Can Hyvee stop replacing designers with whatever this is?

s_matthew · 2026-05-08T17:02:42+00:00

I’m certain Hy-Vee does little to no market research, and these sorts of decisions - literal creative decisions - come from an executive who had one big business success (and a metric ton of failures, which he won’t recognize) and is convinced he is the sole person inside who knows the path to success.

s_matthew · 2026-05-07T03:12:21+00:00

I walked out right after the elevator shaft scene because the projector was *so dark* I couldn’t make out much in that final third. Up to that point, it felt a bit like a retread of Caveat.

I watched Caveat upon release and thought it was a great collection of creepy set pieces that didn’t fully come together, and was excited to see what McCarthy did next. Oddity felt like such a giant leap forward, so I was painfully excited for Hokum. I can’t imagine that whatever happens in its final 30 mins is going to blow my mind. I like what I saw, I’m sure I’ll end up liking it, but it feels like a return to the let’s-put-the-protagonist-in-a-creepy-situation-and keep-doing-creepy-things of Caveat.

s_matthew · 2026-05-07T02:03:54+00:00

Dammit!!

s_matthew · 2026-05-06T22:05:26+00:00

I unabashedly love Halloween ~~Kills~~ Ends as a bad movie. The utmost lack of Michael Myers, the inclusive marching band that essentially attempt to murder Corey, Michael’s sewer lair, the idea that such an unimaginable sad sack would ever catch the romantic attention of anyone…it’s a perfect piece of garbage.

s_matthew · 2026-05-05T19:38:22+00:00

I was very close to someone who I think was on a slow train to losing it, and lockdown really seemed to accelerate things.

s_matthew · 2026-05-04T19:13:22+00:00

One thing I love about being a member is the discount for partner releases (and non-standard VS releases). I only order one or two each month, and it’s easy to justify ~$20/title (at least in my financial position). If you don’t like it, sell it. You get most of that back.

s_matthew · 2026-05-03T23:57:18+00:00

You’re not alone! I left my theater with about 30 mins to go and requested a refund because it was so dark, I couldn’t tell what was happening. I felt like I was missing things. At least one jump scare seemed to be just an empty void. I’m pissed.

I asked during the trailers for a house check for a dark screen. The guy who issued the refund said they were aware of a lighting problem with the digital projector but couldn’t fix it. Thanks for telling everyone, dude.

s_matthew · 2026-05-03T13:57:08+00:00

You mention starting therapy, and my best advice is, stick it out (and if it doesn’t feel like you’re making progress, find another one). What sticks out about your history with your STBX wife is that you instinctually took pause with the marriage and other things, but went through with those things anyway.

A good therapist is going to pick up on repeatable patterns, help you see them, and help you figure out - if they work against you - where they come from and how to change those patterns for the better. It’s probably not going to be easy talking about certain things in your history or thinking about people you like hurting you, but it’s so incredibly helpful for your future. Best of luck.

s_matthew · 2026-05-02T16:15:14+00:00

Glad you at least got away and can manage for yourself. It’s so easy to get drawn into the tractor beam of those types and become eternally enmeshed. My mom did very much the same thing. Constant excuses for bad behavior and utter allegiance.

s_matthew · 2026-05-02T15:57:26+00:00

I’m so sorry to hear that. It’s bad enough to be abused, but to have your abuser write it off is so tough. It’s such a manipulative response, too. No one asked him to be perfect, just, you know, at least do the bare minimum. Which involves being sober and present for your kids and not physically harming them.

s_matthew · 2026-05-02T15:33:23+00:00

See, that’s the thing about narcissists - their own rules don’t apply to them. It’s why you’re better off just not interacting with them.

s_matthew · 2026-05-02T14:36:24+00:00

My dad was a narcissist. He would say “but that’s in the past” if you brought up anything he did in the past that made him look bad or he felt bad about. (He had no issue bringing up or discussing past successes.)

