Techwright
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Posts posted by Techwright
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12 hours ago, Maagic said:
Those Pyro Cathy Wheels are the worst. Especially in caves. It's like having a miniature SUN right in my face.
To be fair, the set's very existence screams "fireworks" which, of course, are bright colors, but yes, some self-restraint on the part of the creators would be good. Would that there were some sort of warning pop-up in the costume creator that would caution against making extreme color choices for those powers. like bubbles. that can blind other players. Even better (but probably a pain to code), empower the other players with a shut-off button specific to each person on the team/league. Hey, one can wish.
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4 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:
Lt. Redshirt? Does he have all the debt badges? 🤣
Not yet, but he got 3 in tight succession just by following orders to investigate a tunnel and accidentally stumbling into the Malta Group's birthday party for Gyrfalcon. Those guys have no chill.
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Do you have this delay on any other character you play (not necessarily a dominator)? I'm only asking to eliminate the possibility of ISP and transmittal speeds. I had an issue not unlike that in years past, and it was related to some sort mess-up by my cable company that another technician discovered. Probably not it, but figured I'd at least point it out for consideration.
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On 12/16/2025 at 11:08 AM, 2DHero3D said:
Vampires probably just get better tasting blood when people are stuffed with goose, ham and sweet potato casserole.
I have to ask: has anyone here actually eaten goose for the holidays? Maybe it is a European thing still, but I've never seen it in any grocery around here in the American South, or in Indiana when I lived there for 3 winters. Perhaps it is only sold in high-end, boutique butcher shops, and thus I've never seen one. I've wondered a few times why it is no longer a readily available meat and an alternate to turkey during the holidays.
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12 hours ago, aethereal said:
In general I find that "bright" options with the darkest available colors in the shades you want tend to produce the most innocuous effects.
I'll second that. Here's my character "The Walking Red". Notice on Power Shield I'm using some pretty dark colors, and I could have gone darker had I wanted to. For the character, it's reached the level of appearance I desired: enough to see the shield, not so much as to block the character's visuals. I suspect your real challenge, fxds, will be Overload. I deliberately chose a medium and brighter color to make it sparkle, but even with experimenting with very dark colors, it's many-circle spectrum glow will still show through.
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I suppose it depends on what origin you may be focused on. A great many of the magic users, for example, could probably do the kinetic drain-and-buff allies shtick if they chose to focus on it. From a technology standpoint, there's probably some version of Marvel's The Mandarin that could do it, although absorption would probably be done by one ring and buffing via another. As there's been different rings at different times, I'm not sure of an exact arrangement. In the TV show, The Flash, speedsters have been shown to temporarily grant a bit of their power to enhance others, and at least on one occasion, a speedster siphoned off power from another, but I usually saw this as a physical contact scenario, and I don't recall if it was ever shown at range. And also, in that lore, two speedsters occupying an identical time, essentially siphon Speed Force off of each other at distance, but that's not quite the same thing.
Stone Armor: It's a minor character in a single movie, but in Sky High, there's a student with the ability to cover himself in rock armor. He's seen briefly going into armor mode to protect himself from a dropped car. In the movie Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2, Star-Lord and Ego both cover their forms in rock armor to attack one another. Quill's was adapted to look like a giant Pac-Man. I have a suspicion that Terra, from DC Comics and associated with the Titans (Teen Titans), with her manipulation of earth and rock, might have used it as armor at some point, though I've not seen enough of her appearances to say that definitively.
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11 minutes ago, arcane said:
I’m not the expert here, but I suspect the actual answer involves legality on some level
@arcane is probably correct. The team that put Homecoming on the map had to go through a lengthy negotiation with NCSoft, and the settled arrangement that gave Homecoming the official nod of acceptance included some details which are apparently not for the eyes of the general public. There's also the matter of how the advertising would be paid for. They're allowed to raise voluntary funds to pay for the servers and such, but I doubt that includes funds for promotional materials.
That said, we do get publicity from time to time as game sites still like to talk about Homecoming, and players are now permitted to stream gaming and publish videos. I think one of the tricky challenges is trying to reach the fans of the original game. We still have fans trickling in stating that they'd no idea the game was back. I was lucky enough to have a coworker inform me back in 2019 soon after the news broke. I'd be deeply saddened if the information circles I ran in didn't clue me in for 6 years. But it is what it is.
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On 12/16/2025 at 7:48 AM, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:
Not much beyond an announcement teaser, I'd guess: here is a thing we'll be doing if Lucasfilm doesn't cancel us, and the engine doesn't experience some light glitches and then, y'know, explode.
Great reference!
