I think he was Vietnamese, yeah. Or certainly Vietnamese-adjacent.
One amusing aspect of the open-borders Britain is that you now have all these ethnic foreigners who were born there and have the class accent of where they grew up.
I only even say that because in the gypsy episode JP makes mention of "Vietnamese weed pickers" getting lost. Probably makes me racist, but it still occasionally seems incongruous to me when I hear non-white people with English accents, despite half the world learning the Queen's at some point.
well, "English" is a loose term. As an American, trying to understand the Indian "English" idiom can be maddening. Though trying to understand a deep Scottish brogue is almost as difficult.
I have no idea what true “proper” english is, but I find that phrase to be totally aggravating, even though it might be considered “proper” in some places.
Black guys with British accents, speaking The King's English, always present a sharp "what could have been" contrast to the police body cam videos I can't seem to get enough of.
On the subject of the idiot box, how do the resident ACF Sinophiles see the 'Shogun' reboot? (caveat, have not read the novel and memories of the first miniseries are vague).
The scenes and costumes are beautiful, the Japanese leads excellent, although the 'Angin' is written purposely as buffoonish, to be frequently girlbossed by the oddly mannish and square jawed Mariko, who sits a horse and fights with a spear. All very current year and tiresome. Chamberlin was much more dignified.
Said buffoonery and pushback actually aligns to the first half of the literary source, though made more obvious for the TV audience. Remains to be seen if this shifts with the same timing as the novel. I'm enjoying it so far.
Think any tax-funded Canadian reporter is willing to ask this question at a Trudeau press conference?
"When you hear the Rolling Stones play Starfucker, does it make you think of your mother? Who did she say was better in bed, your father, or Pierre Trudeau?"
That's pretty funny, actually. My wife hates the imperial family and thinks they're a waste of money. And now they're a bunch of Koreans on top of that!
I read the book. Twice. I lived in Japan for a long time and know what everything looks like (or is supposed to look like) and I've seen plenty of jidai-geki and a couple of the year long Taiga Dramas so I don't really have a desire to watch the new Shogun, but everything I've heard about it is good. My coworker LOVES it. I like Sanada Hiroyuki a lot, too. Maybe I'll watch it when the whole thing is available at once and I have some spare time in the next year or two.
For a look at how accurate the Shogun series is, check out a YouTube channel called Metatron. His main interest seems to be armor and weapons but in general it's what used to be called academic level history. https://www.youtube.com/@metatronyt
I found the Chamberlin series unwatchable. I am loving the current one. One change I don't love is there isn't as much emphasis on how much Toranaga loathes the concept of Crimson Sky and wasted lives. The juxtaposition of a person so willing to use people up, as in to their death, with the loathing of death for not purpose is a key concept in the novel.
Waiting for the ability to watch all episodes of Shogun at my leisure like someone who lives in 2024 is the reason I'm finishing "3 body" now with "gentlemen" on deck. Agree wholeheartedly with Jack's agrivation at Benioff and Weiss' pandering to the shalow and insufferable modern "girlboss" culture.
Hand in hand with girlbossing in modren (sic) TV will be very oddly placed, needless, and explicit sex scenes and a brothel will somehow be worked into the plot.
That is definitely an unwelcome minus when it happens. I thought he was commenting on the irony of women still being objectified in media that revolves around one or more "boss bitches."
Yes this: echoes of the popularity of the bondage novels, and the endless boundary pushing for the sake of. See also: Game of Clowns.
In Shogun alone: a scene where the village lord's nephew has sex with a prostitute in front of him. Why? No reason.
Another where one character is tapping perhaps the same prostitute while choking himself out. After he's finished, she suggests getting some other 'toys', which I figured meant they were jumping the shark to actually pegging on screen. Luckily, they went in a different direction.
The 1980 Mariko is graceful, feminine, and often smiles. The new one is dour and never smiles. Her fight scenes so abruptly break the otherwise such hard fought for immersion as to be almost tragic. One of the other women characters pulls a pistol on a Samurai. Another manipulates the Regents to her own ends as revenge for being 'Handmaidened'.
