Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.

If you’re looking for someone who’s young and athletic, go watch a fucking movie.

Pelosi: “He either is stupid, or he thinks the rest of us are.” Why not both?

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

No Justins, No Peace

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

He really is that stupid.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

Let me file that under fuck it.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Breaking Bad and whatever else you guys watch open thread

Breaking Bad and whatever else you guys watch open thread

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Today I installed a six ton long-throw pneumatic bottle jack, and a ratcheting cable puller in the storm shelter so that we can force the doors and lift a car off of it if we need to do that.  Also installed a garage door opener and mowed, trimmed, and edged the lawn.  Yay, me.  And now to settle in with some beer that one of you no doubt thinks is cheap piss (and it probably does really qualify for that, come to think on it), a couple of naprosyn, and a hot pad.

What are you guys watching or doing this evening?

Reader Interactions

115Comments

  4. 4.

    opiejeanne

    Just about finished the garden sink. We had some scrap lumber, pressure treated, for the frame and picked up a stainless steel sink and faucet, and a couple of 2’X2′ squares of granite at the salvage place. We are currently without a kitchen because of a major remodeling project and this will beat hauling veggies in from the garden to wash in the bathroom sink, as well as being a great place to wash our dishes during decent weather until the kitchen is finished. The thing is about 70″ long with a square of granite on either side of the sink.

  7. 7.

    Alison

    No GoT, no Veep, so nothing on for me other than L&O and Golden Girls reruns and the like. But I’m reading a great book so will probably do more of that.

    I should do a load of laundry, but…meeehhhhh no.

  8. 8.

    Roger Moore

    I did some electrical work- making sure a couple of outlets were properly grounded- and just finished installing a cat shelf. The latter is just what it sounds like: a wall shelf covered with carpet intended only as a place for the cat to climb.

  9. 9.

    diana

    teaching myself tumblr for a fan-based blog. Anyone here know of a good free tumblr theme — single -column, customizable background (which is going to be a gif of the Infinity Pool of Mistress Death, as drawn by Jim Starlin) with a constant header, a changeable identifying name (so that it can be the same as my online identity elsewhere) and supporting permanent URL links (which I know tumblr doesn’t do well)?

    otherwise, where is Steve? This blog has been seriously lacking in cat pictures lately…

  10. 10.

    rikyrah

    TV Notes:

    Orphan Black is out on DVD – BUY IT!!

    It is wonderful.

    Broadchurch – thank you for whomever wrote about it in one of the open threads…it rocks.

    Luther RETURNS THIS WEEK TO BBCAMERICA!

  11. 11.

    gene108

    Reading on a Nook tablet (or I guess any tablet type device) has one down side that books do not have. Once the battery goes down, the joy of not caring about lighting or how close you are to a light is gone and replaced by how close you are to a power outlet.

    It makes it hard to spend all day reading.

  12. 12.

    Yatsuno

    Today I installed a six ton long-throw pneumatic bottle jack

    WHAT THE HELL KIND OF BEER DO YOU DRINK???

    @diana:

    This blog has been seriously lacking in cat pictures lately

    THIS!!! Also. Too.

  17. 17.

    burnspbesq

    Watching the Mets game, the capstone of two long days of watching sports on TV. Gotta get a bunch of work done tomorrow.

  18. 18.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Can you share photos of the cat shelf?

    It’s actually nothing special. I bought one of those floating shelves from the hardware store, tacked carpet to it, and mounted it to the wall. This one is listed as having a 15 pound capacity, but I think they make ones that will hold more than that.

  19. 19.

    Glocksman

    And now to settle in with some beer that one of you no doubt thinks is cheap piss (and it probably does really qualify for that, come to think on it), a couple of naprosyn, and a hot pad.

    Depends on the beer.

    Bud, Miller, and Coors are least drinkable, if not my first choice.
    Yuengling is decent but isn’t available here in SW Indiana.

    PBR, Stroh’s, Sterling, and Hamm’s are canned donkey piss.

  21. 21.

    gogol's wife

    School starts tomorrow so we’re nervous/depressed. Last Sunday night Silk seemed okay, this week it just irritated us so we turned it off.