On 12/16/2025 at 7:48 AM, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:Big, long-term commitment, not to a mention a move to Edmonton. Eesh. Not your high-vibe city, eh.
But they're about to get a public library.
(Obscure reference)
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On 12/12/2025 at 4:43 PM, PeregrineFalcon said:
You should try the MMO. While the gameplay is mediocre, the stories are great.
Oh, man, I used to play the MMO a lot, but it burned me out on all the ridiculous running here and there. That, and there was a perpetual bug that kept one of the Jedi story arcs from receiving its full rewards for completion. I was very annoyed when I completed said arc and...nothing... only to read up and discover the bug had been active for years at that point. It just struck me as very sloppy management. Yes, the stories were great. I loved playing the Sith sorc as an "impure" alien grudgingly admitted to the bigoted ranks, and then choosing all the answers that basically said he was allowing the order to train him but it would be a frozen day in Mustafar before he would willingly embrace their brainwash.
As to the trailer posted in this thread: what was the point? I was impressed with the graphics, sure, but as one who only dabbled in the opening chapters of KOTOR 1, I've no idea what's going on. I can't even tell what the big bad Eldritch horror is in the orange pea soup. Bor Gullet? Or is that something that would be instantly recognized by those who fully played the first two KOTOR, despite being sketchy in detail at best?
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On 12/11/2025 at 1:56 PM, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:
The simple truth is with a full-on consumer recession imminent, $14-$16 a ticket - plus popcorn, parking, and anything else the fam wants on your treat day - is unaffordable for a increasingly large swathe of people. Cinema is in trouble, and whichever way it lands, this merger ain't gonna help.
I've not been to the local cinemas in quite a while. I drove by one of them this weekend, and was surprised to see the ticket box deserted and a sign in the window saying to go to the snacks counter to buy your tickets. That was the way they handled survival during the COVID years, but now, 3 years out...that's not looking so good.
I've been wondering if maybe a split in the cinema experience might preserve at least some of the classic version of it. A rise in "small town" cinemas, 1 or 2 screens, and only showing low-budget movies. Not necessarily all indies, but a deliberate move away from the blockbuster budgets and back towards well-crafted fare on a tight budget. Something like the sleeper hit from 23 years ago, My Big Fat Greek Wedding: US$5million to make, with a "worldwide box office [of] 75.0 times production budget." Admittedly "sleeper" defines the unexpected, but make a studied effort to go that route.
Eh...it's just a thought.
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On 12/7/2025 at 5:58 AM, starro said:
I personally wanted to see more of what happened to the known universe post Dominion War
I do, too. With Odo showing the Founders a new direction, and with Sisko among the Wormhole Aliens, a deeper exploration of the Delta Quadrant is an obvious choice for the Federation. I've stated in other posts an interest in seeing a deeper exploration of all four quadrants, or even a nearby/intersecting dwarf galaxy. They could team with Romulan survivors to find new habitable worlds for the Romulans, trace the scope of the Progenitors' society, or delve into the secrets of the galactic empires that preceded the Progenitors, I think the point my subconscious is making to me is that we need to get back to the wonder of deep space exploration, rather than create the next soap opera, the next great war, or Trek: 90210.
On 12/7/2025 at 5:58 AM, starro said:but we have had too many alternate timelines, prequels, sequels, and junk with too few engaging characters or stories.
On this point we agree, but I would point out that sometimes the only way to jettison the rubbish that degrades canon in a sci-fi or fantasy show, is to have an event that creates a wipe or reset. So I'm not entirely opposed to an alternate timeline, though I think I'd rather it happen due to meddling with the Guardian of Forever, than to add anything not seen in the canon of the original 4 series.
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On 12/5/2025 at 2:55 PM, ShardWarrior said:
Very curious to see how this plays out with regard to the James Gunn DCU projects as there are quite a lot of rumors floating around that both Gunn and Saffron will be out.
Not real keen on the merger, but setting that aside, why would they axe Gunn, and thereby essentially topple the whole revitalization attempt from the DC movie dept.? That would be akin to dismissing the new coach of a previously-struggling major league sports team, after he's had the first victories in rebuilding the team.
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Very surprised to read this. I was thinking about him this weekend. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa passed away Friday, Dec. 5 of complications from a stroke. He was 75.
Best known for his villainous role in the Mortal Combat movie and related productions, Tagawa was actually in several other productions that had comic culture ties. These include additional villains in the live-action The Phantom of the 1990s, and the animated Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu. He voiced the heroic father character of Mandalorian Sabine Wren in Star Wars: Rebels and another animated villain in Teen Titans: Trouble In Tokyo.
