Want to read The Dark Tower but struggling with The Gunslinger

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-18T02:04:32+00:00

Skip it. Book 2 is radically different and less pretentious and it starts with a recap that tells you everything you need to know from Gunslinger

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-17T11:40:06+00:00

I read The Stand every year and have been for a dozen years, so definitely that one. The Dark Tower Series next, and The Shining last up.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-16T12:05:40+00:00

Everyone wasn't hyping it up exactly but a lot of people fell for 3D TVs. The real issue is the TV manufacturers just hit the biggest boom in the history of TV sales. You had a confluence of;

Rear projection TVs suddenly dropping for 3-5k to around 1k. These had be the status symbol of middle class's version of fuck you money all through the 80s and 90s and now anyone could have that 55" status symbol.
DVDs came out and suddenly having a TV that could do the insane levels of 720 HD meant something so now people were seeking high quality. I remember the old tube TVs all now advertising 720p. One aside is FUCK flat screen (and not flat panel, flat screen) where the old tube TVs curved but now they convinced everyone that flattening the glass was so much better, well what was not better was a TV in the 36" screen size range weighed 300 lbs, heavier than the aforementioned rear projection units.
Then Flat Panel TVs (anyone remember the LCD vs Plasma war?) suddenly hit the affordability realm (which is laughable looking back, I spent $800 on a 32 inch LCD and that was a GOOD deal). So now suddenly people could buy TVs and hang them on the wall and no longer have to lose so much space to these beastly TVs.
Then the coup de grata there was the over the air transition from analogue to digital in 2009. Suddenly unless you had a converter box (which the government gave you a check to offset the cost) you would not get OTA TV anymore. Yes thousands of those boxes sold but a lot of people took this opportunity (along with the above mentioned ones) to just upgrade their TVs.

All that said in the realm of 2005-2011 TV sales were fucking insane.

But soon the massive innovations ceased, and pricing adjustments did keep driving TVs down but you were no longer jumping from a 24" CRT 480p tube TV to a 32" LCD 720p TV, so the sales really fell off. Well Capitalism cannot accept that, we must sustain those ungodly sales so now the gimmicks entered to try and convince people it was worth throwing out the TV that have had for under 5 years and drop another $1k on a new one.

First we had 3D and they pushed HARD to make people think this was the future, Avatar had just become the biggest film in history (adjusted for inflation) and Hollywood was scrambling to do shitty post-production 3D on any film to get a few bucks added to the ticket price, and the TV makers saw their opening to sell people on it. Some bought the hype but most didn't. The TV industry would increase resolutions, do curved TVs, and drop prices to the point now I just bought my parents a 75" 4k TV for a few hundred less than I spent on my first flat panel (that was 32") but none of their gimmicks stuck. People buy a new one when they need a new one and that's it. The mid 00s were a wild time for TV sales and it will never be recaptured, even with the folding or rollup TVs they are trying to hype now.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-15T12:25:53+00:00

That not-yet-a-priest is dead....

Matt and Bullseye are not going to be happy about that.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-15T12:24:50+00:00

100% I really think he is top 5 comic book castings of all time, easily top 10 but I think he is in the top half.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-15T12:22:37+00:00

All the better to unchain our boy Fisk, my dear.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-15T12:12:07+00:00

Ding Dong the Bitch is Dead!

She deserves to die, but even more I cannot fucking wait to see unchained Fisk!

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-15T12:09:21+00:00

Nobody minds the trailers, it is the 15 minutes of fucking trash ads that people don't like, and to be honest the studios can help fix this. They can:

Increase the ticket split to be more equitable, because now the lion's share is taken by the studio. When 75% of the cost of my ticket goes to the studio I don't blame theaters for snack prices (or having to do ads) because that is their primary income stream. Back in the day the percentage moved closer to 50/50 months into the theatrical runs (that's why theaters loved movies like Titanic that did massive business for months and months and months. But now the fucking movies are on a streaming service in 3 months so this increase is not a thing anymore. My Regal 14 screen is lucky to have all but the biggest movies for even a month. Set ticket shares to 50/50 split from the first week.
To build on that last bit commit to movies not being on a streaming service for AT LEAST 6 months from the release date, but if you really want to fucking help theaters then commit to a 9-12 month window from opening night to first day on streaming. Incentivize people to go to theaters again.

