House of Wax

 I'm procrastinating.

The local theater, the Athens Movie Palace, has programmed a few classic scary flicks on Sundays leading up to Halloween.  The first of this year's slate ran Sunday, and it was the 1953 Vincent Price led flick, House of Wax.

House of Wax has always held a special place in my heart.  

See, I was scared of a lot of shit growing up.  I didn't do horror.  There was enough stuff in real life to be afraid of.  I spent a good couple of years scared of Count Chocula, and was pretty sure he lived in the main bathroom of my house.  I would run past that bathroom door so he wouldn't reach out to grab me.

Regular movie stuff scared me.  Darth Vader scared me.  King Kong _terrified_ me.  That scene in Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan where Khan puts the parasites into Chekov's and Capt. Terrell's ears?  HORRIFYING.

So I didn't do horror.

But somewhere along the line, I watched House of Wax.

And it's light horror, but it's definitely horror.

 And somehow, I've always appreciated it, because I could see the human underneath all the burn tissue and gnarled hands that Price becomes, after the fire at his wax museum.  Even at 9 or 10, I understood the motivations, at least in terms of getting even with the guy who burned your art.  (And allow me a pause to say that the fire in the wax museum was always fascinating...and I think it had to be something of an inspiration for Spielberg in the scene where the Belloq and National Socialist buddies melt and explode after opening the Ark).  

I wandered a little more into horror stuff after that.  I watched and read Something Wicked This Way Comes.  a year or two later, I'd read The Shining, which began a lifelong fandom for Stephen King.

But a lot of my horror fascination stems from watching House of Wax.

Seeing on the Big Screen was neat.  Especially seeing what was meant to be 3D back in 53. ....

In which Pneumonic Plague is a thing....

Yikes   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/lab-worker-dies-after-suspected-leak-of-deadly-pathogen/ar-AA2dAvef?ocid=socialshare

You know, sometimes I think I read too much.

Annie Jacobsen followed up her Nuclear War: a Scenario this past summer with a tome called Biological War: a Scenario.  In it, she follows the same format as Nuclear War (a harrowing book, by the way...).  What she writes is a scenario based on extensive interviews with government experts who held the positions of knowledge and experience in those positions, detailing what the procedures and response would be when, in the case of Jacobsen's scenario, a weaponized form of Pneumonic Plague is released from an experimental lab.

Now, in that tome, the plague bacteria is a chimera that produces euphoria in those who are infected, so they are more gregarious to speed up the spread of the agent.  

So, what we're dealing with here (ostensibly) is plain old plague.

But that's enough.

Scary stuff, neighborinos.....

Cubs 2026

 Eh.  Whaddaya Say?

As stated in the previous post, they've been dead in the water since Labor Day.

I can't recall going into a postseason as underwhelmed and fatalistic about their chances as I was with this one.

The fact of the matter is, they hadn't passed the eye test since Labor Day, at least, and possible longer.

No matter how much Boog and JD and the polyannas trumpeted the Cubs' Record Breaking Offense.

The truth is, that offense had a handful of games (6, maybe 8 or 9) where they piled on runs, stacked offensive numbers.  

But they really weren't all that good.  They hit .249 with runners in scoring position.  And the number is actually less than that if you take out those crazy games where they scored 13 and 17 runs.  

It's why run differential is a fool's statistic.

Losing Horton early on, and Boyd for extended time was the thing that did it.  Cabrera was a bust in his first year with the club (luckily, the red haired wonder they traded to Miami to get him exceeded my 33% strikeout rate prediction by striking out nearly 40% of the time....which might be alright if you're putting up Kyle Schwarber numbers, but not if you're putting up Owen Caissie numbers....).

But it overworked and overexposed the bullpen, which was fair at best.  By the time they got to mid-August, the bullpen was tired, and didn't have any tricks left that the league hadn't already scouted to death.

I dunno.

It's disheartening.   

But that's life, ain't it?

The postseason goes on.  The Braves won, and will proceed to face the Dodgers.  I'm rooting for them.  And I think I'm rooting for The White Sox....which might get my Cubs card revoked, but I'm not local, so fuck it.

I just like my Phoenix metaphors.

Something else to get my Cubs card revoked?  I won't be too dismayed if the Brewers win it all.

They'd deserve it.  If only for leading the league in hitting with runners in scoring position (.276 don't you know?).  I won't be actively rooting for them, but it won't bother me an iota for them to win it.

However, if we're treated to another Yankees/Dodgers World Series I'm gonna flip some tables.

I'll probably go to Eric's house to do it.

8-0

I went to bed.

It's pure ass that a playoff game starts at 10pm Eastern, anyway.

But I wasn't feeling good about it.

The bats have been dead for a minute.

The bullpen, while showing signs of life the last week of the season, doesn't seem strong enough to support the hopes and dreams of a nation.

I can't recall being so little excited for a postseason game as I was for last night's contest.

Watched a little of Phillies & Braves...the end, specifically.  That looked fun.

White Sox and Astros was a fun contest, with the Sox doing what they needed to do:  take the crowd out of the game at Daikin.  

Didn't watch much of the slaughter that ensued at Yankee Stadium....but the Sox seemed to have a few of the same streaky habits the Cubs do. 

Saw the math that there's something like a 18 percent chance of the Cubs winning the next two games.

Stranger things have happened.

But those bats have to wake up.

This is one of the years that the stats don't tell the story.  They're high on the list of offensive clubs around the league.

But situational hitting isn't their forte.

Which is odd for a Counsell team.  At least, how I remember Counsell teams, when the Brewers were beating the shit out of the Cubs 73 times a year.

So.  Am I excited for tonight?

Nope.

I'm afraid of more of the same.... 

Clusterfuck

 As part of the business, I have to drive through Knoxville on Fridays.  Not much of it, but on Friday afternoons, in West Town, heading west toward the 75 Split, it gets boogery every day.  It's on this stretch of road that Knoxville sports guru Wes Rucker lost his life, earlier this year.

There have been days I've pulled up the map app to see if it'd be faster to head home via 75, 11, or even heading all the way back to Maryville and heading home via 411.

 It's usually bad.   It's worse on Tennessee Football weekend.

I tend to think it's all the locals getting out of Dodge, when they're going that direction.

Add to that, the Dump Truck is coming to town.

 You couldn't pay me to get around the University of Tennessee this weekend.  Playing the #1 team in the nation will snarl traffic enough.  Adding ingress and egress routes for a Presidential Motorcade?  

Fuck that noise.

Postseason

 It's possible that I jinx things by just mentioning them in blog form, but there is a higher than zero chance that the Cubs begin their playoff round in Atlanta.

I haven't hit a Braves game this year.

Not sure I want to pay postseason prices, but I could probably talk myself into it......

Do I jinx it?  

It's kinda like Harry Doyle lamenting the Indians getting one hit?!? One Goddamn Hit?

You can't say Goddamn on the air.

Don't worry, nobody's listening anyway.

Writing

 I've written something.

For the first time in a while.

Still writing on it.  So, wrong verb.

But I've built a small routine.

Which is hard for me.

Think good thoughts.

I'm just trying to stop being intimidated by the blank page, trying to stop being super judgmental of my work, and trying to finish something that I start.

Random Thoughts, this September 5, 2026

 Hot.

It's been really, really, really hot.

I think we hit 100 yesterday.  It's been humid, as well.

My tomato plants are suffering.

SUFFERING!

