This one sharehouse

There was a room underneath the house proper, among the supports, wherein one sharer and his buddies would smoke pot. They referred to it as The Transformation Chamber.

We so regularly consumed fish'n'chips and other fried takeaways, a three-litre bottle of BBQ sauce sat permanently on the lounge-room floor beside a recliner. It was known as King Sauce.

For reasons involving "Robin Of Sherwood", the SCA, cheap OJ and random numberplate letters, the only car any of us owned was nicknamed Durgan Of The Brentwood.

We each paid $33/week rent.

Those were the fuckin' days.

That horrible tomb

This video easily held my attention while I ate lunch (savoury mince on toast), especially the account of how the presenter's "D&D" group aced the legendarily deadly scenario.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giDPr296CAI

DP, JH or MD may remember things differently, but my memory of playing it as a teenager in the '80s is we got slaughtered, got slaughtered again, then consigned the module to the too-hard shelf.

I must read the version in 5E tome "Tales From The Yawning Portal" to see how they updated the trap-fest for a modern audience notoriously precious about their characters.

Weekly tuning in is the new bingeing

For me, presently >>> "Ultraman Arc", "House Of The Dragon" S2 (today's closing scene!!!), "The Ultimate Fighter" S32 (that number is not a typo), "Kite Man: Hell, Yeah!", "Kinnikuman - Perfect Origin Arc". Am I forgetting anything?

Realised I am technically still working in magazines 25 years after I got my first break, albeit writing about VERY different subject matter now than I was back then.

Billhelm Wagglejavelin

* "Gerry Anderson - A Life Uncharted" (2022) [Foxtel]: Scarred man behind marvellous creations. (Utilises deepfakes.)

* "G.I. Joe - The Movie" (1987) [YouTube]: Warm-mess plot. Imaginative animation. Shit music.

* "Invitation To A Murder" (2023) [Prime]: Community theatre-ish. Passable mystery maximising limited resources.

* "Jack Mimoun & The Secrets Of Val Verde" (2022) [SBS On Demand]: Wacky French treasure hunt has its moments.

* "Skate Dreams" (2022) [Kanopy]: Women's skateboarding explosion - told by pioneers, Olympians.

* "The Man From Toronto" (2022) [Netflix]: Unfunny, unspectacular. None of their best work.

* "The Zone Of Interest" (2023) [Stan]: Extreme contrast extremely effective. _Desperately_ arty, though.

<<< Pick of the bunch is N/A. >>>

TPK in the starting tavern

We lost my father in early June. I'm still coming to terms with it. Every day brings some new sadness. Walking to the bottlo for a sixpack, I suddenly thought, "I'll never watch another football game with Dad." Even though he was kind of an annoying sporting spectator, usually dwelling on the mistakes, the sense of loss I felt...I can't tell you.

Recent viewing

* "Arcadian" (2024) [Stan]: Harsh and harrowing ruined-earth monster siege.

* "Brats" (2024) [Disney+]: Welcome, wistful, revealing, contextualising, incomplete, touching re-evaluation.

* "Godzilla X Kong - The New Empire" (2024) [rental]: Suspend reason, enjoy the kaiju. I did!

* "My Spy - Eternal City" (2024) [Prime]: Excels at nothing...yet suited family gathering.

* "Under Paris" (2024) [Netflix]: Shark thriller with flair, nonsense and relevance.

<<< Pick of the bunch is N/A. >>>

Sydney, Day 3

Didn't take as many photos as I was wearing a chockers backpack and carrying my jumper and sometimes coat (due to the warmer weather). Was also keen to return to Newie on as early a train as possible.

Hadn't previously been to this joint. Super busy. Staff were all nice, however. My "Space Invaders" tee sparked a convo with the doc, who also fondly remembers playing the arcade machine when it first came out. Lovely Irish nurse (Sydney seems full of lovely Irish nurses).

On the side of a pet-supplies store.

