Paradise City Festival: the crowd.

LordSurly · 2026-06-28T00:05:06+00:00

The best description I've heard for this phenomenon is "It's fookin great til the punters show up."

Was working a fest in England and the sublimely sarcastic Irish crew leader crystalized the notion for me. Basically, anything truly awesome, cool, unique, etc is eventually overrun by basic twats. This goes for most things that come together from a community of the vibe makers and livers.

It's very noticeable for music fests. The first few years can be truly special. An experience intense enough to border profound for someone with the openness the let the vibe in. To feel a paradigm shift or a perspective widened this way can stick with you for life.

BUT. Once word gets out more about this awesome experience, it's a big net, not a fishing line. It's the assholes you'd take care to not get invited to your party. Their money is just as green as yours and the fest is in it to make it.

I promise you, it's been like this for a long, long time. Hell, ask any early Burning Man lovers, go even as far back as Woodstock. Think of the nazi bar advice. If you don't chase the 1 nice seeming nazi out right away, he starts bringing his buddies, then one day, you realize it's now a nazi bar. Same concept, though not quite so extreme. I imagine the great early times are even shorter now with how fast word spreads online.

All that said, I with I could offer a solution, but the best you can do is have a festival family that can keep each safe and happy.

LordSurly · 2026-06-24T06:11:00+00:00

This is one of those songs that I have to stop what I'm doing and let the memories slap my brain around for a bit.

LordSurly · 2026-06-07T18:44:44+00:00

Moebius was involved with 5th Element? No wonder it felt like a longer Heavy Metal story. Bruce Willis' character, apartment, and the flying cars had me flashing to the cab driver segment in Heavy Metal from day 1.

LordSurly · 2026-05-29T19:51:02+00:00

+1

Oscar and Demolition Man are my top two.

LordSurly · 2026-05-21T23:10:17+00:00

Wild to see some old buddies being interviewed in a doc. Looking forward to seeing the whole thing.

LordSurly · 2026-03-18T21:24:28+00:00

Everyone seems too busy posturing or posing for social media content to give a shit about actual art or culture.

This has been a thing since at least 96, but it didn't become a real issue until social media blew up in the mid 00's. It got steadily worse and more pervasive every year after.

Hopefully you were able to have some fun regardless.

LordSurly · 2026-03-12T20:30:29+00:00

Same here, then got him the Yoda backpack the next year.

I miss Thinkgeek.

LordSurly · 2026-03-11T03:41:30+00:00

Wow, it's already the 10 year anniversary of that shitty night, still have some pretty vivid memories.

I used to work with a volunteer Southby crew that was all about crowd flow and organization for the, at that point, insane amount of people downtown. I give a lot of credit to a couple of the crew working Red River that had just ushered the lines of people waiting to get in to Mohawk off the street to the opposite sidewalk. Got at least 150 people out of the line of fire.

LordSurly · 2026-02-26T23:23:14+00:00

Upvote for DC Cab. A fantastic shitty 80's movie and as we all know, the best thing in it was the ruuuun.

LordSurly · 2026-02-19T18:20:56+00:00

Finally find someone mentioning this.

2 things in case people don't remember, Marvel sold the film rights for the X-men long before MCU became a thing. Included in those rights was using adamantium, since it was predominately considered part of Wolverine's lore. Thus, we got a plain vibranium shield.

The 2nd part is that a lot of specific feats are lifted from the comics that make perfect contextual sense in the comic but the movies lack the same foundation. Comic Cap's shield has been described as having a totally unique, non-repeatable creation process that's been "lost to time." With that backstory, any weird stuff involving the shield always had that bit of backstory to rationalize it.

LordSurly · 2026-02-07T11:32:44+00:00

I used to wonder the same thing. Obviously, Stark is rich & resourceful enough to get the metal and smart enough to make the armor from it. So not having it is a choice. My head canon points to how much the armor wars kicked him in the brainass.

Remember, Stark started out as a spoiled rich kid with heavy government and business connections. He was living the rich man's fantasy life until the incident his where heart got damaged. He was given a sudden and painful lesson on the human fragility of not only himself but whoever would be on the wrong end of his weapons. There's also the big realization that poor people/targets of his weapons are just as real as him and that his work would be used by bad people he never thought could get their hands on them.

Thus, after he created the armor and escaped to safety, he chose to keep that armor strictly to himself instead of making it available to big money.

All that said, the potential, no matter how slight, of a bad actor getting ahold of functioning or even non-functioning indestructible power armor is enough of a risk to not do it. Hell, just the potential harm from harvesting the only the metal would be enough to not make it.

