Survivor 45 - 4512 - "The Ex-Girlfriend at the Wedding"

Oh, man. Why oh why didn't Austin give his idol to Drew?? I blame Dee for not spilling the beans to Austin, like Austin spilled the beans to Dee. 

Not super-thrilled Jake has an idol either. He's not unlikeable, but I just like everyone else more!... except maybe Julie.

As I'm typing this I see the season finale will air on 12/20. Looks like I could've eased my binge-watching just a little bit. But I don't regret bingeing! I think bingeing two episodes a day for at least three days straight is the way to go because I'll have a hard time remembering peoples' names and caring about them otherwise. 

Survivor 45 - 4511 - "This Game Rips Your Heart Out?"

I was right to ship Austin and Dee! But maybe Austin wasn't, since he told Dee. But maybe he had to, in order to keep up trust with Dee and flush out the idol he gave Julie. I forget if people other than Drew know Austin has an idol for himself. 

So Emily goes. Sigh... I was rooting for her too.  Not sure who I want to throw my support to now, but it sure isn't Julie!

Survivor 45 - 4510 - "How Am I the Mobster?"

Saw some raw emotion here. Emily upon winning the reward challenge. Katurah's surprise at being picked. Katurah again after panicking from the water, and everyone helping her get over that. Jake hitting the Survivor Wall and Bruce helping him get over that. 

GJ Bruce. For everything. 

Survivor 45 - 4509 - "Sword of Damocles"

Bruce won again, huh? Huh.

Austin's cool factor is back up, is all I have to say. He even recognized that he had to be quick writing the name at Tribal Council. Smart, smart, smart.  

Jake survives yet again, but we're running out of fat to trim here. 

By the way, I ship Austin + Dee as Kendra suggested. 

Survivor 45 - 4508 - "Following a Dead Horse to Water"

Has it really been that many years since Survivor auction? Wonder why they took it out.

I like Jake, I guess, so I'm glad he's sticking around. Didn't really care one way or the other for Kellie or however you spell it. I did like that surprise look on her face. And wait, didn't she have an idol? 

Survivor 45 - 4507 - "The Thorn in My Thumb"

Well that sucked. Definitely hate Austin a little more now, and of course Katurah. I'm just glad the Survivor producers immortalized her stupidity by making that dumb, incorrect saying the title of the episode. Haven't been this mad since Russell.

But Sifu, meh... should've been Bruce.

Survivor 45 - 4506 - "I'm Not Batman, I'm the Canadian"

Wowowow, that was one for the books. Every bit as awesome as, say, that one tribal where they blindsided Randy with the first fake idol.

Sucks for you Jay... and maybe Kaleb too, since it's another target on his back, since everyone knows he's strong, social, and lucky AF! Actually, sucks for me too since I thought Jay was also the hottest girl this season, but what're ya gonna do.

Survivor 45 - 4505 - "I Don't Want to Be the Worm"

Shoulda kept Brando. What, we can't have two nerds in the game? I'm not a Pokemon player myself, but I appreciated that there were two of them on one season. 

Survivor 45 - 4504 - "Music to My Ears"

You shouldn't have gone out like that, Sean. After your speech I was still hoping you'd be safe. But boy did I love that Tribal. Haha!

Survivor 45 - 4503 - "No Man Left Behind"

Sabiyah, you were a good player. Bringing that wax-encased idol to Tribal Council was pretty smooth, and when you made your choice, I probably would've done exactly the same thing.. 

Survivor 45 - 4502 - "Brought a Bazooka to a Tea Party"

Sorry Brandon, looks like Survivor isn't your thing. But you can be proud of four things: 

1. You didn't get eliminated on the first episode.
2. You didn't seriously injure yourself on the first episode.
3. You didn't completely suck at the physical part of your second challenge.
4. You didn't ask to be voted out (= quit) on the first day like Hannah, the quitting-est quitter in all of Survivor quitter-dom. So respect to you for that. 

Good luck in whatever it is that you do. Definitely rooting for Emily now. 

Survivor 45 - 4501 - "We Can Do Hard Things"

I'm like 12 episodes late, and I'm only halfway into this first episode, but:

I'm very happy Bruce is back. He's the dude who got seriously injured in the very first challenge from last season. Back then I don't even think he settled into camp yet. Good luck to him. 

Dang, Brandon... how hard is it to climb up a ladder? Was it just that slippery or was the water just that cold? You couldn't have been that out of shape.

Emily... I instantly hated her the second she started giving Bruce a hard time at the very beginning of the episode. And then I really, really hated her as the episode went on. That is, until halfway into the episode when the rest of her bonehead tribe started talking about how aliens built the pyramids. The second you give aliens credit for anything, you're the enemy of humanity. What, are human beings only capable of building the same crappy huts you build? Or even worse, that particular race of people couldn't have possibly built anything as grand as the pyramids? Crush them underfoot, Emily.

A not inexpensive lesson in buying anime

(TLDR: Skip the Honey and Clover DVDs, but do get the Blu-rays.)

Got nostalgic for the last two fansubs I ever downloaded:

• Welcome to the NHK
• Honey and Clover

The budget DVD rerelease of Welcome to the NHK was cheap enough on Amazon, with the whole package coming in at six episodes per DVD and four DVDs. I have to wonder if the original releases were of better quality, but I'm not gonna do anything more about it.

The DVDs of Honey and Clover, however, were far too expensive on Amazon, so I hopped on eBay to check prices there. I saw the entire set for $30 so I had to get it. Then I felt bad because there were actually Blu-rays available, but naturally more expensive; the first half of the series alone was $40. So I thought I could at least be happy that I got the whole series for less than even that.