  22. 22.

    MomSense

    One of my son’s friends has been living with us this summer and today he went off to college. I miss him already. My oldest starts at his new school on Tuesday and my middle son starts college on Tuesday. My youngest goes back to elementary school on Tuesday. Wow that is going to be quite a day.

    Tomorrow everyone is going to be home and I am trying to figure out what to cook for them. My oldest went out for dinner with his girlfriend tonight and when they came in they were all smiles and just really great together. We went to the ocean and saw a kid catch a huge, probably 3 foot, striper off the end of the dock. My youngest was a little taken aback about swimming after that! My middle son was play sword fighting with my youngest and we had a great bike ride today. Part of me just wants to freeze everything the way it is and part of me can’t wait to see what they do next.

    One of my friends sent me this video last week and it is so great. . http://vimeo.com/8189067

  23. 23.

    fleeting expletive

    So far tonight I’m not really finding anything all that appealing to watch on TV, and I’m not terribly hard to please. No snakes or spiders though, so that’s nice.

  24. 24.

    Bobby D

    I think I’d just move the hell outta tornado alley instead of investing in all that stuff. You want to stay there after you retire? (and if so, wtf are you thinking?!)

    I grew up in a similar wasteland of rednecks and tornadoes. Got the hell out of there, as soon as I was of age. Rather take my chances with sane people and earthquakes.

  27. 27.

    Mustang Bobby

    Just watched the first four episodes of “Broadchurch” on BBC America. Great acting, great writing, great photography, but I had to turn on the closed captions because I could barely understand them with their accents and slang. Bloody ‘ell.

  30. 30.

    RandomMonster

    Today I installed a six ton long-throw pneumatic bottle jack, and a ratcheting cable puller in the storm shelter so that we can force the doors and lift a car off of it if we need to do that.

    I read that first line and instantly felt totally and absolutely inadequate.

  36. 36.

    Tara the Antisocial Social Worker

    @efgoldman: I tried to watch Copper, but got annoyed with how Mary Sue it was. Every character, male or female, spends all their waking moments thinking and talking about Kevin Corcoran. (Except his missing wife, presumably, but I bailed before ever finding out what that was about.)

  37. 37.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Soonergrunt had a tornado shelter put under the floor of his garage; he talked about it quite a bit around the time of the big tornadoes in Moore. The ratcheting cable puller is a device to pull open the sliding door, even in the presence of something sitting on it that might make it too hard to do by hand. The bottle jack is a fancy car jack that can lift 6 tons a considerable distance- more than enough just to change tires- so they can lift any heavy debris off.

  38. 38.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    @DesertFriar: I wonder if it is on Netflix, right now doing the DVD of Homeland, then The Borgias then Breaking Bad, so what is the opinion of Low Winter Sun among you?

  44. 44.

    Gin & Tonic

    Since I’m drinking a Dogfish Head 90-Minute IPA, yes, whatever you’re drinking is cheap piss.

  46. 46.

    Csbella

    I gave the poodle a 3 hour haircut so I could see him. We weighed him last night and he’s at 73lbs! Probably 5-10 more than he needs to be despite his 27″ frame. May do some serious knitting now.

  48. 48.

    TheMightyTrowel

    It’s a gloriously sunny spring Monday down here – I’d rather be outside walking than in my office working on a lecture but such is the life I’ve got. we have 2 weeks of spring break starting next week, so there’s that…

    I spent the weekend at work, helping a friend move and forcing Mr. Trowel to eat the speciality bacon ice cream at my favourite ice cream parlour (i can’t eat dairy, they make awesome sorbet). He said it was good but surprisingly strong. Also, I’ve started re-watching Veronica Mars in anticipation of the film. I forgot how good it was.

  49. 49.

    ellie

    Tonight: Mojitos. Breaking Bad. Copper. Low Winter Sun. Talking Bad. Tomorrow: Dodger game. Taste of Colorado. Tuesday: Nervous breakdown at work.

  50. 50.

