Survival Sunday 226: Hakata Style Part 2

Well, Z and I are maybe a little obsessed with Hakata-Style Tonkotsu. We got a second package of "animal free" Hakata-style Tonkotsu (which, again, is supposed to be an animal-free pork bone broth), and we kinda went... nuts.

So, the first thing we did, we dumped a bunch of frozen corn in a pot to heat up

It's usually pretty wise to add your veggies first while cooking. Veggies tend to heat slowly, especially when they're completely frozen like this corn was.

I used this picture in a previous recipe...

Eggs are a great source of extra protein in these kinds of dishes. You may notice I use eggs a lot in noodle dishes. That's because they're easy to prepare (especially alongside our meals as they cook).

And where would a noodle dish be without the noodles?
These are the Hakata-Style "Animal-Free" Tonkotsu  we've been loving from Umai Crate.

I feel like I did well with this egg.

We cooked the noodles in the usual way, boiling them until they're just soft enough to eat without stabbing ourselves in the gums. Which is to say, too soft for Z, who would rather eat noodles dry. What a butt. :P But seriously, we both like nice, firm noodles. They're really good that way!

We also got some sea lettuce furikake!
Sea Lettuce is a sort of green, flappy seaweed that proliferates the oceans.
It's tasty, it's useful, and it makes awesome furikake!

I like to throw my eggs in around the same time as my noodles if I'm "poaching" them. This is for two reasons: one is that the yolks don't overcook if I take them out with the noodles, and the other is that the noodles can sometimes hold the eggs off of the bottom of the pan, which can keep them from burning.

Trust me, cleaning burned-on egg out of a pan you're borrowing is always a harrowing experience, regardless of how little egg there is.

But you cannot argue with results.

 I love these noodles. They're thin, firm, slippery, and they really just bring out all of the good parts of the rich, creamy broth!

As you can see, that's one creamy, creamy broth!

I leave you with one last glamour shot of this delicious meal:

And yes, this was plenty for two people.
That's right.
The Hakata-style is so filling that you can feed two big people with it.

If you've got the option for Hakata-Style Tonkotsu at any point in the future, take it.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Saturday Casual Gaming 226: Coloring Pixels

Since I started gaming with handhelds back in the 1990s, you can guess that I love me some pixels. I love 8- and 16-bit (and 32-bit!) images. I love the creativity inherent in stacking colored blocks to make things look recognizable or to come up with something brand new! It's always wonderful.

And since I draw and color and paint, you might be able to guess that I love coloring books.

I do not have a ton of space for coloring books, however, so the recent boom in digital coloring books has been a major boon to me! I was bumming around last year on Steam and found this:

From ToastieLabs, this is Coloring Pixels

Coloring Pixels is a really cool free-to-play coloring book you can download from Steam and fill in beautiful pixel art images that range from incredibly simple shapes to incredibly lush scenes. I love the way it looks, the fact that there are occasionally overlays for holidays (there was snow around Christmas, drifting slowly over the screen, and the edges of the screen were, I believe, on fire around Halloween) just makes it more fun!

Now, I'm the kind of coloring person who likes to finish one color before moving on to the next, which works really easily on small images, but when you get here...

Well... once you get into the crazy amount of colors, things go much slower.
Much. Much slower.

But your reward for finishing each image is that wonderful sense of accomplishment from completing a very difficult task! And it really does feel like an accomplishment. You feel like you've done something, and on days when I literally can't will myself out of bed, that can be soothing.

It's not done, yet, but this is a zoomed-in portion of that same image!
Looooook at allllll that deeeeetaaaaaaiiillllll!

Now, the argument can certainly be made that these sorts of things are not, technically, games, but I'm going to count it because it was free, it makes me happy, it requires input, and you are, technically, finishing tasks to get to an end goal. The tasks are just "input all colors in the appropriate locations" and the end goal is just "finish the picture"...

I did mention that it's only kind of a free game. There is DLC. The DLC is really cool, but it also costs money, which means it isn't happening for me. I mean, there are 12 DLC packs (all of which sound fun), and none of them are more than a dollar. The only reason the "Buy All" function on Steam tells you it's over sixteen dollars is the addition of a downloadable copy of the soundtrack. While the music is pretty fun, it's not something I'm dying to download, but I can always appreciate wanting people to pay you for the music.

