supermen, rob

didn't know you felt any kind of way about the british monarchy, rob

is that a canadian thing or a you thing?

I feel like in the u.s. the royal family is pretty esoteric but it might just be me
we get dumb fake scandals in the tabloids but alls I know is the queen is still alive somehow, having outlasted the boat of the same name, and one of the princes looks like a zombie

not-netflix-but-in-the-same-vein-talk:
I watched 6 or 7 episodes that show that rob mcelhenney made about a video game company
"mythic quest: raven's loft" or something like that (the name was deliberately a dumb generic fantasy name, which was maybe not the best marketing decision)
it's alright
it's not like... super funny. like it's not as good as like a GOOD show, but it's got legs. kinda reminds me of parks & rec except with that it's always sunny-style "these people are assholes" cynicism
kinda cool seeing f. murray abraham, rob mcelhenney, danny pudi, ashley burch, and john dimaggio all in the same show (rickety cricket's in it too but I don't know his real name)

but the episode "dark quiet death"? insanely good, worth watching on its own
it has none of the regular cast and is only tangentially related to the rest of the show
about 20 minutes into it I was like "wait... that was actually a really artful cut right there" (they cut from a close two-shot to a wide of the same scene at the same angle, with the pair of characters in the lower center framed by this large, empty scaffolding thing) and started paying attention. turns out rob mcelhenney directed it, and his wife wrote it. seemed really thoughtful and personal, took me by surprise. basically just a really good short film they snuck into the production of a barely related show

it's on "apple+", whatever the FUCK that is

I mean their presence in the Canadian popular culture is fairly minor- they are acknowledged and generally speaking most dont harbour ill will towards them; they're simply there. Myself, I have a degree of reverence towards them as symbolic of Canada's history as a dominion of the British Empire, and the cultural heritage that endows. I would argue the crown is an integral piece of the national identity, to the same extent it is across the pond.


We also get the ludicrous tabloids

Man, fuck Apple TV- they've managed to wrangle the streaming rights to The X-Files, my favourite show, and now they have all the Charlie Brown holiday specials exclusively on their platform (no longer broadcast on standard television) and are premiering a new Charlie Brown + Snoopy series and like I'm already grifting Netflix off a friend I'm not paying for your fucking proprietary streaming service, Steve Jobs Ghost

I did not feel the need to specify, taking it for granted as common knowledge, but for the uninitiated; the British Royal family is also the Canadian Royal family. The Queen is Canada's head of state, as well.

Quote from: PhantomCatClock on November 16, 2020, 11:55:58 PM
supermen, rob

Everyone should read Neil Adam's The Coming of the Supermen. It's a delightful romp with masterfully written dialogue like "Lois, I can't believe you just said bum steer."

Quote from: RobClock on November 17, 2020, 12:58:08 AM
Man, fuck Apple TV- they've managed to wrangle the streaming rights to The X-Files, my favourite show, and now they have all the Charlie Brown holiday specials exclusively on their platform (no longer broadcast on standard television) and are premiering a new Charlie Brown + Snoopy series and like I'm already grifting Netflix off a friend I'm not paying for your fucking proprietary streaming service, Steve Jobs Ghost

I take solace in my belief that the balkanization of online streaming isn't going to raise any tides but piracy

Quote from: Slurpee on November 17, 2020, 01:50:46 AM

Quote from: RobClock on November 17, 2020, 12:58:08 AM
Man, fuck Apple TV- they've managed to wrangle the streaming rights to The X-Files, my favourite show, and now they have all the Charlie Brown holiday specials exclusively on their platform (no longer broadcast on standard television) and are premiering a new Charlie Brown + Snoopy series and like I'm already grifting Netflix off a friend I'm not paying for your fucking proprietary streaming service, Steve Jobs Ghost

I take solace in my belief that the balkanization of online streaming isn't going to raise any tides but piracy

