My mom was a huge fan of murder mysteries. She's the one who got me addicted to Agatha Christie novels. She also got me addicted to all those British "cozies" murder mysteries and Murder She Wrote, Perry Mason, Ironside, and a slew of others.

But the show I loved above all of them was Columbo, because it was so darn clever how the audience was shown the murder at the beginning so that they knew something Columbo didn't. The entertainment was not in figuring out who the murderer was, but watching Columbo figure out who the murderer was. And seeing him being underestimated at every turn when, in fact, he was always the smartest guy in the room.

Recently I started rewatching Columbo to decompress at the end of the day.

In many ways, the show holds up.

In other ways, I had entirely forgotten how insanely weird the series could get from time to time. In the second episode, for example, there's a long, very long scene of the murderer (Robert Culp!) cleaning up the scene of his crime... all reflected in another man's glasses! It was a bizarre stylistic choice. It was also pretty terrible, being wildly distracting and going on way too long.

But the rest of the episode was a great watch, as always.

And the series proved to be excellent inspiration for another awesome show that worked in the same way, Poker Face. You can almost feel how Natasha Lyonne was doing her best to channel Peter Falk! And why wouldn't she? Falk's Columbo is one of the most brilliantly-realized characters in the history of the genre.

You don't get 9 seasons and 14 specials without being brilliant.

What's worse than having a smoke allergy during wildfires? Vomiting so hard that you throw your back into spasm, so now you have two things to torment you.*

On Saturday morning I was feeling so much better. But then nausea returned with a vengeance that night. I had anti-nausea pills left from something, which helped... but they were gone before I knew it and I had to wait until today for that plus some muscle relaxers for the stabbing pain in my back when I move. Or, Lord help me, cough.

Or, you know, violently throw up because you thought pasta salad was a good move.

Fortunately, laying on a heating pad got me through Sunday and the pills got me through my work day today (and I was able to keep dry toast down) so it was more of the same, I suppose.

There was a good thing that happened though.

While laying on the heating pad all day yesterday, I ran across an Australian show on Hulu which is one of the best things I've seen in a minute. I was going to take a pass because it deals with self-harm, but the trailer looked so good...

And I'm ever so glad I watched it.

It tackles a difficult, sensitive, and painful subject with wit, charm, and compassion... and is entertaining on top of it all. Exactly the diversion I needed, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I'm probably going to watch it again very soon.

There is one lingering question I have about the series that I won't say here because it could spoil things. Maybe it will be answered in the second season. Or maybe it never will because it's supposed to be up to the viewer. It doesn't matter. What does matter is how much I loved In Limbo.

Highest recommendation.

   
   
*Aside from the usual torments of daily life, of course.

The wildfire smoke may have me cowering in my home, but life goes on... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Imperial Forces! Well this is epic...

When I was sent this TikTok, I marveled at the fact that this cat even allows the helmet to be put on his head. My cats would run off the second I even got the helmet near their heads.

   
• Gadget Time! Speaking of 3D printing...

It's enough to make me want to buy a 3D printer, except I know I'd never be this clever. Here's another video by the same guy...

I mean, come on. All of these are genius.

   
• DIYphone! Speaking of 3D printing... this right here is one of the coolest things you'll see all day. Guy made his own phone with clicky keyboard. The patience required to work through all this is mind-boggling...

Brah. The fact that the result is so killer is just icing on the cake. Instant subscribe to Marcin Plaza's YouTube Channel, which is brilliant, clever, and funny. And worth your valuable time.

   
• Pi Times Two! Speaking of 3D printing... and now... this...

Now, I know this is nothing compared to the earliest days of computing where the components of the computers themselves had to be built... but, still... this kind of thing is pretty amazing. 3D printing is making it possible to do all kinds of cool stuff.

   
• Neat! I was given a link to this article: Obscure But Badass Folks You Should Know About, which is exactly what it claims to be. AND THEN... I fell down the very large rabbit hole that is Neatorama. You've been warned.

   
• More Mitchell! A while ago I shared a video of David Mitchell's rants from the brilliant Would I Lie To You. Well, here's more laugh out loud moments...

I swear, the Royal Wedding statement, which I've watched multiple times now... always, always gets me.

   
And now back to being a hermit.

Since I frickin' lost all the entries I had written for this week and am having to go back and remember what I must have been doing during this incredibly busy week.

Work, mostly.

And while I work? The many adaptations of Agatha Christie's fantastic murder mystery sleuth, Miss Marple. My mom was a huge Christie fan and I'd read the books she got from the library after she finished them. It was a natural progression from the Encyclopedia Brown books of my youth.

