Argonath Diver

As a total tangent that I thought of prior to Ormond's question: My dearly departed grandmother was super, super Catholic and in her house we didn't even say "darn" let alone and actual cuss word. But she would say "move your fanny" if she needed a kid to slide a seat down on the sofa. It was about as innocent a way as possible in my youth as a term for one's rear end. I don't think we would have even said "tush" without a glare from her. Anyway when I moved to NYC to work proper Irish pubs, I found out the more original slang meaning, and why my Irish and Scots friends found it so funny when American tourists in Manhattan wore Fanny Packs around. On topic, at least moreso; I just had a bar customer last week with whom I had a lovely chat about modern fantasy fic. She ranked Rothfuss among her favorites (along with two other authors whom I don't recall ever hearing mentioned on this board, can't recall their names). She wrote down a good dozen or so of my recs, 100% of which are from this forum. Trying the Murderbot series first after her delight in my plot summary. I'll never see her again but I hope she loves them.

The Expanse has been argued as possibly the greatest sci-fi series ever by plenty of other nerds. I also adore the novels, but the TV show is so, so, so damn good. It departs from and truncates the novels' content in later seasons, but it's really compelling, fun sci-fi. I'm on a very leisurely 3rd(ish) replay of it all and am still having a blast. Another vote for John Carter as well if you missed it. It's silly and corny, but the author also created Tarzan for cryin' out loud. Award winning it wasn't, but it sounds like it might be up your alley. I put it far above the absolutely atrocious failures of Jupiter Ascending and Valerian. And how have we not all pounced on the most obvious fantasy space epic between Star Wars and Dune - The Fifth Element! Peak Luc Besson, peak Willis, the unforgettable Milla - hell, even my trip-hop fave Tricky "acting" as a mercenary!

99% over me right now, very neat.

Tipping culture in America is definitely a bizarre scenario and I'm not sure how we got here. I'm a career bartender and I have relied on tips completely to support myself my entire life. I made six figures annually working stupidly difficult hours in Manhattan; the Scottish pub on Times Square paid me $9 an hour but we made five times that in tips. Back in my sleepy Midwest town, I'm currently terrified because I've finally jumped ship to bar management, which requires far more responsibility at a massive pay cut. My owners are incredible people, but they simply can't pay me even half what I would make slinging pints down the road. In my defense of the system, I'll say that the very best of us make a ton because we're very, very good at our jobs and are duly paid because of it. You've all had awful waiters before. It's a niche job working the service industry for a living, and the real talent directly make more every shift than the riff-raff. To this day I'm baffled that retail workers can keep on; they deal with the same shit we do, and the vast majority of retail staff are paid hourly vs any kind of commission.

I'm a Hawkeye fan and really happy for the win but that foul call was terrrrrrrible.

Did you guys get Fortnite when it was still in its pre-BR, cartoony zombie survival game? Rhom mentioned it last page as well. I enjoyed it but couldn't get a feel for rapid construction and never got too far beyond the first couple levels. It was wild to see the BR completely explode in popularity soon after, and see Ninja and the other major streamers building absurd complex structures in duels as opposed to, you know, aiming at each other's heads from cover. I've mentioned its original game mode to a bunch of younger gamers (from 10 year olds to 30 somethings) and I don't think any I've spoken to knew it was initially a single player game.

Hard to say that the Dodgers are definitively a 110 win team as they appeared against the Cardinals, who played about 34 awful innings of baseball this 4-game series. Our superstar Arenado with some of the worst at bats I've seen in his career in every game. I mean the Dodgers, damn they're insane! But you guys should have heard the crowd at a packed area bar tonight. This fanbase is pissed. Never in my life have I seen more resentment so early. Lots of schadenfreude for my many Cubs and Mets friends, but they're being polite about it while I wallow in bitter malaise. This is usually my favorite non-playoff-related week of the year in sports.

It's 1 and a half games against a Dodgers team that could absolutely win 110 games this year, but ho lee cow do the Cardinals look utterly lost. Atrocious pitching. Terrible contact. Questionable managerial decisions. Miles Mikolas talking shit for some reason. A snake of a GM *yet again* preaching "patience". This fanbase is usually drunk on Busch Light and obnoxiously overconfident right now. This shit is just pathetic. I'll be interested to see if other NL West teams can keep up with these guys. If they stay healthy, and Yamamoto is as advertised, boy howdy.

First of all I adore Road House as I mentioned several pages ago! I don't mind DMC hating on it, I just wanted to point out that it's just as corny and stupid as its literal contemporary, Tim Burton's first Batman. Which I also adore. I have an atrocious memory, but I was 8 when Batman came out and I absolutely remember my buddy Rick's mom taking us to that in the theater (my own mom would not have approved) and it was fucking awesome.