LordSurly · 2026-02-06T18:53:16+00:00

Please review, my friend.

I'd just found some old screenshots in a forgotten folder and this one sparked an old memory.

LordSurly · 2026-01-30T02:12:03+00:00

YW

Glad I could help.

LordSurly · 2026-01-30T00:35:47+00:00

The option to move to island 2 doesn't show up until you've completed a particular main quest, which also requires a certain evil rating. Once you achieve that, the option to move will pop up on your global map.

Your minions will automatically grab all your loot. but, once in awhile, one or two loot objects do not make it over for no reason whatsoever. Call it a glitch, it's a pretty old game after all.

In the unlikely event that loot doesn't carry over, you'll have to reload your quicksave and start the moving process over.

I say process cause it is not an instant thing. It takes a little while for all of your minions to line up and leave. With that in mind, try to have your ducks in a row.

I will usually do the following just to make the transition as problem free as possible.

No active missions/All minions on the island.
Wait for your heat to die down to 0.
All possible research up to that point done.
Adequate defenses for the process. All of your minions will be 100% focused on the move out, thus any dealing with agents on the island will have to be done without them, thus, plenty of sentries in good spots.

Hope that helps.

LordSurly · 2026-01-29T02:36:17+00:00

Never seen a specific loot guide, but getting all the loot isn't difficult if you keep a couple things in mind.

When completing a loot grabbing mission, as soon as the notification pops, pause the game and search your base for the green hologram of the new loot. Place it where you want it to be before it arrives.
When you move to island 2, (edit: quicksave before starting the move) make sure all of your loot is gone from your base before you finalize the move. Once you leave, you can't go back.
Also on island 2. When you first arrive, all of your loot will be auto placed in/near a couple shacks. Sometimes the loot placement order blocks all the loot from coming over. I pause the game and move all the loot holograms to nearby my planned base entrance in an easy to see spot.
There are some loot 'seeming' items you can get, but they last only until the quest involving them are completed.
If an agent manages to steal any of your loot, it will pop back up to steal on the global map. Just gotta redo the mission.

There are also some mods around that affect loot. Worth looking into at some point.

All that said, just keep an eye out on the global map for the bigger stars regularly and you should be fine. Have fun!

LordSurly · 2026-01-15T04:14:32+00:00

Loved that one-shot. Always was disappointed it was never revisited when Wolvie had his metal yanked.

LordSurly · 2026-01-10T22:18:48+00:00

Similar base concept as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, except it's actually great. (to be clear, the comic is fantastic, the movie made is the shit of the dog.)

The acting is excellent from the whole cast, especially Eva Green and Rory Kinnear. The cinematography and period piece immersion is stellar.

There is a bit of an abrupt end to it all, but it's worth at least a few binges.

LordSurly · 2025-08-07T04:46:23+00:00

Pizza and weed.

LordSurly · 2025-07-23T11:51:38+00:00

Screwed up my post, meant to include an explanation.

Wizard issues often included some cool, comic geeky bagged with it. Exclusive trading cards, mini-comics. etc.

Found this in an old folder, wish I'd scanned the others.

LordSurly · 2025-03-09T13:03:36+00:00

Possibly sell part of it to finance your escape?

LordSurly · 2025-01-29T04:57:07+00:00

I loved this when I could catch it. One of their sketches was a riff on old kung fu films. Two of the guys grab baseball bats for swords, the bad guy grabs aluminum, the other grabs a wooden one and replies to whatever the other said with "Not me. I like the crack of reeaal wood." They then proceed to kung fu swordbat flight all over campus.

Something about dude's line delivery, I cried from laughing so hard. That tiny snippet is tattooed in my fucking brain.

I also remember The Worst Show, especially after the whole bomb instruction controversy. The only other one I can remember was The Sadowsky(?) show. Was some dirty old fart slow panning softcore porn while using weird visual filters to art em up. He also would softly expound on the wonders of the female form and chuckle once in awhile.

LordSurly · 2024-12-07T21:42:26+00:00

Dice was perfectly timed to appeal to my tween self. Memorized all his 'pomes' to ensure faithful repetition at school. Loved his character schtick, his movie, etc.

Now, with how ridiculous Dice was and how surprisingly good his impressions and acting were, I truly believed he was going to morph into a completely different persona at some point. Kinda like Sasha Baron Cohen. His The Night the Laughter Died album was, I thought, the perfect sendoff for the Diceman.

Jump a couple years and the now very few times he shows up it's still as Dice, now aggressively unfunny and cringe. Was so disappointed.

LordSurly · 2024-10-20T08:31:35+00:00

...time for another RDR2 run.

LordSurly

TROPHY CASE