Mark's Movies

This is probably the first sports movie on the show. It's really great, though, and it's called The Sandlot. There are a lot of great moments and a lot of great actors and a lot of great stuff and a lot of great balls of fire! No, that song actually doesn't appear in the movie but I'm just riffing here. Just padding this paragraph. I'm not sure what to say. I let all of this intro stuff kinda hang out in the podcast. Nothing really to say here but even Roger Ebert liked this shit.

I do talk about spoilers for some things in this podcast including.. The Sandlot (this movie) and "IT" the book by Stephen King. Why did I super spoil "IT"? Listen in and find out, I guess. There are plenty of things I didn't talk about in this movie, though. I didn't talk about a lot of other baseball movies--I mention several in passing that were released close to this one but I didn't talk about my favorite baseball movies. If you want me to do some favorite baseball movies send me some tweets @coolmark because I have a few. The Sandlot is maybe in the top 3 of my baseball movies but, now being an adult, I may need to rethink that a little bit. I actually, in retrospect, don't think that take is super hot. Maybe sports movies, in general. Let me know what you'd like.

I had spent a couple of minutes looking up the song "Benny and the Jets" and pretty much stopped when the timeline didn't line up with the movie but, in retrospect, I'm pretty sure it's super about drugs. "Bennies", a name for Benzedrine pills that I've actually heard somewhere (where?), are the first legit drugs that contained amphetamines which is a stimulant that makes you fast, man. But don't do drugs. But yeah, the wikipedia page for Benzedrine confirms it.

This image (above) is possibly the only "game ball" I ever got. I'm not certain. I thought I had another one but that one might be at my parent's house. The "game ball" was given, essentially, to the MVP of the game. It was signed by the whole team. This was actually from the first season I ever played baseball. As I recall it I just had a really good game and, since I super sucked as my friend liked to remind me, it was a big deal. We won that game. If memory serves we had Little Caesar's pizza afterwards. Little Caesar's was actually one of my favorites at the time. Before they fully cut quality and went for the bargain basement of pizza because market research is like "even if it sucks people will still buy it if it's cheap". This ball is on my desk all the time. Right there it's resting in my /dev/mug, which I also got from another friend.

The List of Adjacent Baseball Movies

Runtime 1hr 41m Budget no info on that. Opening Week $4,000,000 Domestic Box Office $32,000,000 Home Video $76,000,000 (est)

A cool article from David Mickey Evan's blog

A Time interview with Tom Guiry

Some papers on Performance-Enhancing Drugs in Baseball

Also, when I said "syntax error" in the podcast I meant "runtime error". I told you I'm dumb.

Be nice. Wear a mask. Stay at home when you can. Black lives matter.

Jimmy Carter should see this Human Right and that's very telling. Scarface, directed by Brian DePalma, definitely runs the gamut of reviews. In this episode I'm going to talk a bit, in a loose fashion, about how this movie impacted me and the world around me.

I don't know that there's a whole lot of objective information here but there is a bunch of subjective stuff going on. There are some links I do want to throw in. They will be forthcoming. As always you can find me on Twitter @coolmarkd (yes the name is 1. ironic 2. homage 3. another homage you probably don't get). I'm on Letterboxd as markd20.

This is the link for the Action Button review by Tim Rogers so you can straight click it in your podcatcher https://youtu.be/Hu4H5ykBP0I

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C2%BFQu%C3%A9_Pasa,_USA%3F

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0380268/

Here's a link for the video of the first level of Scarface: The World Is Yours so you can click it straight from your podcatcher https://youtu.be/CHDo6mgl-SA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_at_a_Time_(2017_TV_series)

Black lives matter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariel_boatlift

"Let's make it fifty" is a phrase that screen writer Rudy Wurlitzer, billed as Hot Rod, says right before he gets one-upped and gets his ass handed to him by James Taylor's The Driver and Dennis Wilson's The Mechanic when he races against The Car in Monte Hellman's iconic 1971 art-house road movie Two-Lane Blacktop.

This is a hell of a movie and most obnoxious film fanatics, yours included, have seen it and somewhat studied it. I came about it a little more organically, through the car angle. I had friends that were almost just like The Driver and The Mechanic in my life. This movie isn't really a documentary however.

Internet Car Movie Database link http://www.imcdb.org/movie.php?id=67893

Stick around and I'll talk at ya a while about this movie in an underproduced podcast because I'm a barely functional human being.

