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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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38 Responses

  1. Glyph says:

    I haven’t seen Boyhood (would like to) but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a film running at 100% on Metacritic like it did, so it seems like either that or Birdman (unfortunately, not a feature-length adaptation of the finest comedic work Stephen Colbert has ever been involved with, but some Michael Keaton thing)? Same goes for Lego Movie over Big Hero 6, no? But I admit I have no familiarity with the awards, process or precedents.

    Watched the first episode of Agent Carter and quite liked it but still haven’t gotten around to the second, hopefully tonight.

    OOOOOOOHHHHH- watched Over the Garden Wall which is a CN fairy-tale miniseries. Very funny, and simply *stunning* to look at (very “painterly”, for lack of a better word, and switches as effortlessly between dark and light as the story does from creepy to wondrous). Slips in stylistic visual homages/references to old (and I mean OLD) animated cartoons & comics (Richard Scarry, Windsor McKay, early Disney/Fleischer). Even if the story is a little slight, very much worth your time and seems it might benefit from a rewatch.Report

    • Glyph in reply to Glyph says:

      Guys, I think Agent Carter is…actually kinda good!

      However, the interaction of ABC (which disallows FF on the show on VOD) and FIOS (who stop the video if you pause it too long, then effed-up their UI so that it defaults to “Restart Program” instead of “Resume Program”; meaning, if you are twitchy on the remote trigger you HAVE TO START OVER AND CANNOT FF BACK TO WHERE YOU WERE) can go jump in a lake.Report

  2. Chris says:

    I have seen Grand Budapest and the the kids movies. I predict either Lord of the Rings or Titanic will win.Report

  3. Saul Degraw says:

    I am reading J by Howard Jacobson. Just started it. I like the idea of referring to a horrible event with the euphemism “WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED.”

    I have also been watching The Honorable Woman with Maggie Gyllenhaal (aka my imagery girlfriend). She stars as an Anglo-Israeli whose father was murdered by terrorists because of his role as an Israeli arms manufacturer. As an adult, she is trying to fix this legacy and encourage peace between Israel and Palestine while also being a strong supporter of Israel (so far). The series is very good but it did stumble across my pet peeve:

    Gur ovt frperg gung vf uvagrq ng va rcvfbqr 2 naq erirnyrq va rcvfbqr 4 vf gung Znttvr Tlyyraunny’f punenpgre fcrag n lrne orvat uryq ubfgntr ol n ebthr Cnyrfgvavna greebevfg pryy. Fur vf enccrq ol bar bs ure pncgbef naq orpbzrf certanag. Gur puvyq vf cnffrq bss nf orvat gur fba bs ure Cnyrfgvavna vagrecergre. Gur snpg gung fur jnf n ubfgntr jnf xrcg haqre rkgerzr jencf rira ure fvfgre-va-ynj qbrfa’g xabj nobhg vg, bayl ure oebgure naq vagryyvtrapr uvtu-hcf. Gur ernfba fur jnf pncgherq jnf orpnhfr fur jnf ba n tbbq jvyy gbhe ba gur Jrfg Onax naq n guebjnjnl dhrfgvba nobhg fbzr nvq zbarl erirnyf gung gur vagraqrq orarsvpvnevrf qvq abg erprvir vg, rira gubhtu vg jnf ba n fcernqfurrg. Znttvr Tlyyraunny’f punenpgre qrpvqrf fur arrqf gb farnx vagb Tnmn gb vairfgvtngr. V unir n uneq gvzr oryvrivat gung gur qnhtugre bs na Vfenryv nezf znahsnpghere (rfcrpvnyyl bar jub jnf zheqrerq ol greebevfgf) jbhyq or fb Cbyylnaanvfu nf gb oryvrir fur pbhyq fyvc vagb Tnmn haqrgrpgrq.

    But the show does let me imagine scenarios where I am going on imagery dates with Maggie Gyllenhaal in London!Report

  4. Tod Kelly says:

    This past week I caught up on the latest season of Dr. Who. Before I had only seen the first Capaldi episode, which I found uneven, and the second “Incredible Voyage In A Dalek” episode, which I thought was stupid. I was pleasantly surprised with the rest of the season. I love Capaldi, and I liked the darker direction the show decided to go. And I love Michelle Gomez’s new Master, who wisely continued John Simm’s manic child-having-fun take on the character.