Back on the live action and heroic side, I enjoyed his performances as a detective in the mid-1990s series Nash Bridges, and as one of the colonists struggling to survive in the Netflix version of Lost In Space.
His list of guest roles is quite long, so there's bound to be something people like that I failed to report.
EDIT: Oh, yes! He was one of the gorillas in the 2001 version of Planet of the Apes. Say what you will of that movie, but the training the actors went through to deliver a credible simian performance was remarkable.
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On 12/5/2025 at 2:11 PM, Thraxen said:
The game is super fun. Should check it out. It’s a beat em up button masher but it is awesome.
I am assuming you are referring to Marvel Cosmic Invasion and not just Cosmic Invasion? There are two distinct games on Steam. I'm also assume a PC platform?
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1 hour ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:
He was at LFCC and gave a talk - and free chats afterwards - on his life as everyone’s go-to villain. He’s got no idea why people first cast or saw him as that, and might like to try the odd romantic lead , but it pays the bills, he’s good at it and it’s fun. (And he’s now fast friends with screen son Tom Felton.)
I'd watch him in a romantic lead, or in any Shakespearean role, for that matter. I'm certain the man has range.
Now that the Bond franchise is being rebooted, I think Isaacs would make a fine M, or...if it is a young Bond, Isaacs might be interesting as that exceptionally rare entity: a 00 that made it to retirement, and could serve, for at least one movie, as something of a mentor to the younger Bond.
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On 11/29/2025 at 12:35 PM, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:
And look, if you're going to have an evil sneering potatohead villain previously incarnated by Jason Isaacs, you get Jason Isaacs, dammit. Accept no substitutes.
(He is also, btw, one of the flat-out nicest and funniest actors I've ever run into in person.)
Hear, hear! Perhaps Isaacs was unavailable, but I was mightily miffed at the recasting, and the retooling of the character. and redesigning the cranium of the character to look squat and more like an American Football helmet than the elongated skull of every character ever shown of that species was just a lazy dialed-it-in job from the prosthetics department.
And I'm insanely jealous that you've run into Mr. Isaacs.
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On 11/29/2025 at 4:31 PM, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:
Responses in the Hide Content
From this we can infer that Doom does something Very Very Bad in 828 - possibly and the F4 come to the main MCU to escape it, seeking help, or chasing DOOM.
While I see your point, I'm not sure the Doom action hits 828, at least not a Thanos-level attack. Its possible that the F4 realizes some vulnerability in Franklin to Doom and chooses to flee 828 to protect Franklin. It might also be possible that the dimension hopping was created by Franklin.
We also know that DOOM impersonates the late Tony Stark to gain access to his resources and research. Though whether he naturally looks like RDJ or decides to alter his appearance to match via surgery, tech or magic remains to be seen.Oh, was that formally stated somewhere? I'd always assumed they were going with the idea that Doom was the 828's variant on Tony Stark. Much like the fun the CW's Arrowverse had in their dimensional crossover, when Brandon Routh played both his TV character, the Atom, and his movie variant of Superman, with the explanation being that in a multiverse, anything is possible.
From the casting anno last year, we also know that god/timelord Loki will be involved, as will members of the X-Men universe. Yes, including Remy LeBeau: and the last we saw of him in D&W was a Strange-style portal ring reflected in his eyes.If Loki's involved, then it's going to be interesting to see which Loki he is: the 828 variant? or the 616 variant who is currently tied up on a very important task as of the end of the Loki miniseries. If it is the latter, then explaining how he can be away from his "glorious purpose" should prove interesting.
So what do you think/hope the reveal is going to be?
I honestly have no idea, but as the movie is scheduled for 1 year from now, I suspect it is probably going to be a teaser, not a full trailer, that drops. And the teaser might be some behind-the-scenes filming of the movie rather than putting too many bits and pieces public.
Hmm...I've not done this for a while, but I put my answers in orange and placed them in the hidden box.
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On 11/4/2025 at 3:31 AM, UltraAlt said:
Tony Stark built that in a cave! With a box of scraps!
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13 hours ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:
...Obi-Wan Kenobi...
*Waves fingers* This is not the confidence I am looking for.
I'm very much of the opinion that OWK was a mixed bag. It broke canon at times, it broke logic at others, had a very annoying, 1-dimensional secondary villain, and it destroyed a very cool character that Rebels had forged well. But it redeemed Hayden in fandom's eyes, gave Joel Edgerton and Bonnie Piesse a chance to shine, and introduced us to Vivien Blair, a little girl with great acting potential. I would give it a 50%, but I'm fine with the 61% that Rotten Tomatoes records from the fans.
