Planning a trip to Las Vegas for the end of January. The Sphere wasn't finished last time we were there, so we are considering going.

Just checked on tickets... $169 each for one ticket to a 50 minute Darren Aronofsky movie? Is there any way it is worth it? Yeah, I get it...the seats move. But $169?

Has anyone been? Glad you did it?

Because of general pre-holiday laziness, I have been making all of my meals for the week on Sunday. This week I just decided to make a slow-cooker meal and just have it every night:

- Chicken, cauliflower, onion, chicken broth, curry and ginger in the slow cooker for five hours.

- After five hours, shred the chicken, add peas and coconut milk

- Serve over rice

It's fine, but it is missing some sort of sweetness. I thought the coconut milk would add some, but no.

I'm thinking maybe pineapple or yellow raisins.

Any other ideas?

Went to see "Asteroid City" Saturday night. I feel comfortable saying it is probably the most annoying movie I have seen in this decade. An overwrought, eye-searing mess. However, everyone around us in the theater seemed to just love it, and the reviews are respectable (76% on Rotten Tomatoes.) I ALMOST feel like I should go see it again just to see if I was just grumpy or missed something. To be fair, Scarlett Johansson and the girl playing her daughter are incredibly effective, but that's all the praise I have.

Did I miss something, or am I right in loathing it?

Last weekend, my friends and I were discussing weird game shows. I described one, and no one else remembered it. In fact, the final assessment was I was making it up or I have become insane. Someone come to my defense.

What I remember...

1. It was a BBC production airing on BBC America

2. Four people were vying for 50,000 pounds or whatever

3. A group of random people were to decide which person would get the money.

4. Round one, the "judges" decided who would be excused based just on looks

5. The second round, a video of each remaining contestant was shown and another was voted off

6. The third round, the judges were allowed to ask questions of the remaining contestants and then decide between the two

7. The host was a brown haired woman named Fern. I think.

The joke of the show was occasionally, they would kick off a young person who was there to help pay for chemotherapy for her mother because she looked too sexy, and then the winner would admit they were there for a late-in-life trip to Ibiza to get laid.

I have tried searching to no avail. Anyone else remember, or am I actually crazy?

Bill and Susan Hayes in matching neckerchiefs!

Some people from The Doctors!

Teenage looking Tracey Bregman!

Waylon Flowers and Madam subbing for Paul Lynde.

And of course, everyone's favorite fashionista, Brenda Dickson!

Ostrich feathers anyone?

Over 6,000 songs on my old man mp3 player. $300 in birthday Amazon gift cards in hand.

Decided to blow it on some new music.

What are you listening to now?

I'm in the mood to dance. Last new music I bought was the Madonna dance compilation, Dua Lipa, Tove Lo and a Dusty Springfield compilation.

So yeah, I lean towards "complete homosexual" on the music tastes chart.

What's new?

It has been decided the next vacation the friends I travel with go on will be a cruise. (the vote was 3 to 2) Since the last major trip we went on was pretty much my idea (Japan) and very expensive, I am willing to give it a try. It's a Royal Caribbean trip leaving from Baltimore and heading to Charleston and then the Bahamas. I've never done anything like this before.

I'm going to have a balcony room to myself, which is cool. I also have a drink package, and I love a casino. So drunk and gambling every day is a possibility.

Anyone have any advice/opinion on these trips? Food? People ? (I see there is an LGBTQ+ get-together early on.) Activities? (there is a towel folding class I am almost tempted to go to for shits and giggles)

I can still get a full refund.

A friend of mine sent me a link to hundreds of scanned issues of Billboard Magazine. Just looking at the ads has been hours of fun. Reminds me of the HOURS my friends and I would spend shopping for music at Sam Goody, Coconuts, and FYW and trying to find the absolute BEST quality blank cassette tapes so we could record each other's purchases..

Anyways, there are also scans of Smash Hits magazine, which are also a lot of fun to click though.

All of this made me think about the recently defunct Q Magazine and the less recently defunct Face. When we were done shopping for music, we would head to Borders to buy giant stacks of magazines, especially Q since it would come with a CD of songs that might never be released in the US. God, the pretentiousness of teens.

So, are Q and The Face scanned and archived anywhere? Mojo? NME?

Thanks for the help...

$40 a Day was the show that brought me to Datalounge. Well, first it took me to the late, great "Television Without Pity" and then here.

