Captain Marvel

Shyam and I wandered out to catch Captain Marvel last night.  In a couple words, we enjoyed it.

A few thoughts (Spoiler Warning, and whatnot):

• I enjoyed the Brie Larson/Samuel Jackson dynamic.  Lots of good give and take, there.  Impeccable timing between the two.
• I enjoyed getting to see Samuel Jackson in a Marvel movie not being such a frigging heavy.  When Jackson showed up again in Iron Man 2, his Nick Fury was fun and funny.  The Fury that shows up in the Whedon and Russo Marvel flicks is grim, and not a lot of fun to watch....there's no meat there for him to grab on to, even in Winter Soldier.  
• Jackson's gasp when the extent of the Flerken is revealed is comic gold.  I could watch that a million times....
• Kudos for making Ben Mendelsohn and the Skrulls three-dimensional.  Plus, my mind KEPT doing the thing about "Don't trust Skrulls" and "Don't trust Ben Mendelsohn's character" over and over.  
• The red and gold Captain Marvel color shift when Carol decides to redesign her costume as a nod to Shazam was a nice touch.
• I enjoyed how bright the movie seemed.  It was a stark contrast to the mid-credits scene, where Carol shows up at the Avengers HQ.  I'm sure that the color palate choice for all the Endgame stuff has been a conscious choice.  It's just pretty harsh how dark it looked, compared to the end of Captain Marvel.
• Damn, Marvel.  You can make a cat puking entertaining.  I watch that shit several times a year, and it's not nearly so entertaining.....

Thoughts

Just a few random thoughts.

We watched the movie First Reformed last night.  This past year (three years?) have been rough for trying to catch movies.  We'd intended to catch it when it was in Downtown West last year, but never made it up.  It's streaming, and we sat for it last night.  Great performance from Ethan Hawke.  I am not mature enough, however, to not throwback to an Amazing Jonathan bit near the movie's climax.....

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After the movie last night, I found out that a former co-worker was killed this week.  Jessica Whaley wasn't typical, inasmuch as there are a lot of employees who come and go, and as soon as they're gone, I don't give them a second thought.

Jessica was different.  I always thought of her as something of a wandering spirit.  She was kind, and had a weird sense of humor, which is where we seemed to connect.   Her mind was usually other places, though.  She had a flighty air that some mistook for a lack of intelligence.  She had a decent head on her shoulders, but sometimes seemed that she'd lost her way.  This didn't always lead to being a model employee.  Still, she was very kind, and she was great with kids, and I was always rooting for her to find her path.

I hate that it ended so soon, and in this way.  There has been an arrest....

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Tonight is the second anniversary of my Dad's passing.

He collapsed at home somewhere around 10:45 or so.  I was closing the store that night.  Mom called to let me know ambulances were on the way, but that he wasn't breathing, and that he was probably gone.  I made it to their house by 11:20.   EMT's were working on him in the ambulance by then.  They told us they'd gotten a pulse back, and were taking him to the hospital.

We went to the hospital, we waited for two hours in the waiting room.  He was pronounced dead just after midnight.  We weren't told until after two.  That still grinds my ass a bit, our sitting there for two hours, tortured.  We had to ask before anybody could be assed to come tell us anything.

That was the toughest week I'd ever gone through.  I still think of Dad daily.  There have been several times over the past year that I wish he were still here, just so I could talk to him, bounce some of the thoughts rattling around in my head about work, about life.

I don't know how two years passes so quickly.

Two Days Off? In a Row?

Today is the second day of a weekend off.

The first such that isn't associated with a vacation since September.

Yep.  That's great, isn't it?