Frustrating

It’s after 9:00pm. I am toast. I’m sitting up in bed typing this on my laptop. When I am done I am going to watch a little TV (I’m doing a The Mandalorian rewatch right now and I am up to the episodes from The Book of Boba Fett, aka The Mandalorian season 2.5) and have a snack and then turn in for the night,

Today was a super frustrating day. Tomorrow is going to be a super frustrating day as well. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday look about the same. Tuesday does too, but there is a tiny little light on the horizon Tuesday. We’ll see.

Hang in there, folks. You can go through a frustrating stretch of time, but statistically speaking it should even out. Like the drummer in Spinal Tap said, “the law of averages says you will survive.”

The Truth is Out There

Beware! There are Extraterrestrial Biological Entities hiding in plain site! They are among us! I want to believe! The Truth is Out There!

194/365
194/365

Get it???

Sorry… I’ve been watching The X Files lately. It was bound to rub off on my tiny little pea brain.

Carl Weathers

Sad to hear that Carl Weathers passed away. I first new him as Apollo Creed in the Rocky flicks. Later he was Chubbs in Happy Gilmore. Arguably the greatest sports movie of all time. Most recently he was Greef Karga in The Mandalorian. He was the guy who thought that Baby Yoda was going to eat him. ’Member that? Yeah, I ‘member.

I was looking forward to seeing more of him in that recently announced Mandalorian movie. It will be lesser without him.

Rest in peace, Carl Weathers.

I’m an Emotional Mess Today

This week has been rough. I didn’t expect it, but three days of window project turning the house upside down has messed me up in a big way. Being sick on Tuesday didn’t help. Waking up at 2:00am with a stomach ache today and not being able to get to sleep until around 4:00am certainly hasn’t helped either. After eight ounces of water and a protein bar this morning I feel a little better, but the stomach ache is still there, just milder than it was.

It got to Jen too, and both of us being on edge lead to pointless, stupid arguments and I hated it. Hate hate hate it. I can’t apologize enough for being an ass. Then today, after very little sleep last night and very little sleep every night this week and being broken in general for days, I watched the series finale of Star Trek Picard and let’s just say… I’ve been following these characters through TV shows and movies since 1987 when I was 16 years old and watched Encounter at Farpoint with my father… I’m not ashamed to admit it… but I balled my eyes out a few times. I am just an emotional train wreck right now.

Season three of The Mandalorian ended yesterday and it was wonderful. Season three of Picard ended today and it was wonderful times 10. I am just a sucker for story lines about parents loving their children that are designed to violently yank at your heartstrings and I am fine with that.

Then on top of all the other shit going on, both home improvement wise and science fiction wise, I went to punch in to work just now and realized I forgot my friggin’ laptop charger in the office yesterday. FFFFFUUUUUUUUU! Jen bailed me out with a sweet USB C charger so I can get through the day. I just hope when I go to the office after work tonight the charger is still on the desk I sat in yesterday. Cross your fingers, kids. I don’t want to have to buy another charger.

Okay. I am punched in to work now. Everything is well. I’m being added to meetings left and right so it’s starting to look like a busy day. Busy is good. Busy is better than too quiet… sometimes. I guess it depends on what kind of busyness it is, you know?

Right. Work. Post this drivel and get to work, Robert.

Taxi

Last week’s episode of The Mandalorian included a cameo from Christopher Lloyd. Everyone online made a reference to Doc Brown from Back to the Future being in Star Wars. I didn’t go there. I went to Jim Ignatowski from Taxi.

Then today while driving to Dad’s and back to give him his morning dose of meds I saw five, count ’em, five taxies on the highway.

Five taxies? In the age of Uber and Lyft?

There has to be a connection, right?

Imminent Star Wars Problem

I’m going to have a problem on Wednesday and I don’t know what to do.

Wednesday is our day to work in the office. I would greatly prefer that we were 100% remote work, but we’re not. Fortunately our nod to hybrid work is just one day a week. I can live with that.

Wednesday is also important for nerds as it is the day Disney+ releases new episodes of Star Wars shows. Currently there are two shows streaming new episodes each week. The Mandalorian, season three, and The Bad Batch, season two. Fortunately for me, my current morning routine involves waking up ridiculously early so I can get my daily exercise in has allowed me to watch the new episodes of both shows before getting ready for work and hitting the road with enough time to drive through 40 miles of gridlock and get to my desk by 9:00am.

This week though… the day after tomorrow to be precise… it’s going to be tough. It’s the season finale of The Bad Batch and they are releasing two episodes to wrap things up. That means there are three new episodes coming out Wednesday, one Mandalorian and two Bad Batch, and I don’t think I’ll have enough time to get through all three before work. Maybe if I get out of bed at 4:30am or so. That might work. Unfortunately, I have enough of a struggle getting up at 5:00 and getting up earlier than that is going to be next to impossible.

