Since I'm back from my Thanksgiving adventure, I might as well bullet up the internet... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Past Midnight! Fly By Midnight is my favorite band of 2021... and they never disappoint. This live broadcast is wonderful...

I cannot believe that I didn't even know they even existed until a couple months ago. The music industry is weird.

   
• Mata WHAT?! Okay. I know it will get better. I understand this. But right now? No thanks. The "metaverse" looks awful...

Maybe for an occasional chat, but I don't want to live here.

   
• InstaGreat! Oh nothing... just InstaCart making my Thanksgiving be great by doing God's work...

Alas, Instacart isn't quite so accessible when I'm at home... but across the mountains I absolutely love that a few clicks is all it takes to get whatever you need brought right to your door!

   
• DavidLL! Six calls. SIX FUCKING CALLS to U.S. Bank to try and get my name correct on my account. Surely I am not the only "II" to ever have an account at US Bank?? But despite SIX CALLS, my account is still fucked up. My name is David Simmer II. Not David II Simmer. Not David Simmer LL. Not DavidL Simmer. Not DavidSimmer LL. AND NOT DAVID L LL!! Jesus Christ... what the fuck does it take? How hard is this? Apparently it's equivalent to fucking brain surgery that it's STILL NOT RIGHT after SIX FUCKING CALLS!!! Forget having nice, kind customer service agents. I want a total asshole who will ACTUALLY. GET. THE. JOB. DONE!

The fifth time I literally walked them through it... "The first name box should be DAVID, the last name box should be SIMMER, the suffix box should be TWO CAPITAL I's to get II. I don't use my middle name and would prefer not to have it left blank, but if you insist, the middle name box should say LEWIS. Didn't make any difference. Still got it wrong.

   
• Dope Soap! I see Ice-T in the new Tide Pod commercials and try very hard to remember that he had a music career before he went into acting... and pushing soap. Which is a far cry from when he was pushing dope, which was definitely not cleaned by soap...

I don't play when it comes to my dope
I check my lyrics close, like with a microscope
I don't clean'em up with no ivory soap
I leave'em hard and pure, hope that you can cope
Because you might O.D. if you overdrive

Tide Pods... the soap that's dope!

   
• Spidey 4, 5, 6! Rumor has it that Sony has backed up a dump truck full of cash to Tom Holland's house for another trilogy of Spider-Man movies. This makes me very, very happy. While ultimately I'm looking forward to Miles Morales taking over the role, I think that Peter Parker has some stories left to tell. Besides, they can always do a Miles Morales movie, then have worlds merge in Spider-Man 6 as a nice hand-off kind of thing.

   
• A Mother's Love! And, lastly, I had no idea that this happened... The Open Christmas Letter.

   
Enjoy those fleeting shopping days until Christmas!

The world may be going to hell in a hand basket, but you can look forward to the journey... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Dune: The Book! When an art book for Blade Runner 2049 was made (called The Art and Soul of Blade Runner 2049) I bought it immediately. The movie was so beautifully realized that I had to see the work behind it. And I was not disappointed. It was a wonderful book that provided some juicy insight into how it was crafted. When I saw that Dune had an "Art and Soul" book coming, I pre-ordered it before the movie was released because I knew Denis Villeneuve wouldn't disappoint...

And he did not disappoint again. The book is gorgeous and rich with detail. With a notable exception. I didn't see anything on the written alphabet that's presented on the scroll Duke Leto signs at the beginning or what's found in Paul's book or on Dr. Yueh's note. This seems a weird omission given how much thought must have gone into it?

   
• Language! The spoken languages of the Fremen was expanded upon by David J. Peterson. He also created the sign language used by the characters. And he put his work online! (along with some other languages he created for film and television, which you can find here). Fascinating stuff. I especially loved how he showed (then explained!) Jessica signing to Paul when they were bound and taken out to the desert to die. And shared a PDF of his transcription for the closed captioning! There's additional stuff showing some writing, but not what I saw in the book and Yueh's note, which is what I was most interested in.

   
• Meme! Lastly on the Dune front is my attempt at a meme...

Yeah, yeah. But I couldn't help myself.

   
• 80's Rewind! My favorite music will forever be 80's Pop. I listen to many other kinds, but that's my go-to jam. Running across music I missed from that era is rare. But finding new music which is clearly 80's-Pop-inspired is an increasingly abundant treat. This past week I found two artists that take me back. The first is CARSON and this wonderful track, Good Love...

