Dimland Radio

dimland radio 1-5-19 show notes

Let’s Check In On This…

It’s not getting any funnier.

No, I’m not recycling a old blog. This is starting the same way as last week’s because I decided to keep an eye on how well this, what looks like a piece of crap, is doing.

As of this writing, the movie has grossed worldwide $35.5 million. It cost an estimated $42 million to make. Hey, this misfire will probably make its money back! Can we hope for a sequel?

What Better Way To Start The New Year?

It was 5:30am on New Year’s Day when I got the call from my dad. Mom had run out of a pain medicine she was taking (she wasn’t following the prescription and was taking an extra now and again) and she began to have withdrawal problems. Dad and I took her to the ER.

It was a short visit and Mom got set back on track with her medication. She’s learned a valuable lesson. I hope.

Lowering Expectations?

I received an official Minnesota Vikings desktop calendar as part of our family’s tradition of a dice game gift exchange. The calendar is 365 days of facts and trivia. Below is from January 1st:

Starting the year focusing on mediocrity. How Minnesota Vikings.

A Dimland Radio ARGH!: Is New York City Trying To Get Everyone To Hate It?

The TV tradition in America is to show the ball drop in New York’s Times Square “live” as the new year comes in. The shows that broadcast TV offers (Fox and ABC) were the ones we looked at. We decided to stay with Fox. Neither offer us anything we really like, we just tuned in for the ball drop.

So, it dropped, “Happy New Year!” Then people start making out. Yuck. And our ears are graced with with the traditional singing of Auld Lang… Not so fast!

Nope. What song was played?

New York, New York!

ARGH!
Except, when preparing these show notes, I looked for video to back up my point. I found video of the moment. And I found that Auld Lang Syne was indeed played immediately after the new year came in. It was greatly truncated. But it played.

I’m still aggravated by the insertion of New York, New York. It interrupted the traditional song. Is there something wrong with letting the song play out, New York?

And I’m aggravated because I’ll have to admit I was wrong on next week’s show.

A Dimland Radio Pedantic Moment: It’s An Initialism, Smarty-pants!

Inspired by one of this week’s Three Cool Things is a Pedantic Moment I had while watching a very funny clip from the UK’s That Mitchell And Webb Look. It’s a sketch comedy show that, from what I’ve seen of it, is awfully funny.

The sketch is called Grammar Nazi (at least on YouTube, it is) and it features a boss doling out swift retribution on his employees’ errors in grammar. Except before he hands out his first harsh reaction, he makes a grammar error. He calls the abbreviation HHH an acronym. It’s not. It’s an initialism.

An acronym is an abbreviation of a multi-word title using the initials of each word in the title to spell out another word. For example: SCUBA or SNAFU. An intitialism follows the same setup, but the letters do not spell out a word. For example: FBI or KGB.

Some Grammar Nazi!

Three Cool Things

1) This cool thing is about my love of the British panel/game show. Not exactly a game show, but not the traditional panel show either. There’s QI, Would I Lie To You?, 8 Out of 10 Cats, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, and a few others. My favorite of the shows is QI and my favorite of the panel guests is Dave Mitchell.

2) China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon. Sure, it could be a Communist invasion, but it’s very cool!

Bonus Cool Thing: It’s never cool when someone does, but a freaky coincidence can be damn cool. Mean Gene Okerlund, Daryl “The Captain” Dragon, and Bob “Super Dave Osborne” Einstein all died on January 2nd. I know that’s three, but don’t start with the celebrities dies in threes nonsense. Sometimes they happen to cluster into a set of three.

Anyway, the freaky coincidence with these three deaths is that they were all 76 years old when they died.

3) The New Horizons spacecraft has past Ultima Thule and sent pictures. Damn! That’s cool! Science! YEAH!

Music heard on the show…

Dimland Radio opening theme song: ‘Ram‘ by The Yoleus
First ad break bumpers: ‘Only You‘ by Yaz & ‘(The) Unguarded Moment‘ by The Church

Second ad break bumpers: ‘Time The Avenger‘ by Pretenders & ‘Here It Is Tomorrow‘ by Game Theory

Closing song: ‘Angler’s Treble Hook‘ by $5 Fiddle

That’s it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.

You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

Images used under Fair Use.

dimland radio 12-29-18 show notes

It Looks Like I May Be Right

It still doesn’t look funny.

