Tag: Entertainment

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Hmmm… That’s interesting and perhaps problematic.

Years ago, after our house burned and losing our substantial DVD/BluRay & CD / Vinyl collection we decided that we didn’t want to suffer that kind of loss again. There are still CDs and DVDs that we hadn’t replaced because they’ve been out of print (so to speak) for years.

As an alternative, you could perhaps back up a DVD by making a copy and storing the original someplace else. BUT YOU COULDN’T… The anti piracy encoding made that an imperfect solution.

Oh sure, you could buy programs that would “Crack the encryption” those programs would even mostly work but the image quality they produced was hit or miss. Mostly miss!

Why settle for a crappy dvd copy that was barely 480 with a mono sound track, when you had a 1080p or 4k Television and slamming surround sound?

In other words, the solution didn’t work well enough to be called a solution. Oh and that “Cracker” program you purchased… Money right in the pocket of some shitty hacker who’d then happily sell your name and credit card number to the highest bidder.

You could perhaps move a “bit for bit” disk image to network attached storage, some of the storage devices even had applications specifically for the purpose. That solution was slow and often disrupted by the anti piracy shit built into the DVD. You’d get the whole movie, but if you played it back from the network storage you’d find the chapters were all scrambled.

So our choice was to get high speed internet and we’d stream movies or TV shows from a service like Apple, Amazon, Netflix, or Hulu. You could “Buy” movies on Apple, Amazon, or UltraViolet. Supposedly, the movies you purchased would be in your personal library forever (OR until the terms and conditions changed…)

UltraViolet was a really terrible service that worked on every device except the 65″ TV in the living room. To use that nice panel, I needed to connect a computer to it, or some other device. Okay, fine for me. The other half had a bit of a problem with complex technology and keeping track of HDMI inputs, and then routing the audio through the sound system or the TV speakers etc, etc, etc.

He could play Flight of the Bumblebee, Mozart’s Requiem Mass, or Wagner’s Ring Cycle, flawlessly on several different instruments, but the remote control for watching a movie or TV show? There were too many buttons to remember.

Go Figure!

I’d come home from work after the house rebuild and find him reading a book in front of a large screen displaying “No Signal”. Sometimes there would be FM static whispering through the surround sound system, because he’d switched to the radio but couldn’t find a station in range.

I felt responsible, terrible, and guilty. I knew that all he wanted to do was watch some opera performance, or listen to a piece of music that I probably wouldn’t like while I wasn’t home. (I hate Opera only slightly less than I hate Rap.) Oh and Shostakovich… Right the hell out of here! If I happened to be a spy captured by Russians during the Cold War… 3 Hours of Shostakovich and I’d have told the Russians our launch codes and given them the President’s Mistress address and phone number!

He knew that. He liked Shostakovich pieces. So he’d enjoy those pieces when I wasn’t around. Much the same as me enjoying Nine Inch Nails, Linkin Park, and Korn. He enjoyed those groups just as much as I enjoyed Shostakovich. So I listened to those groups on the way to work in the car, or at home when he was off playing church services or a gig.

Honestly… I think the problem was complexity added by the the sound system. When you added the TV, and a connection device to the internal network. Then having to choose which service you wanted to stream from, the Network Storage, or the internet, and which TV you wanted to watch the video on, did you want stereo, or surround sound? On and On, just to play a show or movie.

Writing it just now, and I knew it then, it was a lot of work. It’s a hell of a lot easier to plunk a DVD in a tray or slot and press “play”.

Although as I wrote that, I couldn’t help but think of trying to find a specific item on the internet these days. You’ll get a page or two of loosely related items but not the item, then when you click on the item that most closely approximates what you were looking for, you’ll get annoying cookie notification shit, (Weren’t cookies going away????) Then at least one full screen pop up asking for your email address in exchange for some “Special” discount, then another pop up asking if you need help from a chatbot and all the while, you still haven’t been able to see if the item is what you wanted, or read its description or price.

It’s like the damn gas pumps! No, I don’t want a car wash. No, I don’t want to join your club. Yes, I want a receipt. No, I don’t want a discount on beef jerky inside. Please! I just want fucking GAS!

The ONE question aside from wanting a receipt I’m going to answer “Yes” to, is “Do you want me to turn off the screaming advertising screen?”