Listen. If your podcast app or podcatcher or whatever doesn't support images and links you're missing out. This is going to be a multi-media smorgasbord. Let's get live in '95 If you can see pictures you already know where this is going or you're on scummbags.com where this post lives. A lot of podcatchers have the ability to visit the post page and, in this case, I recommend it.

The remote had a kinda 8-way d-pad Steam-controller-ass thing with the two mouse buttons on opposite sides. This allowed you to navigate through Packard Bell Navigator without needing to get up and use a mouse or a keyboard. The thought process is that deadass in your living room you'd have a full on midtower PC setup with a banging 15" CRT and the speakers that were like the ears on it. I miss that shit. But the modem. That modem unlocked so much for me. I was young, so naturally I ended up on AOL. Naturally, I was curious.

We're closing the door on Hackers (1995). It's sad to see it go but it was great to have it here. When they talk about their crime being curiosity... it's legally not true. In 1989 Robert Tappan Morris was the first person to be convicted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act which is a bit of a horseshit law since it purports to cover selected "protected" systems but due to the latitude with which it can be interpreted can cover anything with a network connection and, probably, many things without one. So, no, their crime was not curiosity. Even security researchers, the good guys, can be targeted by law enforcement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which is another law that has a whole host of horseshit interpretations that seems to be aimed at protecting media companies but can be used in misguided attempts to prevent security research from being released. This is a bit of a problem, as you, in 2020, can obviously see.

Robert Tappan Morris was a bit of the template for Dade Murphy. The internet was a different, and more innocent, place in 1988. The worm seemed innocuous--there was no "payload" per se that would damage a computer or compromise information on it--instead a mistake was made and the worm would, 1 in 7 times, make a second copy of itself and it replicated at a rate that quickly overwhelmed the capacity of many systems. The estimate that it crashed 6,000 systems was "cooked up" according to Paul Graham but many major networks were basically out of commission for several days and the number actually could have easily been much higher. It was targeted towards Berkley Unix systems. That clever devil. Robert Morris, rtm's father, had previously worked in Bell Labs. By all accounts the Morris family was one of the smartest around. But Robert Morris, the elder, had a different job at the point that the worm hit. He worked for the NSA. Robert Tappan Morris' worm was meant, as I read in Cyberpunk, to measure the size of the Internet. It's possible that the "crime of curiosity" could have come from the Morris proceedings. But with what we now know of the NSA it does seem like a compelling start of a conspiracy theory. November 2nd, 1988, a day which will live in infamy.

What would the sequel to Hackers look like now? To be honest, I don't know. Maybe we already have it. Maybe it's Death Stranding. Maybe it's a game about the disconnectedness of our society and how we can physically build bridges and help one another out. Hideo Kojima would definitely need to be in it. I'd get Tim Rogers to work on this. He may not be on the up-and up with all things Hackers but the guy "gets" things. Iain Softley and Rafael Moreu were, to my knowledge, not hackers but they "got" being a hacker and they made something... more. What would Hackers 2020 be like? Didn't we miss the optimistic future of the movie's world completely and end up in it's darkest timeline? I wonder what, given the opportunity Dennis Villeneuve would do. He and Roger Deakins paint a war zone in a desert in Sicario. Are Dade and Kate divorced? Did they have a kid young? Did Phreak get locked up while protesting in Venezuela? Are Nikon and Cereal going to mount a rescue mission like in Tony Scott's Spygame? At all points we have institution and individual in conflict. Is Joey a Goldman-Sachs guy, now? Did he turn into The Plague? Was the Ellingson Mineral worm just the illegal beta of the crash of '08? Did Dade go to Afghanistan? Is he in the NSA now? It's hard to put into perspective what events have affected me and how I could even begin to process them in the framework of a sequel plot to a beloved film property that itself seemed so fresh and vibrant in realization. What was the concept that started it? Did it look and feel the same? It feels like a lifetime ago and, seeing as how the movie could rent a car this year, it is a lifetime ago. Booting up my computer and getting Packard Bell Navigator would give me such a sense of... comfort? Control? Everything is perfect here in your little digital house. Maybe that's part of it. Maybe they've shed their innocence and left New York only to be brought back. Like the plot of Stephen King's IT they're forced to face who they become but, in doing so, the examination reveals the issues and problems which we thought were isolated were really systemic. What if the vorpal sword has been in the simulation all along? The nerds inherited the Earth but it turns out they are bad guys, too.