----

Go See Coyote vs. Acme.  It's delightful.  Just good clean fun.

Saw that it's opening in a couple hundred more screens this week than last.  And that makes me happy.  Knowing that Warner tried to shelve the picture to take a take write off on its loss rather than releasing.  Glad Ketchup salvaged it and put it out.  

Saw it on a hot Wednesday afternoon in a theater with about 20 people.  A handful of us were laughing along, but there was one young man who was there with mother or grandmother whose laugh made me as happy as the movie.

-----

Had given some thought to trying to catch Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan, along with a showing of the Original Series episode Space Seed tonight down in Hixson, but the holiday week kinda wore me out, so I can't see myself spending the time.  It's not often that I lament living as far from Chattanooga or Knoxville as I do, but it usually involves something showing in one of their towns that isn't showing here, or general proximity to Knoxville's Central Cinema, which does a great job all around.

(Seriously, if I lived closer than an hour away from Central Cinema I'd probably be in there once a week minimum....)

-----

The Cubs have won a couple.  I've not written much about them this summer, but they're a good squad, and they can run with anybody in the league.  Especially after the acquisitions of Clay Holmes and Kevin Gausman at the trade deadline.  But that bullpen got used a LOT from May to July.  And there are some tired arms.  Grabbing an innings eater like Gausman is great....but it isn't a fixall.

I cringed a little when I saw Shota Imanaga coming out for the 7th inning against the Marlins last night.  I understand the matchup against Conine....but it made me nervous....and with good reason.  Civale got out of the inning, but not without a fingernail or two gnawed on my couch.

I'd love for them to go 4-2 on this road trip.  I'd especially like them to go 2-1 against the Brewers in Milwaukee this coming week...

I'm in a weird place with Milwaukee.  I'll always root for the Cubs, and Milwaukee is a constant source of frustration, especially when it feels like the Cubs play them 59 times in a season.  But it's a well run franchise, and it wouldn't bother me to see them win the whole damn thing......(if the Cubs can't beat them, that is.....)

Unnecessary Drama

 Have you ever managed a zero stakes fantasy football league?  I'm in two leagues.  One carrying a small monetary prize and admission price.  The other free.

Why is the free one causing all the drama?

Southern Brewers Fest

One more thought.

Wandered through some old posts, and realized that this weekend was the anniversary of a few Southern Brewers' Festivals.  It was a day long (and longer) event at Ross's Landing, in Chattanooga.  Several beer vendors.  Brewers, large and small.  Music.  And usually a good day to hang out with friends.  

Shyam, our friend Steven and I were stalwarts.  Julie and her old boyfriend Jason would come down, a couple or three times.  Other friends were in and out.  Mostly we'd take folding chairs, or sit on the giant terrace steps and just hangout all afternoon.  Drink beer.  Have a good time.  A few years, we'd pile into a hotel room downtown instead of trying to drive home.  It was a good weekend, especially before everybody started having too much responsibility.

Then there were breakups.  And new jobs.  It got to be a helluva fight to try and get the weekend off that weekend at Food Lion.  People started having kids.  And the festival itself got too big for its britches.  Raising admission, the price and size of pours.  Trying the two-day thing, once or twice.  

Shyam and I ended up going once or twice on a whim, when we found ourselves with the time free at the end of August.  And we had a good time.

I don't think it's been a thing for seven or eight years, now.

Maybe longer.  

I dunno.  Time's funny out here, sometimes.

It's been 4 years since I've had a beer.

There are rare times I want one.  Baseball games.   And now, I guess, since I'm thinking about Brewers Fest.

Anyway.  Just a little maudlin.  

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.

You Odyssey these Nuts, Redux

 Took the nephew to see The Odyssey today.

Really dug it.

If only because Nolan managed to coax good performances out of both Jon Bernthal and Mia Goth, in the same movie.

Amazing.

Also:  If you're avoiding the movie because of bullshit like the color of actors' skin?

Get your head out of your ass.

You Odyssey These Nuts

 It's a movie, guys.

I love movies.

But I don't need movies to confirm my fucked up worldview.

Wiser people than me have pointed out that if you're pissed about an LGBTQ actor portraying a character, you'll need to buckle your seatbelt when you study Ancient Greek culture.

And the casting of Lupita N'yongo as Helen?  Helen of Troy is to White people what Albert Einstein is to bullpen management.  Stop it.  You're searching for things to offend you.   And trust me, there's much better shit out there to be offended by.

All for a movie you haven't even seen, by the way.  

That little bit of our culture is really fucking wearing me out.  Trashing a product before it even releases.  You're complaining about something you HAVEN'T FUCKING SEEN.

If you can't wait that long, to see the product, or you're refusing based on some bit of casting (N'yongo is a fine actress, by the way), then your opinion means nil, there, Boomer.

Me?  I'll be going to see it this week.  I don't think Nolan is the end-all/be-all, but he's made some fun flicks.  And this looks like it could be a big honking things, and I'll go see it, buy 2 gallons of Coke Zero and have myself a grand old time.

The Reads of 2026, First Half Review

 I started another blog post.  I've been down this week.  Busy week.  Tired.  Crabby.  Started a fight with Shyam yesterday, so I feel like shit.   The post felt like whining, so I've tabled it for now.  May return to it, may not.  

So, instead, I'll do the first half reading review, if'n you're interested.  Just a quick look though what I've read or listened to in 2026.   

January

The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne   by Ron Currie

This one was tight.  Popped up as a recommendation from Anthony Jeselnik's favorite reads of 2025.

It's brutal.  Not quite the revenge story I'd expected from a couple of reviews....indeed, after reading, I wonder if they actually read the book in question.  But yeah.  Brutal.  Violent.  With some tremendous dark humor.  And a touch of the supernatural, which I loved, to be honest:  it's simply a plot point that Babs' oldest daughter (and right hand) can see ghosts.  I just like that touch.

All in all, a well-told crime story, and a nice pondering on poverty, clannishness, culture and legacy.  

I liked this one a lot.  It's also one of two (possible 3) books that wander in and around Waterville, Maine, this year.

Transformers, volume 1    by Daniel Warren Johnson

We had some snow this January, so I sat to read Daniel Warren Johnson's run on the book, which I'd read via single issue, but not in one sitting.  Extremely violent, but an original take on the origin story, which seems to get retold with a new camera lens every relaunch of the title.  Johnson's the best since Furman was writing the original Marvel book, 35 years ago.

100 Places to See After you Die     by Ken Jennings

Kindle read.  Quick chapters, looking at myths and fictional takes on the Afterlife through history.  Quick reads, filled with facts.

Transformers, volume 2:  Transport to Oblivion    by Daniel Warren Johnson

Second Volume of Johnson's run, which might already be topping Furman's runs in my mind.

Enjoyed the variance and nuance in the thinking of characters on the two sides of the conflict, but especially among the Decepticons, with players looking to fill the power vacuum left by the missing Megatron.

The potential parallels between Jetfire and Astrotrain were interesting, especially with Prime being left to use Jetfire as a packhorse.  Don't know the exact nature of Astrotrain's beef, but it makes you wonder.

Especially enjoyed Soundwave's & Thundercracker's mutual disquiet at the methods and intentions of the warlord Shockwave.

Transformers, volume 3:  Combiner Chaos

Third volume of Johnson's impressive run, and it turns into an interesting study of what happens to a authoritarian movement when it loses it Cult of Personality leader.....

