Tag: discovery

Suddenly Best Friends

This morning they were chasing each other around like maniacs, each trying desperately to kick the other’s ass.

Now?

In unrelated news, I mentioned earlier that I finished Star Wars: The Bad Batch this morning. Last night I finished Penny Dreadful. The night before I finished Snowpiercer. I’m halfway through season eight of The X-Files. Last night I started season two of Extraordinary. New episodes of Star Trek Discovery come out on Thursdays so there will be a new one tomorrow. I started watching Baby Reindeer on Netflix because I heard it was excellent. I’m halfway through and I think it’s good… maybe? It’s really tough to watch though. By design, I think. I also started re-watching The Last of Us and speaking of tough to watch. It is fantastic but gut wrenching even on the second view.

I feel like I am running out of shows to obsess over. Star Wars: Tales of the Empire comes out on Saturday. The new season of Doctor Who kicks off one week later. Maybe I should get back to Torchwood and Pennyworth again. I don’t know why I stopped watching those shows, but it has been a while. I guess I’ll just have to poke around Netflix and Hulu and find a couple more shows. This is the golden age of television, after all.

Picard Rewatch

I got shit done on the RPM Challenge today, but on the plus side we got this week’s episode of The Last of Us two days early and it was freaking incredible.

Also, I just finished season one of Star Trek Picard, and I’m 7.5 minutes into season two. Will I finish before season three starts on Thursday? We’ll see.

Once the Picard rewatch is done I need to rewatch The Mandalorian before season three launches on March 1st. There is also new South Park, and each episode of The Last of Us requires multiple viewings (the show is that good) and I’ve got a couple of seasons (I think) of Star Trek Discovery still to go, as well as the last season of The Orville, and The Flash just kicked off it’s final season.

As far as TV is concerned, there’s a lot of good stuff to take in. The 10 episodes of Picard season two come first though.

Star Trek: Recovery

I didn’t plan on it, but my stuck-at-home recovery is kind of turning into a Star Trek recovery.

The day I came home, the season finale of Picard came out, as well as the series premiere of Strange New Worlds. I also remembered that I had a few episodes of season three of Discovery to watch, and then all of season four.

Picard was okay. Probably not as good as the first season, but still okay. Discovery… again, okay. Season three, I mean. I’m watching s4e1 as I type this, so the jury is still out.

I’m very happy with Strange New Worlds so far. There are only two episodes so far, but they both feel like real Star Trek in a way that Picard and Discovery do not (which was the goal, right?). I think it’s the lack of a season long story arc that does it, but if that’s the way they want to go, each episode needs to be really strong. So far so good.

The Stir Crazy Files – Episode 3

I just finished season two of Star Trek Discovery.

Ever since I became a step father I have found that I often get overly emotional while watching things that never would have touched me before.  I start crying like a little baby at the oddest things.  More often than not it’s during scenes that involve difficult family moments, more often than not involving parents and little kids.

Most of these episodes happen in the obvious places.  The filmmakers push a button and I respond.  The first season of This is Us was utter hell for me.  I shed so many tears it left me dehydrated for months.  The last scene that Ned and Jon have together in like episode two of Game of Thrones.  On first watch it was a nothing moment.  On a re-watch years later it destroyed me.  Military stuff is really hard to get through.  The opening 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan on first watch was spectacular.  On second watch, now as a married man with two step kids, turned me into a gigantic puddle of emotional goo.  Some things effect me in huge ways when they absolutely should not.  The one I can’t get over is from Wonder Woman.  Yeah, Wonder Woman.  The scene where she jumps out of the trench and crosses no man’s land?  I ball my dumb stupid eyes out.  Every time I see it I completely lose my shit.  Why?  It’s a super hero movie for goodness sake.  It’s a Greek Goddess fighting a bunch of normal people.  Why does it wreck me so?

Well… Star Trek Discovery.  It happened again.  There is a goodbye scene in the last episode.  I literally had to turn away to keep my eyes from leaking like a leaky faucet.  Why did this stupid show mess me up like this?  What is it about the world around me that allows me to be effected like this?

Oh yeah… the world around me… that might be it.  I wonder if being at 99% of my maximum allowed stress level for 24 hours a day for over a week might have left me vulnerable to an emotional unglueing?

Yeah… I wonder.

As for the show?  Season one was really good.  Season two… awesome.  Star Trek Picard is a mystery show.  It’s a whodunit, where you’re trying to put the pieces together.  Discovery has elements of that, but it’s basically just an action/adventure/blow shit up kinda thing and it is just sooo good.

Fight the stir crazy, watch Star Trek.  You’ll thank me, even if you do fall apart like a baby near the end of the last episode.

Music Discovery

I miss having a proven source for discovering new music. It used to be radio and MTV (urgh), then in the mid-90’s (for me at least) it was late nights in bars in Boston. That was the heyday for me as far as finding music that was in a separate world from the charts and the land of commercial music. It was glorious.

Eventually it ran out of gas though. Well, truth be told I was the one who ran out of gas. The idea of driving home from T.T. the Bear’s place in Cambridge at 2am started to lose it’s appeal, and musical trips into town became something saved for special occasions (ie: Mission of Burma).

In 2008 I was looking for a site to use to host my attempt at the RPM Challenge and I ended up on both Virb and Alonetone. Both sites lead me to a slew of bands and artist that I otherwise never would have found. Many of those acts still have me waiting with baited breath for the next release even though most of them were very far removed from my usual musical comfort zone. Folk rock became a thing for me, as well as lots of acoustic singer/songwriters (usually women), and dare I say it… some electronic music (for shame, Robert!).

Since then? Eh… not much. I did what I did back in high school when hair metal made me want to claw my eyes out in disgust. I went back in time and found things that have been overlooked. That has resulted in a recent obsession with Richard Thompson, and to a slightly lesser extent Sandy Denny.

But new music? Again, not so much.

This year I am resolved to change that. I don’t know how, but it’s a New Year and resolutions are all the rage. I am going to search the interwebs for music made by people I have never heard of before in the hopes of finding a new musical obsession or two. Or three. Or 100. I might start with the mountain of best music of 2014 blog posts that have been popping up world wide over the last few weeks. After that? I don’t know. Not spotify, or beats, or any of that. I don’t want to be spoon fed the way we were back in the radio and MTV days (urgh). I want to discover, not be marketed to.

I’ll let you know how it goes.