But anyway, back to adaptations...

My most favorite adaptation of Marple is the two TV movies starring Helen Hayes... A Caribbean Mystery and Murder with Mirrors. To this day I remain gutted that we didn't get another movie or six from her, because she added such a flawless and effortless air of mischief to the character.

Before Helen Hayes we got a different take on Marple by Angela Lansbury in The Mirror Crack'd. The movie was a good one, but Lansbury was much better suited to playing Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote (which my mom also loved). Alas, the movie didn't do well at the box office, killing a planned trilogy.

Joan Hickson is widely seen as the "definitive" Miss Marple by many, and her adaptations of the 12 novels are legend. What's bizarre is that Agatha Christie herself wanted Hickson to eventually play the character after seeing her in a play in the 1940's. It's bizarre because this series didn't start filming until 1984. Which means Christie was seeing the actor 40 years before she would play the role, and died before she saw Hickson realize her dream casting choice. Of all the adaptations made, this series is probably the most faithful (or, as faithful as it could be given that so much time had passed since the books were written).

And then we come to Marple... the adaptation which wasn't much of an adaptation which ran from 2004-2009. Granted, it's been so long since I read the books that I'm a bit fuzzy on details, but this series plopped Marple into stories she wasn't actually in and changed some major plot points of the books in which she did. As if that weren't enough, they invented details of Marple's life which don't remotely fit the character (she's always been a spinster, but this show gave her the back-story of having had an affair with a married man in the second episode?!?). Geraldine McEwan starred in the first three series and was fine... but the entire appeal of Marple is that she's a sweet old lady. Instead they wrote her as slightly more aggressive in this series, so the charm just wasn't there. When she retired and the role was taken by Julia Mckenzie, they kinda realized the error of their ways and reverted her personality back to the sweet old lady from the novels. Which is to say that I liked the final three series quite a bit more than the first three, and there were some excellent episodes. Even so, the Hickson series still manages to top anything we got here.

And now we're in 2025 where apparently we're getting new Miss Marple movie adaptations after the success of the Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot films. I'll watch them, of course, but I didn't think any of the three modern Poirot adaptations were as good as what came before. Albert Finney (Murder on the Orient Express) and Peter Ustinov (Death on the Nile) were sublime in their respective film adaptations, and David Suchet's take on Hallowe'en Party (which became A Haunting in Venice) is also my preferred adaptation. But still... I'll hope for the best.

No matter what happens, the books still exist*

   
*Albeit with the racism, antisemitism, and other bits edited out for modern audiences.

I may not have a three day weekend like some people in the USA, but don't you fear about me making time for bullets... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Small, Small World! The Disfarers YouTube channel has been interesting, and I've been going back through them to see what I missed. This one from three months ago is hands-down one of the most fascinating Disney Parks video I've ever seen. It's not just about It's a Small World, it's about the fascinating process of Imagineering which has a lot of cameos by a lot of rides...

While not a fan of the ride so much, I'm a massive fan of Mary Blair, and have always appreciated the artistry of the ride. And now I appreciate it even more.

   
• Wedneday Murder Club? Why. Why would Netflix make a major change to The Thursday Murder Club when they KNOW that this has screwed up faithfully adapting the future books? Insanity. Just insanity. I know the book was much deeper and some things (like back-story) would be lost when translated to a 2-hour movie (requiring some things to change), but this? THIS?!? What possible reason? My opinion of Chris Columbus as a director just dropped several stories. And the pacing is awful. Slow at the start where things could have been cut, then rushes to the botched ending where the time should have been spent. Character personalities are changed to bad effect. A good director would understand the books well enough to realize that this change wasn't a good one, and had the writers re-think things. Jeez what a disappointment. If you buy the rights to the book to turn it into the movie... ADAPT THE FUCKING BOOK! Two out of five stars because I'm mad a book series I love with actors I love was mostly good... until it wasn't.

   
• Atom Man vs. Superman! YouTube has a lot of cool restoration videos. The ones I'm enjoying now are the paper poster videos, because it always amazes me how they can just dump water on everything in order to flatten it (something I've tried after watching it, and it works... if you're careful). This last one I saw is very cool because it's so big...

I cannot imagine how much this kind of restoration would cost.