    Southern Beale

    We’re just back from traveling so we caught up with last week’s episode of The Newsroom, which we had missed. There isn’t a new episode tonight. But there must have been a storm or something because the recording got garbled half way through and we lost about 10 minutes. I hate satellite.

  51. 51.

    Southern Beale

    @Mustang Bobby:

    I had to turn on the closed captions because I could barely understand them with their accents and slang. Bloody ‘ell.

    I have that problem with British programming A LOT. Movies, too. I could barely keep up with “Closed Circuit.”

  53. 53.

    lamh36

    Lord help I’ve been putting it off for years, but my sister Jessica loves this movie, so I finally watched The Prince and Me. I’ll grudingly admit, I liked it. A bit too “teen-romancy” for my taste, but it was cute.

    http://youtu.be/IWkNz_5tLac

    Also today, I watched the last Major Crimes (spinoff of The Closer) and it’s about a serial killer. I watched Luther and it was about a different weird killing every episode. Add that to the real-life shit that was going down in Cleveland and ya know I love my Criminal Minds. So it got me to wondering what it was like back in the day before shows like this came out. I know there has always been crazed lunatics and serial killers, but I guess it would only come to light if it made national news.

    I gotta wait until NOVEMBER for more Major Crimes episodes. Damnit. But at least I get to watch the new season of Luther, even if it’s only 4 episodes.

    Check out the trailer for the season 3 of Luther:

    http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2013/06/watch-luther-third-installment-trailer/

  54. 54.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    @SiubhanDuinne: When I was a kid, whenever the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telefon came on, it was a sad moment for me, knowing that the summer was ending and school would start after Labor Day.

  55. 55.

    Soonergrunt

    @Bobby D: The house I built here for $240,000 can’t be had in Sane People And Earthquakes Land for that kind of money, and government pay don’t go that far.
    And there’s assholes everywhere. They’re easier to spot here.

  57. 57.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    @J.D. Rhoades: It seems evreybody on that show is a major A-hole, I am going to try to soldier on with this series, but ready to bail. Mayber they need the Swede from Hell On Wheels. :-)

  58. 58.

    COB

    Coors? or Yeungling? both are scabby piss beer, yet some people will give their money to those cruel corporate entities.

  61. 61.

    ruemara

    I’m watching the Abyss and wondering if James Cameron was always this longwinded. Moved the last of my stuff out of storage, have a raging headache, sore legs and spent the bulk of the day cleaning the room for the new roommate and leveling alts in WoW. Kinda wish there was a bbq or something on sched for tomorrow.

  66. 66.

    RandomMonster

    I have no idea what that block quoted sentence even means.

    Me neither.

    In my defense, I am completely painting the exterior of the house, alone. At this point I’m just down to cutting in and trim and I have to say, my work looks freaking great. Just hoping I find a job and don’t have to sell the damn place.

  67. 67.

    Suzanne

    Mr. Suzanne and I had one of those nights in which we each make our own dinners. I am a vegetarian, and made a delicious egg white frittata with spinach, onion, garlic, mushrooms, peppers, celery, and fresh rosemary and thyme from my friend’s herb garden. My husband, who is a grillmaster and NOT a vegetarian (but does enjoy veggies), got a great deal on pork loin and flatiron steaks, and he grilled it all. The kitchen smells amazing. (It LOOKS horrifying, but the new dishwasher comes tomorrow. Par-TAY.)

  68. 68.

    Redshift

    I was watching the Hugo awards on UStream at a friend’s, but I’ve got stuff to do before I sleep, so I’m home now. Earlier, I baked a cake for my mom’s birthday.

  69. 69.

    Scout211

    We tried to go on a hike at Ebbett’s pass today. That is north of the big Rim fire here in California. We really thought we would be far enough north of the fire but we were sadly mistaken.

    We stopped by a river to picnic but weren’t able to hike because the smoke was so thick you couldn’t breathe. The bright blue sky was nowhere to be seen. It was so dark with smoke it seemed more like dusk than 10:00 a.m.

    It was so incredibly sad.

  70. 70.

