Hagakure. I read that book and immediately began the process of giving away belongings and moving to another city to pursue a new career.

The first time I heard Fear Factory, it's was "Martyr" on Roadrunners At Death's Door II compilation.

1 - 3 - 4 - 2 - 5 - H20 - 6 - the rest is all unmitigated garbage.

A few years ago a couple of guys and I did a similar podcast about F13, with each episode going into detail about a film in the franchise. We started into Halloween, but I got busy and had to drop out and it kinda fell apart. So it's cool that you guys were able to roll up on the same concept and see it through. Good stuff!

The Strange Woman, Gone With The Wind, The Postman Always Rings Twice.

As an additional wrinkle, I wrapped the whole thing into our old Star Wars game.

We ran a Star Wars campaign that lasted for several years. One of the random adventures was the PCs going to a planet that was cut off from the rest of the galaxy, in the meanwhile had advanced to approximately a Medieval level of tech, and understood the force as "wizard magic." So it was basically the Star Wars PCs showing up in the midst of a D&D-ish setting. They had an adventure loosely based on The Ewok's Adventure (saving prisoners from a giant, etc.) During which time one of the PCs courted and woo'd the king's daughter (in a manner akin to The Princess Bride). When the adventure was done and they disembarked from the planet, little did this PC know but he had left the princess in a family way.

Flash forward to the (in real life) discussion of playing "The Enemy Within" but with Shadow of the Demon Lord rules.

I changed the game so, instead of playing on whatever world that Games Workshop sets Warhammer, "The Enemy Within" would take place on that same D&D planet the players had encountered during our Star Wars campaign, but hundreds of years later when the civilization had advanced to the point seen in Warhammer, e.g. gunpowder, Dwarven steampunk, etc.

The main wrinkles were twofold.

First: the entire Imperial line had descended from the child of this princess who had been courted by the one player's Star Wars character years before.

Second: all of the religions were based on a central myth derived from various misunderstandings of the "angels" and "gods" (the Star Wars characters with their ships, blasters, droids, and lightsabers) who had come to their planet once upon a time, and were foretold to return. So I replaced the various churches, cults, heresies, etc. with religions based around characters who my players had run during our Star Wars campaign. Which they enjoyed.

In the end, when the Warhammer/SotDL characters go to the Tomb of Sigmar, within they find an ancient spaceship - the ship that had originally crashed on this planet during the Old Republic, seeding the planet with human inhabitants in the first place. They found a big, red button... and pushed it. This turned out to be a homing beacon.

So at the very-very-very end of the campaign, when all of the bad guys are beaten and the story is wrapped, a spaceship descends from the sky. The hatch opens... and out come all of my players' Star Wars characters, responding to the homing beacon. Their Warhammer/SotDL characters decide to board a la the end of E.T., and the two sets of characters from two completely different campaigns set off together into the stars to seek new adventure. Leaving behind the people of this "fantasy planet" to devise a new set of religions and myths around the events of the campaign we had just wrapped. The end.

I just timed out the leveling-up to make sure the PCs were tough enough to (likely) survive each new "chapter." So they started at level 0 during "Mistaken Identity," and were at level 1 when they reached Bogenhafen. From there, I spaced out the leveling as it made sense, with them being at levels 8-9-10 by the time they were dealing with the events of "Empire in Flames." Along the way, the players never felt under-powered or held back; the leveling always occurred at junctures that felt organic to growth.

The one major change I made, narratively speaking, was replacing "Something Rotten in Kislev" with "Terror in Talebheim." "Terror" is unaffiliated with "Enemy Within" as written but with some tweaking it actually fit much better. For example, at the end of "Death on the Reik" a pack of Skaven make off with a radioactive meteor. In the main narrative of "Enemy Within" it's just a thing that happens. But by stitching in "Terror in Talebheim," I was able to use the meteor theft as a set-up; the pay-off was the Skaven showing up with a super-weapon powered by the stolen meteor.

In terms of actual game play, SotDL has a lot of analogous monsters, spells, etc. So for example Beastmen of various kinds were easy to stat, and I just made tweaks to give them flavor. I should mention that Demon Lord PCs can get strong at higher levels - later in the game, they were beating the living hell out of some pretty tough monsters.

We played that campaign for maybe a year or so, all-in. Now we're on Pulp Cthulhu, playing a campaign that's a mash-up of Two-Headed Serpent, Masks of Nyarlathotep, and Spawn of Azathoth. I gotta keep 'em guessing.

I'm partial to the performance of "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" on Iron Maiden's Live After Death. I can say the same of several songs on that album, including "Revelations" and "Powerslave," but "Rime" stands out for me.

Last year, I ran The Enemy Within using SotDL. It played without a hitch, much fun was had.

Hex.

Mope.

You've correctly identified Knucklehead as a great starting point - probably the best metal bar in LA. There are also a lot of shows at 1720, along with the Regent, Belasco, Fonda, Mayan, Palladium. Sadly, Five Star Bar is done and gone, but there are new venues coming together downtown and on the east side.

And if you don't mind swinging down to Long Beach you can hit Grill 'Em All, a metal-themed gourmet burger joint (kinda like Cuma's in Chicago).

Night of the Comet.

In Ravenous, the protagonist flashes back to his harrowing experiences in the Mexican-American War.

Messiah of Evil.

"Holy Mountains" is the shit.

I have very recently switched from Premiere to Resolve. So yes, I agree with doing so.

It is I think my favorite album. I love every song. Which I can't say about Powerslave, Piece of Mind, et al.

Andy Serkis's reading of the Tolkien books is pretty rad.

Ninja III is brilliant cinema.

Give Me Liberty.

I stopped by the store to grab a copy on the way to see a movie, with the intention of spinning a bit before reaching the theater. But "Clerical Conspiracy" so thoroughly blasted my brain that when I got there I just sat in the parking lot listening to the rest of the album, missing whatever movie I intended on seeing.

Only one way to find out for sure: Go in and see if he has the beans.

Then check to see if the tables wobble.

I think in this case Larry is pushing boundaries for a reason. The newspaper isn't separate from the train of thought; he's leading up to asking that question. LD's thinking this guy might be the kind of person to steal newspapers, so he's leaning into disrespect, and ruffling the guy's feathers.

Still spinning metal every day.

The original Mortal Kombat was an absolute BLAST at the midnight screening I caught opening weekend.