The Getaway   by Jim Thompson

2026 is going to be a year of Anthony Jeselnik, whose new Youtube book club has given 4 or 5 solid reads this year.

Crime novels aren't always my thing, but there's an oomph in Doc that's easy to dig.  And this one triggered my claustrophobia pretty well with a sequence in underwater coffin caves.

And that last chapter in El Rey is a friggin' dark-assed trip, man.....

Transformers, volume 4: Conquer and Control   by Daniel Warren Johnson

Finishing Johnson's run.  It's turned into a helluva good story about why some go along with authoritarian movments, and the best ways to fight them...

Skull x Bones   edited by David B. Coe & Josh Palmentier

A gift from my buddy John, who conspired with Alex Bledsoe to include me in Alex's story "No Prey, No Pay."  SF/Fantasy with a pirate leaning.  Fun collection.  I liked Alex's tale, and though I thought I'd left Cyberpunk in the gutter years ago, I really enjoyed E.J. Delaney's  "Of Scourge and Skullduggery."

February

Doctor Sleep  by Stephen King

Part of the continuing project.  As an older cat, I enjoyed this one a little more in 2026 than I did in 2014 or whenever I last read it, but I still feel like it misses the mark a little.  At no point in either of my two readings do I feel like Dan and Abra won't succeed in their mission.  Even with Crow Daddy kidnapping her....King has Abra overpowered with The Shine.

I feel like this might have been helped by giving us even more of Rose the Hat's perspective.  Maybe underline the desperation of her spot as Head of the Cult that is leaning right on the edge of obvlivion and (perhaps even more sadly) obsolescence.....

That said, it's an enjoyable ride.  Part of the fun thing reading King chronologically is seeing which themes ebb, which ones flow, and which ones remain constant.  This one struck me as sad....a lot of his books look at family life, but this one really stands out because a lot of it is looking at family from the outside.  Almost like a grandfather looking in at his kids' families......

Batman: the White Knight    by Sean Murphy & Matt Hollingsworth

This one surprised the hell out of me.  I really dig it.  A grown up Batman: the Animated Series vibe, with some nudges here and there from Christopher Nolan and Grant Morrison

Curling Rocks! Chronicles of the Roaring Game by John Cullen.

Probably my favorite winter Olympic sport behind Hockey.   Cullen presents a good history,  with cultural insights.   Good read

While the City Never Sleeps    by Alex Bledsoe

New from my buddy Alex.  Strong stuff.  A fun SF story with a classic superhero original leaning.  Lots of thought here on the role police and politics play in our lives, with a heavy consideration about the dangers of gutting the press, and not protecting it in the judiciary.

Paradais   by Fernanda Melchoir

Beautiful writing about angry, desperate people making bad decisions and doing horrible things.

It made me wish I had a stronger reading grasp of Spanish was stronger, because I would have liked to read Melchoir's words in her own language....I'm sure some of the music, poetry and impact is lost in translation.  That said, the translated prose is strong and effective.  Brutal, even.  And some of the music manages to make it through that filter.....Sophie Hughes' translation is quite effective.

An Obvious Fact    by Craig Johnson

Needed to cleanse the palate a little bit after Paradais.  Johnson always turns a good phrase and here writes an effective mystery.  And on the soap opera front, it seems we're leaving Vic's pregnancy unremarked for the time being....

March

Football    by Chuck Klosterman

It was the late great Steve Krodman (Elisson, his own self) that gave me my first sociological musing by Klosterman, 9 or 10 years ago.  I just like the way the man's mind works, and Steve did too.

I'd run into Klosterman's fiction a few years before when I was finishing up a Tom Robbins kick, and somehow went a while before realizing that that writer and the guy STeve was introducing me to were one and the same.  

This one, about Klosterman's favorite sport, examines why it takes up such an outsized place in our sports and cultural worlds.  Examines 9and attemps to debunk) a couple of the mian reasons for its ubiquity, and offers a couple Klostermanesque counterintuitive arguments for its dominance.

The examination of "best player of all time" was probably my favorite piece in the book, why comparing Jim Thorpe to Jim Brown to Derrick Henry is impossible yet unavoidable.  It reminded me of Hall of Fame discussions I'd had with my buddies Jason Russell, Steven West & Ray Wilson.

Also very much enjoyed the discussion on the Canadian Football League, and why its slight variance in the rules underlines the balance American Football maintains between speed and power.

This was a good one.

The Night Stalker   by Jeff Rice

Found the TV movie tie-in at an antique store along my route, and paid $2 for it, and its sequel.  Boring trivia:  Jeff Rice wrote this novel, and Richard Matheson wrote the TV adaptation for the first Kolchak TV movie.  The sequel, the Night Strangler, was written by Matheson, with Jeff Rice writing the novelization of Matheson's story.

This one is surprisingly pulpy.  Suitably Hard Boiled.   Fun Vampire Story.

Kolchak: the Night Strangler     by Richard Matheson & Jeff Rice

Just rolled right into the next one.  Fun.  The backwards stretches to include characters from the first novel/movie are....interesting, and Kolchak commenting on the cabbie showing up like it was part of the plot amused me perhaps more than it should have.  

Heartwood   by Amity Gaige

For a lot of 2025, Shyam, our friend Jill and I were doing a small book club.  When Jill had a particularly busy fall semester, we put it on hiatus.  This was our first book back.

Between this and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, I'm not venturing off any trails in Maine.

Solid read.  Hiker goes missing near the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail.   Told from her point of view, that of the ranger leading her search and that of a retiree whose connection to the story turned rather pleasing, actually....

There is a plot point that continues to bother me, even 4 months later.  It gave all 3 of us in the group a moment's pause.  It is a decision made by the protagonist that seems questionable from a character standpoint....and it's a decision that seems familiar only if you've watched a horror movie or 3 dozen in your life.

Dust Frontier    by Graydon Colbaugh

Read in one day while my Mom had a heart cath procedure.  Fun read from our friend Graydon.  A Deputy out of a Southern Tennessee County that bears an eery resemblance to Polk County is drafted into some interplanetary intrigue.  It's a trip.  

Mr. Mercedes    by Stephen King

Continuing Project, blah blah blah.

Fun.  I like the Bill Hodges character a lot, even if we are jumping headlong into the phase of King's work where he is overly concerned into the Power and Lack Thereof of Older White Men.  I don't know why, unless it was being neck deep in Better Call Saul when I first read this, that I've seen Jonathan Banks as Bill in my head since 2015 or so.

Brady still gets at me.  One of King's better villains, in my opinion.  Jerome....is a choice.....

Hatchet Girls    by Joe R. Lansdale

I read this shortly after Joe announced on social media that the next Hap & Leonard book would be their last....the boys will get to retire.

I wasn't surprised to hear it, as Sugar on the Bones had a real Last Ride feel, and a lot of the characters who'd existed in the Hap & Leonardverse came together Justice League (or Magnificent Seven) style for one last jam....and it was mean very much to honor the late Andrew Vachss, as his avatar Veil figures heavily in the tale.

This one, a story filled unsurprisingly with people getting chopped up with hatchets, is more introspective, and had even  more callbacks to their previous novels than Sugar did.

This one was a rough one to go to immediately after Mr. Mercedes, as this one, Hap is overtly wondering, dwelling even, on his diminishing abilities on the back end of his 50s.