So how do I handle this? I will absolutely watch The Mandalorian episode first. The Bad Batch is a decent enough show, but it’s not even in the same stadium as The Mandalorian. That show would be appointment viewing if it aired at a specific time. The question is, do I watch the first of the two Bad Batch episodes and leave myself hanging through the work day, or do I punt on both of them until I get home from work. I honestly don’t know yet. I may not know until the actual moment arrives.

Talk about your 21st century nerd problem, right? Six year old me sitting in the theater watching Star Wars in 1977 had no clue how good things were going to get in the future. No clue at all.

Ahmed Best: Redeemed

Redeemed isn’t the right word, but it’s sort of right.

Did you see today’s new episode of The Mandalorian? Veteran Star Wars actor Ahmed Best plays a roll. You know who he played before, right? Right. Jar Jar Fucking Binks. The nadir or all Star Wars writing. The nadir of George Lucas’ career. The worst thing about any Star Wars story… Jar Jar Fucking Binks. Ahmed Best did the motion capture acting and the voice acting for Jar Jar in all three prequels.

Jar Jar being terrible was not Ahmed Best’s fault. He did the best he could with the terrible character he was given. I put all the blame on Lucas. Still, Mr Best has taken an ocean of abuse over the roll and it’s all unfairly as far as I can tell. Ahmed Best does not need to be redeemed. Jar Jar does, but shouldn’t ever. Ahmed Best is fine just being himself.

Having said that… his brief appearance in today’s episode gave him the opportunity to KICK ALL KINDS OF ASS. His new character is an utter bad ass. I looked him up online and apparently he’s been playing this character for a long time on a Star Wars themed kids game show. He plays the roll of a teacher teaching kids Jedi skills that they use in competitive games. I have never seen the show. I have never even heard of the show. All I know is that his character made the jump to a dramatic roll in completely heroic fashion.

So welcome back to the flagship, Sir. Welcome back to the Star Wars. Here’s hoping you get more screen time soon. There’s still more story there to be told (no spoilers). Good to have you on the team.

I Feel Let Down

I just signed up for ChatGPT. I wanted to have it write a blog post for me. I asked it to write something about the Bruins clinching a playoff spot yesterday. It wrote one, but all the facts were wrong. I feel like AI let me down in a big way. Well… by
“big way” I really mean “totally insignificant way.”

The Bruins clinched a playoff spot yesterday with a month still to go in the season. They are so far ahead of the pack that it’s unprecedented. Unfortunately this level of insane regular season success often doesn’t translate to playoff success. We can’t get overly confident this year.

I was hoping ChatGPT would write this up for me but of course it didn’t. Stupid artificial intelligence.

Change of subject.

We had all sorts of problems with our Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions yesterday. Our passwords suddenly didn’t work. We changed them all and then they didn’t work again. It was annoying. Jen straightened it out this morning so I am celebrating by watching Star Wars TV shows. I started by rewatching Wednesday’s Mandalorian episode, which then inspired me to find a list of Bo Katan episodes across all of the various shows. I’m up to the end of the final season of The Clone Wars now. So I am basically now watching the alternate view of Episode III.

Okay, for now I’m going to watch another episode, then I am going to make some lunch. I might make some for Harry too, if he wants.

Go Bruins.

Good TV

Yesterday’s episode of The Mandalorian was one that we will someday look back on as one of the best from the series. It was fantastic. Literally everything about it worked perfectly.

Today’s new episode of Star Trek Picard? Same thing. We’re going to look back at this one as a highlight not only of this show, but of Next Generation Star Trek in general. It was so good that I was sad when it ended.

It’s a good time to be a television viewer and a science fiction/fantasy/action adventure fan.

Leaving space behind, temporarily, the season one finale of Poker Face is out today too. I am really happy with that show. I’ve enjoyed every episode, and there are a couple of A+’s in there too (looking at you, episode nine and the one with the mom from Who’s the Boss, and episode one). I’m trying to get back into Extraordinary as well as I started watching that with Jen but she said she wasn’t interested anymore and let me finish it on my own. I still have 3-4 more episodes to go, but it’s a good show… just maybe not quite as good as Poker Face. Oh yeah, and let’s not forget that a new episode of The Bad Batch came out yesterday too and while that show has been hit or miss in season two, the two most recent episodes are both major hits. Yesterday’s was great.

In closing, let’s not forget that as I am listing off excellent TV shows that are currently airing that the single best show that’s out right now is going to wrap up it’s first season on Sunday. I’m talking about The Last of Us, of course. As good as all of these other shows are, and they absolutely are, The Last of Us leaves them all in the dust. It’s gut wrenching and emotional and exciting and terrifying and pretty much perfect and Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey deserve all of the awards. All of them.