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Aug. 28th, 2023 06:52 pm1. I'd been feeling disconnected today, and stumbled upon a post that touched me, and I found myself crying, just crying. Tears flowing down my face. It was about the pain of grief, the inability to share it, or find compassion or comfort. Being in pain, and just wanting someone to listen. Not offer advice. Not commiserate. Not shuffle off. Just be there. Life is extremely lonely sometimes - even more so in the company of others, be them friends or family.
The world felt cold these last few day like shards of glass, sharp, and painful couple with a growing sense of futility...then I stumbled upon that post...and I thought, oh, I'm not alone after all. It's not just all glass and sharp edges. There are people out there who feel as I do, differently of course, but like me they yearn for a hug, or just to hold a hand and listen.
Also it makes me realize how little people listen in this world brimming with noise and one too many barkers selling their wares...whether we need or want them or not.
2. Oppenheimer topped the global box office this weekend...with Barbie in second for the first time, and followed by No More Bets, and finally Gran Turismo
I'm fascinated by Barbieheimer's dominance of the box office. (I am among the few who saw Oppenheimer - who didn't see it because of the marketing hype - I saw it because it had Robert Downy Jr, Cillian Murphy, and Emily Blunt in it - and was directed by Christopher Nolan. Also I have a crush on Murphy - and had been anticipating it since I found out about it in February or somewhere around that point. So I'd been wanting to see it forever. I didn't expect it to do that well - hello, biopic, worse? Historical bio-pic about a little known scientist and the atomic bomb. While that's interesting to me - right up my alley, it's not necessarily to anyone else. I have off-beat tastes. I like movies about scientists and scientific discoveries - I find scientists and science interesting. It's one of the reasons I like hard science fiction. But most people don't.)
I think it took off - because practically every movie out is one of the following and has been for a very long time:
1. based on a video game (Gran Turismo)
2. adapted from a superhero comic book or about a superhero (Guardians, Quantumania, Blue Beetle, The Flash...)
3. a sequel to another movie or in some cases about the third, fourth or sixth sequel to it (Mission Impossible and Indiana Jones)
4. Features mainly car chases, stunts, or action (Gran Turismo, John Wick, Fast and Furious)
5. Horror film
6. Kids animated film
One gets bored after a while. Barbie and Oppenheimer were just different.
3. 2023 seems to be the year of union strikes, everyone is striking. And my heart goes out to the unions - because when you strike - you lose pay. You are taking a huge risk to get more pay.
Some can't strike - the TWU union or Transit Workers Union can't strike - because it shuts down the city and essential services putting lives at risk. The last time they did it - every member got fined.
Right now we have the auto-workers going on strike, the pilots threatening to strike, the nurses (NYU Langone's) threatening to strike due to under-staffing, the writers on strike, the actors on strike...
People have been striking right and left all year long.
4. Almost done with The Killers of the Flower Moon - it's divided into three sections, so I've almost completed the middle section narrated by Will Patton. The first section is about the Osage Tribe and how they fell into legal guardianship, and their murders, the second is about the FBI and the investigators who solve the case and figured out the killers. Not sure about the third section.
Second section got interesting when they started talking about Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas. (I did a legal internship with that Prison in the mid 1990s. Remember traveling to and from it - on the back roads. Got lost several times. Pretty country side. I even drove to it during a scary thunderstorm - and sat in the rotunda with a prisoner waiting for a parole hearing during a prison-wide lock-down during a thunderstorm, and limited lighting. ) So, it was kind of interesting to listen to the story of William White, the former Texas Ranger and FBI agent who was a Warden of the Prison, and the Killers of the Flower Moon residing there. There was even a prison breakout.
I've seen the interior of that prison - and yeah, I can see how they did it. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to break out of it - when I was sitting in the middle of it waiting for a parole hearing.
4. Finished Fisk over the weekend, it's better towards the end. Co-worker and I agreed that once you get away from the annoying AirBnb owner and the cafe, it gets better.
The world felt cold these last few day like shards of glass, sharp, and painful couple with a growing sense of futility...then I stumbled upon that post...and I thought, oh, I'm not alone after all. It's not just all glass and sharp edges. There are people out there who feel as I do, differently of course, but like me they yearn for a hug, or just to hold a hand and listen.
Also it makes me realize how little people listen in this world brimming with noise and one too many barkers selling their wares...whether we need or want them or not.
2. Oppenheimer topped the global box office this weekend...with Barbie in second for the first time, and followed by No More Bets, and finally Gran Turismo
I'm fascinated by Barbieheimer's dominance of the box office. (I am among the few who saw Oppenheimer - who didn't see it because of the marketing hype - I saw it because it had Robert Downy Jr, Cillian Murphy, and Emily Blunt in it - and was directed by Christopher Nolan. Also I have a crush on Murphy - and had been anticipating it since I found out about it in February or somewhere around that point. So I'd been wanting to see it forever. I didn't expect it to do that well - hello, biopic, worse? Historical bio-pic about a little known scientist and the atomic bomb. While that's interesting to me - right up my alley, it's not necessarily to anyone else. I have off-beat tastes. I like movies about scientists and scientific discoveries - I find scientists and science interesting. It's one of the reasons I like hard science fiction. But most people don't.)
I think it took off - because practically every movie out is one of the following and has been for a very long time:
1. based on a video game (Gran Turismo)
2. adapted from a superhero comic book or about a superhero (Guardians, Quantumania, Blue Beetle, The Flash...)
3. a sequel to another movie or in some cases about the third, fourth or sixth sequel to it (Mission Impossible and Indiana Jones)
4. Features mainly car chases, stunts, or action (Gran Turismo, John Wick, Fast and Furious)
5. Horror film
6. Kids animated film
One gets bored after a while. Barbie and Oppenheimer were just different.
3. 2023 seems to be the year of union strikes, everyone is striking. And my heart goes out to the unions - because when you strike - you lose pay. You are taking a huge risk to get more pay.
Some can't strike - the TWU union or Transit Workers Union can't strike - because it shuts down the city and essential services putting lives at risk. The last time they did it - every member got fined.
Right now we have the auto-workers going on strike, the pilots threatening to strike, the nurses (NYU Langone's) threatening to strike due to under-staffing, the writers on strike, the actors on strike...
People have been striking right and left all year long.
4. Almost done with The Killers of the Flower Moon - it's divided into three sections, so I've almost completed the middle section narrated by Will Patton. The first section is about the Osage Tribe and how they fell into legal guardianship, and their murders, the second is about the FBI and the investigators who solve the case and figured out the killers. Not sure about the third section.
Second section got interesting when they started talking about Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas. (I did a legal internship with that Prison in the mid 1990s. Remember traveling to and from it - on the back roads. Got lost several times. Pretty country side. I even drove to it during a scary thunderstorm - and sat in the rotunda with a prisoner waiting for a parole hearing during a prison-wide lock-down during a thunderstorm, and limited lighting. ) So, it was kind of interesting to listen to the story of William White, the former Texas Ranger and FBI agent who was a Warden of the Prison, and the Killers of the Flower Moon residing there. There was even a prison breakout.
I've seen the interior of that prison - and yeah, I can see how they did it. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to break out of it - when I was sitting in the middle of it waiting for a parole hearing.
4. Finished Fisk over the weekend, it's better towards the end. Co-worker and I agreed that once you get away from the annoying AirBnb owner and the cafe, it gets better.