Skummy

I probably won't donate this time - I was happy to support for the last season, but never even ended up watching the whole thing. I'm glad to have my rewards, and have got a lot of wear out of the T-shirt already, but by the time they arrived I'd basically forgotten about them anyway. I'm kind of at the point now where I'm glad that MST3K can still exist, but it would take something special for me to go out of my way to start watching it again.

he's also a mad conspiracist far-right nutjob. He's been insisting that he owns more rights to Doctor Who stuff than he actually probably does for at least ten years, but it's very telling that his stated reason for kicking off about it so much this time is because of the BBC casting black and queer actors.

incredible new metalman lore just dropped

I'd hate this - spoilers:

yeah, could be a mispress, if one half of the record is off-centre or otherwise not manufactured correctly. If just dusting it off doesn't help, when I worked in a record shop we used a quick spray of window cleaner and a cloth to carefully clean records, and that usually did the trick if the issue was with dust and dirt. I've seen some places advise against using it, but usually because they have their own cleaning products to sell you.

I thought season 3 had its high points - the patter song has been stuck in my head for weeks - but I really don't know how much there is left to do with this format. The three seasons were pretty much ideal for the format; series one was about how Mabel was connected to the murder, series two about Charles, and series three was in Oliver's world. Maybe there could be one more story to be told in bringing it all together, but I wouldn't have complained if they ended it here.

On Rockism and such, I think some of it has to do with the declining role of traditional tastemakers or what today we would call influencers; the music press is an irrelevance, there are few if any radio DJs with the combined platform, credibility or influence to make and break a new act, and, at least in the UK, there's no flagship music TV any more. And only nerds read Pitchfork. A lot of people in positions of influence in the music press, and the more generally "alternative" voices in radio, all came up through either the '60s psych scene or through punk and hard rock - I'm thinking John Peel, Jann Wenner, Nick Kent, Steven Wells, Everett True, through to professional rememberer Stuart Maconie. A lot of them were either hangers-on in their respective music scene, or looked up to writers like Lester Bangs. Most of them came up accepting or propagating one of two essential "truths" about music - that Bob Dylan was the single most important writer and cultural force of his generation, or that punk rock was a necessary rejection of the excesses of prog rock and was the creative wellspring from whence everything else flowed. The people who believed one, or both, of these things - and I'll add a third, particularly in the UK, of overrating the cultural influence of David Bowie (as Alan Bennett said of the tone of Bowie's obituaries, if he'd been as influential and earth-shattering as they made him sound, we'd never have had a Conservative government again in this country) - basically ran the music press, most of the smaller record labels, and anywhere else you'd turn for guidance in what the hot new thing was. You only need to look to the controversy around Jann Wenner's recent book about the "Masters" of pop music which features no black or female artists, because he claims they're "not in his zeitgeist" and not "articulate enough on this intellectual level". These are the tastemakers that governed popular music for the better part of the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first. That have created a chronology of popular music that argues that groups of white blokes with guitars in the late '70s were somehow more creative or inventive than the genuine experimentation happening in disco, dance and electronic music at the same time, all of which was disregarded as meaningless trash. That can disregard the contributions of huge swathes of the music industry, and who for the most part remained very narrowly focused on the music of their youth and a smattering of bands that stemmed from it. As much as I have a real admiration for some of the better writers I mentioned, and that one of the things I dislike about modern music and culture in general is that I prefer an element of curation to the free-for-all that comes of having everything at your fingertips (buried deep in this post, that's probably my hill to die on), it's generally a good thing that they no longer have as much of a stranglehold on what is or isn't "cool" in music. I think the pivot to writing very seriously and earnestly about pop music and celebrating the likes of Taylor Swift and Beyoncé in the terms once reserved for someone like Dylan is a necessary course-correction that's gone too far, but mostly driven by economic concerns - people writing about music need to keep themselves in a job and, paradoxically, the easier it's become to access a wider array of music, the less money there is to be made in shining a spotlight on the "alternative" stuff, so all that's left is to write about the multi-million selling pop stars who don't need the additional coverage as if they were boundary-breaking revolutionary artists.