Counterpoint: If 1989 Road House sucks ass, 1989 Batman does too.

This new Road House Amazon thing. I'm just angry. In the bar world, we pretty much have one superhero movie where in a bizarro world, bouncers are nationally respected as much as Batman or Spiderman. I've known a bunch of other guys over my career that can also quote about every line Sam Elliott uttered as Garrett. One of my most scratched up DVDs I had in the Aughts. It's stupid as shit with both a throat-rip and a polar bear knockout, and a sweaty and shredded Swayze rocking some Tai Chi. We all knew a remake would never replicate the 80s cheese-fest. This Gyllenhal abomination is just an embarrassment all around. Cool camera angles is my best compliment. Jake's version of Dalton is such a disappointment. There's zero charm throughout, although the Amazon AI model clearly was trying for some. I'm just so surprised that Doug Liman directed one of my other absolute favorite movies of all time (Edge of Tomorrow), but this was one insultingly bad remake. McGregor was hilariously, embarrassingly bad on screen and I can only assume they CGI'd out ski trails of cocaine under his nose for all of his scenes. I made it about an hour. And as I type this I'm gleefully watching the original again to wash out the taste of that absolute tripe. Pain don't hurt.

When I was in New York, a best friend of mine was an art dealer from an affluent Indian family who were based in Dehli but raised him in Manhattan. So he was very much an American - in that he and I were degenerate day drinking clowns who had amazing times in that incredible city. Anyway he went back to Dehli for an arranged marriage to a stunning bride. But Akaash was simply too American (ie, kind of lazy, drank too much, and though he wasn't a gamer like you or I, his wife disliked his proclivity for binging Netflix and such). They had a relatively shocking divorce and he's now in Dubai. Anyway I understand your cultural disconnect from so far away. I hope you can show your fam and perhaps one of those dates that computer games and American movies are perfectly reasonable hobbies. As it were, I tricked my very Midwestern, no-spicy-food Mom into eating some wildly good but very, very spicy curry from a Kerala style spot in Manhattan. Her forehead was sweating but she loved it. Show your fam your best games, maybe they'll sweat but like it!

Oddly enough even after I said I'd absolutely vehemently never watched h it again, this chatter has me interested. Indeed I saw it when I was 18 and very naive. 25 years in the service industry over 5 states, and I've now Seen Some Shit. I wonder how the movie would affect me now. Regardless, my 30 year crush on Jennifer Connely does not make me want to watch her gorgeous character fall into depravity again. Talk about a jarring and unsettling "sex" scene. This is me talking myself out of rewatching this mid-post.

Regarding Requiem, it literally made me lose complete interest in ever trying out potentially lethal drugs (ie, more than weed and shrooms). Worked far better than the DARE program I was subjected to my entire youth, which only made me think I'd eventually love weed (I do) and was generally mocked by every kid in the classroom. Instead, save time and just play Requiem to a bunch of 13 year olds who would love the music and beautiful young people, then have their psyche traumatized into avoiding dangerous drugs forever. I was already a college kid and young fanboy of Pi, and definitely still a bit naive about drug and club culture. I very well may have taken a pill or two and who knows what else, but I chose to walk into to a theater almost completely unknowing of what was in store for me. Nope, none of that for me. Pass that dutch, thank you.

I'm excited. Already requested off my night shift. I can drive approximately 45 minutes to reach the totality strip. Trying to get a group to make a whole day of it. Oh man do I hope it's not cloudy; April has lots of storms and overcast weather in April in Southern Illinois.

Hey I definitely wish we as a nation could change the minds of ~180 million complete assholes, but before your call for a fundamental change to our entire government, let's just get the one old guy who isn't a dictator-in-waiting elected first. I'm absolutely with you in that I dream of a truly progressive America that catapults our grandkids into space and an ecologically stable Earth for generations, instead of our frightening trend toward a dystopian hellscape. But let's just make sure voters understand how important it is to not get Trump elected first!

Seeing Sir Goggins alone has me sold. I could install Fallout 1 again right now (alas Windows dislikes it over the years but we've dealt with that), I could still tell you nearly each locker in the Wastes had what ammo or loot. I've never really gotten into 1st or 3rd person games but damned if I don't consider Fallout 1 and 2 among my Pantheon, and I'm glad the series has continued great success. That trailer was fantastic. Consider me truly psyched up, as I was for Mad Max Fury Road - which surpassed my expectations and is my absolute favorite movie of all time. If this Fallout series mimics its trailer, I'll be stupidly happy about it and like Fury Road, re-watch it all the damn time with glee.