    Origuy

    @Randy P: The video is subtitled “Taysiders in Space”. Tayside is the area around Perth and Dundee, on the other side of Scotland from Glasgow. Glaswegian is even harder to understand. I heard a fellow on the radio when I was in Glasgow few years ago, I think he was the head of the city council. He must have gotten his job because of the thickness of his accent. “Sure, laddie. Nae on out the city limit ken a clue what ye sayin’! The job is yor’n!”

  74. 74.

    MikeJ

    @Randy P: I did a gig in Tayside. I was in Dundee. Drove up from E-burgh, and there was nothing but sheep in between the two. It’s North and eastish of Edinburgh, Glasgow is further south and west.

    I understood them no problem, but I was always the designated translator between various flavors of UKians and other USians.

  75. 75.

    eemom

    @Steeplejack:

    At Universities there is school on Labor Day. I’d forgotten all about it, but now eedaughter has school tomorrow. (“Don’t you remember?” eegrandmom asked.)

  76. 76.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @MikeJ: I’ve spent some time in Tayside. Lovely country – the train ride from Edinburgh to Aberdeen is stunningly lovely. Aberdeen is a shit hole (except for the 2 days a year it’s sunny), but the train trip is worth it. Funny story, i almost ended up with a permanent academic position at Aberdeen Uni until I intentionally bombed the interview because the panel were such assholes and the dept was set up in such a way to make the junior staff work 7am-midnight while the senior staff flew in (seriously. from Orkney, London and Uppsala) once a fortnight.

  77. 77.

    Karmus

    My major project for today was programming a drum part for a song I wrote maybe 28 or so years ago. It’s still not “there”, but I’m pleased with the results, for a “machine” (software). Pity I can’t play drums, although I’m sure the neighbors don’t mind.

    It’s always been a dream of mine to actually hear it the way I do in my head. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology and a little decent gear (and semi-obsessively collecting instruments for years), I’m gradually getting closer. Little by little, as the song (not mine) says.

  79. 79.

    PaulW

    Washing machine is busted.

    Got one chapter done on novel project I’m writing, which is also me ignoring another novel project I’ve been writing for 3-4 years.

    Didn’t get the 3,000 blog views I had hoped for the month of August.

    Also, need sleep. Gnight.

  80. 80.

    Steeplejack

    @DesertFriar:

    Finally! Someone else who has even heard of, let alone watched, Montalbano! It is a great series. I first saw them on the weird little network MHz, then collected them on DVD.

    Synchronistically, just tonight MHz ran a new episode, Angelica’s Smile, which I have tucked away on the DVR for later. It’s Episode 23, will be available (with 24-26) on DVD September 24.

  81. 81.

    FlyingToaster

    @Bobby D: Everyone gets to choose which burden they want to shoulder.

    Like you, I grew up out in the square states; I got a scholarship to go east, and kept going until I hit the ocean. I’ve lived through one hurricane (lost my bedroom window’s storm window), umpteen nor’easters, MittFuckingRomney, and the Tsarnaev brothers. I’ll take those over the ice storms, tornadoes, and statues to Rush Limbaugh, but some family members have stayed to take their chances.

    @Soonergrunt:

    And there’s assholes everywhere. They’re easier to spot here.

    It’s not the assholes that bother me — Harvard’s just up the road; you’re right, we got ’em everywhere.

    But the stupid gets to me really, really fast. I’d have gone postal if I hadn’t left. More power to you.

  82. 82.

    Mnemosyne

    Just got back from Ventura, where I fought the Ojai Valley Bike Path and the bike path won — I had to give up about 2/3rds of the way there and head back because the goddamned thing is one long uphill climb. (It’s not a steep grade, but it’s essentially a 10-mile climb.)

    We had dinner in Ventura and drove back, which was when I started craving a Skinny Cow ice cream cone, so we swung by the grocery store. I ran in to get the cones, and also discovered that potato chips and Pop Chips were on sale, so I got a bag of each.

    So I’m standing in line with ice cream in one hand and potato chips in the other and suddenly realized, They’re going to think I’m high. Which they probably did. Oh well.

  83. 83.

