Destroying a Costco Bathroom

 So, life goes on, as it usually does.

I have not heard anything from my mother since last weekend when she was in the hospital. I can only assume she was discharged and that she's getting the ablation done at some point within the next few weeks. I wouldn't necessarily expect her to give me all of the details, because she would not want to worry me. When my dad had his hernia surgery last fall a few weeks after we left North Carolina, it was brought up in conversation and then quickly glossed over afterwards, shrugged off like it was no big thing. I found this odd, at least a little, but it seems to be my parents' way of dealing with things -- downplaying them until the event happens but barely actually exists. 

The past few weekends have been a whirlwind of events that has left me feeling a little ragged and underslept, and I am happy to note that I don't really have anything on the docket at all for next weekend or even, likely, the following weekend. I've been sleeping when I can, and when I can't or don't, I've been taking care of various things around the house -- yard work, laundry, some light cleaning here and there, and other general household upkeep things. We've gone shopping a few times, have gone out to eat a few times, and have tried to get as much time together as possible when we're both awake.

The weekend we saw Superman, two days later we went to the very sad, but very sweet memorial for Daisy's friend who passed earlier this summer from cancer. We did not want to go. Well, I wouldn't necessarily say that -- we didn't want to go but we did, you know? Daisy needed to go for the closure it would bring her. The funeral/viewing had been private and family-only, but the memorial was open to all at the VFW hall in the little town in Iowa where the family lived. We'd been to said little town before; it was where we were able to drive across state lines and get the Covid vaccines before Nebraska was letting everyone of all age groups get them. 

The memorial had probably 100 people there and it was very hard for Daisy to process her emotions for. I do not blame her. Many people went up on stage and told stories about the deceased, including her husband and kids. It was a very moving experience. Through it all I stood by Daisy's side like a rock, holding her hand or with my arm around her when I could, just being there for her. I met the deceased a few times -- she'd come to our wedding and was very sweet to me, and a few years later we'd run into her in a store at some point (Daisy does not remember this, interestingly enough). About two years before she died, she ran for a state government position -- I can't remember if it was house of representatives or what -- and Daisy had gone door-to-door campaigning with her to help. She lost, but a handful of people at the memorial were wearing her campaign t-shirts, which I thought was very sweet. 

That night, upon returning to Omaha, we went out to dinner to get very good Indian food to help wash away the sadness of the day. I returned home and had some of the worst diarrhea of my life, but it was worth it. 

One of the things that if you didn't already know about me, you should, is that...I will willingly take on the diarrhea and any after-effects if the food is good enough to warrant it. I can deal with a few hours of discomfort in the privacy of my own home after a fantastic meal and I will not complain about it. I expect this to pop up again on our trip to North Carolina and I am prepared to deal with it then, too. 

Anyway.

The week following the memorial was fairly hectic too; we had Hank's follow-up vet appointment for his eye, the premiere of the new season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and our yearly service appointment for our AC unit. 

Hank's eye is healing, but it is likely he will have a blotch of scar tissue right over his pupil for years, if not the rest of his life. We don't know how well he can see out of that eye anymore, if at all. That makes his condition tough to treat, because by looks we can't tell when or if it's actually getting/gotten better without a vet visit, nor can we tell if he develops a new "outbreak," so to speak, since it has always looked pretty much the same since the beginning. Aside from the eye drops we give him multiple times daily and the L-Lysine supplement he licks off a spoon every day, there's not really much else we can do for it. There's apparently a good veterinary eye specialist across town that may be able to do a surgery to remove that scar tissue (basically, cat LASIK), but we haven't really looked into that as an option yet -- we still have $2k of Mable's hip surgery to pay off. 

Mable, for the record, is completely normal again and you never would've known she had a hip surgery seven weeks ago. 

Hank himself seems fine -- he has been fine throughout this entire process, as if his eye doesn't really bother him at all. He still eats normally, runs around and plays normally with the kids, and is the same loving orange loaf he has always been. But we do feel bad for him, because there's nothing else we could have done or could do now to make this go away. His final checkup for his eye, and the day he'll get his yearly rabies shot, is on the 12th.

Moving onward, our AC is low on refrigerant.

Or so says our HVAC guy, anyway.

Up until last year, our AC had never really given us any issues; it worked when it was supposed to work and got some rest over the course of the rest of the year. Well, starting last summer when the regulator/compressor blew out, we've had numerous issues with it off and on. Most have been easy fixes, and it's been running normally most of the time, but it is very clear that the nearly-50-year-old AC unit is on its last legs. The refrigerant it uses is no longer manufactured in the United States and costs a pretty penny to recharge, as in several hundred dollars. We can recharge it, but it's also just delaying the inevitable, and our home warranty company is not going to be willing, after a certain point, to keep pouring money into our AC. So, when we had the service done last week, our HVAC guy gave us some options and rough quotes on replacement of the house's entire HVAC system -- furnace too, which is also quite old -- and said quotes (especially when ran through our home warranty) were...pretty reasonable, to be honest. So we now have the dilemma of, if this thing dies before the end of summer, of whether we recharge it to make it work for a few more months or to go without AC for however long it takes to get a new unit brought in and installed. Daisy is of the mindset that she doesn't really want to recharge it if it runs out of refrigerant, she just wants to get the new unit put in. I am of the mindset that if it dies when it's 100 degrees outside, I cannot function for a week or two without AC in the Nebraska summer, and I want to get it recharged as a stopgap and set up a replacement of both the furnace and AC for the fall -- like, October or November -- during that lull of time where we wouldn't really need to use either system to keep us warm or cold because we don't generally have temperature extremes we can't manage in that time window. So it's really a wait-and-see approach. 