Quote from: RobClock on November 17, 2020, 01:03:01 AM
I did not feel the need to specify, taking it for granted as common knowledge, but for the uninitiated; the British Royal family is also the Canadian Royal family

wait a minute

so who were that couple dressed entirely in denim in the truck stop parking lot

does this mean I'm not getting my cooler back

leek posted an essay of sorts a long time ago about how when radio (or records?) was invented, some dude lamented that songs now need not be played on instruments to be heard
the phenomenon of young people gathering on stoops, strumming guitars and singing their own unique renditions of songs was going away, to be replaced by identical copies upon copies of the same single rendition, everybody tapping their foot to the same beat, a duller world

leek opined that the then-nascent trend of "collage"-style youtube videos that freely sampled copyrighted material and remixed and recontextualized it into something new was giving something of that unique individual expression back to the world, and perhaps we were not as far away from those lost days of impromptu porch performances as it seemed

the wild west days of early youtube clamped down a lot, of course, proportional with corporate involvement, copyright takedowns and all that, but looking at the cultural landscape of the internet, of streaming, cover songs, tiktok dances, I can't help thinking he wasn't far off the mark

https://imgur.com/rAUFTnf

given the hint "they're a conscious wonderful immortalized figure", the clock crew made the following guesses in the following order:
1) jesus
2) david bowie
3) god
4) disney
5) buddha
6) jesus
7) karl marx

When I was younger I really thought the information super highway was the most magical incredible accomplishment humanity ever managed, with limitless potential for creative freedoms and self expression- and slowly as the years have pressed on, the sphere of social media becomes more encompassing, companies like Google becoming more over-reaching and dictatorial, I realized I kind of fucking hate the internet. And I can't decide if it's just the naivety of youth washing away, or if the golden age of user creation is over, and the allure of it all has been syphoned away.


In either case it makes me feel like a bitter geriatric.

external factors such as the corporate landscape of the internet do matter, but I strongly believe that things being boring has a direct relationship to your own individual interest in fucking around, and your capacity to do so

clockcrew forums look boring because I have near zero interest in fucking around, unless it's flipping pcat's avatar or making nintendoclock watch a music video (that hack has since disappeared)

if I found myself fascinated by, or constantly laughing my ass of at, certain people on youtube, I might be so desperate to join that conversation that I'd learn to use after effects or vegas or whatever to throw my hat in the ring, but I don't, so I don't

there's a lot of user generated content on the internet that you don't see, and that wouldn't impress you, being made by young people who haven't Seen It All yet and have time on their hands. a lot of it is stuff they're not gonna think is funny in 10 years

this shit is human nature, the corporate internet won't kill it. erect a fence around an empty pool and people will find a way past it

Quote from: RobClock on November 16, 2020, 11:49:01 PM
MORE NETFLIX TALK;

The Crown season 4 is here and it's the moment I've been dreading since the series premiere; the Diana arc. Astute viewers will note that the show runner is one Peter Morgan (husband of Gillian Anderson who happens to show up this season as Maggie Thatcher doing an impression that ages the Iron Lady much later in her career than the early 80s where the season picks up), who previously penned the 2006 film The Queen- a story based entirely upon the death of Lady Di and the plummeting approval of the Royals thereafter. Hitherto now The Crown could not be pigeon holed into having either a royalist or republican (British definition) skew, moreso simply portraying the Queen and her family as human beings struggling with the pressures and expectations of their positions as an institution and how dehumanizing that can be- this veil is unceremoniously dropped with a plethora of ham fisted imagery pertaining to mounted stags, and a staunch juxtaposition between (for lack of a more apt word)  contemporary music, settings, and urban sensibility to frame The Queen and the institution of The Crown as cold, and archaic. I give them some credit for still making token attempts to sway the casual viewer towards sympathies for Charles and his love for Camilla, giving it this star-crossed-lover sort of mystique that duty prevents- but it's clear in narrative structure that the show is staunchly in Diana's corner and expects you to be as well.

Ps I'm only five episodes deep so I'll see if my opinion changes by the seasons end. It's still a wonderfully acted and directed programme with exquisite set and costume design, I just wish it had managed to maintain its earlier seemingly impartial position.

Why am I not surprised you're into The Crown, haha. I haven't seen the new season yet, but if I'm allowed to play devil's advocate, weren't the late 80s/early 90s a really tough time for the British monarchy? Maybe the showrunners are trying to replicate that mood. I could be wrong though. I'll let you know when I take a look at it

Quote from: Slurpee on November 17, 2020, 01:50:46 AM

Quote from: RobClock on November 17, 2020, 12:58:08 AM
Man, fuck Apple TV- they've managed to wrangle the streaming rights to The X-Files, my favourite show, and now they have all the Charlie Brown holiday specials exclusively on their platform (no longer broadcast on standard television) and are premiering a new Charlie Brown + Snoopy series and like I'm already grifting Netflix off a friend I'm not paying for your fucking proprietary streaming service, Steve Jobs Ghost

I take solace in my belief that the balkanization of online streaming isn't going to raise any tides but piracy