That wasn't sarcasm. I've played music in a community band before. The number of people who took "community band" to mean "free of charge because we're not famous" was horrific. No, we will not play your wedding for free. The band itself does have financial needs. Like renting practice space and buying water.

What I'm saying here is, I don't think soundtracks should always be free to download. It's cool when a company can afford to do it, but I'm not going to be butthurt when it's under seven bucks.

If they were charging twenty bucks for the soundtrack, then I'd be butthurt.

But yes, the art you're coloring, the colors you use, the soundtrack, the little extras (like the holiday particle effects), and the overall game itself are more than worth your time if you need a moment of zen!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Filmic Friday 226: Night Beast

I don't watch much horror, I'll be honest, but when I do... I tend towards rubber monsters more than jump scares or zombies (I really, really hate zombies) or slashers. I'm pretty sensitive to realistic gore, messy dismemberment, and insides becoming outsides.

Yet Night Beast, a Don Dohler movie from the 1980s filmed in (and using a cast of locals from) Maryland, was... pretty fun!

Oh, don't worry. They show the monster in the first ten minutes. I'm spoiling absolutely nothing.

A few points of note: This movie is one of JJ Abrams' first films (yes, that JJ Abrams), almost nobody on the cast was a legit actor (they're pretty much all locals, and it shows), and I'm 99% sure that the guys who did the miniatures for this movie were actually amazing. Seriously, the opening stop-motion was incredible.

And then the weird alien appears and ruins all of their hard work.

So the eponymous Night Beast (despite often appearing during the day...) is hungry after crashlanding in the middle of nowhere, so he decides to go on a killing spree. Our theory is that he uses his instant-disintegration ray by accident more than as a means to evaporate people. The theory is that the blaster is actually what amounts to a space microwave, but he's got it set too high for humans, so he keeps shooting everything in order to recalibrate it. That would explain why, after vaporizing a guy peeing in the woods and his two kids (yeah, it goes there), it ends up tearing people apart with its bare hands for the most part. It got bored fiddling with controls.

Our heroes consist of a kinda skeevy sheriff, his "hot" deputy, a dweeb with a crush on the local gangster's girlfriend, a geriatric doctor, her seemingly doofy assistant (who turns out to be the MVP), and the idiot mayor and his alcoholic assistant/girlfriend, and a man who wants his whiskey dangit. Three of these guys survive. You're probably not going to guess which three. It's stupid.

Yes, they get naked.
No, the image will never, ever leave you.
No matter how nice the boobs are in this movie (and there are nice ones), it doesn't make up for the men.
Yikes.

This movie is in love with its monster. Every chance they have to show the... adequate monster suit, they take, even when it's not a flattering shot or when the story has no reason for the Night Beast to appear.

This is the worst shot.
It's like they had sixty different partial dentures and crammed them in one mouth.
Also, he's suspiciously uniform in coloration...

I was shocked to see this shirt on Google.
I don't know why I was shocked, really.
There are shirts for everything, and this movie did just get a Vinegar Syndrome BluRay release...

I kinda feel like the movie owes us all an apology for the faces we're put through. These are some of the homeliest people I've seen since Howling VII: New Moon Rising - another movie which utilized the locals as inexpensive actors.

That being said, Mary Jane the alcoholic girlfriend was a fairly decent actress, all things considered.
And she was one of the few genuinely attractive human beings in this movie!
And yes, it's implied strongly that she's boinking the moron next to her.
She could do so much better...

One of the calling cards for sci-fi/horror crossovers is that they tend to have fantastic special effects. Night Beast, however, is more in line with Laserblast than with The Fly...

This is the effect.
Aside from some cool stop motion in the beginning, this is it.
When he shoots people, they turn red and vanish, leaving a smear of ash in the shape of a person.
Cool in theory. Dumb in practice.

The last thing I'd like to mention is the shoehorned subplot about Drago, the eeeeeeeevil biker. This Nick Offerman lookalike causes a lot of trouble, but he's mostly just a doofus. I mean, he sucks, don't get me wrong. He's abusive, stupid, drunk, and can't ride a motorcycle to save his life. He even strangles his ex-girlfriend to death just to be a jerk. He's also 100% pointless.

He's got to be a holdover from an even dumber script for a Lifetime-style movie... right?

