do birds
Suddenly appear
Every time
You are near?

I don't know about prostitutes but yeah, supposedly Oregon's got the highest proportion of strip clubs per capita. But it's been like that for ages - since long before the lower end of the job market became a living nightmare, so I don't think there's necessarily a correlation.

This is exactly the kind of conflict I have. It's a really old cinema and apparently a lot of the original detailing is still intact. It could probably be turned into a terrific second-run/indie theater.

That might all become apparent in retrospect, but when you're actually playing the game, it's not only unclear, but you put a ton of time and (game) money into finding that out.

Here in Portland, we still have at least two working porn cinemas, one of which is in my neighbourhood. It's across the road from a woodfire pizza kitchen and an artisan tea house, perched in the bushes like the world's last creepy pervert voyeur.

That business about designing Fable 'without a design document' is just extraordinary.

Strangely enough, I was having just this conversation with someone yesterday. It was a great premise and that RPG/sandbox mix was a really interesting idea, but the design was pretty flawed. It was never really clear what the game considered a 'good' or 'successful' movie (or at least, I never achieved one). Not…

This is all pretty consistent with my experiences of Microsoft while working in the game industry - striding around telling everyone what to do, confidently asserting thtat they know better than everyone else what the next big thing is, and burning a huge number of smaller companies in the process.

Definitely. As much as I could see that the movies were made by people who loved the Muppets, it's hard to avoid the feeling that when Henson went, the Muppets went with him. I think a lot of that sweetness was his own personality coming through.

I would include Kimmy Schmidt in that list, too.

All Cancelled.

One of my favourite stories ever is that one time, Jim Henson successfully tricked Frank Oz into believing that he'd given the go-ahead for the Muppets to be used in a hardcore porno. True story.

I already said this in one of the umpteen other Cancelationfest threads, but to me, one thing the Muppets lacked in this iteration, and have lacked in a lot of the post-Jim Henson projects, is the simple sense of joy that sat at the centre of their fictional universe.

Still, it's a great theme.

Interesting that the EW article linked above mentioned that the retool was designed to bring more 'joy' into the show. They put their finger on what so many post Jim Henson Muppets projects have lacked. It was always an innately joyful universe. Cynicism had no place in it. A reboot was never going to be a great fit…

Oh, that picture of Beaker. Brutal.

Oh, oh, this is my chance!

That was my thought too. Better to go out when the going's good rather than cobble something together just to keep the show on the air, a la Airwolf.

David Spade's time-travelling sequel to Joe Dirt. So … yeah.

If only AC/DC would axe Axl …