Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Thu Jan 08, 2015 6:43 pm

Maj wrote:Edit: I am also a non-rich person who likes Opera, but it's an expensive thing to experience, so not many non-rich people have.

I guess that's a european thing. I'm not used to theater/opera tickets being expensive. In my hometown it's usualy from 200 to 2000 rubles (2.5 to 25 euros now), depending on your seat.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Thu Jan 08, 2015 7:00 pm

Longes wrote:
Maj wrote:Edit: I am also a non-rich person who likes Opera, but it's an expensive thing to experience, so not many non-rich people have.
I guess that's a european thing. I'm not used to theater/opera tickets being expensive. In my hometown it's usualy from 200 to 2000 rubles (2.5 to 25 euros now), depending on your seat.

Yeah, that's nearly an order of magnitude cheaper than what you'll typically pay for in Dallas's Opera (about 20 to 120 euro, depending on seat). These prices are in-line with sporting events, concerts, and similar activities; but the snooty/boring stereotype the States have makes it a low priority.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Thu Jan 08, 2015 7:04 pm

Yeah, here in the states you can often expect to pay $25 just to get a seat that would otherwise be empty.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Thu Jan 08, 2015 7:27 pm

I should probably add a reference point, that the average salary is 20k rubles (270 euro now). Comparing prices by themself is a silly thing to do.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Thu Jan 08, 2015 7:37 pm

Well, looking things up locally If I take the worst seat in the house, and go by myself, I could attend the Pittsburgh Opera's performance of Carmen for roughly what I earn in one hour. Conversely, taking my wife out and buying a pair of the best seats in the house would cost me roughly a week's wages.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Thu Jan 08, 2015 8:24 pm

For me to go see an Opera, it not only takes the $29 for the worst seat in the house, but another $12 for the gas (at today's price) and another $8 for parking. And that's local/community opera. The actual formal opera company would cost $77 for the cheap seats, and double the gas.

Now, I do have the ability to go to my local movie theatre and watch opera from the Met. The cost for seeing a movie of opera (albeit a really famous opera company)? $24. (But gas is only $1.25, and parking is free!)

Opera has been relegated to the realm of snooty things that rich people do. Which is too bad because I really, really enjoy opera. And because of the snooty richness, Ess thought he wouldn't like it... But it turns out that when I made him go, he thought it was fantastic. Ballet is the same way.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Thu Jan 08, 2015 9:26 pm

I should have explained that it was Americans talking about going to Europe and going to the opera. It was just a very rich-person thing to talk about, like how estate taxes are bad and poor people should just bootstrap.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Jan 12, 2015 11:10 pm

I'm getting kind of tired of Order of the Stick's lack of an update schedule. Last year, going by copyright at the bottom of his comics (because apparently having date of publication is too hard for him), he averaged 1 comic per 10 days. That's about half the rate at which he updated on average in 2013.

If it were actually a weekly comic, that'd be fine. Oglaf's a weekly, and I don't love it any less, but it actually has a schedule, and filler when the artist plans to be away for a bit. OotS is just... OotS is that button in a scientific study that only occasionally gives a hit of morphine when pushed. It's random, so there's no way to know whether any given time you push it will be the time that you're rewarded.

It's fucking annoying, and I almost can't get on Burlew's case as a fellow creative, except that I'm a fucking amateur not making any money off my work, where as he's a professional who's been writing a comic for 11 years and making money off of it. He's well known enough, and his comic apparently enjoyed enough, that when he kickstarted a book reprint he raised 2171% of his goal.

I forgot about Burlew's chronic mysterious illness. And his thumb that was apparently curbstomped by glass. I would love to know what kind of illness affected updating a webcomic this much, or why his thumb is so integral to a fucking stick-figure vector art comic. I just checked, and using my mouse without my thumb touching is odd, but I'm pretty sure I'd get used to it in a day. I mean, I'm sure such an illness exists, but I would guess it's pretty rare. And at this point he should either retire the comic, or he should swallow his fucking pride and hire an artist. I've seen several comics that split art and writing duties, and they seem to do just fine.