The next day, I told Daisy that I had been craving Chinese food in the worst way for weeks on end, and really wanted to get some fried rice and noodles from our local Chinese place that has a ton of vegan/vegetarian options. So, even though the place tends to make Daisy foggy-headed after eating there (she says it's the MSG, for her) she obliged me in an early lunch in an empty restaurant and I finally got to get my Chinese fix. 

We went to her parents' afterward to take care of the cats for the last time we'd do it together before the parents returned from Canada, and I began to feel my guts start to rumble. 

Here's the thing -- on Trulicity, this is nothing new. While I once had an iron stomach, capable of drinking a gallon of coffee per day and eating some of the spiciest or strangest foods imaginable with no ill effects, those times are long gone. Trulicity (and probably the other medications I'm on, as well as diabetes as a whole) has altered my body chemistry so much that if I eat anything out of the ordinary, I will be feeling it for a full day or two afterwards. Trulicity in particular (apparently) is known to contribute to IBS or even fully cause it in a lot of people who otherwise never had any bowel issues -- and I know this because I asked our doctor about it and confirmed it was a well-known side-effect. So, I have to be at least a little bit careful and mindful of the clock, and how fast I know food travels through my body, when I eat something new or strange or eat more than I usually would, say...in a restaurant setting. 

To my credit, at both the Indian place and the Chinese place, I brought half my food home each time. But apparently that will not matter in the heat of the moment.

So, my guts began to rumble at the parents'. I was very glad they were not home, as about twenty minutes later I unleashed the fury in the house's main bathroom. 

When I was done, I felt fine; part of it, I think, is the sodium -- salt goes right through me with the whoosh of a raging waterfall. 

However, there was still something in me. I felt somewhat bloated and nauseous for a good chunk of the afternoon, and could not shake it. I thought it might have been the heat or activity levels -- we'd been doing a good bit of running around and I had just mowed the grass and did all of the string trimming the day before, which had left me pretty wiped -- but deep down, I knew...it was the Chinese.

Daisy had mentioned earlier in the day that she wanted to hit up Costco on the way home from the parents' to pick up some essentials for the week, and I was fine with that. Since we'd committed ourselves to slowly leaving Walmart and Target behind us as much as possible due to their Trump-supporting ways, earlier this year I purchased us a Costco membership. Since then, we've become wildly obsessed with Costco and the vast majority of what we eat every week -- produce, nuts, baking supplies, breads, coconut waters, protein bars, frozen foods, etc -- all come from Costco now. We have spent outlandish amounts of money at Costco this year, likely a few thousand dollars, on everything we need for the house. I have multiple new pairs of shoes and sandals purchased from Costco. We have a household of new bath towels because of Costco. I have enough Brita filters for probably a year and a half thanks to Costco. It has been a wonderful blessing for us.

But, make no mistake, Costco on a Saturday afternoon can be a nightmare. And when you're having some stomach issues, it's doubly so.

I was mostly okay driving there. Getting out of the car and up to the door I experienced some discomfort. I pushed it away and kept walking, but by the time Daisy and I got inside and started going to the aisles, I could no longer do so -- I was doubled over the cart in, as quietly as possible, some of the worst gastrointestinal pain of my life. Because Costco is so big, I was probably 100 yards from the very public Costco bathroom, and I did not know if I would make it. 

So, I quickly, painfully made my way to the bathroom, and was lucky that I could get a stall...and I unleashed the fury once more -- wildly more powerfully than I had in the parents' bathroom.

Now, mind you, this is a public bathroom in a very busy Costco. There were many people coming in and out, and I could not stop the flow, I could not control it. I was having cold sweats. I was trembling; it was not a pleasant experience. I had multiple people enter the stalls on each side of me, quietly and efficiently do their business in a 45-60 second timeframe, and then casually flush, wash their hands, and leave as quietly as a silent fart, and I was sitting there like...this is how people with normal bowels go to the bathroom? It's that fast? Drop trou, it all comes out quickly at once, and then "welp, I'm done" and they are out of there? I was stunned. 

Please note, I once had a woman tell me that efficiency was key -- get in there, fire those babies out, anything else and you're wasting time -- and holy shit (no pun intended, promise) I thought she was kidding. Like, it's not a process for other people? It's just a simple no-muss, no-fuss function as simple as taking a leak?

Instead, I was sitting there cold-sweating, wishing for it to end, but it did not. For thirty minutes.

Throughout the entire experience, which I'm sure the wife found amusing to at least some degree, she was texting with me back and forth. I told her there was nothing I needed, to go on without me and get her stuff, and I'd find her once my soul returned to my body after all demons were released.

