Tag: Dwayne Johnson

The All American Boy

I was a bit productive last night after work. I got off later than usual–after five–and we’d been busy all day as well, which was lovely. We’ve not seen that many people in a day in quite some time, and I’d forgotten what that felt like. I chose to take the highway home again after work, and it wasn’t terrible, to be honest. Yes, the ramp to 90/Westbank was backed up as always, and so was the twin spans over the river, but it was better than driving through the city and dealing with all the idiots and stupidity–which I was definitely not in the mood for. I came home, hung out with Sparky for a while, and then started working. I finished a load of laundry and started another. I emptied the dishwasher and refilled it. I cleaned off my desk and filed stuff (I really need to get the overall organization in this corner revamped, revised, and made more efficient and less clutter-prone). I have a meeting this morning on-line, after which I will do my work-at-home duties and do some writing. I was going to run some errands later, but I think they can keep until tomorrow, as I’d rather be around here all day and get things done. It’s a good plan, at any rate. We’ll see how well I obey those dictates.

I also slept well before Sparky decided it was time for me to get up and feed him. I went back to bed, and then of course that started his passive/aggressive ways of getting me up. I do like having a cat alarm–I’d missed that in our cat-free months last year. Sparky still has a lot of extra energy, but I like that about him, and I like that he has his own way of being affectionate. Such a completely different kind of cat personality than Scooter, but all cats are different and getting to know them is part of the joy of having one.

Mmmm, my coffee is quite marvelous tasting this morning.

I was checking my blog drafts page and was stunned to see how many drafts of entries I’ve started and not completed; several books, movies, and topics I wanted to write about, and of course, I need to either finish them or abandon and delete them. Some were kind of similar and started months (years) apart, so I need to get that figured out, and I really should finish writing about the things I started writing about. It was also startling to see that now my blog has become like everything else I write about–drafts and ideas and notes that aren’t completed. Heavy heaving sigh. In the olden days of live journal, I never did this; I always finished every entry I started (probably because I didn’t know whether you could save unfinished drafts there; I discovered the feature when I moved it over here). As a completionist, you can imagine how much this gets under my skin. I’m trying not to let it bother me, but it’s not working so far.

Sigh.

It’s been a weird week, really. I lost my respect for some people–looking at you, Dwayne Johnson, but I always preferred John Cena anyway, and turns out he’s an actual ally–and my concerns and worries about the decline in freedom for everyone (except straight white cisgender men) and the establishment of the 4th Reich in this country, depending on how the election turns out this fall. All of us who tried to warn you back in 2016 (and earlier, in my case) were 100% right about everything, so by all means don’t listen to us again now. I don’t understand the nihilistic mentality of voting third party to “teach us a lesson about progressive purity”–but it’s usually people too young to understand (and they don’t want to understand) how everything works. The irony that they think the Constitution and the system will protect them from a right-wing autocracy is so misinformed to the point of willful ignorance shows me, at any rate, why they shouldn’t be taken seriously or listened to. Back in 2016 I worked with two young cisgender white girls who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Hillary because “she didn’t leave her husband for cheating on her” and “she’s corrupt and gross.” How does your loss of reproductive freedom feel, you willfully ignorant bitches? Thank God you proved your feminist and progressive purity! I, for one, will never forgive anyone who refused to see the danger we were facing in 2016, and I especially will never forgive people who mocked me for my concerns. Hope you need an abortion this year, bitches.

There’s been a lot of talk over the last decade or so about the art v. the artist; the first time I think I heard about this was the issue of H. P. Lovecraft’s deeply rooted racism in the speculative fiction community. I’ve not read much Lovecraft, if any, and that was something I felt I was missing in my education in speculative fiction, and probably why I never really have thought of myself as a specfic writer–I’d never read Lovecraft, and hadn’t reread or revisited Poe since high school. I still intend to at some point–thank you, Project Gutenberg, so I didn’t have to pay for them–but that will certainly effect my opinions whenever I can bring myself to read some of the stories. I used to read things all the time when I was growing up and throughout my adult life that don’t hold up now on rereads that went right past me on the first read because that was how things were in society and the culture at the time. I loved Gone with the Wind, both book and film, for decades before I began to realize how incredibly problematic both were. I keep meaning to go back and read it again now, but I don’t know that I can handle the idyllic portrait it paints of the old South, the war, and Reconstruction. (By the way, you know those white lady Trumpers? They are in this book as the ladies of Atlanta, and saintly Melanie was the worst of them…although a retelling as a Real Housewives of Reconstruction would be interesting. I know a Black writer retold the story from the perspective of a biracial half-sister of Scarlett’s, which I’ve always wanted to read.) Even Margaret Mitchell herself has some issues with the movie’s depiction of Tara because, in her words, it was a “working farm.”

