Bryce Moore's Blog, page 47

Movie Review: Operation Mincemeat

At some point, I lost track of most of the new movies coming out. I think it’s because I knew I wasn’t going to see them in the theater, so why not just wait until they made it to one of my streaming platforms? The disadvantage to this is that I have no idea what many of the new movies are about. Many just didn’t make it onto my radar at all. The good news is that I can find movies I haven’t heard of at all, and then be pleasantly surprised.

Operation Mincemeat came out last year. It stars Colin Firth in a story based on a real life incident in World War II. The Allies needed to invade Italy, and the only logical place to do it was in Sardinia. Hitler knew this, so Sardinia was well defended. What the Allies needed to do, then, is to convince Hitler that they were actually going to invade somewhere else, so that he’d move his defenses there, instead. To convince him of this, they came up with an idea of having a body wash ashore carrying top secret documents that detailed the Greece invasion. But it’s one thing to have an idea. Making it work is entirely different.

I really enjoyed the movie. It had solid acting, and it was a real pleasure watching as these different characters worked through scenarios to try and guess what the Nazis would do in response to their actions. (If we do X, they’ll do Y, but they might anticipate us doing X, so we should do Z, etc.) Yes, we all know that ultimately Hitler lost the war, but that doesn’t take away from the tension of this singular incident. Everyone who watched it with me had a great time.

As a quick aside, I wanted to speak up in favor of good, but not great, movies and media. It’s something I have to remind myself from time to time. I’ll look through reviews, searching for something that’s highly rated. This one is a 6.6 on IMDB, and I debated watching it. The thing is, at that number, it could be a 5 or a 6 for me, in which case I’d rather just avoid it, or it could be a 7 or an 8, in which case I’d have a good time watching it.

Also, if I watch too many of the same kind of movie, it just gets . . . boring. I’ll call in the Pixar Problem. Pixar generally makes really good movies. Fantastic movies. They’re excellent produced, heartwarming, funny, and worth watching. But I’m getting to the point that I just don’t really care about Pixar movies coming out. It almost feels formulaic to me by now. I don’t know how they move past that. It’s not the CGI; it’s the way their stories are constructed.

Yes, I get it. I’m complaining that a movie studio is making movies that are too good. But if they make enough of them, close together, then they all sort of drown each other out. Marvel is playing very near that territory now. When you feel like you’ve seen the movie before you even watch the movie, you lose the desire to watch it at all.

In any case, back to Operation Mincemeat. It’s on Netflix right now. 8/10. Check it out.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this PERFECT PLACE TO DIE Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Tomas: Graduation Day

So Tomas went and graduated from high school yesterday. It was a gorgeous day. Puffy clouds. Mid-seventies. A light breeze. The ceremony took about an hour, and he and the other graduating Fiddlers played a set as part of the festivities. He’s got a busy summer ahead of him: heading to Europe for a month next week with Denisa and the girls, and then he’s got a week of Fiddle Camp in August. After that, it’s “off” to the home MTC on September 19th, the Provo MTC on October 5th, and then Slovakia on November 22nd, where he’ll be until fall of 2024. At that point, it’s BYU for mechanical engineering. He ended up graduating magna cum laude, and he’s done a great job in high school. We’re very proud of him.

I’ve enjoyed seeing people post pictures from their graduates’ lives, and I thought I might do the same thing today, giving a bit of a “best of” selection of blog posts I’ve written about Tomas over the years. I’ve been blogging almost every day for most of his life, so I should have more than enough to choose from. Not sure who else will find this interesting, but I know I will, so here we go:

