It would probably be cooler if I saved this post until Monday, but the New Order song Blue Monday transcends any one day or week or year, to be honest. It still sounds as fresh as it ever did.

Which is why I was thrilled when I came across this video where they've recreated the song using vintage Casio instruments...

In case you need to hear it, here's the original...

And here's a fascinating smart breakdown of the track that's worth a watch...

So many amazing New Order tracks, but this is probably my favorite of them all.

The last time I was in Seattle I had to wait for my eyes to normalize before driving home.

Rather than sit in a parking lot somewhere, I drove down the road to my favorite restaurant to wait things out. Who can resist a lunch at The Cheesecake Factory...

I had my usual, the Sweet Corn Tamale Cakes...

Then also decided to try the Avocado Tacos. Which surprised me when they came because the shells weren't corn, they were jicama...

The avocado wasn't some tiny slice either, it was a full quarter of one in each, battered and deep-fried...

Every day since, all I can think about is going back to The Cheesecake Factory. Which makes me glad that there's not a location near me. I'd be bankrupt and weight 500 pounds.

Remember yesterday how I said that I got the Rubbermaid FastTrack installed in my garage over the weekend? I actually had some of it installed soon after I moved into my home, and ended up loving it so much that I decided to extended it across the entire wall of my garage above my workbench when I could afford to buy more. It's essentially a rail system which allows you to put compatible hooks anywhere along it you want, then move them anywhere you want when your needs change.

Today some of the new hooks I ordered arrived, so I was able to re-install my garage security cameras and start organizing my stuff when I got home from work...

I even ran FastTrack up above my tools so I would have a spot for lumber that was too long to lean up against the wall...

I have some lights that will hang down from those wood storage hooks that I need to get installed once I figure out how I want to run the electrical cables. I also have a custom-made wall mount for my Milwaukee battery chargers that will get mounted in that space near the end of my workbench.

I really need to save up for a Milwaukee jigsaw to replace my old corded Ryobi. Now that they have one. When I needed a jigsaw Milwaukee didn’t make one so I had to buy corded. Ugh! Corded! Like I’m in the 1960’s or something! I also need a framing nailer and a pin nailer to go with my 15 gauge light nailer and my 18 gauge brad nailer... but that's going to be a while because Milwaukee's nailers are so ridiculously expensive! In the meanwhile I can continue to use my compressed air nailers. Ugh! Compressed Air! Like I'm in the 1920's or something!

Funny that.

UPDATE: I found a Milwaukee Jigsaw on sale (NEW!) for an amazing price ($135 instead of the usual $250) and it arrived! Now all my major tools are in the FUEL M18 cordless family! So nice. Especially given how often I use a jigsaw! No more having to grab an extension cord to cut stuff..

This feels like The Universe being nice to me for once.

A lesbian friend (who's a DeWalt gal) sent this meme to me about how the tool brand you buy tells you what kind of lesbian you are. She said that I was a butcher lesbian than she was according to this chart (because I'm a Milwaukee guy)...

A stone butch lesbian. Yep, that's me alright.

I have so many projects on my to-do list that It'll take me the rest of the year to get through them. Or... it would if I stopped adding to the list.

I had three tasks I was going to complete for the weekend.

The first was to rebuild a bathroom hutch so the Litter-Robot could fit underneath. I figure that the cats' bathroom might as well be in my bathroom so I don't have to wade through kitty litter every time I go in my office (which was the old location). But I don't want to wade through kitty litter in my bathroom either, so I decided that I would sacrifice the shelves in my hutch so it was recessed away from the door. It took all day Saturday to get the hutch torn apart... and I still haven't started rebuilding it because, despite costing $900, the thing is crap quality. I'm going to have to buy materials to make it work.

The second was to install FastTrack on my garage walls so I can better organize my tools in the hopes that I can fit my car in the garage. Did that on Sunday, but was then too hurt and tired to organize anything.

The third was to reverse the catio door because Jake now forgets how to get back inside after he goes out. I'd rather have him unable to go out than unable to come back in, so I'm reversing it. Never got around to it because, well, I was too hurt and tired.

Getting old sucks. Remember when I had energy to easily get a dozen projects done on a weekend? Those were the days.

