Stranger Things

[82_28]

EDIT: That is a period ad from the early to mid 80s. I had some quack prescribe me that shit and I had "paradoxical side effects" from it. I only took a low, low dose of it and it made me feel like I was tripping. Took it only once. But benzos were huge back then. Something inside me fought back from the "calming" properties. I am a really calm person actually, but damn that shit was pushed on people like crazy back then.

[brekin]

Interesting poster. What's it from? I can only hope it's from movie or TV production . . .

If you like Hawkins, Indiana, you are going to love Scarfolk:

Scarfolk Council
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... 81#p569630

[brekin]

Musing on Scarfolk vis a vis Hawkins I think hits on my reservations about Stranger Things.

I like remixes, but mix tapes reproduced with covered songs, sold as new, mmh not so much.

Reminds me of buying compilation albums and not reading the fine print, getting burned by bad covers. I think the Ripple Blast Singers got me there a few times:



The problem is now many people aren't even aware of the first couple of iterations but just the one that seems to package as many of them from before. Films are becoming to resemble recreated "Lists of the top 20, 30, 40, etc movie scenes" of certain genres.

There is remix culture, which when good hopefully creates something new from the dialectic,



and then there is mixtape culture, Tarantino being the the Phil Specter producer to the Ripple Blast Singers of film.

[82_28]

I'll have to watch it again. But did anyone catch the name of the pills Hopper was taking?

[Novem5er]

EDIT: That is a period ad from the early to mid 80s. I had some quack prescribe me that shit and I had "paradoxical side effects" from it. I only took a low, low dose of it and it made me feel like I was tripping. Took it only once. But benzos were huge back then. Something inside me fought back from the "calming" properties. I am a really calm person actually, but damn that shit was pushed on people like crazy back then.

It's still pushed like crazy on people. I went to the doc about 3 years ago with general anxiety and insomnia. I as given two scripts, buspar for general anxiety (which did nothing) and Ativan to get me to sleep and for any sudden panic attacks. That was his go to drug for insomnia: Ativan (lorazepam). Within a few weeks, I went from taking a half a pill at night to taking a full pill twice a day because people can quickly grow tolerant to it. I tried tapering off, but my symptoms were absolutely worse than before I ever took the medicine. So I quit altogether, eventually, and for almost six months.

When my mother in law was shot and killed, I went right back to it, though; along with other benzos that were prescribed. I wont lie; I grew physically dependent on them, and with built up tolerance, I had to take more and more. The side effects kept building, though, so that I was barely functional while taking them, and completely dysfunctional when I stopped. That stuff is bad news . . . but I wont lie; it helped in the short term.

Interesting poster. What's it from? I can only hope it's from movie or TV production . . .

If you like Hawkins, Indiana, you are going to love Scarfolk:

Scarfolk Council
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... 81#p569630

Oh yeah! I forgot about that blog. Turns out it was really just promotional work for a book the guy wrote but cleverly done:

https://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Scar ... 0091958482

[Luther Blissett]

Interesting poster. What's it from? I can only hope it's from movie or TV production . . .

That's from Scarfolk Council, the website of the town where the 70s replay at the end of every decade in perpetuity and things are not well.

[brekin]

Ryder is a conspiracy believer. Your a believer. I'm a believer.



Nostalagia is a thing now, so I cued the Monkees and not SmashMouth.

Winona Ryder on Her Netflix Show Stranger Things, Nostalgia and Johnny Depp

Nostalgia is a thing now.

Yes, nostalgia is a thing now. That’s the perfect—I hear people asking, is that a thing now? And it’s interesting because it being set in 1983, and I remember that year. It was a more innocent time. Well, yes and no. It was the Reagan administration. I remember being in school when Reagan made ketchup a vegetable, because you would get the tater tots and the fish sticks, and then ketchup as your vegetable. And there was obviously corruption and government conspiracies going on, which I’m a believer in, I guess you could say.

Any specific government conspiracies?

