Random Thoughts

 Sitting here on a lovely late summer afternoon, watching the Cubs clinch a spot in the postseason.  First time since 2020, the teevee tells me, though it feels longer.  That stretch from 2015-2020 was special.  And it was too easy to take for granted.  I think I bullshitted myself into thinking the rebuilding following the dismantling of 2021 wouldn't take long.

Damn, it's felt long.

Not gonna count any chickens before they hatch.  I haven't felt confident about this team's ability to score runs since before the All-Star Break.  And indeed, they've been just a few games over .500 since mid-June.  They've shown flashes of it the last week, but largely we're leaning on Shota, Cade Horton and Matthew Boyd (with Boyd looking very, very tired his last couple or three outings, including his start this afternoon), and a bullpen that's turned itself around nicely since being the only big question mark early in the season.

But I also feel like there's nobody entering this postseason on the National League side that is locked and loaded, that is unbeatable.  Milwaukee has regressed from superhuman the last few weeks, and nobody seems to want to win the West.  I don't think the Mets have the pitching.  The Phillies have looked alive the last couple weeks, but they can fade just as quickly.  It's just gonna take somebody getting hot.

Seiya was back in the lineup.  Hoping Kyle Tucker comes back by this weekend.

Maybe.

Just maybe.....

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Took Thomas to see the movie The Long Walk, which adapts Stephen King's novel (written as Richard Bachman).  It's been one of my favorite novels for a while.

The flick is a pretty solid adaptation of the novel.

It's fucking brutal.

Especially after the week we had in America last week.

It's good.

But it might be one of those movies I don't watch again for another several years.....

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My favorite Robert Redford Movies:

1.  The Sting

2.  The Natural

3.  Captain America:  Winter Soldier

4.  All is Lost

5.  Sneakers

6.  Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid

7.  A Walk in the Woods

Putting Winter Soldier up there is probably blasphemy to some.  But it's a good flick, and he's good in it.

All is Lost is a great flick, and I once owned it on DVD, but I don't have it anymore.  I'm thinking I loaned it to my buddy Marty, who died.

In fact, I'm sure of it.

I haven't thought about that DVD in 7 years, until news that Redford passed.

Anyway.  A Walk in the Woods is an underrated little flick.  Shouldn't work.  But it does.  Especially as I wander further into middle age.....

His last movie role was Avengers: Endgame, unless I'm mistaken.  But he did appear, uncredited, in an episode of The AMC show Dark Skies, playing chess with fellow producer George RailRoad Martin.....

Redford seemed like a good dude, and he left an impressive body of work.  May he rest in peace.

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Stopped at lunch at a Burger King today.  I like getting the Impossible Whopper.  I've cut my red meat consumption considerably since my hospital stay in 2022.  I eat it maybe once a month.  But when they do it right at the BK, the Impossible Whopper is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.

Had a small bit of consternation when I stopped at one in Cleveland, TN:  they said they no longer sell the Impossible Whopper.

When I got to the window to pick up the chicken sandwich I ordered instead, I asked if that was a company-wide decision.  

"I don't know," the young feller at the window replied.

Nothing online showing a company-wide removal of the product.  Hopefully I can still get one, somewhere.....

 It's a weird world.  And only getting weirder.....