The reason I am bringing this up is because the Chatelaine of Castle TERF showed her flat ass again this week. I did read the Harry Potter series and I did see all the movies, and I did enjoy them, even if I never had any desire to revisit them. The longer the series went on, the worse the books got, in my opinion, longer and more convoluted the stories got and she often never wrapped up anything; there were a lot of subplot false starts that looked promising that she abandoned. There was veiled anti-Semitism and fatphobia in the books that I marked as I read them as well as in the movies–straight from her hard drive. There were no queer people in her books until she retconned Dumbledore long after the fact–something all queer people should have been so fucking grateful for that we (in her mind) should have fallen on our knees in front of her and kissed the hems of her skirts for all eternity. She is the perfect example of how money corrupts weak minds. This week her TERFdom showed itself in announcing she would never accept apologies from Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe for daring not to agree with her hateful stance against transpeople, that she veils in worries about bathroom/changing room rapes…which basically comes from her assumption that all men want to do is rape women, to the point they’ll pretend they have gender dysmorphia merely to gain access to women only spaces for ease of rape/sexual assault. That’s kind of anti-male misogyny on top of the transphobia. All men are rapists, transwomen are actually men, and therefore all transwomen are rapists…and her wealth, like Elon Musk’s, have convinced her somehow that she is special and therefore her opinions have more value and weight than anyone else’s. Seriously TERF Queen, I am so sorry you had the entire world at your feet and your dark and twisted soul made you Housemaster of Slytherin and Voldermort’s mistress. I take a lot of pleasure in knowing how miserable your money and success have made you…and that you’ve decided the message of your Harry Potter series–everyone is equal, no one is better than anyone else and love is the key–was as phony as she is.

So, yes, it’s hard for me to enjoy art when I know the artist is a horrible person. And I don’t have to consume or pay for their art, just as I wouldn’t expect people who don’t like my values and beliefs to buy and consume mine.

Whew! I think I better get going on my day–this turned out longer than intended! Have a great Friday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. Stranger things have happened on a Friday!

Get Off Of My Cloud

And Christmas is over.

I managed to make my quota yesterday; I didn’t make up the quota from the day before but it’s okay; I don’t really mind. I am going to have to work like a dog this week to get this into something reasonably not embarrassing before turning it in. But I am writing, and I am writing in the proper amount of word count bursts; I just wish I could do more than the daily quota. I can get the quota usually done in about two hours or so, which is pretty fast methinks for the amount of output. I used to be able to do more when necessary, though, and I keep hoping I’ll hit one of those days again. You never know. It may even been today; stranger things have happened.

I finally remembered the last movie we watched on Christmas Eve: Enola Holmes 2. I can’t imagine why I couldn’t remember it yesterday morning. I enjoyed it, and both Millie Bobbie Brown and Henry Cavill are favorites of mine. Last night we watched Black Adam with Dwayne Johnson, which we also enjoyed. I’d seen some snarky hate directed at the movie on Twitter since its release, but I like the Rock and I like DC, so go figure, we liked it. Were there holes in the plot? Of course, it’s a superhero movie so there are always going to be holes in the plot and things that don’t make sense. It’s a fucking super hero movie. I’ve already accepted that mythological gods have given him the “shazam” power, and that he’s been alive in a sort of suspended animation for thousands of years, what precisely is a bridge too far here? I also thought it was interesting to see a superhero who belongs to another country other than ours–all superhero stories inevitably make them American because of course only we would have superheroes.

I also read quite a bit more of Dashing Through the Snowbirds, which I will hopefully finish this morning over coffee–reading while having coffee in the mornings has been really lovely over this long holiday weekend. Perhaps in the new year it can become a tradition for me on the weekends; reading while having my morning coffee. I would like to read more in the new year–my reading isn’t nearly as regular or frequent as it should be at this point, but I am also looking forward to getting my shit back together in 2023 and being more on top of things than I have been in quite some time. I think that’s been the worst thing of these last few years; having a lot to do all the time while not feeling like you have an organizational grip on everything has been absolute hell for me, and I am hopeful come the new year will see that horrific feeling come to an end. I’m always going to be busy, let’s be honest; but I always used to feel like I always had a handle on it before. Maybe that’s changed because I am older and don’t have the desire or drive or energy that I used to have, but I do think it’s really a combination of everything. Come the new year, I am hoping to get better organized from the start and try to get everything planned ahead of time.

