Project Hail Mary

 We are under a freeze warning, though in my neck of the woods the temps stayed above freezing.  There wasn't even a slight glazing of frost on the cars when I woke up this morning.  Today does start a rebound in temps, and soon they will be back in the upper 60s (F) and low 70s (F).  for all intents and purposes, I do believe spring has sprung.

Yesterday was definitely a meh day.  I did do some few things, but mostly I napped.  A small ache at the back of my jaw has turned out to be a minor case of swollen gland and sore throat.  I don't doubt this is why I felt so nappy yesterday.  Not that I'm still not feeling nappy.  Also, you must remember that when you hit a certain age, brief naps can sometimes be essential. 

Because of this nappiness, the cardio I had scheduled for yesterday was moved to Saturday.  Feeling less nappy today, I will probably do that this afternoon since I have to work Saturday afternoon and I like doing my cardio in the afternoon.  I like doing my weight workouts in the morning, so I will have no problem doing the weight thing on Saturday.

And I went to see The Hail Mary Project last evening.  We haven't had a Feel Good movie in soooo long, and it does make you happy.  Ryan Gosling does a spectacular job: he makes you laugh, he makes you cry a bit; he makes you want to be his friend.  He's a science guy who loves being a science guy, not only that, he's an educator.  If he loves anything more than science, he loves teaching.  He has a rapport with hungry, young minds.  We need more teaches like him.  There are also, for those of you who like to look for them, a ton of easter eggs in this movie, including a great tribute to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

And I did go to the movie feeling fairly certain that the Orange Anus was going to TACO.  And, at 6:59, sitting in my seat waiting for the movie to start, I got the notification on my watch.  It's TACO Tuesday.  The world knows he's a gutless, sack of shit.  One of the first things I saw when I left the theater was a comment asking how many oil futures were sold 15 minutes before TACO time, because after he caved, oil futures went through the roof, again.  This happens every time he TACOs.  It's called market manipulation.  

And he unconditionally accepted the Iranian plan.  Even Fox Entertainment was critical of that.  He's basically giving the Iranians the bank.  He's trying to spin it as though it's another Big Beautiful Bill.  It's not.  This is not going to help him in the polls, in fact, I don't doubt it will cause his approval rating to drop even farther.  One thing that's important is that once again most of the Republicans in the House and Senate said absolutely nothing.  If they spoke out against this insanity the MAGA cultists would damn them to Hell.  Staying silent is preferable to them.  They already know they've lost a vast majority of Independent voters.  They would rather ride this clown car straight to Hell rather than publicly admit that they were terribly wrong.

I'm Just Ken

Let's see if I can write this quickly, I slept a bit late and I need to be at the store by 0930.

We have sunshine, and a lot of wind.  Under a wind advisory we are, and it's predicted to continue for most of the day, with our temps climbing up into the mid 50s (F).  Tomorrow we'll be up in the 60s (F), and our afternoon temps should stay that warm throughout the rest of the week.

Yesterday at work end with a spud.  I'd gotten approval last Monday to leave early since the Oscars were starting at 7 and that's my punch out time, however life intervened.  One specialist had his schedule changed, another left at lunch, and a third called off.  Business was slow for most of the day, until.... 45 minutes before I was to leave.  The most aggravating thing was the man who called on the phone and wanted to know about indoor/outdoor carpet.  Many questions about cost, product, and date of installation, all of which take time when your trying to explain things over the phone.  Did I mention he was.. gruff?  He wanted precise figures and we can't do that, even our computer generated estimates provide a range for what the cost could be.  He found this difficult to understand.  He wanted a specific time for the measure, this never happens.  I spent over 20 minutes on the phone with the customer and in the end he told me he stop in at the store today so he could pay his measure fee with a check.  There are certain interactions which need to take place in person; a phone conversation simply doesn't work.

Because of this, I missed the first 2 minutes of the Oscar ceremony.  Boo!  Hiss!

Now I know there are those of you out there who don't watch the Oscars because of lapsing attention spans (thank god I'm not that old), or claim it's too long (it was shorter than Killers of the Flower Moon), and so didn't get a chance to see John Cena's full frontal (I'm waiting for Bob's comment on that one).  Joy Da'vine Joy Randolph won Supporting Actress, as expected, but how many of you knew that she was born in Philly, but grew up in Hershey, PA, and graduated from Hershey High School?  It's nice when you get to see local talent win an Oscar.  I hope none of you find yourself in the same boat as Donald Trump, who posted how bad the ceremony was on his Truth Social, or got to watch Jimmy Kimmel's response.  As usual, the Academy doesn't always vote the way the public thinks.  The highlight of the evening was, of course, Ryan Gosling's performance of I'm Just Ken.  From comments I'm seeing on the BBC and Le Monde, everyone around the world love it.

 

The Go-To Whine

 We're getting rain today... well, showers, on and off with not much accumulation.  For some reason, whenever rain, or snow for that matter, people envision torrential downpours.  That is rarely the case.  Even the steady rains we get are slow to accumulate.  Rain is predicted for tomorrow as well.  Altogether we'll probably get about .75 of an inch, not enough to cause flood warnings.  On the temp side, ours will be hovering in the mid 40s (F) all day.  By this evening, most of the snow we received will be gone.

And I do have to briefly mention the Oscar snubs among other notes.  I was surprised Greta Gerwig didn't get one, but but Barbie is a comedy and the directors (directors nominate directors) love them their drama.  On Margot Robbie?  I never thought she'd get a nomination; comedic performance.  On Leonardo DiCaprio?  Never thought he'd get one; he played stupid well, but his character was barely 2 dimensional.

On Oppenheimer's 13 nominations?  They won't win all of them.  Adapted Screenplay is going to Gerwig, and production design is going to Barbie.  Costume design will probably go to Napoleon, the voters love period costumes.

