Hello, world. I’m MacDara Conroy, and this is my blog.

Someone remind me to make an appointment to get my bicycle fixed this week #tweet

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Helped Bee install an SSD yesterday, which required temporarily removing the GPU and its bastard backplate fitting. Couldn’t screw it back in after, so used twine instead. Life is too short > @MacDara #tweet

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Our govt have proven time and again they’re incapable of doing what’s actually necessary to get us out of the Covid spiral. So good luck with your ‘summer’ plans, everyone #tweet

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My copy of the New Alliance comp Mighty Feeble might be a reissue, but it’s still from the ’80s and it’s getting its first ever spin right now #tweet

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Loads of stuff to check out here in this Bandcamp primer on cybergrind > @Bandcamp #tweet

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Spinning the new Mainliner double LP. It’s loud and trippy which is exactly what you’d want #tweet

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That’s twice in recent weeks that the Music app has lost my entire local library. What the hell is going on??!! #tweet

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I saw tonight’s #BeyondFriday is Freaked so now I’m chilling out to Blind Idiot God, the world’s finest instrumental metal/dub trio #tweet

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Starting into Homeland s08 tonight was a bad choice; my anxiety is bumping the ceiling. I need a stupid action movie or something to wind myself down #tweet

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Quick question: if an EU-based retailer advertises ‘free delivery’ with no caveats, but there is actually a delivery charge (€50), is that illegal under EU law? #tweet

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You know what? I’m not gonna dunk on ‘No films before 1975’ Guy’s tweet. Sure, it suggests a concerning closed-mindedness. But he’s not a film writer, and we’ve all got our weird biases and bad takes #tweet

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But it is a priority…to the moneyed middle classes that constitute the FG voter base > @TarynDeVere #tweet

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Spent an hour this afternoon cleaning my keyboard (2007 Apple wired, the best one) with surgical spirit and cotton buds. It looks good as (almost) new #tweet

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Film review — Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel

This is just…not a good documentary. If it’s about the mystery and tragedy of Elisa Lam, then it stretches what’s a two-hour story at best over a painfully meandering four hours. If it’s really supposed to be about the ‘web sleuth’ conspiracy theorists à la Room 237, then it does a piss-poor job of interrogating how their quasi-vigilante actions did and do far more harm than good. Overall, it has a sneering, right-wing slant that builds this false impression of Skid Row as a den of iniquity and a magnet for the morally bankrupt rather than what it really was and is: a manufactured project to ghettoise the underclass. More…

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Film review — The Yin Yang Master: Dream of Eternity

It’s adapted from a game that’s based on a series of novels so clearly has loads of fans, and when things kick off I can see the appeal. But so much of the film is taken up by a sub-Harry Potter mystery plot that’s as tremendously dull as the soppy romance at its core. More…

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Saturday morning: working, watching the snow fall, warming up with a double cup-a-soup #tweet

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Well, that’s Thursday nights out for grocery shopping. Too many dickheads #tweet

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Film review — Red Dot

Let me save you the trouble: this I’m-so-clever thriller hangs on the kind of preposterously grandiose twist that renders everything that came before completely nonsensical. It’s almost moot that it’s just cringeworthy calamity after calamity up till that point, and then more or less continues in that fashion. More…

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Film review — What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael

The Pauline Kael primer, more or less. Fans of her work will probably be left wanting, despite (or because of) the hagiography. I was left with the impression of someone of whom I can appreciate the enthusiasm, but disagree with the methods. More…

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Honestly the worst part of the ‘Phoebe Bridgers smashes her guitar on SNL’ thing is the way the ‘monitor’ exploded in sparks like in WWE when they throw someone off the stage onto a worked pile of equipment > @MacDara #tweet

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It’s 2021 and there are still no Slovenly reissues. I don’t get it; they’re basically ‘what if Joy Division and Television were the same band?’ #tweet

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Film review — A Glitch in the Matrix

Unlike Room 237 — which was all curiosity about its subjects and their wackadoo theories, the topic at hand aside — A Glitch in the Matrix has a thesis. It’s not the strongest (to someone who started his philosophy degree the year The Matrix came out so never really saw what all the fuss was about) but it does the work of contextualising where solipsistic ideas like simulation theory come from, and the dark places they can end up. More…

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Who’s soon gonna have the complete vinyl discography of mid ’80s Long Beach punk band Phantom Opera? This guy #tweet