I slept really well again last night, which was great. One thing for sure is I got rested over this long weekend, if nothing else. I wanted to get up early this morning to try to start the adjustment to the hellish earliness of six a.m. alarms that are coming the rest of the week, but the bed was so comfortable this morning and warm, and I was so relaxed, I stayed in bed until after eight, making me a lag-a-bed surely this morning. I do have to leave the house–I reordered the groceries I was originally supposed to pick up on Christmas Eve for today–but not for long. The temperature is in the thirties out there right now–but should be up into the seventies by the end of the week again. Ah, bipolar New Orleans winter weather never changes from year to year, does it?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I want to read a bit this morning, and I have a load of laundry to finish as well as a load of dishes to put away, and of course there’s minor cleaning and picking up to do this morning. I think this evening we will get caught up on Three Pines and maybe start something else new.

Have a wonderful Boxing Day for those who celebrate, and for everyone else, have a lovely Monday off from work. I certainly intend to do so!

For Better or Worse

I have always been a fan of John Cena since the first time I laid eyes on him.

I am nothing if not shallow.

But his unique charisma, outstanding physique, and handsome, expressive face caught my eye the first time I caught a glimpse of him while flipping through the channels. Despite my lifelong passion for professional wrestling, however, I never watched any of his matches–my disdain for WWE, which began when they were WWF back in the day, has never abated, despite the hiring of so many heavily muscled guys with spectacular bodies–and was really happy to see him start making the transition to acting (following in the footsteps of Dwayne Johnson, Dave Bautista, and numerous others). I bought a DVD of his first film years ago relatively cheaply in a bargain bin (The Marine, if you are so inclined), and thought, at the time, “this dude could go far in films–he’s naturally charismatic and can act. He’s not Olivier by any means, but he can act enough to carry a scene and create a believable, likable character”.

But the film itself wasn’t good–it was produced by WWE, of course–and I hoped he would get another shot in something not WWE related. He has since proven he can carry a scene, and has done some really great character work in small roles over the years. I did keep thinking–I think this often–that he (and other professional wrestlers) should be cast as super-heroes; it’s not like they have to build up their bodies the way Henry Cavill or Chris Hemsworth had to, so was relatively pleased when he was cast as Peacemaker in the reboot of Suicide Squad–a DC Comic I had no familiarity with; likewise I knew nothing about the character of Peacemaker. But…as a Cena fan, I wanted to watch–and Paul enjoys a good superhero show/movie, too.

I didn’t realize the show was directed and written by James Gunn–whose Guardians of the Galaxy remains my favorite Marvel Universe film–but could immediately detect that Gunn sensibility I loved in Guardians in the very first episode. Not knowing what to expect, I was a little taken aback by the first episode–I thought the opening credits were strange, for one thing; and I wasn’t sure about the show’s tone, or if the characters were going to work or not. We were very close to giving up after the first episode, but decided to keep going.

I am very glad that we did.

It took about three episodes for us to completely buy into the story and the characters, but once the show gets its feet underneath it, it is actually quite fun and darkly funny. All the acting is good, the characters are clearly defined and their inner lives (and inner struggles) make them not only relatable but understandable and likable. They are, of course, on a secret mission to combat an alien invasion (code name: Operation Butterfly), and while the mission is kind of crazy, it works within the context of the show. Freddy Stroma–who is actually gorgeous–downplays his looks to play nerdy Vigilante, and Danielle Brooks is also fantastic. Robert Patrick is also perfectly vile as Peacemaker’s racist father, a super-villain known as the White Knight.

And yes, the opening credits eventually–as we got deeper into the show–became one of our favorite parts of the show.

And Peacemaker’s best friend, an eagle cleverly named Eagley, is also pretty hilarious.

We enjoyed the hell out of this show, and I highly recommend it. Can’t wait for season two–and may even go back and watch Suicide Squad.

And God, Cena is perfect. PERFECT.

My Heart Can’t Take It No More

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment and I slept fairly well. I will be spending most of my day on ZOOM with the new Board of Directors for Mystery Writers of America doing Orientation (we should be doing it in person in New York today, but yet another event is a victim of the coronavirus variants). I am not a fan of ZOOM, for obvious reasons–I cannot stand seeing myself on camera, and hate the sound of my voice–and while I can’t necessarily hear my own voice, I can see my face on screen, and I really don’t like that. I don’t really have space for a ZOOM studio in my little nook office right off my kitchen–and I need to make sure all the counters are cleared off and the cabinets are closed, etc.–and so I’ve avoided doing ZOOM things like the plague during these plague years. I am not an extrovert by any means (and yes, well aware that my claims to be painfully shy, socially anxious, and introverted are often greeted by laughter; but the appearance of calm and ease I project in these situations is always just pure dumb luck because I am always a twisted tangle of anxiety-ridden knots on the inside the entire time, and completely exhausted when it’s over), and thus these things are never easy on me. I imagine this afternoon when the calls ends I will adjourn to my easy chair with a drink and will spend the rest of the day there.