The demons, eventually, were vanquished and I could rejoin normal society once more. I was coated in cold sweats and probably looked like a zombie. I had to unleash a few demons more once I returned home before I promptly passed out for several hours. 

So, yeah, moral of the story -- if you have IBS or symptoms that are very similar to IBS due to whatever medication you're on, take an anti-diarrheal pill before you go to Costco, especially if you've just eaten a meal somewhere that contained a lot of food different than your normal diet.

But, as I frequently say, life goes on...

More Stories from My Life

 As we barrel through July, some things that happen every summer rear their heads up at us again. For one, there's always the excessive heat and soaking summer storms here in Nebraska. Thankfully, none of the storms thus far have been too terribly bad, but I mean, as it is Nebraska in July there's always that chance.

It feels kind of pointless to write here sometimes when nothing major is going on in our lives; but, I can't just cover crisis after crisis here because I do not want this site to be "a series of things that piss Brandon off" or "yet another story of woe in a long string of woes." But, I also know it seems to piss off the fates, or whatever swirls about in the cosmos above and beyond us, if I raise my head up and be like "wow, isn't it great how everything is actually decent for once?" etc.

We're living our lives normally. We're surviving. We haven't had to face any major crises for a couple of months at this juncture -- at least not personal ones, anyway. But I'd be lying if I said everything was good, everything was great, and that there was nothing to worry about or be stressed about on a daily basis, because that's just not true -- it's almost never true.

Daisy's parents have been in Canada for a few weeks visiting the family. During that time we (meaning, mostly Daisy, but I have joined her on about half her trips) have been taking care of their cats and watching over their house while they've been away. They return tomorrow night shortly after I begin work and shortly after Daisy gets off work for the evening, and she'll be picking them up at the airport. We will be glad to have them home, but also will not be visiting them for at least a week -- and Daisy will be wearing a mask when she picks them up -- because Mom always gets sick and/or brings some illness back from Canada (or anywhere else) when traveling. And neither of us can really get sick right now -- it would affect me less because I don't really go anywhere or do anything, but Daisy is working longer shifts to offset the time needed to take our own trip next month to NC, and she has various odds-and-ends errands she does every week...like her volunteer time feeding kittens at the shelter.

My own time at the shelter has waned down considerably. We volunteer together once or twice a month now, but she is there every Sunday afternoon herself for kitten feedings. We just have a lot going on in the summer months and our work schedules have both changed over the course of the summer. Once you're in a groove (or a rut, whichever way you want to look at it), it can be difficult to change your patterns. On our old working schedules it wasn't hard for us to set aside those hours every Saturday morning to go do the volunteer work. On our new schedules, our Saturdays tend to be used to take care of everything during the week that otherwise could not be taken care of because of those new schedules. 

For example -- this coming Saturday we're going to get my hair cut again in the morning hours -- hopefully as early in those morning hours as possible, because in the afternoon/evening we are going to be meeting up with our potential catsitter for the time we'll be in NC. She'll be coming in to meet the cats, get the layout of the house, and we'll discuss the cats' personalities, needs, and her pay rate with her. We don't really have a great time to get this done otherwise, as the evenings during the week Daisy is working, and after 8pm four nights a week, I'm working. So, it's catch-as-catch-can. 

I normally don't cut my hair in mid-summer; I generally get it cut really short in the spring and then let it grow out for a full year before cutting it again. However, in the spring this year I basically just got it trimmed down to a manageable length so that I could get all the dead/bleached/dyed stuff off so that I could re-dye it. Well, it has gotten long again, in the hottest part of the summer, a month before I'm taking a vacation to a beachside resort town where it's expected to be 100 degrees every day and I plan to spend a large chunk of time on the beach -- or at least outdoors -- just as much as I'll be inside. So I'd like to be a bit more cool if possible.

I'm also trying to impress my parents a bit. I've lost about twenty pounds since I was there last summer, and while it's not incredibly noticeable I'm trying to look as well-groomed as possible to match. To those ends I have cut my beard down to a very well-managed goatee and I have been dyeing my hair black for the past several months -- I've mentioned this before. The black hair isn't for them, it was because I had to be on video calls with all of my leadership at work every morning for the month of June, but I've really grown to like and embrace the black, so it is what it is at this juncture. And it looks good. 

But, this time around it's not just my parents -- my two aunts and one uncle will be visiting NC at the same time -- they've rented the house two houses down from my parents' place as an AirBNB for the week, arriving shortly before we get there and leaving a few days before we leave. The aunts are my mother's oldest sister (78) and her youngest sister (60). For most people this would sound like a nightmare, a trainwreck of a vacation, but honestly for me it is not at all. My oldest aunt adores me and Daisy and spent a lot of time with us when we visited WV in 2017, and I will tell you that she does not act like she's 78 -- more like she's in her 40s. My younger aunt, as she is indeed younger -- she was 16 when I was born -- she and I basically grew up together despite the age gap, and I spent a lot of time with her as a kid in the 80s and 90s. I can't tell you how many movies we saw together, I can't tell you how many adventures and shopping trips we went on well into my high school years. I also have not seen that aunt since I moved out of WV nearly twenty years ago now, so it's like a mini-reunion. And she has never met Daisy. 