    I also saw that Netflix now has a prequel to the Ghost in the Shell series, and that was satisfying, but I have the feeling the entire series is not there.

    Reading-wise, I added both The Golem & the Jinni and The Family Fang to my stack, but have yet to start either.Report

  5. Michael M. says:

    I watched The Dog last night. It’s a curious documentary about John Wojtowicz, a mostly unremarkable man who did an extraordinary thing in August, 1972: he attempted to rob a bank in Brooklyn, NY, to finance his wife’s sex reassignment surgery. The failed robbery attempt resulted in a 14-or-so-hour standoff with police and hostages and a 2000-strong crowd of onlookers (to whom Wojtowicz proved rather adept at playing) and everything necessary for a wild media circus. The whole escapade was the basis for Sidney Lumet’s 1975 masterpiece, Dog Day Afternoon, in which Wojtowicz was played by Al Pacino.

    I think it’s “curious” because it doesn’t do much of anything in particular to try to justify its existence or explain to any viewer why we should invest 90-some-odd-minutes in Wojtowicz’s story. And yet I found it watchable and mostly engaging, even if I began to flag a bit toward the end. I suspect if you’ve never lived in NYC or been to NYC, it might be less interesting. I didn’t get to NYC until 1980, so I was intrigued by the portrait and development of radical and sexual politics in the decade prior, and how those intersected with solidly Catholic working-class Brooklyn. Wojtowicz was a self-described Goldwater conservative who didn’t hesitate to serve in Vietnam when drafted; it was his experiences there that both radicalized him and made him realize he enjoyed sex with men as well as women. He was involved with the Gay Activist Alliance, but most of that organization’s members were pretty horrified at what he did and thought he was kind of crazy, and they pretty much turned their backs on him after he was arrested.

    If you’ve never seen Dog Day Afternoon, that is the must-see. If you have and are interested in knowing more of the backstory and in what happened to the people involved, The Dog is adept at relating it.Report

  6. Will Truman says:

    I’m done with Bosch now, and on to Harry Turtledove’s Atlantis series. Just as his Southern Victory series is transplanting European events (WWI followed by fascism) to North America, this seems to mostly be remaining a North American founding without the issue of people already being there. (Atlantis is an island continent that split off from the Americas long enough ago that the have a different biosystem like Australia.)

    I’m digging it so far.Report

    • Burt Likko in reply to Will Truman says:

      I’m interested in Turledove. What order of books should I read them in?Report

      • Mike Schilling in reply to Burt Likko says:

        Start with Guns of the South, which is by common consensus his best book. Then decide if you want to read more.Report

      • Will Truman in reply to Burt Likko says:

        @burt-likko I haven’t read “Guns of the South” (not for lack of interest, it’s just not on Audible), but you won’t go wrong with “How Few Remain.” HFR is the first book on the Southern Victory series (where the south wins the Civil War), but is the only one that stands on its own and so no harm if you like it but don’t want to keep going. If you read the next one, you’ll want to keep going.

        I am still on the first book of the Atlantis series, so don’t have much to say on that yet. I haven’t read any of that invasion series, though it’s waiting for me.Report

  7. Jaybird says:

    We saw The Hobbit III today. At least they kept The Scouring Of The Hobbit-hole.

    Last movie had the whole Smaug thing and I was thinking “DANG! THAT’S GOING TO BE HUGE!” and, nope. The movie opened with Smaug getting the smack laid down upon him and then we had another 2 hours to go.

    That said, they promised us five armies and I’ll be darned if they didn’t give us five armies.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

      Remember the old Adam West Batman television show? They’d set up this two-part episode and have part one end on this *HUGE* cliffhanger… and then, when you got to part two, the cliffhanger was resolved in the first minute and then they’d go to the rest of the show.

      That’s what Hobbit III felt like.Report

      • Michael M. in reply to Jaybird says:

        That was also the case with the gothic horror soap Dark Shadows — huge cliffhanger (usually on a Friday), then a totally anti-climactic Monday episode in which the cliff was unhung in a minute or two and the build-up to the next cliffhanger began. Nevertheless, I loved both Dark Shadows and Batman when I was a kid.Report

  8. ScarletNumbers says:

    The whole Golden Globes is a scam.