One of my first posts ever. Tomas’s original poem, entitled, “Cheetah, who burped in your ear?”I wrote on his fifth birthday. “He’s my fellow theme park explorer, my video game partner in crime, my super spy agent collaborator, and I love the fact that he loves to spend time with me.”I used to take him to work with me on half days. He had a great time at the library, culminating in this post from 2009, 2 years after I’d been working here. “You know, Dad, when I grow up, I think I’ll be a librarian at this library, too. That way we could work together every day.”He had a chat session with my sister, Gretel, before he went to school at all. His typing and spelling skills, I’m proud to say, have improved greatly.Here’s the entry I wrote on his first day of Kindergarten, along with a report back from him on how it went. He was five.How about when he lost his first tooth? That was way more traumatic than it should have been.I used to write a journal with him off and on when he was little. Here’s a selection of journal entries from when he was six years old.He had his first ski lesson in 2011. He’s a regular pro at this point, ready to go down just about anything.Here’s his first story, written in third grade. And his first violin concert, in 2013. Still playing today and going strong.He liked that experience so much, he decided to stick with violin, despite my best efforts to win him over to woodwinds. He made the right choice.Still one of my favorite birthday presents of all time. Still on my desk.Reflections I made when he finished fourth grade.Remember when I helped him clean his room when he was ten, and I had a long talk with him about how important that was, and how I hoped I didn’t have to help him again? Neither does he.Few conversations I’ve had in my life have been as painful as one I had with Tomas back in 2014. He was nine. It was a bit before Christmas. I’ll let you fill in the blanks.Here’s the entry from the fateful day when he knocked out his front tooth while ice skating.How about that time his braces started to carve holes in his cheeks?I make him mow the lawn for the first time. Mwa ha ha!A report on his eleventh birthday.On his love for Baman Piderman.He got a concussion skiing back in 2015. That wasn’t a fun day.In which the two of us go on a quest for a pumpkin in Minecraft.Who can forget our first foray into Pokemon Go, back in 2016? He’s still playing, for the record.Some thoughts by me on how tricky parenting can be, and how it changes as kids get older. He was 12 . . .He turns 13, and is very focused on building his YouTube viewership for his Minecraft channel.

Honestly, I could do this for a long time. I’m just up to his 13th birthday, and there are already a ton of posts I’ve skipped over. After his 13th birthday, I noticed many of my posts about him changed to “this is what Tomas is doing” to “this is what I think about what Tomas is doing.” Instead of talking all about how he’s in sports, I talked about what it was like to be a sports parent. I think it’s the transition I had to make to be able to give him space online. He didn’t need his dad constantly telling people what he was up to, but I could still talk about what I personally was going through.

In any case, I’m out of time for today. This was fun to look back, and I hope you enjoyed it as well. Tomas, ya done good, and I know you have lots more good in front of you. Congratulations!

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this PERFECT PLACE TO DIE Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

On the Value of Long(ish) Car Rides

When the pandemic hit, one of the big changes I went through was that suddenly I stopped driving around the state. Up until then, I had a number of meetings I’d drive to on a regular basis, and since I live in a fairly remote spot in the state, those drives were typically an hour or more, one way. For church, I had a 1.5 hour drive 2-3 times each month. There was another one of the same for the university library system, a 45 minute one for MLA, and then multiple one off meetings that would be scattered here and there. All told, I was in the car for around 8-10 hours a month, I’d guess. Almost always by myself.

Big deal, right? The pandemic just meant I was in my home office for looooooong stretches by myself every day, so that shouldn’t have made a real difference. Except now that I’m getting back into the groove of having some work-related driving again, I really do notice it.

There’s something for me about sitting in a car, driving, that’s almost meditative. I have all that time when my brain is occupied, but not to the point that I can’t sit and think about other things. What do I think about? All sorts of stuff. From what’s going to happen next in my latest novel to how to handle tricky work situations to what I can do help my kids. I think up blog post topics, or think back on different experiences I’ve had in life.

It’s different than sitting alone in my office or at home, mainly because any time at just around the house or at work, there are other things that I should be doing. Simply thinking feels somehow far less efficient, and I typically feel guilty for not being more effective. But when I’m in the car, that’s time that I can’t be doing anything else. No guilt involved!

