Category: Media

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Godzilla vs. Kong

I think I teared up about half a dozen times, I was so happy with this film.  I clapped.  I silently cheered in the early morning as I watched this on HBOMax.

They did something that the other two Godzilla films didn’t do, and that was show, not tell.  There was exposition, but a lot of stuff that they could have had in long, wordy scenes, they didn’t.  Hell, there was a line that more or less jokingly addressed that.

The monsters fought.   That’s all I ask for.  They fought.   And they fought well.

The people scenes were less than before, probably why the movie came in at a tad under 2 hours in length.

None of the humans were in the movie long enough to be annoying, even the ones who would have been under other circumstances.

Every character had an appropriate resolution by the end of the film.  Heh.

The movie is definitely in my top 10 Godzilla films, maybe even my top 5.

It ranks just below Kong: Skull Island in my Monarch/Monsterverse list.

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The Hero’s Journey and Journal

A couple of years ago, a close friend of mine suggested that I need to go on my Hero’s Journey.

Basically he meant that need to go through some quest, if you will, that can help me find or refocus my purpose, since I’ve definitely have lost my way, so to speak, in many aspects of my life.

I’ve been told by a couple of friends that one way that helps them focus is journaling, which I’ve looked at, but seemed like something that was a bit too much or not enough, depending on what I was trying to accomplish.

Which is my basic problem.  What the hell am I doing?

And then I came across a product called The Hero’s Journal.  A method to help me tell a better life story.

So I’m going to try an experiment with this product, setting up a quest and going through the 90 days (pages) of this journal to see if my goal can be achieved.

Simple goal, really, to see if I can lose the weight I’ve gained during the pandemic, if not more.

I’ve done weight loss before, but it was all gained back over the years, and then some, thanks to working from home/sheltering in place.

So part of the quest will be finding solutions and sticking with it over the 90 days.

I think writing this down will give me a better handle of what I’ve been doing (or failing to do) over the past year or so.

We’ll see what happens.

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The Mandalorian Season 2: Reactions

Chapter 9: OH SHIT A KRAYT DRAGON
Chapter 10: HEY THAT’S APPA
Chapter 11: HOLY CRAP BO-KATAN
Chapter 12: ARE THOSE SNOKE CLONES?
Chapter 13: OMG AHSOKA
Chapter 14: BOBA FUCKING FETT IS BACK
Chapter 15: That poor Shoretrooper
Chapter 16: IS THAT REALLY HIM IT CAN’T BE NO WAY WAIT MAYBE IT IS HIM HOLY SHIT IT IS AND THERE’S R2

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New Years Day

I seriously considered staying in my PJs all day today, until I walked back into the bathroom and saw the clothes I meant to wear after showering.

I put them there 3 hours earlier, but I got caught up watching Doctor Who.

I showered and changed, then reheated the fries and pizza that I ordered for dinner last night.

Now I’m watching the Godzilla Lounge Lizard Marathon on Comet TV.

At some point I’ll watch the new episode of Doctor Who, but that’s not for a few hours.

Cheers, everyone!

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Fett

Everyone knows that Han Solo is my favorite Star Wars character, period.

And everyone knows that a close second is Boba Fett.  So much so that I’ve always seen him as a hero, not a villain.  The guy is just trying to get paid by whoever hires him.

Even though he was paid to capture favorite character number one in The Empire Strikes Back.

Anyways, when Return of the Jedi came out, even I thought that Fett went out stupidly, knocked into the sarlacc by a blind scoundrel a.k.a. favorite character number one.

But I never thought he was dead.

I always believed that his armor would protect him and somehow he’d escape the sarlacc.

And for 37 years I never waivered from that belief, even when so many people would try to convince me otherwise.

Then came The Mandalorian.

The show featured a character dressed like favorite character number two; indeed, he did everything that I always thought that character would be capable of doing, Baby Yoda aside.

This season, however, they took a turn toward rewarding my belief in that character, first by casting the last person to voice him in the revised Special Editions, and who played his Dad in Attack of the Clones, in a cameo in the first episode of the season that featured his iconic armor.

And then they revealed that that was indeed him, first by showing his goddamn awesome spaceship, Slave 1, and then showing him off as a badass warrior without the armor.

And then, he was back in the armor.

And they showed him to be that badass that I always knew him to be, even if just in Expanded Universe stories and my own imagination.

A couple of episodes later, at the end of the season, the biggest surprise of all came, a Christmas present to me as far as I’m concerned.

A separate series on favorite character number two.  I’m extremely excited about this.  Probably more than I was when the Solo movie was announced, or when The Mandalorian was announced.

Thank you, Jon Favreau.

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Keep On Trekkin’

I think I figured out why I liked Star Trek The Motion Picture so much when I was 12 years old, and continue to enjoy it to this day.

I’ve been a Star Trek fan since as far back as I can remember.  It was a staple of my childhood, alongside The Six Million Dollar Man and Underdog.

In 1977, a movie called Star Wars came out, and I was not interested in seeing it, mainly because it wasn’t Star Trek.  Reluctantly, I went to see it with my immediate family and a couple of my aunts.

It fucking changed my life.

But that’s another story.

For two years I was more gung ho for Star Wars than Star Trek, though Trek was more readily available to watch because of syndicated television.  All we got for Star Wars on TV was a Holiday Special, which, incidentally, introduced my favorite Star Wars character of all time. 

But that’s another story.

When The Motion Picture finally premiered, it seemed to ‘make things right’ in my mind.  Star Trek made it to the big screen.