Now, here's the thing -- we don't know exactly how this is going to play out. My older aunt is 78, and she has crippling diabetes. Whether she comes on the trip is going to entirely depend on her health at the time. If she's in good health, she'll be there. If she has to go back into the hospital again or has anything going downhill at the time of the trip, she won't make the drive with my other aunt and uncle. 

Adding to this drama is that my own mother has been in the hospital as well, twice in the past two weeks, for her aFib. She will need to have an ablation surgery at some point to stop the aFib. She doesn't know, at present, when that will happen -- she wants to get it done before we get there, and I'm not sure that's going to be possible -- but I guess that's the goal. I talked to her on the phone yesterday morning -- while she was in the hospital bed -- and assured her that it's a quick process that sounds a lot scarier than it is, an in-and-out, 1-2 day thing, because I watched Daisy's mother have it done last year. And all of this is true, Daisy's mother did have that procedure done last year for the same reasons, but I also very intentionally left out the part that Mama felt like shit for some time afterwards until she recovered from it fully, which took a bit of time. My mother is slightly younger and does not have some of the chronic health conditions Daisy's mother does, though, so we'll see. I'm sure it's incredibly frightening for her regardless and she's doing her best to put on the brave face for both me and my dad. 

So there's that.

"Does she want us to shift the dates of the trip?" Daisy asked me after I got off the phone with her yesterday.

"No, she doesn't seem to," I said. "I can tell she's looking forward to the trip and mentioned specifically that she wanted to get it done and be over it before we're down there."

Every time we visit my parents we are staunchly reminded of their -- and by extension, our own -- mortality. I don't like to think about it or address it, but it does come up in conversation when we're there, and it especially comes up in conversation if one of us is under the weather. Last summer when we were there, my dad was suffering from a hernia and kidney stones, and was as such not exactly himself most of the time. I mean, he was himself of course, but through a veil of pain and uncomfortability, and I don't really fault or blame him for that. This time around it's my mother's health issues with her heart. And then Daisy and I look at each other like "both of our mothers have aFib and have either had or are getting surgeries for it, and Daisy's dad also has heart issues...is this our future?"

I mean, it could be. None of us are invincible and none of us live forever. Both of us have several health concerns now -- nothing that's killing us, of course, but enough to arch an eyebrow here or there about the future and how they will progress as we get older. So, I mean I guess we shall see. 

Anyway.

As I'm sure you're aware, I'm already packed for the trip. I've been packed for it for several weeks now, planning for contingencies, swapping out little things in my big canvas backpack as necessary, trying to get everything ready and just right. I am a perfectionist like that, and have a checklist of everything I'd need for a five-day trip out of state halfway across the country. The checklist doesn't just include items, but actions -- things such as "schedule a hold on the mail" and "put travel notices on cards" to "turn off the washer water" and "reshave crotch" etc. 

Yeah, that last one is indeed on the list.

I make a rule that most small things that I can purchase there and leave there, especially liquids, I do that. Stuff like shampoo/conditioner, aftershave, etc. Sunscreen. I don't take shoes anymore -- I wear a nice pair of comfortable sandals down there and put a spare pair in the bottom of my backpack. We're there in summer and we're on the beach -- there is virtually zero reason to not wear sandals at all times, rain or shine. I bought water shoes for the ocean before, and haaaaated them, so this time around I purchased a sandproof pair of water socks with tread on the bottom of them. Think of it being like a wetsuit for your feet. I can strip those off and shake 'em off and then be good without having to worry about taking sand with me everywhere I go. I take a pair of swim trunks that are really just athletic shorts and can double as a normal pair of shorts if necessary. My glasses are all transitions lenses so no matter where I am, I always have sunglasses on my face. That being said I do take one spare pair of glasses with me in the event that I break or lose a pair. I pack three, not five or six, extra outfits because my parents have a washer and dryer, and yes I pack our own detergent sheets and dryer sheets. I try to think of everything, honestly, while traveling as light as possible. 

Daisy is a "kitchen sink" packer, and she does it all last-minute. She will throw everything she thinks she might need into a suitcase, makes sure it doesn't weigh over fifty pounds, and runs out the door. When I travel, especially to visit my parents and especially in the midst of summer, I pack the lightest and most comfortable clothing possible and because I bring my dad a ton of comic books and other items every year, I always leave for home with a far lighter backpack than I had when I arrived, even if I purchase stuff to bring back...which I almost always do. We'll be there this year in peak tourist season in August -- not at the very end of it (Labor Day weekend) as we've been there in years past. Even with that, every year we've been there I've brought home a hoodie with some sort of North Carolina logo on it -- primarily because they're some of the most comfortable and versatile hoodies I've ever worn before. I don't know that I will this year; I've recently bought a few hoodies from scattered trips to Burlington and I don't really need any more at this juncture. I absolutely don't need any more tourist-trappy t-shirts, either. Last year I bought two pairs of sandals down there because they looked comfortable. I hated both pairs and donated them once we got home. So...yeah, it is what it is I guess. 

