iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

I know, Button. It was a rough 2025 for all of us.

A brown and orange tortie cat lounges lazily in a cat bed on New Year’s Day.

My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

“Ok, we just need some extras for an audience scene in Stargate: SG1. Make sure they’re just normal, average people and that nobody stands out in particular.”

A frame from Stargate: SG1 season 10 episode 15, “Bounty.” An audience applauds what they think was a technology demo but was actually a thwarted assassination attempt. The dude in the front row has the most amazing GIANT RED MANE of Sideshow Bob hair that ever Carrottopped.

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

This gen x kid rocked this not at all dorky zip code lunch box in the mid 70s.

Metal lunch box that says “u.s. mail” on the side with a thermos sporting a fast running stick figure “zippy” zip code character.

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

Technically he’s the SECOND Pope from Chicago.

Pope Guido Sarducci behind the Weekend Update desk on SNL in the late 80s or early 90s. Some idiot is on the background (it’s Dennis Miller).

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

I never hear anyone talk about this brewery like they talk about the Alchemist or Hill Farmstead, but every can I open of Mill River beer is fantastic. Fast becoming my favorite #Vermont brewery.

A can of Fulling Mill New England Style IPA beer from Mill River Brewing in St. Albans, Vermont.

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

Fyi for the anniversary noodles, this is the key ingredient. Thai Phat has it.

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

Nature is encroaching. My space weather app told me there’s a decent chance of seeing an aurora in the hour or so, and then I was joined by this new officemate, which my species app tells me is a parametric paper wasp.

Close up shot of a parametric paper wasp parked on my PC case. Don’t sting me, bro.

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

I got irrationally excited when I saw this clue, only to be disappointed by the answer. :/

Detail of today’s NYTimes crossword featuring the clue, “They Might Be Giants,” and the answer, “BASEBALLPLAYERS.”

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

No! Bad, Will Shortz! “Pan” is specifically a side-to-side movement of a camera on a panning tripod head. You don’t “pan in,” you zoom in or you dolly in or you push in. You can pan to something, or pan across something, but you do not “pan in.” Ever. Harumph!

Screen grab of today’s NYTines crossword, featuring the clue and answer for 5 down. The clue is “get a closer shot” and the answer is “PANIN.”

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

I got an email alert from the NYTimes this morning titled "Breaking the Ice" and assumed (optimistically) that it was a cheeky headline about stopping Trump admin goons from disappearing legal US residents w/o due process, but no, it's advice about how to avoid awkward social interactions. 🤦‍♂️

Close up detail of an email inbox, featuring a highlighted email from the NYTimes, the subject of which is, "The Morning: Breaking the ice."

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

WTF is wrong with our culture? This is a thing that @discontinuedfoods.bsky.social is going be posting about in 5… 4… 3… 2….

A grocery store display stand featuring “Post Malone Oreos,” including a large sepia-tinted photo of Mr. Malone in a cowboy hat and the signature cookies in question.

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

One of the 1st filmmaking awards I ever won was the "James Goldstone Award," presented annually to an emerging Vermont filmmaker at the VT International Film Festival. Goldstone directed the 2nd Star Trek: TOS episode, "Where No Man Has Gone Before." Additional details in the alt text. 🖖🎬🎞️📺

A film crew member holds a clapper board slate during filming of the Star Trek: TOS second pilot episode, "Where No Man Has Gone Before," preparing to shoot a scene on the bridge. The camera shows the back of Captain James R. Kirk (yes, his middle initial was "R" in this episode), sitting in the captain's chair, looking at the front viewscreen. The clapper board says it's scene 104 on day 1, and shows the date as "7/20/65". It also says "DIR - GOLDSTONE," indicating this episode was directed by Vermonter, James Goldstone. Goldstone also directed the 1966 TOS episode, "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" as well as the feature films, The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight (1971), and the thriller, Rollercoaster (1977), among others.

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

Today is Django Reinhardt’s 115th birthday!

Django Reinhardt playing a guitar, cigarette hanging from his lips.

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

I still think my personal contribution to the Bernie mittens meme explosion four years ago today was particularly delightful.

A frame from Wes Anderson's film, Rushmore, which features main character, Max, posing on a go-cart racer, legs crossed casually, with the on-screen title, "YANKEE RACERS FOUNDER." Except instead of Max, an image of Bernie Sanders at the January 20, 2021 inauguration of Joe Biden has been superimposed. Bernie is wearing a surgical mask and the iconic kitted mittens (created by Bernie's neighbor, Jen Ellis).

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

This is an AM/FM radio I got in the early 90s by sending in Mac-n-cheese box tops. I did it as an ironic goof and more than 30 years later I still have it. Needs a 9v battery, but otherwise still works.

A Kraft Macaroni and Cheese transistor radio featuring “Dinomac” Mac-n-cheese and some wacky characters on the side, including Loopy, a smiling bi-plane, Bearacuda, a bear on a skateboard, and Beach Bug, some kind of insectoid beach buggy? The other side (not shown in the photo) features Cheesasaurus Rex, a nuclear orange dinosaur.