There is a lot of housekeeping to do here and, as I'm watching Lego Masters with my family I'm trying to sort it all out. But it's a mess. Work has been immensely stressful. Calling someone and saying "hey I'm sorry all your stuff is broken I'd like to help you fix it" is not fun for me. It's not my normal job but it's everyone's job right now and everyone is feeling it. There's more than a little bad news being delivered. I lost track of everything that I said I would have links on so, if you were looking for something and made it all the way here and didn't find it, please let me know. @coolmarkd on Twitter. I won't take it personally. I'll thank you. Promise. It's hard to get a win these days.

http://pbclub.pwcsite.com/wiki/index.php?title=How_To_-_Use_your_Packard_Bell_Fast_Media_Remote_on_a_modern_PC

I realize I never really talked about the Hacker Manifesto. It's by The Mentor. I actually don't feel terribly qualified to talk about it. I guess that is avoidant behavior from feeling anxiety about it.

Austin Grossman's book You. Despite what the Boston Globe may say, at no point would I call it a comedy. Not saying I never laughed. But I don't consider it a comedy. Soon I Will Be Invincible.. and Crooked are also very fun but You is... personal.

Disasterpiece Interview https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rich-vreeland-aka-disasterpeace-fez-hyper-light-drifter/id1432764935?i=1000430238168

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/101 The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling. Free as in beer--not as in speech.

A dude made a replica of the Wipeout setup the play in Cyberdelia. It's cool as all hell

Never Surrender https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39cVvN28UXE the Galaxy Quest documentary trailer. It's on Amazon Prime in the US. Very good.

Again, https://hackerscurator.com/ is one of the most serious places for information on this movie. It's super good. There's a ton of stuff in there I didn't talk about.

Plunket + Kuhr Wired Magazine Covers. Good times.

David Carson Design which is very cool.

Project Blinkenlights was maybe one of the first things that I can remember where I was really amazed at hardware folks. I'd genuinely say that IT is fine or whatever but hardware and embedded systems is what I would actually super turbo Want To Do When I Grow Up but it's not a thing that ever came up in my life and I'm straight garbage with an iron. This is one of those times where maybe I need to give myself a pep-talk where I say "No one is going to do it for you."

A cool essay? on Nowpunk

Check out the 1994 HOPE Author's Panel with Rafael Moreu and Ian Softley. Moderated by Emmanuel Goldstein. Hackers On Planet Earth (1994): The Author Panel. I'm so curious about him and how this story came about. This is as close as I've come to it.

markd20 on Letterboxd. On the icon I have there and on Twitter you can see the Sunflower iMac I got as a hand-me-down from a friend. It was nice. It was on like 10.5.9 if memory serves. I also got a Firewire subwoofer, one of the transparent ones, and the speakers that went with it. Interestingly enough Apple made the Firewire sub stop working by 10.5.9 or so and I had to find a kext and install it to get it working again. I got rid of it, unfortunately. I also had a couple of G3 PowerMacs and a Performa that I got rid of. I guess that's being an adult. Kill your darlings. I still have the keyboard from the Performa, though.

This is half a cry for help and half me seeing how far I can push the envelope of podcast show notes. I'm not ok at the moment. But I guess I'm managing. It's almost a sine wave of mood. It's validating that I've seen others talk about this. I haven't seen IT: Chapter 2 yet but I don't have very high hopes. Not because people laughed too much. I don't have an issue with that at all. But because of how different, linear, and direct IT: Chapter 1 was. When you read the book you will find these sad parallels and detours that really flesh out the themes of the book. The movie felt more "lamp monster" to me. Additionally, and apropos of nothing (as if I'm fucking keeping track), you should very much read Hearts in Atlantis and, probably very much, not watch the movie Hearts in Atlantis because I believe it will suffer the same way but, likely, even more so. The novella, also titled Hearts in Atlantis in the book of the same name, is one my most favorite things in this world. It's not terribly long and it is shorter than the opening one. You probably don't strictly need to read the first novella, which I believe to be called Low Men In Yellow Coats or something like that which I guess is a whole Ambrose Bierce/Robert Chambers/Hit Points Lovecraft mood, but it could be, and probably would be, good if you did.

