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Got a little over halfway framing my latest project... A 7' tall x 20' long set of monkey bars for a 5 year old boy. It's a former client, and she requested me, and my company just told her to let me have the project. It's a bit small for them to mess with. Of course it's overbuilt and it's kind of a fun little project. I'll snap some pics when it's done.

My sainted mother is visiting from Marthas Vineyard, so I've been showing her a few old films. Last night we watched The Black Cat (1934), which stars Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. Both men were at the peak of their careers, coming off the huge success of Dracula and Frankenstein (both 1931) respectively. I saw The Black Cat many years ago because of ...well, me obsessing over electronic music. The Norwegian collective known as Neural Network in this case. Their second album Modernité is an unknown ambient classic. However, their first album Brain-State-In-A-Box is the one that sent me on the journey that lead me to The Black Cat. On the song "Under The Sun" there is a repeated sample "There are many things ...under the sun." The spoken sample is both used brilliantly in the song, but also said with such authority that I was intrigued enough to track down the original source. Flash forward a dozen or more years, and I developed a renewed interest in The Black Cat after learning that the director was Edgar G. Ulmer. Ulmer is a fascinating character who had a gift for turning out a masterpiece (or at least a mini-masterpiece) on a shoestring budget. He learned this skill after he fell in love with a producer's wife, ran off with her, and got blackballed in Hollywood for 10-15 years. (To be fair, he stayed married to her for decades.) The Black Cat is one of the films Ulmer produced before his exile, and was actually a huge hit at the time. Lugosi and Karloff were rivals, and Ulmer deftly used their adverse professional relationship to extract stellar performances from them. It's a horror film, but there isn't much in the way of death, monsters or gore. It's an early psychological thriller more than anything else. It's also quite a short film, clocking in at just over an hour (another trademark of Ulmer, getting things done quickly.) After watching The Black Cat, I explained the significance of Edgar G. UImer, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff to my mother. I also covered the career arcs of the two main stars. Lugosi's fizzled and he developed bad habits like morphine and working with Ed Wood. Karloff, meanwhile, sustained an admirable career for many years. She was quite taken with the film. It has stood the test of time and is well worth a watch even now. Side note: I also attempted to explain to her the renaissance in popularity Bela Lugosi and Ed Wood experienced in the 1980s and onward. I even went into the Bauhaus and their famous track named after Bela. I showed her a live video of the band performing at Coachella in 2005: She was so taken aback by Peter Murphy hanging upside down for the entire performance that the song was king of lost on her. She's a bit out of the post punk demographic anyway. So tonight, naturally, we watched Plan 9 From Outer Space. Unsurprisingly, she thought it was amazingly awful. I attempted to explain that the terribleness the film was the point of it, and how Ed Wood became so famous for his ineptitude. She did find some parts amusing, but in general thought it stunk. I think tomorrow night we'll watch Edgar Ulmer's famous 1945 noir film Detour to make up for it.

I think you posted it exactly where you should have.

I've been a huge Gordon Lightfoot fan since the seventies. He's one of my top 5 lyricists. Right up there with Kristofferson and Dylan.

I did a "recovery ride" with 2 category 4 climbs. So 1.8 miles of what I need to do for 33 miles straight to do maui. I have a long road ahead of me.

Wow! Thank you all for your thoughtful & extensive responses. They each offered valid perspectives (some I had considered, some not), and expressed in a much more lucid manner than I could have. I promise I will consider them all. Much appreciated, truly.

Gordon Lightfoot. Pretty much Gordon 24/7 lately.

I'd have a hard time passing them up at 900$ CDN. That's what, 420$ USD? Maybe 666$? @cetoole has them set up with an SVS sub and I've spent multiple hours listening; I am a fan.

New GoGo Penguin albúm

Colour me interested when they come out in deep, dark, almost black purple with a pink cone surround.

A matching wireless sub would be a great addition.

Thank you very much everyone. Maybe I shouldn't have posted that here but frankly I'm very upset. This photo is from last year doing two laps around the island: it's how I want to remember him.

Cuing up Mammal Hands and GoGo Penguin. Thanks, gents.

“Every time I hear a song of his it's like I wish it would last forever.” - Bob Dylan

Man, I really should get my LS50s out of their box.

As happy as I am with Edifier in the living room, the Wireless 2 LS50 sure looks fucking great.

More brisket tacos.

I'll throw this out and say neither, without first knowing your budget to be able to say whether or not there may be significantly better options for the same dollars. I see almost no value in purchasing a PC locally, haven't done so for over a decade, and given the use case it sure looks like you are way over-buying and if you do decide to go off leash, both will likely have suboptimal battery life because they appear to be gaming focused.

2070 super max-q is about twice as powerful as a 1650ti. The 1650ti is a fairly low end gpu.

Sometimes I watch cat videos: Dune (faster, cheaper, better?)

A little Nikki Glaser

RIP Gale Sayers https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/29951448/chicago-bears-hall-fame-running-back-gale-sayers-dies-age-77

RIP Sci-Fi Designer Ron Cobb https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2555223/mark-hamill-pays-tribute-to-star-wars-designer-ron-cobb https://film-book.com/ron-cobb-the-artist-behind-star-wars-alien-and-back-to-the-future-has-died-at-83/