And really, just thinking shouldn’t be looked at as a waste of time. Don’t get me wrong: there comes a time for thinking to end and action to begin, but taking the time to properly think through a problem can save so much time and effort compared to rushing in with your gut instinct. I have acted differently and changed my mind because of some of the thoughts I’ve had in those car rides over time. They were a time to clear my head and make sure I had a handle on everything going on around me. Losing out on that time made it easier for me to feel harried and out of sorts.

But didn’t I have that same time when I was stuck in my home office? No. It didn’t feel the same, probably because I felt like I should be doing something other than think. Again, it’s the difference between feeling like I’m spinning my wheels (see what I did there?) and actually doing something worthwhile.

No doubt the same could be said for other ways to pass the time. I’ve talked to knitters who say the same thing. Hobbies like painting likely scratch the same itch, too. Anything that puts your mind into a relatively restful state, allowing your thoughts to go where they want.

Anyway. Just a thought that occurred to me this morning that I thought I’d share.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this PERFECT PLACE TO DIE Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Doing More with What You Have

I’ve had a surround sound system for a good long while now. I upgraded the speakers a couple of years ago, and I was debating upgrading the receiver as well. (For those of you who don’t speak Home Theater, with a surround sound system, you plug all of the things you’re going to play (Apple TV, Playstation, Switch, or whatever) into a central box, called a receiver. You also hook up whatever you’re going to use to watch the content, such a projector. The speakers hook into the receiver, and it takes care of all the work, taking in the signals from the players and divvying them out to the projector and speakers.) However, the receiver I have right now seemed fine enough. (It’s a 7.1 set up, which means a center speaker for voice, a left and right speaker at the front of the room, a left and right at the back, a left and right on the sides, and a subwoofer for the bass.) Sure, there are newer ones out there. There are now some that handle speakers above you, and mine only handles up to 1080p resolution, while there are some that now handle 4k and in extreme cases 8k. (I’m going to stop explaining things at this point, because I assume those of you who really want to know have already headed over to Google to find an actual guide, and the rest of you are just bored.)

In any case.

I decided to stick with what I have for a receiver mainly because I think prices will come down in the next few years as more capabilities open up. But knowing I was going to stick with what I had, I decided to see if I could set up the receiver to get the most out of it that I could. It turns out that with a fair bit of research and some tweaking on the receiver end and on the Apple TV and other players’ ends, I really was able to up my game. The surround sound system works much better, and all it took was knowing which settings to change.

This actually reminds me of one of my favorite IT support stories. Back in the day, I ran the IT “department” for a small-sized business that had offices across the globe. (I was the only IT guy, so it’s not like it was really a department.) I would regularly have to troubleshoot with people who were across the country, and many of them had varying degrees of familiarity with technology.

One time, I was helping a man in the Texas office, and he was complaining about how he never got good technology. Case in point? He was still working on a black and white computer screen when everyone else had color. (This was back in 1996.) I agreed with him that was something we should try and fix, and I went to the higher ups with the request. They looked at what they’d ordered him, and they confusedly told me that they’d ordered a color monitor for him more than two years ago.

I got back on the phone, and I explained the situation. He was incensed. He ought to know if he had a color screen or not, since he was the one sitting in front of the computer all this time. This wasn’t my first IT rodeo, so I told him to do some basic steps, just to humor me.

“Go to the settings menu, and select ‘Monitors,'” I told him.

“Settings? Let’s see . . . okay. I’m there.”

“Great. You should see something on there that says ‘Color.'”

“Yup. It’s right here, and it says ‘black and white,’ just like I’ve been saying.”

“Okay,” I said. “Click it, and tell me what you see.”

“It says ‘Black and white,’ ‘Sixteen colors,’ ‘Thousands of colors,’ and ‘Millions of colors.'”

“Good. Click on ‘Millions of colors.'”

There was complete silence on the other end of the line, followed a few seconds later by, “Thanks.” He hung up.