I know we'll be hitting up the souvenir shops again anyway, especially with my aunts there. There is a draw, a pull to them for me that I cannot quite place. Beach town souvenir shops just draw me in, just as much now that I'm in my 40s as they did when I was a kid. I'm not a collector of charms or trinkets but I do love me a t-shirt and some salt-water taffy, so...we shall see. 

Our Superman Experience

 Because my wife is wonderful, and she knew I was waiting for it with great anticipation, she booked us tickets to see Superman last night, opening night, at 10:25pm. This is my (mostly) spoiler-free review of that experience, as well as the movie itself.

I'll start by saying that apparently, if you want to go see a movie when it first comes out -- even for a giant tentpole July summer blockbuster -- the Thursday night before a Friday wide-release appears to be the best time to do it. There were ten people total in the theater, and that counts the two of us as well. I was stunned; Omaha is a big city. It's not the biggest by any means of course, but it's a big city. And I know for a fact that there are a lot of comic nerds here. Apparently none of them want to see a movie at 10:25 on a Thursday night. I hope that's just Omaha and was just the weather (we were getting pretty nasty storms beforehand and even while we were in the movie itself) and not indicative of what this movie's box office is going to be like overall.

Superman -- for what it is -- is a good movie. It is not great, it is not fantastic, but it is good. It is far from perfect, but I wouldn't say any of its flaws are deep or glaring ones. Those flaws, for the most part, are very minor things that only true superfans of the character and the comics are going to pick up on. This is coming from me, too -- Superman is, for all intents and purposes, my favorite comic book character of all time (my favorite comic series, however, and likely favorite Marvel comic characters, are the Fantastic Four -- so this is a great summer for Brandon). As such, I know a lot about Superman and his cast of supporting characters that makes the comic -- when written well -- work so very well even in today's era and keeps it mostly timeless. 

The casting was great overall and all of the characters are given something to do -- only a scant very few are background characters who are just there because they're minor supporting characters in the comics -- Cat Grant and Ron Troupe come to mind. Both characters are in this film. Cat has like three lines and I don't think Ron has any. Both seem to just be there as set pieces. 

My only other gripe with the casting was the casting of Ma and Pa Kent. The way those characters were written, casted, and acted...that was a choice. And it kind of took me out of the movie. Now mind you, even in this film they're mostly background/ancillary characters, there to move along the plot a bit, but still, the way they were done...it was a choice. And you'll know what I mean once you watch the movie. 

David Corenswet is a great Superman/Clark Kent, almost reaching Reeve-levels of how well he balances the character. But that's always going to be the comparison -- we've had many actors play Superman over the years -- some better than others -- but ultimately none of them comes close to Christopher Reeve, right? They are tough boots to fill as Reeve embodied that role and became Superman. Corenswet does one of the best jobs so far in balancing that character's strength and emotion, but also the humanity he has gained from yes, living amongst humans in Kansas his whole life. He is a Superman that no matter what, will always try to do good, sometimes to great detriment to himself, because even if he fails, he has made that effort. I adore the way Superman was written for this film. He is all at once hero and human, alien and Kansan, a man who can do great things but is still not completely sure of himself and is just trying to help in this strange, sometimes sad world.

Rachel Brosnahan is an absolutely magnetic Lois Lane -- her performance is comic-accurate and spot-on in looks and attitude. She is not too old for the role (Margot Kidder) and she is not too young for it (Kate Bosworth, in Superman Returns) -- she is the right age and just locks on to who Lois is and what she does. Aside from Dana Delany voicing the character in the 90s animated series, I think this is the best portrayal of Lois yet. No damsel-in-distress bullshit here -- she is Lois Lane and she is a badass in this movie, and is the closest thing we've seen to a true comic-accurate portrayal of the character in a very long time.

One of my friends said that Nathan Fillion, playing Green Lantern Guy Gardner, was a choice, similar to the choice I mentioned above for Ma and Pa Kent. The choice wasn't Fillion, but Gardner as the Lantern of this film. Well, it was a choice, a deliberate one, and it paid off very well -- Fillion's Gardner is ripped right from the pages of the comics. Make no mistake, if you have ever read any of the comics, Gardner is always the biggest prick in the room. But, he's a prick with a heart of gold. Fillion plays him perfectly, no notes. I said for years that I always wanted Nathan Fillion to play Hal Jordan. Seeing him as Guy Gardner is indeed a switch, but it's one that works wildly well.

Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor is a mixed bag for me -- and I say that with absolute love of the actor and his abilities. Do I think he was phoning it in? No, I think the script wrote him as a very one-dimensional baddie and Hoult worked with what he was given to the best of his ability. I do like the portrayal, but for me Lex Luthor has to be written much more closely to the comics, and Superman...just didn't do him enough justice there. It's a big flaw for me in an otherwise mostly delightful picture. For the record, in my opinion the two best actors to ever play Lex Luthor were Kevin Spacey in Superman Returns and Jon Cryer in the CW universe of DC shows (also known as the Arrowverse). Both of them embody the character nearly flawlessly. Lex has motivations and aims/goals in this movie, but they're just...kind of dumb? I hate to say that because I don't want to sound harsh, but I mean...it is almost as if his character is just there to be the mustache-twirling villain, and that is not at all who the multifaceted actual character of Lex Luthor is. The modern, post-Crisis Lex Luthor is a bald, shrewd, calculating evil businessman based, at least partially, on the Donald Trump of the 1980s. Lex in the comics is  untouchable, machination upon machination, failsafes and contingency plans, and one of the most brilliant but uses-his-power-for-evil minds in the DC universe. Almost none of that is seen here. To see that? Yeah, look at Clancy Brown's Lex from the 90s animated series, or the aforementioned Jon Cryer and Kevin Spacey as both of them have multiple shades of the comics Lex in them. If I were casting this movie? I would've just taken Vincent D'Onofrio and said "essentially, play Wilson Fisk but call yourself Lex Luthor." Hoult's Lex is sleek, young, rich, and while he does have his motivations, again, they're kind of dumb. I'd love to see him play Lex again in a sequel a few years down the road, hopefully with some maturity and calculation written into the character.

Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen may be the most perfect casting I've ever seen for a comic book movie. No notes. He was perfect for, and in, that role -- he is exactly the character you expect him to be and the fans would want him to be. When I heard he was cast as Jimmy, I was like they could not have picked a better actor for the role. And I was right. 

Other highlights of the film are Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho, The Element Man (this is not a spoiler, and he has a sizeable part even though he's not really in any of the trailers for more than a second or two) and Edi Gathegi as Mr. Terrific -- and man did Gathegi chew the scenery as a comic perfect Mr. Terrific. I could make this entire review about his performance, honestly.  

Not a spoiler if you've seen the trailers, but Krypto the Super-Dog is in this movie and every scene he's in, he steals it. He also provides a lot of the humor and lightheartedness to the picture. He is part of the family, so to speak, and that is bullet-pointed at the end of the film in one of the final scenes.

The rest of the casting is fine, I guess; some of the characters aren't really well known, and suffer from "background character syndrome" more than they should -- meaning if we had a six-hour movie, we could have seen so much more out of them, but we don't, so here they are and they get a little action and have a few lines here and there and then yeah, that's it, maybe more screen time in the sequel. Hawkgirl and The Engineer come to mind, as does Eve Tessmacher (though her character does get some of the funniest lines in the film).

And, while we're on that subject, let's talk about the humor -- it is a Superman movie, and (thankfully), humor exists in this universe. One of the biggest problems about the Zack Snyder DC movies was not with the casting or acting really, but the fact that all of them were so dark and brooding, with very little fun or humor. Man of Steel, while (for what it is) it is a well-done movie and still one of my favorite comic book movies, is still really dark and gritty with zero real laughs -- tension and seriousness and drama with a backdrop of some comic book stuff. Not everything needs to be dark and gritty, especially not Superman. Look at 1978's Superman: The Movie -- the first Reeve film -- and I'd even throw in Superman II as well. There is humor there, there are smiles, there are jokes -- but they are all well-balanced within the plot and with the characters. Gunn's Superman excels at bringing this back to the big screen. There are a lot of little in-jokes here and there, but there are a few good laugh out loud moments and a lot of smiles, a lot of spirit in these characters. These are characters who have good chemistry working together and fighting together. They all act like they've known each other for years. They joke, they laugh, they have problems, they seem to exist in a normal world.

And that's one of the biggest strengths of this movie -- this movie has some of the best subtle real-life/realism in it I've seen in a comic book move, ever. These characters talk, and act, like normal people talk and act in real life. None of their dialogue seems stilted or like it would look or sound better on a page than coming out of someone's mouth. This movie has heart and conviction. Every bit of it bleeds with it. We see a Superman who is not invincible, not fully invulnerable, a Superman who weighs the weight of his decisions and suffers for many of them. We see a Superman who has his ass handed to him in a fight in more than one scene in this film. 

One of the other things I liked about this movie -- and I don't consider this a spoiler -- this is not another origin story. It is established immediately that Superman has been on the scene and has been a hero for some time, that he and Lois have been a couple for several months at the time the story starts, and that Metahumans have been on Earth and in existence for several hundred years. This little bit of on-screen text exposition at the beginning of the film firmly cements everything in the story and sets the stage for everything you're going to see without a bunch of weighty backstory, and I wish a lot more movies did this. It gets a major thumbs up for me. 

To wrap up this review, I want to address two things that I've read in other reviews before I saw the movie that I agree with, because I think they're both very good points, and I touched on one of them above -- the first is that this is a bright movie. It is not just full of hope, full of good, but the colors are bright. They pop on the screen. This movie is very much (and I believe, intentionally) a comic book brought to life. There are scenes that would be splash pages in the comics. Everything is flashy, everything is filmed so deliberately to make this look bright instead of dark and dour. This movie gives me hope for the future of the DC universe of future movies. 

