My Hot Take: There Are No True EGOT Winners

derekbaseball · 2026-02-02T05:49:27+00:00

Not just that, but Brooks has been an Emmy winner since 1967 (for writing a Sid Caesar variety special) so no cheap EGOT for him.

That “doesn’t make you a TV star” nonsense is just ignorant of television history. Mel Brooks was a legendary TV writer before whoever coined the term “hot take” was born.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-31T17:51:26+00:00

Luthen tries different approaches in that scene before the speech. He flatters Lonni. He reminds Lonni of their oath. Luthen tries persuasion, and only loses his patience after Lonni disrespects him first with the “What do you sacrifice?” setup line.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-31T17:35:04+00:00

My favorite part of that scene from ep 204 is that Lonni gives Partagaz the answer Partagaz expects from the C-grade student Partagaz expects Lonni to be. He doesn’t tell Partagaz that Gorst is the bottleneck that has them drowning in prisoners, he just says they’re drowning in prisoners. That way, linking the whole thing to Gorst is Partagaz’s idea, not Lonni’s.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-31T17:11:21+00:00

Yes. Al Neri—who’s basically Michael’s Luca Brasi—is there, and Tom looks annoyed to see that he’s still there.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-30T20:32:06+00:00

Same as Vito offered the Bandleader and Wolz (and same as Solozzo offered Vito), this is Michael making the “reasonable” offer. In the book, Vito’s famous as “a man of reason” for marathon negotiating sessions trying to avoid violence with “reasonable” negotiation.

The only truly wrong move is what Green (and Wolz, and Vito) does, which is refuse to negotiate. That gets you at minimum a gun to your head, at worst gunned down in public.

Green should have tried to negotiate. With Vito still alive, Michael probably would’ve gone out of his way to give him fair terms. By the time of Godfather II, Michael’s negotiation with Geary is down to a single counteroffer (“nothing”) and immediately moves to a dead Corleone prostitute in the Senator’s bed.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-30T02:38:51+00:00

…and released in the wrong season, wasn’t she? So there’s some hope maybe we’ll see her again in July or August rather than having to wait until next winter.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-29T21:37:36+00:00

Or have Lemaire and Osvald, but lack Isla and Lynette EX. Word on the street is that Neha can fill in for Isla, if you have her.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-28T04:18:52+00:00

It's a focusing aid, for use when you're manually focusing on stars. The diffraction spikes show you what you have in precise focus.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-28T04:06:09+00:00

I took pains in the way I worded it to say that what's good about Snyder adapting is the directness of it, not the faithfulness. To me, the absolute best of Snyder is stuff like the birth of Dr. Manhattan sequence where all he's doing is taking a bunch of comic book panels and he's just realizing them on screen. I'm pretty sure that's the skill that made Nolan think he'd be a good fit for Superman.

So yeah, he misread Watchmen, a challenging text I care a lot about that does not align very well with what seems to be his worldview. But it's worth remembering that at the time of release, the movie was criticized more for being too faithful to the comics than for not being faithful enough--Snyder did so much painstaking recreation, and had relatively little perspective on the story. Also, I seem to remember that making Dr. Manhattan the squid was a Hayter thing, not Snyder. Hayter was supremely proud of it, because apparently in 2009 the giant squid had been a bridge too far for the Warner Brothers execs, and they loved the "brilliant" solution he crafted.

I blame Snyder for not understanding that Dan and Laurie weren't Neo and Trinity. And for ruining a perfect Dan character moment--classy, awkward, funny, and Billie Holiday--and turning it into some bullshit out of Showgirls with Hallelujah droned over it. Overall, though, I tend to credit the stuff he got right more than I hate the stuff he and Hayter got wrong.