    Why should I care what the Hollywood Foreign Press Association thinks about anything?Report

  9. Kazzy says:

    I have caught a few episodes of “Big Bang Theory”. It is not as awful as I thought. But can we officially abandon any and all laugh tracks?Report

    • Chris in reply to Kazzy says:

      Yes, please!Report

    • Mike Schilling in reply to Kazzy says:

      You thought BBT was even worse than it is?Report

    • ScarletNumbers in reply to Kazzy says:

      If you never saw it before, why would you think it is awful in the first place?Report

      • Jaybird in reply to ScarletNumbers says:

        If I heard a rumor that a show had a laugh track, I’d immediately write it off.

        If I was being told “laugh here”, I’d assume that I wasn’t in the target audience.Report

      • Clancy feels the same way,though How I Met Your Mother won her over in a big way. She finds Big Bang Theory tolerable.

        Here’s where I uncomfortably admit that I like it a good deal.

        My former roommate was a socially awkward braniac from East Texas. He’s been called Sheldon by just about everybody for the last eight years. I don’t know of he’s seen the show, but he hates it’s existence.

        (For those keeping track, he’s not the roommate that moved out due to an argument surrounding Mighty Ducks 3. He is the roommate with the opinion of D3 that exiting roommate found intolerable.Report

      • Chris in reply to ScarletNumbers says:

        Oh man, please link to the Mighty Ducks 3 Story. I managed to miss that somehow.

        Also, I enjoyed the few episodes of HIMYM I’ve seen.Report

      • Mike Schilling in reply to ScarletNumbers says:

        I would move out if anyone over eight had that strong an opinion about any of the Mighty Ducks oeuvre.Report

      • Mike Schilling in reply to ScarletNumbers says:

        The recent Bojack Horseman Christmas special was largely a Christmas episode of Horsin’ Around, presented as “filmed in front of a live audience” (not just forced laughter, but applause for the characters’ catchphrases.) Brilliant.Report

      • @chris I didn’t write it here, though I have referred to it and linked to it a couple of times. Here’s the full story, more or less.

        Karl (ie Sheldon), then a college flunk-out who refused to go to class because he hated people – even professors – who thought they were smarter than him, went back to school and got a PhD in astrophysics from an ACC school. Dennis works as an accountant, but found his soulmate along the way and has become a remarkably happy individual. As far as I know, they still haven’t spoken to one another since. (Karl stood at my wedding, which Dennis didn’t attend. I attended Dennis’s which occurred not long afterwards, though Karl obviously didn’t.)

        HIMYM is a good show that was almost great. I didn’t hate the last season as much as @mike-schilling did, but it did drag the series down. (Ironically, they did something really well that somehow managed to bring things down.)Report

      • Mike, the fact that I thought the movie Happiness was great caused a rough day or so in my marriage. Though, like it or hate it, that’s at least a movie to have a strong opinion about.Report

      • Mike Schilling in reply to ScarletNumbers says:

        I didn’t hate the last season as a whole. I really, really hated the last episode. In fact, if the last seasons hadn’t done such a great job vagebqhpvat naq znxvat zr yvxr n arj punenpgre, I wouldn’t have had a reasons to hate the last episode nearly so much.Report

      • Mike Schilling in reply to ScarletNumbers says:

        That’s quite an MD3 story

        This is my least favorite movie in all the world, though I have never seen it.

        Heh.Report

      • Glyph in reply to ScarletNumbers says:

        “Mike, the fact that I thought the movie Happiness was great caused a rough day or so in my marriage. Though, like it or hate it, that’s at least a movie to have a strong opinion about.”

        Is it acceptable to think that Happiness is a very well-made film that I never, ever want to see ever again?Report

      • ScarletNumbers in reply to ScarletNumbers says:

        To be fair, TBBT is taped in front of a studio aduidence.Report

    • Kimmi in reply to Kazzy says:

      When I get breeze about shows, it tends to be … a bit more accurate (more based on who’s writing).
      Of course, I also get “I’m boycotting that show… at least until it’s off the air.” (So, naturally, I haven’t seen an episode of the Big Bang Theory, though I might actually like it).Report

  10. Kimmi says:

    Gett’s a good film. Ya want a review of it?Report

  11. ScarletNumbers says:

    Shout out to the Rutgers Scarlet Knights on their victory Sunday over the 4th-ranked Wisconsin Badgers.Report