Battles are fantastic - saw them back in the day, and again last year; really fun live, and perhaps more now that they're a two-piece and seem a lot more focused on just making great danceable music, whereas they could disappear up their own arses at times. I had a really unexpected impromptu gig on Friday, as my ex messaged me out of the blue to say she was in London and had a spare ticket to see Joe Hisaishi that night if I wanted it. It was a concert delayed three or four times due to Covid, and it was incredible - full orchestra, choir, and guest solo vocalists, performing pieces from every single Miyazaki Studio Ghibli film, including a snippet from his new one for the encore. One of those brilliant, life-affirming shows. Next up, I have PJ Harvey this week, followed by Laibach in November (was also meant to be seeing They Might Be Giants that weekend, but sadly that's postponed until next year) and McLusky in December, which is a pretty good run.

I watched Cassandro last night, the first time I've gone to the cinema for a new release this year. It was a very surreal experience watching a biopic of somebody I've actually met, I don't think I've ever felt that before. To begin with, I thought Gabriel Garcia Bernal was very good but didn't really feel like Cassandro, but by the end there are moments where you honestly could be watching the real Cassandro on-screen, and then you realise that of course he doesn't seem like "Cassandro" early on because he's still growing into that persona and learning who he is, and he does an absolutely masterful job of that. It's a flawed thing, both as biography/history, and in terms of structure - the third act feels a bit abrupt, and there's a sense that they knew what they wanted the emotional climax of the story to be but didn't really know how to end it there, knowing that Cassandro had years ahead of him. While his drug and alcohol abuse is a recurring theme, it's never really addressed, nor does it go into his years of sobriety or a lot of the trauma he experienced, so while it's accurate to show, it didn't really feel like it added to the narrative the way it perhaps could have done. There are some choices made that I understand the logic behind, but are still a bit of a shame - his mentor being a female character rather than Pimpinella Escarlata and Babe Sharon is likely to make the Exotico role seem more of a fringe outsider, because he would seem like less of a lone trailblazer and outsider figure if it were clear that he were being helped by a previous generation of Exoticos. There's also a sense that the homophobia he experienced was quite isolated, and quickly overcome, rather than a gruelling, long-term effort of winning over audiences - it consistently shows him winning audiences over within matches, rather than over years, but I understand the narrative appeal of using the structure of a match to demonstrate how he won people over, and not wanting to dwell on the unpleasant aspects of his story that would make it a far bleaker film. There's also a thing where they never quite say that Lucha Libre is a work, and I'd love to know the logic that went into that decision - though I also suspect El Hijo del Santo wouldn't have agreed to do the film if they hadn't kept that ambiguity at least. Mostly, I loved it. On one hand, I'm biased as a huge fan of Cassandro, but on the other hand, that means I know his story and I could have got bogged down in it being "historically inaccurate" and dislike it for irrelevant reasons. The fact that I found it a really good, really emotional, film, with a central performance that carries it in spite of its flaws, tells me it probably was actually good and not just me. Stick around for the credits, to see how well you did at "spot the AAA luchadore".

I found the story a bit slow starting, but it's so charming that it makes up for it. I just beat the Necromancer, and am thoroughly on-board. There's some fun dynamics in the battle system that I haven't seen before, too.

Ahead of the new series starting this week, all of Taskmaster New Zealand and Taskmaster Sweden are now on Channel 4's streaming service.

It's funny, because "impossible without a strategy guide" side-quests is something I really associate with VIII, and one of the things that really put me off that game on first playthrough, whereas I just had no memory of them in IX. Maybe I didn't know about them first time around, more likely I'd just forgotten about them, and first time around just accepted that it's how it is now. 8 frustrated me because some of the secrets were like "talk to this arbitrary spot on the world map, followed by a different arbitrary spot", which there's no indication you'd even try to do, or cards where the only way to win them involved losing an unrelated card to a random NPC earlier in the game, and there's no way you could ever figure some of those out, whereas 7, which was my baseline for Final Fantasy games, had complex secrets, but all ones that felt like there was at least a chance you could figure them out through gameplay alone, without help. That no one figured out one of the sidequests in 9 for over a decade makes me think I should probably concede that it can be worse than 8 in some areas. A very good point that I hadn't really thought of, especially with how it ties in the other characters' anxieties. That definitely makes Memoria more poignant and significant as well, that the continuation of memory is ultimately what the party continues to fight for. I love how part of Freya's ending showed that Fratley loves her, even though he doesn't remember their time together. It's shown as something bittersweet, but I found it very touching that he fell in love with her all over again.