Last week I discussed the possibility that the new comedy Holmes And Watson is like it might not do well at the box office. That it looked awful.

As of this writing, Box Office Mojo is reporting that the film, released Christmas Day has only grossed $15 million. The way the studio was pushing the opening day to be big. It doesn’t seem to have worked.

Rotten Tomatoes has this steaming pile of bad movie listed at a 9% positive rating from critics and 28% from the general audience. Both numbers are up two points from when I did the show, so maybe there’s hope.

Nah, it looks like crap.

Enhance! Huh. That Didn’t Work

I’m surprised those arms could lift a pencil.

I found an old Polaroid of me from my art school days. And, boy, do I look like quite the specimen of manhood. Right down to the pin arms.

I’m not exactly certain what year this picture was taken, just that it was sometime between 1983 and 1986. Those were my art school years.

There is, however, a calendar in the picture. If only I could enhance that area as is done so often on TV and in movies. I mention a particular episode of Columbo in which the enhance option was used. However, when I blew up that section it just became a blob.

Enhanced.

More enhanced.

If the information in the image isn’t there at the original size, all the enhancement in the world will make it appear.

This Comic Book Has A Crazy Story

Ms. Marvel is the woman in black under the two of 200.

I won’t go into it in full detail here, but I told the tale of a crazy story of potential incest. It’s crazy and none of the creative staff considered the story’s deeper connotations.

I blogged about it at Warehouse Find, the official blog of Nostalgia Zone. You can read it here.

A Dimland Radio Pedantic Moment: How Many Bullets?

I recently rewatched Tombstone (1993) and noticed that during the gunfight at the OK Corral segment Doc Holliday fired off far more bullets and slugs than his firearms could hold and there was no time to reload. Watch the scene and count for yourself. How many do you count?

Three Cool Things

1) The New Horizons space probe, having passed by Pluto three years ago, is already nearly a billion miles past the dwarf planet. It’s astounding! And it will be encountering another far flung object in the Kuiper Belt: Ultima Thule. Science is so cool!

2) I just finished watching the Black Mirror series on Netflix. It’s an excellent, if awfully dark and, at times, gruesome, series. And its most recent season (not the new movie) has provided viewers with strong female lead characters. That’s cool.

3) I’ve been invited to participate in an art show at a local record store. The task was to make some art out of n existing album cover. Above is the album I used. Below is what I did with it.

Music heard on the show…

Dimland Radio opening theme song: ‘Ram‘ by The Yoleus
First ad break bumpers: ‘New Day Rising‘ by Husker Du & ‘New Dreams‘ by Naked Raygun

Second ad break bumpers: ‘New World Man‘ by Rush & ‘New Year’s Day‘ by U2

Closing song: ‘Angler’s Treble Hook‘ by $5 Fiddle

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.

You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

Images used under Fair Use.

dimland radio 12-22-18 show notes

A Correction

I started the show by correcting a mistake I while talking about the Voyager 2 spacecraft entering interstellar space. While doing so I mentioned that both of the Voyagers had left the solar system. This is wrong. The two spacecraft, although billions of miles from the sun, are still feeling its influence. Not as much, but it’s still there.

They have left the heliosphere, a bubble of influence filled with solar particles and magnetic fields created by our sun, but not the solar system. The two spacecraft have another 30,000 years of traveling ahead of them until they actually do leave it.

NASA has more information here.

A Tale Of Two Police Detainments

Professor Steve Locke, who teaches at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, wrote of an encounter he had with the police over his lunch hour recently. As I read his story, I was reminded of a police detainment I experienced in the early 1990s. The two stories matched up almost point for point.

There were some differences.

One major difference is Professor Locke is an African-American. I am not.

I talk about the differences and I have a couple quibbles, but overall his story is very eye opening.

Holmes & Watson Looks…HORRIBLE.

You see? Modern references in a movie set in the Victorian Era. That’s funny. Right?

I’ve been seeing loads of clips for the new comedy Holmes & Watson on my Facebook page. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly are pairing up again for a comedic take on the great detective and his friend.

It looks like it will be a steaming pile of shit.

Traditionally clips and trailers for comedies contain some of the best and funniest gags in he film to entice people to see the movie. I’ve seen several clips now. Not one of the is remotely funny.

