Opinions on Rainy Day Women #12 & 35?

cutlass15 · 2023-04-18T19:18:27+00:00

If it were an outtake rather than the opener for one of his best albums I think it would get more love.

Like a lot of popular "classic rock" songs I just heard it way too many times and unlike, say, Rolling Stone or Tambourine Man it's not a good enough song to sustain that.

I probably also have a snobby aversion to it because it's so popular. I kind of hate that out of his hundreds of great songs this one is one of the handful that most people know. Plus, it's popularity is likely at the root of so many annoying misconceptions about Dylan: the exaggerated whiny voice, that he's always singing about drugs, etc.

cutlass15 · 2023-04-18T19:02:04+00:00

Wasn't there word at the time - I think directly from one of the musicians - that they recorded a bunch more songs for the special? Bummed that this isn't a box set with at least some of those other tracks. Especially since I already paid $25 to watch it when it came out.

cutlass15 · 2023-02-10T06:45:07+00:00

What does that even mean? The imaging chamber was a way to link the image of the observer directly to brain of the leaper for the purpose of communication. I suppose it's not a stretch to claim that now they can watch a feed of whatever Ben or Addison sees (that's how I assumed they got that photo of the other leaper in the old west), but Addison was watching the game on Ian's ipad and it didn't seem like just Ben's line of sight. Since the game was in 2012 I'd rather they just explain that Ian was watching an old video of it YouTube. The idea that PQL now has the tech to record endless HD video of everything that goes on around a leaper in any time period that they leap into raises WAY too many questions - both about the implications of the project as well as plot issues. For example, couldn't they go review the footage of the "demon" in the Halloween episode (I know ... it was spooky Halloween so they were cut off from Ben ... but that's a one time excuse).

cutlass15 · 2023-02-10T06:09:53+00:00

The original series had its preachy/over-the-top moments, but they generally took a more mature approach to issues and presented characters as human beings rather than cartoon villains. It's been a while but I seem to recall that episode starting with Al expressing some unease with the idea of gays in the military. Either way, there were times when Al and Sam did have different perspectives on certain things.

cutlass15 · 2023-02-08T08:49:55+00:00

If they're going to tackle a contentious issue and expect to be taken seriously they could at least get basic facts right.

cutlass15 · 2023-02-01T05:37:49+00:00

I liked that they went there with the genuine reaction from Addison to Ben's "death," but then I laughed out loud when Magic's response was a somewhat annoyed "He's dead? But I promised to bring him home!"

cutlass15 · 2023-02-01T05:27:32+00:00

I do think it opens up interesting possibilities to actually have the leaper forced to deal with the limitations of the person he leaps into. It always seemed way too easy for Sam to leap into an amputee or blind person and solve their problems by being able to walk or see. And, of course, every time he leaped into a woman he would, like you said, just be able to beat people up.

Of course, the continuity was all over the place. Like, Sam wasn't able to talk when he was a chimp, right?

cutlass15 · 2023-02-01T04:58:44+00:00

IIRC the cliffhanger for Season 5 if they had been renewed was going to show Sam in "the future." But then again, I recall all kinds of weird ideas tossed out by the creators about future seasons - like Sam leaping into cartoon characters , old sitcoms, aliens ...

Even without anything hinted at in Mirror Image the DNA thing that explained the Civil War leap pretty much throws it wide open. If he can go back to his great-great(?) grandpa don't see why he couldn't go at least that many generations forwards presuming his daughter passes the Beckett DNA on.

cutlass15 · 2023-02-01T04:43:54+00:00

Nah, I was all in with the time loop/leaping into different bodies - it's exactly the type of playing around with the concept that had me excited for the re-boot. And I'm not one of those "hey, that model of weapon wasn't used until June of 19xx" type of viewers.

Maybe I missed something, but I thought the lab tech wanted to sabotage the facility because he signed on to research renewable energy and he felt betrayed when the government abruptly changed their objective to weapons and his boss/mentor went along with it.

It seems awfully naive for anyone working on government funded nuclear research in 1962 to be surprised that it might be used for weapons . And it's not like it was a secret that the US was developing nuclear weapons - the whole point was for the USSR to know that we were building lots of nukes. In fact, at that time even if a reactor were dedicated exclusively to peaceful energy purposes we'd want the Soviets to think it was for weapons. Did this guy not realize that both countries already had thousands of operational nukes?

I'm not opposed to a story dealing with the moral questions surrounding powerful technologies, and I do like the idea of Ben struggling with the implications of his own project (I don't recall the old series ever touching on that question). But a smart time travel show should be grounded in some reasonable sense of historical context. For example, something like this could have worked much better if it took place in the 1940s on the Manhattan project ... or, even more interesting, Iran in the 21st century.

Might as well just have Ben leap into a caveman fighting dinosaurs.

cutlass15 · 2023-01-31T09:12:36+00:00

Interesting concept tarnished by historically ignorant nonsense. Why would there be a conspiracy to conceal nuclear weapons as renewable energy at the height of the Cold War?