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

I remember seeing a version of this on a t-shirt once but I don't remember where, so I just recreated it. More info in the alt text. #Vermont

The outline of the State of Vermont (the Green Mountain State) filled in with green, and where the Green Mountains stretch down the center of the state, there is the image of the peak signals created by radio pulses that were detected from PSR B1919+21, a pulsar discovered in 1967 by Jocelyn Bell Burnell, an Irish astrophysicist, who won a Nobel Prize for her discovery. The graph that the radio pulses make looks like a mountain range. The radio pulse image was also used by the band, Joy Division, on the cover of their 1979 album, Unknown Pleasures.

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

This is me singing “These Are My Friends” as Sweeney Todd in a 1987 high school production.

Black and white photo of a young man (the author) in a white shirt and suspenders holding a straight razor and singing lovingly to it.

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 25/12/2024

Star Trek Christmas ornaments ftw! I have several, this is my most recent acquisition. The Man Trap! 🖖 “That’s not Nancy, doctor!”

Close up of a Star Trek Christmas ornament. Captain Kirk being attacked by “Nancy,” the salt vampire, a green alien monster with gray fur.

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 25/12/2024

This is me, Christmas Day, 1977, with my cheap “Star Wars” flashlight-with-a-plastic-tube lightsaber toy I’d just gotten. Years later, I fixed the photo by igniting the laser sword with the power of Photoshop. (The Photoshop is strong with this one.)

A seven year old boy does an action pose with a toy lightsaber in a vintage 1977 photo. The lightsaber is glowing green (and casting a shadow from the camera flash).

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

Got this from a They Might Be Giants FB group I'm in (created by a fellow named Michael Duncan), and I think it's excellent.

This is a challenge to alt-text: It's a hand-drawn chart with an accordion in the center, surrounded by the names of various rock subgenres, and the outer circle features the names of bands that all feature the accordion, aligned with their respective subgenres. The bands include They Might Be Giants at the top (alt rock), then going clockwise: Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphys (rock/punk/folk), Counting Crows (alt country), The Mavericks (folk alt country), "Weird Al" Yankovic (acid polka), and The Decemberists (alt folk rock).

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

Post a PERFECT album from the 90s that isn’t Nirvana or Pearl Jam.

The cover of Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville.

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

...Like, look at this actual screengrab I just took:

A dark and pixelated frame from the first episode of The Agency. Michael Fassbender (at least, I THINK it's Michael Fassbender) is entering a hotel room.

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

Does anyone else think it’s kinda messed up that Woodstock just happily digs into a plate of turkey in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving?

A still from A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving in which Snoopy and Woodstock are sharing Thanksgiving dinner, featuring a large roast turkey. Woodstock chomps away on turkey meat, grinning happily despite the obvious cannibalistic implications.

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

Swiped from a comics group I'm in on FB. There used to be a pretty decent family restaurant/arcade near me that had a Gorgar machine that I really enjoyed. That and Robotron 2084 were my go-tos. I miss that place. Good arancini there.

Four panels from Jon Chad’s PINBALL comic.

Panel 1: an image of Gorgar (a red devil-looking fellow with horns and sharp teeth and no shirt) faces the reader. Behind him are flames and a pinball machine. The title reads "Gorgar speaks!" A caption overhead says "Shortly after the start of the SS era, in 1979, Williams incorporated speech for the first time in their game Gorgar."

Panel 2: Gorgar reaches his be-taloned hand toward the reader. Flames burn behind him. The captions says "Gorgar had seven words in his vocabulary (Gorgar, speaks, beat, you, me, hurt, got), reorganized to form a variety of phrases." Gorgar is shown to be saying "Gorgar speaks!"

Panel 3: Gorgar is now closer and he has made a fist. He says "Gorgar hurt you!"

Panel 4: This panel is at an angle, as though Gorgar's anger is so intense it has shaken the panel loose from the others. It's an extreme close up on Gorgar's angry face as he yells "GORGAR BEAT YOU!"

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

@stonkers.bsky.social made this huge stained glass panel at a local coffee joint I’d never been to before. Cool!

Photo of a large backlit stained glass panel featuring a cup and saucer with steam rising beneath loops of gray stained glass steam clouds. The cup contains brown liquid with hand painted latte art. @stonkers says she’s not thrilled with the piece but I think it’s pretty nifty. It’s certainly the most eye catching thing in the place.

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My Dinner With Andre the Giant @thinkthing.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Great moments in UI history. I took this photo years ago and I still get absolutely flummoxed by it every time I see it. It's astounding how badly this interface is doing as communicating useful information. Bad (100%).

A photo of a DVR diagnostic screen displaying three columns of information. The center column is labeled "Disk Bad" and the first row under the column header says "Good (0%)." WTAF?

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