At least not to me. Comedy is very subjective, but I’m guessing by this heavy bombardment of clips the studio is pushing for a big opening weekend, because once audiences see it the word will get out that it’s a steaming pile of…

Well, you get the idea.

But, hey, I could be wrong.

Three Cool Things

1) The Christmas Comet has made a swing through the neighborhood again. This time it was the closest to us it has been or will be in centuries. Way cool!

2) When Penny Marshall died, which wasn’t cool, the NY Daily News mentioned, apparently incorrectly, that she had been the “before” girl in an ad for a beauty product in which Farrah Fawcett was the “after” girl. Well, I couldn’t find that ad, but I did find a TV commercial for Head & Shoulders shampoo featuring Marshall and Fawcett as roommates.

And there’s not much that is cooler than seeing a young, vibrant Farrah Fawcett again. For me anyway.

My drawing for the challenge of snowman. Do you get it?

3) I’ve been invited to participate in another daily drawing challenge. This one is in honor of Christmas and it’s only five days, but it’s cool. #5GoldenDrawRingsforChristmas

Music heard on the show…

Dimland Radio opening theme song: ‘Ram‘ by The Yoleus
First ad break bumpers: ‘Silver And Gold‘ by Burl Ives & ‘Christmastime Is Here‘ by The Vince Guaraldi Trio

Second ad break bumpers: ‘Let It Show‘ by Bing Crosby & ‘Holly Jolly Christmas‘ by Burl Ives

Closing song: ‘Angler’s Treble Hook‘ by $5 Fiddle

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.

You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

Images used under Fair Use.

dimland radio 12-15-18 show notes

Amway? No way!

I have a co-worker who often asks my advice or to get clarification on a topic about which he has some confusion. Recently, he told me of a friend of his who has gotten into a multi-level marketing (MLM) scheme. I wasn’t surprised to hear that this friend was attempting to get my co-worker to sign up as well. That’s one of the main tasks of being part of an MLM scheme: Recruit others into the scheme. .

I asked if the money was rolling in for this guy. It’s not. I’m shocked!

Actually, I’m not shocked. MLMs rely on people’s gullibility in thinking it will be easy to convince other people to join in and their hopes for big money. The big money never materializes, but their own money does disappear. The members need to maintain a monthly minimum of product. The friend of my co-worker is shelling out $300 a month, but the big money is just around the corner. Or is it? Well, when it comes to Amway 99.99% of its members lose money.

I advised my co-worker against getting involved. I hope he listens.

Brian Dunning produced a video from which I got much of my information as part of his InFact YouTube video series. Check it out here.

HBO’s John Olivier gives a longer, more detailed look at MLMs. Click here.

Cool Thing #1:

I decided to try an experiment this week and not run through the Three Cool Things at the end of the show. Instead I would intersperse the cool items throughout the show, giving more time to each one.

The first is the fact that because of the power of science the human species now has two interstellar spacecraft cruising through space. Voyager 2, launched 41 years ago, has finally joined Voyager 1 in interstellar space, which means both spacecraft are now outside the influence of our sun.

The image above has a few of the astounding facts. And this link is to information on the documentary The Farthest: Voyager In Space, which tells the story of NASA’s Voyager mission.

Science! YEAH!

This Really Isn’t Much Of A Problem Anymore But…

In the not so old days, when widescreen movies went on television the scourge that is “pan and scan” was invited. Until recently, television screens were more square, while movie screens are much wider, so in order to fit the movie picture onto a TV screen someone had to reformat the image.

Sure, they could have opted to put the black bars at the top and bottom to approximate the shape of a movie screen to accommodate the full picture, but then people would complain about the black bars. Such rubes!

I gave a couple examples. One was Mackenna’s Gold (1969), which is generally a mess of a movie and pan and scan didn’t help; and Star Wars (1977), which lopped off a Tusken Raider (calling them “sand people” seems racist to me) from a shot and that led my younger self to some confusion. Luke says he can see one of them now. I can’t.

MacKenna’s Gold – Pan and scan.

What we should see. Oh, look! Telly Salaves!

Star Wars – Pan and scan. Where’s that Tusken Raider?

Widescreen – Ah! There he is!

Turner Classic Movies produced a short film featuring filmmakers discussing why pan and scan is bad and that audiences should be bothered by what they are missing in the picture and not by the black bars across the top and bottom of the screen.

