The World's Common Tater

Two more movies this week. TV is a constant. I did finish one book and am slowly making my way through another.

This is my last weekly recap until after the new year.

Movies

We had two very different movies on DVD we needed to watch before my wife left for Kentucky.

Snake Eyes – This is a GI Joe Origins movie. Henry Golding stars as the GI Joe character Snake Eyes. Snake Eyes’ dad is killed when he is a kid. He trains and becomes a talented and deadly martial arts fighter. He joins Yakuza and gets mixed up in a fight between the Yakuza boss and his cousin’s clan. It’s a decent martial arts action movie that sets up his role with GI Joe. It was a little long, but a decent way to spend an evening.

Old – M Night Shyamalan’s latest. A family on the verge of the parents’ divorce vacation at a tropical resort. They are offered an excursion to a secluded beach with two other families. Once on the beach, they discover they are aging rapidly. Their attempts to escape are thwarted and they are forced to deal with the inevitable death. It was a very interesting movie. It was fascinating to watch the change in everyone as they aged and realized there was nothing they could do. It was not a happy ending movie. Don’t watch if you like movies where everything works out in the end.

TV

We spent a lot of time trying to clear some shows we watch together off the DVR. We caught up with The Resident and Chicago Fire. We watched a couple of episodes of New Amsterdam and Tough as Nails.

I watched the finale of Survivor. I didn’t enjoy all of the advantages and twists this season, but I was glad the finale was relatively free of those. It was just a normal finale with immunity challenges and decisions about who to take to the end. I was OK with the winner. I did miss the regular live reunion show.

I didn’t watch the full two-hour finale of The Masked Singer. I fast-forwarded to the end to see who won and who was unmasked. This season did have a decent amount of bigger names: Tyga, Johnny Rotten, David Foster and Katherine McPhee, Todrick Hall, and Jewel. It’s more fun when they are people I know.

When looking at what I have on the DVR, I decided I didn’t want to watch any more episodes of Day of the Dead. It has been deleted.

I needed something lighter last night, so I started watching The Sex Lives of College Girls on HBO Max. It follows four very different college freshmen who end up rooming together at prestigious Essex College as they navigate their newfound freedom. I watched two episodes and enjoyed them.

I watched and reviewed American Auto. Weirdly, several random people found the post on my Facebook page and commented about how much they hated it. It seems to be a weird show to have a coordinated hate campaign.

I also watched the new show Grand Crew. I wasn’t in a writing mood yesterday so there was no review. It wasn’t a bad show, but I didn’t feel like it was for me. It’s a group of five friends who hang out together at a wine bar. Two of them are siblings. Two of them are roommates. It’s four men and one woman, which I found to be an odd mix. I think they need more women in the group. The stories revolved around one trying to focus more inward and not on dating and the other three men being embarrassed that one saw the other two cry. It was fine, but just not my thing.

Books

I finished one book this week.

The Comfort Book by Matt Haig – Years ago, Matt Haig started writing notes to his future self. These notes were meant to be gifts to his future self. Offerings of hope to help himself through dark times. He added more stories and thoughts and turned them into Thr Comfort Book.

For the first stretch of reading the book, I did it the way I think it was intended – a page or two here and there as needed. As I got closer to trying to wrap things up for the holidays, I started reading it straight through. I think the first way is the best. When you read it all at once it loses a little impact. It was very good, though, and I would recommend it to everyone.

The one I shared on Facebook that I think I need to work on the most:

Your self-worth is not found inside the minds of other people.

I let other people’s opinions of me affect my self-worth way too much.

On Deck

I still have four more days alone before my daughter comes home from college. I’m out of my normal shows I watch alone so I will likely finish the first season of The Sex Lives of College Girls.

I will watch way too many Hallmark Christmas movies to avoid the news.

When my daughter is home we will watch all the Christmas specials I’ve recorded.

I’m currently reading Never by Ken Follett and will be getting new Stephen King books to read over the holiday trip.