I miss bitching about Rachael tipping poorly all around the globe. I miss her constant suggestions to buy a local paper to scour for coupons and blue plate special announcements.

She spent the day in my hometown once, and there was no way she only spent $40 on all she ate (this was the subject of my first post here nearly 20 years ago)

I would seriously pay to watch the show now even though I figure most of the places featured have closed. For all of the annoyances, it was an interesting tour of a city and the format was genius. The threads on here used to get quite long, of course, most of them devolved into debating Ray's sexual life. (Didn't her husband bite someone or something?)

Anyway....is it streaming anywhere I am missing? There are a few clips on YouTube, but no full episodes. I had high hopes for Discovery+ but no deal.

Any less legal options?

Last month, I decided I wanted to collect vintage porn magazines.

The origin of the idea is the memory of being a Boy Scout when I was 16 and volunteering at a paper recycling plant to get an environmentalist badge. Some guy dropped off a giant box of magazines. Torso, Jock, Blueboy, Hot Male Review and Skinflicks. I imagine it was some sort of thrill for him to drop this stuff off with a kid in a Boy Scout uniform. Instead of taking them into the plant for sorting, I snuck them into my car and into my house. There were dozens of them. I enjoyed them very much until my mother looked in my closet a year or so later. Bad day all around.

Anyways, I've been thinking about looking for all of them again. I've bid on a few things on eBay, but things get very expensive very quickly. A few issues of Obsession went for over $100 not too long ago.

Anyone know any reputable places that sell good 80s beat off rags? By the time it was legal for me to buy them, they all seemed to get bought by the same company and became super generic. The 80s were a glossy heyday.

Hi all-

I first learned about this even on here years ago, and now I have attended at least a dozen times.

Haven't been in a while because of the pandemic and I'm still sort of worried about it.

Anyone else considering going? I would love to have a picture of myself with Blair and Natalie from "Facts of Life."

My favorite Chiller interaction? Listening to Billy Zane berate a Chiller employee because he and his sister Lisa were placed in a tiny conference room, and none of their "fans" could find them and they weren't earning money. It was really a nasty interaction. He had the woman in tears.

Also, I remember Jan Michael Vincent's handler going out into the packed lobby and asking everyone who would stop if they would like to meet him. Really trying to drum up business. It wasn't working. We passed by his table, and he was absolutely not coherent. Very sad. He died a few weeks later.

Finally, I wound up sitting next to Cheryl Ladd's table for a long time while waiting for a friend to get Tori Spelling's autograph. She was kind and warm to evry last person who came to her table. Very impressive.

It seems like a year or so ago, I made a joke on that thread....something about Jane Wiedlin already being a movie star...and it just keeps growing and growing. It has been #1 on my follow list ever since. Hundreds of replies.

What is going on in there? Can someone summarize?

Hold me, Datalounge, I'm scared!!!!

I have Googled every combination of words I can think of and still haven't found an answer, so here I am.

My oldest childhood friend and I were talking last night about books we read surreptitiously when we were kids. Once we knocked out the usual ones...V.C. Andrews, Judy Blume's "Wifey," the usual suspects... we both fell on a series of books set in the deep south where all of the women in town were murderous lizard people or sea creatures or swamp mutants or something in disguise. We bot remember they were extremely violent and sexual, but we have no idea what the titles were or how we got our hands on them.

The other author we wound up stealing from our mother's bookshelf the most? Judith Rossner. "Attachments" was, at the time, the most SHOCKING book I had ever read.

Last week, I I had to do some research on a movie I had seen when I was a kid that TERRIFIED me. I wound up ordering it on DVD through inter-library loan. It was such an easy process, I decided to make a list of movies that scared the shit out of me as a kid and watch them again to see if they still worked on me.

So far, the list includes...

1. Pretty Maids all in A Row (The movie that started it all)

2. Dressed to Kill

3. The Sentinel

4. The Eyes of Laura Mars

5. The Fan

6. Diva

7. Performance

So far I have watched "Pretty Maids" and "Dressed to Kill."

"Pretty Maids" is pretty terrible and, as the kids would say "problematic." Also not sure why it bothered me so much as a kid. The end leaves things open for a sequel that never came.

Dressed to kill is also somewhat problematic, but boy oh boy, does it still hold up. Just a great, scary movie.

