Musings & Thoughts for Sunday, February 12, 2023, or: Hey, Look! I Wrote a Regular Blog Post Today!

It’s midafternoon here in Lithia, Florida, on Sunday, February 12, 2022. It’s a cloudy, chilly day here in the Tampa Bay area (64°F/18°C), and unless I have to take some trash out to the garbage bin by the garage, I have zero intention of going outside. I should, but I don’t feel like doing what I’d need to do to look presentable, i.e., shave, pick out a nice outfit, and put on a pair of walking shoes.

No Haikus Today?

Anyway, I totally forgot that on Wednesday (February 8), my favorite composer, John Williams, celebrated his 91^st birthday. If I had remembered, I might have been able to produce a post to commemorate the occasion. Alas, I have not been in the best of mindsets lately, and writing anything longer than a haiku has been impossible. I’ll set up a document on Word, start writing a post for A Certain Point of View, Too, and then end up deleting what I wrote out of frustration and thinking, Who the hell wants to read about this stuff, anyway?

Ugh. Stress is not the handmaiden of creativity. At least, not for me.

Sitting Out the Super Bowl

Since I am not a devotee of NFL football (I am, at best, a casual fan), I will not be watching the Super Bowl today. I don’t follow either of the teams that are playing, so I have zero emotional investment in the game. I’ll watch Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which I’ve attempted to watch at night (usually after 10 PM, which is not a suitable time for me to start watching a feature film) three times over the past few days but always fall asleep at some point in time.

Should I change my mind, I might try playing one of my “adults only” visual novels, this time making different choices to see what my point-of-view character does and who he ends up with at the end. I prefer these video games/adult video novels over porn videos because they have well-written stories, believable characters, and a mix of drama, humor, and – of course – sex.

The art in my favorite ones so far – Acting Lessons by Dr. PinkCake and Leap of Faith by DriftyGames – is absolutely stunning; the 3D renderings of the characters (especially the women) in Leap of Faith struck me as particularly noteworthy. Obviously, the NSFW sex scenes are riveting (the animation work in them is the best I’ve seen so far), but overall, the art (especially the clothing, locations, and environment) is impressive.

In any case, I will be skipping “The Big Game” today.

Waiting for The Fabelmans

In other entertainment-related news, I still hope that Amazon will ship my order of The Fablemans’ multi-format (4K UHD Blu-ray, HD Blu-ray, and digital copy code) set either tonight or tomorrow. On Tuesday, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment “drops” the home media edition of Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical (though fictionalized and with most names changed) drama about his childhood and adolescence. The Fabelmans mainly focuses on his family life and his parents’ divorce, with a few insights about how the legendary filmmaker fell in love with movies and moviemaking.

As was the case with West Side Story, The Fabelmans is one of those Spielberg films that few people rushed to see in theaters, so Universal, anxious to recoup some of the money it spent on its production, released it on streaming services late last month and moved up its Blu-ray release date from July 2023 to Valentine’s Day 2023. And, just like Spielberg’s reimagining of West Side Story, it earned mostly positive reviews and even a Best Picture nomination.

I wanted to see this in theaters when it was released late last year, but no one else wanted to go with me, citing busy schedules and the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. So, I’m eager to see this either on my 4K UHD TV set (which is still smaller than I’d like) or on high-definition Blu-ray out on the family room TV set. And even though Amazon – just to be safe with its delivery forecasts – tells me I will probably get it on the 28^th, I still am hoping that my copy of The Fablemans arrives on Tuesday.

I don’t have any other news to share, so I’ll close for now. Until next time, Dear Reader, stay safe and healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.