Oh well. There's always next weekend.

The temperature has been getting steadily hotter, but I'm not entirely melted just yet... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Hunt and Peck! This behind-the-scenes showing Post Malone using a typewriter for the first time makes me feel very old, but it's also pretty funny...

I used to have a manual typewriter that was lost when I moved stuff out of storage years ago. I also had a cheap electric which was never returned after somebody borrowed it. I really wish that I had either of them, because it seems a retro-cool way to communicate.

   
• Drained! Ha! XKCD reeeeeally has a thing for Dutch colonization and the Netherlands taking over the world!

We dump so much shit in the oceans that the junk would probably just plug the hole, if we're being honest.

   
• Health "Care." It blows my fucking mind how the IRS can put limits on individual contributions to your Health Savings Account. I should be able to contribute however much I need to in order to cover my legitimate medical expenses so I can get a tax break on those expenses. But no. I have to pay taxes on money going towards health expenses because I had big expenses this year. That is truly fucked. We should have our health care covered by our taxes instead of it being pissed away to insurance companies who leach money from the system for profit... but if we can't have that, then why the fuck can't we at least contribute whatever the hell we want whenever the hell we want to our HSA? More bullshit by our elected officials who are fucking OWNED by the insurance lobbyists...

I'm wondering for the hundredth time why American citizens haven't taken a fucking flamethrower to this country given how badly we get fucked over by our government. Absolutely everything is designed to screw over citizens while handing money and power over to greedy fucking assholes.

   
• McGamer! I love things like this! What a wild journey!

   
• Unexplainably Juicy! The new Sparkling Ice Starburst flavors are amazing. Seriously the best flavors they've ever made. Especially Orange and Strawberry...

Can't believe they're Zero Sugar, Zero Carbs, and only 5 Calories!

   
• Anakin! It really bothers me when I think back to how much I loathed Hayden Christensen for "ruining Star Wars" when it was never him. It was the shitty script and dialogue he was given. I am so happy that he's been given a chance at redemption and is nailing it...

It will be interesting to see if he gets any more Star Wars work, seeing as how they are running out of ways to shoe-horn him in the places he's popping up already.

   
And now back to our regularly-scheduled hotness.

Jenny, whom I love more than potato salad, is turning into a cranky, bitter, judgmental creature. Which is to say that she's a cat. Whereas her brother is quite a bit more easygoing, she gets to be more of a demanding little princess every day. Which is fine by me, because the more of a personality she develops, the more I love her for it.

This past week Jenny was sitting next to me getting petted. Jake, experiencing sserious FOMO hopped up on the couch and climbed over her so he could sit on my lap and get petted also.

Jenny was furious.

She hissed and ran off.

Around ten minutes later I look up from my phone as I'm petting Jake and see Jenny sitting opposite staring at us...

But she wasn't staring. Not really...

Look at that face! She was glaring at us. Dang was she salty.

Then, last night, I was petting Jenny on my bed waiting for some laundry to finish drying. Again Jake decided that he wanted to lay on the bed too. He hopped up, flopped back on his back as he always does, which resulted in him rolling into Jenny, which she did not like one bit. I mean look at that face!

She did not like this disruption at all, even though I never stopped petting her. Eventually she got up and repositioned herself so that Jake wasn't touching her.

Maybe not a princess... probably more like a queen.

And her majesty was not pleased.

Back in 2001, Disneyland finally got a second park. Walt Disney World had gotten a second park in 1982 (Epcot), a third in 1989 (Hollywood Studios), and a fourth in 1998 (Animal Kingdom)... so it was a long time coming. The difference being that Walt Disney World has vast amounts of land to expand, whereas Disneyland doesn't. Sure, there's going to be a planned expansion to the Disneyland Hotel side of the street, but it's just not a lot of land because there's hotels there. Nope... whatever was going to end up across from Disneyland was the only shot they had at doing something truly spectacular.

But instead we got California Adventure...

Filled with a bunch of cheap, boring, off-the-rack rides that were themed to the idea of "California," the park was hardly worth waiting for. It was shit. I mean, seriously, Superstar Limo?!? My God. Disney had so badly lost its way that one can't help but think that Walt Disney himself would be disgusted in what's been attached to his name.

