Of course, because this is The Good Place, I can’t honestly tell if this is just some placeholder text that slipped through, or if this is legitimately the intended description for tonight’s episode.
You don’t say
Patrick
Bad Times at the El Royale
Finally, last night, I watched Bad Times at the El Royale. Back when I first saw the trailer, I thought it was an Evans movie for sure, but it ended up playing at the multiplex down the street instead, for all of two weeks. I managed to miss it. Now I regret not seeing it on the big screen.
El Royale takes place at a hotel in Lake Tahoe, on the border between Nevada and California. The border literally bisects the hotel. Rooms on the California side are $1 more per night.
The movie opens with a priest, a singer, and a vacuum-cleaner salesman trying to check in, one lovely afternoon in 1969, but the clerk is nowhere to be found. Once they do track him down, a fourth guest appears, and she’s got some baggage. Well, they all have baggage, but the fourth woman appears to have kidnapped someone.
Of course, this is a noir-ish thriller, and no one—not even the venue—is who they seem to be.
I quite enjoyed El Royale. It felt a lot like a Quentin Tarantino movie, but it was written and directed by Drew Goddard. Goddard managed to take all the good things about a QT movie—colours, music, sudden violent twists—and discard the endless soliloquies. It really makes for a tight, nasty thriller, and it’s just the thing I was looking for.
If you like violence, secrets, thunderstorms, ’60s music, and violence, it might be just what you’re looking for too.
Header image from The Movie DB.
The game’s afoot
A quick quote for Throwback Thursday:
God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.
From Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Wintry
Sometimes it’s hard to see the beauty in winter, which is why I like taking photos of things like hoar on trees and frost on windowpanes (like the photo above).
Otherwise, it’s too easy to feel like this—
—when the temperature dips to ‑30°C in the mornings.
Green Things
For the first time in my lifetime, there are living things on the moon.
Consider: Apollo 17, the last crewed mission to the moon, left the lunar surface in December 1972. (I was born the next year.)
Header image: Gene Cernan in the Lunar Rover. Taken by NASA, and in the public domain.
William Gibson: Grand Master
It’s got a nice ring to it.
Congratulations to William Gibson, one of my favourite authors, on the announcement that he has been named the latest Damon Knight Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.
The Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award recognizes “lifetime achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy.” Gibson joins the Grand Master ranks alongside such legends as C. J. Cherryh, Peter S. Beagle, Ursula K. Le Guin, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Joe Haldeman. The award will be presented at the 54th Annual Nebula Conference and Awards Ceremony in Woodland Hills, CA, May 16th-19th, 2019.
Via Tor.com, here’s the official announcement.
Header photo by Nikki Tysoe, used under a CC-BY license.
Bye, Flickr
I’ve been a Flickr member since almost its inception. I signed up sometime in 2004. I’ve been there through it all, and mostly enjoyed my time.
But when the new owners (ie, SmugMug) tell me they’re going to start deleting my photos if I don’t pony up for a Pro account, well, that’s it. I’m out.
Bad move, SmugMug.
(Aside to Mr. Pensato: I’ve been doing a bit more work on Blinky.)
PS: I’m in the process of moving my photos off Flickr and onto my own personal site (ie, this one). So I’m not going to lose sleep over the whole “your photos are getting deleted” thing. Let me know if you’re interested in the simple WordPress plugin I’ve built in order to pull my photos.
Morning coffee
In my banned books mug.
As it heats up, the black REDACTION bars fade, revealing the titles of books that have been banned and challenged through the years.
Get your own copy here. They don’t sell the mugs anymore, it seems, but Out of Print does have some other “banned books” products available.
Blue sky
It may be ‑35°C outside but at least the sky is a lovely shade of blue.
Merry Christmas to all
Grandma Terry 
Genevieve 
The wee Christmas tree 
The family, just before the presents got opened
