Brandon Winter

I love old black and white movies, but half of them is me just saying “wait, which white guy with dark shiny hair is this again?”

The last decade has been brought to you by Troma Entertainment.

Listen, make his day and yours at the same time.

That is a lot of planes.

big dick energy beings

Wealthy is never having to think about money. Rich is earning John Woo’s squib budget every month.

Drug Stores in 1955: We serve lunch, can fill prescriptions, and you can buy a suit or a dress here, too.

Drug Stores in 2025: Who you like some anti-snoring strips and a bag of candy corn, in July?

It’s popular to villainize cities these days. But sit outside on a cool summer night listening to a guy sing John Prine’s “Illegal Smile” in the bar across the way as the whole bar sings along over the tidal hiss of passing traffic & the wind through the cherry trees & tell me it’s a hellscape.

Wait…they are? It takes real guts to touch something that perfect, I’ll say that.

The coffin might be made of laminated particle board, but it sleeps like a sepulcher, I assure you.

“I even got to curl my hand in a grotesque hypnotic gesture for a sec.”

You think the first time a vampire has a crucifix shoved in its face and it gets to hiss in eldritch agony while jumping out of a window back into the shadows whence it came, it thinks “shit, I’ve made it?”

Ummm, this looks incredible.

Because the book concentrates on what they choose to do or not do. You get to see how their basic personality unfolds in how they live their lives, rather than how the author chooses to mete it out to you.

Been thinking about this a lot, & I think that’s one of the things that makes the book so good. A lot of time, showing & not telling can become a kind of parlor trick. Revealing the characters slowly makes things shallow. But since we know them 20 pages in, we get to know them on a deeper level.

OK, this guy called The Bargain Hunter. He’s just Kraven the Hunter with a vest made of coupons with lion’s mane fringe. He stalks the aisles of grocery stores hunting deals and saying things like “never buy brand-name pantry goods. You’re wasting your money.”

That has a kernel of truth.

I’ll always drag academia for being a miserable place full of miserable people. BUT…

So thankful to have learned how to spot assumptions & knee jerk reactions that masquerade as criticism. It taught me how to smell BS. Can’t say thank you enough. Legit made my life better and me a better person.

I love how mad people get when I say this. What binds people in an age cohort are the things they experience in their formative years. 9/11 made a lot of 20-somethings fascists and a lot of them pacifists. That’s it. Birthdates don’t dictate or mean anything. Generations are astrology.

Also, “Gandalf” is literally the name of a dwarf in Old Norse named Gandalfr, and he used that. Dude knew his shit.

And in the exceptions, like in some German dialects (like Berlinerish) and Old English, G is *still* “J” only before front vowels. See: Berlin “verjessen” instead of “vergessen.” Or “yester-“ in English instead of “gestern” in German for “yesterday.” Shit’s predictable and has rules, my dudes.

I hate that our entire world is basically a tabloid. At least give us a real Bat Boy.

No decency.

He came to Davis,CA when I was in grad school there, and I have never seen a crowd that out of control in the eyes in my life. People were manic. The guy has a charisma I’ve never seen before. I guess what I’m trying to say is, yeah, right? But, like, it’s some deep shit. Truly wild.

Oh no! How the little guy doing?

I still can’t believe it’s not real meat, either.

“Available wherever you get your podcasts.” OK, but what if I get my podcasts from a guy named Sergei in a back room in a pawn shop?

Yeah, or the appearance of a spine. Trump is a coward who retreats at the slightest real pushback. But he looks and feels like a tough guy, and people like that. I honestly think if a Dem candidate came out and said “listen, I don’t have the answers, but this is what I think” would do really well.

Moderation isn’t the answer; it’s talking about complex and difficult concepts in a way that people can grasp and see the value in. But it’s easier to basically reboot an old “rhetorical franchise” than to spend the money on marketing for something new.

pundits go “oh, you need to be more racist,” and the Dem party buys it b/c that’s the easiest solution. Finding and working with a complex message that speaks to people is harder than just aping what’s worked for someone else (most big budget art is made like this, too—see: remakes).