Knuckledragger

Legendary coach, Hall of Fame TE Mike Ditka dies at age 86.

In the parlance of our times, least excessive Mac built.

Nomadland (2020) It's a drama that's shot alternately like it's a documentary (it kind of is) with a lot of long, West Anderson style establishing shots. Frances McDormand is an amazing actor. She earned her flowers and not because she married to a Coen Brother (to this day I'm not sure which one.) Apparently a lot of people were Bigmadland when it won a number of Oscars.

DJTJ's ex-fiance Kimberly Guilfoyle is getting a lot of bad press because of her blatant bribes (and attempts to get more) from the "Snappy Tomato Pizza" co-owner Eric Deters. Deters got mad at her because he gave her $300K and got shit to show for it. Among his list of demands was wanting Guilfoyle to pass on a copy of a song he wrote to Kid Rock. I present the song in question:

We've got some uncharacteristically early fall weather here on MV, that means a man's thoughts turn to ...blues metal. I've been a fan of Glenn Danzig's music for 40 years now. The Misfits need no introduction nor explanation. Samhain was an amusing but short-lived diversion into goth rock. The first four Danzig albums (and the fun little Thrall-Demonsweatlive EP) are represent Glenn in his absolute prime. He had the ideal backing band for his possessed Elvis persona. Eerie Von is the perfect backbone for the whole thing, and already had experience dealing with Glenn in Samhain. John Christ's riffs are leadenly heavy but still cut sharply through the mix. Chuck Biscuits got his start in punk rock (DOA, Black Flag, Circle Jerks) but adapts seamlessly to the demonic blues sound of Danzig. He's not a showy drummer, but he always does exactly the right thing. The efforts of all of these men are captured by producer Rick Rubin, who was also at the absolute top of his game at the time. Rick has done an awful lot to tarnish his own legacy, but the truth is in the 80s and 90s he was a music god. The first Danzig album is lightning in a bottle, and really without peer. I'm biased, because I bought it new on cassette in 1988, at a very impressionable age. Similarly, I bought II and III on CD when they came out. Both albums seek to the one(s) before them, and succeed in some areas and fall short in others. Also, they straight up fucking ROCK. Even at his most goofy, Glenn was a savant at conjuring compelling cheese. I didn't pick up 4 until years later, some time post millennium. While it's vastly inferior to the first three, it still a solid listen. Glenn was veering into experimental territory and well out of his natural depth. This would be a harbinger of (bad) things to come. He was fortunate to still have the classic band lineup and Rick Rubin producing. 4 was recorded in legendary Sound City studio, and I'm sure that helped. Look up the albums recorded there sometime, it's a staggering list. The album with the greatest guitar tone ever was recorded there. (I will die on this hill.) All of the above was enough to counterweight Glenn's worst ideas. Mostly.

TBH Stretch, I suspect you are in fact the ideal target market for the iFold new iPhone Duo™. The strength of Apple products is the ecosystem. The individual pieces are only okay and invariably overpriced, but like 1980s Transformer toys, they make something really cool when combined. As I've mentioned, I'm friends with a silent generation couple here on MV. He turns 90 at the end of the month(!) and has no use for mobile phones, smart or otherwise. She's a comparatively youthful 86 and is in the market for a new iPhone. She has already got a recent iPad Pro (which is a very slick device) and a MacBook with 8GB of RAM (I swear, I turned my back on her for five minutes and she bought the exact worst model.) I've been encouraging her to at least consider the Duo. Their son, who lives in Spain, has an Apple Vision Pro. I am unsure if he uses it to translate on the fly. He also has a vegan girlfriend who has alienated the rest of the family. I swear, vegans are cultists. They take what starts out as a good idea and twist it into some fundamentalist extremism that... So uh anyway, the machine to buy for legacy Intel based apps is a 2018 i7 Mini, or if one is feeling insane, an Intel Mac Pro. I actually have a friend who has been taunting me with the idea of selling his.

So Jim Bakker croaked, which got me thinking about the 80s. He had a sex scandal with Jessica Hahn. She cashed in on her "fame" and appeared in a few music videos, most infamously with Sam Kinison. That one sucks. Sam was at times a great comedian, but his music career was pathetic. In a much more interesting example, she appeared in a video by the nuclear (and ecology) obsessed Nuclear Assault. Not my favorite example of 80s thrash, but it holds up pretty well.

