Fox/ Marvel Watch: Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

Watched:  08/03/2024

Format:  Alamo

Viewing:  First

Director:  Shawn Levy

SPOILERS

And also a forewarning - this is going to be scattershot.  There's so much going on in this movie.

Olympics Broadcast Summer 2024 (so far)

We've been having fun watching the Olympics.  Gymnastics, soccer, basketball, and beach volleyball are my main things to follow.  But I've been all over the map checking out everything from Equestrian to Fencing (did you see that venue?  Holy cats.)  

Hot tip:  US soccer looks good!  Also both women's beach volleyball teams.  And I think we have really good teams for both basketball squads.

Men's gymnastics was a show stopper Monday evening.  Really good stuff.

I'm Gen-X, so my memory of the Olympics from growing up - really starting with the 1984 LA-based games - was that you essentially got 3 or so hours of coverage in primetime.  There was definitely daytime coverage on the weekends, but I can't recall if they showed daytime games during the week.  Viewers were more or less at the mercy of what the networks wanted to show.  And they showed swimming, women's gymnastics and then some track (I remember Carl Lewis and FloJo very well).  

I think it was 1992 that someone cooked up the idea to make the Olympics pay-per-view and that went over like a lead balloon.  For you kids, it's somewhat like renting a movie in Amazon Prime, but imagine having to place a phone call and pay someone $15 over the phone - and it's showing in real time.  Apparently viewership slipped and the carriers were criticized for trying to make profits *this way*.

But, yeah, the old broadcast model was partly great, partly irritating.  I got to see some amazing moments - I watched Mary Lou Retton live!  But every Olympics, you'd know there were dozens of other things happening you could be watching, but - instead - you'd have to sit through package after package about athletes who would then, inevitably, not do very well.  Or you'd be watching swimmers stand around for ten minutes - and then NBC would say "oh, and by the way, this amazing thing happened in Pentathalon, but you'll never see it.  But we did, and it was greeaaat.  Oh, well.".

I didn't and don't understand the self-fulfilling prophecy of "Americans like only these four things" they used to/ somewhat continue to do every Olympics.

SW Reads: Norse Mythology (Neil Gaiman)

The past few years, I've been digging a bit into Norse myths and whatnot, somewhat spawned by what I saw in the Ring Cycle operas and my absolute certainty that Marvel's Thor is probably not accurate.

Let me be clear before someone with a PhD in Norse mythology shows up in the comments to correct me:  I am just scraping the surface, looking into this on my own, and moving slowly/ piecemeal.  Feel free to leave helpful information in the comments, but trust I'm no expert.* 

If you read any Sandman, you've known since the 90's that Neil Gaiman has some particular ideas about myth, and some pretty solid knowledge pulled from traditional sources.  

Recently, I finished the Prose Edda, which I probably should have written up, but I didn't.  It's a transcription by a 13th century monk of what were the oral traditions of the Scandavian and Germanic folklores, touching cultures stretching from Germany to Iceland.  Previously, I'd read Beowulf and Saga of the Volsungs.  I'll be making my way to the Poetic Edda, but...  that feels so much more challenging.  Me and poetry have a difficult relationship.  There's plenty more I need to dig into in the way of Germanic epics and legends, but it's going to be slow going.

Happy Birthday, Hannah Waddingham

Happy Birthday to actor, singer, dancer, award winning presenter, etc...  Hannah Waddingham!  I believe that today, Ms. Waddingham is 50.*

Ms. Waddingham has had a stellar year, co-starring in The Fall Guy, voicing a cat in Garfield, winning an award for Eurovision 2023, presenting at the Oliviers and BAFTAs, I think.  She has a Mission Impossible movie coming, and a show with Octavia Spencer.  And, she's up for an Emmy for her voice work on Krapopolis.

This year she met the Royals a few times and even came briefly to Austin, TX for the SXSW premier of The Fall Guy.