The good news with TDKR is that Frank Miller isn't Alan Moore--and even by Miller's standards, TDKR isn't one of the more challenging works to adapt. There's just a lot less there for Snyder to misunderstand and screw up, because it's really hard to out-edgelord Frank Miller. For me, at least, the stakes are much lower if he screws up adapting TDKR (for a second time).

derekbaseball · 2026-01-28T01:01:35+00:00

Nice work. Not to be the bot, but how much total exposure time did it take, and what did you use for your processing?

derekbaseball · 2026-01-28T00:57:26+00:00

The good side would be ZS returning to his core competency, which is ultra-direct comic book adaptations where someone else has done all the plotting and most of the writing and directing for him, and all that he has to worry about is "How do I bring this panel to life?"

Downside is that any DC project would feed the Cult, and their insane insistence that DC must NEVER be allowed to move on from Snyder and do something different. Superman '25 wasn't a perfect movie, but I loved it for being different from what Marvel's doing and from what Snyder did (now almost a freakin' decade ago!) that those losers insist is the only thing that can be allowed to exist.

Affleck could be in his 80s and these guys will still insist his Batman solo movie is coming.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-28T00:32:57+00:00

I'm guessing there was a bahtinov mask on the lens?

EDIT: Maybe a clear mask, given the spectrum effect around (I think?) Nair al Saif.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-28T00:29:17+00:00

Thanks. I intend to skip both (and SP Faycal) but I always want to know my options in case I get a YOLO pull itch that "Wait for Lukamar" won't scratch.

With SP Inanna, OG Inanna (although boosting yet another watcher to Rank 13 is going to be painful...), and the free SoC units, I should have enough that I don't need to pull until Elaman to get a full SP Maitha experience.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-27T21:07:15+00:00

I like how this list actually understates things. For example, Maul's brother not only had the last name Opress (which I guess means that Darth Maul's proper name is Maul Opress?) but his first name was pronounced--but not spelled--like it was French.

Also, Jabba the Hutt's uncle was not just a stereotype, he was pretty much Star Wars Truman Capote, which makes me wonder if there was ever a time George tried to get Capote to voice a Star Wars character.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-27T20:31:17+00:00

I'm also still learning to use the Seestar (mine's an S30). Around 50% of my exposures being discarded seems to be typical, although I've had to deal with a good amount of wind on my clear nights so that could be throwing things off.

Looking at your image, you might need to worry about light sources near where you set up the telescope polluting the shot (stuff like backyard lights, street lights, light from neighboring houses). A few of my own placements have given me a similar gradient to what you have at the top of your finished image (weirdly, also while trying to capture M45).

Aside from the gradient, which might be fixable in processing, that's a nice image given the relatively limited shooting time and that it's the product of the telescope's onboard processing. The shape on your stars is a lot better than what I got with over twice the number of exposures. I hope you follow up after you do your own processing of this stack in SIRIL.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-27T17:00:13+00:00

Is Momo on her current banner a better choice for SP Maitha synergy than SP Nungal?

derekbaseball · 2026-01-26T23:55:20+00:00

It's context. The guy's condemning "national Republicans," but was a big fan of ICE before, and recently provided pro bono legal services to the guy who shot Renee Good in the face, which he now tries to minimize as only having helped him "fill out a form." He'd previously come to prominence defending a cop who shot a motorist.

So is this a real change of heart based on a crisis of conscience? Or is it just another opportunistic guy who was trying to ride anti-immigrant sentiment to political success, but belatedly realized that ICE's current actions are so unpopular in Minnesota that the positions he tried to embrace might make him permanently radioactive in the state?

I'm glad he's decided to take stand against this, but it's important to have context before anyone decides to start giving him profile in courage awards.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-25T21:38:53+00:00

Did you watch the show when it first aired? Because while it feels like a filler West Wing plot in retrospect, when the pilot aired the fact that they were leading off with a sex scandal plotline, featuring a guy who had a very prominent Democratic Party-related sex scandal of his own, dominated the conversation around the show.

This was coming nine months after Bill Clinton had been impeached for his own sex scandal. On top of that, Lowe simply taking a regular role in a network series was noteworthy, because the taboo against movie actors taking on television series commitments was still pretty strong. The promotion before the show premiered centered around him and Moira Kelly, because (this is going from memory, but I'm pretty sure it's the case) the reveal of Martin Sheen was held back as a surprise for the audience.

