I'm deep into home improvement projects, but don't despair... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Read a Book! Two excellent documentaries A Beatles doc on The Beach Boys (Disney+) which was very good, but had a horrible sound mix. The music is blasting... sometimes over the dialogue. And then there's the Reading Rainbow doc (Netflix) which is perfect...

Well worth your time. Especially if you're familiar with the program. I remember it would play in the lounge at college even though it was meant for kids. But it was not dumbed-down entertainment, so it was watchable for everybody.

   
• Sixty-Nine, Dude!! So there I was, ready to turn in for the night this past Tuesday when I saw a bright light flickering out my window. At first I thought it was just a plane because the light looked red. But it never moved, so I pulled out the StarWalk 2 app on my phone and found out it was a comet named 13P/Olbers which comes around every 69 years. It won't be here again until 2094, so I hope you saw it while you had a chance...

Sweet! Really makes me wish I had a telescope!

   
• Beautiful Cabin Crew Scarlett Johansson! When powerful people want something and you won't give it to them, then they just take it. Doesn't matter if that power comes from money... or people who are controlling a powerful force in our lives like A.I... what's yours is theirs. In the case of Scarlett Johansson, OpenAI. took her voice after she told them she didn't want to work with them. Hope with all your might that powerful people don't want something you have.

   
• I'm Good, Thanks! Sonos released the news that their new "Ace" headphones will release on June 5. And it's like they honestly think I would buy their shit? I couldn't use Dolby Atmos on my Sonos soundbar because it took years for them to fix the "pop of death" that plagued it. YEARS! Their interim solution was to "turn Atmos off" WHEN THAT'S THE ENTIRE REASON I BOUGHT IT! Between that and their shitty fucking app that makes using their gear a horrendous ordeal (I am filled with rage every time I have to scroll through a playlist because it keeps pausing to load), there's zero fucking chance I'd spend $450 on a pair of their fucking headphones. It's weird to think that Sonos was once the pinnacle of audio equipment with incredible features you just had to have (considering you could afford it), but now I honestly don't care if they flame out and shut down.

   
• Smell That Freedom! France has released a stamp that smells like baguettes! Nifty. BUT ALL 'MURICAN STAMPS SMELL LIKE FREEDOM! U-S-A-! U-S-A-! U-S-A-! U-S-A-! U-S-A-! U-S-A-! U-S-A-! U-S-A-!

Except I still want some of those baguette stamps. Who wouldn't?

   
• Enter The Sandman: Part Two! I have been anxiously awaiting to see who gets cast as the remaining Endless for the second season of The Sandman, and here they are...

Perfect. But I am still waiting for an adaptation of Death: The High Cost of Living. I don't understand why it's not been announced. It would be relatively cheap to produce. Just write a check for a fraction of the money you gave to Zack Snyder to crap the Rebel Moon movies out of his ass and call it good.

   
• Pigment! Wonderful look at a 300 year-old artisanal pastel shop in France...

I love stuff like this. In an age when computer-generated A.I. "art" is all the rage, it's nice to see the craftsmanship that goes into the tools of creating actual art.

   
• Corruption. the only REAL bipartisan issue! I saw this last week and it hasn't left my head. And yet we keep voting for this fucking bullshit instead of persecuting them all for treason...

Treason, which I'll remind you, is punishable by death in this country.

   
Until next time, buckaroo.

Apple's release of their new iPads got me to wondering about how much the Adobe apps have approved over the past three years. I had bought a 2020 iPad Pro because I heard that useable versions of Illustrator and Photoshop were out for iPad (or coming soon to iPad... I can't remember). But then found out that they weren't really in a state that I could use them to do actual work. They were but a shadow of the full program. It was a bummer, but I had something fun to play with during pandemic lockdowns, so it was all good.

Turns out that the apps have improved dramatically. Not only can I open and edit full-on Illustrator and Photoshop files, the feature set is rich enough that I can do real work on it. So that's nice. But it's not the most impressive thing I've discovered after ignoring my iPad for years.

That would be an app called "Adobe Fresco" which is around 4 years old now.