I recorded this episode while standing. I have a mic stand and I moved my office chair out of the way and stood roughly in the middle of the room. I know that at some points I was too up on the mic but, maybe other than that, let me know if it's any different. Better or worse. Smash that like and subscribe. Leave a review.

Let's rollerblade into 1995's misunderstood coming-of-age? Action? Adventure? Sci-Fi? movie Hackers. Directed by Iain Softley, written by Rafael Moreu, and starring Johnny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Jesse Bradford, Matthew Lillard, Laurence Mason, Fisher Stevens, and Wendell Pierce with an appearance by Marc Anthony (!?).

Go on a journey of minutiae and have Mark overstay his welcome in this podcast that lasts altogether way too long and is only Part 1 of the look into this movie. In this episode the focus is a bit on the production as well as the characters themselves. A bit of research went into this one and there will be more to come.

At the end of the episode I get into my list of 6 perfect movies (in no order--just 6 that came to mind). By the end of this description I've also dropped my third-person voice because I'm exhausted past the point of propping up that pretense.

HackersCurator.com

Free Our Data

Also! The Shout!Factory release is coming back! I paid like $60 for a used copy of this movie but it'll be shipping in May 2020 for $20!!!! Awesome!

Yes, there was a laugh track at a couple of times. I hated it, to

One love.

Imagine it's 1992 and an animated Batman movie is in theaters. It's true. Batman fights a murderous foe in Mask of the Phantasm. Dive in with Mark as he does some exploration into Mask of the Phantasm, Batman: The Animated Series, and his childhood.

Dark Knight: A True Batman Story

Night In Venice by Kevin MacLeod

https://www.polygon.com/2019/6/12/18662657/tom-king-batman-catwoman-phantasm-comic

Batman Animated on Amazon

Tweet at Mark at @coolmarkd

Catch Mark on Letterboxd as markd20

If you ever really wanted to watch a movie where being in an office was actual cool and exciting then this would be it! 1992's Sneakers is a movie about a professional Red Team getting double-crossed. Needless to say: hijinx ensue. Let's talk a bit about this early-90's premise that is still wildly applicable today.

As always you can find me on twitter @coolmarkd

Music from https://filmmusic.io

Music from https://filmmusic.io

And here are just a few infosec folks I follow on Twitter:

I'm sorry. It's been a while since I've recorded. I neglected to turn off the hardware noise gate that I use. It's fairly abrupt at some times and it's due to me starting my words with an exhale which is, in all probability, poor elocution. I'll never be a member of Skull & Bones at this rate. Eulogia would be upset with me. But also I don't find Eulogia as a goddess on record(TM) so maybe that's all just bullshit and we're all just human born to make mistaaaaakes.

But this is a short update. Quality is rough. Editing is minimal (you'll see). Equipment is new. And it's more about me than it is about you but maybe that helps out. It certainly helped me out some.

As always find me on twitter @coolmarkd I love to talk about movies but I also don't get out to see many new movies. I also don't get a chance to see many old movies. But I'm working on that.

Welcome to Hollywood... or perhaps Hell. This is wrapping up the trilogy of detective movies that was planned albeit a little late. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a fun postmodern noir/pulp starring Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer, and Michelle Monaghan which was written and directed by (in)famous Shane Black.

After recording I realized that I never got around to addressing the discussion that Harry has with Harmony about what type of guys she hangs around with and what type of girl she is. It was interesting to see that discussion framed in a 2005 perspective of there being a definitive "right" or "wrong" way to be with regards to sex however this was coming from a liar and a thief so maybe that was the joke? It's definitely a position to take but I can't imagine it being played quite that straight with the other things happening in that space.

If you don't get to the end of the episode but you're reading this (weird, right?) then I'll point out that the podcast will be taking a hiatus. I hope to reevaluate the release schedule and the scope of things to accommodate all of the things that I want in my life but that will remain to be seen.

Thanks for listening and as always you can reach me @coolmarkd on Twitter.

Hey folks--not an episode today but a brief message. I realize now, while uploading this, that days like this can be difficult for many who have different circumstances than mine and I apologize for that.

Enjoy your time with your family if you can. This holiday was definitely made to sell greeting cards and merchandise but there is still that nugget of truth.

None of this is actually in the audio file. Just getting a little more retrospective writing this episode description (more like an episode addendum amirite).

See you next week.