April

Katrina;  a History, 1915-2015

A look at the meteorological, physical, historical, political and fiscal reasons for the catastrophic days following Hurrican Katrina's landfall in 2005, as well as the response in the ensuing decade.....

Empire of Silence   by Christopher Ruocchio

Came recommended by a couple people.  There are shades of Dune and The Name of the Wind in there, but somehow it kept me going back to Piers Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant, which I devoured somewhere around 1991 or 1992.

The alien races, especially the Umandh were interesting, and both they and the Cielcin have a lot of potential for storytelling, and that might get me back for a second book.

I did have some issues with the storytelling, inasmuch as I couldn't tell if the bloated prose was Ruocchio's or of Hadrian, who's telling the story.  From the couple of reviews I've read, it seems like it may improve in the subsequent books.

Dept. of Speculation   by Jenny Offill

Read with Jeselnik Book Club....this wasn't at all what I was expecting....not even sure what I was expecting.  Plenty dark with a surprising bit of levity.   It didn't end like I was expecting.  An occasionally lyrical piece of being an adult, a spouse and a parent, in a difficult marriage.

This made me want to look into become an Art Monster.

Revival   by Stephen King.

Project and whatnot.

This was a banger.  Up there with 11.22.63 as King's best since nearly losing his life.

Continues the theme of the utility and futility of being an older white man  in the 2010's.  This one is very concerned with death and dying.  Makes me wonder how many friends and acquaintances King had seen die leading up to the writing of this.

This is fun.  Crackles with energy, and contains a sadness you don't find in a lot of King's work.....

G.I. Joe:  The Cobra Strikes    by Joshua Williamson & Tom Reilly

Didn't care for it.  As far as I'm concerned, Larry Hama's the only guy who writes Joe worth reading.

May

Monsters in the Archive:  My Year of Fear with Stephen King    by Caroline Bicks

This one was a pleasant surprise.  Bicks holds the Stephen King Chair in the English Department at his alma mater, the University of Maine at Orono.  She received access to King's personal archives, and did analysis of five of his early works, using the original manuscripts King worked with.  She went in looking for themes and motifs.  Digs in a bit to his early life, and examines bits from childhood to college and impact his novels and short stories.

As stated, I'm up to 2016 or so with his works myself, and seeing themes in play has been the interesting part of my project.  I'm not looking right now to go back to any of it, but Bicks' book made me want to go back and give Pet Sematary, Night Shift and Carried closer looks.

King's comments about not having revisisted Carrie were interesting, stating that the man who wrote that book was young, and didn't know what he thought he did about the world.

(The grouse in me says it didn't stop him from revising and stealing some of the charm from The Gunslinger....but I digress....)

Good read, and would serve as a nice companion piece to King's On Writing.

Harlan Ellison's Watching by Harlan Ellison

I'd been wanting to go through this volume front to back, and then Audible made it like $2 in its cash sale.  How could I not?

The downside of audiobooks is that I can't underline, and when I bookmark using Audible's app, sometimes I've lost the grain of whatever caught my ear and can't remember the thought that I'd had when I bookmarked it.  It's a little easier to regain when I can see something I've underlined or highlighted in an actual text.

That said, the list of shit I want to watch or rewatch after hearing Harlan yell and scream about it (and he yells and screams about both things he loves and hates), is long.

The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake   by Breece Pancake

Steven West gifted me a copy.  Good stuff.  Short stories.  Pancake's prose reminds me of Hemingway and McCarthy, but his ear and use of irony remind me more of Flannery O'Connor than anybody I've run across.  All of that wrapped up in a vall and raised in the Appalachian hills of West Virginia.

He also reminds me very much of Tristan Egolf, another immensely talented writer with ties to Appalachia who also took his own life.

I See You've Called in Dead    by John Kenney

I don't dislike it, but in the couple months since I've read it, I've grown increasingly irritated that it's a well-to-do guy with incredibly fortunate circumstances and his friends who make time to undergo a philosophical learning experience.

Still, it's funny, and it is touching.  And I even agree with the philosophic lessons herein.

I'm just annoyed that I don't have more money than I do.  I'd just like to take the wife on vacation again some time.....

The Reformatory   by Tananarive Due

I'm not sure how often it happens that you read your new favorite book by one of your favorite writers.  Due is fantastic, and has been near the top of my list for a while, but it's largely been her short fiction that earned her a place in my heart.  I think she's the only writer out there whose name will make me pick up a collection, or a magazine with a story in it.  She's just got a remarkable talent for that medium.

Her novels are good.  The Good House and Joplin's Ghost are particularly effective.  But this?!?! 

This is fantastic.  I loved every page of it.

(And I say that with the caveat of having started it and only made it 40 pages in back in 2023).

I went back to this one as I'd read a couple of truly excellent pieces about it.  And even though I get my hopes up.....I loved it.

Equal parts ghost story, history lesson and prison break story.  This might be my favorite thing I've read this year....

Supergirl:  Woman of Tomorrow    by Tom King & Bilquis Evely

I may not like Tom King very much.  I hate to say that, because I know a lot of people hold him in high esteem.  It might just be that I've read or watched a lot of the source material he seems to be inspired by.

I've seen and read both True Grit and John Wick, though, and just didn't get as much out of this as a lot of people did.....

Three Miles Past  by Stephen Graham Jones

The ease with which Jones switches between goofy fun to very real disquiet is perhaps the most startling thing about his writing.  It's remarkable.  His Angel Lake Trilogy is a magnificent fever dream, and his books Mongrels and the Only Good Indians are stellar, and quite sad.

This is three tales...novellas, really.   Two of them really, really weird and the third tremendously sad.

I liked this collection.

June

Finders Keepers   by Stephen King

I don't dislike this one, but Bill, Holly and Jerome feel superfluous.  Almost unnecessary.  Almost like they're an afterthought....a way to get out of a story King might have originally tried to write for the Hard Case Crime series.

Mother Night    by Kurt Vonnegut.

One of the Vonneguts I hadn't read.  Read with Shyam & Jill.  Not the oddball romp I often associate with Vonnegut.  It's still looking to frame the absurd.  And some of the sadness seems to come from realizing how stupid we, it, and everybody is.  In this case, Howard Clark is an American who works for Germany in the Second World War as a spy for America, but creates some of the most damaging pro-Germany propaganda that the world sees.

Howard is The Dude Lebowski.  Impotent.  Unable to make his own way.  This made me uncomfortable.  

And it probably should

Cathedral of the Drowned    by Nathan Ballingrud

The second part of his Lunar Gothic trilogy, Ballingrud continues to really weird me out.  Especially at 2 in the morning, when I read this because our aging Siamese cat decided to do parkour on me in the middle of the night.

Don't read this if you also own a wobbly cat, who skitters as her main form of ambulation.

A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet

I have a problem with this one, and it's similar to I See You Called in Dead.  I guess I'm less and less interested in the tribulations of the well-to-do.

The Western Star   by Craig Johnson

It's fun, Johnson's western tribute to Murder on the Orient Express.  This one just felt messy, though.....

Harlan Ellison's Endlessly Watching     by Harlan Ellison

Collected for a Kickstarter, finishing up Harlan's columns with Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine.  Lots of good stuff, but it felt like either I'd read too much Ellison, or Harlan was getting bored with the column towards its end.....

Random Thoughts, This June 28, 2026, AD

 Hey!  I still have a blogamathing.

What's been going on in the life of Tommy?