But all of this ignores the basic point that the comic is barely interesting anymore. If his "pages go by, nothing happens" stuff happened in a comic that updated a couple times a week, that might be fine, but when he's averaging about once a week or twice in three weeks as he has for the last two years, it's absurd.

I just needed to gripe about OotS and it's bullshit non-schedule.

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Jan 12, 2015 11:59 pm

I stopped reading about 3 months ago to give him time to write something interesting or funny.

They went shopping for wands.

I reckon I'll give it 6 months next time.

I think part of the reason that Burlew rankles us so is that he's basically any of us who lucked into a dream job and seemingly takes it for granted, blowing it off. It's like that douche who dated your dream girl/guy and treated them like shit.

[edit:
I feel I should include a proper image to signify my jimmies being rustled out of jealousy-fueled contempt, and also for the record that I never personally experienced my dream gal being dated by jerk guy, but feel the imagery and meme is well-known.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jan 16, 2015 7:17 pm

This where we gripe about facebook, right?

Last night I made an off-hand comment on facebook about how if I saw a name on a ballot that had (scientist/sociologist/specific field title) listed as their occupation, I would damn near automatically vote for that name.

Queue the morning and I've got a friend in their early twenties saying "party-line voting is what led to Bush Jr. being elected" and, after I challenged him to name a non-republican/conservative politician who was bad/inept but elected through unthinking party line voting and said that maybe we should elect people who have experience with the things they're making decisions about, rather than how to read and write laws and contracts, "so, you want to put a pyrotechnician in charge of a nuclear power plant because they both deal with explosions?"

No offense to the lawyers of the den, but given how many politicians get up and say "I'm no scientist, but (blah blah blah white jesus says carbon monoxide gives your lungs exercise!)" maybe it's time we let people who have a background in the things they're supposed to write policy on make the decisions and let lawyers handle the drafting of documents, rather than letting people who have only ever studied law make the decisions after ignoring the advice of the people who are trained in the matter.

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Mon Jan 19, 2015 10:10 am

@Prak: This is technocracy. It was popular in the first half of the XXth century. We had a president in France who tried to put it back in the 70s with little success.

There are multiple problems with it. Some are "marketing" problems, other are more intrinsic problems.

The marketing problems are that people don't like to be told to stand back and let the expert deal with the problems. They'll tell you that experts drown everything in techno-babble and know nothing about how people actually live. Someone who tells you that all your problems are because of immigration, maybe even with some "common sense" "proof" will be better accepted than someone who tells you about a complex solution and requires you to read a few hundred pages for you to understand why it's a good solution.

The intrinsic problems are problems with the experts themselves. First, how do you tell if someone is truly an expert in a field, and the expert you need? Nothing prevents a company from having experts on its payroll to advocate that tobacco doesn't cause cancer and that global warming is a scam. And even "independant" experts still don't agree on some major issue: some will tell you that nuclear power is the best solution while other will tell you that we should switch to 100% renewable energies, and both will have high quality documented studies to back them.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Fri Jan 30, 2015 5:08 pm

Constantine (2014) ep.2 wrote:There's nothing blacker than the gypsie magic

Goddamit, Constantine, I was starting to like you!

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jan 30, 2015 5:58 pm

yeah.... Constantine's winning no awards for sensitive portrayals of non-western magical traditions...

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 7:02 am

One of these is an actual picture of a DC character in the Suicide Squad movie. The others are not. TAKE A LOOK!

Can you guess which one?

---------------------

So the Internet is ragging on the Joker-look in epic fashion.

My favorite line so far?

"oh wow I can tell this version of the Joker is a real bad dude because his origin story involves falling into a vat of hot topic"

My problem is...the tattoos are trying too hard. He looks like a Joker henchman who's a fanatic fanboy and the Joker keeps him around because he'll do anything the Joker tells him to, and keeps coming out alive out of shit that should kill him.