    Keith P

    @Betty Cracker: I’ve been wishing for several seasons for Jesse to get wiped out. I cannot stand his character. Maybe it’s the constant whining, the constant yelling, the recent catatonic behavior, or the constant “, yo.”s. As smart as WW is supposed to be, it surprises me that he isn’t able to see that the guy is a whacked out, paranoid meth head who needs to go to Belize before he takes everyone around him down with him.

  84. 84.

    Bruce Lawton

    “Hell on Wheels” recording from last night. It’s got a real variety of bad guys. You have to record it because AMC commercials are unbearable.

  86. 86.

    Steeplejack

    @Mr Stagger Lee:

    MHz used to have a “channel” on Netflix where they had several of their European crime series available—Montalbano, (Swedish) Wallander, etc.—but I don’t know if it is up now.

    I just noticed that someone has full episodes of Montalbano up on YouTube, but, alas, no English subtitles. Still, they would give you a sense of the series. It’s a modern-day cop show set in (gorgeous) Sicily. Good acting, good writing. I tried to find a good “trailer” clip, but they’re all too overheated and gimmicky.

  87. 87.

    FlyingToaster

    @efgoldman:

    Its just that there’s enough of the rest of us here to keep ‘em overwhelmed.

    Exactly. We have one crazy stupid old fool here in our suburb; his ongoing agenda is to stop any buy-in to “No Place for Hate” campaigns. He has 0 support, even from his relatives.

    Governor LePage is what happens when you let the Teahadists take over your state party. I’m sure his head will explode when he loses his job next year.

    New Hamster, though, is chock full of people who didn’t want to pay MA taxes and are now paying even higher NH property taxes, for which they seem to receive Dick-All. I just point and laugh, walking down the sidewalk and bike path to my local pool, which is paid for by my taxes. If only we in Massachusetts could send our LaRouchie’s up there.

  90. 90.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    @Steeplejack:

    I cannot disagree. I just don’t need it running through my head for the next three days. There are things a man doesn’t talk about in polite society, and one of those is his shelter, because if he mentions it, the reader/listener will either have this Fagen number or the soundtrack from The Wizard of Oz haunting him.

  91. 91.

    daverave

    @Scout211:

    The spouse is out of town for 2 weeks so I thought I’d be doing some solo backpacking at some point but the fire(s) have put the kibbosh on that idea. Ebbett’s was really pushing your luck, I’d have tried Donner Summit but even there who knows. The Rim fire is burning some of the most beautiful areas in the Sierra. It’s a good thing there’s so much granite up there otherwise they’d never get it stopped on the north east edge.

  92. 92.

    Steeplejack

    TV notes: Binge-watched some Burn Notice to get caught up and also to free up some room on the DVR for Broadchurch, which I forgot to record a week or two ago. (They reran all four episodes this afternoon.) I’ve only watched the first episode so far, but I’ve got a few doubts. David Tennant looks about 14 years old, and I’m not sure that butching him up with beard stubble and a loose tie is the way to give him cop cred. They could have gone with “straight-arrow wound-too-tight nerd obsessed with the job” and it would have worked better. Also, I got a slight Twin Peaks vibe from the first episode, and not in a good way. What dark mysteries will this simple community offer up, etc., etc. There was one sour-faced woman who kept showing up on the edge of scenes who had Log Lady written all over her.

    Burn Notice has been a guilty pleasure, one that I fell into a few years ago when I finally got an HD TV and I started watching a lot of TV because everything looked so good in HD, especially coming from an old 20" set. Hell, I was addicted to the Humidity Channel for a good six months. Anyway, I’m glad that they’re finally winding it down, and I’ll ride it out to the end. But a couple of these episodes are going for a level of heaviosity that the bulk of the series really doesn’t support.

  95. 95.

    Steeplejack

    @Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):

    “Lollipop Guild.” Just sayin’. In regards to earworms.

    Man, I love watching silent movies, but it is a real drag when some poseur adds a jarringly insensitive music track to make it more “interesting.” Hitchcock’s The Lodger is on TCM right now, and the added music is seriously fucked up. Dude, less is more!

    But visually the movie looks great. A really clean print. Thank you, Ted Turner, wherever you are.

