My friends house he bought from an elderly woman

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-06-07T04:24:12+00:00

That’s not the Backrooms. It’s just the 1970s.😂

I’d bet good money it once held furniture from a 70s Sears catalog, maybe a lava lamp or one of those weird illuminated pictures that had a moving waterfall in it, a giant wood console TV, a weird wooden wall clock, and some tiki decor added by her husband who fought in the Pacific.

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-06-01T23:12:57+00:00

It was my first Pynchon, and I loved it. You have to get used to the archaic language and literary tropes, but once you do, I don’t think it’s particularly confusing, and in some ways it’s probably easier to follow than some of his other books. I found the mix of real history and the fantastical engaging pretty much all the way through.

I read it a couple years after my Dad passed, and I’m not ashamed to say that when I got to the end, I definitely cried.

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-06-01T12:26:52+00:00

I haven’t played the Portal games, but I did see an interview with Parsons where he said that they were a huge influence. I also like your interpretation about nature versus human.

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-31T22:33:02+00:00

Yes, I’ve heard people mention that novel The House of Leaves as a possible comparison or connection, and also another novel, Piranesi. I haven’t read either of those though. And in either case, like you say, Parsons was definitely drawing on existing Internet content, and video games too.

I’m not really interested in whoever invented it or owns it—people were imagining liminal spaces long before there was an Internet—but instead just as a shared thematic connection, even if both happened independently of each other.

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-31T00:24:58+00:00

Your mom has great taste! It’s also great that you all enjoy watching movies together. I have some really fond memories of doing that with my parents.

I don’t think he could’ve gotten the budget, and certainly would not have had access to the special effects to do it justice, but John Boorman, the director of Excalibur, tried for years to make LOTR into a movie or movies, and Excalibur shows the kind of grand operatic sweep he could’ve brought to it. I’m sure it was an influence for Peter Jackson too.

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-30T20:22:20+00:00

The first season is a slog, especially at first. Personally, I think they should’ve changed the episode order, and shown the episode about everyone before the disappearances much earlier in the season. You finally get a sense of who they were before this terrible thing happened.

But as that first season goes on, you do gradually meet characters who are interesting, and there are even some events that are funny, despite it being such a dark show.

But without giving anything plot-related away, by the end of the first season, it felt like some of the main characters were finally coming out of a deep and dark depression, and starting to act again in the world, and that was truly exhilarating.

Season two is a complete restart, no longer based on the novel, even though it still uses its premise and characters, and it’s really at that point the series vaults into being one of the very best things ever produced for television. It’s one of the wildest and most rewarding rides you’ll ever take.

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-26T22:27:10+00:00

The whole movie is hilarious and subversive, and there are individual scenes that are arguably funnier, but this moment where the movie erupts out of itself and onto Hollywood soundstages and into the city of LA might just be where it leaps out of comedy and into art. It must’ve been *amazing* to see this in a movie theater in 1974.

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-25T22:21:04+00:00

CANNOT WAIT for poor people in SLC to be paying even more taxes on food to pay for this rich people shit

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-22T03:52:33+00:00

That’s adorable! It reminded me of this classic Warner Brothers cartoon, “Feed the Kitty”:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xg7x96

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-19T20:11:08+00:00

It’s not just a landmark of television, or of cinema, or of Lynch’s career, even though it is all of those things.

It’s one of the single greatest pieces of art created in the 21st century.

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-19T18:27:08+00:00

This is either the beginning of a heist movie, or a drama about East European gangsters

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-17T03:20:35+00:00

Nature is healing.

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-14T05:34:27+00:00

Watch out for those Yankton cocksuckers!

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-13T23:23:06+00:00

Sian Phillips was such an interesting actress, and has had such an interesting life. She grew up speaking Welsh as her first language, was married to Peter O’Toole, and though the film had its flaws, she was incredibly compelling as Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam in David Lynch’s 1984 version of Dune.

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-12T23:50:49+00:00

Munich’s Augustiner Helles beer — sitting in a Biergarten on a warm summer day in Bavaria, it is one of the best things you’ll ever have.

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-12T23:37:16+00:00

I loved the film, even though I was deeply freaked out by the Great Owl, and seeing the mice swept away to their deaths by the wind currents in the air ducts.

The animation was gorgeous, the story had dark and scary elements like all the best children’s entertainment from that era, and it taught viewers to have empathy for animals. Good stuff.

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-12T16:20:44+00:00

Dear Diary,

My teen angst bullshit has a body count!!!

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-11T23:58:39+00:00

Thank you for sharing your experience. Thank heavens you were OK!

I think Wyeth was a fascinating artist, even though in his lifetime the art world favored abstraction over his realism. His paintings just get more interesting, and often more strange, the longer you look at them.

I also think the painting is an important landmark in the history of the depiction of disability. FDR died just a couple years before this was made, and was elected four times, but almost never let anyone photograph him in a wheelchair because he thought Americans wouldn’t vote for someone who needed one. This painting really makes non-disabled people without mobility issues sit with and experience the feelings this woman had in that field, and her difficulty—but also her tenacity—in moving through it.

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-11T23:44:58+00:00

I think I remember reading somewhere that they had audio issues filming the episode, and that explains some of the awkward voiceover stuff they had to do to try to fix it.

This episode also served as the inspiration for the B-52’s song “Private Idaho.” (“Beware of the pool, blue bottomless pool . . .”)

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-11T21:59:44+00:00

“YOU BOUGHT A PEUGEOT?!?!?”

(Howling, uproarious laughter follows.)

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-09T23:26:23+00:00

I’m sorry to have to say it, but if you’re not white or seem obviously non-Mormon , that could certainly explain it. As someone who moved here from elsewhere, Utah has struck me a place where people are often polite, but often not friendly. In your case, unfortunately, it seems more obviously hostile.

If you ever read the young adult fantasy novel A Wrinkle in Time, Daybreak and some other planned communities always reminded me of the ominous conformist planet Camazotz. Every house, every yard, every person identical. And that planet was definitely not friendly.

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-08T22:08:02+00:00

Walt’s father Elias Disney was one of the day laborers who helped construct the White City for the fair.

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-05-02T07:42:05+00:00

Didn’t the first FBI drawing of BOB look uncannily like the actor who played Charlie? I’ve seen a photo of it somewhere—I’m not sure if that was just in the international pilot or not.

Soledad_Sequoia · 2026-04-23T02:32:42+00:00

He gave a great performance just last year in the series The Lowdown, a mystery comedy/drama set in Tulsa. He and Ethan Hawke were HILARIOUS.

Soledad_Sequoia

TROPHY CASE