So, L and I went to see
Hoppers at the movies on Thursday. The premise sounded very stupid to me when I first heard about it, but L had showed me the “lizard lizard lizard lizard” teaser some months ago, and the lizard looked cute, and L wanted to see it by RH was not interested in seeing it with her, so I said I would. I watched Dan Murrell’s review of it with some trepidation, but he said it was a good, though “lesser” Pixar, with a good message but not too preachy, which seemed relatively reassuring. And both L and I ended up enjoying it more than we expected and laughing A LOT, which was nice.
We saw it in 4DX, which was my first experience of that at feature length –
( more on this part )In fact, the only time the chair-jolting part became really unpleasant was during
( the previews )The movie itself was fun!
( More, with marked spoilers )It’s not a movie that will stay with me in some, you know, profound way, like an
Encanto or an
Inside Out or a
Spider-Verse, but it was cute and a time well spent! I even don’t terribly resent it for costing us $33/person XD (though, seriously, that is insane).
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I also watched a couple of comedy specials:
Pierre Novellie Why Can't I Just Enjoy Things special – about his autism diagnosis via heckler. I liked Novellie when he appeared on How Do You Cope, talking about his autism, and enjoyed him as a guest on Elis & John, in more free-form conversation, and then
scytale recommended this special, so I watched it (because I couldn’t get into Netflix for some reason, and B, whose email it’s linked to, was asleep in Normandy, so I couldn’t watch the James Acaster specials I was planning to watch with my solo dinner at home).
( I liked it (some joke spoilers) )And then I was watching his other special on YouTube,
Quiet Ones, and there is a bit he reads from a paper (because he finds it too boring to remember) about Moore’s Law XD I mean, what are the odds XD XD This show was from 2021, so a lot of it is about the lockdown, and I generally thought it was less strong (which makes sense, you would expect an artist to get better at his art as he practices it more), but I did appreciate the “quiet ones” bit, among the differences between men and women, after which the show is (justly) named.
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Some more Taskmaster-adjacent content:
-
CoC 4 portrait fanart -- what a gloriously mad bunch! :D (cartoon!Andy is my favorite)
- Another
Taskmaster Podcast popped up for the second live event in NYC (the last night of the tour). There was some repetition of stuff I heard Greg say on other stops or other interviews, but still some fun gleanings.
( Assorted tidbits )Long Alex & Greg interview during the US tour (YouTube): Fun and thoughtful, with some unusual questions and good rapport.
( Assorted tidbits ) *
I think it's also time for an Elis & John catch-up. It’s been a bit over a month since my last post, but really, because it took me about a month to get through the previous catch-ups, over 3 separate posts, I’ve actually got over two months worth of listening I’m catching up on – i.e. 2 months of new shows and about 7 months of Radio X backlog.
First, a visual bit:
John and a giant teddy (from ~10 years ago?)
Second, John was on
Chris and Rosie Ramsey’s “Shagged, Married, Annoyed” podcast earlier this year, where the schtick with the guest is he reads a listener-submitted story, which of course I don’t have much interest in, but he also talked about some personal stuff in more detail than I’ve heard elsewhere. (The recording was from about 6 months earlier than the podcast, so, mid-2025-ish, because How Do You Cope was actively putting out episodes and John said he’d been sober for 2.5 years, when he passed three years in November 2025.)
( Personal tidbits: giving up meat, spooky bum procedure )Catching up on the current shows,
( Jan - Mar 2026 )(I do also have ~8 months of Radio X shows to post about, but that's going to be a separate post -- hopefully it all fits in one, LOL.)
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And oh hey, it's mid-March somehow, so this is probably a good time to check in on my
( fannish goals )