(04-30-2026, 02:51 PM)Drunk Monk Wrote:

(03-24-2026, 09:38 AM)Drunk Monk Wrote: The Furious

This one is getting great buzz. It's got a stacked fight team. Looking forward to it.

Because of solar power, I have only paid one electrical bill the entire time I've lived at the Lair. I had to pay a bill because I switched meters with the neighbor so he could pay for the well which was on his property. I usually carry a credit balance because of the electricity I sell back to PG&E. Not a lot but there has always been a balance.

About the time I bought the back-up battery I noticed a change. My balance was starting to decline rather than gradually increase. I was also notified that I would have a bill come August called the True-up bill. I'm not exactly sure what that means. I guess I'm signed up for a minimum charge and what accrues over that is all paid in August. My True-up has always been zero. 

I was thinking the new charges might have to do with the new battery back-up. Maybe when those were installed, some switch was thrown that didn't send juice to the grid. But according to my control panel on the batteries, it showed I was sending plenty of juice to the grid.

I went online and looked at my yearly bill and all it showed was me buying energy from the grid for the last six months. Blue bars mean I buy from the grid.



Now, that can't be right. According to my app for the batteries, I sent 789KwH to the grid and I bought 183KwH from the grid. I bit the bullet and called PG&E in order to get to the bottom of the mystery. I talked to a young lady and she had me go to myPage on the PG&E website that gives really granular detail on my bill. We looked at the month of March and this is what I saw.(Pic Below) Green is what I sold. Blue is what I bought. Just looking at the chart all I could think was how was it possible I owed PG&E money. There are way more green bars than blue bars. And the green bars are big. I was raising my voice to the girl, not yelling but more agro, for her to explain to me how I owed if the green was so much bigger than the blue. If you hover your cursor over the bars on the website, you are given the actual amount of energy for each day. Each bar corresponds to a single day. Naturally I added them all up and I got 466 KwH sent to the grid and 29.2 KwH used from the grid. Like I said. I felt like I'm on crazy pills. 466 is much bigger than 29, right?




The young lady put me on hold for a minute to go ask a question. That's when I did the addition while she was gone to show I had sold more energy than I bought according to the chart on her website. She came back to say I can't really go by the monthly chart. I needed to go to the hourly chart and look at the hourly numbers. Fine. Let's go to the daily. For reference I pulled up Mar 15 as an average day.



Once again, I saw a lot of big green bars and a bunch of small blue bars. I did the hover. I got the numbers. According to PG&E's own chart, I sold 25 KwH and I purchased 6 KwH. I asked her to explain. She sent me to the bill where it said I only sent 192 KwH to the grid and purchased 249 KwH from the grid, which is why my bill showed a deficit to which I owed money. I needed to pay for those 57 KwH. The next chart is another day that shows green but in a smaller amount.


Again, I did the math and it says I sold 19 KwH and bought 15 KwH. All the green bars showed this. Every day I was selling more than I was buying except for those three days. The crazy pills were really starting to kick in. What wasn't I seeing?  The woman from PG&E kept to the company line that their numbers showed I owed. I felt like I was uncovering some weird conspiracy. It's starting to look to ease my mind, I might have to go through every day and show the actual discrepancy between bought and sold, which is a completely crazy idea. But I am leaning towards it.

Regardless, I do believe the charts on the page are misleading. On the monthly bar graph, each day should show blue and green on each bar and the pop up should both bought and sold amounts, because that is how they are doing their calculations. At the moment, the numbers shown on the monthly don't accurately reflect what is going on.

Another problem is one my representative briefly mentioned but we never focused on and that I think that is where the big discrepancy lies. When I sell my money to the grid, PG&E uses the wholesale price. When I buy from the grid, I get the retail price. I can only assume I am paying much more for energy than I am buying. It would be better if the price for buy and sell were the same.

Still feeling crazed. Still feel like a mistake is happening somewhere and I just can't find it. Probably time to get a cork board, a bunch of yarn, some thumbtacks, and make a design to connect all the clues.

I could've sworn I saw this movie before but when I searched it out here and on KFM, I found no reviews by me. I think I thought this was a different film. Watching it, it seemed completely fresh but that has happened to me several times with movies I've seen already. Whatevs. I watched it again to see Miao Xie's role in it, which is minor. took me a while to recognize him and he does nothing of note.

This is deep in the yaoguai genre with lots of flying about, taoist magic and dated CGI effects. It's Yuen Woo-Ping revisiting his 1982 rant-aisa The Miracle Fighters, which I must seek out and watch because I don't know if I've seen that either. I liked it, but it's so overblown with magical stuff, like a superhero movie. It kinda gets lost in itself, overdone, but I enjoyed it for what it was. The story was amusing with a love quadrangle, and the yaoguai genre is one of my favs. Tsui Hark also had a hand in this, so it's deep in the Fant-Asia zone. 

The film was highly regarded at the time, mostly for its costumes, sets, effects and its overall design style. Those don't hold up, at least the effect don't. CGI has gotten scary good. This was back when it still looked like CGI. The fights were a lot of flying about and tossing various missile weapons. I did like all the demon unmasking. It had it's moments and there was a sequel, which I'll probably check out someday.

Not overly D00M recommended. 

Seen on YouTube here:

Zombies. Blood everywhere. Mayhem. I needed a little palate cleanser after Office Romance.

Danny Boyle returns to his zombies. All of Britain is under quarantined to contain the rage virus. There are a few pockets of survivors including an island off Scotland where people are still surviving. They can cross back to the mainland via a causeway that only appears at low tide. In a test of manhood or something, young Spike and his father head to the mainland for Spike to get his first kill. Yep, things go tits up.