And then there's the band Fly By Midnight, which has a number of great songs that feel like they could have been released 35 years ago...

Some of the tracks are a bit more contemporary, but they still have an 80's sensibility in how they're constructed that have me addicted...

And then there's the YouTube suggestions that are filling me with even more incredible stuff. Conor Matthews has some stuff I never knew existed but now can't live without...

New old music is the best music!

   
• BARGAIN! My favorite home renovation show is Bargain Block on HGTV. I don't always like the design result, but the road to getting there is great. And it's been renewed for a second season!

Sometimes good news happens when it comes to the shows I like!

   
• Conspiracy Made Real! Netflix has unloaded one of the most depraved animated shows ever, which is hysterically funny to watch...

The imagination that goes into creating this series is really great. It's not just crude for the sake of being crude. Doesn't get much better than that!

   
• Rami is Pete and Pete is Rami! Saturday Night Live has moments of genius that shouldn't exist. And this one from the previous episode is one of them...

Inspired. The genius of it makes things funnier than they actually are to me.

   
And no more fresh hell until next Sunday.

I watched the last episode of 60 Minutes about the Facebook whistleblower because I was expecting some serious dirt. Some people were saying that the Facebook outage was intentional so that people on Facebook wouldn't be discussing the 60 minutes interview, so it must be juicy, right?

Turns out that it was not.

It was the opposite of juicy. Which, according to the listed antonyms of the word, means it was dull, bland, juiceless, moral, withered, sere, desiccated, boring, dehydrated, unfavorable, shriveled, unexciting, disadvantageous, clean, unsexy, uninteresting, and dry.

The story was all those things because all the allegations were just so fucking obvious. Facebook puts profits above its users? ZOMFG! I may die of un-shock.

Facebook is a piece of shit company. They put users like me in Facebook jail for the stupidest crap so they can say "SEE! WE ARE DOING SOMETHING!"... yet some people can say whatever the fuck they want, and spouting COVID misinformation (which is LITERALLY KILLING PEOPLE) is perfectly okay. I can't joke "all men are pigs" when I am, in fact, a man and am clearly joking... THAT will get deleted... yet a man can threaten to beat up a woman and there are ZERO consequences on Facebook, even if you report it.

So, yeah. What a waste of my fucking time. If I didn't have so many people important to me which I only have contact with on Facebook, I'd have ditched them long ago.

What was not a waste of my time was the the story after the whistleblower non-story about Tony Bennet preparing for his final concerts amidst him having alzheimers. It was absolutely fascinating. And heartbreaking. Especially if you've had to go through it with somebody you care about.

Cannot possibly recommend watching this highly enough. Worth your valuable time...

The reaction by Lady Gaga at the end when Tony knows her name... it's like... all the feels. I've been there. And you feel exactly like that. And when it happens less and less, you are hit by it harder and harder. I still remember the last time my mom remember who I am, even as I am forgetting all the less happy times around it.

But that's how it works, right? That's how we cope? Cling to the good things and let go of the bad?

It's how I cope, anyway.

They may be more than meets the eye, but Transformers ain't got nothing on this blog... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Classic? Still really, really pissed at the Coca-Cola Company for fucking up Coke Zero. It tastes like such horrendous shit that I am still not used to it... and likely never will be. The only caffeinated beverage I liked, and it's just... gone.

   
• GAH! Taylor Swift has been re-recording her music due to legal ownership issues with her back-catalog. Her vocals are as good as ever, but the new music is awful. Wildest Dreams, one of my favorites, was just re-recorded and they trashed the music on it. It used to be so open, bright, uplifting, and soaring... now it’s flat, boring, and dour. Almost depressing...

There’s this throbbing bass line just fuzzing over everything and it’s truly terrible. I fully support Ms. Swift taking back ownership of her work, but not like this. Not like this. Ugh.

   
• Safe & Effective! The Pfizer vaccine is apparently far less effective than Moderna over time... and yet they only authorized the Pfizer booster for people 65 years and older or people at high risk? What the fuck kind of nonsense is this? If it's an issue of them not having enough vaccine for people who are unvaccinated, then yeah... I can wait. But the number of people getting vaccinated right now has to be fairly low given how many people are refusing to protect themselves and others, so what the hell?