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Film review — Next

Not only does it squander its premise and render what should be a white-knuckle thriller as a weirdly staid talking piece for long stretches, it also fails to harness Nicolas Cage’s unhinged energy for any sustained results. Oh, and Julianne Moore’s character is a brunette. Why would you…never mind. Next! More…

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Film review — Space Sweepers

Completely derivative and far too long for the substance of its story, but there’s always something happening so there’s no time to get bored. That’s more than can be said for a lot of so-called spectacles of this ilk. More…

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Film review — Moon 44

This one is interesting as the first time Roland Emmerich worked with Dean Devlin (here as a co-star; he wasn’t yet a writer). The aesthetic influence of Blade Runner and Aliens looms large in the production design, but that’s the only suggestion of the potential that would be realised in Stargate four years later. In this case, Emmerich is working with a threadbare plot — mostly boring, occasionally uncomfortable — that simply doesn’t support the vision. More…

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What’s that you say? A book on the history of SST Records? Guaranteed purchase right here > @JimVermin #tweet

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#MyFirstCinema was the Fairview Grand to see The Jungle Book. I hated it; sticky floors, noisy kids. Didn’t return till years later for Disney press screenings > @MacDara #tweet

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Film review — Roadgames

This one loses an entire star for its absolutely farcical score. It turns a neo-Hitchcockian Ozploitation thriller into a bloody Ealing comedy or something. More…

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Film review — In Search of the Last Action Heroes

A YouTube video essayist makes what’s more or less his dream project and it’s kind of accidentally great? I mean, it’s clear Alex Winter was secured as one of the talking heads as there was no way they were getting Keanu, but his insight lends the sort of depth and gravitas that a relatively dry documentary about an anything-but-dry subject really needs. More…

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Film review — The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart

I could be glib about the Brothers Gibb and say ‘They’ll always be Les Tossers to me’ but I can’t deny those harmonies. The biggest downside to this (mostly posthumous) documentary is that it’s far too slight, and skips over much of the pre-superstardom days and records that should be more than footnotes in their story. Give me the four-hour cut with stuff about early albums like Cucumber Castle and whatever possessed them to give a record a title like Cucumber Castle. More…

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Film review — Final Destination 3

It will always bother me about these movies that they start with a premonition that no one wanted, then the person who experiences it and those they influence are targeted by the invisible hand of fate, but the premonition itself somehow doesn’t count as something that was fated to happen. Yes I overthink these things, but that’s just the kind of person I am. More…

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USB recording from my turntable wasn’t working; turns out my Audacity was a few versions behind and didn’t record line-in sources in Catalina > @MacDara #tweet

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Had a dream last night where I found a tiny dog and its even tinier puppy litter and their injured cat friend on the street, so I took them home in my backpack #tweet

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Bade farewell to the Enormotron this evening after 12 (12!) years. Now five-plus years after cutting the cord, we no longer possess a TV set #tweet

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If you want to understand resentment, try doing all you can to protect yourself and others from the virus, then go to the supermarket at 5 on a Friday evening #tweet

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You know what? I kind of really want one of those Bob countertop dishwashers #tweet

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Not just punish us, but avoid any inconvenience to the well-to-do. As in, the class that put us in this mess in the first place > @alan_maguire #tweet

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Film review — O Lucky Man!

The blackface (not once, but twice!) really sticks out like a sore thumb in what’s otherwise a film that resonates as much today as it must’ve done back in 1973, with all that seething anger against the system barely concealed by the offbeat mirth. More…

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Psycho Goreman is probably worth a month of Shudder alone; I really had a blast with it. The end credits theme riffing on Turtle Power was just the cherry on top #tweet

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Now the Music app has suddenly decided to ‘lose’ my mp3s and I have to reimport the entire folder ffs > @MacDara #tweet

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Chrome’s new thing about hiding folders and subdomains in the address bar…whose idea was that? Because it’s a really bad one #tweet

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STARDOM are live-streaming classic matches on their YouTube channel if you’re at a loss for something to do this Saturday morning #tweet

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Film review — Action USA

You know, I didn’t really care for this. More of a ‘couple of beers into film night with the lads’ kind of deal, methinks. Dug the explosions, though. So many explosions. More…

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Film review — Promising Young Woman

It would be so easy to cast this aside as a caricature of toxic masculinity. I mean, it’s practically begging for it. But what you have to realise is that men, the target of its satire and ire, are fucking clichés (being a man, I speak from experience) and this movie gets really, really gets that. More…

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