Jenn Dolari @dolari@driveinsaturday.org

This would likely end any travel to Texas that wasn't a dire emergency. And even then, if I could work it remotely, I would.

https://www.salon.com/2025/03/05/identity-fraud-proposed-texas-state-law-would-make-identifying-as-transgender-a-felony/

I wish Woods still made these power decks. I have three and they're just the perfect configuration for large plugs and regular plugs. They stopped the gaming branding after a while then the form factor completely disappeared from their site.

I wasn't able to go out Thursday to celebrate my Twenty Fifth Tranniversary, so I did it tonight.

Happy 25th Jenn. Here's to 25 more in whatever country I end up by 2050.

#jenns25th

@socketwench

@socketwench - please excuse the typos. This was written on my phone over a of ice cream and apple pie.

@socketwench - Superman is one of the movies that made me a movie big buff. Mind you, I was six.

It's also one of the movies I have the most preproduction info on.

Superman's production history is super weird, no pun intended. The producers weren't so much big on making the best movie, as they were getting the most impressive people they could get and hope they'd make a monster movie to their liking.

They got Mario Puzo to write it, fresh off the Godfather. Paid Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman a load of cash to star in it and didn't care who got what role.

Mario Puzos is a bit off a mess. The opening on Krypton and the Smallville stuff is mostly the same. But once it's in New York it's completely different.

It takes place at a television station. Clark is a TV anchor, Lois a weather girl, and they'd another character who does sports. I found out later this was actually how the comics had Superman at the time.

The rest of the movie is less a Superman movie as it's a comic book movie featuring Superman. The script was a collection of mini stories featuring Lois, Clark and the sports guy across the globe, occasionally punctuated by Lex Luthor showing up now and again. The last mini story involves four kryptonian prisoners taking over earth.

The script was fairly unusable, so the entire New York segment was gutted and focused more on Lex and his real estate scheme. And here's where the producers mis-stepped. They decided the tone of the movie would be 1960s Batman. Luthor munched on Kleenex. Telly Savalas cameos as himself. Superman was very much a daddy's boy. It was... not good.

When it came time to film the movie the producers then made their best decision, hiring Richard Donner right off The Omen.

He took a look at where they were going, hired his friend Tom Manckewitz (Hope i got that name right), and rewrote the script to remove the ultra campiness of it. What we got was one of my fave movies and a good sequel that could have been better...

... but I'll wait for that Wench Watches to Trek that story.

@thraeryn @socketwench - what's funny is this movie was my introduction to the Superman mythos, and do everything else feels foreign to me.

@socketwench - The bloom is very intentional. Geoffrey Unsworth put bloom in practically every shot of the movie. It's one of his calling cards. You can even tell the Richard Donner directed scenes of Superman II thanks to that bloom.