I finished IX last night, about as completely as possible. I defeated Ozma and Quale, got level 99 on Choco's beak, Treasure Hunter Rank S, and every ultimate weapon apart from Freya's and Excalibur II, because fuck that. I gave up getting all of the cards, because I missed one that you can't get on Disc 4, so ended up with something like 96 or 97. Key to beating Ozma for me was realising that I didn't need to use Dagger's turns to heal, because everyone had Auto-Regen equipped, and by the time the animation for summoning Ark was done, everyone was back to full HP anyway. That and a lot of luck, basically. I didn't remember the ending at all, only that Necron shows up. Ending thoughts:

there's some stuff that's definitely better for the remaster - every old guide I've read says that there's no "!" or "?" icon to indicate where you can find Hades, so he's basically just hiding behind a rock with zero indication that you even might be able to find him, whereas in the remaster you at least get the "!" pop up. Similarly, there's a "card" icon that wasn't there in the original, to tell you when an NPC is someone you can play cards against. There are random spots in Memoria where, if you try and interact normally/talk to them, Zidane just shrugs, but if you challenge them to a game of cards, they reveal themselves as the ghost of a card master. Without that card icon, why would you ever think to challenge a random blank spot on the map to cards?

thing is, I had been back there and seen the first two brothers run out and say somebody was missing, because going back to old towns after a disc change/major plot point feels worthwhile even though it usually isn't. There is absolutely no indication that you would go back there after every boss/story point in Memoria, because why would you connect those two things?

I'm in the end-game of FFIX, and there is shit I had no memory of, to the point that I don't think I ever knew about it first time around. So...once you get to Chocobo Paradise, and then find every hidden treasure on the world map with Choco, and then Choco decides to come and stay with you instead of in Paradise, if you go back and challenge Fat Chocobo to a game of cards, he'll tell you to go and visit every beach in the world. You then have to go and set foot - not on a Chocobo - on every beach on the world map, and press Circle, a button which doesn't mean "interact with" in any other context for the rest of the game, and it makes a noise. Once you've done that for all 21 beaches, you can heal your entire party just by going to the beach. An insane sequence of events. There's also another side-quest I missed, as apparently did almost everyone because it doesn't make any sense, of the identical Tantalus guys running out of the theatre and saying that they can't find a member of their family. You have to go back to them after each boss fight in Memoria, despite nothing indicating that these two things are in any way connected. Just really ridiculous stuff all round. Nothing quite as bad as some of FF8's secrets that are utterly impossible to figure out without a strategy guide, but some serious nonsense all the same.

I don't think I can even get 20 on the jump rope! I'm rubbish at it. Luckily I'm not a completionist for trophies and achievements, and can fully accept when it's just a skill issue. I've also been playing Sonic Origins, and have come to terms with never getting more than four or five Chaos Emeralds in Sonic 2. Back to FF9, though, I always loved Vivi as a character, and not being able to remember quite how his story goes - and my girlfriend seeing parts of it unfold for the first time - means I'm really invested, more than in anything else in the game thus far. He really is the heart of the entire story. I'm also enjoying Quina as a character far more than last time, and finding Garnet and Eiko more likeable and well-rounded characters than I remember. Zidane's still a creep, though, which is a shame, as without that, it would be a better romance story than FF8, which was always celebrated for what I find quite a perfunctory and difficult to believe romance plot.

put in some serious FFIX time while my other half was at a music festival last week, and I am at a point where I only have the vaguest of memories of what's going on, and I love it. The early game, while I didn't remember everything, I still had a clear enough idea of what was happening, whereas the story is all a bit fuzzy from the start of Disc 3. I didn't pay attention to Kuja saying the reason he couldn't go to Oeilvert (a place I had no memory of) because there was a magic barrier, and ended up taking Eiko and Vivi, which was a mistake, but workable. Garnet/Dagger currently has no voice, which means half the time her attacks/magic don't work, and that's one of the more frustrating dynamics going. I got the trophy for beating Hippaul in 100 races, the kind of drudgery that only Final Fantasy games would reward you for. As a result, I also have a ton of decent cards, and am actually quite good at the game now, even if I still find it quite tedious.