Seriously, he looks like a slimy Nick Offerman...

But yes, this gradual skid over the center line into the path of an oncoming VW Bug of a movie is a great watch with the right group of friends. If you can get yourself a copy (especially the shockingly well-put-together Vinegar Syndrome copy), then I strongly suggest gathering your comrades, ordering some pizza (though maybe without sausage... you may understand if you watch it), and give it a watch!

If this squeamish dork can watch this movie, you probably can, too. There's a pretty bad special effect near the end involving a guy who was electrocuted with 30000 volts, but I found it more comedic than scary.

I mean, they left the eyeballs in...

Regardless, it's a good time, eminently riffable, and it serves as an excellent tour guide to Maryland...

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Thursday Art Walk 226: The Bribe

This one's kind of an in-joke, I'll admit, but it's also too cool looking for me not to show off! ... hold on, did that sentence make sense? No? Whatever.

I like this picture. It's an in-joke.

"The Bribe"; pencil, Pigma Micron 05, water based marker; 2019

The beak is filled with soy sauce, the eye is a small quail egg and tobiko maki on a bed of lettuce, the neck is a pair of maguro sashimi slices, the chest is a pair of shrimp nigiri (though you cannot see the rice), the trio of blobs at the bottom are shumai, the pair of half-circles are dumplings, the wing is a tasty curry over rice, the back is a pair of chopsticks, and the tail holds the wasabi and pickled ginger!

I hope that made you as hungry as it did me :P

That'll do it for me, today! I'm gonna go make some lunch.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Wednesdaymania 226: Tuesday Night Titans

The WWE Network is a vast wilderness of bizarre and unbelievable variety, and in amongst the shoddy reality TV like Total Bellas or Legends House, you wind up with some really, really weird stuff Vince McMahon seems to have forgotten. Like Tuesday Night Titans.

Which is a shame, because this show was marvelous.

Tuesday Night Titans was, in essence, Vince's answer to late night TV Talk shows. This was his Tonight. He played his own Dave Letterman. The show was, essentially, a vehicle to introduce us to the wrestlers, new angles and feuds, and it even showed us the human sides of some of the guests. Admittedly, most of the segments seem to have been Vince finding ways of tormenting his jovial co-host, Lord Alfred Hayes, but occasionally, you'll get something real and marvelous, like the interview with Hillbilly Jim on his farm while his leg heals. You get to see Jim's personality, which is rare. Also, it taught me that Hillbilly Jim, a man who I once jokingly referred to as a charisma black hole, is actually funny and nice and can really, really play guitar!

So TNT was a fantastic show.

The set was always great, it was always fun to see Hayes playing off of Vince and the guests,
and the guests were almost always lots of fun, too! Here we see Macho Man and Miss Elizabeth
and a ring with what appears to be Macho and Hogan toys in it.

 Vince got to pretend he was more refined than he was, often wearing wild suits (though I can't find the one that was pumpkin pie colored online, that was my favorite so far), and using big words and his "listen to daddy" tone. Lord Alfred Hayes always wore his fanciest suits, even tuxedos, with awful frilly shirts, and he always, always played the fall guy. He did it really well, too.

His relatively diminutive height of 5'6" (167.64cm) was a wonderful foil to other wrestlers
since they were usually a good six to twelve inches taller than him, and much broader besides!

 TNT was a show where you never knew who was going to show up or what they were going to do. Is it going to be Salvatore Bellomo and his model ship? Is it going to be the Iron Sheik and his camel and ladies? Is it going to be Hillbilly Jim and his granny? What if it's Paul Vachon's wedding? Or Fuji Vice? Or Dr. D accidentally firing an actual gun into the actual studio ceiling?!

Anything could happen.

Anyone could be there.

Like Captain Lou Albano, possibly best known outside of wrestling for being the live action Mario
in the Super Mario Bros Super Show!

 And whoever showed up, you knew you were about to learn about some hidden talent they had!

Like Tony Atlas's phenomenal artwork.
Seriously. He made that. He's fantastic.

 The show was apparently popular enough in the 1980s to have even spawned an SNL takeoff on it, though it may have been a little obscure to non-wrestling fans. Also, it was apparently a very bad episode and it did contain Billy Crystal in blackface playing Prince.

That set is almost cheap enough to belong to Vince.
That suit is almost ugly enough to be Vince's.
I think they did an okay job, here!