Meant to compete head-to-head with "Procreate," it's a drawing and painting program that's darn good. It has a different approach in some areas, and is a vast improvement in others (particularly with their animation tools and "live brushes"). It's matured a lot in the past few years...

And so... looks like I'll be taking a closer look at that this holiday weekend.

Though, call me old fashioned, but I will always prefer physical media over digital drawing tools. There's just something about getting your hands dirty that makes art seem more "real" to me.

Wah! My weekend is already half over and I'm not ready for it to be Sunday! But Sunday it must be... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Goonies Never Die! I watched this video reflecting on the career of Josh Brolin solely in the hopes that he would talk about Men In Black 3. That movie is so incredibly underrated. It's an amazing film. And a large part of that is Josh Brolin doing a Tommy Lee Jones impression... perfectly... for most of the runtime. And obviously GQ knew that's the thing everybody wanted to hear, so they saved it for last...

I sure wish that we could have heard more about his experience working on that movie.

   
• Otin! Oh man. The new Disney+ series, Iwájú, is Afrofuturism done very well... but it's so much more than that because there's like a lot going on. And it's very much steeped in Nigerian culture, which is to say that it's something wonderfully different than the same old shit we usually get. Bravo to Disney for giving us something fresh and new for a change. And for using amazing voice actors who breath life into these characters...

The frickin' FOOD in this show is unreal. They put a lot of focus on it as a part of entrenching you into Nigerian culture. And, I tell you what, the emotion they pack into these 20 minute episodes is substantial. Tola is the main character of the show... but it's her best friend Kole who will break your heart. Dang they put a lot of hardship on this poor kid. The villain in this series is a very, very bad man! AND GOOD LORD THIS SHOW IS BEAUTIFUL. They use color to illustrate the class divide in this future Nigeria, and it's very, very hard not to see it because it's the visual language they paint with. And, as if all that wasn't enough, the sound design is equally wonderful. Great surround effects to envelope you in the environment. If you have Disney+, it's very much worth checking out. The episodes are short, so it's a quick watch.

   
• Ramona! Ramona Fradon is a legendary artist whose gorgeous illustration style has been seen on a vast number of comic book characters. I think I first saw her work on Aquaman reprints or the Super Friends comic. But over the years the thing I most remember her for is the "special event" Wonder Woman stories they'd get her to draw. She had a more "cartoony old-style" that wasn't my favorite for the comics I was into, but that didn't mean I couldn't appreciate it from an artistic standpoint. Far from it, her minimalist style is beautiful because she could get some very expressive line-work that stood very well on its own. I remember reading about her retirement (which was January 5th) and she passed four weeks later on February 24th at the age of 97. Her final work was a trio of covers for Women's History Month...

Though one of her more brilliant works was a private commission piece that she did a few years ago...

Rest In Peace. You were a trailblazer and true artist from the start.

   
• Help Me, Todd! Okay... let's do the math. Paramount+ wants $60 a year to subscribe with ads. Without ads is $120 a year. BECAUSE IT COMES WITH SHOWTIME, WHICH I DO NOT WANT! No option to get CBS shows without ads and without Showtime. I would pay $90 to get a year of ad-free, but Paramount is a joke of a company who wants me to subsidize their Showtime programs which I have no interest in watching. And so... do I pay $60 so I can watch So Help Me Todd with ads... or do I just subscribe to the show on iTunes for $30 without ads and I can watch it as much as I want? Well, because I don't believe in paying for stuff I don't want AND I detest ads, I'll just buy the show on iTunes. It is, after all, my favorite network show on television...

It's not like CBS has any other shows I can't live without. I'll just watch episodes of NCIS Hawaii once Paramount runs out of money from trying to force crap on people they don't want and they're forced to sell episodes of the show to Netflix because the person in charge of the company is a fucking moron. Can't wait for the spin from the Paramount PR office when profits drop to record lows and they have to convince shareholders that the people running the company aren't fucking idiots who just lost $60 from me. Of course, this is the network who canceled Magnum P.I., so it's not like I expect rational thought to come out of their leadership. But hey, maybe they'll renew So Help Me Todd and get another $30 out of me next year? Stranger things have happened!

