RFalvo69
Posts: 1380
Joined: 7/11/2013 From: Lamezia Terme (Italy) Status: offline
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Let's consider wargaming and military history as a given. I don't like following sports, except for three events: the FIFA World Cup, the Soccer European Cup and the Olympics. Many, many years ago I was a supporter of Juventus F.C. - but mostly because I'm a supporter of athletes I like and back then a lot of them played for Juventus. Then, since the mid-'90s, my interest for soccer waned and never returned. I do have a maxi-screen in my restaurant, as anyone else in my line of work has, because it is either that or when there is an important soccer match we can keep the doors closed. Supporting the "Azzurri" at the World or European Cup is, of course, totally another matter. Yet, I'm uninterested even when Italian teams play in European competitions. I just don't have my heart in it anymore. Same with Formula One. Today it just bores me. I love ghost and horror stories in any medium and I still play the Call of Cthulhu RPG with a group of friends. Finding good horror movies is not easy but I recently liked The Conjuring 1 & 2, Hereditary, The Witch, Midsommar and some unexpected gems like Unfriended, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Last Shift and Grave Encounters (the latter seems a quick cash-grab in the found footage/Paranormal Activity genre, but it is actually both a satire of it and a movie full of its own interesting ideas). In horror literature I like more the classics (Lovecraft, R.E. Howard, Arthur Machen, Clark Ashton Smith, M.R. James...) Modern authors, from King onwards, are often hit-and-miss - and when you digest a tome like "Insomnia" over a few weeks only to arrive at that ending... hours of my life I'll never get back. And in videogames I'm always hoping for the next scarefest. Resident Evil, sadly, lost his way (they tell me that RE 7 is worth a try, however). Thankfully we got Outlast (truly one of the scariest game ever ), Alien: Isolation (played three times - the last one with mods that make the Alien even more scary), Amnesia: the Dark Descent and The Forest. There are some "lovecraftian" games, like The Sinking City, but, sadly, they do lack the fear factor. I still wonder where the creativity once seen in titles like Silent Hill 1 and (exp.) 2 went. Death Stranding, BTW, defeated me one third in. It is not a game, it is work I, of course, do like cooking and experimenting with new recipes. This, however, overlaps with work, and thus it isn't strictly "an hobby". What else? Hmmm... I don't know if it can be considered an hobby, but when I'm a tourist I do walk all day. I'm not interested in "All Paris in three days on a coach!" I stay there one week and walk everywhere. My wife hates me. She likes to walk too, but my legs are longer than hers and, for some reason, we always end up with her grabbing my arm and stopping me cold while panting. This happened when we started dating, more than 25 years ago, and still happens today. Male insensitivity, I guess. Lost hobbies: photography. A few years ago, after squeezing what a Lumix could do to the limit, I took the plunge and bought a Canon Eos 5D Mark IV + 50mm lens. And then... I... dunno... stumbled. Too many options, too many things to learn, not enough time to go out there, experiment and learn... a fiasco Now my basically still brand new equipment is gathering dust somewhere. My only consolation is that my eldest daughter is taking a photography class with a cheap Nikon, so maybe one day it will be hers.
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"Yes darling, I served in the Navy for eight years. I was a cook..." "Oh dad... so you were a God-damned cook?" (My 10 years old daughter after watching "The Hunt for Red October")
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