Villenueve could have delved into Baron's gross incestual fixation for Feyd, but I think for a big tentpole Hollywood release it worked great to have the whole Harkonnen faction depicted as creepy bloodthirsty psychopaths, even if it simplified all of their weird shit going in in Herbert's novels. I'm surprised and happy that a genre film is a colossal success in that it's made bonkers money in a week, on a property that I definitely did not think would ever reach mainstream appeal. Not even a big fan of the books but holy damn that Part 2 was superb and I'll see it again in a theater - the Dolby Surround experience was truly effective.

Saw it tonight on a rare night off. Just a terrific film with some superb scenes on a big screen. I'm not much for the books but I thought this one knocked it outta the park. Will read up all these spoilers once I'm home.

Well the raid leader in the all-time classic P4L Leeroy UBRS run definitely was in on it as well. His entire pre-run speech was hilarious. Now whether he, Leeroy and a couple others were in on it and left the rest in the dark to run around the egg room like maniacs isn't something I recall or not. On this note, my coworkers at my bar have been running a DnD campaign on Wednesdays while I bartend. I wanted to jump in but not have a full character, so the DM and I created an NPC that occasionally (ie when it's slow near closing time) jumps into the fray. My guy is a berserker named Warboy Leeroy who yearns for glorious death in battle (so I can return to the bar). I've survived three nights in a row so I'm pretty pissed off.

Agreed on the discussion of raids. When WoW was still in vanilla, I was in a world-class raiding guild (Elitist Jerks on Mal'Ganis, formed from the Something Awful forums) and I prioritized our major raids over both my college classes and my girlfriend. Grades suffered and I spent many nights doting on the ex to make up for being a dickhead, but you're God damn right that when we were, I forget, like top 25 first in the world do defeat Lucifron I consider it one of the best nights of my life.

I suddenly have three games I really want to dive into with very little free time to do so. Deep Rock Galactic: Survival is a $9 isometric auto-shooter rogue-lite based off the 3D games. Vampire Survivors only with wildly entertaining screen-wide explosions. It's ridiculously fun, and I love that genre as a gamer who prefers grindy, low-focus games while I have whatever entertainment playing on my other monitor. Poor Halls of Torment was a delight, but this is just so damn much more fun. 5/5 stars if you're into that kind of game. Nightengale is sort of a steampunk Valheim, which by definition sounds amazing to me. My coworkers bought it after Palworld unsurprisingly became boring after a week. We had a blast on our Valheim server, and they want to re-create that fun. Alas, I'm just such a solo gamer with crazy hours (I usually get home at 1am and game til 4) that group games are difficult. Finally, Last Epoch just dropped its 1.0 patch. ARPGs are my bread and butter - this year I've been re-grinding Grim Dawn and loving it just as much 1500 hours in as I did 50. Last Epoch doesn't have the same amount of complexity of that or Path of Exile, but it's vastly superior, in my opinion, to the soulless pit that is Diablo 4. The endgame sputters out a bit, but there's many, many fun classes to try out and it is simple enough that you don't need a specific build guide and a university course the way Path of Exile does, and frankly it's just far superior moment-to-moment combat than Grim Dawn. This will be the one I play most of the spring.

Dang, until you quoted it, I thought he was saying Swearington reminded him of far older TV. *Stares off into the dark*

Indeed, polishgenius, joyful is a perfect descriptor for Super Mario Wonder. I think my favorite bit in the game is the repeated meta commentary from the little flower fellas, nearly breaking the fourth wall. Something the wee'uns aren't going to pick up on, but a bunch of us that grew up holding NES or SNES controllers in small hands are delighted by. My best friend has 4- and 6-year old daughters who are absolutely beloved to me. I asked him how old he would let them get before buying a Switch. They play educational iPod games but he hasn't let them fully nerd out yet. I think I have him sold on my incredibly glowing description of SM:Wonder. The younger is far too wild to have the patience to learn hard levels, but the older is a brilliant young nerd, defiant and proud, and she's gonna absolutely kill that game once I tell her how many secrets there are to find.

I am right with you as a PC gamer. I literally can hardly use my thumbs to navigate first person games on consoles. I do use a controller for Hades and a couple other isometric style games, though. Anyway, Mario Wonder looks so amazing that I've also considered the Switch simply for that and Zelda games. I have managed to quell my drive to burn money I don't have by intermittently watching a full playthrough of Wonder on youtube. I watch enough Twitch on my second monitor that it's not vastly different since I'm not a chatter regardless.