For two years, he’d been using a color monitor as a black and white monitor, simply because he didn’t know how to make that simple change. This is a concept I’ve returned to multiple times over the course of my life, so I suppose it’s not as if his mistake was made in vain. There are so many times when I realize I can do more or be better at something just by changing the way I’m doing it. Too often, I see people ingrained in The Way Things Have Been Done. They don’t like to consider other options, and they can even get irritated if anyone makes a suggestion to help them.

I try not to be like that. If someone knows a better way to do something, I’m all for hearing them out. True, sometimes it won’t work for me, but I try to at least fully consider the possibility that it might. It’s too easy to just decide to dismiss something, because change is difficult. Making the tweak to my surround sound system took three or four hours of research and then a fair bit of fiddling. It would have been easier to just leave it alone, but now that I’ve spent that time, I get to enjoy my home theater system that much more.

And that’s your food for thought for today. Happy Wednesday, everybody!

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this PERFECT PLACE TO DIE Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

TV Review: Moon Knight

We live in a pretty crazy time, when it comes to television series. It feels like there’s always something new coming out that I really want to see, and if I miss out on one show, then there’s a good chance I won’t get back to it, just because there are so many other things coming down the pipeline. I’m not really complaining; having a wealth of riches is a problem you like to have. But one of the consequences of this is that I tend to rely on word of mouth when it comes to deciding what I want to spend my time on. If I hear enough good things, I watch. If the buzz turns sour, I avoid.

Moon Knight was a show I’d been looking forward to. I’ve enjoyed the other Marvel offerings on Disney+ so far, so why wouldn’t I give this one a shot? Except then I heard some decidedly bad things about the show. It had been billed as being grittier than the other Disney Marvel shows, and fans were loudly decrying that claim. To listen to some of the loudest, the show was too tame, with bad special effects, and a boring plot.

Seeing as how I had some issues with some of the Book of Boba Fett’s pacing and story choices, this buzz around Moon Knight was definitely believable. For a while, I debated even watching the show at all, but I finally decided to go for it, and we watched it with Tomas and Daniela.

I’m very glad we did. I enjoyed it from start to finish, and I have no real complaints about the show. The effects were great, the story was strong and mysterious, and the acting was top notch. It wasn’t hyper violent or anything. In line with most Marvel movies, really. Perhaps it got some people’s expectations to go in a certain way, and when it didn’t do that, there was a backlash.

It’s basically the Egyptian flavored Marvel movie. Thor among the pyramids, though that’s not really accurate at all. The show runs in part on mystery, so I don’t really want to talk about the plot too much. Oscar Isaac plays a down on his luck museum gift store attendant. He loves the exhibits on ancient Egypt, but he doesn’t have the qualifications to work outside the gift shop. Also, he’s been having issues sleep walking . . .

Isaac does a really great job in the show, and watching him navigate the hand that’s dealt to him was one of the best things about it. Overall, I gave it an 7.5/10. It tends to suffer from Marvel-itis, a disease similar to Pixar-itis. When a company has a lot of experience making good, solid shows and movies, you stop really being able to appreciate just how good the shows and movies are.

So why all the hate on the show? Some of it is likely because some people were expecting over the top violence and were disappointed, but I think another significant part of it is that the show actually tries to break Marvel into some more diverse casting and locations. Other than Black Panther.

It’s sad and depressing, but it seems like there are some very vocal pockets of fandom that are dead set against diversity. Any attempts to diversify a franchise are met with cries of derision and outrage. Black characters in Star Wars? How dare they! A black Heimdall? Sacrilege! And then there’s the following Twitter screeds and social media attacks on the actors behind those portrayals. The hissy fit some people had over Rose in The Last Jedi is just ridiculous.

In the end, I’d say give the show a shot if you like Marvel. It’s only 6 episodes long, and it’s a fun ride. Don’t listen to the naysayers, and just enjoy yourself.

Isn’t that what pop culture is all about?