   
• Keep Your Fucking Bullshit Politics Out of People's Lives! The insane... FUCKING INSANE... crusade against IVF is usually seen as something that affects only women. That's not true. It affects women, men, and those identifying as neither... it affects families. And I am disgusted to my core that dumbfuck politicians who don't give a shit about facts... or ANYTHING or ANYONE except MONEY and POWER... put these dipshit laws on the books. Fuck them and all the people who vote them into office. A man wrote an article for GQ Magazine talking about what he and his family went through, and it's worth a read.

   
• NEWSFLASH: Republican senator blocks bill to protect IVF. Cindy Hyde-Smith is a literal ghoul. She's a shell of a woman who has been filled with a hatred for other women that's shockingly brutal and cruel. Nothing quite like watching a woman embrace the patriarchy to dismantle an option for women who want to be mothers. I get why regressive men vote for toxic, misogynistic pieces of shit to represent them in government. But I will never in a million years understand how women vote for... whatever the fuck this horrific excuse of a human being is... who works overtime to endanger their lives and strip away their rights...

If your God didn't want IVF for us, HE WOULD HAVE DESIGNED HUMAN EMBRYOS TO BE DESTROYED WHEN FROZEN! But of course their belief in an all-powerful deity doesn't allow logic to be applied to anything, so here we are. Fucking anti-science dumbshits making a decision for others in the "Land of the Free" over an issue they probably don't even fucking understand. Sadistic fucks.

   
• Spam! Just when I think I've hit all the keywords to stop spam texts from politicians reaching me, along comes one more to add. Eventually I'll get there! I regret more than just about anything I've ever done sending money to one candidate... ONE... via "ActBlue." And the spam texts and emails have never, ever stopped ever since. No matter how many emails or phone numbers I block. The fuckers just keep making up new ones...

I love how ActBlue, which is about as skeezy an operation as you'll find just says "It's not our fault you keep getting donation requests from us... we just just provide tools for candidates to fundraise! You can't blame us!" And yet... all the people "using their services" are constantly saying "It's not the criminals! It's the guns that are the problem!" So... which is it? If ActBlue acted responsibly and forbade people from using their donation processing system if they send spam texts, and accepted complaints from people getting spammed with ActBlue requests who never "opted in," then there wouldn't be a problem. But ActBlue doesn't give a fuck. The more people using their service, the more money they make. And so I will never, ever donate to any candidate using ActBlue. I wish others would do the same. Then candidates would have nobody to blame but themselves for getting into bed with these fucking assholes.

   
• Fishy! The first Aquaman was dopey fun. So long as you didn't think too hard, it wasn't horrifically bad. Kind of a fantastical globe-spanning adventure. But Aquaman 2? Yeah, it's horrifically bad. And though some of the visuals are really great... most of it is so bad that it practically looked animated like a cartoon. And not in a good way. As if all that wasn't enough, the film is obsessed with Aquaman having piss be squirted in his mouth. Baby piss. Octopus piss. I spent the movie pretty sure that his wife is going to be pissing in his mouth any minute now. Or just full-on brick in his mouth. Which is the natural escalation we need. Hilariously, they ended Aquaman 2 the same way that they ended Black Panther... and THEN they ended it AGAIN the same way they ended Iron Man! They copied TWO Marvel Studios movie endings in the same film! Holy shit am I glad that the Zack Snyder reign of terror over the DCU is now officially over.

   
I guess that's enough trash for one Sunday. See you next week.

The sun is shining, there's no snow on the ground, and apparently Winter is over, but I'm trying not to think about a possible drought come Summer... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Portraiture! Auguste Toulmouche was a wonderful artist who is most well known for his portraits of fancy Parisian women. What made his paintings so notable was the expressions he painted on their faces. The most famous likely being La Fiancée hésitante (The Hesitant Bride)...

But my favorite of his is Vanity...

This past week I was going through my art books and noticed something I hadn't before. There is a portrait of Auguste by another artist of the day, Jean-Louis Hamon...

