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Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

Fman99 Jan 07 2022 09:23 PM

Watching the fascinating "Class Action Park" documentary on TNT, the story of "Action Park" in Vernon, NJ. This place was madness. I totally remember seeing TV commercials for this place as a kid growing up not too far from NYC in the late 70s and early 80s. Probably good that my folks never took me there.

Willets Point Jan 07 2022 11:05 PM Re: Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

My mother refused to take us based on a "not driving to New Jersey"/"not spending that kind of money" basis. I didn't know until years after it no longer existed that it had a reputation for danger.

Johnny Lunchbucket Jan 08 2022 06:51 AM Re: Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

I went there once. Terrifying.

Marshmallowmilkshake Jan 08 2022 07:11 AM Re: Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

We went there once when it was largely just the alpine slide, then a few years later when I was in college and i was the full-blown crazy. The loop slide was closed, but we did a lot of the other things.

metsmarathon Jan 09 2022 11:53 AM Re: Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

i went there a few times. maybe twice as a younger teenager, then twice in my senior year of high school. i was always terrified of the big water slides. the wave pool was scary, too. the first of those latter two times i had a good little scrape on the alpine slide. shaved off part of my elbow skin, and a little off a knee and shoulder. nothing too, too bad, but it hurt like heck. later, went with another group of friends, and one of them needed to be pulled out of the cannonball splash. got "CFS" written on his arm. we wondered what it meant, and joked that it was for Can't Fucking Swim. i'm delighted that is actually what it's for. pretty sure i once went in college, likely the last year it was open. no incident worth note, though. it was an amazing, terrifying place, made more terrifying in hindsight. they really don't make amusement parks like that anymore. and that's a good thing. i read the action park book, but still haven't seen the tv thing. i should add that to my watch list.

Willets Point Jan 09 2022 12:33 PM Re: Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

I watched it last night. It felt like the talking heads introduced every single ride as "This ONE was the MOST dangerous!" I thought it was good overall but could have used a greater variety of people talking and less replaying the same footage over and over.

Edgy MD Jan 09 2022 12:46 PM Re: Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

There had been a couple of smaller, budget documentaries before the more major doc. Everybody, it seemed, has an AP story. I'm not sure they don't make amusement parks like that anymore. Or, maybe, the laissez-faire attitude toward oversight has just shifted to other fields. I feel like you don't really know where deregulation has hurt us until it hurts, us, you know. I also feel like the federal government has been kinda run like Action Park for some time. I guess what AP and its nutty founder were good for was innovation, and that that's fallen away from the amusement industry. Either they upgrade the attractions by just adding more to stuff that has already gotten mostly through the regulation regime, so roller coasters become bigger/faster/stronger/(wagner) to where the fear and violence increases but the fun factor gets lost, or the only ones who can afford to innovate are Disney and they put all their resources into the technology of innovating but far less into the engagement and storytelling part. The coolest things water parks brought into the amusement industry is "the lazy river" — where the rider doesn't go down a slide or a tube, but just rides around in blissful circles in a tube for a few minutes or an hour, with an occasional trip through a wavy part or a shower. I see people from seven to seventy on those things looking as serene as can be. But I imagine it's only a matter of time before we realize a different amusement park has been operating under a similar lack of scrutiny for shocking amount of time. Cynical, I know.

Fman99 Jan 09 2022 04:15 PM Re: Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

Willets Point wrote: My mother refused to take us based on a "not driving to New Jersey"/"not spending that kind of money" basis. I didn't know until years after it no longer existed that it had a reputation for danger. My parents just weren't amusement park people. We went on rides at the county fair, my brother and I, but my mom was always way too much the old Jewess for anything bigger than that, and my father was too self conscious about his size and other health issues and wasn't going to be on board either. I never even rode a roller coaster until I was 17 or 18 and went to Six Flags Great Adventure in NJ on a high school "skip day" with my buddies.

Frayed Knot Jan 09 2022 04:51 PM Re: Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

Mine weren't either. Plus there wasn't much on Long Island beyond a few small ones that sufficed for occasional tween-age fun. But those were a fraction of the size of the big ones that got advertised on TV and all seemed to be in New Jersey, not something that we were going to cross two rivers and the biggest city in the country to get to. Palisades Amusement Park was the one I remember which wall-papered kids TV shows with adverts ... I can still recite this half century old-plus jingle. [YOUTUBE]lLVgEP8pOWQ[/YOUTUBE]

Frayed Knot Jan 09 2022 05:15 PM Re: Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

Back to TV options, I was recently convinced to dive into YELLOWSTONE. Season Four recently concluded so the Paramount Network (not sure I knew that existed prior to a week or three ago) re-ran all four leading up to the latest finale so I put some extra gas in the DVR and recorded all forty episodes with the intent of making it my pre-baseball season (assuming, y'know, that there is one) viewing habit as I catch up one episode at a time. A modern times western. Kevin Costner is the patriarch of a Montana ranching family trying to hang onto his way of life in the face of outside developers and local Indian nations looking for their slice of the pie/land, all while keeping reins on his often unruly and/or disappointing adult children. I was only vaguely aware of this show's existence until now as I probably assumed it was an 'old times' western and I can take or leave Costner. But then I found out it's Taylor Sheridan written/directed project and he's made several movies I've liked -- HELL OR HIGH WATER & WIND RIVER (SICARIO not so much) -- so I dove in on that basis and haven't been disappointed yet.

kcmets Jan 09 2022 06:02 PM Re: Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

I re-watched the first episode of Yellowstone yesterday for free on Peacock. I say re-watched because I'd seen it years ago and it was quite familiar and then I never followed up on keeping up with the show for whatever reason. Went to watch the second one late morning only to find it cost 4.99/month. No thanks, I'm not paying every single tom-dick-and-harry for a slice of their monthly pie for just one show I'm interested in. This was originally on Paramount?

