Did the groundhog see a shadow? I don't know, and I didn't check. What is the average lifespan of a groundhog? What does Puxatawny do when Phil dies? Is there a backup groundhog waiting in the wings? Or do they have to go on a hunt for one like they do with the Dalai Lama? It's probably better if we don't know.
A Thing In My Possession: A big aluminum measuring cup I think the silliest thing I got for Christmas was a 1 qt measuring metal measuring cup. It's made of aluminum and looks like it belongs in a commercial kitchen or bakery for the purpose of measuring bulk dry goods. But I don't use it for that purpose. I suppose I could, but I mostly drink water out of it, often with a squirt from one of those flavor boosters that have been around for years, but got popular on tiktok when someone called them "water hacking." I put it on my amazon wishlist not because it seemed like a particularly useful drinking vessel, or because i needed to measure things in quarts. I put it there, because it's a screen accurate version of the mugs that Klingons drink bloodwine from. It shows up in a few episodes across The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. It isn't immediately obvious that they're using measuring cups for mugs, because theu just look like large metal mugs. but someone on the internet noticed and I have loved that fact ever since. It's clear someone in a props department needed to find something they could use that looked appropriately klingon-like, and a large metal mug with flared lips has the appropriate brutalist flair. I've been using it for over a month now and it's great. It has a wide base, and holds enough water that I don't feel the need to go refill it all the time. Plus it lets me secretly pretend I'm a Klingon in boring zoom calls.
Poorly Organized Thoughts on: Shut Up and Sit Down Huh. Shut Up and Sit Down is ending. Well that’s not technically true. But it feels true. Shut up and Sit Down is a youtube channel and podcast and website that reviews and discusses board games, card games, and similar things. It started a bajillion years ago in some fake year called two thousand and eleven? that can’t be right. I discovered them through another defunct website Penny Arcade TV. Penny Arcade is a webcomic that has been around for probably twice as many internet eons as SU&SD, and they have dabbled in lots of different things. They tried to make a gaming news website, and they tried to make a gaming video site. Both of those failed in different ways, but one of the web-shows they hosted on their eventually defunct video site was Shut Up and Sit Down. I discovered the game review show there, particularly with the video where they reviewed six games in about fifteen minutes. It was a new thing, and they introduced it as a new segment called Rapid Reviews. I’m pretty sure they never used that segment name again. But I was hooked by these wily boys and their board games. I had only recently gotten into the hobby with any particular zeal (mostly off another ended game show, TableTop with Wil Wheaton). But these guys were looser around the edges, not polished, filming in their living rooms. It felt like friends telling me about the games they liked and why they were cool.
About five years ago one of the two dudes, Paul, had left the channel. It wasn’t a huge surprise, after he had moved to Canada a couple years prior and was focusing on his own writing. It was a big change, but one the site weathered. They had brought on some additional on screen talent, and by that point it really felt like a 3 person show anyway. And in the time since, they had hired even more people to be contributors. More voices in the game review community was a good thing, and the videos changed to match the style of the new contributors. Quinns, the other remaining original host felt like he was doing a lot less month to month, after all, he had a second job doing absolutely amazing reporting work on non-board games for the website People Make Games (seriously, check it out.)
So I can’t say I’m too surprised by this change, but I can say I am a little sad about it. The videos will still exist, and I can go back to them whenever I need to find info on new (or old) games I want to try. If I’ve ever recommended a board game to someone, it was in the hope that I could spread some of the enthusiasm for the hobby I felt coming through the screen from their videos. One of my favorite things to do when I was at PAX South (RIP) was wander through the tabletop freeplay area and find a game they had recommended so I could play it with my friends.
That’s the other side of the coin then. I’m not the same person I was when I discovered their game videos. I don’t play bored games nearly as often as I once did. It started with the pandemic, where all my gaming had to be don remotely, but by the time in-person events with friends had become safer, my closest friend group had migrated to different parts of the country (including my move to The Woods.)
We still get together and play games every Sunday night, but if we want to play a board game, we have to do it through a piece of software to simulate the experience. And by that point, why not play a video game (which we often do?)