This. Funny how piracy went down when Netflix was the only streaming service on the market, which aggregated a lot of content in one convenient place. As always, greedy capitalists ruined that by spreading that huge catalogue across a fuckton of streaming services. In terms of budget, it's not very different from paying cable. If I wanted to stream all the shows I want to watch I'd have to get Netflix + HBO + Amazon Prime, fuck that noise. This is why we can't have nice things

Quote from: VCRClock on November 17, 2020, 04:26:15 AM
external factors such as the corporate landscape of the internet do matter, but I strongly believe that things being boring has a direct relationship to your own individual interest in fucking around, and your capacity to do so

clockcrew forums look boring because I have near zero interest in fucking around, unless it's flipping pcat's avatar or making nintendoclock watch a music video (that hack has since disappeared)

if I found myself fascinated by, or constantly laughing my ass of at, certain people on youtube, I might be so desperate to join that conversation that I'd learn to use after effects or vegas or whatever to throw my hat in the ring, but I don't, so I don't

there's a lot of user generated content on the internet that you don't see, and that wouldn't impress you, being made by young people who haven't Seen It All yet and have time on their hands. a lot of it is stuff they're not gonna think is funny in 10 years

this shit is human nature, the corporate internet won't kill it. erect a fence around an empty pool and people will find a way past it

While I think you're right to some extent, I'm with Rob (and I think Slurpee) in my belief that the architecture of the internet has changed a lot.
I mean, you're right in the sense that people will always dick around. Maybe we're not captivated by some of these endeavors because we're already out of the loop. Modern-day youtube is very different from youtube from when I first joined the CC (for example), and Tik Tok is something that belongs pretty much to a new generation. That's kinda inevitable.

However, back in the day the internet wasn't built around social media platforms, and most importantly, data. I could be wrong, but maybe Rob feels that there aren't as many "honest" artistic endeavors anymore, only facsimiles thereof, pieces of culture gunning for our attention (and our data). There's an ominous feel of dishonesty in that. As if content was just a carrot on a stick. And that's disillusioning, I suppose.

Of course, I could just be jaded and cynical like most people in their mid-twenties

Quote from: Slurpee on November 17, 2020, 03:21:52 AM
https://imgur.com/rAUFTnf

given the hint "they're a conscious wonderful immortalized figure", the clock crew made the following guesses in the following order:
1) jesus
2) david bowie
3) god
4) disney
5) buddha
6) jesus
7) karl marx

is this your way of letting us know you love us and the saturday night slurpee games

Quote from: DiscoBallClock on November 17, 2020, 05:58:26 AM

Quote from: RobClock on November 16, 2020, 11:49:01 PM
MORE NETFLIX TALK;

The Crown season 4 is here and it's the moment I've been dreading since the series premiere; the Diana arc. Astute viewers will note that the show runner is one Peter Morgan (husband of Gillian Anderson who happens to show up this season as Maggie Thatcher doing an impression that ages the Iron Lady much later in her career than the early 80s where the season picks up), who previously penned the 2006 film The Queen- a story based entirely upon the death of Lady Di and the plummeting approval of the Royals thereafter. Hitherto now The Crown could not be pigeon holed into having either a royalist or republican (British definition) skew, moreso simply portraying the Queen and her family as human beings struggling with the pressures and expectations of their positions as an institution and how dehumanizing that can be- this veil is unceremoniously dropped with a plethora of ham fisted imagery pertaining to mounted stags, and a staunch juxtaposition between (for lack of a more apt word)  contemporary music, settings, and urban sensibility to frame The Queen and the institution of The Crown as cold, and archaic. I give them some credit for still making token attempts to sway the casual viewer towards sympathies for Charles and his love for Camilla, giving it this star-crossed-lover sort of mystique that duty prevents- but it's clear in narrative structure that the show is staunchly in Diana's corner and expects you to be as well.

Ps I'm only five episodes deep so I'll see if my opinion changes by the seasons end. It's still a wonderfully acted and directed programme with exquisite set and costume design, I just wish it had managed to maintain its earlier seemingly impartial position.

Why am I not surprised you're into The Crown, haha. I haven't seen the new season yet, but if I'm allowed to play devil's advocate, weren't the late 80s/early 90s a really tough time for the British monarchy? Maybe the showrunners are trying to replicate that mood. I could be wrong though. I'll let you know when I take a look at it

I was going to make the same point. Also, and granted I'm a republican by default, but surely we can agree that monarchy is cold and archaic by definition?

Republicanism is sooo 1658, get with the times