This is NOT my image. Just "borrowed" it after doing a Google search. Couldn't manage a clear pic myself on account of the school-holiday crowd.

Railway reading. Not much new news. Completed about half of the puzzles and crosswords. I swear I used to be faster. (Onya, Blues!)

Hope you enjoyed this three-parter. I have a followup appointment at the C/C next month, so I'll do a similar travelogue then.

Arrived home to TWO issues of "The Phantom". They apparently did one early to facilitate annual leave. Crazy kids. Also the can-be-solo boardgame "Folklore", which I ordered on clearance for almost 100 bucks off!

This thread may pique your interest, as it did mine - https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2731208/folklore-the-affliction-the-whole-series-review

Sydney, Day 2

Decal on bathroom tiles. There were other different ones, too.

Best coaster in the world.

Lunched with CM and our great mate DL. Didn't snap my burg. This was the description. I was mildly disappointed as I hadn't paid attention to the "southern fried" part and expected something healthier.

Half a dozen highlights (for me) from the massive new - and free to explore - wing of the Art Gallery Of NSW. On Level -4, there was an artwork that was like being at a rave: laser/freaky video lightshow, smoke, thumping soundtrack and, when the performance concluded, all sorts of (simulated) debris on the floor!

We'd originally planned on seeing the Mucha exhibition, which cost $35 a head. There was no need, with plenty of gratis art to view.

D. gave me this awesome (third use of the word in two posts) T-shirt. You need to be a rasslin' fan of a certain age to understand the gag.

Pre-State Of Origin dinner. AM's meal was nothing like the photo, but you get that sometimes. My king prawn fried rice was solid.

Sydney, Day 1

Random shot through the train window.

The reason for my visit: heart checkup. Specialist made me go for a blood test immediately afterwards, then had his assistant book me in for a CT scan and another heart-related test on Thursday, lengthening my trip from 1.5 days to 3. 

Stayed with CM&AM. C. and I had delicious banh mi with the lot for lunch.

CM likes to watch this soccer show while he eats.

C. jokingly referred to his Jaguar as a "land yacht". Indeed, it floats along the road.

Our driving music of choice: the awesome synthwave album "Daggers" (2024) by Dreamkid - on fluorescent green cassette!

New mural in the local park. Nearby, there were some older Chinese ladies practising traditional dances and filming themselves.

I read this (quite decent) cyberpunk novella - bought in a sale years ago - while in Sydders.

New addition to AM's figure collection. Awesome likeness, right?

The first Thai food I'd eaten since before the Pandemic! (My main + shared entree.)

Back at M. Mansion, tried a fruity beer by CM's fave brewery. A dessert in a can.

Latest walking audiobook

Official blurb:

This cat-and-mouse story of a vast FBI sting operation reveals how the criminal underworld has become a globalised economy in its own right -- one that can't be policed without crossing complicated ethical boundaries.

Beginning in 2018, a powerful app for secure communications, called Anom, began to take root among drug dealers and other criminals. It had extraordinary safeguards to keep out prying eyes -- the power to quickly wipe data, voice-masking technology and more. It was better than other apps popular among organised crime syndicates, except for one thing: it was secretly run by law enforcement.

Over the next few years, the FBI, along with law enforcement partners in Australia and parts of Europe, got a front-row seat to the global criminal underworld. They watched drug deals and hits being planned in real time, making arrests where they could without blowing their cover. For a period of years, some one hundred thousand criminals worldwide, including members of South American drug cartels, the Calabrian M*f**, and the Chinese Tr**d, did their business in full view of the officers they were trying to evade. It was a sprawling global economy as efficient and interconnected as the legal one.

But a surveillance operation like this couldn't last. It was too dangerous, too ethically fraught, too large. And it all ended in spectacular fashion.

Dark Wire is more than the story of this enormous sting operation -- it shows the fundamental problems of policing in such a vast and high-speed economy. This is a caper for our modern world, where everyone is connected and no-one is completely free.

