Month: August 2019

I’ve tried to avoid the coverage of the Russo’s whirlwind tour for the re-release of Endgame. They are doing what all writers and director’s are encouraged to do–answer questions and spill secrets about their creation. They’ve said, for example, that the ambiguity of how Captain America wound up back in the present day is intentional. Whether or not this is true is another question entirely and, for the most part, unanswerable. What can be answered in my mind and finally put to rest is the question of this MCU arc. Is it worth the watch and even rewatch? Well, let’s go through.

Nah, let’s cut to the quick. It is worth it. You can stop reading now.

Still here? Let us continue:

It is worth it because of the mythology and the storytelling. It is worth it because of the backstory of the actors and the characters. It has value at every level–even the fan service level. I read a post recently by a writer who wondered aloud when and how fan service became synonymous with bad. Well, right away, my dear writer. A story should be consistent with itself and it’s characters and not become something different because fans like X, Y, and or Z. Fan service scenes like the passing of the torch from Black Panther to Spidey to the All-female team was fan service… But I digress..

The story is good and shows us the potential future. Sadly, it is a future I am less interested in, though that may be by design. This new phase is about a new era of characters that I don’t have the relationships with, so there is more freedom for the writers to direct them towards different audiences than my old butt. This may be the point.

My point is this: Marvel did a heck of a job and as I watch this final Avengers I recall all the films leading up to it and take joy in how the story came together to create a vision that I can appreciate for years to come.

I have to be awake in a few hours yet I am here spinning through my upcoming schedule and working to understand what I have going on and how to best arrange my time day to day in order to lead a happy and productive life that creates room for everyone and everything. Light work, right? Riiiiiiiiight….

In truth I have bitten off exactly as much as I can chew and I was up till right now considering taking on another class. I cannot do that. What I need to do is take advantage of the time I’ve allowed myself to actually do the work of my life and to relax and to live and to have moments for me. I have scheduled moments for everyone else, and I have a depth of happiness about that. Me time is generally relegated to when everyone else is gone. It usually entails Madden or Minecraft and me just decompressing. Occasionally I fall into ASMR and reset the ole brain pan, but overall the time allotted for me is whatever is leftover.

New schedule doesn’t do that. It segregates me time into writing, working out, and other. The other is described above or perhaps just me laying around reading a book. What truly matters is that it is there and not just leftovers i’ve scraped together from the time left from other people. That is a big step for me.

Some Thoughts:

1. Settling on the NFL network fantasy interface since my existing league is already there. Planning a great draft experience for the family league. Drafting on the beach could become a thing.

Since leaving my partner this afternoon my day has gone downhill with all the grace of a Rhino shot up with Ketamine. No, it hasn’t even gone that well. At least nobody died. Well, nobody died directly in our line of sight. The accident that shutdown the highway could’ve been that bad for all we know. I suppose a weird silver lining in all of this is that our day could’ve been worse. Much worse.

Still, it wasn’t good. My plan to be better has gone awry. I broke the kitchen. I broke the faucet (replacement scheduled for Sunday) and then I broke the microwave (replacement part–which may or may not work–scheduled for Saturday). This feels very much like one of those airline commercials where the guy remarks, “wanna get away?” Well, yes. Yes, please?

Of course given the cost of repairs and the fact that we will undoubtedly be eating out exclusively until the kitchen is repaired, I cannot afford to get away. I cannot afford to continue screwing up like this either. Heck, I cannot afford this screw up. Part of me wants to rush to the casino with all the cash I have and see if I can win enough to pay for everything. But I’ll lose and then be in a deeper hole. Such is the perils of life it seems.

In short, it did not go well.

Even my big plan of sitting with the kids and watching this really cool looking film was thwarted by their mom who put eyes on the same film and watched it with them. Well, at least the Giants won… Wait. let me check that final score… Yes, well that is one thing I can count on. That and the love of a good woman. That second part means that future days won’t all be like this.