I’m just highly suspicious. Maybe it was just the house I grew up in. It’s weird. The government actually came up with the phrase “conspiracy theory,” so it would sound like just a theory during the Pentagon Papers. My parents were very active in the ’60s. It’s pretty common knowledge what was going on.

I remember when Occupy Wall Street happened, and my dad went down there, and they were taking videos just like they used to—the thing that Hoover did. There’s a great documentary on Netflix called 1971 about this group that was never caught that broke into an FBI thing who released all these papers, and it was literally, “Spy on this woman’s group at this college,” really crazy, and “take photographs.” And they were doing that with Occupy Wall Street. There were people in there that were planted taking photos.

In my household, we were raised not to believe the mainstream press. But you don’t want to just listen to one source. And it’s still that way I feel. It’s just been such a hard couple of weeks, when Orlando happened, you go to CNN because you know that CNN is the most level-headed and it’s like Terror Alert in these huge letters—it’s hard to get a more neutral take. But now with the Internet—I do wonder sometimes if part of me didn’t want to have kids because it’s such a crazy world. You really can’t control what they see.

http://time.com/4380827/winona-ryder-st ... hnny-depp/

(Some very neutral state musings about the Johnny Depp domestic violence allegations also at link.)

[Col. Quisp]

I don't understand why so many people like this show. So much screaming. So much overacting. Hyperactive children. I wanted to like Winona but I hated her in this. Is MKUltra really all about contacting Cthulhu?

[Novem5er]

Hyperactive children? Me thinks you don't interact with a lot of pre-teens and early teenagers :p I didn't find the kids annoying in the least, but at the same time, I've probably worked with around 1,000 teenagers in my classrooms by this point, so your mileage may very.

About that MK-ULTRA bit - - - *SPOILERS*

In the show, the government was using the psi-experiments as a weapon to use against the Russians. The monster was completely unknown to them. Later in the season when they show Eleven (the psi girl) being directed to remote-view a Russian figure (aka spying), she incidentally discovers the monster existing in that alternate psi-space. She is later directed to make direct contact with the monster, and when she does, a rift between dimensions is created.

[Col. Quisp]

Do you think Eleven will turn out to be a roll of the dice in a D&D game? And all will be revealed to have been just a game.

[Novem5er]

I've seen that theory over on Reddit, where the entire show is basically a manifestation of their D&D game. No, I don't think they will take it in that direction literally - but yes, I think there will be parallels drawn between their game and the world.

In the first few minutes of the series, Will laments that the Demogorgon got his character and a few minutes later he is snatched by a real monster. I chalked it up to simple foreshadowing at first, but there were enough other references to their games that I'm no longer sure. Again, I think it will just be another thematic layer, though; I don't they are going to make D&D central to the plot or make the game seem dangerous (which was another them of 80's media-crazes, something I don't think the Duffer Bros will want to re-inspire).

[82_28]

Behind the music of Stranger Things I just happened upon.

Obsessed with “Stranger Things?” Meet the musicians behind the show’s spine-chilling synth score

Netflix’s new streaming series “Stranger Things” is a fantastic voyage through ‘80s sci-fi, horror, teen romance and paranormal tropes. I gorged on all eight episodes in two days after its July 15 release, in part because the show — about the odd disappearance of a little boy and the discovery of a suspicious government lab, slimy creatures and a stoic little girl in a small Indiana town in 1983 — is riddled with cliffhangers. But it’s also a noteworthy series because twin showrunners the Duffer Brothers effortlessly disperse so many clever meta references throughout each episode. They do this narratively (with winking nods to things like “Tales from the Darkside,” “E.T.,” “Poltergeist,” “The Goonies,” “Aliens,” “Altered States” and “Under the Skin,” as well as with actors Winona Ryder, Matthew Modine and River Phoenix doppelgänger Charlie Heaton), but they also really nailed their musical references.

