PicoBlog

Now that my work for the 2024 draft is complete, I have sorted through my top 70 graded offensive linemen to filter out ten of my favorite prospects ranging from projected day one, two and three picks. Rather than just highlight my top ten overall, I prefer to vary the range of grades to add some variety while picking my personal favorite players to study. This also allows for some ‘long shot’ types of prospects from later in the draft that I would most comfortable betting on being featured players.

Since its inception, reality TV — as a genre of entertainment — has oscillated between exploitation and documentation. Tracing the roots of the genre back to Warhol’s Factory-era films, which in turn inspired MTV’s Real World, the extent to which participants were being unwittingly taken advantage of has remained a question. What some have begun calling… ncG1vNJzZmiipZm0prnEp6tnq6WXwLWtwqRlnKedZL1wvMigZKunqZa5tcWMoqpmrJiaeqOx0q1kq52Roba1xYysn6iv

A note to Fight Freaks Unite readers: I created Fight Freaks Unite in January 2021 and eight months later it also became available for paid subscriptions for additional content — and as a way to help keep this newsletter going and for readers to support independent journalism. If you haven’t upgraded to a paid subscription please consider it. If you have already, I truly appreciate it! Also, consider a gift subscription for the Fight Freak in your life.

By Howard Wolinsky Who says prostate cancer isn’t funny--at least sometimes? Even advanced prostate cancer. Jokesters, including Bard AI, entered more than 50 one-liner, shaggy dogs, cartoons, limericks and othe bits—we even play blue-- in the first-ever “Putting the Glee in Gleason” prostate comedy contest. TheActiveSurveillor.com is grateful for all the entries and good humor (not the ice cream--many of us avoid dairy, right)--and attempts at humor. Jokes are in eye of the beholder.

Red Rocket Dir. Sean Baker 128 min. In porn circles, the term “suitcase pimp” refers to a remarkably narrow species of human, an unemployed man who serves as a kind of agent and assistant to his porn-star girlfriend, accompanying her to sets and managing her affairs. For these guys, the  trick, as with a regular pimp, is to make a parasitic relationship seem like a protective one, which requires a sinister charisma on the man’s part—a sharp perfume to cover up the stench of a bottom-feeding loser.

In the final moments of “Sex/Life” season one, desperate Connecticut housewife and former New York sex-haver Billie (Sarah Shahi) is finally ready to act on years of yearning and months of journaling about the one that got away. She’s been trying to make things work with her handsome, loving, and loaded husband Cooper, and to put dreams of her handsome, loving, and loaded ex-boyfriend Brad in the past. But as the final episode comes to a close, the elevator doors to Brad’s penthouse open.

Back in January, I put together an edition of Sonic Breadcrumbs where I dove deep into Neil Young’s massive, 10-disc Archives Vol. IIset. For what it’s worth, a retail version drops tomorrow, (March 5th) if you’re eager to snag a physical copy for your collection. I don’t even own a CD player at this point, and am considering picking one up. It’s that good. Also, maybe I should buy a CD player?

My August “Reynolds Rap” column for the Marina Times newspaper (“Fraudenbach: How the Coalition on Homelessness is holding San Francisco hostage”) elicited one of the strongest reactions from readers I’ve ever received. One group of concerned citizens from various neighborhood organizations even took hours out of their busy lives to attend the August 3 Homeless Oversight Commission meeting, collectively reading the article word-for-word before its members (you can watch the video here).

Suncoast is one of those films that’s so specific that it must be based, at least loosely, on something that happened to the director in real life. And yes, that’s the exact backstory, with writer/director Laura Chinn basing the film on her real experiences.  It’s also one of those films that didn’t seem all that special until it snuck up on me in a serious way.  Suncoast, which was a Sundance film and very much feels like one, is a fairly straightforward teen coming-of-age film, with one twist: It’s set up against the backdrop of one of the most controversial culture war battles of the last 25 years.