Some Thoughts:

1. Been considering bringing up the question of gun violence to the class this semester. Not sure I want to open that can of worms. I feel it should be opened and could make for really interesting writing–narrative and research.
2. I think an undertone in this whole debate is that the gun lobby is trying to maintain their profit margin at all costs and hoping to actually grow that margin (businesses be like that). Meanwhile there are people who are actually arming themselves out of fear and preparedness for battle. What battle?
3. The Great Replacement, of course. If you haven’t read that post-academic piece then you should. It has become a rallying cry for the far-right. Maybe not the whole thing, but the talking points are there…

Thursday starts the weekend with my kids. That means 4:30 wake up calls, lots of football, lots of video games, and far less order and planning than is needed to live a stable existence. That last part has to change moving forward. I need to get in a routine with these boys that reminds them of the importance of planning and of family time and, equally important, chore time. They have managed to wreck their room on a fairly epic scale, so we need to set aside time this weekend for cleaning and organizing. They tell me each weekend that they have no clothes and each weekend I clean the clothes and set them in a pile in the middle of their room. The pile disappears but to where? They still claim a lack of clothes.

I think I will put some focus on them cleaning out their space this weekend. All things considered it is probably time they got their own rooms, though this seems highly unlikely to fly with any of them. All I can really demand is that the existing space be scaled down to the point where they have far less stuff cluttering up the place.

I will also put more emphasis on family time away from the video games. We will watch a movie together and have game time together. We are unlikely to do a family meal, because that simply isn’t what we do, but we do need to eat better, thus I need to shop better for the weekend in order to be ready as a dad.

This is a rant.

Kind of a rant, actually. More like the randomized musings of my mind suddenly focused and channeled into a singular problem that is the ever shifting landscape of post-cable television. While I understand that each channel is a business unto itself and expects to monetize said business, I do wish there was a single clearinghouse (a website perhaps) that allowed a consumer to see all the services and all the channels and find a way to come up with the best deal that does not force you to buy new services every time you want to watch a show…

Or a game.

This is about a game. This is about a Giants game. This is about the game this thursday pitting the Giants against the Jets in the first pre-season matchup. This is the battle for New York and it is playing live on the NFL Network. Meanwhile, I do not have a service that offers that network, so I gotta go buy one.

Or at least take advantage of a 5-7 day trial, depending on the service. So, what service do I get? The only one I have not checked out so far is Youtube. Out of the other services the best (read: only) option I’ve found that carries the NFL Network (see monetization commentary above) is Playstation Vue. So, that is where it is at for this weekend.

This lovely article by Cnet would’ve helped last year, but I had Sunday Ticket. I cut the cord and there is no new lifeline from Cnet to save me. So, what I gotta do is decide what to do moving forward. One week and one game at a time.

We’ve come a long way from the old ways and the old style of being and thinking and living. It could be said that we are evolving as a nation and as people. It can also be said that this is cyclical. We go through stretches of leadership and we go through stretches of darkness where it feels as though things are quite close to the end. Of course this is just one perspective. There is a large segment of the country that feels that things are just fine . A slice of that segment feels that things are even better than before and that the leadership change made us Great Again.

Some Thoughts:

1. Super sleepy. Didn’t blog or write today until right before bed. One of those days where I had opportunities to be more productive but passed.
2. Still a few minutes left to be writing and, honestly, I have nothing.
3. Experiencing random thought firings. I must be kind of hungry because one such firing was about iHop.
4. Time is almost up and that is good ’cause I said practically nothing tonight. That is the craziness of this exercise. I can write a thousand words on one day and struggle to hit fifteen words on another.

I woke up this morning with a strange thought in my head. I’d gone to bed thinking about football because it is Madden Season and by extension Youth Football Season is right around the corner. So, I found myself thinking about video game football and real football and really working both down to a basic equation. If you think about it, football is ultimately the same type of equation as the stock market. Each player represents a set of data. That data is used in relation to other data to reach a conclusion, which is a 1 (win) a zero (loss) or less common an error (tie). We pay these players so much because they are uniquely qualified to generate the data needed to push forward the equation (which we are balancing with another equation represented by the opposing team).