But alas, TNT has not been revived in the modern day. Honestly, I think Vince would find that talk-show pace to be more up his alley than daily TV, so if he were in charge of a TNT revival and Hunter took over the WWE, things might improve. Maybe.

Mostly, I just kinda want to see what modern Vince would do with this format. Would he have another live band that played music that was already a decade out of date? Who would he have as guests? Would they still talk about real-life talents that the wrestlers have?

These are the big questions, guys!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Talk About Tuesday 226

I left you guys hanging yesterday with news of my cat's impending surgery, so I think I'll start things off today with the good news (or good mews, as it were).

She's doing great!

I woke up this morning and she was snoozing on the stairs. I picked my way past her and noticed something... or rather, I didn't notice something. She is breathing normally. For the first time in years, there's no obstruction, no obvious strain or discomfort, just... peaceful, snoozy, kitty breaths. It's amazing.

She's eaten two full meals since she got home, so her appetite is back, and she's been very affectionate. She is, however, still prone to wandering off to sleep in her carrier, which is where she is right now.

On top of the good news with the kitty, we've also had wonderful weather (a few thundershowers notwithstanding) for the last few days. During one of my walks home, I was treated to some spectacular clouds:

It's hard to tell here, but the sky looked like something out of Breath of the Wild!

Really, a lovely walk home :)

I took one more photo that night, as I swung down my road in that perfect evening stillness, just as the sun has set. One of my neighbors has a small patch of grass and brambles that explodes with lupine and valerian every summer, so I took a snapshot of that little wild garden.

You'd never know that this patch was bounded by two houses and a road...

Yet nature photos and feline news isn't exactly what Tuesday Blogs are for (I guess...), so here are my plans for the next seven days:

• Tomorrow I'm gonna chat about wrestling! Lots of wrestling!
• Thursday will be all about them arts, as usual, though one of the pics might be an in-joke...
• Friday I'll write about a weird movie my Film and Editing Friendo showed Z and me
• Saturday will involve casual games somehow... I haven't yet found one to review though! I'll keep looking.
• Sunday, I've got a few things I could talk about!
• Next Monday, I should have more skulls crocheted on :)
• Next Tuesday, I'll be talking a whole lot about nothing (as usual)

So that's the weekly update for the 26th week of 2019. I've been doing some more writing, some more reading, and a lot more crochet than I've shown...

But that'll do it for now :)

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday 226: Skulls and Polyps

You know how I've been worried about the cat?

This kitty in fact

And how she hasn't been eating and sounds really bad? Well! She went to the vet again this morning, and rather than going 2 hours away to a specialist, she had an appointment to be knocked out and have her few remaining teeth cleaned, as well as a little check to see if they could feel the growth in her face.

They did.

It's been years. We've known that she was suffering from some sort of obstruction for years, and it has never shown up on any x-rays or physical exams until today. They just called us and told us they got the whole thing, and she's coming home tonight. I set her kennel up this morning (yes, it's a big dog kennel. Yes she still weighs just over 7lbs. Yes that's overkill. She's our princess) and now she'll get to use it.

So tl;dr: The cat is probably gonna be okay guys!

And now, on to the Fiber part of Fiber Monday:

Skull shawl against the burgundy of our couch...

I'm up to 13 skulls across now, which means I've advanced exactly... 1 set of repetitions this week. I suck. Hopefully, I'll dedicate more time to the shawl in the next week or so. I think I'll have more energy to do things like this now that I know the cat isn't flipping dying, which was my biggest fear.

Vidalia Onion for scale.

We're going to keep working on the shawl until it's done, but then I'll need more ideas...

Go Enjoy Something, guys!
FC

Survival Sunday 225: Breakfast A La Leftovers

What do you do if you have leftover rice and steak, but you're hungry for breakfast?

You make steak fried rice, is what! KOREAN STYLE!

Here's what I used:

• 1 egg
• peanut oil
• leftover rice
• leftover steak
• sriracha ketchup
• some butter (maybe 1/2 Tablespoon?)

Here's what I wanted to use, but we were out of:

• green peppers
• red peppers
• carrots
• onion
• Thai basil

This is a random egg in a glass bowl. I didn't take pictures of my egg.
I didn't take many pictures, I was busy.

