Movies

Allergies?

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Sniff, sniff. The last week or so whenever I’m out walking, my nose will get all stuffy, and my eyes will get a little teary. I don’t remember this problem in the spring before, and this is my third one here in the Portland area.

After a couple seconds I realized this is actually my first spring here. In 2023 I was hardly getting out of the house much, what with taking care of Donna. Last year I was gone on the big road trip from mid-April to mid-June. All three of my usual paths are typically lined on both sides with all these springy, flowery things. Maybe pop a Benadryl before heading out and/or some tissues.

Today’s evening movie showing was Life of Crime a movie based on an Elmore Leonard book…nuff said. Oh, and I restarted watching LOST yesterday. So far I’m just watching one episode a day, not like the 2 per day clip from before.

Red Sox chances of making the Wild Card round in the 2026 playoffs: 17.9%

 

Thoroughbreds

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Just another day in paradise. Today’s afternoon matinee was again on Amazon Prime and is billed as a crime/thriller with comedic undertones. Thoroughbreds is about two upper-class teenage girls in suburban Connecticut who rekindle their unlikely friendship and have a plan to solve one of their problems. IMDB says 6.6/10 and I’d bump it to a 7, I did not regret the hour and a half spent watching it. And I didn’t get teary-eyed at the end.

Red Sox chances of making the Wild Card round in the 2026 playoffs: 23.2%

 

I’m Such A Girl

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This could almost qualify to be included on the “Awkward Family Photos” website. Note Donna’s wet hair (and holy crap, ’80s glasses); she has probably just finished showering in the tub she and her sister Sandy are in while I am outside. I bet the original plan was we were all going to be in the tub, but the instant camera didn’t have a timer. I wonder what I’m using to push the shutter button? So, I guess I did have a Polaroid Swinger camera. I’ve stumbled on a bunch of them recently.

Today was just another typical day (maybe not it that order) for me. Until I went looking for a movie to watch this evening. I started at Prime Video and after watching a half dozen trailers, I settled a quirky little movie called Carrie Philby. It is a fish-out-of-water comedy/drama, and when it gets to the end, our protagonist finds herself, and someone to share it with. I actually got a little teary-eyed at the finale; I’m such a girl.

Red Sox chances of making the Wild Card round in the 2026 playoffs: 17.4%

 

More Black And White

So, yesterday I watched Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, AKA Star Wars Episodes 2 & 3, again in black and white. First up was Attack of the Clones with its sappy romance between two actors with zero chemistry with each other and the sheer amount of screen-filling, fast-paced CGI just because they could. The lack of color did not help at all. After a dinner break I waded into Revenge of the Sith, where we get to watch the creation of big bad Darth Vader. Here is where Hayden Christensen did have chemistry; he really nails the angsty teen, pissed at the universe, persona. Still way too much excessive use of CGI to the point of distraction.

This afternoon I went ahead and cued up The Empire Strikes Back in B&W (remember I watched the OG Star Wars very recently). Stopped a little more than an hour into Episode five because the Red Sox game was starting. I’ll finish it after the game.

I wonder if I like this black and white thing because we didn’t get a color TV at home until I was almost thirteen?

I Thought About It

I’m a sci-fi guy, and all this talk and the media blitz for Project Hail Mary made me actually think about going to see the movie. In the end I gave up the idea for two reasons: it is 2-1/2 hours long and my bladder isn’t that big, plus watching at home will have no one talking or looking at their phone. So maybe I’ll watch another movie based on an Andy Weir book, The Martian. I have a copy of it so I can hit pause if I need to go to the bathroom or want to look at my phone.

This triggered a memory of me blogging about how much I like that movie. I should add it to my list of when I’ll rewatch a movie or a TV show or episode on a certain day each year, i.e., Jesus Christ Superstar on Good Friday or Elf at Christmastime. The post is from 2 years ago, and through some fuzzy Googling, I determined that I should be watching it on a Tuesday in March. Well, today is Tuesday, March 24th. Guess what movie I’ll be viewing tonight?