Frayed Knot Jan 09 2022 07:04 PM Re: Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

=kcmets post_id=84290 time=1641776573 user_id=53] This was originally on Paramount?

AFAIK, it's been exclusively on Paramount.

Fman99 Jan 09 2022 08:37 PM Re: Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

I think Kevin Costner is the most overrated American actor of the last 40 years. I can think of exactly one movie I enjoyed him in - "A Perfect World," where he went 100% against type and played the antagonist opposite Clint Eastwood and Laura Dern. Everything else, I see him and hear him and think, man, what a stiff this guy is.

Frayed Knot Jan 10 2022 05:27 AM Re: Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

Hey, he was real good as the dead guy in THE BIG CHILL. Apparently there were originally several flashback scenes in that flick and Costner was the part of the suicide. But then they all wound up on the cutting room floor so you see nothing more than a body being dressed for the burial and that was probably a dummy anyway and not Costner. So you might say he started his career as a stiff. Like I said, I can take Costner or leave him. I'm neither going to run towards or away from something simply because he's in it. In fact I probably originally paid no notice to this project because I figured: Eh, Costner, western, Indians ... been there, done that, even though I never actually saw his big western opus, DANCES WITH WOLVES. In this case it was film-maker, along with some personal recommendations, that drew me in, rather than the cast. Costner's fine in it.

kcmets Jan 10 2022 06:11 AM Re: Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

Not to veer off into movies, but I like Dances With Wolves. It could be a good forty-five minutes shorter, but that might just be me.

Johnny Lunchbucket Jan 27 2022 09:09 AM Re: Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

Soat least one of us (LWFS I think) recommended CHEER, which I sorta accidentally got into. Truly remarkable if insensible young athletes in Bumfuck Texas battle to be the best junior-college cheerleaders under the watchful eye of the daughter of Tom Coughlin and Nurse Ratched. Season 2 get a whale of a story when one of the featured performers does a very, very bad thing.

Edgy MD Mar 04 2022 09:01 PM Re: Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

I'm so embarrassed to say that we've strangely fallen for the dumbest of German TV shows called The Ranger. It may have a cooler name than that in German, but it's staggering in that it's so unashamedly heroic that it feels like satire, and you have to back up to realize that, holy shit, they're totally in earnest. Man with perfect chin and perfect teeth and INCREDIBLE hair looks after his plot of wilderness; takes care of his mother, widowed sister-in-law, and nephew; and touches hearts and saves lives. He's fucking Superman. Or Ubermensch. But Goddam, he's humble. His spirit yearns for freedom, but his shoulders were meant to bear responsibility. He can just look at you soulfully in the eyes and you drop your chin in shame, realizing that you shouldn't have been camping outside the designated area, or disturbing animal nesting areas. He arrives at the site of a forest fire and squints, and it practically dies of shame and puts itself out. The soundtrack is filled with this heroic English-language neo-folk-rock, that's almost authentic but just a little off, like somebody gave a German band a Mumford & Sons record and told them to do a knockoff in 10 days, using as many of the following powerful keywords as possible: GLORY, HOME, BELONG, TRUTH, SOARING. This guy's name is Jonas. He walks into the lives of men, women, and children, and they all fucking pine for him longingly. The sun gets up in the morning just to shine off his hair, and I'm pretty sure his tears can heal. All who meet him hate that they can never be man enough to measure up to him or woman enough to hold him. I hate myself too. It's like somebody made a Mark Trail adaptation for American TV in 1955, with modestly high production values, and it somehow didn't get released until 2022, but nobody cared.

Johnny Lunchbucket Apr 01 2022 05:56 AM Re: Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

We're checking out a German comedy called HOW TO SELL DRUGS ONLINE (FAST), which is about an awkward teen and his nerdy friend who open an ecstasy shop on the dark web mainly as a means to win back his girlfriend. Frenetic hijinks ensue.

Lefty Specialist Apr 02 2022 06:39 PM Re: Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

I've been watching the Volodomyr Zelinskyy TV show that essentially launched his political career, Servant of the People. It's captioned, of course, but it's pretty damn funny. Kind of Beverly Hillbillies meets Veep. And there's a tinge of sadness thinking that the cosmopolitan, modern Ukraine depicted there no longer exists. Zelinskyy's doing better in his new role these days, though.

whippoorwill Apr 02 2022 06:49 PM Re: Hot Interesting Whizz: Television, 2022

Frayed Knot wrote: Mine weren't either. Plus there wasn't much on Long Island beyond a few small ones that sufficed for occasional tween-age fun. But those were a fraction of the size of the big ones that got advertised on TV and all seemed to be in New Jersey, not something that we were going to cross two rivers and the biggest city in the country to get to. Palisades Amusement Park was the one I remember which wall-papered kids TV shows with adverts ... I can still recite this half century old-plus jingle. [YOUTUBE]lLVgEP8pOWQ[/YOUTUBE] Somehow missed this in January I will go to my grave remembering this jingle. But I will also wonder what they meant by coast to coast… any ideas?