1) Prep all of your ingredients so you can cook fast. Your best bets for this are to cube your leftover meat (you can use any leftover protein in this, I just had a small strip steak on-hand!), then crack your egg into the rice and mix the egg and rice together. Leave those off to one side. Then pour a little oil into your pan!

I used peanut because the canola was buried.
DO NOT USE olive or sesame oils.
Those oils burn quickly and ruin pans, ambiance, and meals.

2) Heat up your pan and oil a bit. I stayed on the lower end of things and grabbed a pot lid to keep the spatters down. Once your oil is hot enough (which is really an "up-to-you" thing, since this recipe is pretty loosey-goosey), carefully add your protein (and any veggies you may have!) and begin heating the meat/tofu.  A few words of warning:

• If you're using veggies, you put the heaviest ones in first and cook them for a while.
• If you're using tofu, get as much moisture out as possible and dredge it in corn starch/cornflour to prevent explosive spattering and grease burns
• If you have a kitchen screen (the round ones that look like a flat sieve), this is a good time to use it.
• This will absolutely spit and spatter, no matter what you've added

This steak was precooked, so I really only wanted to heat and possibly crisp it.

 3) After your steak looks almost ready, prepare to pour your rice/egg mix in there! Be prepared for extra splatter, but! once your rice begins to absorb your oil, it'll get nice and calm in that pan. Be prepared to move this mix around as much as possible. I oiled up a silicone spatula for this purpose, since the one I have attracts rice like a wedding...

You may have noticed that I haven't specified a temperature.
Everything's already cooked, so getting it so it won't kill you is a moot point.
I started the meat on med, lowered the temp as I got to the end, added rice/eggs on med-low, slowly increased it
You want the rice to get hot, the egg to cook, and the whole meal to come together.

 4) Finally, it's time to add seasonings. Since the rice and meat had both been cooked before, I didn't have to add salt or pepper, but if you've got a craving, go ahead and add that now. This is also when you add your butter, just because we hate our arteries here, but we love flavor. If you're using salted butter, you probably don't need to add any other salt. You can also add your sriracha, ketchup, sriracha ketchup, or other saucey-ingredient here! I didn't add nearly enough. You can go pretty crazy, I think.

Regardless, you want to mix it in thoroughly!

5) If you have anything else to add, like fresh chives or basil or green onion, etc, now is when you add the pre-plating garnishes and prepare to turn this all out onto a plate. Trust me, you want a dinner plate, not a salad plate, unless you're taking this out with a spoon. I smooshed the rice into kind of a long mountain so it would all slid out as one unit.

Which it did, to my joy.

I strongly recommend reusing leftovers as much as possible for as many kinds of meals as possible, since you can get some really cool experimentation out of that. I mean, who doesn't like a meatloaf sandwich (and that includes "meat" loaf sandwiches, for vegetarians/vegans) or a nice "Everything" soup?

If you've got food in the fridge, and no one else is eating it, that's when you get creative and make something like this!

Experiment with different kinds of rice - this was just some plain white rice that had been boiled and already had a little butter in it, but you know that wild rice or rice pilaf would be interesting!

Experiment with your proteins - steak is great, but now I want to know how this would've tasted with some MorningStar Black Bean Burger or some chicken breast... maybe bacon? Turkey bacon?

Experiment with vegetables and greens - spinach and artichoke hearts for a more Mediterranean flair with balsamic instead of ketchup! Or katsu sauce with green onion, sesame, and daikon for a more Japanese experience (best with Sushi rice?)! What about trying some peas and curry powder to make it more Indian?

Rice is infinitely customizable, fried rice doubly so.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Saturday Casual Gaming 225: Peggle Blast

Alright, you guys already know how much I love Grandma Games, so here is the most Grandma Game I've played this year:

PACHINKO!

 I love the older games that cropped up on the internet. I spent weeks on Bejeweled, Plants vs Zombies, and pretty much everything else that PopCap came out with, so I decided that, when I saw a free version of Peggle on the Google App store, I'd give it a look.

But what is Peggle?

It is, simply put, Pachinko. A weird pinball-like game where you're trying to hit certain areas of the board to gain points and progress. It's huge in Japan.

I don't think you quite understand me.

It's huge in Japan.

But that's not really all Peggle is. This is a game about unicorns, magic, balls, and pegs.