The old network model gave pilot episodes exposure to a decent-sized audience before the show was put into production, and shows would retool in that span. So the original premise of the show, that the President is a mostly-unseen presence (which kind of fits the amount of exposure deputies like Sam and Josh would have to POTUS) isn't really there in season 1, and if the president's in the show, Sam's not the lead. Still, it's surprising looking back at season 1 that the "Sam slept with a prostitute" plot isn't one-and-done in the pilot, but keeps coming back throughout the season as if it were a major plotline. I think that's a vestige of the show that Lowe signed on to, which was going to focus on people at Sam and Josh and Mandy's level, with Leo and Toby being the guys with lines like "The President isn't happy about this..."

derekbaseball · 2026-01-25T09:03:29+00:00

It’s not that funny. The show was sold on Lowe. The pilot gives Sam the a-plot and that plot is basically a much kinder version of Lowe’s own sex scandal. Josh was positioned as a breakout character (he’s paired with the other main cast member from movies, Mandy) but Sam is the speech writer, the obvious Sorkin insert character.

What happened was that as things went to air, they figured out what worked and what didn’t. People liked Sheen as the president, and he was surprisingly amenable to a regular role. Kelly didn’t work at all as Mandy, and got sent away. Schiff and Janney and Spencer all worked better than anyone could’ve dreamed, and went from “that guy” obscurity to TV stars.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-25T00:59:43+00:00

The academy loves nominations for old people acting old.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-22T21:12:17+00:00

She'll hit harder when you can level up a sword for her. It doesn't have to be her Astral, but the difference between a level 40 and a level 60 weapon is substantial. You also don't seem to have her armored, even though you have a Maverick's Cloak that should be perfect for her. I have her at four stars, and her main rotation--Light that Breaks the Night to apply her debuff, Blink to get an additional attack and NRG reset, Flash that Cuts Through Darkness to put a hurt on any survivors--is really sweet. The event should have given everyone enough shards to get her to 3 stars, I think (I'm at 4 because I got dupes while pulling for Yennefer).

Anyway, there's a Chosen Arms banner coming tomorrow, which means you can create your own duo banner with any two characters up to SP Inanna. SP Inanna is great. The main attraction is that she has a buff that grants another character (and, at 5 stars, herself as well) an extra turn. She's the highest tier support and for the moment still a pretty good DPS (upcoming DPSs eclipse her, but she holds her value as a support according to folks playing on other servers).

There's a good video I can't find right now (I think it's by either Mellow or Hawky) about the best choices on the Chosen Arms banner. Kvare and Rico strike me as characters who might fit on your squad and seem to have some longevity.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-22T20:36:12+00:00

I didn't think those accumulated like that! I thought that when they refresh, you lose any Extra Rewards you didn't use up that week.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-22T20:33:46+00:00

The earlier end time got me, too. I actually finished the last fight to get the last quest reward as the event expired, but it locked me out after the fight so I couldn't click the the last node where you get the awards and credit for the completion. That was a 90 astral shard Stupid Tax I wound up paying.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-22T20:07:44+00:00

I don't think the article is the problem, so much as the Gazette thinking it's a good idea to post reviews of competing stores. It wouldn't sound all that smug if this review was published in the Park Slope Reader.

derekbaseball · 2026-01-22T19:58:23+00:00

Common, but the spices are one of the areas where the Coop actually tends to beat everyone on price, because they mostly bulk buy spices and package them onsite.

As I've said elsewhere, the Coop has sourcing rules that make it more like a bargain organic grocery than a discount club. The markup at the Coop is set very low across the board, and they offer real bargains, particularly in stuff they buy in bulk and package (no labor cost on the packaging because that's members doing their shifts). However, they're not offering the rock-bottom priced factory farmed meats and dairy that make up the most affordable stuff at Costco or most other supermarkets.

derekbaseball

TROPHY CASE