I enjoyed the movie and the series. The movie took a few watches to appreciate the nuances. The series had a little too much serial feel to it at times, as in "who's the eccentric criminal type we meet in this episode." Or it became a bit repetitive. By the end, I guess all of those gangsters of the week were pulled together in a satisfying way, so I can't really complain.
I'd say this is the best show I've seen in awhile, and better than other shows I've watched recently, including "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", "The Sandman", "Death and Other Details", "True Detective Season 4", and so on.
I am allergic to aristocracy. I vastly prefer the French or Bolshevik way of handling them vice the fawning American press. That being said anyone who thinks Bill Gates or Prince Andrew is in their respective positions because they are stupider or less ruthless than the average street level gangster probably believes that Epstein hung himself.
An aristocracy trained from birth to lead and bound by noblesse oblige is theoretically a pretty good deal, but it’s usually generations of coasting mediocrity descending from someone who lent the king money or knifed the old duke and backed the right usurper in the 15th century. That said, our meritocracy is starting to turn into that, just with more legalistic rent seeking and fewer actual swords.
I never thought about it but I guess they do / did use gold leaf for naming.
They are like old / vintage collector cars to the 10th power. He has several fully restored boats that have never been in the water. He’ll be 70 this week, and I’m sure he’ll rectify that right around … never.
-He lives on a busy road (it’s a highway, really) on which cars - and 18 wheelers - travel at 75 MPH. The driveway is long, and it exits at a steep and oblique angle just after a blind brow. He is unwilling to enter or exit with a boat trailer without calling a local cop to give him cover. Once, about 20 years ago, a truck from the nearby wood yard nearly turned his ultra-rare Gar Wood into popsicle sticks.
-He sold his lake house for top dollar during COVID…
-…which means he’d have to use the boat ramp at the local marina.
-Given how infrequently the boats are used, they are guaranteed to experience a failure to proceed, so he’d need someone to go with him to tow him back to the ramp, which presents some difficulties in getting an old boat back on the trailer.
-Once back home, the boat has to receive hours of TLC with a chamois before it returns to storage.
As a result, it’s much easier to keep them in storage.
Guess I've been busy living an authentic, fullfilled life. Never heard of 3 Body Problem. As I hated the stupid Benneton ads back in the 80s, I'll continue to never bother hearing of it.
Always been a big fan of Guy Ritchie's work. (Might have to do my yearly re-watch of "The Star" soon.) I thought the Gentlemen was a fine film, though not one of his best, though I could not put my finger on why. I think Jack pointed out the reason - the wrong cast.
Since I'm too cheap to spend the $12/month (while being fully aware that I spend thousands on toys and fun recreational pursuits), will have to fanangle someone's Netflix account and watch this show.
I agree with you on the too cheap part. At one point I was paying monthly subscriptions to at least a dozen different streaming channels. My wife only watches Investigation
Sorry, hit the wrong button. My wife only watches Investigation Discovery and I never get the time to watch any movies, so I simple stopped paying. I'd rather stare at the wall as I sip whiskey than watch 99% of what's on.
Even when I had subscriptions I invariably ended up watching the same old stuff I'd seen 10x before versus the new crap.
I spent this evening watching The Rockford Files for free on Pluto TV. I'm confident that this show Jack's talking about would not have been half as entertaining.
I've been spending my evenings of the last several weeks either prepping my car for racing season and riding my bicycle, so I was unaware of either 3BP or The Gentlemen. I have, however been keeping up with season 2 of Tokyo Vice, which also uses high-end watch as a plot device, in this case a Vacheron Constantin claimed to be worth a quarter million. From what I've read, the real-life Jake Adelstein seems like a fraud, but the show has a good sense of grit, and the hero car is a Fairlady Z.
Had an ancient Baruth been the one to land on the shores of Japan, half of the population would have weird squeaky voices by now. I can imagine it: "My... er.. intimate custom... is three of you at once, on a rotating basis."