Because Ryan Gosling is nominated, as well as his song, there's a good possibility we'll get to see him cavorting half-dressed across the stage singing "I'm Just Ken."  He'll probably lose to Robert Downey Jr, who's black and white malevolence in Oppenheimer was so well played.  

Anyway, this was a really good year for movies, in fact, I might compare it to 1939 when Gone with the Wind was up against The Wizard of Oz for best picture.  Of course, that was also the year before war broke out across Europe.

I baked some Italian bread yesterday, and then made a BLT for dinner.  Scrumptious.

And, of course, the New Hampshire primaries were yesterday and Trump won, as expected, how ever, he only received 54% of the votes.  Looking at the numbers, the only Republicans voting for him are the hard core conservatives, moderates, centrists, and Independent voters turn away.  He needs the Independents if he thinks he even has a chance to win the election.  He's not going to get them, which means he's going to rally as many losing Republicans around him by shrieking Election Fraud.  For a brief moment that was a rally cry, now, however, more and more people are seeing it as nothing more than a rally whine.  Conservatives will never admit their political views don't jive with a majority of Americans, meaning they will need to blame something else for their loss and election fraud is their main go-to whine.

La La Land

So, I went to see La La Land last night.  On a Tuesday night... the theater was filled.  Everybody wants to see this movie, this original musical, this almost forgotten genre.  I liked it... a lot.  The feel is both Retro and Modern.  Colors jump out at you.  The opening number brought a tear to my eye - this is what movie musicals were in their golden era.  Gosling and Watson are both very, very good.  When they are happy, you are happy.  When things get tough the ache filters through the audience, a soft hand on your shoulder that makes you sigh.  Reality peeks through the fantasy with a sly wink.  This movie is about its two stars, but also about Hollywood, about La La Land with its successes and failures.

How good is La La Land?  When the movie was over, there was applause from the audience.  When I heard that I knew I was not the only one touched.

The not so funny truth about "The Nice Guys."

I've been off for the past two days and they've been busy.  I've moved my bank account, am now a member of Members First Credit Union.
I had to replace the remote control ceiling fan in the bedroom because Big Seig though the remote was a chew toy.  The only difficult part was standing on the bed to take care of the wiring.  The old one was white, the new one is burnished bronze.  And since I was replacing things in the bedroom, I installed new rods for the drapes - burnished bronze, of course.
got a new car, I'll talk about that later in the week.
Last night I went to see "The Nice Guys."  Ryan Gosling is cute.  Russell Crowe is burly.  Ryan is the funny one and he plays funny well.  Russell is the Bud Abbott to Ryan's Lou Costello and he does that well, too, most of the time, but not always.  When he isn't doing it well it's because of the script.  It's terrible.
The movie takes place in 1977 so I was expecting to be barraged by 70's music... not in this movie.  Oh, yeah, there are a couple of songs where you get to hear the intro, or the bridge, or the chorus in the background.  Boogie Wonderland gets played during a party scene.  That's about it.

Had I been producing, this thing would have been pumped full of sound, it wasn't.

Except for the bits between Ryan and Russell, the rest of the script sounds like Screenwriting 101 (except for an interesting scene with a bee in a car).  As you're sitting in the audience watching talented actors struggle to give cohesion to a plot that is far more broken then Ryan's wrist under his cast, you can't help but be disappointed.  I'm not saying it isn't funny.  "The Nice Guys" is down right hysterical at times, but those times are tacked a broken armature, there's no purpose for them outside of just being funny.  Catalytic converters are not funny.  Ah, shit, that was a spoiler... but don't worry, it's spoiling nothing.

A little Oscar buzz

Well, I watched the Oscar ceremony last night and thought that there were good moments and bad moments.  I wasn't impressed with Chris  Rock and evidently neither was Shaun King.  Someone needs to tell Chris that when he's speaking about diversity he's speaking about many, many peoples and not just black people.  His comment after Sam Smith's acceptance speech indicates he doesn't believe LGBT people should be included.  Bringing 3 little Asian-American kids on stage as the punchline for a racist joke was detestable.  And making a joke about Rhianna's panties and a party there?  When did sexist behavior become a pillar of diversity?  Oh, and a grandmother hanging by a rope?  No class there.
Anyway, some of the show was really good.  Some presenters were passable, some were great.  I thought the bit between Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe put the others to shame.  The two reminded me of Abbott and Costello - their routines were sharp, smart and sounded spontaneous.  Gosling and Crowe did the same thing.
I thought Sam Smith's performance was very good.  A lot of people are saying that Lady Gaga's was the best - I wish she would have just sang the song instead of spasming every couple of beats in an attempt to create drama.
I was really surprised that Tom Hardy didn't win for The Revenant.  I thought he was far and away the best part of that movie.  Of course, DiCaprio won and his speech was fine until he hit the part about global warning.  When he noted that they had to move filming down to southern Chile in order to get the right amount of snow, he failed to add that when they were filming up in the Vancouver area it was during the summer and that's why there wasn't a large enough snow pack.  When it's summer in the Northern Hemisphere it's going to be winter in the Southern Hemisphere, which means there's going to be a lot more snow in the Chilean Andes then there is in the Rockies.  What a horses ass.

And, of course, the Picture of the Year was Spotlight.  Academy voters gave the award to a film they felt to be socially relevant.  They want to be seen as artistic rather then commercialistic, so while The Revenant was seen as artistic, it made way too much money and therefore became irrelevant.  A film about investigating the cover up of child abuse by the Catholic church, however, fit the bill.  So, my advice to black actors who want to get nominated is this: get cast in a socially relevant film that doesn't do too well at the box office.  Remember Precious?  That was a big hit with Academy voters.