Unfortunately, that question is never asked. I suppose that’s why my blood pressure is so dang low when I”m driving across country. I take a lot of back roads, and in those little country towns… A Gas Pump is just a Gas Pump…

Apparently my other half wasn’t the only person who had trouble. Most modern surround systems, and TVs are smart enough that with the right cables, all you have to turn on is the actual device you want to use. The system if properly configured, will see an HDMI input and make certain assumptions about it. Video Game – Connect TV and surround system turn on TV. CD player – Sound system only.

The cool thing is that you don’t have to fiddle with 5 different remote controls (All of which work differently. Some of which have volume controls that do nothing). All you have to do is turn on one device.

I’d been planning to update our equipment to the new standards. I was going to make it a Christmas present to us both this year. I don’t think I’ll be doing that now. He’s gone and I can reconfigure what I have to work until I decide what’s next in my life. But there is a temptation to update everything anyway… It all can be put in moving boxes, right?

In an effort to make things as simple as possible, over the years, I’d made a couple of decisions. Those decisions may come back to haunt me now.

We settled on a single streaming device. We went with the Apple TV in part because this is an Apple household. No, not in the religious sense.

For decades Apple devices, while expensive, worked as advertised, and had long term support. Non Apple devices… Not so much. “Blackberry? Paging Blackberry… Blackberry?” ZUME? PalmPilot? Compaq iPaq? Compaq Computers? The list goes on and is quite long!

This is not to say that Apple didn’t lay some eggs in their time, but Apple supported these devices for a time after they stopped selling them. My Newton Messagepad was a nifty device, ahead of its time, and woefully misunderstood by the blockheads in the media who sealed its demise with horrific articles damning something they didn’t understand, in favor of the Palm Pilot.

Apple though, is getting long in the tooth. They’re beginning to take on the lassie faire attitude that defined Non Apple corporations for years.

That attitude is, “The customer will buy it even if “it” doesn’t quite work.” We’re seeing this in Apple Software, and to some extent, in their hardware. The butterfly keyboard issue is only the latest example of Apple failing to pay attention to quality indicators.

With the Apple TV, the other half could turn on one device, and then have a menu that allowed him to pick what he wanted to see or hear. When we added the HomePod speakers things got a lot simpler One button, one remote. Then it was just a matter of making sure that all the music was available in the cloud. The same was true of Television shows and Movies.

Soon our collection of movies and music was all in iTunes. If the other half had a problem with the system, I could often walk him through corrective steps or just log on to the iCloud account to figure out what was wrong. Simplicity reigned, and I no longer came home to a screen displaying “No Signal”

In hindsight, our collection being completely in iTunes may not have been the best idea. We have a lot of movies. We also tended to buy TV series that we liked. The number of movies would be a problem if they had to be physically stored. They might even be a problem if I were to download each one to the network storage. I could always increase the network storage size, or add bookshelves.

The Apple Movies all have encryption. They can be played from network storage with a computer as long as the computer can verify with the internet that you have the rights to play the video. The Apple TV flat out refuses to see the movies exist on local network storage. Since the purpose was to have the movies on the big screen I haven’t kept up with downloading them since the AppleTV wouldn’t play them from downloads anyway.

One concern I have is that movies are being changed to accommodate the Woke overly sensitive crowd. There’s a bigger problem with some of the TV series I’ve purchased over the years. A current example is the series Archer.

This morning I happened to be looking at purchasing the season pass for season 14 of the show. I noticed with some surprise that seasons 1-8 were available for purchase, as was season 14. What happened to seasons 9 through 13?

I immediately checked my library and found that seasons 9-13 were still available because I’d already purchased them. This begs the question, why is there a gap at all? Seasons 3-5 of The Boys from Amazon are not available on iTunes. I purchased Seasons 1 & 2, on iTunes thinking that I’d be able to complete the series in time.

That seems questionable now. The Expanse is a series that I own except the last two seasons. I suppose I should purchase those before they’re unavailable. I also just checked on “Strike Back” and found that ONLY the two seasons I own are available, the remaining 5 or 6 seasons are completely missing. Just a few months ago all the seasons were available, they were expensive, but available. I suspect I could get a boxed set at Best Buy come Christmas time.

This makes me wonder if digital collections are worth it. If I can’t have a guarantee that I’ll be able to purchase all of a series or have the option to purchase a digital un-woke version of Gone with the Wind, or Looney Tunes then perhaps I need to go back to physical copies.

I still can’t purchase Young Frankenstein on iTunes. But I was able to get a copy of Blazing Saddles.

Then there’s the issue of some of the albums that I’ve had in my collection disappearing and not being available for re-download. Thankfully I have a friend that has a massive collection of music and If I really need to have one of those albums, I have no issues asking him for a high quality copy.

