Detroit Chokes

I didn't watch the NFC championship game yesterday but I did see a friend screenshot the 24 to 7 halftime lead by the Lions . 

I did casually check NFL.com later, expecting more of the same, only to see the game was nearly tied. 

And then Detroit lost, having given up 27 unanswered points in the second half. 

Ouch.

I've got nothing against the Lions, but it sure is fun to see a NFC North rival go down in flames, and all the great memes that it spawned lol. 

Selfie

Charles Osgood

 

Charles Osgood, the radio and television anchor known both for his humor and his talent for making the mundane interesting, has died of dementia at age 91. 

He spent a half-century on the air for CBS, both with his "The Osgood File" on radio and, for 22 years, hosting “CBS News Sunday Morning” on TV. 

I wasn't a fan of Osgood - not in the sense that I was AGAINST him or disliked him in any way. What I mean is that to me, he was a pleasant background noise in my life; a familiar part of the everyday, even if I rarely paid full attention. 

RIP

Breakfast Denied

Yaya just sent me this picture of one of her cats cursing the inventor of glass. 

Man From Earth

 

Last month, at LuLu's suggestion, I watched Man From Earth.  It's a film set largely in a single living room, where five friends come together to say goodbye to a departing colleague, John Oldman. At the party John tells his friends that he is 14,000 years old, a survivor of the Stone Age who changes location every ten years to avoid detection. What follows is an intellectual discussion among the group that occasionally rises to the level of anger and violence, as they try to determine whether their friend is a medical marvel - or a liar. 

This movie is highly lauded, and Lu enjoyed it, but I thought it missed the mark. It wasn't bad, it was just . . . well, awkward. 

The small setting, the cast of friends that are suspiciously diverse in attitude, thought, and personality,  the dialogue-driven script, it all says "stage play" to me, not movie. 

Which is fine, but even as a play I think it falters. Remember what I said about the friends, how they were all so different as to make you wonder why they are friends at all? As the story goes on and they settle more into archetypical roles the friends feel more and more like they are there to justify to the audience why John is speaking; no, lecturing. 

SPOILER:

 I was also annoyed by the random brushes with the famous: Van Gogh, Columbus, Buddha, and let us not forget his assertion that he himself is Jesus Christ. Here, you may rightfully wonder if the film lost me with John's sacrilegious boast. No. Perhaps it would have, had the claim not struck so many other sour notes with me. He's of European ancestry, going back 12,000 years at that point, studied under Buddha, dismissed the idea of God, or at least an active God - yet he somehow chose to immerse himself in ancient Israel, living the life of a devout Jew? For what? Why? How did he pass? Not for the purpose of "becoming Jesus," because he makes it clear he wanted nothing of the sort. Nonsensical. 

END SPOILER

My beefs aside, it was entertaining enough, and I don't regret seeing it. I grade this a C+

Gary Graham

I won't lie to you: until this morning I couldn't have told you his name if you had given me a year to think on it. Even so, the news today that Gary Graham died on the 22nd at age 73 hit me in the gut. 

Graham was the star of Alien Nation, the 90's TV series based on the book and movie of the same name*. While it was short-lived, I ate up every episode, and the one centered around a massive city riot played in my head many times in 2020. 

Later, Graham would go on to play Soval, a Vulcan ambassador to Earth, in Star Trek Enterprise. That may be his best known role, but I never saw his episodes. To me, he'll always be Detective Matthew Sike, teammate with an alien partner in a much different Los Angeles. 

RIP 

 

*yes, I read the movie novelization. 

It's still better than a snowstorm

Sleet and icy rain this morning.