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I’m sometimes glad to be proven wrong—what am I saying, as a pessimist, I count on it—the mulefa and war with the angels weren’t unfilmable; I was only unable to predict that budgets for such spectacle would eventually be approved for the small screen. Not like me, too, to quote the books (“There’s plenty of folk as’d like to have a lion as a dæmon and they end up with a poodle”) and fail to make the connection to “Seen and Not Seen” from Remain in Light.

I’m also reminded how I found the series in the first place, from a co-worker whose church-arranged husband strung her along for just long enough to finance his business and obtain a green card. The spinster’s faith is surely unshaken: “L’absurde naît de cette confrontation entre l’appel humain et le silence déraisonnable du monde.” Albert Camus, Le mythe de Sisyphe

Chang Cheh (and I Kuang) had a whole Hung Sikuan-verse long before Marvel, I remember at least another one where Fu Sheng had to tunnel to rescue him from a dungeon, and in this Executioners prequel, the character, filled in by a Chen Kuantai-lookalike, gets in on some Lu Feng skewering with Kuo Chui, Lo Meng and Chiang Sheng. Sun Chien wasted his time being an expert of walking on posts, while Brass Head/Mr. Chu from Crippled Avengers wielded a lollipop-shaped hammer, all of which is visible in the final freeze frame above.

…for good, really, our latest road trip there lets me cross it off places I’m likely ever to return to, which is kind of a good feeling, despite the reason of course being that little time’s left for it to change, similar to how I have fewer things left to eat. Speaking of which, a single Nathan’s Famous chili dog at one of the New York, New York exits (next to a woman manning an oxygen station who told her fellow booth operator that Christmas Day was the worst she’d had yet) now costs nearly ten dollars with tax and no longer even offers the snapping skin. Surprisingly cheaper box of fish & chips at Gordon Ramsay’s place, though factor in the wait, the lack of seating, then the fight through the crowds to get it back to your room warm, and the none of this seems worth the trouble. Bring back the original Star Trek Experience and maybe? I kept thinking of the drive I made once to meet a friend I no longer have and missed an item on the auction house in a game I no longer play, might that have been the wrong life-altering decision? At least the weather cooperated at the Cajon Pass and I didn’t crash the car as I have been in the dreams leading up to and during the trip.

I woke up the other night and decided to read up on the Pussycats, having largely parted ways with them after disappointing revival attempts at the turn of the century. Their Wiki mentions a compilation from Rhino in 2001, but the one I got was issued a few years before, and neither had “Clock on the Wall”, anyway, which may have turned me off most of all.The 2020 Blu-Ray remaster looks crisp like my OTA VHS recordings aren’t (despite using SP mode!), and even while I was making them I knew it was too late for that idyllic spirit of adventure they depicted, it could still await my next of kin.

There was a suspicious car traveling up the street, I think maybe because the driver wasn’t immediately visible, so somehow I was able to hop in the back and confront the occupants. “This isn’t possible,” I accused, “You must be from the future!” The two or three men admitted as much, as our vehicle converted to a boat and took off on the open seas. (I was reminded of The Last Starfighter, which we watched the other night. It wasn’t really that good, was it, apart from the premise, which I’d rather have seen again on a 12-minute episode of Regular Show.) We entered a purple gash in the air, and the sky went from sunny to dark as we docked. They warned me that in their time, non-Whites were gone, purged, didn’t press for an explanation, and that I’d stick out. The city was a bland shade of brown and eerily empty of inhabitants, like an early videogame. The boy, still a four-footer, tried befriending one of the local Village of the Damned children but heeding our host’s advice, I told him to let go of her hand.

Thought-provoking foray into race relations aside, another of my familiar themes in dreams is the long journey on foot alone, often across unimaginable distances and non-navigable terrain, which may or may not be a corollary of transportation woes, though fortunately I spare myself the actual experience and only reflect upon it before or afterward. This morning I traced my trip from somewhere in northern New England to upstate New York by way of Canada and the “Madison” River, probably mistaken for the Hudson. Is there some challenge I’m bracing for, and am I burdening myself unnecessarily by taking the more difficult approach, like how I prefer to use a manual screwdriver instead of the cordless drill?

A single-lane road went around the back of the parking lot, but when I approached it to exit, two sedans were oncoming. The asphalt ahead of them was broken, though, resulting in an abrupt four-foot drop, which neither must’ve seen because the first fell head-long onto the lower ground then the one behind landed on top. It seemed like I stepped out to investigate. The driver of the buried car appeared: he (?) was a hunched humanoid, but his body was covered in a large drum-like steel shell and his head comprised of goggles for eyes and a screaming mouth. Another of its kind emerged from the wreckage and was just as angry. I left the monsters to themselves by promptly departing to their left in the original way out, glad that the dashcam had caught everything.

Has this already been done? A man’s life is linked inextricably to an ancient samurai sword somehow and becomes virtually immortal unless the weapon is broken. Well, that was the premise of the caper I took part in before waking up for good today (then again, it is Sunday), where a female Japanese detective and I uncovered the mystery, then rewound to catch a re-enactment of the origin of the bond between the two, which, to our disappointment, was lacking in special effects: he was a nobody who happened to be around when its crate was broken.

I’ve used highlights from Son in the past, that one as an OBS scene when my former Brawlstars partner would score, but I’ve gotta hand it to him for defying the do-or-die stakes and coming through with a world-class assist to advance. Somewhere out there, assuming the Parkinson’s hasn’t completely taken his mind, 윤대섭 smugly recalls championing his countrymen against the doubts of a fellow viewer of Soccer Made in Germany. I lived to see the advent of Kpop, too.