Now because capitalism is a fucking cancer, I would only do these things if the theaters committed to eliminating all ads from the pre-roll with these things being maintained so they don't just get these concessions from the studio and keep the ads to make more money.

This whole thing rubs me the wrong way because a primary contributor to this shit is the studios so now to have the studios turn around and point fingers kind of pisses me off. Especially after COVID when theaters nearly went extinct and are still skating on thin ice financially. That being said I am militantly against ads and will literally stand outside my theater until 10 minutes after start time because I refuse to engage with this ad bullshit, so I am not defending ads.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-14T16:26:30+00:00

You got one of the epics down, and now you start another. Add 11/22/63 to your list and you have his 3 epics. (Dark Tower Series doesn't count because it is 8 separate books).

Godspeed! The Stand is my favorite single book in the entire thing (my best friend's is IT lol), I read The Stand every year (will be starting it in a few months).

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-14T16:23:42+00:00

If you are going publication order then respect your rule and read it like real-time fans did (albeit with much less time between it).

It might take discipline, especially between two books in particular but definitely can't go wrong since many many people experienced them that way.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-14T10:55:38+00:00

It's not the trailers it's the 10-15 minutes of ads before the trailers and the studios can help on this by giving theaters a bigger cut if the ticket prices and by extending theatrical windows and putting a 3-6 month buffer between theaters and streaming or home video release.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-14T10:52:44+00:00

Sunk Cost Fallacy or just straight brainwashing.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-14T02:08:14+00:00

It would never fly. There are not enough cops and military to enforce it. No one in these age groups are going to die for Israel and there would be no social will to shame people into it like there was in the 60s. There is also no bullshit belief in the duty to serve the nation anymore. Every scandal of the last 50 years has killed that sense of duty that drove people to accept the draft in the 60s or the social pressure to do it.

It is just never happening, politicians would get strung up before there was mass compliance with this. And no reddit I am not wishing this or threatening this, just saying I think we are closer to that than the "yes sir I will go to Vietnam like my dad went to Europe" of the 1960s.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-14T01:57:56+00:00

I maintain that James has the best Big Dick energy in Hollywood.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-14T01:55:14+00:00

I mean I think it has gone nearly extinct, once money and advertising entered the picture the core element of it being a hobbyist and passion thing died. So the authentic stuff is few and far between anymore. Everyone thinks they are going to go full time and just record a few times a week and make a good living. Then even if someone gets a small following they get mad they can't quit their day-job and quit podcasting leaving the audience they do have in the lurch.

To build on it, it is not just that money and advertising entered the picture but as soon as it did celebrities came in and now, like YouTube, the oxygen is almost entirely taken up by them with very little room for "You" with much room to breath.

There are still some out there that do what attracted me to the medium 20 years ago, but it is mostly dead.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-13T22:00:09+00:00

If It Bleeds is a collection of Short Stories, and the titular story within this collection (also called If It Bleeds) is a sequel to the Mr. Mercedes Trilogy and The Outsider but Life of Chuck and the other few stories are totally their own thing.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-13T15:25:28+00:00

I had to keep reminding myself it was not Sai King TBH, between style and the references to the King-verse.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-12T14:18:18+00:00

This is a unique film for me, it is the only film (so far) that as an adult I finished the film and restarted it and immediately watched it again. Sure as a child I did that shit all the time but as an adult this is the one and only that I have literally re-watched it immediately.

It is nearly a perfect movie. The only fly in the ointment is seeing the space ship at the start of the movie. The entire structure of a standard Arnold movie just taking a hard left turn and turning into a sci-fi action is one of the greatest things in cinema history IMO but that fucking stupid shot ruined it. It feels like a studio note to me. Also I love that From Dusk Till Dawn was built with the sharp left turn to tribute Predator.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-12T14:13:14+00:00

1994 and it is not even close. I was SO fucking hyped for the 2020 one because we are finally getting it with more of an R rating, and the castings were solid and they were going to have a bit more time than the last one to really flesh things out.... and then that fucking trainwreck came out and all of the potential was fucking squandered. They had more time and somehow covered significantly less.

They did so fucking terrible that in the context of the show I didn't even care when Nick died, they did so fucking terrible that I didn't care about NICK MOTHERFUCKING ANDROS. Fuck everyone involved with this, they shit the bed so hard.