The Sopranos riffed on that fact way back in the '00s only to indulge in some unnecessary gayness with Fat Vito's arc. I'll give them credit for being self-aware on that one since it's a beloved IP.
You can’t renew a series without it. The Hollywood gay mafia will end your show if you don’t. The only I show I can think of that was renewed without a gay love story was Ray Donovan. But they all got molested by a priest. So while not a love story I guess they got their gay plot twist.
It’s hysterical to me when they can’t introduce a new character and are like just make that one gay. Remember Animal Kingdom? They had been robbing banks and parting for episodes. But a few seasons later, they all surfing and one of the brothers comes home gay. Haha.
It’s like they sell the first set of scripts but can’t reload without going gay. So the stand alone mini series can stay straight. But… I bet we’ll get a gay Reacher soon.
What I don’t know is if they tell the writers to include it or if they add it to a rewrite when the next season isn’t picked up right away. Or are they just expected to go by the Abbey on Sundays and kiss the ring… haha. I never kissed the ring, but I spent a lot of Sundays with dude’s thongs and dongs in my face as I helped my girlfriend sell tv shows.
Uh oh. Tangent time: It was actually a lot of fun and I kind of miss day drinking in West Hollywood. But I also couldn’t sit there and not pitch in! So I pushed car shows I signed bad obsession/ project binky and put together sizzle reel and pitch for them to come to the US and build weird stuff. By the time the networks were done with their comments it looked like every other horrible build show. Same with the other cool concepts I pitched.
I did get kind of close on One Man, One Car, Every race. Where one car gets modded each week for the next style of racing. Autocross to drag racing to circle track and so on. Ending at the mint400 with a desert race. The car would be a butchered mess from all the different shops that worked on it from week to week but I thought it would be fun.
Maybe I shouldn’t have broken up with her. Maybe I could have made car shows? I doubt it, but it was a super fun chapter. And I got to shoot a ton of video myself which was awesome. But she was never in town and it got old. I felt like that dude that lived in Oj’s house. Kato or whatever. Her apartment was insane and I’d take her 997 up to Angeles crest every night. I was looking for Takumi. And I found him one night! Turbo Miata on Hoosiers with rally lights! Goes up after 1am… anyway, I was over it and spent like $5k just on gas (2 tanks a night for weeks) and Carrera just hired me to model for them. Like I was leaving for an 18hour photo shoot during fashion week where I would be asked to “do the nude!” Wearing sunglasses of course. I had no idea that meant just a nipple. I was like sure, you’re paying over a thousand an hour, you want nude?? Ohhh a majority of the shoot was a cocktail party. Like 100+ people watching as I tried to undo my pants. The scream from the woman who had just been yelling do the nude was amazing. It was so awesome. So ridiculous.
They finally got wise and canceled the whole thing. But only after they paid me even more for additional photos. Life is so weird. I think they went with a Somalian refugee who became a model instead. Like so different from me and my story. And it’s probably a good thing. I’m already pretty obnoxious, could you imagine if they actually put me on billboards? Makes me laugh so hard every time I think about it. Like was that even real?
Sooooo…… you can sell a show without a gay line, but no way you get to renew it without one. Not a chance.
It never stopped throwing me for a loop when Jimmy the (Vietnamese?) weed cultivator busted out a very low class British accent
I think he was Vietnamese, yeah. Or certainly Vietnamese-adjacent.
One amusing aspect of the open-borders Britain is that you now have all these ethnic foreigners who were born there and have the class accent of where they grew up.
I only even say that because in the gypsy episode JP makes mention of "Vietnamese weed pickers" getting lost. Probably makes me racist, but it still occasionally seems incongruous to me when I hear non-white people with English accents, despite half the world learning the Queen's at some point.
It implies he's one of a few, right?
There are more Indians, in India, who speak English than there are Americans who speak English.
well, "English" is a loose term. As an American, trying to understand the Indian "English" idiom can be maddening. Though trying to understand a deep Scottish brogue is almost as difficult.
Are you implying "do the needful" is not proper English?!
It absolutely is!!!
I have no idea what true “proper” english is, but I find that phrase to be totally aggravating, even though it might be considered “proper” in some places.
I wish I could give > 1 “like” for this! How about 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍?
Black guys with British accents, speaking The King's English, always present a sharp "what could have been" contrast to the police body cam videos I can't seem to get enough of.
theres plenty of that kind of footage in Britain to entertain you
that kind of juxtaposition rankles me in ways few things can
no i dont care if im racist
I don't think it makes you racist.. unless you guys are always throwing that around as a joke.
had a guy from jamaica in the dorm at tulsa u. in '54. looked exactly like a milk chocolate clark gable and had an r.a.f. officer's accent. charming.
Good review, I really liked the story and the clothing and all the luxe stuff. Big Guy Richie fan!
Agreed, but I think I liked the brunette (a lot) more than Jack.
Didn’t quite beat Thandie Newton in RocknRolla though (for me).
I really dug her vibe, but she's not classically pretty.
I think they glossed her up too much, but otherwise she is pretty. Here is where lipstick can be a bad thing
I also liked the mom
Joely Richardson was gorgeous in her twenties and thirties.
She will always suffer from being in the same show as Tessa Thompson.
she is easier to look at than jack yes
Jack just prefers blonds.
Will watch.
On the subject of the idiot box, how do the resident ACF Sinophiles see the 'Shogun' reboot? (caveat, have not read the novel and memories of the first miniseries are vague).
The scenes and costumes are beautiful, the Japanese leads excellent, although the 'Angin' is written purposely as buffoonish, to be frequently girlbossed by the oddly mannish and square jawed Mariko, who sits a horse and fights with a spear. All very current year and tiresome. Chamberlin was much more dignified.
Said buffoonery and pushback actually aligns to the first half of the literary source, though made more obvious for the TV audience. Remains to be seen if this shifts with the same timing as the novel. I'm enjoying it so far.
Loved the original.
Won't watch the new one on principle, as I'm permanently put off of reboots.
Oh, and "Sino" means Chinese. Just FYI.
Japan is just an inferior version of China!
Ask any Chinese person, they'll tell you, in detail.
That's not the way I heard it from Hashimoto-san.
My wife is going to kick your crippled butt.
Sounds like I should go into hiding!
Nah. *My* wife has your back!
Please, attractive Asian women, stop fighting over...
*blushes*
...little ol' me.
I don't appreciate this implication that other countries are racist, everyone knows the USA holds a monopoly on racism in the world.
im trying very hard to bring that accolade here
And slavery! Slavery only ever existed in America!
Just don't tell the Japanese that their imperial family's roots are in Korea.
first its the royal family being german
now its the japanese royal family being korean
next youre going to tell me the prime minister of canada is actually half cuban
well to be more accurate, one half Spanish - African mix.
the important point is that he not canadian but some kind of bastard child
My absolute favorite, without a shadow of a doubt true, "conspiracy theory"
Think any tax-funded Canadian reporter is willing to ask this question at a Trudeau press conference?
"When you hear the Rolling Stones play Starfucker, does it make you think of your mother? Who did she say was better in bed, your father, or Pierre Trudeau?"
seeing as the media is basically state owned and a mouthpiece for the liberal government the is little chance of anything like that happening
sadly
That's pretty funny, actually. My wife hates the imperial family and thinks they're a waste of money. And now they're a bunch of Koreans on top of that!
I read the book. Twice. I lived in Japan for a long time and know what everything looks like (or is supposed to look like) and I've seen plenty of jidai-geki and a couple of the year long Taiga Dramas so I don't really have a desire to watch the new Shogun, but everything I've heard about it is good. My coworker LOVES it. I like Sanada Hiroyuki a lot, too. Maybe I'll watch it when the whole thing is available at once and I have some spare time in the next year or two.
