size: the conspiratorial and highly-targeted mechanisms of control exerted on cult members are naturally harder and less necessary to enact in larger groups. I think age is also an important factor: in a larger and older group, there will be less focus on a single charismatic figurehead with the ability to exert specific control on their followers. Christianity has Jesus, and Catholicism in particular the Pope, but the former is so distant as to be an abstract concept onto which people can project their own ideas and feelings, and the latter is chosen bureaucratically and exists in a long line of stuffy old men who I don't think have anything close to the potential for devastating influence over individual followers' psyches and behaviour. None of that's not to say that religions aren't capable of being a force for ill in the world; just that the kind of threat posed by cults is not something I can see in religions.

Very soothing. One of my cats was a loud purrer, and a loud growler. She'd let out the most incredible drawn-out escalating growl if you picked her up when she didn't want to be.

I love all of this a great deal.

Me too. The sheer number of thirty second skips it takes is pretty ridiculous. I have weird feelings about monetization of podcasts in general, to be honest. Ad reads feel like such a weird resurrection of those 1950s TV presenter product endorsements we all laugh at now. Sure, we're all media savvy and all know what an advert is, but it all seems a bit demeaning. I mean, podcasts have to pay for themselves somehow, and there's no way I'd individually financially back every podcast I listen to (though I do support a couple), but I kind of wish more did something along the lines of what NPR does, where they have a separate person do the ad reads. Maybe it's a petty distinction to make, but to me it's classier. I wonder if it took any negotiation with the advertisers to not have the presenters do the read. I've been cutting podcasts out of my cycle quite a lot recently. A lot of the time it's over something silly; the fact that it bothered me so much probably means I'm listening to too many podcasts, but happily that's a problem I can fix by stroppily unsubscribing from them.

Recognition! I'll have to check out the archive of the stream he mentioned.