Last night, I dreamt I went to Ravenloft again

"Aeon Flux" was a rewatch.

* "Aeon Flux" (2005) [Foxtel]: Super freaky, super stylish. Better viewed now. ('COS: Everyone still precious about the cartoon then.)

* "Atlas" (2024) [Netflix]: Clunky exposition/J.Lo aside, ambitious scifi spectacle.

* "Babylon A.D." (2008) [Disney+]: Postapoc "golden child" escort mission never wows.

* "The Famous Five - The Curse Of Kirrin Island" (2023), "T/F/F - Peril On The Night Train" (2024) & "T/F/F - The Eye Of The Sunrise" (2024) [new BBC flicks all available here on Stan]: Lavish productions. Radically enhanced storylines. Memorable baddies.

* "Justice League - Crisis On Infinite Earths, Part 1" (2024) [Netflix]: Intriguing, endearing take on classic comics event.

<<< Pick of the bunch is the three new "Famous Five" films, though the third is slightly weaker than the first two, IMCO. >>>

Latest walking audiobook

 

Official blurb:

From award-winning journalist Kara Swisher comes a witty, scathing, but fair accounting of the tech industry and its founders who wanted to change the world but broke it instead.

While tech titans bragged they would "move fast and break things", Kara Swisher was moving faster and breaking news. Covering the explosion of the digital sector in the early 1990s, she developed a long track record of digging up and reporting the truth of this new world order. Her consistent scoops drove one CEO to accuse her of "listening in the heating ducts" and for Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg to once say: "It is a constant joke in the Valley when people write memos for them to say, 'I hope Kara never sees this.'"

Burn Book is part memoir, part history and, most of all, a necessary recounting of tech's most powerful players. This is the inside story we've all been waiting for of modern Silicon Valley and the biggest boom in wealth creation in the history of the world.

While still in college, Swisher got her start at The Washington Post, where she became one of the few people in journalism interested in the emerging field of tech. She was among the first to recognise the potential of the internet, accurately predicting that "everything that could be digitised, would be digitised". She went on to work for The Wall Street Journal, joining with Walt Mossberg to start the groundbreaking AllThingsD conference, as well as pioneering online tech sites.

It's only a slight exaggeration to say Swisher has interviewed everyone. Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Bob Iger, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Meg Whitman, Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg are just a few who Swisher made sweat - figuratively and, in one famous case, literally.

Despite the damage she chronicles, Swisher remains optimistic about tech's potential to help solve problems and not just create them. She calls upon the industry to make better, more thoughtful choices, even as a new set of powerful AI tools are poised to change the world yet again. At its heart, this book is a love story to, for and about tech from someone who knows it better than anyone.

Burn Book includes soaring tales of innovation and brilliant entrepreneurs, as well as Silicon Valley's much more complex history of striving, success and failure. The book details how the commercial internet came into being and how, for all it has given the world, it now sits at the centre of global power, creating a clear and present danger to humanity.

Recent viewing

* "Anatomy Of A Fall" (2023) [Kanopy]: Accident? Suicide? Murder? Riveting, nuanced, haunting trial.

* "Beverly Hills Cop - Axel F" (2024) [Netflix]: Charismatic, vehicle-wrecking throwback replays the hits.

* "Craig Before The Creek" (2023) [Foxtel]: Utterly charming OUTDOOR childhood adventure. Original songs.

* "Deadly Instincts" (1997) [Prime]: File under 'So awful it's mildly entertaining'.

* "Dracula" (1979) [Foxtel]: Straightforward adaptation - creative camera angles, dated effects.

* "They Called Him Mostly Harmless" (2024) [Foxtel]: Mystery corpse. Internet sleuths. Deadends. Dark turns.

<<< Pick of the bunch is "Anatomy", of course. "Craig B/T/C" not far behind! >>>