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this PERFECT PLACE TO DIE Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Diablo Immortal: First Impressions

Last week Blizzard released a new Diablo version for mobile phones. (They’ve actually also released a PC version of it, but I haven’t tried it. The game is designed for mobile.) Being a pretty big Diablo fan, I had low expectations (because it’s a mobile game), but I checked it out anyway. The word on the street heading into it was pretty negative. Diablo fans were dismissive of the game when it was first announced, saying they wanted a “real” game. And then it came out the the game would be funded through micro-transactions, which are far from popular among the gamer crowd, even if they’re often par for the course on mobile.

But hey: it was free! It was worth a download and a quick run around the block.

Honestly, I’ve had a complete blast with the game so far. At its heart, Diablo (for me) is pretty straightforward. You go around fighting and killing enemies, hoping to get cool items, that will help you kill more enemies and get better items. The cycle repeats, and that’s it.

Diablo Immortal offers a slew of different ways to do that basic formula. There are quests. There’s a storyline. There are rift runs (which are self-contained dungeons that take about three minutes to beat). There’s a PVP system. And then when it comes to upgrade, there’s a ton of other ways to do that. Upgrade items. Upgrade gems. Upgrade things items go into. Upgrade your PVP skills. Basically, you can hop on the game and have a fun time in just a few minutes. It’s great.

Now, it’s true that the game has a pretty heavy pay to win side to it. You can buy items that will get you better stuff, using money instead of your time. And (obviously) that’s much easier and quicker than killing lots of things over and over. So there are already players out there that are much much more powerful than my character. However, that was always the case for me. No matter how powerful your items are, you’re still just doing the same thing: running around killing monsters that are just difficult enough for you to kill. Paying money to fast forward that process . . . doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. It might make a difference in PVP, but we’ll see. I guess if they have characters of all levels playing each other, then it’s an issue, because free players will get steamrolled. But if they do it based on item level, then that’s not an issue.

But even assuming PVP is a mess, it was always a mess for me. I never played PVP, because I didn’t have time to make really strong builds. I just would go on and play for fun. For that, Diablo Immortal is pretty perfect.

The other significant change is that they’ve made it more of an MMORPG, so you see other people running around killing stuff while you’re out and about. That took a bit of getting used to, but in the end it doesn’t have a huge impact on me. If you want to find a group of people to play with, the game makes that very simple. (Playing with more people means you get better loot.) But you can also just ignore it and be fine. I haven’t seen any griefing yet.

Will I stick with this game for forever? No clue, but if they release updates regularly, then I could see me doing it. The free model of the game is pretty much exactly what I want from Diablo. One could make the argument that the “pay to have a chance of winning cool loot” model is preying on people who are prone to having bad gambling habits. But let’s be honest: my other game of choice (Magic: The Gathering) is built around the same thing. If you’re playing this game, I encourage you to just not pay for anything. I did buy the battle pass for $5, because I like those, but that’s $5 every month or so. I’ve heard of some people who have already spent tens of thousands of dollars on the game.

Don’t do that, and if you think you’re the kind of person who might do that . . . don’t play this game.

But if you just want casual Diablo fun wherever you go, then download Immortal and enjoy. (And let me know–maybe we could kill some monsters together.)

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this PERFECT PLACE TO DIE Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Cell Phones Abroad: Help?

Last time I went to Europe, I definitely learned one thing above anything else: using Verizon’s “international plan” option is a complete and utter rip off. They might have tweaked it some since, but at the time, it was incredibly confusing. There was a $10/day option, but there was also a monthly option, but it was just for the calendar month (as I recall). And Denisa and I were both trying to use our phones abroad. In the end, we stopped using hers after a bit and just used mine, but we still ended up paying for both the monthly and the daily plan because of a screw up on our end, and . . .

I’m not doing that again.

My sister, on the other hand, waltzed into Hungary, picked up a European SIM card, and used her phone to her heart’s content for the whole trip, all for about $40. I’ll have what she’s having, thanks very much. But naturally, as I’m going to look through the options at the moment, there are just a ton of them, and it’s a bit bewildering if you haven’t done it before.