In the same camp.
Original book series was good though. Need to find audiobook for that series.
Actually on a site called humble bundle right now.
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/shogun-asian-saga-james-clavell-books
Probably cheaper, I mean. That may not have been obvious...
Thanks!
For a look at how accurate the Shogun series is, check out a YouTube channel called Metatron. His main interest seems to be armor and weapons but in general it's what used to be called academic level history. https://www.youtube.com/@metatronyt
I don't get to watch as many of his videos these days as I'd like, but I really enjoy his channel.
I found the Chamberlin series unwatchable. I am loving the current one. One change I don't love is there isn't as much emphasis on how much Toranaga loathes the concept of Crimson Sky and wasted lives. The juxtaposition of a person so willing to use people up, as in to their death, with the loathing of death for not purpose is a key concept in the novel.
Production quality has improved in 44 years.
Waiting for the ability to watch all episodes of Shogun at my leisure like someone who lives in 2024 is the reason I'm finishing "3 body" now with "gentlemen" on deck. Agree wholeheartedly with Jack's agrivation at Benioff and Weiss' pandering to the shalow and insufferable modern "girlboss" culture.
Hand in hand with girlbossing in modren (sic) TV will be very oddly placed, needless, and explicit sex scenes and a brothel will somehow be worked into the plot.
I thought we were bringing up negatives
LMAO
The negative is that now instead of gratuitous boobs in those scenes, its gratuitous penis.
That is definitely an unwelcome minus when it happens. I thought he was commenting on the irony of women still being objectified in media that revolves around one or more "boss bitches."
Yes this: echoes of the popularity of the bondage novels, and the endless boundary pushing for the sake of. See also: Game of Clowns.
In Shogun alone: a scene where the village lord's nephew has sex with a prostitute in front of him. Why? No reason.
Another where one character is tapping perhaps the same prostitute while choking himself out. After he's finished, she suggests getting some other 'toys', which I figured meant they were jumping the shark to actually pegging on screen. Luckily, they went in a different direction.
The 1980 Mariko is graceful, feminine, and often smiles. The new one is dour and never smiles. Her fight scenes so abruptly break the otherwise such hard fought for immersion as to be almost tragic. One of the other women characters pulls a pistol on a Samurai. Another manipulates the Regents to her own ends as revenge for being 'Handmaidened'.
This is why we can't have nice things.
I enjoyed the movie and the series. The movie took a few watches to appreciate the nuances. The series had a little too much serial feel to it at times, as in "who's the eccentric criminal type we meet in this episode." Or it became a bit repetitive. By the end, I guess all of those gangsters of the week were pulled together in a satisfying way, so I can't really complain.
I'd say this is the best show I've seen in awhile, and better than other shows I've watched recently, including "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", "The Sandman", "Death and Other Details", "True Detective Season 4", and so on.
I am allergic to aristocracy. I vastly prefer the French or Bolshevik way of handling them vice the fawning American press. That being said anyone who thinks Bill Gates or Prince Andrew is in their respective positions because they are stupider or less ruthless than the average street level gangster probably believes that Epstein hung himself.
An aristocracy trained from birth to lead and bound by noblesse oblige is theoretically a pretty good deal, but it’s usually generations of coasting mediocrity descending from someone who lent the king money or knifed the old duke and backed the right usurper in the 15th century. That said, our meritocracy is starting to turn into that, just with more legalistic rent seeking and fewer actual swords.
Don't forget all the inbreeding.
Noblesse Oblige would be a great name for a (wooden) boat.
(For the avoidance of doubt, that’s tongue-in-cheek!)
You could gold leaf it on the back of one of your dads!
By way of olive leaf, the Tahoe wooden boat scene is truly gorgeous to behold.
I never thought about it but I guess they do / did use gold leaf for naming.
They are like old / vintage collector cars to the 10th power. He has several fully restored boats that have never been in the water. He’ll be 70 this week, and I’m sure he’ll rectify that right around … never.