Yesterday we started watching Peacemaker with John Cena on HBO MAX; it took a minute for us to get involved in the story but we eventually got sucked in. It’s an odd kind of super-hero show, really; Peacemaker is theoretically a villain (I’m not familiar with the Suicide Squad and haven’t seen any of the movies) but he sees himself as a hero. John Cena is a very charismatic leading man; there’s something about him that is very watchable, and he plays comedy very well; which is surprising, since he comes from the world of WWE (then again, Dwayne Johnson and Bautista also did, and also play comedy very well, so maybe it’s not surprising), and he really shines in this part. I’ve always been a fan, and am glad to see his career outside of WWE taking off. I’m looking forward to seeing more of the show. We also started watching a docuseries on HBO MAX after we finished the three episodes of Peacemaker that have been loaded for streaming called Murders at Starved Rock, which is interesting enough but probably isn’t going to have a resolution.

I did started reading Alafair Burke’s Find Me yesterday and am enjoying it thus far–maybe when the meeting is over I can spend some time with the book, which would be marvelous and a definite reward for spending so much of the day talking to my computer (which is some seriously weird Jetsons shit). I started making a to-do list yesterday so I can keep track of everything I need to do and need to get done and with some sort of time-line involved; I am confident I can get everything done but it’s going to take some serious focusing on my part to get it all done. It’s a bit overwhelming and stressful to be sure, but as long as I can get a handle on everything I need to do, it can all get done. Over the next two days I am going to work, over my morning coffee, on getting my email inbox cleared out once and for all; I am going to get some filing in order; and I’d like to finish reading Alafair’s book. I think we’re probably going to watch some movies in the evening–Power of the Dog and The Tragedy of Macbeth are at the top of my list–over the next couple of days, and I am also hoping to start back at the gym tomorrow morning (after getting all my morning chores finished); hope springs eternal. My weight has climbed back up somehow, and so getting back to the gym is a lot more important than it has been. I hate that my weight is climbing again, and I am sure it has to do with me being more sedentary over the last few months than I had been in the months before. (Just thinking about how good it will feel to stretch and work my muscles out again just sent a shiver of delight down my spine.)

But making the list made me feel much better about things, honestly; I don’t know why I have so much trouble falling back into the habits that help me get things done and reduce my stress.

I bought our first King cake of the season yesterday–and yes, it’s quite delicious. I don’t think I bought any last year, since there were no parades or hardly anything Carnival-like; I doubt very seriously that Paul and I will be heading down to super-spreader central out on the corner this year. It’s a shame because we’ve always loved the parades and catching throws, even when the weather is bad; how many times have we stood out there in the rain to catch things? (It’s actually more fun in the rain because most people leave and there’s more room and they throw more because there are less people to throw to…) But I just can’t see taking the risk of getting sick out there–and you know there are going to so many unvaccinated people out there who won’t wear masks at all; the parishes surrounding Orleans are ridiculously defiant when it comes to taking measures to protect other people, which is terribly sad–but those are also the people who drive in to the city and hang out along our parade routes (while posting comments on news articles about how much they hate New Orleans and how the city is so dangerous and riddled with crime–keep your racists asses out in your paradise parishes then, trash), so yeah, no desire to put myself at that much risk, thank you very much. I can only imagine what Carnival is going to do to our infection rates.

Given how many people used to die annually in New Orleans AND Louisiana from malaria, yellow fever, and other pandemics that used to rage through the population, you’d think we’d handle things better as a state, city and parish, but nooooooooo….(if you ever want to read a great book about the horrors of a pandemic and massive death in New Orleans during the nineteenth century, Barbara Hambly’s Fever Season is pretty amazing)

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. I have to hide things from the computer camera and do some straightening up as well as preparing. Heavy heaving sigh. And I will see you tomorrow, Constant Reader.

5 8 6

And now it’s Thursday.