Work.  Workworkwork.  We're doing it for ourselves, and not the behest of some faceless name on an email, like at the grocery store.   Shyam and I own a fishing bait delivery company.  We deliver all over Southeast Tennessee, going as far west as Jasper and South Pittsburgh, and as far North as Knoxville and Crossville.  Business has been good.  

And spare time?  It's more than I had with Food Lion.  I just haven't been using it to write like I should.

There's a lot of windshield time.  And story ideas.  Hell, I had most of a Twilight Zone episode written surrounding a bus with the name BJ Tours on it. 

----

I have wandered out to see a couple movies.  The nephew and I took in Disclosure Day on Father's Day weekend.  I like it.  I dig the optimism, though the realist in me says Stevey's overestimating A.) the General Public and B.) How much a meteorologist and a journeyman musician pull in, incomewise.

Shyam and I went to the Swingin' Midway Drive-In to catch Masters of the Universe, which we both enjoyed for the silly nostalgia of it.

-----

I haven't cared for a lot of what I've been reading lately:

I read A Children's Bible, by Lydia Millett along with Anthony Jeselnik's book club.  Have mostly enjoyed what he's presented with the Club....but this one just didn't do much for me.  I had, interestingly, the same problem with it that I ended up having with I See You Called in Dead, by John Kenney (not read with the book club):  the trevails of well-to-do white people aren't interesting trevails, sometimes.

The Western Star, by Craig Johnson, wasn't bad, but it's ending wasn't satisfying.  Came out of nowhere, if we're being honest, and that's not really Johnson's modus operandi with Longmire.  

Harlan Ellison's Endlessly Watching....a continuation of what was started in Harlan Ellison's watching, published via Kickstarter.  It's still fun, but Harlan loses interest in the column somewhere about 6 columns from the end.  And it works a lot like this blog from 2014-2026.

-----

Cubs?  If they hit, they'll make the playoffs.  Not because the hitting's that good, but we have about 19 teams in the Majors that will finish the season somewhere between 78 and 83 wins.  Not good, not bad.  But we only have about 7 in the leage that will finish above that, and the Cubs should be one of them.  But only if they keep hitting.  If they slump like they did in late May and early June?  They're sunk.  

Which is not to say they'll win anything this year.  There are 3 or 4 really good teams this year.  Dodgers, Yankees....and probably the Braves, assuming they wander out of this slump they've been in for a couple weeks.  And maybe the Brewers, though I'm loathe to say so.

Saw today that Hoby Milner is out with appendix troubles.

At least I can't blame that on the Cubs training/conditioning staff....

-----

Looking back at the past several paragraphs, I seem fairly negatively aimed.  But that's not how I feel, really.   

I don't think.....

Colbert

From Robert Reich on Facebook:

Friends,

Stephen Colbert’s last show is tonight.

CBS refused to renew his contract, and you know exactly why: He mocked and criticized Trump.

CBS says it’s ending “The Late Show” because the show was costing CBS some $40 million a year. That’s utter bullsh*t. Colbert enabled CBS to charge higher fees to local affiliates, because he attracted millions of viewers to those affiliates’ 11 p.m. news programs in anticipation of his “The Late Show” airing right after. The show was also a promotional gold mine for CBS, whose series stars were often interviewed by Colbert. No wonder CBS was “feverish” to lock Colbert into a new contract only three years ago.

What really happened couldn’t be clearer. Führer Trump was furious at Colbert’s mocking, and publicly called for CBS to cancel him (or “put him to sleep NOW” as Trump wrote in one social media post). At the same time, CBS’s parent company, Paramount, was on the verge of a lucrative merger deal that Trump could interfere with.

Paramount had already sucked up to Trump by offering him $16 million to settle a lawsuit he brought against CBS News’s “60 Minutes,” although he had almost no chance of prevailing in court.

In a monologue, Colbert called the settlement a “big fat bribe,” which it was. Days later he got word he’d been canceled. About a week after that, the deal was approved.

Before Colbert started at CBS, he hosted Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” where he played a right-wing, blowhard, curmudgeonly TV host.

I was often a guest, presumably because I was a good foil for the blowhard that Colbert was acting. (I’ve also been a guest on his “The Late Show.”)

The first time I came to do “The Colbert Report,” I was nervous. I didn’t know how to respond to someone who’d be acting as a conservative asshole but wasn’t one in real life.

I was sitting alone in the greenroom when Colbert popped in. He introduced himself, sat down, and then, smiling, said, “Just wanted to warn you that I play a real jerk out there.”

“Oh, I know,” I said. “I’ve watched the show.”

“Good. Don’t argue with me. Just play along,” he counseled.

“I’ll try not to argue,” I said. “But I go on so many of these combative shows that I may automatically start arguing.”

Colbert laughed. “That’s fine. Just let me do the heavy lifting. I’ll be so obnoxious that viewers will see the wisdom in your argument!”

“Sounds good,” I said, still nervous.

“Just have fun!” Colbert advised, before vanishing to his set.

Colbert was anything but a right-wing jerk. In fact, as I’ve come to know him over the years, he’s remarkably self-effacing and wicked smart. He’s progressive in his politics, of course, but never dogmatic. Even when he skewers Trump on his “The Late Show,” he does it with gentle humor and no trace of anger or bitterness.

I’ve done many thousands of interviews over my adult life. Some interviewers, like the late Bill Moyers, have been so thoughtful and well-prepared that I’ve barely had to think; I just fall into a natural conversation with them. Others are so stilted or slick that they hardly listen to what I say, and the interview has the tortuous feel of gears grinding from one topic to another.

Colbert is like Moyers in being well-prepared and listening intently. But he adds a rapid-fire wit that can make a serious point while putting an audience in stitches.

When Colbert interviewed me last August about my latest book, CBS had just announced that his contract wouldn’t be renewed and that by late May the show would be off the air for good.

A stagehand met me at the side door to the old Ed Sullivan Theater. As he led me to the greenroom, I asked him how everyone there was taking the news.

“Not well,” he said. After a pause he said, “We’re like a family here.”

Some time later, Stephen came by the greenroom. I asked him how he was doing. “Oh, I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll find something else to do. But there are about a hundred people here who will be out of jobs, and frankly I’m worried about them.”

They are like a family — Stephen Colbert, his executive producer, the segment producers and directors, showrunners, writers, cameramen, gaffers, grips, lighters, stagehands, custodians, musicians. Stephen has treated them like a family. His respect and concern for them is unusual in the business but consistent with the courtesy and kindness I discovered the first time I met him.

In sharp contrast is the way CBS and Paramount’s new owners, Larry and David Ellison, have treated Colbert and all those who have made “The Late Show” such an important part of our entertainment and political firmament.

Behind the Ellisons lurks Trump, who treats everyone like shit except strongmen he can’t control such as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

After tonight's show, the Ed Sullivan Theater will go dark, and we’ll lose one of the nation’s funniest and most courageous, truthful, and gentlemanly critics of Trump and his lawless regime. Our society and democracy will be the worse for it.

Farewell, and thank you, Stephen.

imperative

Well.  If you insist.....

blargh

SOMETIMES YOU JUST GOTTA SCREAM

Dirty Pool

That's cheating!  You guys are cheating!

