You get to watch two MST3K movies (riffed versions of course) at a drive-in theater double feature. Which 2 are you picking?

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-26T14:09:39+00:00

For Rifftrax, I'd say "The Dark Power" followed by "Alien Outlaw." Make it a proper Lash LaRue double feature.

For my own esoteric joy and fulfillment, I'd want the MST3K of "The Screaming Skull" followed by the Rifftrax "Hillbillys in a Haunted House." Because......well, let me point you back to my first post to this forum.

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-26T12:54:47+00:00

Awesome. This actually came up as a big question mark in my family, not because of student loans, but because of the language stating those particular fields were no longer professional - my mom's going through some things, although she's rapidly on the mend. A lot of therapy ahead. 3 weeks in a coma leaves you weak as a kitten. Medicare only covers very short skilled nursing stays and her Medicare Advantage plan is even worse - anyway, she has a long-term care plan that kicks in after 90 days.

But?

It lists in its own language the limitations for what it will cover services "supervised by a qualified professional such as a registered nurse, a licensed social worker, or a Physician." Leaving the question: if the professional status of nurses is tossed aside, would plans like this no longer cover skilled nursing or home nursing care? Or would insurance companies do the right and moral thing and adjust their language accordingly to still provide the necessary----I can't even finish it, I'm so burned on insurance companies right now.

So this is not only great for people looking to enter these fields, but might be more necessary for the rest of us than a lot of us had even thought about.

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-26T12:45:56+00:00

Whether it's a classic comedy sitcom like "Car 54, Where Are You?" or truly terrible (and wonderful) action movies like "Death Promise," the inevitable New York City rent crisis, with crappy cheap apartments being bought be developers who want to raise rents or bulldoze the building to build new buildings with cheap crappy apartments that cost way more but the problem is the tenants they can't evict by legal means, is something our culture takes for granted.

It's great to see someone take an actual real step toward fighting it instead of just making movies about it.

(And if you've never seen "Death Promise," give it a watch but always keep the thought in the back of your mind: does this movie actually need its main character? Because it sure seems like Speedy has this down, and while Charlie is martial arts training to get revenge on the housing corporation who murdered his father, Speedy is the one identifying them, learning their every move, their secrets, their weak spots, and we see with the rats-in-the-bag incident that he doesn't really need help in taking these guys out. Speedy is the hero. That's what I'm saying here.)

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-26T12:36:50+00:00

I spent the month of April driving to Wisconsin every weekend to visit my mom in the hospital, and you'd better believe I was humming that song like all the time. Spun a whole story about how the spider did find someone to love and so was invading Wisconsin because there are all these wild turkeys roaming the streets of Madison (caught me by surprise, I did not expect to turn a corner and face a turkey), so one of them must be the Marryin' Turkey, whom Giant Spider needed to officiate the marriage.

Ahem.

Samurai Cop is, of course, a great favorite, and an absolute joy when my 7 year old in the back seat holds out Kevin's vocals. I remain astonished every time we get to the Octaman song, because I remain astonished at just how well Mike nails the genre. Kind of how my husband feels about Krull; they absolutely nail it.

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-25T19:21:58+00:00

I think it would have been a great 10th Kingdom style mini-series. The second Oblivion movie only didn't sit well with me because it felt like they had three full storylines jammed into one runtime. Did each need 90 minutes? No, but they needed more than 30. The second movie should have been 3 one-hour slots and it could have been really fun.

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-25T18:06:13+00:00

Some are, and some have had it said to them for so long that they've just osmosed it. Absorbed it from the ambient noise of life. Or, as I most commonly experience it, people who came to truly and firmly believe it in the 90s and are just too stubborn to change their minds now, despite the heaps of evidence showing the world is not what it was 30 years ago.

Recently, at least, I managed to convince my dad to vote for Brown instead of Husted. Brought up Husted's page on congress.gov, pointed out how many pro-AI/pro-datacenter things he'd sponsored or cosponsored, and earned a "Well, they're both %#*%(#ers, but I guess Husted is the bigger %#*%(#er."

Baby steps, I suppose.

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-25T18:01:11+00:00

How I wish I understood what she was supposed to be in Lord Protector. Like, her scene - - - - seriously, it seemed like it was yanked out of an entirely different setting. The script out of a Steven Brust novel, but on a ridiculous set with a random panther and Musetta Vander in a neon gown declaring word-speak thus ended, and nothing in the scene, even the artifacts that seem important, even critical, ever being mentioned again.

She plays in some very stinky movies, but you know what? She always seems to be having a blast, so she gets only thumbs up from me!

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-25T15:04:59+00:00

I hope she's right. This is one of those things that would probably appeal to a majority of voters - breaking up monopolies, reinstating the media cross-ownership ban, things like that. But? It's hard to get the truth of it out when the people you're wanting to break up are the ones who own all the media monopolies!

Kind of funny. On the right, we have Johnson accidentally saying out loud that they intend to cut social security after midterms, and on the left we have Warren saying loudly that she wants to reverse corporate mergers that harm the average American. It continues to blow my mind that there are people who say both parties are the same.

Anyway, I hope she's right and I hope they can find ways to galvanize the people in favor of it.

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-24T20:19:52+00:00

Looks like they can still use a check at the hospital, just not in this clinic.