The exception being the fantastic attractions Soarin' Over California and the California Screamin' coaster, which were the only reason to waste your time walking over from Disneyland. An argument could be made that Twilight Zone Tower of Terror was also an exception, but it was a seriously dumbed-down version of the spectacular original from Walt Disney World, so I disagree.

But anyway...

Disney found out immediately by the overwhelmingly negative response to their cheap-ass abomination that they done fucked up (I made a special trip to see it and was livid that it was such a waste of time and money). You can't make a theme park on the cheap and expect people will embrace it just because you slapped the Disney name on it. They were forced to start revising things almost immediately, then announced a major renovation in 2007, just six years after it opened.

Eventually we got "Cars Land" which had the excellent Radiator Springs Racers, and "Pixar Pier" which had the fun Toy Story Midway Mania but that was it. Everything else that they've slapped on this massive failure has been mediocre to awful.

The nerfed Twilight Zone Tower of Terror became Guardians of the Galaxy Mission Breakout, which was okay, I guess. But they slapped it in the middle of "Avengers Campus" which is horrifically bad. This new "land" was ill-conceived and, shocker, cheap.

California Screamin' got re-themed to The Incredibles' Incredicoaster which is so cheap as to be embarrassing. They just plopped a bunch of static characters around the coaster, including the infamous Jack-Jack "babies on sticks" and Violet's disembodied head, and took away many of the things that made California Screamin' such a fun coaster. Which is to say that it was a massive downgrade.

Despite being a cheap-ass park, California Adventure was at least thematically cohesive. They did their best to actually adhere to the concept of "California" and make sure that everything was beautifully-appointed and had good flow. But now? It's a disjointed, incohesive mess that keeps having less and less to do with California. An obvious re-skin done on the cheap with precious few good attractions (and that beautiful World of Color show) to make it worth visiting.

So what to do?

The Pixar Pier section of California Adventure is the place for all things Pixar... but not including the Cars movies or the Monsters, Inc. movies, which both have rides in other sections of the park. Which begs the question... why not just convert the entire park to become Pixarland... the perfect compliment to Disneyland. But stop being so fucking cheap about it.

Build out a cohesive game plan for how the park "lands" should be defined and how they flow into each other [Cars Land, Toy Story Pier, Monsterstropolis (the Monster's, Inc. city), Metroville (the Incredibles city) etc., this is not rocket science]. Then go attraction by attraction to revise or replace the cheap crap and turn it into something Disney-worthy. Start with Incredicoaster... re-track it to not be so rough, then make it worth being associate with Disney by adding animatronics and decent effects instead of babies on sticks and other stupid crap. Then move on to the next. Then the next.

No idea how to integrate Soarin' (which was ruined when they turned it to "Around the World" instead of "California") but Imagineers are clever. Maybe it could be a ride where you're soarin' like the house in Up or something. Avengers Campus can just be scrapped entirely. And if you can slap a Guardians of the Galaxy Band-Aid on Tower of Terror, then how hard is it to do it again with a Pixar property? Doing a Coco-themed drop-ride that takes you through a colorful adventure through the Land of the Dead could be so cool. And can you imagine if the rest of Avengers Campus was turned into the city of Santa Cecilia that's celebrating Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) 365 days a year? Make it colorful and fun... so cool...

I dunno. Maybe Pixarland isn't the answer... but there's gotta be an answer somewhere. Because right now California Adventure has very little to do with California and is a cheap, shitty park that nobody want's to bother with because there's limited E-Ticket experiences and precious little Disney magic to be had.

Disneyland deserves better.

As do Disney parks fans.

Could this week be any longer?

On the other hand, it seems like it was just Thursday a couple days ago, so time is both dragging and blowing by at the same time? Maybe my brain is borked.

The new (third) season of Shoresy has finally dropped after already airing in Canada. It's everything I hoped it would be. This is such a fantastic show. I may like it even more than Letterkenny...

At least now I'll have something to do for the next half-hour.