We both have iPhones, and I’m pretty sure they’re unlocked, and I’m almost positive they’ll work on European mobile platforms. She’ll be flying into the Czech Republic. I’ll be flying in to Austria. Then we’ll both be in Slovakia and Italy. There are options to buy SIM cards online and have them shipped to America before you go. There are options to buy them in the country. There are different carriers, different plans, different everything.

I’m all for choices, but when I get too many of them, my head starts to spin. That’s where you come in.

Have any of you done this recently? Do you have any words of wisdom or warning? If I’m going to get SIM cards sent to us here in the US, I probably better get on that right away. If we’re waiting to buy until we’re in the country, then it’s not as big of a deal.

Thanks in advance for any and all bits of advice.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this PERFECT PLACE TO DIE Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Once More into the Decluttering Fray

When it came time for our kitchen renovation to begin, we had a number of items in the current kitchen that needed to be rehoused while the construction happened. And in true Bryce fashion, I handled that by . . . throwing all of those items into the family room next door. They remained there throughout the long reconstruction process, but when that was all over, I put them right back where they belonged, because I’m awesome.

Ha. No.

I left them there, untouched, because I had lots of other things to do. And they’ve stayed there and stayed there and stayed there, and every time I thought about cleaning the room out, I wilted in the face of just how bad it was. I didn’t know where to begin. Everything was coated in construction dust, and there were a ton of things in there that I didn’t know what to do with. This would be a job that Denisa and I would have to do together.

It probably would have stayed that way indefinitely, except I was asked to play the piano in church on Sunday. The regular pianist would be away, and I needed to pinch hit for a single song. That’s all fine and good, except I hadn’t touched a piano key in years. And where was my piano? In the middle of the mess that was my family room. So in the end, my desire to practice (so I didn’t look like too big of an idiot in public) overcame my reluctance to start on that decluttering job.

Saturday, Denisa and I spent most of the day cleaning. We threw out three big trash bags of stuff, and made a huge pile of other stuff to be given away. We swept and wiped and mopped and scrubbed (and practiced the piano). And the room went from a place where you literally couldn’t sit down to a place that’s close to what it was like before. There are still some piles that need to be gone through, but it was a huge improvement.

I kept that momentum going the next two days, working on the kitchen itself. Since we’d just been putting stuff anywhere into it as we went, there’s a lot of efficiency lost in terms of storage. And it was also easier just to put something somewhere instead of actually decide if we needed it or not. I’ve been making a lot of those decisions, as well.

In the end, it was a very helpful reminder that no matter how hard the job, starting it is often the hardest part. Once you’ve got even a smidge of momentum, things begin to get easier. I took photo and video to track the progress, but Denisa made me swear never to share it publicly, since the room looked as bad as it did. Sorry, folks.

(As for playing the piano, I did well enough. Made some flubs right at the beginning, since I was nervous and it had been so long since I’d played in public, but it went fine after that.)

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this PERFECT PLACE TO DIE Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Unpopular Opinion: Blade Runner Hasn’t Aged Well

I got in hot water in some circles with my review of 2001 a while back, but I clearly haven’t learned my lesson when it comes to revisiting old science fiction classics. I watched Blade Runner for the second time a few nights ago, promising Denisa that it was a solid movie. It’s really highly rated on IMDB. It’s got a great cast. It’s influential. You can’t go wrong, right?

Wrong.

It suffers from some of the same problems 2001 did. The pacing is just. So. Slow. And there are times when the movie feels willfully obtuse. Again, I think some of the difference here is that back when it came out in 1982, showing these cool environments and potential futures was just fascinating in and of itself. Special effects were miles away from where they are now, and so much of this stuff was just fresh and fascinating. Fast forward forty years, and the effects have been left so far behind, watching them just to be amazed isn’t enough to keep my interest.