Thoughts at the End of March

 A couple or three weeks ago, we went from slightly busy to ridiculously busy at our business.  My wife and I own a small fishing bait/supply delivery business that runs routes from Knoxville to Chattanooga, over towards Crossville and down to the opposite side of Nickajack Lake.  It keeps us busy enough, but the period from December to February is pretty slow...usually there's a ramp up in business in late February and March, but somewhere around the 10th, it was like a switch flipped and everybody in East Tennessee decided they were going fishing.

It's not a complaint.  Idle hands and whatnot.  

It's still a novelty to me, some 39 months into doing this, that I like my job.

My whole working career, I've done jobs that I've tolerated.  But I really like what I do.  

The downside is this.  I had a couple projects that I wanted to get done over the slow period.  I wanted to finish replacing the boards on our deck, and I wanted to get our spare room (the green room, due to it's green carpet) cleaned out so I could get new bookshelves installed in there.

Neither got done to any satisfaction.  And now we're busy.

Going to make time to get them done before it gets hot, though.

-----

Add to our general annoyance:  we think the heat element of the dryer is done.  We've been able to sun-dry the bulk of our clothes, but at some point we're going to have to make time to either get the dryer fixed, or replaced.

-------

Baseball season is back.  Hemmed and Hawed about whether I was going to resubscribe to MLB.TV, since my rate was going up.  Decided to go ahead, but then had to run headlong through the wall of trying to subscribe through ESPN.  I'm pretty firmly in the camp that MLB is shooting itself in the foot by making its product too difficult to see.  There's a meme out there about a game having each inning broadcast by a different provider...and it's funny because something something.....

------

Took the Jeopardy Anytime test back in February, and again just now,  since you can take it again on the anniversary of Jeopardy's first broadcast.  General theories are that "passing" is 35 out of 50.  I didn't keep count today, but I felt like I was somewhere around 42.

I got to do the second online test in the fall of 2024, but didn't get to move forward to the Zoom interviews.  

Maybe this time.....

sunset

Sunset tonight,  at the vats

The Bride!

 Wandered out the Athens Movie Palace today to catch The Bride!, the new flick from Maggie Gyllenhaal (which I spelled correctly on the first try), starring Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale.

It's fun.  A bit of a mess, but it's got tremendous energy, and a helluva fun performance from Jessie Buckley (who was already high on my list, but who might have bought benefit of the doubt for the rest of her career).  

A couple of nice throwbacks to earlier Frankenstein flicks, including a couple of references Young Frankenstein.....

One of the notable things to me was Jake Gyllenhaal (which I spelled correctly on the first try) performing.  Now, I don't want to tell anybody, least of all a film director, how to run their lives, but if it's me and I'm directing my sibling?  I order that sibling to do a lot of extensive training (i.e. dance, fencing, boating, etc).  I then costume them as uncomfortably as possible.  I also give them extensive, time-consuming makeup and prosthetics.  And then, I Stanley Kubrick the shit out directing their scenes with take upon take upon take.....

All of which ends up on the cutting room floor.

But then, that's probably why I'm not a film director......

Random March Musings

 Welp.  It seems I'm doing just so well keeping up with the blogamathing.

Can't blame being terribly busy for February, because while we were able to keep ourselves from going stir crazy, it won't be like it will be in four weeks, where I'll be on the road six or seven days out of the week.

I'll blame the Olympics, which were in February.

Also, birthdays.  My birthday, Shyam's and my mother's are all in February, and we each celebrate it with ritual combat, and I'm going to tell you that at 49, that takes longer and longer to recover from.

Olympics?  It's nice having a job that lets you enjoy something, from time to time.  

Enjoyed this year's Olympiad from Milan/Cortina.  Men's and women's Ice Hockey were my main focus, but caught a good deal of curling, and was mesmerized almost daily for a few minutes by everything doing on the ice slide....luge, skeleton, bobsled....all look like means to certain injury.  And now that we're past the Winter Olympics, will somebody please finally just admit that two man luge is a drinking game that just got out of hand?

I didn't lose any family relations over this Olympics, which is a small relief.  A cousin popped off after the Last Supper depiction at the beginning of the Paris Olympics in 2024, calling it an attack, and that Christians needed to fight back.  I responded with about a dozen pop culture depictions of the Last Supper, and mentioned that philosophical attacks are one of the biggest arrows in Christianity's quiver over the years, so that glass house is nearly windowless at this point....

And I lost contact with that cousin.  Blocked across all social media.  

Which sucks.

But no familial relations destroyed by this Olympiad.

-----

Tangentially related to the Olympics is a book I read:

Cullen co-hosts What is a Jeopardy Podcast? which is a weekly listen, and also hosted a mini-series on a scandal in the Curling Community called Broomgate, which I really recommend if you're looking for a good listen.  I also recommend his book, which is easily the best book on Curling I've ever read.  Considering I've read two, I guess it mean's in the better book on Curling I've ever read.

Funny, and a bit self-deprecating, it's not lacking for passion for the game.  

The book occasionally gets granular with personalities and events, but it just underlines how much Cullen appreciates the game and the people who've played it, and worked to bring it to the prominence its achieved.

Early in the book, he mentions a curling venue, Tee Line,  in Nashville, and I might be tempted to wander out to Middle Tennessee to give the game a try, even though I'm possibly nearly as athletic as one of the stones ....

-----

Your old pal Tommy just looked at the prices of the aforementioned Tee Line in Nashville.  And it's not prohibitive, but it's still more than my mind, which is stuck in about 2009 when it comes to expenditures, wants to pay for things.

I guess everybody needs to make money.  And Curling Venues aren't free to build.  So I get it.  

Excuse me while I grumble to myself that sometimes it just feels like there's somebody on every corner looking to charge you $39.95 just for existing.

-----

A little bit more Teevee that Shyam and I have watched.  We wandered into the world of Taskmaster a couple years back, and from Taskmaster I've wandered to Eight out of 10 Cats, and even more into Eight Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown in the mornings, while she gets ready for work.

Prime recommended this one, a variant on a game show that apparently has iterations from a couple dozen countries....from Norway to Thailand to Argentina to Poland.

Simple enough concept.  10 comedians, actors or personalities are locked together in a room, and the main rule is that you are not allowed to laugh.  Using soccer rules, one laugh warrants you a yellow card, and a second in the 6-hour period gets you ejected from the game.

No prize is mentioned that I can recall in this British variation, so the whole shebang may have been just for pride, shits and giggles.  Considering that most of these actors and comedians have been cross-pollinating on each other's panel shows for years, many of them knew that there were buttons to be pushed among their competitors.  It was also interesting to see how difficult they thought it might be to get Bob Mortimer, Judi Gold and Richard Ayoade to break.  (Spoilers:  Indeed, it was Mortimer & Ayoade who came down to the last, and Judi Gold essentially being taken out by an accidental creak of a chair more than any attempt to get her to laugh).

It turned into an interesting psychological game to watch, watching people essentially torture themselves by not giving in to the urge to laugh.  A couple players kept themselves in a dark mindset.  A couple disassociated:  watching Harriet Kemsley maintain a 1000-yard stare for much of the show was somehow the highlight of it for me.

We've moved on to the Canadian version, which doesn't seem to have the same chemistry:  not sure how many of the 10 comedians knew each other beforehand.  It's fun, and it's an interesting mix to have Tom Green, Dave Foley, Caroline Rhea and Colin Mochrie rubbing elbows with K. Trevor Wilson and Mae Martin (another Taskmaster favorite).  