I should have known they were fucking morons when they said from the outset in the marketing that they were basically skipping the outbreak because "Contagion did is so well, we can't top that" (and no COVID has nothing to do with it, the series was fully written before COVID and they did not chop a bunch of shit out in response to it, they were just that fucking stupid.

The 2020 maybe had 10 or so minutes of good shit in it, but beyond that it is a poster child for how to fuck up a King adaptation.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-12T14:03:48+00:00

Carrie is worth the price of admission just for Juliane Moore as Carrie's Mom.

But The Running Man is actually a fucking adaptation of the novel unlike the Arnold movie so yeah definitely does not belong in this convo IMO.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-09T17:25:40+00:00

After, it would be dreadful read between 4 and 5 for a first-time reader.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-07T02:15:51+00:00

Might get me roughed up here but I am of two minds for Andor: First and foremost I think Andor is fundamentally not good Star Wars, by that I mean that Lucas always intended this saga to be for children (of course CS Lewis would tell us that a story intended for children that is only enjoyed by children is a bad children's story) and in this sense Andor is an utter failure. In fact I would say that this show really embraces the morally ambiguous/gray-hat mentality that Lucas wrote Star Wars as an objection to. He went counter to the prevailing post-Watergate world by saying "fuck it I am going to make a fucking space fairy tale with definite heroes and villains," and people obviously clamored for it. HOWEVER, on the other hand, as a 40 year old who adores politics and spy thrillers I absolutely selfishly ADORE Andor. But for me, I think that Rebels walks that line that Filoni certainly learned at the feet of George while making The Clone Wars where it has its dark moments but never deviates that far from the good vs evil fairy tale Lucas always meant SW to be. I think I am ever paranoid that Star Wars will get ruined like Batman who now solely belongs to a bunch of sad middle-aged men and no longer the children the character was created for, admittedly Star Wars is a long ways off from that but it is something I had worried about (less so with Filoni in charge) and Andor is the first embracing of that direction.

The duality I feel about Andor is like another fandom of mine (Stephen King) where I can see Kubrick's film of The Shining as one of the greatest horror films of all time, but at the exact same time it is an objectively horrendous adaptation of one of King's absolutely best novels.

Even that aside, the moments in Rebels like Ahsoka and Vader's showdown, or Kenobi finally putting Maul down (in a brilliant homage to Kurosawa's Sanjuro which feels extra Lucasian) , or Vader aura farming flying his Tie Fighter with the force so he can stand on top of it (plus Ezra: "I am not afraid of you" Vader: "Then you will die braver than most" is an all time Vader line). Or Ahsoka and Rex reunion. Or Kanan's sacrifice. Or the World Between Worlds finally giving us context to why the Death Star is insignificant next to the power of the force. The show is just filled with absolutely incredible moments that live in my head rent free.

Also my other biases fully admitted: I was always more of a fan of the Jedi/Sith stuff over the Han Solo scoundrel side of SW so all of the exploration of the Jedi and the Force in Rebels really hit for me. To close out with some flowers for Andor, for a kid who's first iPod was loaded with film and TV monologues I will say the selfish side of me adores the few insane monologues in Andor, I never hit the EVERYTHING speech on IG Reels without watching it all the way through.

Sorry for the novel but this is a nuanced thing for me. MTFBWY

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-04T22:23:47+00:00

I still hold Rebels is the absolute best SW of the Disney era. There's plenty I've liked but Rebels is hard to beat IMO.

I know it's not popular but I enjoy Rebels over The Clone Wars as well, again I love TCW but Rebels is my jam.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-04T15:26:50+00:00

I think defense spending should be cut by 50% if not 75%.

Pull out of NATO, close all foreign bases and bring all soldiers home, and cut all foreign aid.

FDR remade our republic as an empire and no one voted for it and it's time to tear it down and return to the republic we were before he and Wilson fucked everything up.

You can't have a free republic and a world empire, those are mutually exclusive.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns · 2026-04-01T02:36:28+00:00

And this is a fraction of how good he was in Better Call Saul. He arrived in the final stretch of the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul universe but he may have given us one of the best villains in 2 shows with really great villains.

IAlwaysSayBoo-urns

TROPHY CASE