The second I review note I agree with is that for a movie called Superman, for a large chunk of the movie he is not the driver of the plot but someone the plot happens to. And there is a lot of plot in this movie, there is a lot of things swirling around all at once to the point where it will be easy to get lost if you're not paying close attention. Through about 60% of this movie, things are happening to Superman, not Superman moving the plot himself. This works really well at times and not so well at others. The movie doesn't really suffer from any pacing issues (at least not that I noticed) but I found the "he's someone the plot happens to" was very accurate throughout a good chunk of the film. 

Overall -- I'd give it 3 out of 4 stars. It's a solid B+ / A- picture, right at that cusp of good but falling slightly short of amazing. I like what it does quite a bit, but is it a movie I ever need to own on disc? No. Would I watch it again once it hits HBO Max? Sure. Do I encourage you to see it in the theater? Yes, if you're a big fan of these characters and the DC universe. If you're not, or just a casual fan, it's fine to wait for on streaming. 

Non-spoilery tidbits of things I really liked:

• There are a few scenes where if you look closely, the cars have Ohio license plates -- immediately recognizable if you're from the tri-state area (as I am). The movie's city scenes, by and large, were filmed in Cleveland.
• As with most James Gunn movies there are some little easter eggs hidden, such as streets marked as Waid and Grummett -- references to Mark Waid and Tom Grummett. I believe there's a Jurgens somewhere too, in reference to Dan Jurgens (likely my favorite Superman artist of the 90s and in my top two or three of all time). 
• There are at least five cameos in the movie; two are major comics characters, one is an actor you'd expect to see in a James Gunn film, one is a rather surprising actor playing a very minor role with a lot of screen time, and one is a great actor doing a voice-only part (and if you're familiar with his work, you'll recognize said voice immediately). 
• The new score is great and incorporates the original John Williams score from the older Superman movies really well.
• The opening and closing credits sequences also pay homage to this -- big time throwback to the Reeve films.  

Finally, my gripes:

• As mentioned above, the casting/treatment of Ma and Pa Kent. I don't want to go into spoiler territory, but...yeah, when you see the movie, you will know what I mean.
• Not every superhero movie has to have some giant, city destroying plot device in it. Really, it doesn't. This movie has four of them, so, unfortunately, it falls into that trope. This may sound spoilery. Really, it's not, because I guess you should expect this if you're watching a superhero movie at this point. I wish we didn't have to expect it. 
• At times, there is such a thing as "too much plot." Let Superman be Superman.
• There are several little things that will really irritate some of the hardcore comics fans -- changes from the comics that will rub you the wrong way if you're paying attention.
• There are some immense plot holes here and there that are kind of swept under the rug -- and a particularly egregious one near the end that desperately needed to be corrected was not corrected in any meaningful way, if at all. 
• Okay, so, yeah...I'm gonna be that guy and say I'm not a huge fan of the Superman suit redesign. I love that they incorporated the Kingdom Come symbol in red and yellow, but as for the rest of the suit? I hated the piping on it, I hated the collar -- there is absolutely zero reason they could not have just put Corenswet, or any actor who has played Superman since Reeve, in the Reeve Superman suit. That is what the fans want -- the most perfect, most comic-accurate suit ever seen on screen that every comic fan wants to see again. The movie suit serves its purpose I guess, but it looks too leathery/rubbery. It doesn't take away from the film but man do I just want them to use the real suit again. 
• While we're on that subject, I really wish they'd gone with Guy Gardner's comics suit as well. The one Fillion is in in this movie has far too much white in it and aside from a little emblem on the shoulder, nothing about it screams Green Lantern. This is Guy in the comics, for the record:
  
  
  
  
  So...yeah.
• The runtime is a bit long. I don't normally care about runtime in superhero movies, but for the 2h9m this movie kept me in my seat I think it could have been shaved down by about 10-15 minutes without really losing anything of great value. 
• Metamorpho, for as great as he was in the movie, was basically just used as a plot device. I would have loved to have seen him get more screen time. 
• The major cameo at the film's end comes in wholly unexpectedly, but could have added so much more to the movie had this character come in, say, twenty minutes beforehand. That being said, I think most comics fans are going to love it.
• No spoilers here, but also don't want you folks to get your hopes up too high: No Brainiac, no Lobo, no Darkseid, no Batman, no Wonder Woman, no Flash, no Aquaman, no Shazam -- none of the other major comics' characters in Superman's circle or in the Justice League make any appearances here. This is a brass-tacks, Superman vs. Lex Luthor story with a few ancillary characters in the periphery. And, truthfully, that's what it should be. I only call this a gripe because I would have loved to have seen cameos of any of these characters anywhere, even in the background, in a non-story-affecting way. 

So yeah, there you have it -- solid picture overall. It's nothing groundbreaking, it's not a life-changing movie, but it's a fun Superman movie with a good cast and a lot of soul. 

My Yacht Rock Era

 Our lives can get pretty hectic for long stretches of time. As I've said before here, I can never write about everything that happens, as if I did, I'd never be able to leave my desk. As I have six cats to help take care of, a stressful job with long hours that I need to do in order to keep those cats -- and the wife and myself -- in the lifestyle to which we've all become accustomed, and I also have to eat/sleep/do household upkeep...yeah, a lot of stuff just goes to the wayside. 

