Category: Current Events

#MarvelMadness

It galls me that Captain America: The First Avenger is not going to be voted the best Marvel movie in this completely arbitrary, fan-based, no-sports-right-now-so-let’s-ask-people-to-vote-on-this bracket done by SB Nation. I have been thinking about this all day. I have a nine-month-old daughter, and thinking about her (if we’re being honest) has been a distant second to thinking about the traveshamockery of the voters, and the bracket.

First things first, let’s get this out of the way: I think Captain America: The First Avenger is not only the greatest Marvel movie, but one of the best movies of all time. I can watch it over and over and over again. In fact, I have watched it over and over and over again. I will watch it over and over and over again, again. The story is great. The acting is great. The cast is incredible. Ignoring Chris Evans and Hayley Atwell and Sebastian Stan, you have Dominic Cooper, Tommy Lee Jones with his dry humor, Hugo Weaving as the bad guy, STANLEY TUCCI. And to top it off? The movie does not have a Hollywood, normal Super Hero ending. It’s a really sad ending. The first time I showed it to my mom, her first comment was “that was such a sad ending!”

So ok that’s taken care of. Now let’s look at the bracket SB Nation put together. All three Captain Americas in the same bracket? Dr. Strange (a great movie) against Captain America First Avenger (a great movie) in the first round? A possible matchup between Guardians of the Galaxy movies in the second round? Nope. So I went ahead and fixed it.

You’re welcome, SB Nation.

Captain America is the ACC; classic, historical, and all three movies make it to the quarterfinals, with two in the final four.

Iron Man is the Pac 12; yes, all three movies are in the bracket, but let’s be honest, there’s really only one that is good, and even that one isn’t quite as good as some of the other movies.

The Avengers movies are the Big Ten; great, but unfortunately, other movies are greater.

Thor is the Big 12; only one movie makes it past its opening matchup but then goes all the way to the finals.

Ant-Man is not a conference but a team: Gonzaga. While it can hold its own against the other, bigger movies, it can’t quite match their firepower.

Spider Man is the SEC; maybe not considered a powerhouse when compared to the rest of the Marvel movie universe but still fun and successful.

My bracket also includes upsets (End Game becomes the first top seed to fall, losing to eventual champion First Avenger, with Infinity War the next top seed to exit, falling to Guardians of the Galaxy in a nailbiter). Thor: Ragnarok defeats Dr. Strange, which is funny (to me), because Dr. Strange appears in Thor: Ragnarok and Thor appears in Dr. Strange. Civil War (which, let’s be honest, is basically another Avengers movie, probably would have made the finals if it were on the opposite side of the bracket but it still would have lost (barely) to First Avenger.

I know the SB Nation final bracket is going to look very different from the one I put together, but I can say with all confidence that their bracket will be wrong. You should only refer to mine as the real one. Captain’s orders.

The New Normal

I preface this by saying: I completely understand that this is a scary time, for a number of reasons. I know that hospitals are swamped and that medical workers are putting their lives on the line on a daily basis, that people are scared of what will happen with their jobs and the health of their loved ones, and that this whole situation sucks. So is it wrong that I don’t think I want the shelter-in-place to end? Probably.

I should clarify – I do want the shelter-in-place to end, because among other things, I want to be able to go to the store without chlorox wiping everything and sanitizing my hands every time I touch something. I just wouldn’t be upset if my wife continued to work from home. I’ve been a stay-at-home dad for four months, the first two of which coincided with the end of my wife’s maternity leave. Now that she is working from home because of coronavirus, it feels the same as those first two months. Just, different.

Although my life hasn’t changed since my wife started working at home, it feels very different. Our routine is basically the same; I get up around 6:30am to work out, my wife gets up at 7am to get ready for work, I get our daughter around 7:45 so that my wife can say good morning before heading off to work, then I do the stay-at-home-dad thing while my wife works until returning around 5:30pm. Rinse, repeat.

Now, instead of getting in her car to drive to work, my wife walks down the hallway to our office. That is essentially the only modification to our daily routine and everything feels very different. And I love it. It’s amazing 1) to see my wife throughout the day and b) for my wife to see our daughter throughout the day. I love witnessing both of their smiles when they see each other. Also because I don’t have a “9-to-5” job, I am able to take care of our daughter and allow my wife to do the work she needs to do.

(Also, I find it funny that my wife LOVES that she can wear sweats and comfortable clothes at work, while I HAVE to wear jeans at home so that I don’t feel like a lazy slob. Mars and Venus, I guess.)

This is definitely a weird limbo for a lot of people, including my wife; my routine will not change when she starts going back to work. We are incredibly lucky that so far we have not been impacted too much by this terrible situation (knock on wood). I don’t know how long this new normal is going to last, and I certainly hope it doesn’t last much longer for all of our sakes. But I also will miss this new normal when the old normal returns.

Lame Jokes Makes Star Wars Fans go to the Dark Side

Aggression and anger both lead to the dark side of the force. So it seems ironic that after a Fox News host made some lame jokes about Star Wars and its fans, some of those fans decided to make death threats against her.

Yoda would be very disappointed in all of you.

Katherine Timpf of Fox News made some “jokes” about Star Wars, saying “I wasn’t familiar with Star Wars because I’ve been too busy liking cool things and being attractive,” and then how she wasn’t interested in “watching space nerds poke each other with their little space nerd sticks.” So I guess it’s safe to say that Katherine Timpf won’t be one of the billions of people who will go to see The Force Awakens.

I’d never heard of Katherine Timpf of Fox News before today, but I know two things about her:

1) She’s a troll. As a host on a talk show, she would know better than anyone that the way to get publicity is to troll, and what better to troll than a movie that is getting a TON of press.

2) She needs new material. She didn’t watch Star Wars because she was too busy “being attractive”? That joke is made at least once an episode on The Big Bang Theory, and it’s not particularly funny there either. If you’re going to troll, at least have the decency to come up with new jokes.

But in the end, all it took was a couple dumb comments to send many Star Wars fans to the dark side.

The Empire has already won.