We give high marks to the first season of the UK version, and look forward to the second season, that airs on Prime later this month......

imperative

Well.  If you insist.....

shit

New Movies seen in 2025

 My New Year's resolution from 2024 into 2025 was to not go 7 days without watching a new movie.  Part of it was I was watching the same stuff over and over.  I wanted to get back into watching a little more stuff.

I made it (though I think there was a 9 day stretch in September where I started a movie, but didn't finish until a couple days later....but I'll give myself a break with it....)

These movies could be new releases, or movies that I just hadn't caught yet.

The new to me flicks I saw in 2025:

January:

Music by John Williams  (2024)

Nice documentary about the guy whose music is imprinted on my DNA, between Star Wars, Superman, Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park.....

Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim   (2024)

This was actually really cool to see on the big screen.   My nephew and I had the theater to ourselves for an 11AM showing, after it had been out a few weeks.  Really cool animation....

Nosferatu   (2024)

It's pretty.  I couldn't stop thinking how Count ORlok looked like an undead Soda Popinski.  

America as Seen by a Frenchman   (1960)

Shyam got this for Christmas.  Interesting documentary.  Funny, at times.

Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace   (1962)

This wasn't very good.  In their comedy album, the State has a bit  with Ken Marino as  Holmes, and Joe Lo Truglio as Watson.  Holmes carries a stoner vibe throughout, and Watson is a bumbling fool.  I'd like the State to redub the movie.....

The Dead Don't Die    (2019)

Despite enjoying Jarmusch, and a despite an interesting cast, I skipped this one when it came out.  Zombie burnout, brought on largely by The Walking Dead's endless pessimism and cruelty.  This was fun, though.  Nice and dry.

World Trade Center    (2006)

Passed this one up way back when.  Shouldn't have.  It's pretty solid, with some really good work from both Cage and Pena.  Watched after reading a book on Cage's career.....

Dream Scenario    (2023)

I need to sit with this one again, as I've thought about it a lot.  Nice weird horror concept......

The Hound of the Baskervilles   (2000)

Maybe the worst thing I watched all year.....

February

Volunteers   (1985)

Read director Meyer's memoir, and hunted this one up.  It made me not hunt up any more of his stuff.  

The Wild Robot    (2024)

This was fantastic.  It eventually made my top 10 for 2024.

Wicked Little Letters    (2023)

We'd meant to see this one in theaters, but never made it out.  Olivia Colman is one of our favorites.  And she's quite good in this.....

Love Hurts   (2025)

Dumb and fun.  I think I had more fun watching Marshawn Lynch have fun than anything.....

Captain America: Brave New World    (2025)

I think I liked this better than most people.  It's uneven, I admit.  Feels heavily reshot.  I wish they'd given Tim Blake Nelson's Leader more to do.  But I still think it's fun.

A Midsummer Night's Dream    (1935)

Surprisingly fun....

Elevation    (2024)

It actually takes a lot for me not to just run with the concept.  But the world looks way too clean for 3 years of everybody living in the mountain wilderness.

The Monkey    (2025)

This was great fun.  I don't think I've laughed this hard in a movie theater in a long time.

Flow    (2025)

One of 2 5 star first time watches this year.  This is magic.  

March

AfrAId    (2024)

Good concept.   Meh execution.

Wallace & Gromit:  Vengeance Most Fowl    (2024)

This is just a lot of fun.  Like everything Wallace & Gromit.

The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire   (2002)

Better than the Frewer Hound of the Baskervilles.  But then it would almost have to be.....

The Navigator    (1924)

Can't go wrong with Buster Keaton

Perry Mason:  the Case of the Musical Murder   (1989) 

Our internet was out for 3 or 4 days in March after a transfer truck snagged the line off the pole, after a storm.  We made do with Shyam's Perry Mason TV movie collection.   Not great, but not bad, either.

Perry Mason:  the Case of the All-Star Assassin   (1989)

Less good.....

April

Death of a Unicorn   (2025)

Not great.....

Twister: Caught in the Storm    (2025)

Really is kinda amazing that we carry movie grade cameras and computers in our pockets.  This was pretty interesting.

Spartan    (2004)

We'd missed this one.   It came recommended upon the passing of Kilmer.  It's solid as hell.

G20    (2025)

I mean, it's Viola Davis pissed off with a machine gun.  Plus, it had Girl Twin from Blackish.

Talk to Me    (2022)

This was better than it had any right to be.  High energy.  Maintains a spooky vibe.  Couple or three visuals that really caught me offguard.  I liked this one.

Wolf Man   (2025)

It's not horrible, but it's really, really clunky.  I don't like how Julia Garner got used, at all, and I typically like her in everything she does.....

May

Sinners    (2025)

My other 5-star first time view.  This was amazing.  An absolute hoot to see on the big screen.

Thunderbolts*   (2025)

Maybe the best thing the MCU has put into a theater since Endgame.  I enjoyed this one a lot.  

Companion   (2025)

I only gave this one 3 stars on my Letterboxd review, but I've thought about it a couple of times since, and I think it may rise higher with another viewing.....

Y2K    (2024)

 I was really rooting for this one, but it doesn't hit its marks.

The Hobbit   (1977)

I'd never actually watched this all the way through.  Not bad....I can see why Tolkien fans dig it.....

Final Destination    (2000)

Couple of good visuals, but it's pretty rough.....

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning     (2023)

This is a long, long movie.   Good.   But it takes a while to get where it's going...

June

Sleepaway Camp   (1983)

I'm glad we got past the guys wearing Belly shirts.   I never really got a grasp on that bit of zeitgeist.  I hope that doesn't roll around again.

Pee-Wee's Big Holiday    (2016

Went back to watch this after watching the really excellent Paul Reubens mini series on Max.   This really wasn't bad.  Alia Shawkat and Joe Mangianello get the vibe.

Predator: Killer of Killers    (2025)

It's good.  I just don't think I liked it as much as most Predator fans did. . 

The Phoenician Scheme    (2025)

A little too busy, but still fun.  I actually would like a movie with Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston as brothers at each other's throats......

The Day the Earth Blew Up:  a Looney Tunes Movie    (2024)

This was a lot of fun.  Why Warner would rather have taken a tax credit than release this is quite beyond me.  Seeing this makes me think Warner missed the boat entirely, and should have been pumping one of these out every couple of years since the 50's.

Fire Birds   (1990)

Not great.  Top Gun in Helicopters.  Cage and Jones didn't have much to work with.....

28 Years Later    (2025)

This was magnificent.  A dark fairy tale.  I really dig how misleading the advertising campaign was leading up to this.....

1922   (2017)

Re-Read the Full Dark, No Stars collection this spring.  This and Big Driver are the two stars of that collection.  This movie?  Somebody should have told Thomas Jane to pump them brakes.....

July

Big Driver    (2014)

Actually, this may be the worst thing I saw all year.   Completely guts the original story.  But then, it was for Hallmark, or Lifetime.....

A Working Man   (2025)

This was pretty bad.  Nothing fits together properly.   Very crowded cast.  Nobody has time to breathe.  Plenty shooty and stabby.  Very Crowded

Jurassic World: Rebirth   (2025)

I'm part of the problem.  I just wanted to see dinosaur/monster hybrids chasing, biting and fighting.  And I got it.  I kinda like it.  I can't tell you it's good.  But I felt like it was a good use of my $10, to sit in air conditioning.  I will say:  I really dig the river sequence, which was cut nearly whole cloth from Crichton's original book.