See? Pegs and balls.

You control a cannon that fires little balls at these pegs. Blue pegs are worth points, which can add up quickly and give you free balls, but the orange pegs are what you want to aim for. These are necessary. You have to hit them within a certain number of shots or you lose. You don't want to lose. That would make Bjorn the Unicorn very sad.

See how happy winning makes him? You want him to be happy, right?

So you ping the balls against the pegs, you get your points, and suddenly, you're face-to-face with a bright orange unicorn named Fnord - Bjorn's angsty brother. Fnord is a jerk. I like him. Too bad he doesn't like me, so I keep having to smack him down by throwing balls at pegs until he capitulates to Bjorn's demands. I can understand why he'd be annoyed with Bjorn. Anyone who establishes a fantasy kingdom based, not on magic or money or even weird social constructs, but instead on a form of gambling popular in the Roppongi area, is perhaps not sane. But everyone loves Bjorn. Poor Fnord.

Yes, that's a pirate octopus lady with a gold tooth and an earring in her head.

In this bizarre dystopian fantasy land, you are tasked with peggling your way through level after level, learning mechanic after mechanic, and retrieving item after item for Bjorn. Fnord continuously attempts to stymie you, but... alas, you are forced to ally with Bjorn.

And yes, Bjorn's requests do get more and more bizarre.

All in all, for a game about unicorns and balls, this is a really good time. If you're looking for a time-waster, this could work for you. It's free to download and play, though you may end up watching a few ads for bonuses or extra lives, and there are paid elements (getting more bonuses, extra lives, etc), but it doesn't seem to be Pay-To-Win yet. I say "yet" because I'm not too far in. Maybe 30 levels in. Regardless, if it does start to feel Pay-to-Win, I'll yeet this app right off of my phone.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

PS: Fight the power. Fnord forever.

Filmic Friday 225: Bad Times at the El Royale

Sometimes, you watch a movie and think why didn't this explode?! This movie, Bad Times at the El Royale, is one of those movies.

It's just so... cool!

Bad Times is a movie about people who make maybe not the best choices all ending up in the same place. A priest (who isn't a priest - not really a spoiler, it's easy to see coming), an African American singer, a vacuum salesman (who also isn't actually a salesman, which you can also see coming from a mile away), a shady hippy, a Very Bad Man, a Very Messed-Up Girl, and a squirrely busboy all end up in a hotel that straddles the border of California and Nevada. The El Royale has seen better days and worse people, but these people are possibly the most important.

"Father Flynn" and Darlene Sweet

Once upon a time, a man buried something in one of the rooms. Father Flynn wants to dig it up.

Once upon a time, Darlene Sweet thought she could make it big singing. She just wants to get to her next gig and sing another day.

Hapless, hopeless Miles Miller

Miles wants peace and to keep his job, no matter how horrid it can be, but more than that, he craves absolution. The appearance of a priest is an occasion for both hope and horror.

"Laramie Seymour Sullivan" on the left.
Do not be fooled.

Emily Summerspring - wild child.

 Emily Summerspring wants to do the right thing, even if it really, really doesn't seem so.

I said not to be fooled.
Meet Dwight Broadbeck.

Mild-mannered (and casually racist) salesman by day. Intense G-Man in private. Dwight Broadbeck will do what he thinks is right whether it is or not.

Sweet little Rosie (not pictured) wants to go "home", despite "home" being closer to what a sane person would consider hell.

Charismatic, cold, killer Billy Lee.

 Leader of a band of misfits and rejects and murderers alike, Billy Lee wants what's his. Even though the what is a who, obviously underaged, and this is not okay.

Once upon a time, something was hidden and lost.

Everyone's looking for something at the El Royale. The movie is about everyone looking, but whether or not they find what they're looking for? That's the journey.

It's a really, really good journey.

It's also a beautiful one! Seriously - everything is beautifully lit, every color bringing more to a scene (rather than detracting from it, as many films tend to, I think). It's beautifully scored - music from the 1950s to the late 1960s providing a glorious backdrop for the action to play against. The story (or stories) is/are compelling. The action is used as a way of making sure you're still paying attention (up until the climax), and everything you see or hear is rewarded later.

And yes.

The El Royale is, in fact, some sort of pervert hotel.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

(I didn't want to use the trailer, because it's a very bad trailer)