Ye Gods, how lovely was it to get in my car yesterday morning and turn the heat all the way up? I actually felt warm for the first time in days, and the heat was on at the office, too! Marvelous, simply marvelous, really. The weather also got significantly warmer–still cold, but twenty degrees was a significant improvement–over the course of the day. It’s going to drop into the thirties again overnight on Friday and Saturday, per the forecast, but if I can sleep through it I don’t care how cold it gets at night. I did have ice on my windshield yesterday morning–that was an unpleasant surprise–but my wonderful car warmed right up as I sat there and the ice melted and all was right in the world again. The drive to work was a bit of an ordeal; I left early, just in case, and was right–New Orleanians cannot drive under the best of circumstances–and when I got on 90 highway from the west bank to connect to I-10 East….my ramp was blocked off by an apparent car fire? And then of course the next exit from I-10 West (don’t try to follow the highway nonsense in New Orleans, seriously) was Carrollton. Because people drive like morons I wasn’t able to take the Carrollton/Tulane exit and had to get off at Carrollton right in front of Costco…and you always need to remember that when you need to make a left turn in New Orleans, you probably can’t. I wound up detouring around Xavier University and our OTHER building on my way to work this morning…thank God I left early so I got here around the time I usually do….it only took me almost three quarters of a fucking hour.

Ironically, the temperature in the Lost Apartment last night was one that would ordinarily have me bitterly bundling up and complaining about the cold…last night as I moved around the apartment getting things done–all the things I wanted to do and intended to on Fat Tuesday, I was laughing at myself…because after Fat Tuesday last night seemed very pleasant indeed in the Lost Apartment. I slept like a stone last night–God, if I could only sleep every night the way I do when it’s this cold!–and didn’t really want to get up this morning, either–it was warm and comfortable–but even so, this cold this morning is completely bearable and something I can handle with aplomb, methinks.

One great tragedy of the cold, though, was I lost a day’s work on the manuscript on Fat Tuesday, which means really having to buckle down on working on it this weekend. I may wind up having to ask for an extra week, but it’s very close and if I can get a lot done this weekend I might not have to ask for another week–but I am not going to kill myself and am going to try to be reasonable and realistic about how much I can get done this weekend.

Rather than finishing Mr. Mercedes last night, we chose to watch Serena Williams play Naomi Osaka at the Australian Open; some amazing tennis, but I have never enjoyed watching Serena lose. I suspect that was her last Australian Open; I think after this year she will undoubtedly retire and enjoy the rest of her life, maybe even have another kid. She owes us tennis fans nothing, really–I just hate seeing her marvelous career come to an end.

It’s forty-two in New Orleans right now, with a projected low of thirty-nine for the day. I will undoubtedly feel very warm and toasty when I retire to my easy chair to watch movies and remake last week’s condom packs (they were exposed to a temperature that was too low for them to stay good; so I have to remove the condoms from the packs I made last week and put new ones in); I’m not sure what I want to watch today. I watched Young Rock last night while I waited for Paul to come home; I can’t make up my mind as to whether it’s meta and charming, or cheesy yet charming. Dwayne Johnson is just so damned charismatic…I have been a fan from the early days (just as I have been a long-time fan of John Cena; I don’t watch WWE at all anymore for a variety of reasons, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate the talents working for them), and there were times watching the show when I laughed out loud–the actors playing him when he was younger were very well-cast, as were the men cast as the professional wrestlers he knew and hung out with when he was a kid; and the woman playing his mother is very likable. Also–the guy playing his father Rocky Johnson is eerily well-cast as well. So, I’ll probably keep watching, but am reserving judgment on it.

Oh, I wonder if either version of My Cousin Rachel is available to stream anywhere? I’ve never seen either, and I do love the book very much. If my mind could focus better, I’d give it a reread–for some reason I’m having trouble reading again, so at some point today, tomorrow or over the course of the weekend I am going to delve back into some short stories. I started reading an ol Dan Girls mystery, The Clue in the Cobweb, because I want to start doing blog entries about the kids’ series I loved so much (I’ve already done The Three Investigators and Ken Holt; I am also rereading a Three Investigators tale, The Mystery of the Fiery Eye as well), and eventually would love to cover every one of the series I read when I was a kid and continued collecting as an adult. I know I’ve also already done Trixie Belden–but I’ve not done any of the others. I am hesitant to approach Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys; even with the ones I’ve already done I barely scraped into the extensive research and scholarship on those series, and as I’ve noted before, fans of these series take them very, very seriously (I still want to write a book about that; I think a very interesting murder mystery novel could be set at one of these fan conferences they do annually because I don’t have enough to write already.)

And on that note, tis time to head back into the spice mines. Hope you have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and please stay warm and safe out there!