Good morning. Hello. How are you? #733
Mulch! Sexploitation films, the nobility of solo shareware developers, tummy aches, the mystery of missing butterscotch.
Good morning! Hello! How are you? All well? I do hope so, I do hope things are going swimmingly. Last night I watched a film called The Perils of Gwendolyn in the Land of the Yik Yak. It was certainly… something. I am kind of amazed at the budget for it. It was “low budget” but not nearly enough. It is Tawny Kitaen’s acting debut. That is pretty much the best thing it has going for it. Actually, the woman playing Beth — who goes by the single moniker Zabou — was pretty great as well. Though given that it’s a B-movie sex comedy sci-fi adventure, I suppose you’d want the two best things going for your film to be the two female leads. Also kinda racist, but, then, pretty much every 80’s comedy is.
Our mulch got delivered and spread yesterday. Mulch day is a very exciting day in the year. Afterward everything looks so goth and dark and weed free and uniform it really is very satisfying. Mulch! They spread mulch around my new apple trees and all around my Birdies bed planters and it looks so, so good. They have not gotte to the hoop house area yet, but I think they’re coming back today. Mulch! It’s the best. Smells so good. Mulch! Mulch!
I’ve added a bunch more 4k and HD films to the Plex in the up-rezzing project. I got a spiffing new 4k HD Blu Ray drive for $100 off of Amazon and it does not need any special firmware flashing or any of that nonsense to work with MakeMKV to rip 4k UHD discs. It is really pretty remarkable. As you know, I am trying to never give JK Rowling another penny of my money, but I’m also trying to, you know, not pirate too much, and I’m trying to, you know, get films in 4K. So I bought the 8-film 4k UHD Harry Potter box set, which has been out for quite a while, used off of eBay for pretty cheap, actually, less than $50. I will re-sell it once I’m done. But I ripped it all and it worked great.
The Goblet of Fire disc did not rip the first time, but when that happens, MakeMKV spits out an error file and then you email that error file to this email address, and then within a day, MakeMKV downloads some new code from the internet and the rip then magically works. MakeMKV is pretty much a solo operation, a single developer who seems to have devoted his life to this thing. He also doesn’t charge for it. It’s been “free while in beta” for, gosh, at least a decade. You can pay — and I have — but you don’t have to. But anyway I picture this guy as being an adherent of daily routines, much like me. Every day he wakes up in the morning and he checks the special email address, gets a bunch of tar.zip files of failed 4k UHD cryptographic keys, and he decodes them, and pushes out a new data update for his marvelous piece of software. It really is an amazing process. And all legal! I bought these disks! Everyone that uses this software has a physical disc in their hand! They are, by definition, not downloading this shit off of Pirate Bay.
So, anyway, I added: all of Harry Potter in 4k, Sting’s Bring on the Night (aka the greatest concert film ever made), River’s Edge (the Crispin Glover, Keaunu Reeves, Ione Sky masterpice), and a bunch of 70’s and 80’s sexploitation films, if you are into that sort of thing. The Perils of Gwendolyn in the Land of the Yik Yak (let’s just write out that great title one more time), The Image, and The Story of O Part II. Is the 1975 Udo Kier masterpiece The Story of O not obscure enough in your sexploition journey? Well, then, let me introduce you to the sequel. Oh also two 90’s more highbrow not-actually-sexploitation-but-who-are-we-kidding films: Damage, and Scandal, the 1989 good version with John Hurt, Joanne Whalley, Bridget Fonda and Ian McKellen come on that is such a great film. In ripping that one I also learned that Scandal had a title song recorded by Dusty Springfield and it is pretty great.
For those who asked here is a photo of my McGyver’ed CPAP mask. Now this doesn’t really do it justice, because you have to take this entire contraption, put it on your head, then wrap a fannypack strap around your head, placing the fannyback in front of your eyes like a sleep cover, so that it mushes together this whole taped up contraption, finally properly sealing the hole. But it gives you an idea. Someone put this thing in the MOMA.
Yesterday Jane kept saying that she didn’t feel good, that her tummy hurt. It is very disconcerting. It’s tough. It’s not that I don’t want to believe my kid, and it’s not that I want to discount it, but her language is still not developed enough. Part of you wants to discount it, she often says she doesn’t feel good, and she seems to have trouble distinguishing between emotional and physical pain. Well, I assume not distinguishing, but specifying. But she really did keep at it throughout the day, was quite insistent. She could never describe it beyond that — my tummy hurts — so it was hard to figure out what to do about it. I think maybe it’s cheese? She had a lot of cheese the last day or so. I tried the “that’s a shame your tummy hurts because if it didn’t you could have this cookie” trick and she did not fall for it, so I assume she was, you know, serious about it.
It’s a hell of a thing to simultaneously think your kid is maybe joking and also that she is dying of some horrible disease and you should rush her to the doctor right now and then somehow you’re supposed to blaze a middle-ground common-sense trail right down the middle of both of these neuroses. Parenting! Yeah! Parenting! Mulch!
On the flipside, she is learning her coins and dollar bills and cash and how to scan products across a barcode scanner at the grocery store like a good little consumer and on Friday when we were doing our purchases, she shouted out “I love money!” in front of a bunch of people so I guess they all know I am not raising a little communist over here. Excellent cover work for when the corporate dictatorship arrives.
Hey what is up with butterscotch? I love butterscotch and every… mmm… I’mgonnasay decade or so I suddenly irresistably crave butterscotch. I really want a butterscotch candy. This craving has been going on for, like, two weeks now and I can’t find butterscotch anywhere. I mean. I’ve not looked on, like, the internet, but it does not seem to exist in stores anymore. Stores no longer have those cheap-ass bags of brokedown cheap candy on the bottom shelf. The kind in the cheap crinkly plastic wrappers in a cheap crinkly plastic bag. The kind that when you’re a kid you hate to get in your halloween basket. My god I want a butterscotch cheap candy right now. I bet they’re gone, just gone, like so much stuff from the 70’s and 80’s like racist sexploitation films and smog. I bet now if I want a butterscotch I gotta buy some fake-ass artisinal, branded shit. Twelve dollars for butterscotch on Amazon. This is Joe Biden’s America.
A covers mix for you today. Now, look. The So I Married an Axe Murderer soundtrack is no Encino Man soundtrack, but it’s got some gems, including two great covers, including this Boo Radleys cover of There She Goes. I met Martin Carr once at Club Deville in Austin at SXSW. I was very excited but I played it cool. He was so, so bored. This new Wet Leg cover is great. The Thou cover of Shellac is the greatest thing since sliced bread. They also have an amazing cover of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Maps” on this album, but weirdly not the Spotify version, just the vinyl version. But its on Bandcamp on a Stereogum benefit album, so check that out. The Vanilla Fudge song was in Ken Burns’ The Vietnam War. The Miles Davis song was in Sam Valenti’s great Herb Sundays playlist this week.
Until tomorrow!