Timelapse of overhead clouds from just south of Everett, WA on 2018-03-25.
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Alex got a scooter for his birthday. After the kids had a few rides, I rode the scooter too. I promptly fell. Alex edited together the video my mother took of the incident to add slow motion instant replay… a few times. My mother had started to record after Brandy said “We need to record this so we can show the hospital what happened.” Such confidence in me! No hospital visit needed. But the kids, Brandy, and my mom all had a good laugh at my expense, watching the video over and over and over… and laughing and laughing and laughing… now all of you can enjoy it too. Grandma Leslie said that she didn’t understand Alex’s videos because she didn’t understand Minecraft. So Alex made a video just to explain Minecraft to Grandma Leslie. He highlights a variety of the things that are most important to him in Minecraft. Oh, and he insisted on having his facecam upside down. Because he could. And that is cool. Right? Check out and subscribe to the rest of his channel too: ALeXMXeLA.com The video above is the 25th he has posted. There are 16 more in the pipeline right now, and he records more almost every day! Yeah, I’m behind. Maybe someday I’ll catch up. Maybe I won’t. In any case, 2012 was extremely slow for movies. In the whole year I only watched three. So here goes:
And that was it for 2012. As I did for movies we saw at the movies and for books I’ve read, I’m moving my descriptions of what we’ve watched on “Family Movie Nights” from one post for each movie we watched, to one per year, listing each of the movies. So here we go, for 2011. Yeah, I’m a bit behind. Whatever.
And that was the last real “family movie night” we ever had using the old way we did that. We’ve seen a few things together since then, just not quite that way. Starting whenever I do this for 2012, I’ll just list all movies I’ve seen, regardless of the venue or who it was seen with. Oh, for completeness, in 2011 I also “kinda saw” the following movies because Alex watched them so much I eventually saw the whole things, although not necessarily in a linear straight through the movie sort of way:
So. Movie night. It is a thing we used to do before we moved. Maybe someday we will do it again. But of course I still haven’t posted about the ones we did in 2011. Oops. Anyway, Amy’s movie was Heathers. This is apparently a classic. I’d never seen it before. I hated it. I couldn’t understand why any of the characters did any of the things they did. I had no sympathy for most of them. Most were repulsive in one way or another. It basically made no sense to me at all. I just couldn’t relate to or understand even a single character in the whole thing. Amy and Brandy of course liked it. And that was that. Released: 1996 Aug 2 Another bit of catching up since I am not at home. I have no memory of watching this movie at all. So I guess I thought a lot of it. I really should write these things less than a year and a half after I watch something. Oops. Reading the description on Wikipedia rings a few bells though. I now remember a few bits and pieces of the movie. It was OK I guess. But obviously it left no lasting impression on me. After this, we’ve actually only had two more family movie nights in the intervening year and a half. We obviously got out of the habit with everything else that has been going on in that time. We should get everything set up again and start doing it again someday. Maybe this summer. We’ll see.
So it was Amy’s turn, and she’d gotten this movie for Christmas or her birthday or something. I forget. Anyway, this was actually the first (and actually only to date) movie we’ve actually watched on Blu-Ray. Anyway, this was her pick. My mom was visiting at the time, and the day before had actually married Brandy and I, so I guess watching this movie with Amy, Alex and my mom was kind of our honeymoon movie. Kinda? Maybe? No? OK. Anyway, I’d seen the musical of this on Broadway years earlier. I think with my friend Kathy, although I don’t really remember for sure. The broadway version was corny but fun. I think the same pretty much applies to the film version. Light hearted. Fun Abba songs. Nothing too serious. I’m thinking the play version might have been a bit better actually. But whatever. This is basically just a fun summer movie sort of thing (which we watched in the winter, but whatever). Oh, and some of the greek scenery was really cool looking in full HD. That aspect of watching this as a Blu-Ray rather than in ED like you get on DVDs was indeed pretty cool. But I’ll be honest here, in most cases the difference doesn’t really matter that much. I’m not sure it is worth paying a lot more for unless it is something specifically all about the visuals. But it is certainly better quality than DVD and any streaming I’ve seen.
So, continuing working our way through the old Doctor Who’s. We are always watching the oldest available story we haven’t watched yet. So while we have watched some Second and even Third Doctor stories, in the mean time they keep releasing more First Doctor stories. So here we are back with the First Doctor. The most interesting thing to me about this story are the echos, or should I say foreshadowing (well, perhaps if it was intentional) of the much later 4th Doctor Key to Time stories. In both cases the Doctor and his companions are on a quest to collect the “keys” which when brought together will enable a tool of great power. Or something like that. There is a different adventure associated with finding each of the Keys. The endings are somewhat similar too. Anyway, otherwise this was an OK First Doctor story I guess. I’ve never been a big fan of this Doctor though, so I’m not sure that is much praise. It was OK. It was better than some others. I’m still eager to get past these early episodes up to the episodes from the Fourth Doctor and beyond though. We have a ways to go though, especially if we keep going so slow that they release more older episodes faster than we watch them. :-)
I think this DVD had been a gift at some point in the past. Maybe from my friend Ron. It seems like the sort of thing he might give. In any case, it had sat unwatched for a few years, but its turn had finally come and we all sat down to watch it. If there is anyone who hasn’t heard of this, it is basically a documentary following some surfers on a round the world trip to find new and different places to surf. They wander around, they go places, you get a few minutes of glimpsing the locals through the eyes of Americans who really know very little if anything about where they are or the people there. And then they surf for awhile. And then they go somewhere else. From what I understand, this movie was somewhat significant in surf culture, and many of the places they went where surfing had not been common became places where many people would travel to surf. That’s nice I guess. From the point of view of someone watching in 2010 though, the whole thing took on a comedic tone, simply because of how absolutely dated everything seemed, both in terms of things like cars and clothes and the like, but also in the attitudes of the narrator and the surfers. I guess 45 years or so really does make a big difference. It seemed a bit slow by modern standards too. It just sort of rolled along, with no sense of urgency or getting to the point. Which I guess maybe was the point. |
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