   
• Whitney! They are remaking The Bodyguard? Yeah. Good luck with that. On top of having to replace the irreplaceable, you run the very real risk of trampling over a sacred ground you don't want to be stepping...

I dunno. Maybe the stars will align and they can find a cast that works and find a way of avoiding the disrespect that comes from a wound still fresh... but I won't want to watch it for a very long time. If ever.

   
• Beard! Yet another fantastic flawless episode of Ted Lasso... this one focusing almost entirely on Coach Beard (with a little more Mae, Baz, Phil, and Jeremy thrown in)...

I sure hope that a few of the other characters that haven't been featured much get at least some character development. They could almost film an entirely new series focusing on the lives of everybody outside of the football club and it's probably going to be great just from the standpoint of adding to the greater narrative.

   
• Character! I have watched most all of the character breakdown videos from GQ. My favorite that I've seen is this one with Willem Dafoe...

He is a compelling guy, a phenomenally talented actor, and listen to him talking about his career is fascinating stuff.

   
• Money Shot! Okay... this is pretty incredible...

Now, of course, the answer to everything is just "CGI"... but in the days before CGI? This is what there was.

   
And that's a wrap for bullets one-day-delayed.

Well, it's really happening.

One of my all-time favorite bands is ABBA. When I was young I listened to their stuff near-constantly, and owned everything they released.

And despite fans clamouring for new music... despite an offer of $1 billion for a world tour... they resisted. ABBA was over. The music was done. And there was nothing more to come in the future.

Until there was.

And today was the day.

A new album titled Voyage and a virtual concert performance is forthcoming...

And, in all seriousness, could this be any more brilliant?

The album itself is arriving on November 5th...

And two of the tracks... I Still Have Faith in You and Don't Shut Me Down... are available to listen to right now.

And so 2021 is shaping up to not be so terrible after all perhaps?

UPDATE: When I pre-ordered the album from iTunes, I saw that the complete track listing is there plus you get a digital booklet!

1. I Still Have Faith in You
2. When You Danced with Me
3. Little Things
4. Don't Shut Me Down
5. Just a Notion
6. I Can Be That Woman
7. Keep an Eye on Dan
8. Bumblebee
9. No Doubt About It
10. Ode to Freedom

I totally trust ABBA and all... but... Keep an Eye on Dan—?!?!?

UPDATE UPDATE! And here's the lyric video for Don't Shut Me Down (which I've had on repeat for a hundred times now) and a video for I Still Have Faith in You which features the ABBAtars at the end...

There we go!

I've said many, many times that I am a massive, unapologetic Miley Cyrus fan. It started with Hannah Montana and has carried all the way through her music career. Her voice just hits me right every time. I held off watching her Stand By You concert until this last day of Pride because it seemed a great way to close out the month.

It was fantastic.

Miley is a ride-or-die LGBTQ+ ally, and she uses every possible opportunity to back that up in this show. If you haven't seen it, it's on Peacock. If you don't have Peacock, it's worth getting the free trial just to watch it.

Here's my live commentary as I watched, just in case you can't live without my thoughts...