Of course, nowadays televisions are formatted more like movie screens so pan and scan isn’t the problem it once was. Except now the old TV shows have black bars on the sides.

Cool Thing #2:

In the world today, our lives are very well documented visually. From photographs to video, most of us in the developed world, anyway, has plenty of pictorial evidence of our existence. That hasn’t always been the case. One hundred years this sort of documentation was much more rare, so how cool is it that a website has posted a video featuring film footage of four artistic masters? Well, it’s very cool.

At this link there is a nine minute video of film taken of Monet, Renior, Rodin, and Degas. The artists are old man at the time they were filmed. You can see the ravages of time evident in each, especially Renoir.

They were just as alive then as we are today. These films give us a look back in time and it is so awesome!

Movie Recommendation: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

It is said this movie suffered from Star Wars fatigue or possibly from audiences having trouble accepting anyone other than Harrison Ford playing Han Solo, and those factors led to this film not performing as well at the box office. It might also be due to the switching of directors while the film was in production. Ron Howard took over after directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (directing as a duo) were fired.

Well, I recently watched the movie and I really liked it. It’s fun! Star Wars movies should be fun, right? Yeah, some can get a bit dark. Empire Strikes Back and Rogue One were pretty dark, but they were still fun.

Solo is more light-hearted and filled with Easter Eggs for the fans. And I think Alden Ehrenich and Donald Glover both do a fine job playing Solo and Lando Calrissian. They don’t do impressions of Ford and Billy Dee Williams, but they do capture their essence and attitude, with an gesture or voice inflection here and there that get pretty close to the original actors.

As I said, it’s fun. The special effects are terrific. Watch it.

Cool Thing #3:

I found the above photograph in the trash of an office I cleaned years ago. The fellow on the left is a stranger to me, but the man on the right is former MN Twins pitching ace Frankie “Sweet Music” Viola. I fished this picture out of the trash and have kept it ever since. I think it’s cool.

Music heard on the show…

Dimland Radio opening theme song: ‘Ram‘ by The Yoleus
First ad break bumpers: ‘O, Superman (For Massenet)‘ by Laurie Anderson & ‘Dark Entries‘ by Bauhaus

Second ad break bumpers: ‘All Shook Down‘ by The Screaming Blue Messiahs & ‘You’ll Have To Go Sideways‘ by The Soft Boys

Closing song: ‘Angler’s Treble Hook‘ by $5 Fiddle

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.

You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

Images used under Fair Use.

dimland radio 12-8-18 show notes

A Memory Of Pete Shelley

Musician Pete Shelley died on Thursday. He was a founding member of one of the UK’s earliest and best Punk rock bands.

I shared some memories of my experience with the Buzzcocks and Pete Shelley.

This Cartoon Again?

Yes, I talked about the above cartoon again, because something else occurred to me when I listened to last week’s show.

President George H. W. Bush Died…

…And some folks on the internet couldn’t get past their hatred of GHWB and President Trump. I gotta tell ya, it gets mighty tiresome.

I hope the people who had all that fun focusing only on the bad stuff Bush 41 did remember that when other people remember only the bad things of Jimmy Carter’s years as the president.

During this talk I also touched on how original the phrase “Make America Great Again” is, why people tend to focus on only the good stuff of those who died (unless they allow the partisanship take over, that is), an aspect about the Apostle’s Creed (not Apollo’s Creed) that I hadn’t know about, and there were two moments when I got emotional watching the funeral of GHWB.

Three Cool Things

1) This live footage of the Buzzcocks in concert from 1981 is pretty cool.

2) Geologist/blogger/podcaster Sharon Hill’s response to being invited by a TV producer to maybe participate in yet another mystery-monger program. Her response (above) was brief, to the point, and way cool.

3) As Pres. George W. Bush greeted Michelle Obama at the funeral service for his father, he slipped her a piece of candy. Now that’s not only cool, it’s pretty damn sweet.

Music heard on the show…

Dimland Radio opening theme song: ‘Ram‘ by The Yoleus
First ad break bumpers: ‘Telephone Operator‘ & ‘Qu’est-Ce Que C’est Que Ca‘ by Pete Shelley

Second ad break bumpers: ‘I Generate A Feeling‘ & ‘Homosapien‘ by Pete Shelley

Closing song: ‘Angler’s Treble Hook‘ by $5 Fiddle

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.

You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

Images used under Fair Use.