In honor of Lapka staying, I shall forebear posting any more Roy Clark.

I watched Darren Brown’s “The Push” over the weekend. It’s a little cheesy, but interesting all the same. By means of various psychological manipulations, it sets a man up to commit a murder. The setup is complex and involves a fake charity auction with about 75 people attending, all of whom are actors in on the setup. The only guy that doesn’t know it’s a setup is the target.

I won’t spoil it here, but in watching it, I can’t help but wonder whether and when I’d resist the manipulations. It would be very very difficult to see that the whole event is a setup, which is a key premise to the manipulations that follow.

Brown is a Brit. I don’t know how well known he is over here in USA#1, but what’s his reputation over there? He claims the show was not at all faked or made up, but rather that it accurately represents the manipulations that took place.

Howard,

Derren. He’s very well known if you’re into magic type stuff. Maybe somewhere between Criss Angel and David Blaine as far as how well known. Prob more like Criss Angel level.

Just watched the trailer for The Push. Kinda feel like he’s recreating the movie The Game.

His interview on Rogan was interesting if you like Darren Brown. He talked alot about his specials and what goes into them.

Damn it, I hate autocorrect. I know it’s “Derren” and that’s what I typed. It’s worse to leave it off, though.

Watch the whole thing ... I’ll be interested in your take.

I thought the game could have been good, but it was not.

This is correct.

the **** are you two on about, the game was a great movie

Depends how much you're willing to suspend disbelief. I was disappointed as a teen watching it in the theater, due to the ending.

I might be more forgiving now.

Yeah that ending was absolutely ridiculous. I liked everything leading up to it.

What they said. I can overlook the ending. I liked the movie aside from that. I think many people way overrate the importance of endings. Most movies (studio execs probably) don't have the courage for realistic non-endings and slap something on. And so it goes.

It's mostly the ending that I remember from it. I remember it being a reasonably fun watch at times, but it's also the type of movie that hinges on its ending, so a blown ending is a blown movie. Obviously there are other movies where the journey is more important than the destination.

what was blown about the ending? How else could the movie have ended given what the story was?

Meh, it's a concept piece. It had good action, acting and dramatic scenes. I saw it once in theater 20 years ago and remember it fairly well and not just because of the ending. I've completely forgotten a lot of movies during that period.

I love how ya'll are skirting around spoiling the ending to a movie that came out 20 years ago.

The point is that this is kinda too extreme to be a "game" and they took the point too far. It goes from "these people are nutso" to "these are realistic people".

My memory on this is pretty fuzzy because it was a one-off viewing from 15+ years ago and I could easily be getting stuff wrong by this point, but driving a dude beyond the brink to the point that he legit attempts suicide, at which point everyone jumps in with "LOL j/k" and he basically responds "okay lulz, you got me," and then goes and asks the woman out...like, what? It was just way too goofy of a conclusion for him to be instantly okay moments after his failed suicide attempt.

The most unrealistic thing in that movie was a clear sounding hands free phone back then. They still don’t have that sorted here in the future.

Although MD's reaction to the reveal was pretty lol, it was the "suicide" itself that I took issue with most.

That said it's been years since I watched it, so maybe there is an explanation that makes it less absurd than I remember.

That's exactly how I was, I enjoyed it much much more on the rewatch

wtf is OTT?

Better than OOT

BTW I just read through the Lapka stuff, it does my cold black heart good to see you guys still haven't changed.

sup killa!

In the three weeks that have passed since this post, I've returned to this quiz a few times a day. I got my first 197/197 on the 15th of November, following a bunch of 175ish to 190ish (you improve exponentially quickly once you start learning the ones you get wrong) scores, and since then I've been trying to speedrun the quiz, meaning to finish it without errors as quickly as possible.

Once I somewhat knew the countries, I quickly beat 7 minutes, then 6½ minutes happened some time after that, and I wanted to get below 6 minutes. Well, I was able to push the time below that with some effort, before eventually getting an insane time of 5:32, which is my current personal best. I'm very confident I can get below 5:30 in time, but I think my ultimate ultimate time of sub 5 minutes is simply out of reach. It would certainly require some insanely quick thinking, as well as some very solid mouse cursor movements.

Anyway, I think it's fun, and I would encourage anyone to learn some geography this way

I can’t think of a more useless ability