Another Level Up
Issue #128: "In brightest day, in blackest night...."
Hello again readers! Welcome to another week of absolute nonsense!
Fifty three. I can’t believe that I’m 53. Physically, at least most of the time, I feel my age. Mentally, absolutely not. I’m not sure where I fall on the age scale mentally. Somewhere in my 20s maybe? Early 30s? Hell, I don’t know. I just know that mentally, I don’t feel like a 53 year old. Or act like a “typical” 53 year old. Then again, how does a “typical” 53 year old act? I guess I’m just basing this on my parents and I probably shouldn’t do that. Oh well, another year older and still not grown up.
Oh, for context, yesterday was my birthday.
I wanted to talk a bit about an interesting trip that I took last week. The plan was to take a train up to Grand Rapids, Michigan and drive back to Oklahoma with my daughter because they (daughter, son-in-law, and grandkids) are moving back down to this area. The daughter doesn’t like to drive long distances by herself so I offered to come up and drive back with her. So let me tell you about this trip that started out in a nightmare fashion. First of all, the first leg of the trip turned out to be by bus and not train. Not a great start. If I wanted to take a bus I would have bought a bus ticket instead of a train ticket. So we get to a tiny town in Kansas. It is there that I find out two things. First, the train that is to meet us there and take us to Chicago is delayed. And not by just a few minutes, or even an hour. It is delayed by 9 hours! So I have to sit in this little train station out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night for 9 hours. Second, I realize that I brought the wrong charging brick for my phone. I brought the brick for my iPad instead of my phone. And so since we are out in the middle of nowhere, there isn’t a place for me to go buy one so I can’t charge my phone. So the bus finally gets to this town and it turns out that I can’t charge my phone on there either because it only has 120V chargers, no USB ports. Also, there is no Wifi on the train so I can’t use my iPad to message anybody while I’m on the train (at this point, the charge is very low on my phone and I need to save it for emergencies). Okay, so we get to Chicago. Of course I’ve missed my connection to Grand Rapids. On the bright side, this was anticipated so I called my daughter and let them know what was going on and they said that they would just come and pick me up at the train station in Chicago because we checked the next scheduled departure from Chicago to Grand Rapids and it wasn't until the next evening. When I get into the train station in Chicago I tell the attendants that I’m just going to wait there for my daughter to pick me up there, however, I am informed that the station closes at 1am and I won’t be able to stay there. But because Amtrak screwed up with the delay and missed connection, they will put me up in a hotel for the night. So I take a shuttle bus to the hotel and thank gawd there is a USB port in the hotel room! I start charging my phone and message my daughter to let them know not to come to the train station but to just pick me up at the hotel. So that was the trip from OKC to Chicago. The trip back to OKC by car with my daughter and the grandkids was mostly uneventful and pleasant.
If you follow me on social media, you might find that every once in a while I repeat things here that I have already said over there.
If you aren’t, you can follow me on Facebook, Goodreads, Instagram and Letterboxd.
There really weren’t any new releases from last week that really jumped out at me so that was kind of a bummer. However, since this is the first issue of February, I thought I’d touch a bit on some of my favorite albums that came out last month.
Lambrini Girls - Who Let The Dogs Out
Izzy S.O. - Homesick
Kinda Nice - Can I Pet Your Dog
Ex-Void - In Love Again
Spare Skin - Spare Skin EP
Also, go check out the newest issue of my Cover to Cover series on Radio Unfriendly.
There were 2 books on last week’s comic book pull list.
Star Wars: A New Legacy #1
Green Lantern #19 (I recently added this title to my pull list)
Here are some other things that I read last week:
Green Lantern Vol. 1: Back in Action by Jeremy Adams
Green Lantern War Journal Vol. 1: Contagion by Phillip Kennedy Johnson
I have been reading a lot of Green Lantern lately. Mostly because someone suggested I read the current run. I keep forgetting how much I like the Green Lantern stuff. Not just Hal Jordan but Green Lantern in general. I am glad it was suggested to me.
I went to the theater Saturday evening and watched a movie called Companion. It wasn’t awful but also not great. To be completely honest, it is not something that I would recommend to anyone.
On streaming, I rewatched the 2011 Green Lantern movie. It was not as horrible as I remember it being. I remember going to see this movie in the theater with my son when it came out. I also remember that they had to switch us from the 3D theater to a normal theater because they were having technical issues with the 3D version of the film.
Last week on Rebel Rock Radio, we talked about the impact that Star Wars has had on our culture overall. #YouCanThankStarWarsForThat
Toronto based punk/indie band Pup released a new song last month and for some reason, I am just now coming across it. It is this week’s TOTW. Enjoy.