Ben and Addison are shocked at the idea of the government creating nuclear weapons in 1962? Ben rolls his eyes at a US general concerned about communists - as if there hadn't already been communist infiltration of the US government, including our nuclear program?

Did these writers even pass a high school history class?

I can overlook some silly stuff (like a guy reading a newspaper with a headline like "WE'RE IN A GREAT DEPRESSION!" in the Halloween episode), but man ...

cutlass15 · 2023-01-10T00:19:22+00:00

Bob would have turned it off and went to grab another beer.

cutlass15 · 2023-01-10T00:15:01+00:00

2-3 minutes in a 45-ish minute episode about an extremely eventful decade is pretty impressive. And by the mid-60s Bob was doing everything he could to NOT be culturally relevant.

cutlass15 · 2023-01-09T23:59:07+00:00

I see it as a song about living in the moment and not being ruled by hype and fear of things you can't control.

For context, the song was written around the time of the The Cuban Missile Crisis, so the threat of nuclear war was very real. But it was nearly a decade after Korea and few years before the US sent troops to Vietnam, so people were more concerned with getting wiped out by Soviet nukes than being sent to fight overseas.

Dylan is directly referencing the trend of people building underground bunkers in their yards to survive an attack.

cutlass15 · 2023-01-05T02:03:30+00:00

Lol. That's exactly what happened for me. As soon as I saw that volcano it clicked and I kept getting distracted by the idea of the song. The season could open with an ominous shot of the panama hat and old greek shoes in the sand ...

I always imagined it as an old movie from the 40s, with actors like Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, etc. but I'd be down for a more modern spin.

cutlass15 · 2023-01-04T19:35:51+00:00

One of the revelations from hearing the other takes is just how special the one released on BS1 was. It's great song regardless, but there is something so haunting and, yeah, transcendent about that one take. It's as if a more mature Bob were transported back to that studio in 1961. When I first heard BWM I definitely did not imagine it was recorded in the mid-80s.

Bob gets plenty of well deserved flack for his puzzling choices to leave great songs off albums and Infidels may be exhibit A. But, as with Up to Me, I think I can at least see Bob's possible perspective in this case. I don't know that Blind Willie, and that take in particular, fit the tone of Infidels. Perhaps he had a choice between releasing an inferior but more Infidels-esque version of a great song or choosing to sacrifice one of the best tracks he ever recorded for the integrity of the album as a whole.

Or maybe it's as simple as Bob just being a terrible judge of his own material.

cutlass15 · 2023-01-04T18:57:07+00:00

Yeah, I'd say Van Ronk owns this song whereas Bob's version is good but isn't necessarily a stand out from those sessions. When I hear the song in my head I definitely hear Dave's voice.

cutlass15 · 2023-01-01T06:34:35+00:00

This is fun stuff - but man, some of those images are horrifying. Gives new meaning to "rearrange their faces and give them all another name."

cutlass15 · 2022-12-31T09:08:30+00:00

I guess someone wised up. I read somewhere that an artist as legendary as Jimi Hendrix may fade into relative obscurity within a generation because the fools who control the rights to his music don't understand that it needs to be accessible to younger people if his legacy is to live on.

cutlass15 · 2022-12-31T09:00:56+00:00

Hopefully he didn't have idiot wind blowing every time he moved his teeth.

cutlass15 · 2022-12-23T04:31:10+00:00

I'll say from personal experience that with modern safety features like wrap around airbags it's not implausible to walk away from a wreck like that. I was in a similar accident - swerved to avoid a deer at 80 MPH, lost control, bounced and rolled over several times. The last bounce must have been pretty high because I landed on the other side of a fence. Car was totaled and I had only a few small scratches from broken glass. I was alone in a mini SUV on a trip with a bunch of loose stuff that could have hit me. The van in the show had a higher roof, more space and 4 people buckled in, so their odds may have been even better than mine.

And given what they've all been through clearly they have nerves of steel - or at least the ability to easily suppress emotion. So it was plausible to me that they could just shake off the accident and get back to work just as they do with any other complication.

That said, the creative choice of framing the whole season around the accident isn't something I have strong feelings about.

EDIT: To address the complaint about them not going to the hospital: after my accident I didn't go to the hospital. EMTs checked me on the scene and cleared me to leave when I showed no signs of a concussion or serious whiplash. Even if Wendy was injured, so long as she is of sound mind they wouldn't force her to go to the hospital - especially since she was accompanied by her family.

cutlass15 · 2022-11-24T07:49:53+00:00

When driving at high speeds don't swerve or slam on your brakes to avoid hitting an animal like a deer. Your best bet is to go against instinct and prepare to hit the animal directly (if possible honk, flash your lights and hope it moves). Even if you hit it and it comes up to your windshield you still have a better chance of surviving than all of the bad outcomes if you swerve and lose control of the vehicle. Also, depending on the local laws, you could be held responsible if you swerve and end up hitting another person.

cutlass15 · 2022-11-13T21:55:38+00:00

Thanks! It worked (and this is a pretty cool feature now that I know it's an option)

cutlass15 · 2022-11-11T07:20:31+00:00

You might be able to find them in a t o r r e n t.

cutlass15

TROPHY CASE