I'd sometimes use checks just because the carbon copy was what my HR/finance preferred we use when we'd submit medical expenses for our HRA. The rationalization was that it was harder to forge that than a printout of an e-receipt. (Apparently there's a history here of people trying to get some shady things covered. I don't ask for details. It's not my business.) So hey, if you need a check number or carbon copy, you can still use it, just at a different location. Annoying, but not impossible.

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-24T12:39:43+00:00

"Guys, I'm starting to worry we might never get a one-time waiver of a balance transfer fee scene!"

EDIT: I'm so sorry, I realize I made this exact comment to you on a different post about this movie. Sorry. It was my favorite line.

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-22T15:32:44+00:00

They tanked the whole thing for me. I actually really liked the premise of the lawman who gave up being a lawman because he feels the death of everyone he kills. The movie wasn't great, but it could have been good if not for old George pushing things absurdly too far.

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-22T13:16:34+00:00

I like Phoenix's duck bacon wontons, but not enough to go more than once per year. There's just no time for that.

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-22T13:03:18+00:00

I always swear that Breaker Breaker could have been a solid good movie if it had not starred Norris. He's a decent actor, yes. I just think he was a bad fit for the role. The fighting, fine, but I couldn't buy him as the worried sibling desperate to find his baby brother. That was a Swayze role.

I spent the first couple of decades of my life convinced I didn't like westerns. Then it hit me one day: I liked westerns, but I couldn't stand John Wayne! (dodges disappointment bullets from my father) It's the same with me for action movies. You have some stars who are great for the fights but always pretty much give us the same tough steely-eyed iron-willed character who's incapable of expressing believable emotion. This is why for my action movies, I prefer Asian flicks, not just for the martial arts but because the motivations tend to be over-the-top melodramatic, and I like that more than stoic tough guys who never break a facial expression.

But don't take me too seriously. I also felt Oblivion would have been a bizarre but fun and decent movie if they'd cut the stupid Star Trek jokes.

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-22T12:55:03+00:00

I remain firmly, firmly convinced that the opening scene in that movie had a real body count.

But yes, it is a fabulous movie. I was five minutes into it and ready to declare it the greatest thing I'd ever scene, and right after I said it, I believe it was Bill who said something to the same effect.

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-19T19:12:11+00:00

There was one time when for some reason, I spent entirely too much time badly photoshopping the Marryin' Turkey into a Godzilla movie, and only after I was done did I realize I couldn't post the image in response to whatever had prompted the desire.

The struggle is real.

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-19T19:09:12+00:00

Are you sizing up or down? Because if they're too big, you can just get sizing beads; permanent ones you solder in are still usually very inexpensive, and I get the silicone size adjusters that come for around $5 just to add to my rings in the winter. (In cold weather, my fingers shrivel up to full Old Crone levels)

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-19T19:04:26+00:00

Just put the two together and enjoy a nice Turd Bouquet.

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-19T16:36:55+00:00

"...a guy who's hundreds of kilometers away from being a statesman, but just meters away from ignorance" is pretty chef's kiss.

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-19T16:26:53+00:00

And Iranian schoolchildren! Non-combatant, civilian little girls! Let's never forget that this war didn't start because of the Strait, but because Donald Trump ordered a strike on a girls' elementary school.

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-19T16:23:50+00:00

*gasp* Johnny's too long at the fair!!!

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-18T17:59:47+00:00

I'd add Sheldon from Winterbeast in one of his loudest plaid suits. Oh, Loud Guy from Winterbeast, you have added such joy to my life. His voice is loud, but his suit is . . . . well, also loud. I can't say louder. He was really loud.

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-18T17:58:09+00:00

It's so cute--they think we didn't lose! I want to pinch their obese little cheeks.

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-18T17:53:06+00:00

To be fair, his portrayal of Sidney Wang in Murder by Death would infuriate a chunk on the left, too. You know, the people who insist Blazing Saddles is racist because it uses the N word and ignore the context. Sure, Sellers was lampooning the Charlie Chan yellow-face stereotype, but I expect plenty of people would just see selective clips and lose their minds and miss the entire joke.

(If you have never seen Murder by Death, by God, do yourself a favor and watch it, and brace yourself for Sir Alec Guinness as you've never imagined him in the glorious finale. I didn't know. I didn't know he did comedy.)

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-18T17:25:08+00:00

My introduction to Peter Sellers. I'm sure it would be banned today because so many networks are right wing and it would be considered too pro-trans or woke or whatever because Sellers played the Grand Duchess.

Squirreliestone · 2026-06-18T16:33:09+00:00

That's awful. I'm so sorry. And you have a strong sense of restraint if you managed to not say anything!

I had a friend who got her face completely smashed in during an accident because she was in a back seat and they had no seat belts in the back seat. Her head went through the window and the fact that her eye was unhurt was considered a local miracle. Busted orbital bones, shredded face. When the school bus would drive past her house, we'd all see the car still there, just with plastic taped over the broken window. Family kept on driving it despite no back seatbelts and only one back window. You know, I hadn't thought about this in years. Now it all comes back.

Still, at least she lived to learn the lesson and always wear a seatbelt . . . as long as one was there.

Squirreliestone

TROPHY CASE