My attitude about this is simple. If I paid for the damn album in digital format and lost the copy of that album due to a drive failure I should be able to redownload it. If you’re not going to let me do that, then my other option is to “Pirate” a copy for my own use.

I have no desire to start selling pirated copies of my music or videos, I just want to the able to play them hassle free.

Unfortunately, I think that ability is going to require buying physical copies of everything again. I don’t look forward to repurchasing DVDs or CDs to recreate my library again. To my way of thinking I shouldn’t have to. Then again, I don’t think like everyone else.

If I were to commit to going all physical copies of everything again… It would be a great excuse to do a complete sound system/entertainment system refresh. That would give a friend and I a great shopping day in the audiophile stores he haunts. I might even go so far as to buy a turntable and get back to vinyl.

I’m not sure I want to go with tubes in an amp. I know my friend will strongly suggest that I do. I think I’d rather put the bulk of cash in really fine speakers.

We’ll see…

In the mean time, I’m going to experiment with some DRM removal software to see if I can download and save my collection to my Network Storage and avoid replacement altogether.

It’s interesting, I think we’re all going to be looking at doing things the “Old Way” because the “New Way” has become so corrupted. I can think of a couple of recordings of live shows from comedians I owned. Those shows / recordings would never pass the censorship the “Woke” crowd seeks to impose.

The Newest Call of Duty game is going to be live censoring any trash talking between players. That’s half the fun! When I played COD with my coworkers, we called each other names all the time over the communication channels. Where else do you get to call your boss a “dumb ass” to his face and have everyone laugh? But along comes the WOKE, they’re going to use an AI to censor “Hate or hurtful speech” in online gaming, and the AI will flush your sorry ass from the game if it doesn’t like what you say.

I’m not sure I’m willing to pony up $70 to have an AI tell me I can’t trash talk my friends during a game. I really enjoyed the creative swearing and trash talk directed at me when I screwed up. Then again, I was playing with retired guys from the Navy, Army, and Marines.

I wonder how the gaming community will respond? If no-one buys the new game, and only plays the old non-AI enhanced versions do you think they’ll get the message?

That’s fantasy! The young kids will keep the games alive and they’ll accept censorship in all its forms because they don’t know any better. Stalin said something about educating the children… I can’t remember offhand the exact saying.

I’m heading to Best Buy later today, maybe I’ll check out the selection of physical copies of music and games.

Have a great one!

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I always wanted to attend Burning Man

Over the years I’ve had friends tell me about their experiences on the mesa.

Burning Man is one of those things that is very unlike me. I’m a control freak (more or less). I like order instead of chaos, and I’m not someone who indulges in recreational drugs.

My friends descriptions of the Burning Man festival paint descriptions of a beautiful chaos. Some of my friends said flatly they spent the festival naked, high, and having sex at random with other people who were just as naked, high, and out of control.

Yes, this would seem to be something that is 180° counter to my nature. Perhaps that’s why I’ve always found the idea of attending the festival attractive. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to just completely let go.

What would it feel like to shed all the conditioning of society and embrace the wildness for a few days? Could I even do that, or are my controls locked down so tight I can’t be wild as the wind? In my youth I could easily shed society’s rules, my clothes, and inhibitions, now, I’m not so sure I could.

The art pieces that get assembled are often spectacular, I’ve been told that the pictures don’t do them justice because you lose the scale of the piece. I’d imagine they’re really spectacular if you’re seriously fucked up!

I’ve never been able to attend. In my 30s and 40s it was always about working and no matter how many months in advance I asked for vacation time, it was always denied.

I was shocked and surprised, while working at a military contracting company, when I asked for a week of vacation and it was granted.

That was literally the first time and perhaps the only time in my 40+ years of employment when I was granted my earned vacation time with no hassle or questions asked. I scrambled to secure all the reservations after the vacation approval. Since I’d always had vacation requests denied, I hadn’t pre-reserved my spot because some of the reservation was non-refundable.

I was leaving the country, so I had to notify the security folks. They were nice, they educated me about clearances and leaving the country. They hooked me up with a training class with about 20 other folks. Then off I went. Scuba Diving in a foreign country. It was great fun!

I think the military contractor might have raised their eyebrows if I’d gone to Burning Man. But probably not too much, as long as I didn’t come back to work on Tuesday morning still loaded.

Burning Man has always seemed to me to be an opportunity to step into a Mad Max movie. Generally speaking that’s not something I’d do without being heavily armed. Burning Man might be thought of as Mad Max without the gunfire.