   
• Peaches! In my news feed, there was an article about Thomas Rhett's wife being pregnant with their fifth child. And I didn't know who that was. So I Googled him and some images popped up. Didn't recognize him, but he's obviously a famous country singer. then I see him in a Boston Red Sox jersey and am like... okay... I like him already. Then I see how famous he is, and I'm like... oh... I'm sure I've heard his stuff then. I click on the Boston photo and it's from his Instagram. I click though to that. He's got a beautiful family. And then I see gem...

Legendary dad material.

   
• Cracker! I didn't think that the new Cracker Barrel logo was terrible (for the minute it was used). But it was beyond terrible FOR Cracker Barrel. The thing about branding is that people can get incredibly attached to stuff that they form a relationship with. If you're changing something, for better or worse, they're going to react. So you had better have a very good reason to do it. And you need to be very smart about how you do it. This was a massive misstep from the jump, all because whomever was in charge of this mess committed the First Sin of Branding... they did not know their own audience. Because to say that this was a glaringly obvious disaster is not an understatement...

I don't even have Cracker Barrel where I live (the nearest one is in Vegas) but I reacted with a wince to the rebrand because I knew immediately how it would be received. Because I've been to one of them once. A decade ago. What's ironic is that they probably did it hoping it would be more appealing to society at large because sales were sliding. Now they're in the dumpster having to try and crawl their way out.

   
• Negative Four-And-A-Half Stars! Maybe I was too quick condemning Paramount+ for canceling Strange New Worlds after an upcoming abbreviated fifth season. Because Four and a Half Vulcans has got to be one of the shittiest episodes of ANY Star Trek I've ever seen. Good Lord. Somebody watched this dumpster fire and thought it should air? How did it get past script stage in the first place? It would have been better to cut it completely and come up an episode short this season than to air something this horrendously bad...

Apparently when you take the Vulcanizing serum, it changes your hairstyle!

The stupid... it still lingers.

   
• Insecticide! And lastly, allow me to once again comment on a botched adaptation. Butterfly, the comic book series, was a brisk four issues. It was breakneck storytelling and an interesting read. So when I found out that Prime Video adapted the comics with a leisurely six episodes, I was excited. Watching it, I didn't think it was as good as the source material because it got repetitive in ways that weren't interesting... but I liked the cast and thought "Well, this will be a nice diversion!"

AND THEN I GOT TO THE END WHERE THEY CREATED A STUPID FUCKING CLIFFHANGER AND A NONSENSICAL FUCKING TWIST TO SET UP A SECOND SEASON THAT I WILL NEVER... NEVER EVER... WATCH. What a lazy-ass pile of shit. Why is it that nobody can just complete a series any more? It always, always has to have a stupid-ass cliffhanger for a next season that may never come. Lazy fucking writers. Just tie everything up with an ending in case this is all we get! Then, if you get a second season, you can find a new and exciting angle to begin again. But NOPE! Easier to just fuck over the audience. And "easy" is all these talentless hacks have to offer. My God. It's getting to where I don't want to watch TV series any more. Though movies are doing it too. Netflix made a shitty The Old Guard sequel, which I hated, then ended that MOVIE on a cliffhanger which probably won't be resolved. I need to create a new website explicitly where people can share whether or not a show ends on yet another lazy-ass fucking cliffhanger so people can decide whether or not they want to invest time in something THAT MAY NEVER BE FINISHED. At least The Thursday Murder Club was smartly written enough to have a satisfying conclusion (well, if you haven't read the books).

   
If you're an American who's off work tomorrow, enjoy your day off from labor. If you're an American who's not off work tomorrow (like me) try and enjoy your Monday.

I like to have television playing while I work at home. But it has to be something I've seen before. Otherwise I'll pay too much attention to the show instead of the task at hand. And whenever I don't know what old series to watch, I consult Wikipedia's List of television shows considered the best.

Some shows have to be ignored because I refuse to watch (I still loathe Succession no matter how many people love it), others I have no desire to watch again (All in The Family, Cheers, Hill Street Blues, etc.), and others I've already seen way too many times (The West Wing, for example).

As I started down the list, I saw Better Call Saul and decided that was the one. Vince Gilligan has a new top-secret show in development for Apple TV+ (coming November 9th), so it seemed like a good choice.

But it was a huge mistake, because this exceptional spin-off of Breaking Bad demands your attention. Part of the thrill of the show is the exceptional performances by Bob Odenkirk and the rest of the cast, and so much of that is played out on their faces. Which means it's too distracting because I'm staring at the TV instead of my laptop.

It's such a great series...

Too great, which is why I'm rewatching Community for the hundredth time instead. Also a great series, but one I can work during.