The DVDs arrived in great condition, and the "book" style packaging was quite attractive. Video quality was as good as you can expect from pre-HD sources. But the truly awful subtitles crushed any enjoyment I could have gotten from it. As this review and this forum post mention, if you hear can clearly hear the surname, you damn well better have that name in the subtitles instead of the given name! Not only is it confusing hearing one name and reading another, but relationships can change, and if and when characters become closer, they'll drop the surnames and call each other by their given names instead. So what what happens when given names were used all along? As a translator, you're boned. As a viewer, you're more confused than you have to be.

Not unrelated: I was almost going to blow a stupid amount of money for the rare, out-of-print physical English manga of Welcome to the NHK, but it's available digitally at both Comixology and Viz. Of course, had I known that it was on Viz from the beginning, I probably wouldn't have gotten it at Comixology first. While the reading experience is equally good on tablets, you want Viz for browser-based vertical monitor for single-page viewing; Comixology can't seem to do single-page viewing on manga other than the cover page. But if you want to view both pages at the same time on a TV, again with a browser, you do want Comixology because Viz enforces this stupid border at the top and bottom of the screen that you can't get rid of. Viz has the border in browser-based vertical monitor viewing, but that almost perfectly centers the image, making it even better than if you had hit the full screen button.

Welp, more money to splurge on the physical complete Japanese-language manga!

Superman & Lois

Can I just say how much I love this series?? Brought me back to the superhero shows after I left with the end of Arrow. I binged the first five episodes of S&L on HBO Max and now I'm catching it on TV live. I can't think of a single criticism. 

And can I also say how much I love this Lois?? She looks exactly how I would picture a real-life Lois. She's just as pretty as the animated Lois from Superman: the Animated Series and Justice League. What a beauty!!

Asagiri Gen-isms

We're all watching Dr. Stone on Crunchyroll, right? Good.

Took me a while to realize these were just backwards Japanese words...

りむ

じま

ばいや

ごいす

どいひ

TLC's Unexpected: Character Rankings

Favorite grandpa: Tim (McKayla's grandpa)... narrowly beating out Fabian

Favorite grandma: Jessica (Chloe's mom)

Least-liked teen dad: Diego... that guy should show some respect to his baby mama's mama

How about new singer rules for America's Got Talent?

Last night's AGT was an embarrassment with most of the acts being singing acts, and more than half of the acts advancing to the next round were singers. Taking the variety out real quick. Bello Nock and Just Jerk should've stayed -- hell, I voted for them.

It just seems that if you're a singer, you could either perform decently or do really well (by which I mean show "heart" or "emotion"), and depending on the judge's mood you might even get a golden buzzer. Whereas if you do any other kind of act, you either do your trick or you blow it. They're the acts most fun to see, but they're not closing their eyes or making funny faces because they're not singing some dumb song.

Here are some rules I'm proposing that, while they won't ban singers outright, would give the other acts a chance:

1. Require that singers write and sing their own songs. They don't have to play an instrument. This should keep the acts from being a step away from karaoke night.
2. Only two singing acts can earn a golden buzzer that advances them to the live shows. Once in the initial auditions and once during Judge Cuts.
3. For the Judge Cuts, the next round should have all the singers battle it out in their own round. Call it "Battle of the Voices" or something. Considering there are three weeks of quarterfinals with 12 contestants each, and five advancing to the semifinals, I could definitely tolerate up to two singing acts per week in the quarterfinals. That means 20 singers in one Judge Cuts show, with up to six singers advancing. Seven with the golden buzzer.

Less capturing from the TiVo and more buying from Amazon

I've noticed I no longer have the time and energy to capture, edit, and encode absolutely every show I want to keep forever, so I've decided to buy from Amazon more. I'm not just talking Blu-rays (which I absolutely will for the CW superhero shows), but Amazon Video as well.

This decision was made a lot easier when I realized that even if I did have a 1080p capture card, various TiVo hiccups (loss of sound, Skip notifications) and huge lower screen ads mean I won't ever get a clean capture anyway. And I'm going with Amazon rather than iTunes because while you can view your Amazon content on many different devices, you can only watch your iTunes content on Apple devices. Also, SD content on iTunes is complete crap (think: low-res, mobile-friendly videos).

America's Secret Slang is still just as good as I remember, and the quality is excellent in full 1080p. But there are plenty of other one-off History specials that I'd like to see, and they're all on Amazon too. Just search "History Specials." It's all part of one season, and obviously they won't let you just purchase an entire season (they're all unrelated and who knows how big the list will get), but they're (mostly) reasonably priced; $1.99 for SD, $2.99 for HD, and $4.99 for the handful of ripoffs.

Shows I'd want to buy in the future:

• 101 Objects that Changed the World (and the other "101" shows)
• How Life Began
• Hacking the System
• Wizard Wars
• The various Anthony Bourdain shows
• Food: Fact or Fiction

Hulu subscription, again

I decided to buy one month of the lower-tier Hulu subscription ($8 with limited commercials) rather than the even-more-expensive-than-Netflix higher tier ($12 with no commercials). Why? Well, I really liked these current Naruto Shippuden filler episodes and my FireTV Stick was coming in the mail.

Subscribing to Hulu definitely improves the quality on my computer, but when they say "limited commercials," you don't get any fewer commercials; it's the same amount of "limited commercials" they've always had!

I checked out Seven Samurai since I know that's part of the Criterion Collection, and I'm glad the movies aren't interrupted by commercials.

UPDATE: Having upgraded to no commercials, Hulu still does the fade in/out between segments.

To all YouTube commenter "comedians"...

To anyone who needs to reference plot lines to make your "jokes:"

Can you please just fuck off at least a little bit?

You're just spoiling it for the rest of us who don't want to illegally download the TV show or manga.

You're also not funny. Had Bleach and now Naruto spoiled. Assholes.