Everything for the trip to North Carolina next month has been finalized; we are greatly looking forward to getting out of Nebraska for a few days. The only thing that's left to do is find a cat-sitter for the days we'll be gone, as with Pete's meds (and maybe Hank's too, depending on how his eye is doing), it would not particularly be feasible to just leave them to their own devices for a few days. 

In the past, we've just asked Daisy's parents to stop by a couple of times to make sure they have food and water, and to quickly scoop the litter pans, but it's hard on them to do that and it doesn't get any easier the older they get. We plan to use a pet-sitter service this time around -- like a trusted gig-worker who can stop by, make sure they get new food and water and have good litter -- but there's a lot of logistics and trust to work through there and time is running out to get this set up and finalized. If we can't find someone or it's cost-prohibitive we may have no choice to beg the parents' forgiveness and ask them to do it one more time for us. 

Summer has moved so quickly so far and we haven't really been able to enjoy it -- aside from work, if it's not 150 degrees outside it's 60 and pouring rain, so it's one extreme or the other. Daisy's been working OT on weekends when she can, and last weekend I injured myself for three days afterwards by mowing both yards and doing the string trimming in the back yard all in the span of 90 minutes or so before the temperature would shoot up to 100 that afternoon. We're both tired, we're both allergy-stricken, and aside from my nights off we almost never see each other or get any real time together for longer than ten-minute stretches when Daisy is on break before I work for the night. 

July is here, and with it comes July 4th weekend. Daisy, of course, has the 4th off as it's one of those holidays she gets off and doesn't have to actually work. I have it off anyway as it's a Friday, and I don't work Fridays. We don't really have any set plans for the holiday weekend; honestly, more than anything else, I need rest and recovery time. I asked Daisy if she would be so kind as to take the time to help me dye my hair with that blackest black dye I got from Amazon about a month ago, as it's the fancy permanent kind that requires a three-stage, three-ingredient process for it -- it's not just the "put it in your hair and let it sit for two hours before showering it out" kind of dye the others I've used have been. 

The parents may want to do cookout things or just spend some time together over the holiday weekend. I don't know yet; we haven't really been able to discuss with them. They're going to Canada later this month so I would imagine they'll want to get as much time with us as they can before they leave. 

On Saturday morning, we're finally volunteering again at the shelter for the first time in about a month and a half. On Sunday morning, Daisy is also going back over there for more volunteering as a kitten care specialist -- there's a "class" of sorts she has to take to become "certified" in kitten care for the shelter, and that's what she's wanted to do there since the beginning, so in order to have those jobs opened up for her, she has to take said class first and have it on the record. It is what it is, I suppose.

She asked me why I didn't want to do that, and truthfully...I am nervous around the very young kittens when trying to feed them or mix the food properly for them. I don't want to accidentally hurt them, I don't want them to choke when I'm trying to feed them (some of these kittens are very, very young, like two weeks old or so) and I am terrified I will do something wrong. So yes, it's my anxiety. I am perfectly happy to own the work I do at the shelter and I am also perfectly happy for that work to be manual labor and nothing that could accidentally harm anyone or any animals. 

Also, even if I wanted to, Daisy's doing that on Sunday morning...when I'll be sleeping as I work Sunday overnights. So it's not exactly feasible for me anyhow. 

I have been spending my overnights at work as of late rediscovering a lot of music. I went through my entire music collection a few weeks ago to load up my mp3 player for the trip to North Carolina, and added something like 1,900 tracks to it. This is a mp3 player with 16GB of storage and what appears to be about a 20ish-hour battery life. And every night, while I work, almost from start to finish I am setting it on "shuffle" and just letting it play. It has a mix of everything on it, from Abba and Avril Lavigne to Ghost, Iron Maiden, and a lot of heavier stuff -- interspersed with a lot of music from the 60s and 70s and Chappell Roan and Taylor Swift. It is, truly, a giant mixed bag of anything and everything. 

I've realized as I've gotten older, I've gained a true appreciation for Rush, Steely Dan, and the Michael McDonald era of the Doobie Brothers. Last week I purchased a lightweight pork pie hat I plan to wear on vacation. My hair is graying and I'm going to dye it again this weekend. Good lord...have I entered my yacht rock era? I think I've entered my yacht rock era. 

I do look really good in the hat, though.

Note, that photo isn't me, it's the stock photo from the website.

To go along with the theme of summer and vacation, aside from the hat, Daisy and I have both ordered a smattering of new clothing here and there for the trip. Do we need new clothing? No. Both of us have so much clothing that we're truly blessed. Daisy has gotten a few new summer dresses, and (true to form for me) I have gotten several new music shirts -- Bowie, Bad Company, Black Sabbath, Def Leppard, AC/DC, Kiss, and the Beatles. So, basically old man music. But, it's what I grew up with.

I have not yet pulled the trigger on the purchase of my new PC. I need to, soon, but it's a huge purchase for me and I just...I have enough debt as it is. Like, I need the computer, this one is very slow and is about to age out of usefulness, but...it's $1k to get everything I need for the new machine and even though we're pretty financially stable, that's a lot for me to drop all at once on anything.