After Googling for other images of the guy and not finding any, I realized something... this is likely the only record of what Auguste looked like. All articles about the guy show this same image. It's a rough painting, and yet captures a feeling in a way that a photograph never could. One of the many reasons I love art so much. Here's a self-portrait of Hamon...

Amazing artist. I would kill to be able to paint hair like that.

   
• Méndez! I wrote a whole post over my love of the movie Half Brothers (which you can read here). I'm such a fan that I've been tracking down other works by the people in it. #1 on my list is Luis Gerardo Méndez. The guy's ability to emote what his character is feeling is jaw-dropping. He makes you feel every emotional beat of his character, and is a big reason why I love the film...

BUT ANYWAY... I was thrilled to learn that his latest project is on Paramount+ and is called Los Enviados. Except when I went to Paramount+ I couldn't find it. After a couple weeks, i.e. TODAY, I found out that it's there... you just can't search for its Spanish title. You have to search for The Envoys instead?? Weird, considering it's a Spanish language show. But anyway...

So, yeah. Most definitely checking this series out. The second season just dropped, so I'm assuming the first season must have been pretty great.

   
• Cameron Classics, Now On Digital! I love James Cameron movies. And two of my favorites are True Lies and The Abyss...

I bought them on both LaserDisc and DVD. My digital version were ripped from DVDs and hi-res broadcast because they've never been available to purchase on Digital (or Blu-Ray). Until now! And iTunes has both of them on sale for $9.99 each! So now I'm digital legal. As I endeavor to always be. The only time I'm not IS WHEN THEY DON'T MAKE THEM AVAILABLE FOR SALE!!!

   
• Rojas! Every time I rewatch Ted Lasso I find something new that I didn't know. Apparently, Danny Rojas is based on Mexican football star Javier Hernández. While reading up on Hernández, I ran across Diego Maradona, an Argentinian footballer who is rumored to also contribute to Danny's character. And THEN I found this old video of Maradona where he was warming up before a match. The song playing on the field in the background is Live is Life WHICH THEY PLAY AT THE END OF THE SECOND SEASON'S FIRST EPISODE! MIND. BLOWN. The epiode where Danny recovers from accidentally killing the team mascot. The people working on this show really know their football...

And SPEAKING of Ted Lasso... in the second episode Roy is walking out on the field with a young girl, which is most certainly his niece Phoebe. Except the actor isn't credited on IMDB and she doesn't actually appear in the story until the next episode, where Roy tells Ted about her when they visit the school with Trent Crimm (of The Independent). But if she was walking out with the team, wouldn't Ted have already met her and known who she was?

I must have watched the series a dozen times by now. And the earlier episodes even more. It got me through the horrors of the past three years, and it's pretty daunting knowing that there's no more coming to help me through 2024.

   
• Tidy! A friend posted a story about a mouse that tidys up a man's workbench every night. If there wasn't video evidence, you wouldn't believe it...

I wish my cats were this motivated. The whole incredible story is right here.

   
• Expenses! This truly is incredible...

And he really does do that...

Don't forget to be awesome. The guy in the videos is John Green. He wrote The Fault In Our Stars, a book I never read... but did enjoy the movie adaptation. He's a really great guy who has some very interesting thoughts. I love his YouTube channel so much, and recommend checking it out if you want to fall down a rabbit hole of awesome.

   
• Sigma Octantis! Just when I think I've seen all the flat earth idiocy that exists... along comes another one. Note at the top where the North Star (Polaris) is riiiiight up top...

I'd credit the artist... but I have no clue who that is

Polaris. POLARIS?!? Funny... according to this flat earth model dumbfuckery, you should be able to see Polaris from anywhere on earth. But any time I've traveled south of the equator, it was no longer visible. South Africa, Zimbabwe, Antarctica, Argentina, Fiji, Australia, Bali... no Polaris in sight. I checked! But do you want to know what's funny? Sigma Octantis (AKA The South Star) which is not visible in the northern hemisphere, is the star around which the night sky rotates when you are in the southern hemisphere. Almost as if the earth was a globe! Remarkable that! These flerfers really need to like... travel... and stuff. THE CONSTELLATIONS AREN'T EVEN THE FUCKING SAME! JESUS!!!