    ETA: Not all of the music is bad. But there’s a lot of ragtime-type stuff, because that’s old and this movie is old, and that’s funny, so there! Ugh.

  96. 96.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    @Steeplejack:

    Yeah, I’ve watched too many good silent films that just get some stock ragtime thrown over ’em. The good restorations include soundtracks that were suggested for the films in the first place (Abel Gance’s Napoleon leaps to mind)- IF the films had music written for or suggested for them in the first place.

    ETA: I’ll take If I Were King of the Forest. I’ve got some good memories of a recently deceased uncle who loved it.

  99. 99.

    Hal

    I seriously want to put a curse on whoever made up that idiotic “I get drugged tested for my job, so why shouldn’t people on welfare get tested? I pay for their benefits!” meme that gets passed around Facebook every few weeks.

    I’ve downgraded my opinions of several people I genuinely like because of it. The last person who posted it decided to do so in the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, and I’m sure that was not a mistake. Amazing what people do to make themselves feel superior to others.

  101. 101.

    Steeplejack

    @Mandalay:

    Cool! For those who are interested, MHz runs a European series or a European movie every night at 9:00 EDT. The rest of the day the schedule is pretty much Latvia Now! and Taiwan Outlook, etc. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

    They’re starting a bunch of new series this week: The Half-Brother (Norwegian) tomorrow night, Antigone 34 (French cop drama) Tuesday. I don’t know anything about these, but they’re usually worth checking out.

  102. 102.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    @Steeplejack:

    Wow! That’s a beauty!

    I saw it at an old neighborhood house in GR- not so fancy, no balcony, but not a tiny screen, either.

    Ever seen Detroit’s Fox Theater? The Ilitch family did a great thing in restoring it.

  103. 103.

    Steeplejack

    @Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):

    Those old movie palaces are awesome. To think that at one point they were going to tear down the (Atlanta) Fox and put up a parking lot or something. Grr!

    Gross mismanagement, because anyone who sets foot in the place falls in love with it. I haven’t lived in Atlanta for eight years, but they started making much better use of the Fox for music dates, social events, etc. It’s a gem that it would be prohibitively expensive to replace or duplicate.

  104. 104.

    Fred

    Boy can I one up Soonergrut today: Just spent three days clearing obstructing trees and crap from the sides of the ditch next to my house. What I always though of as a drainage ditch turns out to be deep and wet enough to be a small boat canal to the nearby huge lake. I think I just doubled my property value. It’s kinda like hitting the lotery but with a bunch more aches and bruise plus I got stung by a hornet on the ear.
    Can’t remember which movie the line is from but this guy takes a swig off a bottle of Corona and says, “This beer tastes like piss.” and the other guy says, “That’s what the lime’s for.”

  105. 105.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    @Steeplejack:

    It was the same thing with the Fox in Detroit. Ready to be torn down, but somehow preservationists managed to get it included on the National Register of Historical Places in 1985. Then the Ilitches (owners of Little Cesar’s Pizza, Detroit Red Wings and, added more recently, the Tigers) stepped up.

    I’ve seen one movie there, and that’s it. A ticket to see Field of Dreams and a Tigers’ game across the street one Saturday 8 years ago. The sound wasn’t good, but I suspect that’s because it’s normally used as a venue for live gigs now. I could probably spend a week in that place and not pick out every bit of interesting ornamentation.

    BTW, it’s the second largest theater in the US. Only Radio City Music hall seats more. Built in 1928, when Detroit was the 4th or 5th most populous city in the country. There were 3 or 4 more movie palaces in Detroit back in the day, not too far away, and I think only one other remains- and no one has done the rehab on it, nor do there seem to be any plans for it.

  106. 106.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    @Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): @Steeplejack:

    And I just googled “Detroit movie palaces” and came up with a hit for this book ( http://www.amazon.com/Detroits-Downtown-Palaces-Images-America/dp/0738541028 ) at Amazon. The blurb:

    The spokelike grid of wide grand avenues radiating out from downtown Detroit allowed for a concentration of theaters initially along Monroe Street near Campus Martius and, after the second decade of the 20th century, clustered around Grand Circus Park, all easily accessible by a vast network of streetcars. In its heyday, Grand Circus Park boasted a dozen palatial movie palaces containing an astonishing total of 26,000 seats. Of these theaters, five remain today, fully restored and operational for live entertainment. Detroit, more so than any other North American city, illustrates how demographic and economic forces dramatically changed the landscape of film exhibition in an urban setting.