This past Saturday I finally got around to watching the second season opener of Peacemaker. It was even more insane than I had hoped. But first... tomatoes.

I honestly don't understand how my two small tomato plants keep pumping out so many 'maters. Even more unbelievable is that I am using no pesticides, have no netting or fencing, and pretty much ignore them... yet bugs and birds aren't bothering them at all.

Just before I started up Peacemaker I picked enough ripe ones to make another tomato salad with feta cheese and Mediterranean herbs. Unbelievably good...

I think I have at least one salad left in my plants once they ripen. Maybe two. I can't imagine how many I'll end up next year if I triple the number of plants. Hopefully enough for two salads a week instead of one every-other-week. Plus extra for burgers and spinach wraps and such. Dinner was delicious. Except I was embarrassed to include my garlic bread in the photo because it was made from hotdog buns.

And so... on Sunday I made a loaf of sourdough. Then I had to transfer my starter to a bowl so I could wash out the container I keep her in. Always a mess. And, if you've ever mixed flour and water, then you know it becomes glue that takes some effort to clean...

As for Peacemaker... it's as demented, crazy, and entertaining as I expected. Maybe more so. Suffice to say that if you can appreciate a good sex orgy (and are old enough to see such things), then this is the show for you.

Many fans wondered if the first season of the show was going to be canon in the new James Gunn DC Universe of movies. Turns out that, yes, it is. With one exception. The ending. In the original series, Peacemaker sees the Justice League arrive after the fighting is over. Superman, Aquaman, The Flash, and Wonder Woman (I'm guessing that Cyborg and Batman were off-limits for some reason). It's a hilarious bit that I won't spoil here, but I can tell you it's the most memorable thing to come out of Zack Snyder's dark slog of a DC Universe.

So... in the second season recap, Gunn fixes it. Now it's the Justice Gang which shows up... Mr. Terrific, Superman, Green Lantern Guy Gardner, Hawkgirl, and even Supergirl...

That's pretty great.

And now we wait for the Gunn DCU version of Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Batman, Cyborg, and The Flash. Hopefully all comic bookey fun like Superman (2025) is.

The Dog Days of Summer may be slowly fading, but the Bullets of Summer are still sticking around... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Yesterland! This video of Disneyland in 1956 is wild. Everybody dressed up for a day out at Disneyland... from dress shirts with long pants and full on suits... to sundresses or Capri pants... nobody was in jeans and a T-shirt (and where were short pants for the guys?)...

I remember for my first visit 20 years later it was the same. My brother and I were dressed up in matching green suits that my grandmother made. And the reason I remember them so clearly? Because the threads in my suit glowed when we were riding It's a Small World. I remember the suits right down to how the buttons looked (but don't ask me what I had for dinner last night). And, wow, were the attractions very different at the beginning! No E-ticket rides in 1956 because they didn't come until three years later. And of course this were back in the days where not much was politically correct. Something I didn't know is that Disneyland was never segregated. Walt Disney wanted everybody with the means to pay to visit the Happiest Place on Earth. That being said, there are precious few non-white people in this film (except for the "Indian Village" entertainment, of course). Interestingly enough, the boat skippers on The Jungle Cruise fired AT the hippos instead of in the air to "scare" them back in the day. Vicious.

   
• I've Been Framed! Every payday I've been buying picture frames to hang up prints and art and maps and bits and pieces I've been collecting over the past 50 years. Last time, I bought some frames that arrived in a totally a different color than I ordered, so they refunded me 50% of the cost and I just spray-painted them. Score! Today they finally stopped smelling, so I hung them up. They're prints by Bill Mudron as a tribute to Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli films (based on prints by Kawase Hasui). I love them. There were actually five I wanted, but two of them were sold out, so I got the these three, which are incredible. They're in the hall as I walk in the front door...

Dang. I wish I could afford glare-free museum glass (to get a closeup glare-free look at them, you can visit the artist's website here). What I really love is that the characters from the films are almost hard to spot in these prints because they're very small. In mine for Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro, you have to look a minute...

I really wanted the prints for Kiki's Delivery Service and Ponyo as well...

You can buy reproductions on Mudron's website, but you can't get them at the size of the original prints, dangit. I may buy a few smaller reproductions to hang somewhere else in my home, because they're so frickin' amazing.

   
• The Plot Thickens! If you've never seen Robots Draw, you're missing out. I knew about the account, but I didn't know that the guy behind it did a TedTalk...

Before I could afford a dot matrix printer, I had an Atari 1020 4-color pen plotter, which I'm reminded of every time I see a Robots Draw reel...

