Apr. 30th, 2025

canyonwalker: Better Call Saul starring Bob Odenkirk (better call saul)
Yesterday I wrote about a con Jimmy McGill and ride-or-die friend Kim Wexler pull against a prosecutor in Better Call Saul ep. 4.08 to get her to reduce the charges against Jimmy's associate, Huell Babineaux. At Kim's suggestion Jimmy wrote a bunch of letters as a fake letter-writing campaign from ordinary citizens of Huell's hometown, attesting to what a wonderful person Huell is and promising the judge to come protest his unjust prosecution at trial. The judge tells the prosecutor to offer a plea bargain to keep the case away from trial. The prosecutor, suspecting the syrupy sweet letters of being phony, takes them back to her office and sets her team to investigate them.

This is where Jimmy is three steps ahead of them.

First, those letters from people in Coushatta, Louisiana are all mailed from Coushatta— a real town. Jimmy traveled there by bus to post the letters from the tiny town's post office.

Next, many of the letter included phone numbers for the people who supposedly wrote them. Those phone numbers....?

Jimmy and his TV crew trick a prosecutor to save Huell from jail (Better Call Saul ep. 4.08)

Remember Jimmy— actually he did this as Saul— the phone salesman from a few episodes ago? Yeah, those phone numbers are all real. They go to a bank of phones Jimmy purchased and set up in his office. And he's hired his 3 member film crew of UNM students, including "Drama Girl", his script-writing and makeup consultant, to answer the phones. They put on laughably thick Cajun accents and downhome mannerisms as they impersonate eah of the letter writers the ADA and her staff check up on. Jimmy himself lays it on thick as the pastor of the Free Will Baptist Church, while "Sound Guy" plays a recording of church organ music in the background.

Oh, and Free Will Baptist Church? You know the prosecutor and her team are going to Google that. They're not idiots. But again, Jimmy is ahead of them. And the showrunners hid an Easter egg.

Better Call Saul easter egg - real website for phony Free Will Baptist Church (screencap Apr 2025)

The prosecutor's team pulls up the church's webpage. It's got a photo carousel of Huell Babineux being thanked by various members of the community— including firefighters thanking him for rescuing senior citizens from a burning building. The prosecutor, at this point, gives up. She contacts Kim to offer a plea bargain.

When I saw this come up on a laptop screen in the show, following the crazy accents on the phones, I was practically crying with laughter. Then after watching the episode I discovered something even better— an Easter egg.

That pic from the website? It's not a a screen-cap from the TV series; it's a screenshot I made by visiting https://www.freewill-baptistchurch.com. Yes, the Free Will Baptist Church of Coushatta, Louisiana is fake... but it has a real website we fans can visit!

The main page has the aforementioned photo carousel of Huell Babineaux (Lavell Crawford) and his many charitable acts. The "Testimonials" page has 3 audio recordings of the Better Call Saul cast pretending to be small town parishioners. If you call the number on the website, you hear a recording of Bob Odenkirk's hilarious rendition of a Cajun preacher. And the "Donate" button really works— though it redirects to a real, legit charity, the Food Bank of Louisiana.

canyonwalker: Mr. Moneybags enjoys his wealth (money)
I've written over the past few days about the new tariff trade war. People are stocking up ahead of expected price increases and retail shortages. We're already seeing price increases and dwindling inventory in consumer electronics with clear signs it's going to get worse over the next few weeks. It would seem like this is the time to buy that new TV, computer, phone, tablet, etc.— if you haven't done so already. As I've thought about this I've decided that, thankfully, I don't need any bigger-ticket electronics right now.

  • My partner and I bought new phones 6 months ago. We're extremely happy with them, and we purposefully bought near-top-of-the-line models to ensure they'd be sufficient for at least 3-4 years.

  • My computer, a MacBook Air M2, is going on 3 years old. I'm not itching to replace it anytime soon, though. I'm still fully satisfied with it and can see easily getting at least 5 years good use out of it.

  • Our TV is seventeen years old but we're still happy with it. And yes, that's "TV", singular. We own just one. I've idly browsed sales displays online and at Costco many times in recent years asking myself, "Is it worth replacing?" And the answer has always been No. Nothing's compelling enough about newer TVs— and some newer features, like "smart" TVs that spy on you and clutter your screen with extra ads, are negatives— that I'm happy sticking with our 2008 vintage 42" LCD until it breaks.

  • I've been thinking for a while about replacing my dedicated camera, a Fujifilm X-T3. It's several years old now. Like with the TV question, though, I'm not sure newer cameras offer anything compelling enough— especially not to justify spending $1,500, $2,000, or more when I have a camera that still works really well.


The X factor in all of these equations, of course, is "What if it breaks tomorrow?" If my phone, computer, or TV breaks I'll want to replace them, and I guess I'll have to pay whatever the new price is.

That 17yo TV is the only thing I think might go any day. I mean, it's still working perfectly, but who knows what'll happen tomorrow. Unlike older analog tech where many failure modes manifested over time, like an old picture-tube TV "going on the fritz" for a year or two before dying, with modern electronics a chip goes from working fine to shorting out and it's— BAM! buy a whole new TV, because there's no cost-effective way to repair it. Either way, 17 years is already way longer that we expected that TV to last. Its predecessor, which I shopped carefully for, only lasted 11 years.

If my Fuji camera dies next week, I'm not sure what I'll do. I might buy a newer camera— or I might decide to wait several months. In the interim I can continue using the built-in cameras on my iPhone. As I've noted many times, they've gotten way better over the past several generations. My 16 Pro is now able to do more things adequately well that I used to have to use a good dedicated camera for. Yes, there are still things the iPhone camera does not do well that I care about— like waterfalls photography— but for 6 months? If the market goes haywire? I could probably limp along without a dedicated camera.

Profile

canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
canyonwalker

June 2025

S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 2nd, 2025 10:27 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios