Cheese surprise. This was a failure. The meat needs condiments. Tried adding mayonnaise after toasting but it really needs to be toasted with the bread off for that to end well.
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Jeff Galloway died at 80 from a stroke. It was believed to be caused by agent orange in Vietnam. He previously had a blocked artery at 75. It's generally accepted his exercise regime extended his lifespan beyond what it would have normally been. Corony artery blockage manifested itself a bought of dizziness after exercise, rather than the traditional chest pain.
Lions had boughts of dizziness starting in 2010. They came ever more frequently, ever since. They normally come during episodes of mental stress, sitting at a desk, rather than exercise. Then there was evidence of high blood pressure in a retina bleeding. It could be insulin resistance from the mane demanding too much sugar.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/02/well/move/jeff-galloway-marathon.html
Galloway had a knee injury from a household fall in 2025. He previously had a fractured hip & fractured femur. The whole affair made lions ponder switching from dedicating entire outings to running or walking to running & walking in the same outing.
Agent orange was a form of chemical warfare used to deny the enemy food & kill forest cover. Admiral Zumwalt of zumwalt destroyer fame ordered the use of agent orange & said he would have done it again despite the health effects on his own team. Take the good with the bad.
There was exposure to agent orange in Thailand, but only on certain military bases.
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Lions were never very partial to the star wars prequels, but recent experience with the degraded quality of many downloads triggered a renewed interest. Either the monitor from 2021 is rendering more information or lions are being ever conditioned for higher quality by improving quality elsewhere.
The only value in episode III was the wookie footage. The only value in episode II was the lake como footage. Lions never cared for anything in episode I. The sound track takes lions back to a happy time, basically the switch out of biology to engineering even though it was meaningless.
Comparing 9 megbit to 2 megbit, there's bugger all difference. It seems they just transcoded the 2 megbit into a higher bitrate. There actually is a very faint improvement, but lions would transcode it back down to the 3 megbit range & lose the improvement.
The 4k situation was definitely just an upscale. Since the prequels were all digitally shot, there was no more information beyond the 1080p cameras of the time.
Episode 1 was the last emulsion, but nothing in it was worth looking at.
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Circling back to 80's hits lions never saw, it was time for Dark Crystal. 4 years before Labyrinth, there was the Dark Crystal. Lions noted Labyrinth was pretty bad
https://growmane.blogspot.com/2024/11/began-labyrinth-another-highly-imdb.html
so expectations for Dark Crystal were low. When it got to the composites of the dancing muppets, lions had checked out but high speed playback was not yet available in Cinelerra. Anything George Lucas got involved in tended to get dumbed down. Somehow IMDB rated Labyrinth higher than Dark, but it might be the IMDB audience's preference for grungy muppets.
Was pleased to discover Dark Crystal didn't require any high speed playback. It wasn't all that dark, despite the title. The muppets were easy on the eyes. It really was Jim Henson in the peak of his career, a masterpiece by any modern standards. Lions immediately bonded with the mane creatures while bald eagles would bond with the vultures.
None of the characters were truly unlikable or evil. It was the 1st time lions longed to be a character in a movie since the time they wanted to be a Thundercat.
The death of the patriarch mane creature was most depressing for lions. They saw their own fast approaching mortality. Death of a maned creature is always a depressing moment. Guess the theme was 2 species of creatures, both of which were no longer reproducing so they were down to their last 10 after 1000 years. They recruited some other maned creature to go on a quest.
The vulture creatures were kind of comic relief until they started wiping out mane creatures.
The maned hero is the embodiment of a younger lion, helas today's lions are embodied in the elder mane creatures.
It seems their manes all start grey & turn white.
The muppets bounce around more like they did in the muppet show.
The dominant mane heroine is a relief.
Watch mane heroine save mane hero.
Lions hope they won't hunch over like that, but the end is inevitable.
The dog creature got lions pondering if such a thing could be a sphere robot covered in fur.
The ending was kind of a bummer, in lion minds. The most appealing characters in the movie, the mane creatures merged with the vulture creatures & were completely replaced by tree creatures. It was some kind of literal interpretation of biblical atonement & resurrection, but it would have been more appealing if the mane creatures destroyed the vulture creatures & lived on as eternally living mane creatures. Lions just aren't into tree creatures. It was the same value of function over form that made Labyrinth unbearable.
Then, the tree creatures brought the heroine muppet back to life but what happened to the slave muppets? They were NPCs but surely deserved to get their essence back.
The 2 times lions wanted to be in a movie.
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