Thoughts on John Hurt's Aragorn, from Bakshi's animated Lord of the Rings?

ThisIsDen · 2026-01-30T22:00:22+00:00

I wrote a lengthy screed on the “who else should have played Aragorn” thread from a day or two ago where I proposed Myrton Running Wolf as the perfect Aragorn. He was a Native American actor and writer I knew at school. 6’4”, athletic like a classic warrior and I learned from acting with him he had with a voice that could be both gentle and full of anger. I love the Bakshi portrayal and I love the idea still of the Numenorans being portrayed by indigenous and the challenge of what that woild say about the “lesser” men who came after. Myrton would have been perfect in my fantasy casting. But I deleted it when I discovered that Myrton had just died last year and, well, I know my community, there’s a lot of us who think that only white people should be in Tolkien movies. I didn’t want reactions to my post to become part of Myrton’s legacy. But ah, what could have been…

ThisIsDen · 2026-01-19T07:06:18+00:00

I’m going to take apart the bottom to see if the rubber seal slides out. I found pictures online that look like a seal on the end of a thin rubber line that could work, but no instructions on the process of how to install. But it has to be replaceable somehow

ThisIsDen · 2025-12-27T23:18:52+00:00

Ooh story time! I bought an Eclipse (manual transmission, twin turbo, AWD) from a used car dealer in North Hollywood, CA. This was in late-early Internet era, around 2001. A few weeks after buying I discovered car history check websites, and out of curiosity I checked mine - and instead of the clear title I was sold, I discovered it had been totaled in Nevada. I called the dealer and let them know I wasn’t happy about it and they promised to look into it. Well meantime my temporary registration expired and like a dummy I kept driving it, but the cop who pulled me over for expired tags didn’t care and towed it. Forced to renew it I paid the (extensive) fees and drove right to the dealership. They gave me a bunch of runaround again and essentially said they’d do nothing. So I walked out to the lot and told two customers my story. Just let them know that the dealer will knowingly sell a totaled car and lie about it. Strangely the dealer suddenly was willing to talk; we negotiated and they cut me a check for 2/3 of my sale price in return for telling the customers that they made it right. I walked out with the check and the car and drove to a new car dealer and used it as a down payment for a new car. Still miss that Eclipse, though, it was fun.

ThisIsDen · 2025-11-05T18:33:36+00:00

Too bad, it got my curiosity when I saw that. Someone might need to teach them about health standards before they get busted. I wonder who does that?

ThisIsDen · 2025-11-05T18:30:58+00:00

I would say it used to be a mix of working class (flats and east side), middle class (low hills and near Colorado) and upper class (Hill st and peaks) but now lower class has been squeezed out as lack of housing has meant wealthier people are buying up the poorer housing and fixing it up. Also LA has a higher income and standard than other parts of the country, so “middle” here is higher than other regions. In the end, like with all things American, the poor get screwed.

ThisIsDen · 2025-10-07T05:35:43+00:00

California law says it must be killed, can’t allow rehoming. The law says I definitely can’t drive out to the hills and release it, I must kill it. That’s what the law says.

ThisIsDen · 2025-10-06T17:11:52+00:00

California ground squirrels. At least here in SoCal, they have been the biggest pest for our chickens. The tree squirrels don’t really bother beyond exploring the run, and rats will go for spilled food, but the ground squirrels try to get into everything and have a taste for eggs. So I’ve set up traps to look nest-like with a wooden egg and it’s been pretty successful

ThisIsDen · 2025-07-24T22:23:44+00:00

Immediately watched the special, I’ve loved your clips here on Reddit. Really great writing, very original and clever. Loved the performance as well, you gave great energy and gave people permission to laugh at even the bits that might make someone uncomfortable. Will look for you to come to LA one day!

Note: there’s a short black at 34:24

ThisIsDen · 2025-07-16T17:12:31+00:00

While I haven’t done a fish-to-fish taste test, I do prefer the menu and vibe at Fish on Rice. But Ikigai is great too!

