Random Thoughts, this August 23, 2026

 What's been going on in my neck of the woods, you ask?

You didn't ask?

Why'd you come here, then?  This little nook of the internet has been pretty quiet for a decade, aside from various lists and a random movie review.  Sometimes I post a pretty decent meme that I found on Reddit or Instagram.  Is that why you're here?

How's this?

 Pretty good I'd say.

Effective. 

Usefull, especially if you've got a friend named Chris.  Which I do.

I sent this to him.

He said "You've sent this before."

To which I replied "Probably so.

See, recently, Shyam and I got into a discussion about favorite "Rom Com," to which I was having trouble coming up with an appropriate answer.  I don't have anything against the sub-genre of flicks, but I just wasn't having anything that was sticking to my mental ribs as an answer.

The best I could do was When Harry Met Sally, which is simply one of my favorite scripts ever written.  I like the flick, and I was set to call it that, but that movie doesn't even make my Letterboxd list of 145 or so favorite movies.

Shyam said that hers was the 2013 film What If.

"I'm not familiar," I said.  And her eyes widened in disbelief.

"We've watched it," she said.

I looked it up on Letterboxd.  "Nope," I said.  "It's not ringing any bells."

"We watched it right here, in this living room."

"When?"

"It's been a few years, but we've watched it.  You liked it."

A look at ye olde internet movie database confirmed a rating from yours, truly.  6 stars out of 10.  I had seen it.  It's a minor bit of honor system, in that I don't rate movies I haven't seen.  So, I'd seen the flick, starring Daniel Radcliffe, Zoe Kazan, Adam Driver and MacKenzie Davis.  But I had no memory.

So, we found it streaming on PlutoTV (where I watch my Star Trek: the Next Generation reruns, even when they're the Klingon episodes, which have somehow begun to be tiresome in my 40 year Star Trek fandom). 

Well,  We watched the movie.  And I remembered bits of pieces from my previous viewing.  I remember Rafe Spall falling out of a window.  I rememembered Adam Driver exulting over Sex and Nachos.  I remembered MacKenzie Davis trying to light four cigarettes at the same time.

But the rest of the flick?  Nada.  I can only thing that I was working one of the ridiculous 60 or 70 hour weeks, or that it was watched while Dad was having a surgery (today is an anniversary of a hip replacement, don't you know?), or there was some other somesuch stressor going on in my life.  So, I remembered little of the romantic comedy.

There is one other possible explanation.  There are bits of Wallace and Chantry's (the characters played by Radcliffe & Kazan, respectively) relationship that mirror Shyam's and mine.  We were friends a long long time before we involved ourselves with each other, though there weren't any beaus or girlfriends that we found ourselves contending with (although there was once incident where I lost my temper with her former boyfriend Hal, but that was 20+ years ago, and there was alcohol involved....)

Kissing Shyam was the scariest thing.  Up to that point, I'd screwed up every relationship, or attempted relationship.  Turns out she was scared similarly.  She was, and is, my best friend, and I was really scared of losing that.

14+ years into this thing, we haven't screwed it up yet!

-----

Anyway.  Thoughts on a couple other flicks seen recently:

Go West (1940) --A Marx Brothers movie I'd not seen.  Kinda drags and loses momentum in places, but there's a scene in a stage coach where Harpo steals and replaces hats with a carpet bag that is just so quick and insane in its blocking and staging that I had to go back and watch it a couple of times.  The movie's alright, but that scene is worth the price of admission

Spider-Man: Brand New Day -- This was a lot of fun.  Maybe more fun than anything the MCU has put out since Endgame.  (And remember...I like the MCU).

The End of Oak Street --  A fun Twilight Zoney/Spielbergy romp.  The ending doesn't 100% work for me, but I think this was a good End of Summer flick.  

-----

A thought on a couple other flicks I want to see:

Looking forward to Coyote vs. Acme.  If only to see if the uproar around it was worth it.  But then, the Day the World Blew Up was a good piece of Looney Tunes action, and it made me think Warner Brothers has been dropping the ball for 60 years not dropping one of those in theaters every year or two.

Super Troopers 3.  If only because I want Hollywood and Indies to stop being afraid to dump comedies into the theaters.  Film Comedy has been a weird place for 10 or 15 years.   It's playing in Cleveland this week, and I might make the trip.