This Is Not Spinal Tap

After dinner I decided to watch one of the 100 or so movies I own while waiting on the dishwasher to finish. I opened up Plex and went to the movie page. As I looked at the first couple of rows of movie posters, I tried to decide what kind of movie I was in for. Really couldn’t. I’ve said this before in that I’ll see the title or the poster and I’ll be able to sort of speed watch the whole movie. And once I’ve done that, I literally don’t need to watch it … I’ve just seen it.

One nice thing about Plex is that there is a shuffle button at the top and if you click it a random movie will start. I’ve used it a few times with limited success, maybe twice out of the five I got something that I would be in the mood to see. Attempt number six was a win, Plex had selected This Is Spinal Tap. I hadn’t seen it in ages and just running the movie through in my head made me want to watch it again. I didn’t recognize the background image at start up, but there were our 3 main guys looking like they’d been dipped in gold, so the movie was right (the image was for the movie’s 41st golden anniversary.)

The movie was not right. First clue was the first image you see, the logo of the production company A24, that studio was way too new to be from the 1980s. Wait a minute, Rashida Jones and Marlon Wayans getting married, I watched the trailer for this movie a way back and put the movie in my Apple TV+ queue. I did start to watch it back then too, but gave up about 20 minutes in.

Weird. I exited Plex, got back in, drilled down through the movie posters, found and clicked on This Is Spinal Tap again. It started up right where I just left off, 3 minutes into On The Rocks. What the heck, I’ll watch it again and see if I can at least get to the part where National Treasure Bill Murray shows up. I ended up watching the whole thing. It had very strong Lost in Translation vibes and with good reason, it too was directed by Sofia Coppola.

After watching the movie, I went over to the PC where the Plex sever runs on, found the .MKV file, opened it in a media player and it was the real “This Is Spinal Tap.” What the heck was going on. I scrolled back up in the directory and there was an .MKV video file for “On The Rocks” too. The file was dated in November of 2023. Did I download a copy of the movie less than 2 years ago and forget about it? I stopped pirating stuff way back in the twenty teens. Plus, I wouldn’t think so based on earlier this year’s starting and stopping watching it part way. Has someone hacked into Plex somehow on stored a copy of there? I mean I have it set up to allow me access to my movies while traveling…

I’ve deleted all the “On The Rocks” files and rescanned the library, but now when I got try and play “This Is Spinal Tap” Plex can’t seem to find it. I guess tomorrow I’ll try and uninstall Plex, clean up the registry, reboot and reinstall. Now, I really want to watch Spinal Tap.

Addendum (8/15/25): Nothing I did would let me play “This is Spinal Tap” on the PC using Plex. It wouldn’t play on on the laptop either, but it will play on either TV running Plex via the Roku box. “?” Side note, I just now stumbled on that there is a sequel, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, coming out next month. This is where that gold image came from and since the movie came out in 1984 it also explains the 41st anniversary thing.

It Was 50 Years Ago This Weekend

Donna and I had been paling around for a few months, watching movies at the base theater, going out for meals, etc. But for the Fourth of July weekend we planned a getaway trip to Pennsylvania to stay with Bob Brown, my old Class Leader at ‘B’ School, back in Millington, TN who was then stationed at Willow Grove. Bob and his wife Joanne had two teenaged daughters, so I slept on the couch and Donna bunked in with the girls.

I want to say it was on Saturday that all of us went out to see a movie. They have theorized that if you want to put your arm around a girl you would like to get closer to, just take her to a scary movie. That theorem proved true that day, because the movie we saw was Jaws. When Richard Dreyfuss’ character went down underwater to check on the boat he and Roy Scheider find and that dead guy’s head popped out, BINGO, she grabbed my hand.

We both credit seeing this movie with cementing what was to become an almost 50 year long love affair. We might have watched it a couple of times over the years, but it never was an annual thing. So today, it being the 50th anniversary and all, I rewatched it. I did kind of miss that hand though.

Oh, on a side note, a dozen years later we both ended up working at the place that supplied the solenoid valves that operated the shark’s jaws, Automatic Switch Co.