GAINZZZ

I'm still doing my arm-weighted walks. And still fixin' to consider starting to ponder weightlifting again.

What about you? What are your GAINZZZ?

Any recommendations in books or TV? Any projects or plans you want to share?

Here's a recommendation. Sort of: Garth Merenghi's Darkplace. All six episodes (it's British) are on YouTube.

I recommend this with a caveat: It's not for everyone. You have to think a certain kind of meta humor is funny to enjoy it.

The show is about a trashy and incompetent but extremely narcissistic British horror author named Garth Merenghi. During the eighties, he tried to get a horror series produced on British TV, but he was refused by every company. So he put a small amount of his own money into it and self-financed his show.

Being a narcissist, he of course cast himself as the hero, Dr. Rick Dagless M.D., who everyone on the show is always complimenting for being so strong, so good-hearted, so giving, and so sexually virile. It's obviously a self-insert and wish fulfillment fantasy.

To save money, he cast his publisher, who cannot act at all, as the head of the hospital.

The show is about a hospital in which portals to hell have been opened. So, during their daily rounds of treating patients, they also have to confront demons and ghosts.

I think because it was the eighties, and cop shows ere popular, Garth Merenghi couldn't choose between a Hospital show and a Cop show so he chose both. All the male characters inexplicably carry guns and whip them out at the drop of a hat. There is no in-show explanation for this. They're never said to have a military background or anything.

That's just the Miami Vice vibe Garth Merenghi was feeling at the time.

The last part of the premise is that these episodes have only recently been rediscovered, and they're being aired with commentary from Merenghi and the other actors, talking about how great this terrible, terrible show is.

The first time I watched it I thought it was okay, but I was a little underwhelmed. But it's the kind of show that gets better on rewatches. Because it is aggressively weird. It takes some time to get on the same mental page as this very weird show.

For inspiration:

That inspires me to do the jerk and clean.

Yes, jerk and clean. I said what I said.

posted by Ace at 06:30 PM

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