Quote of the Day, It Can Spoil You For BEING An Author Too, Tom edition.

Although Tom Anderson already knows that. Dude’s in the same boat as me: writing books in a world where Terry Pratchett existed.

Mort is a great book for many reasons other than the intelligent way it writes about AH, and only as a secondary plot at that. It is a good illustration in how reading Terry Pratchett at a young age will spoil many other authors for one, for all the things one takes for granted as a result.

(I assume you have all already read Mort. If not… what a nice thing you have to look forward to!)

#commissionearned

Quote of the Day, The Reason Isn’t Always Flattering edition.

This was in regard to a question as to why some content in Cyberpunk 2077 was cut: “”Unused content is unused for a reason,” [Cyberpunk 2077 quest director Pawel] Sasko says.” Which is true enough. However, sometimes the reason is, Because we were already over budget, or We needed three more weeks that we didn’t have, or even We just weren’t good enough to figure out how to make it all work. Anybody who’s played KOTOR 2 or Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines knows that sometimes the spirit is willing, but the studio might be… under constraints.

Quote of the Day, There Should Be A ‘Movies People Like To Watch’ Category edition.

I can’t quite believe that the reviewer here is serious, but:

In a just world, those 95 minutes of blood-soaked carnage would be guaranteed to earn [COCAINE BEAR] multiple Oscars, from best screenplay to best director to best film. Alas, the lack of teachable moments probably means that won’t happen, but it matters not. For what matters is that in 2023, we have a movie that hearkens back to earlier times, back when Hollywood sought not to make us better people, but to distract us for a while, to invite us to imagine possibilities like “what if a bear got hooked on cocaine?” 

…I am still on to go see this flick with my eldest kid this weekend. We were supposed to go last Sunday, but I had a bout of mild food poisoning. Clearly, I will need to fast all of Saturday, just to be on the safe side.

Quote of the Day, Can Movies Commit War Crimes? edition.

Did you know there was a Garbage Pail Kids movie? Well, there was: and it was everything you might imagine, and less. This is supposedly a quote from the director, and even for 1987 this is some freaky-a*s sh*t, man:

“We got dwarves and put heads on them, and found out how long they could survive in there without breathing, and it turned out to be about five, seven minutes. So you had to rehearse everything without the heads on, put the heads on, have a paramedic [with] a stop watch. Little sons of bitches go in there, and you say ‘action’, and you shoot until they can’t breathe.”

I’ll wait for the horrified laughter to stop. Note, also, that I have not put up an Amazon link. I have my pride. And a basic sense of humanity.

Quote of the Day, I Don’t Know If The Venerable Bede Made It Up… edition.

…but it’s still one Heaven of a quote.

The present life of man upon earth, O king, seems to me, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the house wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your ealdormen and thegns, while the fire blazes in the midst, and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter into winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all. If, therefore, this new doctrine tells us something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.

Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England, Chapter 13.

Quote of the Day, The Pain Was The Point edition.

How amusing: “The executives over at Warner Bros. are having regrets about bringing director Zack Snyder back to complete his four-hour cut of Justice League, which cost the studio an extra $70 million to complete because a completed version of his film did not already exist.”

…Maybe you shouldn’t have tried to make a Zack Snyder flick into a Joss Whedon flick, guys. Whedon’s on my [expletive deleted] list for his personal behavior, these days – but he was never gonna be able to give Warner Bros. the JUSTICE LEAGUE they wanted. When Snyder came in and applied to the screws to get the JUSTICE LEAGUE he wanted, I laughed and I laughed and I laughed. Mind: I enjoyed both movies!

It’s just that I enjoy watching a major movie studio howl with outrage over the consequences of their actions even more. May they remember it, the next time. And the time after that.

#commissionearned

Quote of the Day, I Have A Sherman Tank So Your Argument Is Invalid edition.

This is old, but good. Short version: man buys tank. Man parks tank outside of his house while he works out final home for the tank. The bug up the a*s of the man’s HOA decides this is intolerable, starts up the passive aggressive machine, and sends a certified letter. Result?

In the spirit of General Patton, Buzbee was unmoved by this opening salvo. “Typical,” he says. “It sounds like small-town stuff, but this was Houston, Texas. But I didn’t fret over it. Hell, I would have moved it two weeks before I did but for the fact I got that letter. So then I decided I’d leave the tank here for two more weeks just to see what they would do about it.”

What they did about it was start writing parking tickets, which is funny. I mean, generally speaking you can assume that anybody rich enough to buy a tank is rich enough to just pay the parking tickets. Besides, he was moving it anyway to a nice ranch, where it can peacefully frolic and run over cars…

Via @KPlorable.

Quote of the Day, You Volunteered To Write A Screenplay For Paul Verhoeven, Scooter McGee edition.

Don’t be surprised when that particular path takes you to weird places:

Continue reading Quote of the Day, You Volunteered To Write A Screenplay For Paul Verhoeven, Scooter McGee edition.

Quote of the Day, Yes, Indeed: Read @Badmachinery’s STEEPLE Webcomic edition.

John Allison, writer of the Steeple webcomic:

It’s my birthday today! I’ll be celebrating, as I always do, by having a glass of water. If you want to give me a present, please tell a friend about Steeple. Tell them it’s a reasonable read at a price that’s right. That ought to do it.

It is, in fact, both of these things. If he did commissions, John Allison would be on my ‘try to buy a book cover from’ list.