   
Really hoping we get some late snows so we have water this Summer.

It's easy to fall in love with art. At least it is to me.

Art is such a big part of my life that I do what I can to experience it. Whether it's driving over to Seattle to see a new art installation, or flying to Columbus, Ohio to see a Kehinde Wiley exhibit, or visiting every art museum I possibly can while traveling the world... art brings joy to my life.

But it's not just museums where you find art. It's all around us.

I've mentioned a couple times that I've collected bank notes I find whenever I'm in foreign countries. Some are interesting. Some are clever. And some are just incredibly beautiful. Like the notes that the Netherlands had before converting to the Euro. I marveled at them whenever I visited the country.

And finally somebody talked about it...

Fascinating, isn't it?

There's nice art on the various Euro notes as well, but I haven't seen anything that approaches what they used to have in Dutchyland.

Yesterday I was busy getting burnt so your bullets are a day late... because an all new Bullet Sunday on Monday starts... now...

   
• Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow! My favorite Star Trek has always been the original. None of the shows that followed come close. Until now. The third episode of Strange New Worlds is just one more brilliant feather in the show's cap...

Even if you're not a Star Trek nerd... you'll want to tune in if you love good television.

   
• Driven! I WAS NOT PREPARED!!

Fabulous.

   
• Pebbles! Holy crap...

I'd like... preserve those in acrylic... or something.

   
• New Pixar! Despite my having zero interest in Elemental, I am incredibly anxious to see the other upcoming Pizar flick...

   
• Matlock! WHERE HAVE I BEEN? DID Y'ALL KNOW ABOUT THIS?!???

Kathy Bates in a lawyer show? I will watch the hell out of this!

   
• NEWSFLASH: Titan Sub Search Could Cost Taxpayers Millions. The gubermint should sell insurance to rich people looking for dangerous thrills to cover the cost of rescue/recovery missions. It should be required. I had to buy a huge policy when I went to Antarctica in case I had to be air-lifted back to South America... why do rich people have to pay nothing? If you can afford a quarter million to go see Titanic, you can afford another quarter million in insurance.

   
• Dreams in Pink! Architectural Digest getting a tour of Barbie's Dream Home is what I need right now...

How somebody at AD thought to do this is pretty great.

   
Have a nice day at work tomorrow, England!

Spring has been one cold day after another for me on this 800th run at the bullets, but I am undeterred... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Invasion! When Secret Invasion was unleashed in the comic book world, it made for a wacky, weird, and wonderful story. Shape-changing Skrulls had been impersonating some pretty major players, and as everything unfolded you really didn't know who was going to be next. It's highly doubtful that the MCU will be able to go in this direction... it would be a massively expensive series if they did... but I'm still anticipating a few surprises along the way...

This has very much the feel of a Cold War thriller... except the deep-cover spies are Skrulls. And just look at the cast they got! Very excited to see where this leads... and what comes of it. If there are long-term consquences, it could make for some sweet stories later on.

   
• Singer! John Singer Sargent is one of my favorite painters... bridging the gap from the impressionists I love and the realists I admire. This short video gave me a new appreciation for his work, and is worth your valuable time to watch...

I love videos like this.

   
• Fun with Flags! And speaking of videos I love, CGP Grey makes some of my favorites...

I have no idea how he comes up with his ideas, but he has never released a video that wasn't fascinating. Even when they're as short as this one.

   
• Behind the Scenes! If you love the movie Arrival as I do, this is a real gem. But... spoilers... if you haven't seen it. Definitely watch the movie first...

The process that happens from story to screen is sometimes as fascinating as the film itself. Arrival is all kinds of interesting even without this. But with it?

   
• ZOMG! ZOMG! ZOMG! ZOMG! New Wes Anderson! This looks fantastic...

All of his films have a similar look and similar quirks to their characters. What makes them well worth watching is that all the stories are so different.

