100 days left

Random entry time!

Today is Stephen King's 71st birthday.

Relatedly, I recently finished watching season 1 of Mr. Mercedes (the streaming series from ...AT&T?? Man, does EVERYONE have a streaming service now?) Anyway, I picked up the DVD from the library (aka, sticking it to The Man) and watched the 10 episode season. Overall, I felt it was a pretty strong bit of television, and improved a lot on the novel. (I felt that the novel was standard King. I liked it a lot, but it wasn't one of his best.) ANyway, the series was immensly watchable, with a few things that didn't work. Oddly, there is a scene in the novel that was supremely disturbing that ...didn't work as well on screen. (Without getting spoilery, I'll just say Brady's younger brother.) And dream scenes bug me a lot lately, and there were a few of those that i felt were somewhat just padding. So, maybe if the series had been 8 episodes it would have been stronger? I mean, 10 didn't really wear out its welcome or anything, but it still could have been tightened up somewhat.
The music selection was top notch.  And I adored Fred and was always happy to see him in the credits. The casting of Brady, Hodges, and Jerome were all perfecto. And while my feelings toward book-Holly are ambivalent, tv series-Holly went a long way toward improving my outlook on the character.
Speaking of characters and improvment - Brady. Oh man, King tries (too hard, maybe?) in the novel to have you HATE him. And, yes, he's vile and murderous and so on, but ... the series just makes it so much better. Because while he's frightening and hateful, he's also ...more human? Like, there are moments where you can actually feel sympathy for him, and where he has glimpses of actual humanity that make him all the more complex. (Plus, he did murder a homophobic white supremacist, so he's not all bad, I guess...)
I read that a lot of people didn't like book-Hodges because he's selfish and puts others in danger at the cost of his obsession with Brady. Series-Hodges is unlikable for other reasons (he can be off-putting) but I think they toned down the "putting other people in danger" aspect to a more realistic degree.
Wow, I rambled about that a lot more than I had intended to. Suffice to say that I enjoyed the show, and once season 2 gets out on DVD, I'll check that out, too. (I wonder if they will stick to the Mr Mercedes trilogy...and if that means that there will be anything past a season 3. Book 2 didn't really focus on Brady much, actually so I'm guessing season 2 will follow more of book 3.... I dunno.

ANYWAY.

What else?

Silas is playing the Legend of Zelda (original flavor) and .... Link was kind of fat back in the day. Not body shaming, just observing.

Speaking of body shaming and Nintendo.
Actually, no. Not even gonna go there. (apologies for even approaching it, as I'm sure if you're aware of it, it's now (back) in your mind now...)

Tangentially related to THAT, though - overheard some people at work the other day discussing Brett Kavanaugh. More accurately, they were discussing the allegations against him. The gist of the conversation was that it was "a long time ago" when they were both in high school, and, bringing things up NOW was unfair and "back when I was in high school there were  boys who would try to sneak into women's bathrooms" and  blah blah blah, because people suck.  (Somewhat interestingly, we had a person who worked at the station with the same name as the current SC nominee, although his last name was spelled with a C instead of a K. Based on the little I know of both Bretts, I would prefer that *our* Brett was the one who would be deciding court cases.)

November cant' get here soon enough. I am SO freaking tired of political season.

I have watched about the first third of Avengers Infinity War so far, and so forgive me if this is answered later - but...why not use the Reality Stone to, um, make it so you have the others?

There's a new show starting on NBC on MOnday called Manifest, which looks a bit like a Lost-reboot, but I've watched the first segment (it's been posted up on YouTube) and ...eh. It looks like it's going to focus more on the relationships than on the actual mystery of what happened, and I'm just not there for it. (Although I'm curious if Trump will get mentioned in the show at all. I mean, if you had disappeared in 2013, and then just arrived in 2018, THAT would certainly be a shock to discover. Hell, living through it has been a bit of  one. Also, if it did happen in real life, you know he'd take credit for the plane returning/blame Obama somehow.)

There are only 100 days left in 2018. Not sure how many of them will be blogging days, but I guess we'll see. And then after that.... I've been thinking about possibly not blogging anymore. I don't (typically) have a lot to talk about, and I don't know if anyone is even still reading. But, then, I've felt that way before, and have somehow always come back around, so who even knows.