ThaOGDreamWeaver

Jimmy Buffett - Wings

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Learning To Fly

Holy Modal Rounders - If You Wanna Be A Bird

"There are many ways to judge someone you like, but one I like is the size of their... bookshelf." My current read is the biography of the Ghostess With The Mostest, the woman who made the Hollywood Hills green... with envy, one of my personal style and sass icons - Cassandra Peterson. Yours Cruelly, Elvira starts with a bang - no, not that kind, though there's plenty enough action later on if that's what you're looking for - as a down-on-her-luck standup comedienne takes her first vacation in years. And is considering quitting and getting that regular job. Settling down. Settling for... normal. Naturally, at this point she gets a frantic call back to LA to audition as, of all things, a late-night horror host. Despite things going somewhat tits up at the tryout, she gets the gig through sheer force of personality, great lines and snappy comebacks - and the rest is herstory. We then rewind and walk through a rural childhood (with one early near-death experience), time as a Vegas showgirl, joining the legendary Groundlings comedy squad along with the likes of Paul Reubens and Phil Hartman, and then getting that role-of-a-lifetime. It is funny as hell, yes. There's a few naughty bits. And of course, things haven't been easy. You may need tissues. For tears, sweetheart. Genuinely. Not least for the descriptions of when she runs into Teresa "T" Wierson, her life partner of the last 20-odd years (and who has iron self-control: resisting running around screaming "I'm Elvira's girlfriend" must have required superhuman effort.) It's... yeah. Right in the feels. On a similar icon note: I've also recently finished Keith Richards' autobiography, Life (and as he says, he remembers everything.) To give you a bit of a flavour: you again start at a midpoint with a typically Keef story - the Stones being hauled into a scary damn rural Southern courtroom on a drug charge. But for some reason, the judge seems to be missing. And things start to go the way you'd imagine a life seemingly that charmed and/or ridiculous is (still) going. Is Keef a nerd? In the sense that he is absolutely passionate about music over anything and everything else... hell yeah. Final recommendation isn't an autobiography, but oddly works like one. Jerry Seinfeld's Is This Anything? is a complete collection of every gag he wrote for gig use from being a mop-headed wannabe in the 70s through to the COVID era when, well, laughs got a bit muffled for a while. Open any random page and... [flips] I got death, gambling, and sandwich bags. (Those are not part of the same bit, btw, but I think there's something in that.) As well as reading and watching his craft grow, you get to see how his life and public and private obsessions change over the years - though I'm trying not to analyse (as Barry Cryer said: dissecting comedy is like dissecting frogs: only weirdos get laughs out of it and the frog dies). But I am learning. So what have you got on your reading pile right now? Em x

Re Mr. Vee's comment: often the student trains the master.

The Specials - (Livin' In A) Ghost Town

If you're wondering why they cast the guy who played Mark Zuckerberg as Lex Luthor...

I'm not sure that's what I'd call context... per... se... er... [blink] ...ahem. Moving swiftly on:

Stevie Ray Vaughan - Texas Flood (Live at the El Mocambo)

Rodrigo Y Gabriela - Orion (Flamenco Version)

Steve Vai vs Ralph Macchio Ry Cooder and... himself - Head Cuttin' Duel / Eugene's Trick Bag

Joe Walsh, Joe Satriani, Brian May, Steve Vai & Nuno Bettencourt - Rocky Mountain Way

Brian May, Steve Vai & Joe Satriani - Tie Your Mother Down

Picking up on Techwright's point, in a non-spoilery way... Maybe a more accurate title for BoBF would be Tales Of The Underworlds or something like that. Except: (a) it doesn't tag viewers who didn't stick around for that Mando tailgag in (b) doesn't sound quite as Western (c) by law, anything with that title has to have Kate Beckinsale wandering around in impractical latex corsetry ...not that that's a bad thing, you understand, but does it work in context?

Jean Michelle Jarre - Stardust (Live From VR Nôtre-Dame)

That is indeed a fine Jam song. Not-quite spoilery thing: this being a Western show, and noting Filoni and Favreau's Western obsession... ...or am I seeing too much here?

Jabba wasn't that smart, though his mind was powerful enough to defeat mind tricks. They get filled out a lot more in Clone Wars (a Filoni joint, natch), and there's a lot of scheming going on. https://www.starwars.com/databank/hutt-clan They're cunning, but very straight-line cunning - they're so wrapped up in and smug about their own prowess they often don't see anyone else's scam or counter-scam coming. Sounds familiar. We have a similar slug-like, parasitic alien species with a penchant for scams and a weakness for their own hubris in Britain, called Etonians. And for some reason we keep electing them.

Bet it was a Thursday.

Francis Cabrel - La Cabane du Pêcheur

EON - Fear Is The Mindkiller (Original Mix... With Bats)

My random, unfounded speculation is yet another Western trope: the Hutts are playing both sides. Set up both enemies with lies, false flags and gifts. Then sit back with the popcorn lizards and watch one big, powerful enemy and one smol-but-fierce one tear each other to shreds, then move back in and hoover up what's left over. Maybe run a book on it on the side. It's what I'd do.* ...of course, this strategem depends on neither or both sides figuring that out before they're easily beaten. That doesn't work out well. *Barring the lizards. January diet, y'know.

*bump* ...came here to ask this, as the Mac is starting to nudge me a lot about Monterey and I'd prefer it didn't frag anything.

Had this on a lowbie toon, doing some light buffage on a fire farm a few days ago... ...got yelled at because I didn't wait for Vengeance to be up 😛

...so I'm wandering around with a mid-level blaster last night and got an interesting drop: an Experienced Marksman recipe from the Sniper PVP set. Oooh, nice. So I take a look through the complete set, and in there is a Recipe for Range/Fast Snipe: promising to make all your Sniper moves instant cast. Fun... Maybe I should have looked it up on the Forums first, but I blew 100 Reward Merits on it and then a bunch of inf on the parts. Took my first snipe with it, and... ...hey, where's my Sniper Shot bonus message? Oh. After a trip to Icon for a pair of donkey's ears, I then blew another 150k on an Unslotter and sold it on. Hopefully whoever bought it knows what they're about, but I basically spent a ton of merits and inf nerfing my own build. What other bad, dumb, horrible, no-good, 0 stars would not recommend purchases have you made and wanted your cash back - or want to warn others about?

Favreau and Filoni, other than epic SW nerds, are massive Western fans (whereas Lucas liked his war movies - particularly 633 Squadron, Dambusters, Bridges At Toko-Ri) and samurai movies (Hidden Fortress, natch, but also Yojimbo and Seven Samurai.) The big Western trope I get from BoBF is Unforgiven: the tired old gunfighter who wants to retire, though even Clint Eastwood never went through the guts of a galactic-sized Venus Flytrap. So the setup is Boba reflecting on his life, trying to adapt, and getting pulled into that Last Big Fight he doesn't want. For which we have two episodes left and our first two allies, plus the Gamorreans and the Mods. Then again, Boba's motivation for retiring is very far from reforming himself - he's just hacked off with bounty hunting for a series of useless, treacherous bosses, thinks he can do better, and wants to give it a try. I can very much relate.