I have friends I see in person, but they tend to be the ‘sit around and drink wine’ sorts, while I’m bringing more of a babadook vibe with my board games. And I don’t honestly know if I’ll ever go to a real board game convention again (because of viruses. Con crud was a real problem even before COVID.) It isn’t like I’m done with board games, any more than Quinns is officially leaving Shut up and Sit Down (he’s moving into a “contributor” role) I still have lots of games that I’d love to get to the table again, and I can’t shake the idea of hosting a mini-con of just people I know here in town to play games with my friends again, but my priorities have clearly shifted a bit. This is as good a time as any to remember that we are always changing as people and that it’s ok we aren’t the same people we were before.
Stuff I'm not yet watching For by birthday I bought myself a bunch of movies. I've been fascinated by the niche category of color movies that have an official black and white release. I first heard about this particular phenomenon when it was announced that a black and white version of The Mist, based on a Stephen King novella was getting released. This seemed silly and kind of weird, but it's what the writer/director Frank Darabont had apparently always wanted, but had been kept from doing by the studio. But if you sell it as a DVD special feature it's a pretty cool idea (this was 2008, when people cared about DVD special features.) Since I first hears about The Mist, my ears would prick up any time I heard another director was looking to do that with his film. It's the sort of thing that feels kind of silly, but also shows how changing the color gamut on a film produces a different viewing experience.
This is something I discovered as a relatively young child. I grew up with tv that was predominantly in color, but there were enough black and white shows I could access (thanks nick at night!) that i knew it was a possibility. Mostly I knew it signaled that a movie or TV show was old. But I was also a kid who liked to play with the settings on my TV. More than a few times I would ignore whatever show was actually on TV, instead spending time playing with the display settings. I could increase the green, red, or blue levels, driving them up or down and make the picture change before my eyes. I could dial up r down the contrast and sharpness to change whatever I happened to be watching into an alien looking broadcast. Or, I could dial down all the colors, and dial up the contrast and make any tv show look like it was old, which is to say black and white. So when I hear about directors re-releasing their movies in black and white, I can't help be reminded of afternoons in front of the TV playing with the remote to see what I could make the picture do.
I've been trying to keep track of all the movies that get this treatment, but I wasn't sure anybody else was noticing the trend or not. So I was surprise3d and delighted to see this article about Godzilla Minus One's recent limited release without color. It pointed out this mini-trend that has been going on for a while. IT listed some I knew about, like Logan Noir, and Fury Road Black and Chrome, and even Zach Snyder's Justice is Gray edition of Zach Snyder's Justice League (which I actually watched instead of the color version) The article also pointed out a few I didn't know about like Peter Bogdanovich's Texasville, or Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley. But not all black and white versions are made the same. The better versions of these films are shot in a way that makes the lack of color work as if it was never in color to begin with, rather than just dialing down the saturation and calling it a day. Every shot needs to be re-graded in order to really make it sing. back when black and white film was actually being used, there was a lot of work put into how specific colors would impact the film, and a lot of work put into coloring everything to create a particular look in the final product. Working from a color version and re-coloring it to black and white is not guaranteed to actually make for an interesting picture.
So did any of these movies accomplish that? I don't know because I haven't seen most of them! Back to my birthday. I decided I'd track down as many of these "official" black and white versions I could find. Some of them were easier than others. I managed to get Logan, The Mist, Fury Road, and Johnny Mnemonic (of all films?) on blu ray, and while I haven't bought them yet, Parasite and Texasville are both available from the criterion collection, so I'll pick them up in a future sale. And there are still 5 official versions that are unavailable as far as I can tell. Godzilla Minus One just came out last year, so it hasn't even hit physical media yet, Nightmare Alley and Justice League have official versions in b&w, but no physical releases as far as I can tell, and the last two Mother by Bong Joon-Ho and Lady Vengeance by Park Chan-Wook might have had official releases, but if they did it was in Korea, where both movies hail from, and I've had no luck tracking them down. At least some of these were re-graded with the director and cinematographer supervising and approving the work, so I hope to find them one day officially. But until then I've got some more movies to watch.