    26,000 seats within a few blocks of each other!

  107. 107.

    Steeplejack

    Aw, hell, no! I had The Lodger paused, just started it up again a few minutes ago, and along comes a scene that could plausibly use some ragtime music—a big dance scene in a dance hall, with dancers, you know, dancing—and the motherfucking music guy instead uses some brooding, foreshadowing music that is totally ridiculous because Alfred fucking Hitchcock is broodingly foreshadowing the murder visually, which is what you’re supposed to do in movies. Dance music would have been a nice counterpoint. But no. Shoot me now.

    I think the problem is that there are a lot of people who consciously or subconsciously dismiss old movies out of hand because of the technical limitations of the art form then. So they (in this case the music guys) have to either “help it out” or make fun of it. Sort of like how it is easy to think of people in past times as “stupid” because they didn’t know all the things that we know now, or the same things that we know now.

  108. 108.

    Steeplejack

    @Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):

    Well, back in the day going to the movies was almost like watching TV. You had to leave the house to do it, but it was very cheap, and many people would go several times a week to catch the newsreels and cartoons and the (much more numerous) new releases. Not just blockbusters but “women’s pictures,” B-movies, kids’ movies, serials, etc. And there were a lot more movie houses to make that convenient.

  109. 109.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    @Steeplejack:

    Oh, yeah, certainly. But that many palaces, with that many seats, jammed in to a small area? Detroit had neighborhood houses that would be considered palaces anywhere else, and they were probably showing second-run films as the feature.

    I’ve been getting into the history of movie houses here across the state (Grand Rapids), and we had two big palaces downtown with a few slghtly smaller theaters down there, too, and we had three that accommodated 500+ in different neighborhoods. And even though these three were big, they weren’t really opulent. The rest were all small houses, scattered around town, and those are the places people went to kill an evening or weekend afternoon on the cheap, tv before tv. I guess what impresses me the most about those downtown palaces in Detroit is the wealth- spread around amongst the population- that they represented.

  111. 111.

    PaulW

    About Breaking Bad: Jesse knows Walter’s one big secret. Jesse knows that Walter’s pride had been wounded over his break with the company he founded. Walter hasn’t revealed it to anyone else… Sky probably knows, but nobody else knew how much that company’s success had eaten at Walter’s pride.

    Jesse compared Walter White to the Devil. And how did the Devil fall? Pride.

    Jesse is going to hit Walter White where his pride is the most vulnerable.

  112. 112.

    gogol's wife

    @Steeplejack:

    You probably won’t see this, but yes, we’re starting today. If you ask why, I’ll have to kill you.

    I have sat through probably 20 hours of meetings on that very question. Trust me, when you factor in how many classes there have to be, how many Monday classes there have to be, a reading period before finals, having finals end so that students don’t have to travel on Christmas Eve, not letting the freshmen have a day off after Orientation so that they all binge drink, we have to start on Labor Day. But I’ve been setting my own work schedule since last May, so it’s no great tragedy for me. Most staff don’t have to work.

  113. 113.

    Death Panel Truck

    @The prophet Nostradumbass: Somebody’s watching MeTV.

    I was going to watch it there, but all the commercials are for funeral homes, life insurance, catheters, funeral homes, hearing aids, cell phones for old coots, catheters and life insurance. Oh, and funeral homes.

    Too goddamned depressing, so I watched the same episode on Netflix. We love that newfangled Roku thingy.

  115. 115.

    KSE

    I’ve been thinking of starting a Breaking Bad “live pool”, as in, which characters will still be alive at the end of the last episode. Right now I’m guessing Marie, Agent Gomez, Badger, and Gus (SHUT UP. HE COULD STILL PULL THROUGH.)

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