Movies and life:

“Baywatch” is vastly better than its trailers, but it would have to be. Like the source material, it knows it is first and foremost a jiggle show, but also like its predecessor, it understands that you can have occasionally decent writing and acting in addition to the jiggle. Which isn’t to say that there is an atom of brilliance in this show, but it does have a lot of heart, and it is NOT the brain dead comedy the trailers presented. (At least, not most of the time.)

“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” is better than its immediate predecessor, but not even close to the original trilogy. The producers seem to have figured out that Jack Sparrow doesn’t work at the center of a movie, and have given us paired protagonists who can almost carry the movie. Still, flintlocks and square riggers and weird supernatural stuff, and I am a very happy camper.

“Wonder Woman” is a cultural event packaged in a big budget but nonetheless mediocre gender switched remake of “Captain America”. My comment, on leaving the theater, was that the movie had, “Six feet of heart and 71 inches of stupid;” Dementia’s comment was that the pacing was poor, the middle was weak, and that, given a choice, she would really rather watch “Captain America” again. I loved Gal Gadot’s portrayal of Wonder Woman in “Dawn of Justice”, but suspected at the time that the character as presented was just too smart to base a movie around, and the chance of her actually surviving the script building process was zero. The second assumption has proven to be true; we will never actually know about the first. Note: We didn’t dislike the movie; we enjoyed it. We just don’t understand the fuss.

There was a poker game on June 2, and I went, but I visited my father before that, and I visited my mother’s grave before that. I ended up on my hands and knees, cleaning off the accumulated mud and moss; flush stones settle, a bit. My father continues his slow decline, and the poker game went as they have been going for quite a while, with me finishing consistently near, but out of, the money.

The annual Rend Lake messabout was this weekend, and I went, and was moderately ill, but I managed to get the boat into the water, and did a little rowing. One of the other fellows took Suchia for a spin as well, which hasn’t happened before. The brave soul found her a bit too strange for his tastes, even though he really liked the concept. I went back to my room early and then slept for ten hours.

Finally… I am scheduled to take the last of my pre-paid exams on June 15. I have boiled 1000 pages of text down to a single 19 page document, which I am currently trying to memorize. We shall see.

Uncle Hyena