Sloth, Maybe?

  ...that is, if we're not there already. Image:  KDKA Radio In the film Idiocracy , when Joe Bauers, aka "Not Sure," emerges from his cryogenic capsule, it is at the foot of a garbage landslide.  As he looks around the landscape of the U.S.A., landfills that dwarf the highest skyscraper literally litter the horizon.   Collapsing buildings are lashed against upright buildings to keep them from finishing the job.  All potable water has been replaced with a Gatorade like sludge called Brawndo.  Hospitals have names like St. God's Memorial.  Entropy rules over the once fruited plain. When Joe Biden was scheduled to appear at the Forbes Avenue Bridge in Pittsburgh, PA, it collapsed.  Ten people were injured.   One can only hope there was space in the ICU at St. God's to let them get proper treatment.  I don't blame Grandpa Joe.  I can't point a finger at a single politician or a clutch of them for the collapse of the superannu...

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!   In this episode, Boba Fett steps aside to reintroduce a familiar face.   Or rather, a familiar helmet.   One Din Djarin, the star of The Mandalorian .   The Book of Boba Fett  Chapter 5:  “The Return of the Mandalorian” is directed by Bryce Dallas Howard, and was written by Jon Favreau. The chapter begins with Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal), who is down on his luck.   He’s still collecting bounties, and he’s nursing a blaster wound that cut through the fabric of his jumpsuit rather than being nullified by his beskar armor.   He enters a secret Mandalorian cell led by the welcome presence of The Armorer (Emily Swallow) and a rival Mandalorian of the Visla clan.   Djarin reveals that he is in the possession of the legendary Darksaber - the symbol of absolute leadership among the Mandalorians.   The Visla scion challenges Djarin to combat so he can win the heirloom and become Mandalore.   Djarin barely wins the batt...

While running through Fate / Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia a second time, I kicked back to contemplate the best fight I've ever seen in anime ever.  I'd argue it even put the battle between Tetsuo and Kaneda in Akira to shame. Titled "Ushiwakamaru vs. Tiamat," it was nominated for Best Fight Scene in the 2020 Crunchyroll Anime Awards. To give the uninitiated some background, King Gilgamesh of Uruk summoned servants from various times and places to fight at his side against the Three Goddess Alliance.  Among them are King Leonidas of Sparta, the gender-swapped samurai general Ushiwakamaru and the disgraced ronin Benkei. When Tiamat, the most powerful of the Three Goddess Alliance makes her advance on the fortress city of Uruk, Ushiwakamaru leads the offensive against the serpentine deity.  She deftly hacks off the heads of one giant serpent after the other and confuses her enemy further by multiplying herself into seven "clones" that ride the ...

In the wake of the mod cyclist chase scene in Chapter 3:  "The Streets of Mos Espa,"  The Book of Boba Fett was the butt of much ridicule on many social media platforms, particularly Twitter.   For some hardcore fans of things Fett and Star Wars , it was a bridge too far.  Things can get ruthless among fans and detractors, but it can serve as an accurate bellwether for whether or not a series has genuine appeal.  As for Chapter 4:  The Gathering Storm, TBOBF is on the knife edge as to whether if can maintain its present fanbase and at best, win back those fans and casual viewers who peeled away. The chapter opens with yet another shot of Boba Fett slumbering in his bacta tank.  It is an intro that even grates at my nerves at his point.  The flashback depicts Fett and his bantha scouting out the perimeter of Jabba's old palace - now dominated by Jabba's majordomo Bib Fortuna - to see if he can reclaim his signature ship Slave I* .  ...

I remember seeing disaster-from-above films like Deep Impact and Armageddon in the nineties.   They follow the same formula:   A comet or asteroid the size of (enter large body of real estate here) is going to collide with the Earth in (enter sliver of time before doomsday here).   The wise leader of the free world takes the helm as a small crew of plucky scientists / astronauts / oil riggers that crack wise as they set a nuclear or seismic whatchamacallit on said asteroid of comet to fragment it or vaporize it.   They avoid total devastation by the skin of their teeth.   Swell of inspirational music by Aerosmith or some other schmaltzy 70s rock act and roll credits. In Don’t Look Up , I found myself laughing all the way to armageddon when I realized that the leader of the free world was asleep at the wheel.   Three scientists - heralds of doom - go unnoticed.   As for the general public, they bend where the winds of social media, algorithms, and tre...