Awe man. That’s like a surfboard that’s never been waxed, it’s almost sinful. I’d have to give them a rip at least once.
Well, there are several problems:
-He lives on a busy road (it’s a highway, really) on which cars - and 18 wheelers - travel at 75 MPH. The driveway is long, and it exits at a steep and oblique angle just after a blind brow. He is unwilling to enter or exit with a boat trailer without calling a local cop to give him cover. Once, about 20 years ago, a truck from the nearby wood yard nearly turned his ultra-rare Gar Wood into popsicle sticks.
-He sold his lake house for top dollar during COVID…
-…which means he’d have to use the boat ramp at the local marina.
-Given how infrequently the boats are used, they are guaranteed to experience a failure to proceed, so he’d need someone to go with him to tow him back to the ramp, which presents some difficulties in getting an old boat back on the trailer.
-Once back home, the boat has to receive hours of TLC with a chamois before it returns to storage.
As a result, it’s much easier to keep them in storage.
Guess I've been busy living an authentic, fullfilled life. Never heard of 3 Body Problem. As I hated the stupid Benneton ads back in the 80s, I'll continue to never bother hearing of it.
Always been a big fan of Guy Ritchie's work. (Might have to do my yearly re-watch of "The Star" soon.) I thought the Gentlemen was a fine film, though not one of his best, though I could not put my finger on why. I think Jack pointed out the reason - the wrong cast.
Since I'm too cheap to spend the $12/month (while being fully aware that I spend thousands on toys and fun recreational pursuits), will have to fanangle someone's Netflix account and watch this show.
I am with you. I only had a “3 body problem” when I was dating in college and had three rather differing women on the rotation.
Like you I will need to find a way to watch this, but may try reading the book first.
I do like how Guy Ritchie films so this may be worth the watch.
But I did like the Benneton race livery, but agree the ads were trash.
Let's not confuse the Schumacher world championship F1 car with all the stupidity of their marketing :)
Yes! Diametrically opposed. One brilliantly designed and driven. The other also ran.
I agree with you on the too cheap part. At one point I was paying monthly subscriptions to at least a dozen different streaming channels. My wife only watches Investigation
Sorry, hit the wrong button. My wife only watches Investigation Discovery and I never get the time to watch any movies, so I simple stopped paying. I'd rather stare at the wall as I sip whiskey than watch 99% of what's on.
"I'd rather stare at the wall as I sip whiskey than watch 99% of what's on."
Wise choice.
I find that I watch less and less of the content du jour targeted toward me.
Leaves more time for listening to podcasts or audiobooks while also doing something else!
You're better off watching Friends than you are listening to these inane podcasts.
"Bro, I hate when traffic is slow."
"Me too bro. Let's stop to acknowledge our sponsors."
I do not exclusively listen to the shows that arouse your ire!
Depends on the whisky. (Dropping the "e" is deliberate.)
Dropping the "e"? Heathen.
Even when I had subscriptions I invariably ended up watching the same old stuff I'd seen 10x before versus the new crap.
I spent this evening watching The Rockford Files for free on Pluto TV. I'm confident that this show Jack's talking about would not have been half as entertaining.
Perhaps I should introduce my children to Stuart 'Angel' Margolin.
Being outside, staring at a fire with a nice rye whiskey.
Magic.
I've been spending my evenings of the last several weeks either prepping my car for racing season and riding my bicycle, so I was unaware of either 3BP or The Gentlemen. I have, however been keeping up with season 2 of Tokyo Vice, which also uses high-end watch as a plot device, in this case a Vacheron Constantin claimed to be worth a quarter million. From what I've read, the real-life Jake Adelstein seems like a fraud, but the show has a good sense of grit, and the hero car is a Fairlady Z.
Wait, season two is out? I didn't realize that. I'll have to watch it.
Sounds like an interesting show, is it on Netflix? Between this and The Gentlemen I may just have to pay for a month or 2
HBO
Oh damn, I think my lady has that!
HBO is worth it to just watch their back catalogue
Excellent season. No need for the gay shit but oh well
Oh boy. There ALWAYS has to be some eventually.
It's very funny that you mention that. After accidentally starting on part 2 of the old Shogun, I stumbled on this: https://archive.org/details/shogun.-part.-2.1980.-restored.-bluray.-1080p.-dts-hd.x-264-grym
Go to 8:36
Ninja edit: Apparently Chamberlain was in the closet.
Had an ancient Baruth been the one to land on the shores of Japan, half of the population would have weird squeaky voices by now. I can imagine it: "My... er.. intimate custom... is three of you at once, on a rotating basis."
The Sopranos riffed on that fact way back in the '00s only to indulge in some unnecessary gayness with Fat Vito's arc. I'll give them credit for being self-aware on that one since it's a beloved IP.
You can’t renew a series without it. The Hollywood gay mafia will end your show if you don’t. The only I show I can think of that was renewed without a gay love story was Ray Donovan. But they all got molested by a priest. So while not a love story I guess they got their gay plot twist.
It’s hysterical to me when they can’t introduce a new character and are like just make that one gay. Remember Animal Kingdom? They had been robbing banks and parting for episodes. But a few seasons later, they all surfing and one of the brothers comes home gay. Haha.
It’s like they sell the first set of scripts but can’t reload without going gay. So the stand alone mini series can stay straight. But… I bet we’ll get a gay Reacher soon.
What I don’t know is if they tell the writers to include it or if they add it to a rewrite when the next season isn’t picked up right away. Or are they just expected to go by the Abbey on Sundays and kiss the ring… haha. I never kissed the ring, but I spent a lot of Sundays with dude’s thongs and dongs in my face as I helped my girlfriend sell tv shows.
Uh oh. Tangent time: It was actually a lot of fun and I kind of miss day drinking in West Hollywood. But I also couldn’t sit there and not pitch in! So I pushed car shows I signed bad obsession/ project binky and put together sizzle reel and pitch for them to come to the US and build weird stuff. By the time the networks were done with their comments it looked like every other horrible build show. Same with the other cool concepts I pitched.
I did get kind of close on One Man, One Car, Every race. Where one car gets modded each week for the next style of racing. Autocross to drag racing to circle track and so on. Ending at the mint400 with a desert race. The car would be a butchered mess from all the different shops that worked on it from week to week but I thought it would be fun.
Maybe I shouldn’t have broken up with her. Maybe I could have made car shows? I doubt it, but it was a super fun chapter. And I got to shoot a ton of video myself which was awesome. But she was never in town and it got old. I felt like that dude that lived in Oj’s house. Kato or whatever. Her apartment was insane and I’d take her 997 up to Angeles crest every night. I was looking for Takumi. And I found him one night! Turbo Miata on Hoosiers with rally lights! Goes up after 1am… anyway, I was over it and spent like $5k just on gas (2 tanks a night for weeks) and Carrera just hired me to model for them. Like I was leaving for an 18hour photo shoot during fashion week where I would be asked to “do the nude!” Wearing sunglasses of course. I had no idea that meant just a nipple. I was like sure, you’re paying over a thousand an hour, you want nude?? Ohhh a majority of the shoot was a cocktail party. Like 100+ people watching as I tried to undo my pants. The scream from the woman who had just been yelling do the nude was amazing. It was so awesome. So ridiculous.
They finally got wise and canceled the whole thing. But only after they paid me even more for additional photos. Life is so weird. I think they went with a Somalian refugee who became a model instead. Like so different from me and my story. And it’s probably a good thing. I’m already pretty obnoxious, could you imagine if they actually put me on billboards? Makes me laugh so hard every time I think about it. Like was that even real?
Sooooo…… you can sell a show without a gay line, but no way you get to renew it without one. Not a chance.
I seem to remember that some of their "guidelines" were leaked at one point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLAAD
Imagine if the NRA vetoed scripts that were negative about privately-owned firearms.