Watching “Stranger Things” immerses you in the sounds and the soundtracks of the ‘80s. The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go” is a repeated theme here, and other nuggets such as New Order’s “Elegia” and Modern English’s “I Melt with You” encapsulate key scenes. But the musicians who really set the tone for “Stranger Things” are Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein of the synth band Survive. Dixon and Stein wrote the spectral theme song and the show’s spine-chilling synth score. As a result, they now have an avid social media following posting about their work.

Read the rest here.

http://www.salon.com/2016/07/23/obsesse ... nth_score/

[brekin]

I don't understand why so many people like this show. So much screaming. So much overacting. Hyperactive children. I wanted to like Winona but I hated her in this. Is MKUltra really all about contacting Cthulhu?

Agreed. Although I've been broken to where I'm a regular reluctant fan now. But most dialogues go on 1-2 minutes too long. Many kids/teens do have screamy/adversial frenemy relationships where they are arguing/screaming at each other, but that is usually because they are fighting constant boredom and have to create drama, when your friend is missing, presumed dead but is contacting you through a psychic girl weapon with a dimension jumping predator and secret gov outfit in pursuit, there is more than enough drama to curtail junior high displays. Unfortunately, Degrassi High may be as big an influence here than anything else.

This vechicle is not launching Ryder's McConaissance. After she gets her son she can't even play the one note she's been ringing. Hysterically-frumpy doesn't have much watchability. It would have been more interesting if she would have been also involved in the earlier research studies, about all the mystery we get about her is Hopper and her ex possibly vying for her when they went to Degrassi.

What ST does well is take the old standards and condense them in a light and consumable way. That is why I continue to watch the RI equivalent of the Lawrence Welk Show.

[Nordic]

I just binge-watched it this last week while I was banned.

Earlier I wasn't interested in this because if seen a trailer and Winona Ryder looked so annoying it completely turned me off. But when I saw there was a thread here I decided to check it out and I got hooked.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was surprised at the subject matter, and when the girl 11 showed up I was hooked. She was GREAT. Seriously she was the glue of the show. Conveying that poor character while barely saying a word, doing it all with her eyes, just great. The other characters were hard to really care about very much. The kids were annoying, the teenage girl was annoying, Winona Ryder was almost unbearable but I kept thinking of how unbearable I might be if my son disappeared. I would lose my fucking mind. But still ...

The girl made it for me. I think she's gonna be yuge. She's English and apparently quite a ham. She has her own YouTube channel where she sings. She's a good singer too. I kind of want to check out the other show she was in, it looks like a similar kind of show actually.

The flashback scenes with her in the lab were extremely creepy. Made my stomach literally feel tight and kind of nauseated. Maybe because we all know that shit ain't fiction.

And like Wombat said we've all most likely had dreams of "the upside down". I've had more than dreams about it. I've experienced it a little more than is comfortable. That's why I'm here (one reason anyway)

I really thought that these guys must have read Jeff's work and ran with it.

The episodes "The Duffer Bros" directed weren't as good as the others. Who are these guys? Isn't Shawn Levy a director who's done family comedies in the past? Like "Yours Mine and Ours"? I'll have to look that up.

Anyway I really got into it. Maybe my life is just boring right now (it is) but I enjoyed it immensely in spite of its flaws.

The other show the girl did is called "intruders":

"A TV series centered around a secret society devoted to chasing immortality by seeking refuge in the bodies of others."

Her name is Millie Bobby Brown.

[82_28]

I think people who criticise it are missing the point. There is much to be criticised but I think the criticism is meant to happen. They didn't go through all that trouble to make a piece of shit. They took kinda sorta piece of shit films that we all love still because we grew up then and can identify and threw in paranormal and laboratory testing etc which we had no iota of back then. I noticed this right away. It seemed cheesy at first glance but as the story unfolded it became compelling. Ryder's performance was absolutely believable and I "enjoyed" it. Her character was what I would expect to see in a real mom in the throes of confusion and fear. Her chain smoking was also a nice touch. It's set in the motherfucking 80s guys. It captured the era perfectly.