One friend suggested that with my skin type, I’d probably need to build a suit out of a space blanket, or perhaps a still-suit from Dune. He laughingly said that he didn’t think there was enough sunscreen on the planet to protect me from being fried. He did point out that the space blanket suit could be a sellable item, or at least a great art piece.

This led me to rethink going to Burning Man. After all it’s the art piece that is supposed to burn, not the overly fair skinned attendees.

I thought perhaps I could enjoy the festival by adopting a Vampire schedule. But being in a tent on a desert mesa trying to sleep during the day would be problematic.

If I had to run around all day long in a reflective encounter suit like I was on another planet, and couldn’t enjoy dancing naked in the sun with the other festival goers then what was the point?

I briefly considered going to Burning Man this year.

2023 has been a rough year and mentally checking out for four or five days sounded attractive. There wasn’t enough time and a few too many moving pieces to allow me to go, once I thought of it.

How much SPF Ten Billion could I lay my hands on, was one hurdle. I’ve seen photos of people dressed literally in mud. That would work as long as the mud wasn’t flaking off every 2 minutes.

As luck would have it, had I gone this year I’d have had an abundance of mud. I just read there were 73,000 campers are stranded on the mesa due to heavy rain that has turned the desert into mud. Apparently officials are telling campers to conserve food and water because it’s going to take some time for the area to be dry enough to be navigable.

I’m glad I didn’t go.

It’s one thing to tic something off your bucket list and have fun doing it. It’s quite another to want to tick something off the bucket list and be totally miserable doing it.

Besides I’d have been alone, and I’d have had muddy equipment, a muddy me, and a muddy dog to pack into my muddy vehicle. I’d have “Burning Man Mud” in my vehicle forever.

Experiences are supposed to change and enhance you. But I don’t want to be reminded of an experience, (good or bad) every time I drive somewhere.

Maybe next year…

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Hey Tucker Twitter isn’t working!

Well it’s probably working for a lot of folks, but since I don’t have a Twitter account and am really ambivalent about creating a new one I’m not able to see Tucker Carlson.

I had a Twitter account, which i got rid of a number of years ago.

In my case I was tired of speaking my mind and then either being shouted down or censored. This was especially true when what I said was 100% correct with verifiable sources.

After becoming disgusted with Twitter, killing the account, and not looking back I don’t really want to sign up again. Then there’s the fun little thing that Twitter is perhaps limiting how much I can read per day? (Is that true?) and now they’re not letting me look at any tweets behind the “Create an Account” page.

I was tuning in a couple of days a week to see what Mr Musk was proposing about the future of Twitter. I was actually thinking about rejoining the service. But now… Nah, I’m not going to jump blindly into a service that drove me away.

I was tuning into Tucker Carlson on Twitter. That was another perk for me to rejoin the service. I hadn’t quite decided when the Twitter folks locked things down.

Now I can’t see him at all and interestingly his Twitter show isn’t being rebroadcast as widely as it was.

You can go to Tucker’s web site and maybe view episodes. Although I’ve not had that work either. It looks like the link it trying to take the user to Twitter or X (whatever,) but the linkage fails without an error and never plays either.

So while I’m sure the number of people like myself who don’t really want to play Twitter’s game is vanishingly small, There are a number of us for whom Tucker is effectively OFF THE AIR.

Which is just exactly what the folks who fired Mr. Carlson from Fox wanted.

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Hollywood on Strike?

Meh, who cares?

I haven’t been to a theater in a decade. I killed Netflix and Amazon Prime a couple years ago, and Hulu is Next.

I don’t watch network TV

Most of the movies I’m interested in are either old, or from independent or foreign production houses.

It’s not even about “Woke” vs. “NonWoke”, it’s about the quality of the story. I’ll grant you, I don’t like being preached at. So about the time something looks preachy I’m out.

With the streaming services, I found myself asking, “How is it that I have 3 streaming services and still can’t find anything I want to watch that I don’t already own?”

Hulu has started to annoy me because of their algorithms. I can’t confirm this for a fact. But it seems that when I add a movie to my personal Apple TV library, suddenly Hulu starts showing me the exact same movie and encouraging me to view it on their service. Uh… look dumbasses I already own it commercial free, why the hell would I watch a movie that I own through your service with commercials?

Perhaps Hulu, you should have been showing me something new!