And it’s not like there was ever a competition between the two franchises in my mind, I just seemed to shift focus from one to the other over time.  Nowadays I watch both equally, whether it’s a episode of TOS or TNG or one of the films, or introducing my niece to the Clone Wars and Rebels animated series, or the latest episode of The Mandalorian.

But back to The Motion Picture.

Sure, it can be a boring film, but to me it’s as captivating as 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Depending on your mindset.

And as I’ve gotten older, I seem to be in that mindset more and more.

But that’s another story.

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Celebration Weekend

In a normal world, Nelson and I would probably be heading back to the Bay Area from Anaheim, on the last day of Star Wars Celebration.

Instead, I made a Target run to see if I could get anything from the new Galaxy’s Edge Trading Post items that went on sale today.

I went to one Target and they had no such items out.  I saw another customer with a basket of figures, asking an employee if they had a particular figure in back.  I asked the customer if they had put up their display anywhere, and he said no, he found the figures in the regular Star Wars display in the toy section.  I told him that other Targets had end cap displays for the new stuff.

I then went to the other nearby Target, where I was greeted with this:

That same customer from the other Target came up behind me and asked if this was what I was looking for, and I said yeah.

To be honest, the sight of this made me feel sad that I wasn’t in Anaheim, because I had planned to visit Baatu and Black Spire Outpost and even build my own lightsaber.  But it wasn’t meant to be this year.

I almost bought the cheap Jedi Blade Builders saber that they had, but decided not to.  I’ll build mine at Galaxy’s Edge, someday.

Instead, a porg and a LOTH CAT jumped in my basket.

They brought along a deck of Sabacc-shaped cards to keep themselves busy.

The majority of the other merchandise was rebranded Blade Builders sets, Q’ira’s blaster from Solo rebranded and recolored as a Mandalorian blaster (Double barreled?  No.), droid factory action figures and plush droids, and some masks and books.

And yeah, I’m wearing yet another Star Wars shirt today.

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Stones

So I’ve been nursing a kidney stone at home for the past few days, and yesterday was by far the worst day.

The pain wasn’t as bad as I’ve had in the past, it was just THERE.  Constant.  Throbbing. And no amount of water drinking or ibuprofen seemed to make it go away for more than 1/2 an hour or so.

Because of the pain I was pretty lethargic, trying to fall asleep and nap throughout most of the day.  I think I did manage to nod off a few times, only to wake up with the dull pain still there.

I also watched the pilot episode of The Greatest American Hero on Peacock.  That show hasn’t aged well.  Or at least the pilot didn’t.  That used to be one of our ‘must watch’ shows back in the day.  Dad loved it.

I kept moving from my bedroom to the living room throughout the day to find a comfortable spot to sit or lie down.  I managed to watch both the Red Sox-Mets game and the Padres-Giants game.

I didn’t really eat much during the day, either, just some cottage cheese and Belvita biscuits for breakfast, the last slice of frozen pizza from the night before for lunch, and for dinner, some shredded chicken from the chicken broth I made the night before.  Don’t ask.

I tried to fall asleep after the Giants walk off win over the Padres, but I couldn’t, so I decided to stay up and watch Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. which I probably would have done anyway.

During the episode the pain faded, but came back almost at the end of the episode, so I took another ibuprofen with a cup of milk, and that seemed to do the trick, though I did get up around 2 am to pee.

This morning?  Pain is much more manageable.  I think it’s about to pass, like its about to drop into my bladder.

Here’s hoping.

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Justified: A Celebration

It started with a news article saying that Timothy Olyphant was going to play Cobb Vanth in The Mandalorian, Season 2.  Vanth, according to the Star Wars Aftermath books, is the man who found Boba Fett’s armor some time after Return of the Jedi.

I had heard of Olyphant, but never watched his show, Justified.  My friends on Facebook suggested that I watch as soon as possible, and that I’d love it, and that they couldn’t believe that I had never watched it.

I binge watched it over 8 weeks.

Five years late to the game, but I now consider it one of my all-time favorite television series.

From the first episode, I felt that I related to the main character, Raylan Givens, in a few ways.

Raylan Givens: I guess I never thought of myself as an angry man.

Winona Hawkins: Well, you do a good job of hiding it, and I suppose most folks don’t see it, but honestly, you’re the angriest man I have ever known.

The show itself was well written, with snappy dialogue.  It reminded me of Firefly in some ways, probably because of the music and the fact that Raylan reminded me of Malcolm Reynolds in many situations.

This is a rare show that I can say had few, if any, bad episodes.  That said, season 5 was probably my least favorite, but only because of a weaker plot that other seasons.

Plus, Dewey Crowe is probably the stupidest character on TV in recent history.

How about some top 5(ish) lists?

Favorite Characters:

  1. Raylan Givens
  2. Boyd Crowder
  3. Art Mullen
  4. Rachel Brooks
  5. Tim Gutterson

Favorite Recurring Characters

  1. Ellstin Limehouse
  2. Dickie Bennett
  3. Bob Sweeney
  4. Winn Duffy
  5. Mike “The Hammer” Reardon

Least Favorite Characters

  1. Dewey Crowe
  2. Boon
  3. David Vasquez
  4. Wendy Crowe
  5. Danny Crowe

Yeah, I really didn’t like Season 5…

Favorite Big Bad (Season) Villains

  1. Mags Bennett
  2. Avery Markham
  3. Robert Quarles

The series finale ended the show better than most other series finales.  Better than Game of Thrones, LOST and Battlestar Galactica, even though I enjoyed the last two shows finales.