What else would you add to the list? (Also, support your local libraries. I work on a college campus, and the Interlibrary Loan staff was THRILLED to have a project right now)

Flat, inert and lifeless.

They took a fascinating subject and pounded all the juice right out of it.

And I'm a Ryan Murphy apologist.

Thank you, Paul Rudnick, for the word picture.

I'll remember it forever.

My quarantine hobby has turned into watching old TV movies on YouTube. I started out with horror-related ones (Thanks to the Sam Pancake Presents the Monday Afternoon Movie podcast....start listening now!!!) and now I get all sorts of suggestions. So far, my favorites have been "Scream Pretty Peggy" with Bette Davis and Donald from "That Girl," "Beverly Hills Madam" with Faye Dunaway and her nostrils and "Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn" featuring Miss Frances Faye.

I have questions...

1. So, is Alexander gay or not? We know he is a "sensitive artist" and all, but he seems to love Dawn. But he also seems to love the football player. It feels like he was written as gay, but there was trouble. Thoughts?

2. Who is Earl Holliman's character supposed to be? A lawyer? Social worker? Why was he invited to the football player's party? He just shows up everywhere. I was surprised by the late in the game gay reveal. Wasn't Holliman gay IRL as well?

3. Was the football player closeted? If so, why would he risk going to a gay bar (is it a gay bar?) to see Miss Frances Faye with Alexander? If he is comfortable going to a gay bar, why does he need a live in hooker? Couldn't he just meet someone there? Even pre-internet, someone would take pictures of a famous athlete at a gay bar and get them published.

4. Leigh McClosky, was hot, wasn't he? (not really a question)

5. Who the fuck is Miss Frances Faye and why do I have to call her Miss? Why did she get such fancy billing in this?

6. Finally....was this popular? It's not terrible like so many of its ilk are, but it sure isn't great.

Thanks for your time.

Recently, YouTube started recommending Gogglebox episodes for me to watch (The original UK version of the short lived Bravo show "The People's Couch" which I also enjoyed) Just people sitting around watching trashy reality shows and whatnot. The recommendation came because I am spending most of my quarantine time watching old English game shows. (as an aside...please watch Cluedo below...fascinating cast of DL favorites)

Anyways...is there a place, shady or not, to watch some of these shows (Blind Date Hotel, Five Guys a Week etc) online?

I have checked BritBox and AcornTV, and for the most part they seem to try to keep it classy. Not for me) A friend watches a lot of BBC shows on RedditTV, but I get nervous about downloading random files.

Any other shows you may recommend? Also finished up watching maybe 1000 hours of Come Dine with Me on YouTube. English, Australian and South African Versions.

Talking to a friend last night about shows we remembered appealing to our young, gay selves...

There was a documentary that ran on HBO CONSTANTLY when I was a kid (early-to-mid 80s) about female comedians. One of them was a Bette Midler-type who did some sort of cabaret showcase (for some reason I think her name was Zorah) She just fascinated me, but I have no idea what became of her. She seemed really intense.

I think the movie ends with her getting a part in a show about wrestlers (again, hazy memories) that closes very quickly. Like opening night.

Anyone know who she is? WHET her? I can't be the only one who remembers her.

If she wound up being super famous, I'll be embarassed.

Who do we hate already???

Sherry Pie seems annoying.

I can't stop watching this stupid show. I watched it Logo on my day off a few weeks ago. It amused me enough to set my DVR for it. I didn't know it was on 10 times a day. Now I'm addicted.

Some observations...

1. It's occasionally very funny

2. The acting is far less broad than most 80s sitcoms... even Crystal Bernard does well.

3. Whoever dressed the exceptional Marion Mercer HAD to have dressed Bea Arthur in Golden Girls. Same giant ruched, puffy -sleeved monstrosities. She pulled off about 75% of them though. Same producers, so it's very possible.

4. My major complaint: Why do these women dress up in super coordinated separates to go to work where they immediately change into uniforms? Is this wardrobe their car clothing?

5. Complaint Two: No fancy restaurant serves corn on the cob or pudding in diner parfait glasses.

Debra Winger is on the episode im watching now. She's the chef's daughter.

One House, three decades, three murders.

Lucy Liu is camping it up in the 80s section.

Ginnifer Goodwin is actually acting in 1964.

Reid Scott from VEEP shows his ass in present day.

So far I'm pretty charmed.

Anyone else?

(And, yes, I know Marc Cherry has been problematic)