I'm not saying the Joker absolutely wouldn't have tats under the suit, but "DAMAGED" in cursive on the forehead is just fucking retarded.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 7:21 am

Yeah, I like the tattoos in general, but the face tattoos are really out of character for him, and, I'm only just realizing this now, the jester skull is so on the nose it would kill you be driving bone fragments into your brain.

I'm not necessarily opposed to whatever's going on with the teeth, because I could see Joker getting his teeth knocked out and having them replaced with metal because... well, hiding his insanity isn't his style.

The J on the cheek is... out of character, but a cute allusion to those stupid teardrop tattoos.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 8:34 am

In prison, the teardrop tattoos signify that you've murdered someone. But then, Joker isn't really pulling a "prison tattoo" look here. This Joker does look like a serious departure from the standard, but my first thought upon seeing him was that it is a very good idea to put a very large amount of distance between your Joker and Heath Ledger's Joker.

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 9:06 am

I think the mad laughter would be better as scars than tattoos, because he would do that sort of thing.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 12:06 pm

The Joker, at least according to Frank Miller, looks like this:

Basically they are doing the Frank Miller Joker. Which since they are also intending to do the Dark Knight Returns Batman vs. Superman fight, is not at all surprising. There are lots of dumb things about The Fucking Batman, but the fact that the Joker has short spiky hair and a tats all over his chest simply isn't on that list.

-Username17

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 12:11 pm

I kind of assume they're combining the Joker with the Gang Leader character of Dark Knight Returns

I assume the aesthetic is meant to make him fit more into the imagery that all 90's movies imagined future gangs would look like. That said there might not be any reason because Zak Snyder is retarded.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 7:13 pm

Well, a Frank Miller Joker. Until I went to find an image from All-Star because your hotlink isn't working, I was thinking of this FM Joker-

[

I'm aware of what tear drop tattoos mean. That doesn't mean they don't look stupid as shit, just that I'd probably never say that to someone who has one.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 8:10 pm

If that's the meaning they're going for, shouldn't he have way the hell more of them? The Joker kills seriously a lot of people.

Count Arioch the 28th · Sat Apr 25, 2015 8:47 pm

erik wrote:I stopped reading about 3 months ago to give him time to write something interesting or funny.

I stopped reading like the third or fourth time they brought back Nale. Also, the storyline should have ended years ago, Berlew is milking it for all it's worth.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 9:26 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:The Joker, at least according to Frank Miller, looks like this:

Basically they are doing the Frank Miller Joker. Which since they are also intending to do the Dark Knight Returns Batman vs. Superman fight, is not at all surprising. There are lots of dumb things about The Fucking Batman, but the fact that the Joker has short spiky hair and a tats all over his chest simply isn't on that list.

-Username17

While that's true, it remains that the huge Eastern Dragon tattoo is much more elegant, and more menacing, than the prison tatts in the new pic.

The prison tatts there just say "crazy skinny white guy." The dragon tat says "and now Joker is going to kung-fu your ass."

Which, I guess, might be why they went with the prison style tatts rather than the Yakuza style tatts.

It's certainly not worse than Jokers current origin, which is exactly the same as Vandal Savage's.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sun Apr 26, 2015 8:37 am

The problem with the tattoos generally is that they're cheap. It's just a bunch of "he's the joker, get it?" references. Yes, we know. The good news is he will probably have clothes on most of the time, so the only thing viewers will have to put up with is... the cursive damaged... on his forehead.

Fantastic.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Apr 26, 2015 9:12 am

Yeah, pretty much. It's like he walked into a tattoo shop and said "give me all your crazy, jester, and clown related flash." I'm fine with the laughter, though it would be more in-character if it were less "carefully designed tattoo" and more "schizoid break-induced self harm." I'm kind of fine with the grin, although it's just.. odd. The facial tattoos are just cheap and generic.