The only reason I’ve kept Hulu to this point is that they were more or less cheap and sometimes I’d be able to find a movie I hadn’t seen. They’ve saved me purchasing some real turkeys. But since I enjoy campy sci-fi, even the turkeys in my collection are amusing sometimes.

Speaking of campy sci-fi I saw a photo of what looks like Jane Fonda protesting with the writers. Honestly, the photo made me smile. Jane Fonda did a lot of protesting when I was a young person. There’s a sweet nostalgia seeing her out protesting now. I think I’ll have to fire up Barbarella.

Lilly Tomlin was in that same photo and I thought that was very cool homage to Grace and Frankie which was a show I enjoyed.

Personally I think this strike is ill timed and is going to hurt the writers, producers, and actors much more than it helps.

Like it or not, the COVID years, got everyone used to not going to movies, and a lot of folks, myself included got used to looking for old shows or movies that we remembered fondly.

I can speak for myself when I say I don’t have a clue what is new on the boob tube. When we cut the cable years ago, it seemed that every other show was some form of “Reality TV” that we weren’t interested in at all. So why were we paying over $100 a month to Not watch TV? We didn’t miss it once it was gone and if I put that $100 into old movies and TV shows that we did like we still came out ahead.

But for other folks, this strike is going to feel like nothing more than an extension of COVID production halts and likely, whatever shows or movies aren’t being produced won’t be missed.

I’d strongly suggest that the writers and actors not push this too long. People are fickle and have the attention span of a gnat these days. Give it 6 to 9 months and stupid TicToc challenges will be all the entertainment people remember or need.

On the plus side Alec Baldwin’s epic Rust will probably rot on an editing computer, never to see the light of day.

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Wow, I was interested in seeing Bros… Now I wonder.

I have enjoyed Luke Macfarlane in other performances. I know nothing about Billy Eichner.

Billy Eichner has apparently tweeted his dissatisfaction about Bros opening weekend box office. It apparently wasn’t very good.

1 bros 2022

Reading what Eichner said was pretty offputting. There wasn’t any need for him to shoot his mouth off. I’d have much more respect if he’d taken the opening weekend under performance like a man and simply moved on. 

Lets face it, this movie is going to have limited appeal. That being said, the box office may have improved over the Columbus Day Holiday weekend had Eichner not sounded like such a spoiled brat.

Now, I’m thinking I’ll wait for it to be on streaming services.

It may well be funny, the trailer has some moments that look promising, but I’m not sure that I can put up with catty board room scenes with a bunch of LGBT people sitting around sniping at each other. That is something that I’ve personally had way too much of.

From the trailer, this movie appears to be steeped in elitism. Not having seen the movie itself I could be wrong. But the trailer sure had that elite feel to it.

There are other movies that are gay romantic comedies with more appeal to the average gay man.

You know, the guy who worries if he’ll be able to pay his electric bill. The guy who uses his phone with the cracked screen for a year or so, because it still works, and he doesn’t have the cash to pony up $800 for a new one.

Movies like:

In & Out
The Birdcage
If Dad Only Knew
4th Man Out
The 10 Year Plan

All of which are worth watching.  The latter two have pretty relatable characters and tell a good story. Sure they’re not mainstream but they’re nice films.

The thing is, not everyone is elite, not everyone can live in a beautiful apartment in New York, not everyone gets to sit in an office arguing over inconsequential trivialities. 

There are a lot of Gay and Bi men who do manual labor. They don’t live in high-rises sometimes not even in a single bedroom apartment. The have calluses on their hands, they’re pragmatic and don’t hang out every night in bars with a $25 cover charge.

Perhaps those same LGB people are a bit reticent to spend money at a theater to watch a bunch of elites bemoan their “horrible” lives. Maybe those Gay and Bi men are more content to buy a six pack, grab a good burger as a treat to themselves, and wait for Netflix to show the movie 6 months down the road.

Maybe, they don’t want to sit in a theater with a bunch of the LGBT community screeching and howling a a big screen. Maybe these guys have so little in common with the “normal” LGBT people that they’re uncomfortable in such a crowd.

Maybe from a personal worth perspective these guys would rather go home, shower, and sit on their couch in a clean pair of boxers with their feet up while they wonder if they’ll be able to put gas in their truck.

I can say this, after hearing Billy Eichner whine about homophobia and straight people not seeing his movie I’m less inclined to see it. That’s a pity too, because I could really use a good laugh.

Speaking of which maybe I’ll queue up If Dad Only Knew. There are some pretty funny scenes.

Mr Eichner, you really need to learn when it’s time to keep your mouth shut.