Yes, autumn of 1990. I was 22, dropping out of my English major at Ohio State while trying to drop in with some ragtag group of artists and experimental musicians in the Short North of Columbus. I had just moved out of the Rat Hole apartment in the half-slum that was South Campus and back into the parental estate out west in Lincoln Village, where one of my sisters was also still living and watching the weeknight sitcoms and police and courtroom dramas...one of which was this rather oddball experiment called “Cop Rock”, a police drama like “Hill Street Blues”, but with songs and sometimes dancing. I can remember watching only one episode, and thanks to our 21st Century tech, I can track down when the specific episode aired, through the IMDb: Wednesday, November 21st, 1990. The day before Thanksgiving. All I remembered was a tragic scene where a small African American boy was lying dead on the ground, an innocent victim of a crossfire between street gangs. His mother and a group of wome...

On my last entry for Fate / Grand Order , I said I was 75% of the way through.   Having completed the series, I must say it is a bizarre fusion of Avengers Infinity War , Avengers Endgame , The Return of the King , and any pie throwing fight you’ve seen in a Three Stooges short. To start off, Ritsuka Fujimaru and Mash Kyrielight are led by Ishtar in a journey to the Underworld.   Their twofold mission is to liberate the fallen Gilgamesh from the bonds of death and to recruit Ishtar’s estranged sister, Ereshkigal, in their battle against the primordial goddess Tiamat. Meanwhile, Tiamat and her son Kingu unleash a horde of fearsome creatures with talons for legs and grotesque grins where a head should be.   They are meant to be the successors of the human race and they literally tear through cities and their inhabitants on the way to the great city stronghold of Uruk.   There, Gilgamesh, Fujimaru, Mash, Ishtar and a host of champions will make their final stand before...

In my stars I am above thee, but be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em. Thy Fates open their hands. Let thy blood and spirit embrace them. - Malvolio, Twelfth Night, 2:5:7 Chris Smith, alias Peacemaker (John Cena), has greatness thrust upon him, but the  q uestion is:   Can he bear the weight of greatness? Now this may sound like a negative introduction to the HBOMax series Peacemaker , but I assure you it is a compliment to the series and the character around whom it is centered. You see, Peacemaker entertains the delusion that he is an All-American superhero, cut from the same cloth as Superman or Marvel’s Captain America.   Instead, this muscle bound, gun toting, government agent hides a vulnerable center of a whiny man child with a severe inferiority complex and the disdain of his extreme right-wing dad Auggie (Robert Patrick), who makes no reservations for calling his son a “pussy.” To begin w...

I find myself in familiar yet not so familiar surroundings.  I'm back in my home borough of the Bronx just across from Manhattan.  I descend into a subway for a train marked with a black letter in a yellow circle.  Anyone from the Bronx knows there are no lines in the Bronx signified with a black letter in a yellow circle.  The 2 line is a white number in a red circle, while the 4, 5, and 6 lines are white numbers in green circles. Where in the Bronx is this leading me? I descend into the station anyway and I board the train to which, according to my internal compass, is headed back into Manhattan.  However, when I exit from a station I arbitrarily decided to leave, I find myself in Hastings-on-Hudson, a town just north of Yonkers.  I'm at Warburton Avenue and Main Street, and the buildings look slightly different.  They're glass and steel instead of brick and mortar.  They are only two to five stories high.  The local record store is moving ...

  - JJB

They sound like they're being strangled. A few weeks back, I saw my first hawk up close.  It was perched on a branch somewhere along the Aqueduct Trail up the hill from where I live.  It was a big beast.  It didn't seem to be in a predatory state of mind.   It just sat there on the branch, unperturbed. I had seen hawks circling in the air every time I took a drive out of the city.  Now I see them nearly all the year around.  Always from a distance.  They circle the sky looking for prey, but I never see them swoop down for the kill. Yet here is a great hawk, his grey-brown feathers nearly concealing himself among the bare winter trees.  Someone on the trail had pointed her out.  I was tempted to take photographs of the hawk, but I didn't want it to fly off in aggravation.  The other people on the trail weren't so reluctant.  So I can only describe to you in words and not images what I saw. Are the hawks well fed from their diurn...

A few days back, I wrote a sharp review of the latest chapter of The Book of Boba Fett .   “The Streets of Mos Espa,” I said, was an episode of setups but no payoffs.   That is true, but what I lost track of is that this is a serial.   Not every aspect of TBOBF stuck the landing, but it’s had some satisfactory endings such as Chapter Two, “The Tribes of Tatooine.” So, basically I’m reassessing my review of “The Streets of Mos Espa.”   Upon watching it again, I saw the chapter’s strengths.   Boba Fett exhibits cunning when he turns a gang of   “water thief” street urchins into members of his crew.   There was the threat of Fett tarnishing his image as a big wheel in the underground if he gunned down a bunch of teenagers.   Instead, he heard them out, figured they were being screwed over by the water monger, and won them over to his side.   Fett may or may not be a new man with a conscience, but he’s proven he can weigh the pros and cons and a...