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On 11/21/2025 at 12:38 AM, ShardWarrior said:
Amazon MGM Studios has greenlit a new Stargate series for Prime Video! It will be an all new series.
I must admit, I am giddy to hear the original crew is going to be involved! I would love for them to do a proper series finale for SGU.
That's 7 minutes of dialog that should have been pared down to 1.5 minutes.
I'm thrilled to hear there's another Stargate coming. I'm thrilled to learn that it will NOT be a reboot, but its own story, its own continuation of the overall story. There's so many things it could move forward or tie up from the other three series, such as: how does Atlantis play into the Stargate of today? Has it been moved back to its galaxy, or is it still being studied and kept in reserve here on Earth for defense? And have the SG scientists finally cracked how to recharge the batteries?
I've said it before, but I'll say it again. When people complained that the Ori stories were a step down from Goa'uld stories, and the gift of the Asgardian technology basically eliminated all remaining threat to Earth from the galaxy, I suggested that a new show be focused on a rogue faction of Goa'uld be returning to the Milky Way in power. Everything about them should be a ramp-up on the Ra gang, as the rogues reason for leaving was to find and steal technologies in distant areas that would allow them to overthrow Ra, challenge the Asgardians, and make the rogues the ultimate power in the Milky Way. Instead, with the tech they needed in hand, they find Ra's gang wiped out, their slaves freed, the Asgardians gone, and their technology in the hands of Earth, Tok'Ra, and their allies. This levels the playing field, if not tipping the balance towards the Goa'uld again, and gives us the classic fight that so many loved. I'd be interested to see just what threat or threats they create for this new series that can measure up to Earth's resilience and inventiveness with both Ancient and Asgardian technologies to empower Earth.
My big concern is that this is an Amazon Prime project. Amazon does not have a good track record with appropriately and accurately handling the canon of established works in their own interpretations.
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4 hours ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:
The advantage you’ve got as a writer in this scenario is the worldbuilding is already done, and there’s no reason you can’t namecheck or cameo existing characters.
The challenge here is which parts of the world building do you keep and which do you toss, and what's that going to mean to, arguably, one of the two most vocally nitpicky fandoms in existence. For example: do you keep the spore drive as canon (itself an upheaval of well-established canon), or do you cut it loose in favor of the canon from the original 5 TV shows and their movies? What do you do about the Time authority of the future that seems to pick and choose their interference in the present? By the end of Voyager, there were any number of crazy inventions that could play havoc with keeping a tight grip on writing going forward. The Barclay communication technique, bouncing subspace communications off of stars to extend range across multiple galactic quadrants is but one example. You also have a mounting number of creations (beings) that are sooner or later going to need to be addressed or its going to look weird. Are you telling me there is only one giant space amoeba in the entire galaxy? Surely there must be other swarms of flying parasites to control whole planets with spinal cord-infecting tendrils, more scorpion-like parasites to enter victims mouths, more warp-speed vampire clouds to suck iron-blooded victims dry, etc.
Sooner or later, your product becomes even less believable the more cases of antagonists' populations or off-the-charts technologies that you ignore.
I can see a couple of ways to successfully address this concern:
1. Reboot - clear all canon and begin again. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Strange New Worlds had a soft reboot, specific to the technology. The SNW Enterprise's command deck looks vastly more advanced than 1960s Star Trek's original, and that's somewhat okay with me, as a lot of technology we have today surpasses the 1960s version. The Kelvin timeline movies got around the dated tech look by stating that the Kelvin Enterprise was designed from retro-engineered technology created after studying the scans of the time-jumping Romulan ship. But even in a reboot I'd stay clear of the established characters. The original Kirk era had a dozen Constitution-class starships, of which the Enterprise was only one. Why not focus on the crew of another?
2. Go where no one has gone before - riffing off what I suggested in a previous post, focus on a deep exploration ship or possibly squadron (as a Trek parallel to long-range exploration in the 1400s. Columbus took 3 ships after all, and Magellan had several). Set them previous to Barclay's galaxy-spanning communication discovery. The advantage here is that deep space explorers would not necessarily have access to all the updates and changes going on in the Federation, since there's no Barclay. Any advancement would have to be their own discovery, either through experimentation or alien contact. This admittedly has certain strong parallels to Voyager, the difference being Voyager's events began with an interference, while these would begin with a choice. For icing on the cake, do the unexpected and set the adventure outside of the galaxy. Most don't know this but we actually have dwarf galaxies near, and possibly even in collision with the Milky Way. (near being over the MW's polar region, meaning the dwarf is closer to the MW core than MW's own arms are) One supposedly in collision is full of red stars suggesting great age. In Trek views, this implies ancient civilizations to explore.