Later Spike returns to the mainland in the hopes of finding a doctor to help his sick mother. More tits up. They do get to meet Voldemort.

There is lots of running and screaming and bloodshed and scares and weirdness. It was fine. Kept me entertained. I really watched it so I could see Twenty Eight Years Later: The Bone Temple.

Springsteen: Deliver me from Nowhere. I could have sworn thatGuy reviewed this somewhere but it's not coming up. Maybe I'm confusing this was the Dylan biopic that came out around the same time.

I like Springsteen. I'm not a huge fan. I knew some of the stories surrounding Nebraska at the time. I think I might have even bought the album at the time. I could sing you the opening lines to Atlantic City, which is a song I really like. But I'm not invested in him. I've never been to a concert. (Did see him at ABA, though, with the Rock Bottom Remainders and will dine out on that forever)

The story charts the time from the end of the River tour through the recording of Nebraska on a 4 track in a rented house in New Jersey to its release. This was a bad time for Springsteen as he dredges up memories of growing up with an abusive father, who had his own mental health issues. There is not a lot of arc to the story. He records the album. He spirals downward. The record company doesn't know what to do with the album as they are looking for hits. The weirdest character in the movie is Jon Landau, Springsteen's agent. His slavish devotion to Springsteen is weird and the way Landau is portrayed is kind of trippy.

But the Biopic covers all the bases, hits all the points of note. Gives some of the background for some of the songs. On the whole it felt forced, like they were trying there hardest to make an important statement about artistry.

Yes, my Achilles heal is Romantic Comedies. But I guess I should say good Romantic Comedies. Plus, I like Brett Goldstein who plays the lead and also wrote this. You might recognize Mr. Goldstein from Ted Lasso or Shrinking, which he also helped write.

This was bad, epically bad. Should have been on the Hallmark channel. There were a few tepidly funny scenes but not many. The graphic nudity is an up close showing of a birth. At no time did I feel involved in the characters or actually believe they were in love with each other.

Yes, this is on my own head.

Mabel's brain gets transferred into the brain of an animatronic beaver. She uses the new body to go on a quest to find other Beavers to help her save her beloved glade from development. Shenanigans occur.

The movie has really heavy handed messaging about saving the environment and getting along with all the animals in order to preserve our environment. Maybe it wasn't heavy handed if you are under ten or maybe people are so siloed at this point you need the heavy to get the point across, but for it was too heavy.

This seems like it could have been a direct to DVD back in the day. Story wasn't all that rich. Nothing super special about the animation. Not all that funny. It does have a big number from SZA for the closing credits.

No sword fights.

(05-28-2026, 10:29 AM)Drunk Monk Wrote:

(05-28-2026, 10:09 AM)thatguy Wrote: DM, is RM doing this quarry event:

Quote:

Carmina Burana: A Cinematic Masterpiece Live in the Quarry Amphitheater

Join I Cantori di Carmel and Music Director Daniel Henriks for an evening of raw power and cinematic wonder. Featuring over 130 musicians, this bucket-list experience is performed at the historic outdoor Quarry Amphitheater in Santa Cruz.

The Quarry Amphitheater

BUY TICKETS

 

• The Music You Already Love:Even if you have never stepped foot in a symphony hall, you will recognize the pulse-pounding sounds that have defined countless movies and anthems.
  
• A Physical Experience: Hearing this work live with an intense choir and orchestra is something you have to feel to believe.
  
• A Masterpiece Made in Our Community: Our ensemble leads this performance alongside world-class soloists Ashley Fabian, Chris Mosz, and Ethan Vincent, with a special debut by our youth chorus, I Cantorini.
  

 

--tg

JM covers the Quarry, not RM. And JM is only called in for the more extreme concerts, not this one. However I met with the general manager there at Cali Roots and he offered to comp me and Stacy in - I need to follow up on that. I love Carmina Burana.

Was doing some research into Miao Xie for next week's screener (which I'm very excited about). Xie heads two franchises - Eye for an Eye ( https://www.brotherhoodofdoom.com/doomFo...p?tid=7880 ) and these Fight Against Evil flicks, of which there are two or three - there's definitely a sequel which I'll watch soon. 

Xie was the kid who starred alongside Jet Li in My Father is a Hero and The New Legend of Shaolin, both films I remember fairly well but should probably revisit. He was also in The Thousand Faces of Dunjia, which I thought I've reviewed here, but it doesn't come up in a search. That was a Chinese Tomb Raider genre flick. He's now in his forties and about to explode on the scene.

In Fight Against Evil, he plays Li Hongji, a 'little policeman' who is, of course, a totally kick ass fighter. In the opening scene, he stands solo between to gangs and kicks everyone's ass. Then he's sent on leave, where, of course, he gets involved with another gang extorting the community. More ultravi ensues. 

The fight choreo is simple - mostly one shot/one action, but it's brutal hardcore stuff. There's a great fight inside a cramped empty bus, and another against a brain damaged hulk of a gangster brother that's exceptional. It's good stuff. Xie can move, a former child wushu champ IRL who has honed his fight choreo skills over the years - he can sell a punch. Loved the action.

Also love the modern PRC vibe, the squalor, the vibe, a lot of eating scenes, and drinking of baijiu, which reminded me of the banquet last Saturday. 


Seen here: 


NOTE that this has horribly translated subtitles, probably done by AI. It's distractingly nonsensical and frequently derailed my attention because I was struggling to discern what they were talking about. 

D00M Recommended.

There's a lot to process about last night. I'll get to it later today. This is just a placeholder for now. 

For you uninitiated, may I present her majesty, Queen Herby