• Billy Ray! They started with Billy Ray Cyrus! And... is that really Tish Cyrus?!? No. Drag queen impersonator? I'm lost and the show hasn't even started!
• Starting out with a cover of Cher's Believe seems about the most appropriate way to open a celebration of Pride there could ever be. It's a great rendition of a classic. A drag queen review accompanying her is just the icing on the cake.
• Not being a fan of Country, I am not terribly familiar with Little Big Town, but they are doing a very nice cover of Cyndi Lauper's True Colors with Miley.
• Ooh! My Heart Beats for Love is a good Miley track to include in a Pride celebration! Such a great song.
• Oh gawd. TJ from Brothers Osbourne came out rocking a French tuck. I BLAME TAN FRANCE FOR THIS MADNESS! To make up for it, they're singing a cover of Pat Benatar's We Belong. Beautifully.
• A Madonna Medley! As if they had a choice. I think the crowd would have burned down the theater if Madonna hadn't been involved in here somewhere. My favorite Madonna song by a long mile is Express Yourself (I'm sure it has nothing to do with the David Fincher music video). Miley is absolutely doing it proud. Which makes sense. It's for Pride, after all. Oh man. Like a Prayer. If Miley sings Take a Bow or Holiday it will complete a trifecta of my favorite Madonna tracks!
• It's not like I give a crap about Orville Peck's whole "Masked Singer" schtick... I'm just not a fan because he always sounds so forced and unnatural. Doesn't help that they are dueting Cowboy Take Me Away, which is a song I don't much care for to begin with.
• ABBA! Oh man. And it's GOOD! Maren Morris can hold her own against Miley, so this is a great duet. Dancing Queen remains an amazing song in any decade.
• Party in the USA is a fantastic Pride anthem... so of course Miley's singing a snippet of it. This is a slightly subdued version that's absolutely beautiful. Why couldn't we have gotten the entire song?
• Welp. Doing my best to hold it together as Miley belts out I'll Stand By You. I would have totally shat myself if Chrissie Hynde walked out to sing it with her.
• Mickey Guyton is back! Joining Miley for a rendition of Blondie's Heart of Glass. Now, don't get me wrong... Mickey is killing it... but I love Miley's version of this song and wish it hadn't been a duet.
• Believe it or not, The Climb is not one of my most favorite Miley songs, but it is so hugely apropriate for a Pride special that she can't really not sing it.
• Miley getting her makeup fixed on-stage is about the most Miley thing to happen so far.
• Oh... all I had to do was wait. Here's the full song of Party in the USA. Except... Miley is destroying her own song by adding audience participation. Always fun if you're actually in the audience... always a boner-killer if you're watching at home. And now she's talk-singing. Ugh. Just why? And just when you think it couldn't get worse? CHEER-SINGING!
• LAST SONG?? But we just got started! — George Michael's Freedom... well that's just about perfect isn't it?

I tell you what... I would have given just about anything to be at this concert. What a fun night with some great performances!

Baby it's hot outside, but the hot lead from my bullets are even hotter... and an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Pride! I could do an entire week of posts on the TikToks of ileavebreadcrumbs. He is a man who married a male soldier during the era of "Don't Ask Don't Tell," and his stories are just... a lot. I cannot even fathom how straight couples would deal with the same obstacle that gay couples have to endure. Just take for instance their wedding...

The fact that he is willing to put himself out there knowing that homophobic bigots are just waiting to tear him apart in the comments is everything that Pride exists for. Love = Love.

   
• Pride Again! And it doesn't stop there. His husband is not just "fairly famous"... he's famous-famous." His story has been discussed in many, many places. Including, most famously, on The Daily Show...

He was even a part of The Newsroom...

That's all kind of crazy how they found out they were on a TV show! But... remarkable too.

   
• More Pride! But the TikTok that destroyed me was this one...

Do yourself a favor and go watch his TikToks. This is why we have a Pride Month.

   
• At The Car Wash, Yeah! A friend shared this video on Facebook and I must have watched it a hundred times by now. It's just that good...

Somebody filmed him doing it again, but this time we get to see him walk off...

I mean, you can see him just patiently waiting for the brush to come down and then walk directly underneath when it gets low enough. Makes ME want to give this a try!

   
• Salvage! One of my truly joyful distractions on YouTube is Baumgartner Restoration. Julian is an absolute master of his craft, and his latest project... restoring a van Dijk... is him at the absolute top of his game. If you have time to spare (and I highly recommend making time) this is a remarkable mini-documentary. UPDATE: The second part is even better, so I'm posting it instead (you can still catch the first part here, if you're hungry for the whole story)...

Absolutely incredible. UPDATE: and in this second part, be sure to watch an "end credits scene" that follows the blank black frame at the end (because there are no credit!).

   
• SHARRRRK! And... I've cleared my calendar for Shark Week starting July 11th. Thank heavens I have Discovery+, because I will absolutely be tuning in for Stranger Sharks!...

Oh, who am I kidding. I'll be tuning in for all of the shows!

   
• Beer Beer! Truck Truck! You may remember when I mentioned that a guy made a song out of somebody (rightly) critiquing Country music...

Well, it finally came out as an actual song. It's good. But a part of me thinks that something got lost in translation from the demo to the finished song...

The additional twang and polish is a bit distracting from what I was used to in the original track. Even so... that's a song that's going to be popping up on my SONOS rotation! And I'm not even a fan of Country music!

   
Now, if you'll pardon me, I'll go back to watching my air conditioning electricity bill continue to bankrupt me.

There's so much going on right now that I'm having trouble slowing my mind enough to get some sleep. My solution? As with so many things now-a-days... it's TikTok.