3. Carefully moving forward: starting with events after Picard, move forward, but craft answers to those hanging threads that might eventually snag and bog down Trek. For example, simple dialog can fix several of these: "The latest dispatches say a starship fleet was finally deployed to trace back the path of the giant space amoeba and destroy any others it finds to remove potential threats." No special effects, no budget, a nice cameo comment and the problem is tied up neatly.
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36 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:
I personally would prefer they take their time and find the right people to be involved rather than moving forward quickly.
And in my interpretation, "right people" means those who will adhere to the canon established in the first 5 live-action TV series and their related movies. (Okay, maybe not Star Trek V: Final Frontier. 🙄 I didn't include Star Trek: The Animated Series as it is generally considered soft canon.) These "right people" would also be the ones to separate from the characters that have gone before, embracing new characters and tales, even if they settle their stories within one of the time periods already portrayed. Lastly, they'd return Klingons and Romulans to the established look Roddenberry signed off on for Star Trek: The Next Generation and going forward. Roddenberry went on record as saying that the Klingon look that appeared first in Star Trek: The Motion Picture is the look he'd have settled upon had he a big budget for prosthetics and makeup effects during The Original Series. Of course, returning to the canon he established for the Klingons would also be important.
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You may have heard that the original, 1990s live F4 cast all cameoed in Fantastic Four: First Steps. Here's the story as they tell it:
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I've been "rewatching" F4 via reactors' videos, and have additional thoughts:
1.) The film creators went creatively out of their way to show how long a time jump in the story is without using text to say it. In fact, the only time text is used to explain the passage of time is at the beginning of one of the two credit scenes. Instead, they utilize things we see in the real world and have a natural understanding of how long those things take. These include:
Spoiler...Sue's pregnancy and Ben's beard.
Without typing a word, we know all the events we see from the first Sunday dinner to the good ship Excelsior leaving Earth a second time are encapsulated in roughly 8 1/2 month, since we see the results of the pregnancy test, and the healthy birth of Franklin.
A very few reactors commented on the seemingly storybook lightning speed in which 828's humanity came together to build a space bridge to move Earth, but if you're watching, well into the development of this, ahem, marvel, Ben stops shaving (or would that be grinding?) and grows a full beard. While I've no idea if growing rock for a beard takes longer, a standard full beard for a man takes a minimum of 3 month, and up to a year, depending on various factors. So, design and construction of the world-wide wonder are still swift, but are more driven by urgency, rather than miracle comic book speed.
By the way, a note on the speed of Galactus. Some reactors pointed out the seemingly ridiculously slow speed of Big G's ship traveling in the solar system. I get it: if it takes a mere day to reach the Sol system from the distant heavens, why would a faster-than-light craft take weeks, or possibly a few months traveling from Jupiter to Mars to Luna (moon) and finally Earth? I'm no physicist, but I've watched a lot of sci-fi in a Holiday Inn Express (poor joke on an old American commercial), and a lot of sci-fi shows that using FTL drives and massive items with their own gravity, say, the size of a moon or dwarf planet, in the area of a solar system can really mess with things, or be messed with. While the movie doesn't show an FTL drive being use by Galactus, its not a stretch to assume his ship uses a different speed when moving through the gravity wells of a star system with planets. One doesn't want the new wax finish to be dinged when passing close objects, do they?
2.) There's a moment when Mr. Fantastic picks up a very large steel beam of some kind and begins an attack...
Spoiler...by climbing Galactus and then using the steel beam to wrench open one of the feeding ports on the back of Galactus, spilling hot life force (magma?) and injuring Galactus. I've yet to see any actor pick up on this, but this is exactly the same move that Jason uses to defeat the enchanted Colossus in the classic movie Jason and the Argonauts. There, Jason attacks the port in the heel of the bronze behemoth, causing it's heated life force to spill out: a literal Achilles heel. Though I've seen nothing to confirm my suspicion, I have a very strong sense that whomever incorporated this type of attack in the F4 scene was paying homage to the Jason scene.
Wonder Man: MCU, meta, comedy
in Comic, Hero & Villain Culture
Posted
So, by now everyone knows that this show is a show-in-a show, and the real life actors are playing fictional actors remaking a Wonder Man movie. Apparently, the real-life cast has been having fun making promotionals in-character as the fictional actors. Here's a couple of these from the Marvel Entertainment YouTube channel. I about lost it when I realized they were doing a send-up of all the crazy, irrelevant things interviewers put actors through.