   
• Scotty! They are making a Scott Pilgrim animated series for Netflix... and all the actors from the movie are returning to voice their characters! I love it when massive stars like Chris Evans, Jason Schwartzman, and Aubrey Plaza signs on to do little projects like this. Obviously not a cash-grab for them... they just wants be a part of it. Very much looking forward to this, even though I thought Michel Cera was miscast in the original film.

Interesting to note that Young Neil is not so young any more! None of them are! The movie was THIRTEEN YEARS AGO!

   
Back under the blankets I go.

Be thankful that's all over... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• GoTGv3! Looks like Rocket is going to be an experiment by the High Evolutionary in the MCU, which makes perfect sense. Can't wait for this movie...

I'm sad it's the last Guardians film. But who knows where these characters will pop up next?

   
• Oh My! I had heard pieces of this story before, but not all together like this...

Epic. And hysterical.

   
• Balance! Some of the wealth on display here is... staggering...

My checking account is positively anemic by comparison.

   
• The Mickey Mantle Letter. Definitely NSFW material (in text), so proceed at your own risk... but holy crap!

   
• Dial of Destiny! Sure looks better than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull...

And hopefully it is better, because nothing would make me happier than Indy going out on a high note.

   
• Rogue Wave! It seems odd to me that cruise ships sail to Antarctica. I went on a research vessel that was built like a tank with limited people onboard, and the water got so rough that one person ended up with a compound fracture and others were hurt. Our boat was tossed around like a cork in a blender, and it still feels miraculous that we made it through without suffering more injuries than we did. But a cruise ship?? That just seems like a recipe for disaster. And for this ship it was.

   
Now I really need to take a long winter's nap.

On February 19, 2022, I was sitting in my home watching the final two installments of "The Wedding Veil Trilogy" on Hallmark Channel. In the second film, they end up in Burano, Italy, a small island near Venice which is known for fine lace and colorful houses. As I do every time a place I've been to appears in a movie, I take a quick look at my travel photos from my visits and try to remember details of my trip.

Turns out I remembered quite a lot. But one thing I couldn't remember is how far it was from Venice to Burano. All I could recall was that it was the vaporetto stop after the cemetery island and the island of Murano. A quick look at Google Maps, and I saw that Burano was quite a bit further away than I was thinking it was...

Map © Google

Because the movie wasn't very good, I found myself wandering around Venice using Google Maps "Street View"... tracing my way around the places I had been in my two trips to visit.

Eventually I got around to this...

Map © Google

Now that's weird... what's that glass cage doing there?

On March 20, 2011, I was in Venice, Italy. While there I posted a photo of a giant statue of a small boy holding a frog at the Punta della Dogana...

On August 16th, 2015, I was in Los Angeles, California. While there I posted a photo of a giant statue of a small boy holding a frog at The Getty Center...

At the time I remarked that it was weird how there were duplicate statues half a world away from each other.

So tonight I decided to Google for more information on the statues to see why there were two of them...

• In 2008 artist Charles Ray used 3D computer modeling to create models of a photo that had been taken. The work, entitled Boy with Frog, was then super-sized and built out of fiberglass over a steel frame for a commission by François Pinault to stand outside of a museum he was building to house his art collection in Venice.
• The Punta della Dogana museum opened in June 2009. Boy with Frog was installed for the opening, sitting on land owned by the City of Venice. The lease to house the sculpture was renewed with the city four times a year.
• Sometime in 2011 the fiberglass sculpture in Venice was replaced with a painted stainless steel version.
• On July 26, 2011 the fiberglass version made its way to The Getty Center in L.A. where it was put on temporary display until January of 2012.
• In May of 2013 the stainless steel version was removed from the Punta della Dogana and replaced with a reproduction of a lamp post.

Apparently the Google Maps Street View image I saw was snapped prior to May of 2013. Furthermore, the statue had a police guard during the day, but had the glass cage locked around it at night to protect it from vandalism.

Now I am going a little bit crazy, because I have some questions about what I've read...

