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September Days Are Here
Not a moment too soon, says I. I’m all about the “-ber” months, thank you very much. Only a few more weeks til 🍂 Autumn 🍂…
All These Lovely Tokens
By all these lovely tokens September days are here, With summer’s best of weather And autumn’s best of cheer. ~Helen Hunt Jackson
From your lips to God‘s ears, Sister!
I would be only too happy to see summer fade quietly away into colorful autumn bliss.
Not that I could get that lucky, but a guy can hope.
Even so, we’re officially in the “-ber” months and it’s time for Mother Nature to take a chill.
Apple cider, warm dishes from the oven, cozy clothes, no perspiration and definitely…
🍂 Pumpkin 🎃 Spice 🍂
Master of Kung Fu
“Run It” | Marvel Studios’ Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Talk about your long arcs. Wow. I never gave Shang-Chi a chance in the comics when I was younger.
He used to wear these weird-looking pajamas because it was the 70s and they were just throwing characters against the wall to see what would stick.
I’m really glad to see they lost the dumb outfit and added the Hong Kong vibe. This looks like it’s going to be absolutely nuts (in a good way). I cannot wait to see this film.
What I was saying about the long arc is that the “Ten Rings” was the outfit that abducted Tony Stark back in the first Iron Man movie. The ten rings also refers to the rings that were worn by one of his most powerful adversaries, The Mandarin. They even gave us a fake Mandarin in Iron Man 3 to throw us off the trail.
It’s going to be interesting to see how they work all that into a cohesive story with a seemingly tangential character. Simu Liu plays the titular character and he looks like a very likeable guy. Should be interesting to see how he fits into the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Essential Workers
Storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is. ~Tim O’Brien
We’re facing a calamity these days.
There’s a disease of unknown provenance that keeps popping up at the least convenient times. There’s a senile buffoon in the White House. There’s a Democrap majority in Congress raising all kinds of heck with their stupid platform.
Basically, we’re going to hell in a handbasket.
That being the case, the least we can do is enjoy the ride.
The entertainment industry basically got shut down cold last year. All the lockdowns put movies and TV shows behind on production. Theaters of every kind were closed.
Thank goodness for streaming services and decades of existing content. People got to go back and binge all of their old favorites and catch up on stuff they’d heard about but never made the time to watch.
Well, when you’re locked up at home with nothing to do but worry, you’re going to need a storyteller.
People thrive on stories. They paint our world in vivid colors.
Sure, we often decry the celebrities for their morally vacant lifestyles and their vapid pronouncements on matters of the day.
That’s because when they’re being the people we admire in a story, we can totally divorce that from the knuckleheads they are in real life.
The story is bigger than the performer.
We all love a good show or movie, but it’s the story that makes it good.
It’s hard to picture someone else playing our favorite characters once the role has been filled by someone who did a particularly good job of representing them, but the parts are bigger than the actors who fill them.
To me, Jeremy Brett will always be Sherlock Holmes even though he has been very well played by Basil Rathbone, Robert Downey Jr., Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch. Heck, even Mr. Data got to play Holmes on the holodeck. Of course, that one went off the rails because The Nanny‘s butler started raising all kinds of hell.
So, whenever you mention a favorite characters, unless it was a one-shot, you’re going to have different people who have portrayed them. The part is bigger than the player. Story is simply that important to our well-being.
That’s how we kick off the last 1/3 of the year, folks. Autumn’s closing in and I can hardly wait.