Silicon Valley

I just did a rewatch of the whole run of Silicon Valley and it’s still great. As a software developer, I hold the end of Season 1 Middle-Out scene as one of the all-time great comedy scenes ever put to screen.

On the rewatch, I appreciated many more of the callbacks they threw into the show than I did on my initial week-to-week watch as it aired.

Fleishman is in Trouble

This was a challenging but compelling watch. Stressful and sad, it ended on a note that was a little too cute for my tastes, but throughout I just couldn’t look away. I’ll watch anything with Claire Danes in it, and she’s only one of several heavyweights here. Strongly recommended, unless uncomfortable shows about divorce, insecurity, and grief are going to bring you down.

The Rocketeer

Weirdly, I’d never seen it before! I remember it having an outsized presence in Nintendo Power and it being a thing, but I’d never actually watched the movie. Unclear Pod put it on my radar, though, so we rewatched it over the weekend and what a treat! On the back of The Rocketeer, we’re talking about doing a tour through the adventure movies of the 90’s over the next several weekends. I know I’m hot to rewatch The Shadow.

(As great as the film is: I’m glad I didn’t watch it when it came out because that movie opens on Jennifer Connelly rolling a stocking up her thigh… and that absolutely would have impacted the way my pubescent brain was wired.)

Have I done nothing but post terrain workbench shots since December?

White Noise

I read White Noise back as an undergrad close to 30 years ago, and it had a pretty big impact on me then, but I haven’t returned to it since. I enjoyed the Netflix adaptation quite a bit. Unfortunately The Airborne Toxic Event, having been placed in my forebrain by Baumbach, looms large every time I see coverage of the tragedy in East Palestine.

The Northman

I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to The Northman. Eggers has only delivered bangers so far, and The Northman was no exception. I remember seeing some criticisms of it that ran along the lines of “It’s just Hamlet :eyeroll:” and you know what? Fuck off with that! It was an excellent adaption of it, and there are much, much worse works to adapt than Hamlet.

Wednesday

I should have hated Wednesday. I expected to hate Wednesday. I didn’t hate Wednesday; I really enjoyed it.

(None)

I’ve been jammed up with this Into the Dark terrain literally all month. Haven’t gone a month without finishing at least something since December 2018. This is the fifth time this has happened since I’ve started tracking this stuff in Jan 2010.

Meant to do this a month ago! Only painted a single model in January, a test Black Templar.

Everything on the cardboard and to the left: done and ready for varnish. To the right: today/tomorrow to wrap up.

Finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel here. More than a third, less than halfway through washing stuff. Need to get more mineral spirits before I press on.

Deeply sick of this project. Ready for something, anything else.

No progress in the last few days (thanks work), but I’m getting there!

Almost there: once the lower right corner is done, gloss varnish and oils next!

Touchups and labeling, then on to the second, smaller batch before varnishing, oils, and lights.

Heckin’ finally.

This Kill Team / Boarding Actions table is, as noted, taking forever… but now that I’m done with the metallics, everything else has started to roll out pretty quickly. Total process is:

• Prime white
• Airbrush GW Sons of Horus Green basecoat – this took way more than I expected! SoH Green has terrible coverage!
• Airbrush Magos Purple along bottom / from below
• Airbrush Sybarite Green along top / from above
• Drybrush VMC Neutral Grey – if I could go back in time I’d probably use GW Gauss Blaster Green
• GW Wraithbone on door panels – this took forever
• GW Leadbelcher on metal parts – two coats sometimes needed
• GW Runelord Brass on brass parts – two coats probably needed
• GW Wraithbone on skulls – two coats definitely needed here
• GW Leadbelcher cleanup on skull eyepieces
• GW Wraithbone + GW Sons of Horus Green arrows over the doorways
• GW Corvus Black on batteries
• GW Kabalite Green highlights on black batteries
• Black on bottom of terrain
• VMC Neutral Grey on wires
• Gloss varnish
• Ivory Black + Burnt Umber oil washes everywhere
• Burnt Sienna + Orange oil washes in some places
• Dullcote
• Titanium White on unbroken lights
• VMC Neutral Grey on broken lights
• Contrast (TBD) on lights
• Aibrush Contrast above over lights

This is taking FOREVER. The end result had better be worth the LOE. I’m through getting the steel down (likely the longest step) on everything; far table has copper, near table is getting it. Left to do: skulls, wires, battery covers, base for lights. Then oils, then lights.

Also, all the scatter and small 1-wall pieces are unprimed as of yet.