Predator: Badlands (Hulu, 2025) is an action horror buddy road-trip movie with a lot of heart and zero humans. Seriously!

Frontier Airways: You can check in for free with our portal or it will be $25 for us to print you a boarding pass. Me: I will take Free, thank you. FA: Sorry. The portal is not working. That will be $25. Me: You Motherfuckers.

I have many stories of interacting with wildlife while biking. Today was the first baby bobcat sighting.

Watched Alligator (1980) and Alligator 2: The Mutation (1991). Clearly the first, written by John Salyes(!), was the better of the two, however the sequel includes the immortal line: "I gave an amino acid sample to your wife in the lab!"

I used my anxious energy a year ago after the elections to do a bunch of energy efficiency projects in my house. We were using 25% more energy than our neighbors, now we are using 5% less, even with the addition of an electric vehicle.

Loving a long bike ride today outside Philly on a 50 degree day. Bummed to find out my favorite workout podcast, Club Life by Tiesto, just ended a week ago. 😎. 😫.

Circus peanuts and a fine ruby port.

Standing in the middle of a painted crosswalk under blinking yellow lights explaining to a driver that they do not, in fact, have the right of way. At least I am outside before 4 days of snow, sleet, and rain. Merry Christmas!

So weird to have a movie coming out with almost my exact name, played by George Clooney. Now I know how my friend Paul (not the one you are thinking of) Simon feels.

PLUR1BUS (AppleTV,2025) feels like a class of screenwriters were given an assignment to extend the Unity episodes of Rick and Morty into whatever they felt was interesting, then filmed to results and tried to stitch it together into story. Well shot. Well acted. Brutally slow.

Driving into town followed (checks rear view) by the car I sold a year and a half ago. Lookin’ good buddy.

How will the Duke boys get out of this one? Tune in after this short commercial break.

Got to see my friend perform this weekend with his band Shady Grey.

Weapons (2025) was just as good as I heard. See it before anyone tells you anything about it.

Today, for the first time ever, my Dad told me a story about being a kid and doing a small favor for British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

Watching a band cover AC/DC always reminds my of hearing the “Back in Black” album for the first time in the basement with my Cousin Dan and a laser show he made of parts “borrowed” from Bell Labs. Hope the universe is treating you well.

Galactic at Long’s Park in Lancaster, PA. Is a good end to the weekend.

Finally watched "A Complete Unknown" (Hulu) and enjoyed it. Ed Norton as a conflicted Pete Seeger was great and deserved more attention. The joke after viewing is you will know nothing more of Dylan's origin because nothing prior to his visit to NYC to see an ailing Woody is shown or discussed.

It was a good Saturday. Got a bike ride in with my wife, got to see a live wolf (amazing), got some Chinese and ate it by the pool where I had drinks with friends, then saw a Styx/Kansas/SuperTramp cover band with other friends, drank some good beer, and got home safe. If nuclear war breaks out, OK.

If you ever need me to leave a room, just play The Offspring or Billy Joel, and I will tip my hat and head for the door.

Mountianhead (Max) builds an interesting world, shakes it up, and immediately loses interest in itself.

In my township you can not legally burn yard waste but you are allowed recreational fires; so I am having a beer to make it nice and legal.

Another killer season for Love Death + Robots (Netflix).

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, I took the one marked with hazard cones, Because that is how I roll.

If you like poker and have a few minutes, please give my new Poacher Texas Hold'em Poker Game a whirl. Web-based, mobile friendly, no ads or registration. Play against the AI and rank against other players. rio-ai.com

In a Violent Nature (Hulu) attempts to carve out a new genre: The Arthouse Slasher

Actual Proof at The Gem

About the watch Night of the Lepus (1972) on original 35mm in the theater where they filmed the original The Blob.

This does not feel like checkers OR chess. Feels more like lawn darts.

I changed the default voice on my phone to an Irish woman and driving directions in my car are just so much more fun.

Demon Seed (1977, TCM) stars an artificial intelligence that consumes the library of congress and realizes humans are trash and sets to build a new race using artificial sperm and the wife of its creator. One of the first and best "AI assistant goes bonkers" stories, by Dean Koontz.

Star Trek: Section 31 (Paramount+) is a cinematic lobotomy. Just awful. Yet somehow exactly what my mind needed to erase the last couple weeks.

While Rome burns I am at an afternoon showing of The Substance.

Joker: Folie à Deux (Max) and Emilia Pérez (Netflix) are meditations on love, loss, crime, punishment, revenge, redemption, and too much makeup, told in off-key songs that appear like a column of smoke.

Eaten Alive (1976, Plex). The owner of a texas motel on the edge of a swamp feeds his problems directly to his alligator buddy. Psycho meets Porky's by Tobe Hooper. Based on a true story.

Can not get this song out of my head these days... www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzLT...

Creature Commandos (Max) is an animated spin-off of The Suicide Squad, and the fact the soundtrack is mostly Gogal Bordello, simply delights me.

Every time I open LinkedIn I see an ad for a service that will turn a picture of a woman at a poker table into a professional business headshot. If the best picture of you is one where you are sitting at a poker table, you have other things in your life you need to deal with first.

Trying to decide if Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Goldbergs, or Universal Basic Guys is the most accurate depiction of people who live in and around the city.

Eddie Muller introducing the Noir City showing tonight.

At some point Trump is going to have to pay Mel Brooks a royalty for stealing the plot of The Producers.

Happy Octoberfest y’all.

Or, this happened...

The past harm and future harm to creatives by generative AI has been and will continue to be be enormous. However, trying to discuss it just gets you pure hate from all sides, so I will now STFU about it. Y'all can figure it out.

☘️

Some days figuring out what people are upset about on Bluesky feels like homework.

Enjoying the warm comfort of the constant chaos of the year-long poker league and seeing some people I haven't seen since 2019. Busted out at tonight's final table with pocket queens. I can deal with that.

Inside (2023) on Prime follows a single character, played by Willem Dafoe, a high-end art thief who is trapped inside a penthouse fortress during a theft gone wrong while the owner is out of the country. Like staring into the eyes of Marina Abramović for an hour and a half. Which I would do.