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Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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20 Responses

  1. Doctor Jay says:

    On the other hand, if you aren’t yelling, “NO, don’t do that!” at the screen, it isn’t really a horror movie, is it?Report

  2. Saul Degraw says:

    Interestingly when I saw the trailer for this movie, I wondered if it was part of the Alien franchise.

    I started the Radeztky March by Joseph Roth yesterday. For non-fiction I am reading Lands of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture. The book is about the old department stores of the late 19th and early 20th century and how they gave rise to modern consumerism and advertising and even IP.

    Fun fact: Frank L. Baum, most famous for writing the Wizard of Oz books was also one of the pioneers of Window dressing/trimming.

    There is also a lot of interesting stuff that might break the No Politics rule in discussing here.Report

  3. aaron david says:

    I watched Eyes Wide Shut the other night, as I hadn’t seen it since it came out. Much more impressed by it the second time around, which leads me to think that more aspects of it, the stiltedness of Cruise, the off timing of many scenes, etc. which fell flat when first received and viewed in the theater, were more deliberate and that the aspects of it that were not appreciated upon release were supposed to be that way.

    Worth a second viewing.

    Also saw Trumbo, it was all right, neither good really nor thoughtful. But definitely worth watching.Report

  4. LeeEsq says:

    I really want there to be a Venom movie. Please, pretty please. But do him right this time. Venom should have a high-pitched voice and sound barely in control.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to LeeEsq says:

      I have argued and continue to argue that Spider-Man 3 would have been a better movie if it were limited to Eddie Brock and the Green Goblin Storyline. Maybe the Sandman storyline, but the movie was already a hair overstuffed.

      Venom should have showed up in the last 3 seconds.

      4 should have been the Venom movie.

      If some bone-headed studio executive demanded two bad guys (“this is a sequel! Nobody wants to see a Spider-man sequel where Venom is the only bad guy!”), put Rhino in there to be dispatched in the first 20 minutes and *THEN* make the Venom movie.Report

      • Brent F in reply to Jaybird says:

        The back story of Spider-Man 3 seems to be that Raimi wanted to do a very 60s era Sandman story and was set to do that when Arad insisted that he had to do Venom.

        The result is why you should probably let the filmmaker who made you a ton of cash in his first two efforts do the his thing again and not force decisions based on whose toys are popular. Sony’s superhero properties never recovered from this unforced error.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Brent F says:

          I boggle at Marvel’s ability to say “well, if we’re going to tell the story of Infinity Gauntlet, it’s going to take 20 movies to do it… better get started.”Report

          • Brent F in reply to Jaybird says:

            There is probably a marvelous business book to be written about how Marvel Studios avoids producing out and out unsuccessful movies in a genre were it was standard for at least one out of three made would be stinkers.Report

          • DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird says:

            It helps that the Infinity Gauntlet story has already been written two or three times.Report

  5. LeeEsq says:

    I am reading the Chosen Ones. Its a novel based in a reform school for wayward children and home for chronically ill children in Nazi Era Austria. Its a very dark book, My more cheery non-fiction reading is a History of Modern Uganda abut Modern Uganda.Report

  6. j r says:

    I’ve been reading The Sellout by Paul Beatty. It won the Man Booker prize for 2016, the first book by an American to do so. It’s a comic novel, which is not something that I usually go in for, but it is actually very funny.Report

  7. Maribou says:

    I’ve been reading Fantasy: The 100 Best Books, by Cawthorn and Moorcock (mostly Cawthorn). An odd but compelling little book, published in 1988.

    As for your question about “aren’t scientists supposed to be smart?”, well, obviously they are, but they’re also supposed to have higher than usual doses of:
    1) hubris
    2) curiosity

    So it’s not that they don’t know better, it’s that they don’t care, because they’re so passionate to Experience and Understand. This is a time-honored trope in SF, going back to the pulps… not without its historical examples. Real scientists do stupidly dangerous stuff too.Report

  8. DensityDuck says:

    We watched “Stranger Things”, staying up until 3 AM to finish (because how would you leave a story like that halfway through?!)

    It was pretty good.

    Although there’s a scene where someone sticks their face into an alien egg pod, and we all yelled NO DON’T, but I guess the conceit is that this is 1982 and they haven’t had forty years of sci-fi stories detailing all the myriad ways that sticking your face into an alien egg pod is a really bad idea.Report