This guy covers songs a other artists, and what he comes up with is so good. The 1975 is one of my favorite bands, and her nails this. Just nails it. If you’re on TikTok, go be amazed. @maxfrostmusic...

He is able to effortlessly step into different musical styles...

I mean...

Then it just starts getting unreal...

And into a region that's uncanny to an insane degree...

Yeah, this is exactly the kind of thing I need to take my mind off of the world.

This past week I've been planting stuff in my flower beds. I got everything into the ground on Sunday and finished my planter on Tuesday. Surprisingly, I must have learned a thing or two from previous years, as ALL of my flowers survived the process. I took a walk around when I got home from work yesterday and was most pleased.

Then this afternoon the skies opened up and a torrential flood of rain fell out.

At first I thought that it would be a momentary thing that lasted for just a couple minutes. But eventually the rain kept dropping harder and harder and I started to worry about my poor flowers. After 10 minutes I couldn't take it any more and ran home to see what was happening to them...

The answer was... nothing good. So I ran around trying to cover them.

All the irises that hadn't already fallen over from their own weight were pounded flat.

My larger flowers were okay... with minor damage and a few snapped stems that had to be trimmed.

But the smaller flowers, which I thought would be just fine because of their proximity to the ground, were ripped to shreds. Not the alyssum, of course... that shit can survive just about anything... but all the tiny blue, purple, and yellow flowers I liked so much. They had their petals ripped off and their leaves buried in mud. They likely have new blooms yet to come, so I expect that I'll see them come back. But right now there's just little stubs where flowers once grew.

I spent a while digging a small trench to vacate all the water from the beds. I then had to manually scoop the water out of my planters. I left the irises alone, however, because they were going to fall over eventually anyway.

After I finished up, I went inside to take a shower, change clothes, and grab a sandwich.

And the minute I sat down to enjoy that sandwich?

Here comes the torrential flood of rain again.

I've had many mormon friends over the years that have come to mean a lot to me. And, without exception, they have accepted it when I tell them that I try to live my life according to Buddhist principles and that's enough for me. They've never attempted to "convert" me. They've never condemned me or my beliefs. They've never lied or harmed members of my family. They've never been anything except nice to me. And so I've done my very best to be kind to them in turn.

When I'm traveling and run into Mormon missionaries, I stop and say hello, ask how they're doing, and ask them where they are from to make conversation. Especially when I am in a foreign country, because I know they're probably homesick and lonely. Being nice costs me nothing.

This is not to say that I don't have issues with the Mormon Church. Far from it. I was absolutely infuriated when they, as a tax-exempt entity, decided to support the virulently anti-gay Prop. 8 Campaign. But I feel this way about all the churches that decided to become anti-gay propaganda machines. If you want to be a PAC, then that makes you taxable, and you should lose your exemption. Period.

But anyway... ultimately if you want to be Mormon (or whatever) and aren't using it as a weapon to against people (see Prop. 8 above) then you do you and I'll do me.

And if you want to stop being a Mormon, that's okay with me too.

Which brings us to Mormon Stories.

Mormon Stories Podcast is a series of conversations with John Dehlin which center around Mormonism. It started as a forum where Mormons could discuss all aspects of the religion from varying perspectives. And it's fascinating. I was reminded of this recently when a friend brought up Tyler Glenn (lead singer from Neon Trees). Back when I first got into the band (late... just four years ago or so), I found a 3-part interview he did about his growing up in Mormonism... and what eventually caused him to leave the church. If you don't know of him, he's the guy behind the fantastic theme song for Love, Victor...

I ended up listening to Tyler's episode all over again. I think what makes it so compelling is just how smart, kind, and humble he is when talking about Mormonism. His perspective is part uplifting... part heartbreaking... but all interesting. Even if you're not a fan of Neon Trees I still highly recommend listening to his appearance on Mormon Stories. Yes, it's six hours long, but once you start listening the time flies by. I (re)listened to it while I was working...

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's an interview with Jeremy Runnells about his infamous letter questioning Mormonism that's fascinating in a more analytical way. There's an interview with Wayne Sermon from the band Imagine Dragons that's every bit as interesting as Tyler Glenn's story. There's an interview with Noah Rasheta, who teaches Secular Buddhism from the perspective an ex-Mormon. The list goes on and on.

If you're looking for a new podcast series about a subject you may not even be familiar with, give it a listen.