Video game simulations work this equation in their own minds compiling the data set used to represent each player in order to complete the balancing equation and produce the one or zero (depending on what side you are on) or to actually balance the equation–which is never really the goal.

That brings me to the stock market. Each stock represents a balancing equation. You have an output of 1 (stock gains) 0 (stock losses) or the equation balances (no movement)–which is never really the goal. In sum, both are zero-sum games in which millions of people are playing at various levels, and ultimately the results of the game shape our understanding of the data, the world around that data, and even ourselves.

Odd day. I took my boys to the place where they had their first exposure camp for their tryout for the Scottsdale Argonauts football team. This means I am officially out as a coach for my boys in tackle. It is anti-climactic. I wanted to bring them a ‘ship or something, but instead I bring them to a set of coaches who are responsible for the last six State Championship High school teams. The Saguaro staff is serious and does well to bring some of that flare to their pipeline program. I’m looking forward to what my boys can do on a squad like that. It feels like neither will be the best on the team and yet feels like both have the ability to be starters. I hope the youngest doesn’t get shuffled back to Offensive Line where he is useless and angry as a player. His speed is best served on the edge (blitzing–though he doesn’t actually play that role and he should) and as a Powerback where he can use his speed and strength to create mismatches on D.

Otherwise I spent my day partially in the pool and partially playing a ton of Madden. I’ve simmed through the better part of two seasons building a roster from the ground up and now it is time to reap the rewards of that work. Presently those rewards are a 3-2 season and 4th in the AFC East with my Brooklyn Bulls. I’m not pleased about it, but I still feel we can make a late season push to the playoffs–especially if we can split with the Jets (nemesis team) and take two from the Patriots.

Finally, I’m getting closer to going back to work full time and that has my mind churning about how to get these classes as interesting and exciting as possible –for my benefit. I gotta keep it fresh and fun to stay engaged. This work environment brings me no joy otherwise.

Outside the rain is falling in sheets and lightning is snapping in the distance. It is beautiful; a far cry from the desert of this morning and of most days.

Not good.

Some Thoughts:

1. Okay so I am still watching the darn thing. I think that says more about me than it does about the show. I mean I nearly finished the first season of In Between and that was awful. There is a lot of awful on Netflix. The general concept of throw everything at the wall and see what sticks applies here. They have a great deal that just falls to the ground.
2. I mean it is trope-tastic. Everyone on the show is super hot and fit. The fit part makes sense, because they are a space expedition, but there is the one fat guy who throws off that strangely shaped hypothesis. Basically it is everything I ever thought could possibly trope up in one show. There’s the dude who has constant epiphanies, there is the horror dream where the character’s true darkness is revealed, there is the contrived drama every episode… Basically it sucks.
3. I’m only still talking about it because I have to write for 10 minutes and the blog is about this. Just about this.
4. At least it was.
5. I’m going to take a moment to reflect on the slate of teachers I’m surrounded by at ASU. Bunch of certified A-listers… does that mean I’m a future A-lister? I like the way that sounds.

Thinking about the college years as I sit at my office desk. Mr. Nightmare is playing in the background. He is also talking about the college years and this particular set of horror stories remind me of college. Not in the horrifying way he intends, but as a different phase of life. Specifically, how I related to the world. How I thought about living conditions, drinking, friendships, and even how I spend my time.

All of that has changed now. Having a family has introduced me to the world of having and needing a crapload of stuff. I live between two houses and neither are below 2000 sq ft. This leads to a lot of stuff. I spent my time home tonight cleaning and figuring out how to fix stuff that is broken around the house. I spent money all day on similar projects on the other house. I love it. I love the happy feeling of moving in and experiencing the growth of a home and the hum of the people in it. I was less about that life in the college years–sure my room was a hangout, but it was as if I was one of those hanging and not the arbiter of such things.

I suppose this is what it means to grow up.

Some Thoughts:

1. Exhausted.
2. Trying a whiskey sour as a nightcap simply because I saw the mix in the cupboard. Really sweet. Too sweet. I shall be adding more whiskey to the mix post blog. That ought to lead to a good night’s sleep.
3. Yes, I know it won’t but I’m going to believe that happy lie.