I've been listening to Rob Brydon's Brydon &. It can be very luvvy - it's showbiz people chatting and sharing stories about how they met, so there's plenty of namedropping, and stuff like Richard E. Grant being Brydon's next door neighbour for a while. And did you know that Rob Brydon was friends with Ronnie Corbett? You'd think he'd bring that up. In spite of all that, it can be brilliant. Brydon's a great host and interviewer, and gets some really interesting stuff out of his guests. It's not appointment listening, but I've binged a lot of episodes over the weekend, just picking and choosing who I'd be interested in listening to - Reece Shearsmith, Harry Hill, Michael Sheen, Alan Davies, Lee Mack, David Mitchell, Miles Jupp, Bob Mortimer, and Richard E. Grant. I'm always just fascinated by the nuts and bolts of what goes into a performance, or any creative enterprise, so hearing him talk shop with stand-up comedians and actors about technique and theory and how you craft a stand-up show, and things of that nature, is just really interesting to me, but he's always funny and affable with it.

That is such a masterclass in interviewing, for the same reason that Parkinson's Ali interviews are so good; he's sat opposite someone who desperately wants to, and is used to being able to, dominate the conversation, and he never allows him to, he knows exactly the right questions to get Welles talking on interesting topics, but also knows when it's appropriate to step in and change direction, when to be formal and precise, and when to be more conversational and friendly. Orson Welles would wipe the floor with almost any other interviewer, but in that clip they come across as equals. On the topic of the clip, as much as it's going off-topic from talking about Parky, it always chills me to remember that the specific reason that Welles (and others - Vincent Price is one I know of) was under investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee is that he was identified as a "premature anti-fascist" before World War 2; that is to say, they saw something undesirable and un-American in him opposing fascism on moral grounds rather than as a point of political convenience. Back to Parky, there's a brilliant story he told about how when his dad was on his deathbed, his dad asked him if he felt he'd had a good life, and Parky said that yes, he couldn't deny that he had, that the BBC had given him such a wonderful career, and that he'd interviewed so many of the biggest names in the world. His dad replied, "still, it's not playing cricket for Yorkshire, is it?".

He was great. One of the best interviewers to ever do it, getting great stuff out of an amazing range of guests - everything with Billy Connolly, with Muhammad Ali, with Orson Welles, and some good comedy stuff with the likes of Kenneth Williams and Frankie Howerd, a lot of which is all still on iPlayer, and I imagine a lot more will be uploaded soon.

Doing some serious heavy duty procrastrination today, so I redownloaded EWR, and have been looking through this update to see if anything jumps out at me: Relationships: Staff: Workers (not touching stats, just looking for accuracy elsewhere): Belts: Stables:

There's a lot around the stats that I think has been historically misunderstood - in the early days of EWR I remember someone thinking that the "Speed" stat literally meant how fast a wrestler was, and there were countless arguments along the lines of "Kane just did a Hurracanrana, increase his Speed stat", because people were interpreting it in terms of a pretty narrow list of moves or characteristics, rather than "how good is this wrestler at performing in a speed-based match". But then you're left to interpret what a "speed-based", "brawl-based" or "technical-based" match is, and, in TEW, when "brawling" becomes "hardcore", where "Puro" comes in, and where "flashiness" comes in - what does a wrestler with really good aerial skills but zero "flash" look like? Some of it is a lot more intuitive than others. One of the reasons I've never got on with GM Mode in WWE games is that a lot of these things are very narrowly defined and rigidly constrained - certain "styles" of wrestler work well together and others don't, and certain matches are only going to work for a certain style; but there's no reason two brawlers can't have a great Ladder match, it would just look very different to a ladder match between two high-flyers. I think anything that moves away from just mimicking EWR/TEW's approach to stats is a good thing in terms of making other games stand out, and offer something different. I'm not sure if the balance is right here - perhaps Wrestling Skill, Entertainment and Psychology are a little too broad, and Agenting being a skill in its own right feels unnecessary, and also a bit of a cheat code in a way; I'd rather have to take a gamble on whether someone's likely to be a good agent based on the balance of their other stats, and it's unlikely that someone with a really strong grasp of Psychology and Skill could also have low stats as an Agent, in my opinion. To the list of stats above, I would maybe consider breaking out "Entertainment" into some sub-categories, though that might be broken down elsewhere. I'd want Consistency added, and I've been arguing for a while that TEW should have a Creativity stat, so would like that included here as well. I've not seen enough from this game yet to make me want to play it, and I think it is still maybe using the language of EWR and TEW a little too much to feel like it has enough of its own identity to stand out for me, but I'm keeping an eye on it all the same.