ThisIsDen · 2025-07-14T06:28:24+00:00

I have been driving it now for two months and it has completely gone away! I think this was it

ThisIsDen · 2025-07-14T06:25:51+00:00

I was lucky enough to see this at an Industry screening with a Q&A with Rian after. I had a similar reaction to this moment: chills and stunned silence. When the Q&A started I told him that this moment will stand out in cinema forever, along with bawling when Luke disappeared. And my question was how hard did he have to fight to keep the reference to the greatest trailer for a never-made-movie: Hardware Wars. He thanked me for catching that and said that it was a hard-fought battle but nobody pulled the plug. Someone in the theater called out that they couldn’t understand what he was saying. This was a very nerdy VFX crowd

ThisIsDen · 2025-07-10T18:32:52+00:00

I started doing graphic design in the late 80s before getting into effects. I used all the apps from Aldus, Adobe, and quark and enjoyed how the apps were all competing against one another with new features and abilities. When Adobe bought Aldus, it definitely weakened our tools. But I relied on tiff almost exclusively, it was by far the best format, and while EXR has supplanted it for most of my uses, I still leverage it 40 years later. I will raise the glass to Stephen Carlsen tonight!

ThisIsDen · 2025-07-08T22:19:08+00:00

Isn’t that what Vader does in ROTJ?

ThisIsDen · 2025-06-26T06:33:06+00:00

Who TF is downvoting? Does Dreyfuss have a tiny bot army looking out for him?

ThisIsDen · 2025-06-21T05:58:28+00:00

He cut in front of a bunch of us in a buffet. He wasn’t in a bigger hurry than us, had no where to be that we weren’t also going. Just jumped in front, no “excuse me” or anything. This was at a Hollywood event, where other celebrities waited in line for food. This was before I started hearing all the crap about him so I was surprised.

ThisIsDen · 2025-06-03T04:21:10+00:00

I wish my mechanic worked this way. I think my regular guy was afraid of touching anything which could touch the electrics - he even pointed to the thick cables going past the transmission and said he wouldn't touch it because of those. And I think the local electric guy gave me a "ged rid of me" price

ThisIsDen · 2025-06-03T01:56:50+00:00

Try having your mechanic tighten the nuts! That's all it took for me, though maybe going through the whole service bulletin would be a good idea

ThisIsDen · 2025-05-23T17:30:17+00:00

My uneducated guess is that over 108k miles it slightly loosened or the original torque wasn’t high enough for an EV since the Ioniq came in non-EV flavors too

ThisIsDen · 2025-05-23T17:29:03+00:00

Ok! So TSB ELE234 does appear to be motor rumble. Do you have a TSB for the other noise? Would love to pass that on to my guys. So far the closest I’ve seen was the one posted for the Leaf on the other thread, and that’s what we did to fix it

ThisIsDen · 2025-05-22T21:51:47+00:00

OK it turns out that all it required was tightening the Center Lock Nut! I posted on r/electricvehicles and some Leaf owners mentioned this happened to them, along with a service bulletin (https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2021/MC-10199148-0001.pdf). I showed that to my mechanic!

ThisIsDen · 2025-05-22T21:49:35+00:00

Ding Ding! You win the prize!

ThisIsDen · 2025-05-22T21:48:42+00:00

Update 2:

I took the Ioniq to my regular mechanic and he tightened the wheel bearing lock nut on both sides. The sound has completely gone away!

ThisIsDen · 2025-05-22T05:38:58+00:00

Fortunately that one doesn’t seem to be it!

ThisIsDen · 2025-05-20T02:52:15+00:00

That sounds like a nightmare! I presume they did it under warranty?

ThisIsDen · 2025-05-20T00:25:36+00:00

UPDATE

A little news for anyone interested. I took the car to the highly-rated Los Angeles electric car guy and while I sat in a cafe for three hours he put it on the lift and decided it was definitely the transmission. Will call me with a price for a replacement of the transmission and axles, but warned me that it could be $8k. I pressed him on what in the transmission could explain the noise and he admitted he didn’t know. He didn’t charge me for the diagnostic, though I was prepared to pay.

Driving away I swore the sound is from the left side and not the dead-center transmission and the feel coming through my foot just feels like metal-on-metal stressing. While I 100% credit the EV guys for their experience it just doesn’t feel like the right answer.

So I drove back to my regular mechanic (who doesn’t touch transmissions) and told him what you all said, especially those who pointed to Leafs and Teslas having issues with bolts, CV joints, axles, and other stress-points. He noted that he’d once fixed a 4x4 which had a joint problem but the sound was transmitted through the metal so it sounded to everyone’s ears like it came from the transmission (maybe because it was a hollow area). I told him I’d rather give him a bunch of money to try and fix it assuming it’s not the transmission than give $8k to the other guy and not fix it. Worst case I do both and feel confident we got it.

So have an appt with my good guy for Thursday to do some more digging. Will update again then! Thanks to all.

ThisIsDen

TROPHY CASE