The Woman in the Yard    (2025)

Pretty good, I thought.  Danielle Deadwyler is one of those who seems to just understand her assignments, time after time.

Superman    (2025)

God bless James Gunn.  This is a movie I really needed to see.  And I really needed my nephew to see.  We've got so many fucked up ideas about what being a man in the United States.  This was a good response.

Chasing Chasing Amy    (2023)

Good documentary about the impact of media, for those of us who don't find the path leads from A to B to C all the time.

Pieces of Aprill (2003)

Somehow, we wandered through the Best Supporting Actress Nominees for that year's Oscars, and I commented that I'd never seen this one.  I liked it, and the ending made me cry, because shit like this does.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps    (2025)

I really, really like that it didn't look like every Marvel movie since 2020.  Loved the look of The Thing, and the vibe of the city.  Liked Giacchino's score, liked Ineson as Galactus.  And Vanessa Kirby just kills it.  

I also like how technology from the FF bleeds over into regular society.  Meanwhile, in "our" MCU, they have heads up holographic displays for Tony and the Avengers, but we're still playing with thumb drives and Macs in the rest of the world....

(I didn't like Pedro Pascal in this, but I don't know if it's Pascal burnout or something else....)

August

She Rides Shotgun   (2025)

Not bad.  Good performances from Heger, Egerton and Lynch, who might be the Best Actor on Earth.

Just not a great adaptation of a really good novel.....

Doomed! the Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four   (2015)

After watching this, I think that everybody involved with this movie was a Lot.

Dressed to Kill    (1946)

Pretty decent Holmes flick.

The Naked Gun    (2025)

It's not the same vibe as ZAZ, but I still liked it.  The Chili Dog scene, and the Snowman Threesome were inspired bits.

In the Heat of the Night    (1967)

I'm including this because I'm not sure if I'd ever seen it all the way through.  Strong flick.  After watching this in the midst of a lot of Coen Brothers flicks, it's a pity that Warren Oates passed before being able to be cast by them in anything.....

Weapons    (2025)

This was a good year for horror.  And this was another fine entry.  A lot of fun.  (Looks at Wolf Man....and it uses Julia Garner correctly!!!!)

Yankees-Dodgers: an Uncivil War    (2022)

This wasn't fun.  Felt slapped together.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles    (1990)

Including this one because it's another I hadn't seen all the way through from start to finish.  Saw it on the big screen.  It's a fun flick.....

Julius Caesar   (1953)

Don't quote me on this, but I think that Brando kid could go places......

Now You See Me   (2013)

It tries hard to go for that Ocean's Eleven heist energy.  But it misses.  

September

Woman of the Year    (1942)

Dig that Kitchen scene, man.  That's comedy gold.

Final Destination 2   (2003)

Somebody told me to give this one a chance, after I didn't much like the first flick.  And they were right.  That opening sequence is fire, man.

The Long Walk    (2025)

I liked it.  A lot of people gave it a lot of shit for not being the book.  As if they've never watched an adaptation before.  I kinda dug this one.

Final Destination 3    (2006)

This one is.....less good than 2.

The Final Destination    (2009)

This one is....less good than 3.....

Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths part 3   (2024)

DC animation has been on point the last several years, but they turned Crisis into a slog.....

October

Play Dirty   (2025)

Haven't seen somebody completely miss the vibe of their own project so completely like Wahlberg in a long, long time.....

The Mummy    (1957)

This is a beautifully shot flick.  I'd like to see it on a big screen

Halloween II    (1981)

It's not bad, and it seems unfair to punish it for not being Halloween.  But I will.

The Substance   (2024)

I knew that it would bodyslam you with the body horror going in.  But I still got my ass whooped.

I'm a little weird, but I didn't love Qualley in this.

Trick r. Treat   (2007)

It's a mixed bag, but I liked the swings.  This was fun.

A House of dynamite   (2025)

It's a disjointed mess.  But I really like Rebecca Ferguson and Gabriel Basso in it.  

Who Killed the Montreal Expos   (2025)

Didn't need a whole documentary to know that Jeffrey Loria is a piece of trash, but we got it.  Actually underlines a lot of the problems with modern sports.

November

Blue Moon    (2025)

Ethan Hawke is great.  Just great.  My favorite performance of the year.  I really dig the bar, too.  I could practically smell it.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof   (1958)

I'd never seen it.  I saw a play of it in college, and in one performance, one of the actresses fell face first into the back wall of the set.  And in that respect, this movie really lacked a certain element of comedy.....

Frankenstein    (2025)

This looked exactly like I wanted it to.  Didn't love Oscar Isaac in it, but I don't typically love him in much.  

Predator: Badlands    (2025)

Really, really liked this.  Very fun.

Amarcord   (1973)

Fucking fascists.

Going Berserk   (1983)

A bit of a miss.  A bit of a mess.   I do miss John Candy, very much.

The Running Man    (2025)

Satisfying, but that third act is so drastically different in tone that it screams studio meddling.

It's different than Arnold's flick, but I have the same complaint about this that I did with the 1987 version:  there's no way that the government doesn't level that building with a missile strike as soon as they see what's up....

December

The Banger Sisters    (2002)

Goldie Hawn is a national comic treasure.   

Kill Bill: the Whole Bloody Affair    (2006)

Satisfying.  Tarantino makes me appreciate Michael Madsen, who always seemed a like a good Big Picture guy.  Another one who understood his assignments.

Eddington   (2025)

Another one that's going to warrant a second watch.  I liked this one a lot.

Christmas Eve in Miller's Point    (2024)

I haven't been to a family Christmas gathering in close to 30 years.  Or hung out with random friends in the woods in almost as long.  Didn't realize how much I'd missed doing both.

Wake Up Dead Man     (2025)

And the third bowl was just right.  Knives Out was fun, but misused its supporting players.  Glass Onion uses its cast well, but its story just doesn't hold up.  They found a fine balance here.  Plus, I kinda dig the take on the role of religion in today's world.

The Roses    (2025)

Doesn't hit its marks, but Olivia Colman is fantastic, as always.

The Ugly Stepsister   (2025)

Needles and Eyeballs and Buttholes.

A quick (possible wrong count) says that's 89 new to me movies last year.  Sinners and Flow were both amazing.

As an addendum, my top 5 of 2025 that I've seen:

1.  Sinners

2.  Weapons

3.  Blue Moon

4.  28 Years Later

5.  Superman.......

In which I am put into fiction....

Well.  My name got added to some fiction.  It seems my buddy Dino conspired with my other buddy Alex to get my name included as a character in Alex's story "No Prey, No Pay" found in the new anthology from Zombies Need Brains, Skull X Bones.

I was tickled.

January is a weird month.  Facebooke memories shows that it can be a heavy month.  A couple of Dad's surgeries, including his bypass.  My truck got stolen in early January 2014.  My friends Steve and Marty, and my Aunt Annette all died in early January.  I got fired from the old jobplace in early January.  Add that to the Post-Christmas low, generally bleh weather....I can say that the first few weeks of the year are generally my least favorite.

I was feeling that pretty hard when Dino gave me that.  It gave me a lift......

The story's not half bad.

If you'd like to purchase a copy of the anthology, you can use this link to do so.....

Pic Dump

Sunrise this morning....

A picture at the park the other day

Itsabit resting on me

Riceville,  from our ridge

Ripley,  my writing buddy

A picture of Earth's moon that's i took with my pocket computer

Thesaurus,  locked in....