The printer was mostly for fun because the paper was only 4.5-inches wide, but it was better than nothing. Even if it took forever to print text because the letters had to be drawn one by one. Wikipedia has a short article on the unit here (which is where I got the photo).

   
• Gooey! I honesty don’t know how in the hell got to be THIS BAD at Apple after Steve Jobs’s died. Granted, I am using a public beta of the latest iOS, and this might be fixed... but... what the fuck does this last button do in Apple Music?

The first is shuffle. The second is repeat. The third is infinity auto-play. But that fourth button provides no feedback as to actually doing anything, so I have no idea. This odd set of buttons could very well be the worst GUI design I’ve ever seen. Coming from a company that used to care about GUI! Fortunately, long-time blogging friend LeSombre managed to remember an article about this very topic and was able to tell me it means "AutoMix" and Apple describes it as "Songs transition at the perfect moment, based on analysis of the key and tempo of the music." So I immediately turned it off, because I wondered why in the hell the end of a song was either sped up or slowed down in weird fucking ways as it faded to the next song via CarPlay. No thank you. And, on that note... APPLE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PROVIDE SOME FEEDBACK FOR YOUR FUCKING BUTTONS SO PEOPLE KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY ACTUALLY DO!

   
• Only Connect! If you've ever been frustrated by The New York Times puzzle "Connections," you should know that it was inspired (or stolen) from a UK quiz show Only Connect. These puzzles always feel incredibly difficult, and I can't fathom having to solve them within a time limit. It usually takes me forever when I have forever!

In other news... "Father's Day" was invented at a YMCA in Washington State?!??

   
• Atmosphere! Alaska Airlines has rebranded their loyalty program as "Atmos" now that they've merged with Hawaiian Airlines. Which is fine, I guess, if not for the fact that Dolby Atmos home theater sound standard already exists. I'm guessing that there was no trademark danger since they are wildly different industries, but I still wonder why they'd go with this?

"Atmos" isn't a real word. At best it's an abbreviation for "atmosphere" (which is where Dolby got it, I'm sure, because they're creating an atmosphere of sound). Not sure where Alaska's head is at here, but I can't help but think they could have come up with something better.

   
• Winds of Waiting! I am clinging to the idea that the person asking this horrific question has challenges gauging social situations and perhaps didn't know that what they were asking is awful. Anything else just beats down my faith in humanity to new lows. I don't care how impatient you are for the next book, this is inhuman. And I have zero doubt that this question already haunts George RR Martin himself. So... why?

That. Being. Said. While undeserving of... whatever this was... Martin has kinda brought fan frustration on himself. He has been stringing everybody along for thirteen YEARS. All the promises and all the assurances of Winds of Winter being a "priority" falling by the wayside while he finds another TV show or movie or game or book or convention or talk show or whatever to do. Anything but actually getting the work done. Add to that the HBO adaption utterly destroying the ending of the A Game of Thrones adaptation and making fans even more anxious to know how everything "really" ends... and, well, it takes things to new levels. — No, he did not deserve this terrible question. But I have to wonder if George RR Martin wasn't constantly making promises he couldn't keep, would we have an environment where people feel entitled to ask a question like this in the first place? Something to ponder. Also something to ponder? BRANDON SANDERSON COMPLETING A SONG OF FIRE AND ICE?!? Good Lord. I'd rather have no ending than that. These authors in no conceivable way complement each other. Like... at all.

   
Now it's time to go pick tomatoes for my dinner.

Cannot get my hands to stop smelling like the onions I just cut, but I'll try my best not to throw up on my keyboard... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Plague Doctor! I was researching the bubonic plague (don't ask). Eventually I got to Alexandre Émile John Yersin, the Swiss-French doctor who co-discoverer of the cause of the plague and figured out it was being spread by rats. He's a pretty amazing guy with some amazing accomplishments. But here's the thing... he's also a total snack. JUST LOOK AT THIS PHOTO!

He was apparently celibate, dedicating his entire life to making other people's lives better. Which he probably did by melting ovaries as he walked down the street. — And here's where it gets interesting... I remember the "American Market" in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), which is also called "Yersin Market" because it's on Yersin Street, named after our boy here because he ended up moving to Vietnam for the remainder of his life of research (where he founded the Medical School of Hanoi, and was a pioneer in cultivating rubber trees!). When it comes to heroes of history, this guy is definitely on that list.

   
• Neverending! Nothing quite finding a cover of a song that you prefer over the original. This is pretty cool...