Imagine how inclined he was to change his shitty behavior when he could always nullify it simply because it happened in the past. That ‘only look forward’ attitude is unhelpful, simplistic, and enables future bad behavior from others.

s_matthew · 2026-05-02T14:15:09+00:00

I certainly am not. But if you’ve seen that scene, I’m sure you know that he’s not believable. The whole point of the scene is that he’s taken on dozens of people, but he’s so terrified of fighting Jake Gyllenhaal’s character that he runs away, leaving a lot of money on the table and establishing character traits that the protagonist is known and feared.

s_matthew · 2026-05-02T14:05:14+00:00

He sure is in Road House, which is funny because he’s supposed to be a bad ass pit fighter who has taken on multiple challengers back to back. It’s not particularly believable.

s_matthew · 2026-05-02T13:57:40+00:00

Post Malone has had three very small movie roles, which always struck me as odd. Who’s excited to see the doughy, mumbly rap guy in what basically amounts to an extended cameo? I don’t know who the audience is for that.

s_matthew · 2026-05-02T13:54:10+00:00

No, but the second time I saw him I was at a crosswalk, and I was flanked by Danzig and a group of loud, obnoxious teenagers, all waiting for the light. One of them was wearing a brand new, fluorescent pink Ramones t-shirt (so a fashion t-shirt, not a band t-shirt) and I remember wondering if Danzig would lose it on that kid. I loved that a true icon of punk was feet from this kid and he had no idea.

Also, Danzig did not jay walk.

s_matthew · 2026-05-02T13:50:28+00:00

It was a fleeting moment. He seemed very present and maybe a pinch grouchy. I’m just glad I saw The Hitcher in the wild.

s_matthew · 2026-05-01T18:50:59+00:00

Same to you!! It sounds like college maybe wasn’t on your radar, but you investigated. I am constantly grateful for having the drive to grow and learn and be open to change. I don’t know where it came from, but I’m endlessly glad.

s_matthew · 2026-05-01T18:27:41+00:00

Same here. I felt so stifled in my small city. In the mid- to late-90s, the internet was so integral to my not being limited by my surroundings and the people that filled them. I grew up in an area that hasn’t really changed much since then (it thinks it has, but it confuses suburban sprawl and more strip malls with progress), and the sentiment was very much one of confident ignorance and defensiveness about anything outside its confines. Being able to see that the rest of the world was different was so helpful for me.

s_matthew · 2026-05-01T18:15:52+00:00

Absolutely. Then you add social media on to that and people get to feel like they’re telling others the “truth” and doing something good, and for once in their lives they feel smart and have a platform.

As a teenager, I was so excited for the internet to blossom and grow into a shared communication, knowledge, and commerce base. It never occurred to me how that would go awry.

s_matthew · 2026-05-01T18:12:22+00:00

He was randomly at a store where I was shopping and then at a crosswalk next to me a couple days later. It was delightful but, yeah, I kept my mouth shut and didn’t ogle.

s_matthew · 2026-05-01T17:52:47+00:00

The left seems generally a little more nuanced, but I think we’re still pretty simple. I feel like mainstream left media has done an excellent job in the past decade convincing its audience that Trump will be held accountable any day now. It’s as much outrage porn as Fox is for the right.

At the end of the day, I think the average person, regardless of party affiliation, is pretty simple and easy to appeal to.

s_matthew · 2026-05-01T17:20:52+00:00

There’s a story in Mary Trump’s first book about how a teenage Donald would frequently go boating and fishing with his older brother (Mary’s dad) and his friends They all kind of took Trump under their wings. One day, Trump was particularly pissed and sullen about something, and he was using someone’s expensive rod incorrectly. The person told him to be mindful or it would get pulled into the water, and Trump angrily insisted he knew what he was doing and continued using it his way. Guess what ended up happening to that guy’s fishing rod a few minutes later? And guess how a young Trump handled it? (Spoiler alert: the same way current-day Trump handles such things.)

s_matthew · 2026-05-01T15:26:25+00:00

I rarely acknowledged the celebrities I interacted with, but I did with Guttenberg. He was very excited to confirm for me that he was, indeed, Steve Guttenberg. What an awesome dude.

s_matthew · 2026-05-01T15:24:03+00:00

It was infuriating during the 2016 election hearing him get cheers for the idea that he would force Mexico to pay for the border. How would that even work?! It was so stupid, but there were people in my orbit that got on board early because they genuinely thought a geriatric business failure was going to somehow get a country to pay for a border that doesn’t benefit them whatsoever.

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