Yes, I can see how the movie’s influential, and I can appreciate where it stands in the long lineage of science fiction films. The concept is still great, and I can (in theory) really get behind a sci-fi noir film. But there are many noir movies that are still fantastic today, and that’s mainly because they focused on story and character instead of flashy effects. I’m not saying Blade Runner doesn’t have either, but both its story and its characters are overshadowed by attempts to make things feel more “future-ish.” As if the assumption was that in the future, people would now be pretty strange across the board. When people don’t act like people, but like caricatures, I lose a fair bit of interest in the movie.

It didn’t help that I watched the “Final Cut” as well. There’s a reason the movie felt much more violent than it did when I saw it before. That was added into the movie, and it didn’t really make it any better, and arguably made it worse.

One of the main reasons I watched the movie was so that I could watch Blade Runner 2049 and understand it, but after such a poor experience with the original, I’m pretty gun shy about the sequel. Should I still give it a shot? Because I gave this one only about a 6, and that was me being super generous and giving it some bonus points for its place in history. I probably ought to bump it down to a 4 or even a 3. Checking my watch and pausing it to see how much time is left is rarely a sign of a movie I just adore.

Tell me why I’m wrong.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this PERFECT PLACE TO DIE Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Picking Yourself Up and Moving On

I remember there was a time, back in the days of yore, when I felt like things were going pretty smoothly, all told, and I wondered when they all might go pear-shaped. Because they always do, don’t they? Sooner or later, something always comes up that knocks you off balance, and it takes some time to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and continue onward.

But man, the past two years have felt like one long series of blows from any and every angle, and I’m sure it’s the same for all of you. Regardless of your political leanings, between the 2020 election, COVID, vaccination debates, masking debates, racial protests, inflation, war in Europe, and now mass shootings, it feels like I’m getting way too much practice at resilience. We’re all affected by all of those, and anyone who says they aren’t is so deep in denial they need a flashlight and pickaxe to find their way out.

So there are times when I sit here in front of my blank computer screen, wondering what in the world I can write about now. How do I go from yesterday’s post about how upsetting the Uvalde shootings were, to some fluff piece about my top ten breakfast cereals? Things like that make so much of what I do, think about, and enjoy just feel like sawdust in my mouth. How should I be sitting around watching movies and playing video games when so many people are going through such hell?

There are a few ways I’ve learned to respond to it. First off, I take my responsibility as a parent seriously, and I try my hardest to create a home environment where my kids can be happy and feel loved. And that doesn’t happen by brooding non-stop about the injustices in the world. Not that they don’t know those exist, and not that they won’t experience some of those as they grow up, but I’d like them to be able to look back on their childhood and have as positive of memories as I can give them.

The other day, I was cleaning up my bedroom, and I came across a letter MC had written me toward the end of 2020. In it, she talked about how frustrated she was with COVID and all the mess that caused, but she also talked about how much she loved 2020. She got a dog. She had time to play games with me and her family. She played with her friends. We went on some family vacations. She had a great Christmas. There were so many things she could have focused on to say just how awful a year she’d lived through, but she didn’t do that. She acknowledged the bad, but focused on the good, and I think that’s a wonderful pattern to follow.

I’m not saying we should ignore everything that’s happening, and that we’re not all on the line to one extent or the other to try and fix things, but while we do that, we can also focus on the positive. Tomas was named Student of the Month today. A month or so ago, Daniela got that award at her school. Denisa took dandelion pictures with the girls a few days ago. We’re planning our trip to Europe. And yes, I’m watching movies and television.

I can’t live my life at a 10/10 anxiety level all the time. I will be worthless at the end of it all if I do that. So if there’s one thing 2020+ has taught me, it’s how to move forward in spite of everything that’s going on around me. How to take pleasure in the moment and plan for the future as best I can. How to build in time for myself, my family, and my friends. Being miserable doesn’t cure anything. Dwelling on depression only makes me more depressed.

So sure, I’ll take today to not write about my favorite Bill Murray movies, or the latest show I’m watching, but tomorrow, I’m going to get right back at it. Thanks for hanging around.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this PERFECT PLACE TO DIE Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.