Have A Good Trip: Adventures In Psychedelics (2020)

2020.05.19
Tried this last night. I was hoping for a balanced infotainment piece, but its mostly boring celebrity anecdotes. I hung in there for the Anthony Bourdain segment; couldn't go any further.

The Devil We Know (2018)

2019.04.21
Scandalous. Shocking. Depressing. Why isn't this a bigger issue? Is it because the problem is so big we don't even know what to do? I'll be thinking about this one for a long time. It should be life changing, but I'll probably do what most of us do and just try not to think about it.

Murder Mountain (2018)

I like this documentary, probably because it roots it in history and explains how we got here. It kind of starts to lose coherence at the end as it gets closer to the present and the lies and court cases don't yet have the benefit of history to sort them out yet.

Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon (2015)

That filled in a lot of gaps in knowledge I really didn't need, but its still interesting.

Seventies (2015), Eighties (2016), Nineties (2017)

2018.12.04
The seventies series was quite good, same so far for the eighties. It's interesting to go back and get a different perspective, and find gaps in your knowledge (and fill them).

2018.12.11
The eighties felt really brief, which makes sense since that's my decade. Still good.

Paycheck to Paycheck: The Life & Times of Katrina Gilbert (2014)

Watched some time around Sep. 2018.

Uh... depressing? inspiring? moving?

(E) All of the above.

Empire of Scents (2014)

At first this seemed like it would be an exploration of the olfactory arts and sciences, something you don't get a lot of so very interesting. The first person they interviewed talked about their loss of smell, good start. Then there's hunting for truffles, a sommelier, perfumers, ambergris hunters, lots of interesting stuff. And then the perfumer starts getting creepy about what body parts he wants to recreate in bottled form. And then you realize you are spending an awfully long time with the truffle hunting people who also start getting creepier and creepier with their admissions. And then its just over.

Held my attention while watching, afterwards realized it was not worth watching at all.

Chicken People (2016)

Not bad. Got better as it went along.

Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa (2007)

Two or three cable/FIOS plans ago, I had saved some movies on a DVR, but ran out of time and had to turn the box in before I could watch them. They weren't special or rare enough to justify any great effort in copying them off, so I put them on a list. Years later I find the list, enter the name into YouTube, and I'm watching.

I think the first time I started watching Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa I was attracted to the post-apocalyptic theme. I just recently played Fallout New Vegas, and it got my attention again for the same reason.

What holds my attention is the look into how society works, and how it doesn't. And how people work, and how they are broken. As tough as this life might be, with Fallout on my mind I can't imagine what this kind of life would be like with added starvation, radiation, raiders, and limitless small arms.