In September of 2009, I drove to a local brick & mortar store and paid them $30 for a DVD of Snow Leopard. It felt like a genuine upgrade from 10.5. Some time I after that I doubled the RAM in my laptop (remember when we could do that?) from 2GB to 4. I also replaced the spinning rust HDD with an SSD. Good times.

A guy on reddit built a "1968 system." A 275 driving Cornwalls had got him like this:

HAH. Controversial televangelist Jim Bakker dies at 86. Know Your MemeRIPBOZO | Know Your MemeRIP Bozo, often written as RIPBOZO, is a phrase used online to celebrate a person's death, deeming them a "bozo," commonly defined as someone who is insign

Dozens quarantined after researcher at Russian plague laboratory dies of ‘unknown’ infection. Oopsie doop-ski. It's a (possibly/probably weaponized) variant of the bubonic plague.

Political cartoon from 2005.

R5 Mk II arrived yesterday, and by "arrived" I mean I drove to the post office and picked the damn thing up. The camera body is comparatively small and lightweight vs an equivalent DSLR. The 5D IV with its battery grip feels like a hulking behemoth in comparison. Even the 5D classic a chonker next to the R5. Funny how much bulk a pentaprism adds. The R5's UI is ...Canon. I had to figure out how to enable shutter activation when "no lens is attached" to use my manual focus glass. From the get go, the R5 pestered me relentlessly to set it up with my iPhone. That necessitated making a "MyCanon" account ...which I did on my laptop, with a real web browser and password manager. Then I had to sign into Canon on my iPhone and pair the two devices. The entire process made want to buy a view camera from 1920. I own zero R lenses and probably won't for quite some time. I am totally buying an R mount anamorphic. I started with the Canon EF to R adapter and it did what it said on the tin. The lens I had closest was the 135L, which says more about me than it. For reasons unclear to me, Canon ships their bodies set to fast burst mode. My 30D came that way 20 years ago. Some fussing later, and I had single shot and daylight white balance set (AWB is the devil.) Of course, the first actual keeper shot I took was with my beloved Super-Takumar 35mm F/3.5, a lens design that goes back to the 1950s. My copy is from the 70s and while it's far from perfect lens, I love how it renders things. This marks only the second time I've used the 35mm Takumar with a full frame sensor. Its ass is too fat for EOS bodies and on the 5D IV, it requires mirror lockup and live view to use. I find that workflow to be a miserable PITA, so I only ever used the 35 with my EF-S bodies (of which I have 3 ...for reasons.) While I loved the shots I got with the Tak on a cropped sensor, I knew I was losing out on much of the flavor of the lens by not having it on full frame. It's like own a Mac tube preamp and not using the phono input. The Fotasy M42 to R adapter is very well made. I had to enable the "shoot with no lens attached" setting or the shutter won't work with non-electronic lenses. Of course, the second lens I tested was the 35mm Takumar's 50mm, radioactive, F/1.4 sibling: There are a lot of variants of the F/1.4 Takumar, and mine is among the least desirable. The original 8 element version proved to be too expensive to produce and is a bit of a white whale amongst collectors. Besides being radioactive and yellowing, my version has a terrible coating and makes giant orange hexagon flares. Of all the lenses I own, it might be the one with the most "character." The 50's posterior isn't as bulbous as the 35's, so it's far less invasive inside the camera body and as a result I've shot with it on full frame for years. Before lunch today I had a go with the Nikon F to Canon R adapter (also made by Fotasy.) I have never been good friends with the Nikon lens mount. It's backwards. Also, I have owned precious little Nikon glass over the years. The only ones I shoot with are the mighty 300mm F/4, an excellent 50 F/1.8 I got from a certain 🐵 in 2010(!) and the decidedly mixed 18-200mm VR. Of those, the 300 was the obvious choice. I replicated a shot I took nearly 20 years ago of the house across the pond. Manual focusing a long lens with an EVF takes some getting used to. The R5 has a zoom peek function, but I as of yet haven't figured out how to use it. That's it for now. I'll out some modern electronic AF lenses tomorrow. What a silly idea.

Putin, 73, Gets Confused in Stuttering Speech to Reporters. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

The pain of living on MV. Four different "updates" on the delivery of my new camera. Two trips to the post office. No fuckin' camera. The clerk's advice was to try back tomorrow.