• Which version did I see in Venice in March of 2011? Had the fiberglass version been removed and I saw the painted stainless steel version? Or was the fiberglass version still on display at that time?
• If the temporary installation of the fiberglass version was to be removed from The Getty Center in January of 2012, then how did I see it there in August of 2015? Perhaps it wasn't removed after all? Was it removed and brought back for a while? Where is it now?
• From what I can tell, the stainless steel version ended up at the Philadelphia Museum of art, but is currently on display at a Charles Ray exhibit at The Met in New York City.

It seems absurd that such an important and beloved work has so little concrete information available about it. The good news is that I think I saw both the fiberglass and the painted stainless steel versions. And, if it turns out I haven't, a trip to Philadelphia can solve that (or New York City, if I can get there before June 5th).

So much good entertainment news this week, but I'm keeping my expectations in check... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Old Guard! My favorite movie of 2020, by a large margin, is getting a sequel! Starring Charlize Theron and based on the comic book of the same name, I literally can't say enough good things about it...

Apparently everybody's coming back, though a major shift at the end of the movie adaptation have me wondering if the follow-up movie will attempt to adapt the story of the follow-up comic book, Force Multiplied.

   
• Atomic Blonde! And speaking of Charlize Theron... her other amazing film, Atomic Blonde, is not getting just one sequel... it's apparently getting two!

This is phenomenal news, because the first movie was a spy thriller unlike anything I had seen before. I only hope that whomever picked the songs for the soundtrack comes back to select them for the sequels, because that just made an incredible film even better.

   
• Dark! And I'm not done with awesome entertainment news! Yet another amazing movie has a television series sequel in development... Dark City! But it gets better! Original director Alex Proyas is going to be working on it!

I remember the original film very well. A friend and I had made a trip to Seattle and had some time to kill. There was a theater near our hotel so we decided to see a movie. Nothing looked interesting to us, but we eventually settled on Dark City because it at least was supposed to be science fiction, which we both liked. Nothing could have prepared us for what we were going to see. It was an absolutely fascinating story and had some of the most stunning visuals of any film I had seen up to that point. Visuals, I might add, we've seen copied in any number of films (there were times watching Doctor Strange that I couldn't get Dark City out of my head). No word as to whether any of the original characters will be returning, but

   
• Happy Little Trees! I finally got to the Bob Ross documentary on Netflix. I was most pleased that they acknowledged that The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross was preceded by The Magic of Oil Painting with Bill Alexander. They were essentially the same program using the same technique... except Bob Ross was ASMR personified. I remember when I was a kid how upset I was that Bill Alexander was replaced with the new guy, but ultimately fell in love with Bob Ross just like everybody else did. I am fairly certain that I saw every single episode of both series, and was a huge, huge fan...

From PBS. But, just in case... © ® ™ Bob Ross Inc. so I don't get sued.

The documentary was quite good, but I didn’t learn anything new from it. I was well aware of the battle between Bob Ross and The Kowalskis, and was hoping that we would finally get their side of the story. But nope! They opted out and provided a weak-ass statement, which only makes me believe that they are awful people who didn’t honor the wishes of Bob Ross and tried to cheat everybody out of ownership of what they were left after Bob Ross died (not to mention the awful things they did to steal from other artists). Such a shame. With all those millions of dollars there was plenty of money to go around while still honoring Bob Ross’s final wishes. UPDATE: Bob Ross Inc. Responds to Netflix Doc.

   
• Eeelie! DAFUQ?!? CAN SOMEBODY CONFIRM THIS?!?

It's like... I don't even know how to respond after watching this.

   
• Sheep! "A sheep farmer stuck in lockdown in New South Wales who was unable to attend his aunt’s funeral has honoured her memory with the ultimate tribute: a love heart made from sheep."

The innovation of people to escape the confines of the horrors of this never-ending pandemic provides hope amongst the ignorance and selfishness that plagues us.

   
• Value! "Spread the word. This has to stop." — People really are the worst...

And just as a sample of what this guy has to deal with...

Jesus, humanity. Do fucking better.

   
Any more attempt at bullets and I'd be shooting blanks. So until next week...