Last year I bought a power washer that was on sale because it seemed like a handy thing to have. Turns out that I could have saved the money because I can get the same "pressure" with a garden hose nozzle. There is a nice thing about the power washer, however. You can put cleaning solution or window cleaner or whatever in it to wash while you spray. That's a handy enough feature that I don't regret buying the thing. Though I do wish I. Would have gotten the electric power tank instead of the battery power wand. That would have been more powerful, I think.

I wish I could say that I'm talking about power washers because I power washed my house when I got home but, alas, it was because I fell down a power washer art rabbit hole...

If you search for power washer art on YouTube, you'll find all kinds of cool stuff.

AND THEN I fell down another rabbit hole of HOAs fining people for not pressure washing their driveway.

AND THEN I fell down another rabbit hole of HOA assholes.

AND THEN I got this in my feed...

Alternative facts. Jesus. Really hoping we don't get a repeat of this bullshit.

Yesterday was a tough day. I received some terrible news very early and it kinda took the wind out of my sails. One sad fact about getting older is that bad news seems to accelerate, and once you get to the point of accepting what happened, you get hit with something else. I had planned on installing the final ceiling access panel I had built over the weekend, but couldn't pull it together.

Instead I fell down a rabbit hole over the movie A Few Good Men, because I watched it last night before bed.

This is a film that perplexes me. I always found the dialogue to be wordy and unnatural. Everything coming out of Tom Cruise's mouth feels like it's coming off a script because nobody talks that way.

But the performances!

The dialogue may be a bit weird and unnatural to me, but the way the actors deliver it is unnaturally incredible. The performances are wonderfully nuanced, and I honestly think that it's the best acting to come out of Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson throughout their entire careers... plus every other actor was top-tier amazing in every scene. It's a dream cast giving their absolute best, and you feel it while you're watching the movie.

The reason for this post is that I want to run through my favorite performance in A Few Good Men.

Yeah, yeah, that explosive Jack Nicholson monologue is a master-class of acting and takes your breath away with just how flawless he performed the scene... but it's Noah Wyle's Corporal Barnes that really stood out for me. And it's such a small role. He drives the legal team to the base when they arrive and has a funny line about putting on a jacket since you don't want to look like an officer because you might get shot at. But it's this scene in the courtroom that really made me take notice...

Just think for a minute about all the balls that Noah Wyle is having to juggle in his moment.

The entire movie hinges on a "Code Red" that results in tragedy. Wyle is the one actor who has to explain it, illustrate it, and tell the audience about how it is technically not a military authorized practice, but soldiers taking disciplinary actions into their own hands. This is not some bit part filmed for scenery or atmosphere, it is the crux of absolutely everything that follows. How Rob Reiner came to cast Noah Wyle for such a critical role is something I really wonder about.

Barnes has to come off as a country hick, but can't appear stupid. You feel that he's probably uneducated and not too bright... but he isn't ignorant either. That's a balancing act that takes some serious acting chops.

He has to be the most genuine person in the entire cast, which means Wyle's performance is far more nuanced than you'd assume at first glance. He has to emote while being a blank canvas, because his testimony can't have any hint of an alternative motive or secrecy. You have to 1000% buy that everything he says is an honest reflection of his experience so that you comprehend the events of the movie in a way that doesn't leave room for doubt.

In lesser hands, Barnes could have been played as a jarhead robot forcefully expressing his lines. But Wyle's performance plays it deferential, likable, and wholesome. He's almost gentle. This was likely because Rob Reiner wanted a stark contrast between him and the other Marines so you have more of a sense that Barnes is being personal and honest while delivering the most important information in the entire film... not just dumping Marine rhetoric on you. It's a fascinating choice, and a very, very smart one. Noah Wyle has spoken about his role, but I'd love to hear him explain his choices and what direction he received to get there.

I looked Wyle up on Wikipedia to find out if he was originally from the South. His slight Southern accent is not overwhelming and feels more authentic than the twang we usually has to suffer through. The guy was born and raised in California. Which meant he must have researched and practiced for his role.

And nailed it.

It's all too easy to get caught up in the performances by the big-name actors in a film or series while ignoring the minor roles as background noise. But there are times that this is impossible. And Noah Wyle's performance in A Few Good Men is one of them. At least for me.