Not that the original Limahl track was bad by any means...

I just like the new synth arrangement of the material better.

   
• Addams! The first half of the second season of Wednesday is fun. And there's a couple cameos that are so flawlessly cast that I almost didn't believe it. Yeah, yeah, I know there are people who are big mad that it isn't faithful to the source material, but it can be its own thing and still be entertaining...

Though, to be honest, I still prefer the two films starring Raul Julia, Anjelica Huston, Christopher Lloyd, and Christina Ricci over any adaptation of the original The Addams Family comic.

   
• It's Doug! All the Jeopardy and Black Jeopardy sketches on SNL are hilarious, but I find myself watching this one at least every-other month...

The fact that Tom Hanks was willing to make fun of himself this badly makes it even more funny than it already was. And, of course, Mr. Hanks is no stranger to Jeopardy sketches... he has a hilarious role on Black Jeopardy...

Though Eddie Murphy's impersonation of Tracy Morgan in front of Tracy Morgan remains one of the funniest things I've ever seen...

You know it's funny when you can break Tracy Morgan while playing Tracy Morgan.

   
• Unhappy! Watched Happy Gilmore 2 last night. Good Lord. Was looking forward to something charming, nostalgic, and funny to distract me from the day... instead Netflix approved a two hour mess that's more depressing than funny. Adam Sandler is an alcoholic ass-hat who accidentally killed his wife at the very beginning of the movie? Hilarious...

You know you're in deep, deep trouble when you're looking forward to seeing Shooter McGavin more than the main character. Hell, you're happy to see anybody except Happy on the screen (Bad Bunny continues to surprise me with just how good he is... just like in Bullet Train, his character is a highlight). Fortunately, there's some genuinely funny moments and a lot of great cameos which allowed me to get through the film on nostalgia alone. But... come on... in a day and age when life is depressing enough, can we not do this? Killed his wife in the first two minutes? Really? This is where we're at?

   
• Just Fuck Off Already! Precious few people are a bigger piece of shit than Bill Maher. I have never understood his popularity. He has bad take after bad take based on misleading statements and outright lies, and has shown himself to be a dick of the highest order every chance he gets. I ignored him forever... until he was taken to school by Ben Affleck, of all people, over his shitty fucking Islamophobia. From then on I actively loathed him. Which is why Big Joel's latest video really hit for me. Well worth a watch...

Lord. If you want to be dishonest with your audience so you can be a self-righteous douche, nobody's stopping you. But if you actually think that's makes you a better person, who the fuck are you?

   
• Slop! I reported a Facebook page that is nothing more than fake AI-generated bullshit about Dolly Parton dying...

Anybody willing to lay odds on Facebook hitting back with "We didn't delete this page"... because Facebook is ALSO run by fake AI-generated bullshit? In all seriousness, fuck these AI scammer pieces of shit. Dolly Parton deserves far better than this stupid crap.

   
• NEWSFLASH: Tim Cook appeals to Trump’s love of gold with a 24-karat base for Apple plaque. So what's next? Tim Cook just flies the Apple jet to DC and blows Trump on the White House front lawn at a press event? I don't know what's more embarrassing... the fact we have a president who requires you suck up to him personally so you can keep your company in business, or the fact that CEOs are lining up to do it.

   
And now I'm back to smelling like onions.

Speaking of comfort films... last night I watched the Oh, God! trilogy.

Now, the original was a remarkable movie to behold. Mostly because of the casting. George Burns was flawless as God. An easy choice. But how did they think about John Denver for the lead? He was perfect for the part, but where did he come from? I would have thought of dozens of names before I ever got to him. Maybe even hundreds.

It was such a clever movie for the day, especially in particular scenes which were written so beautifully. I wish there was a higher quality clip of God answering the questions of the "religious council" that was given to the guy who was claiming he was speaking with God (to prove he was actually speaking with God), because this is as good as it gets...

Oh, God! Book II was a big step down from the first one, but it still tackled some profound questions we might have for God and was a fun watch...

The franchise's third (and final) film made a move so obvious that it seemed almost inevitable... because in Oh, God! You Devil they had George Burns playing both The Almighty and The Devil. I remember an interview with George for the film had him talking about what a stretch it was for him to play The Devil. He said something like "Yeah, I smoke cigars and chase women!" which I still find incredibly funny. The movie itself rebounded a bit from the second one, mostly because of George Burns playing every scene to perfection...

And do you want to know what put these movies on my radar? It was an old Burns and Allen skit that popped up on YouTube...

Say goodnight, Gracie.