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september already??
Sep. 4th, 2020 09:28 amworldwide cases: 26,337,473
worldwide deaths: 869,331
US cases: 6,151,253
US deaths: 186,806
Canada cases: 132,527
Canada deaths: 9,189
Ontario cases: 44,720
Ontario deaths: 2,859
COVID-19 is still a thing, everybody! Ontario's cases per day dipped below 100 for about two weeks, and now we're back up in the 130 per day range. Not great; my guess is that we're seeing a rise due to summer travel, summer get-togethers, restaurants starting to reopen, people getting out there and forgetting to wash their hands or sanitize or mask.
In the past month or so, what have we been up to? I wrote a Let's Anime column about a 1987 catalog of anime merchandise from an import company started by three Florida ladies who were instrumental not only in the anime fan community but in getting me into anime fandom.
http://letsanime.blogspot.com/2020/08/1987-catalog-of-dreams-and-vhs-tapes.html
The conversation about women in fandom has been an ongoing thing in nerd circles lately, but where I'm from, Japanese cartoon nerds, women were always a part of it. The first ongoing Japanese anime convention was started by a woman, the longest running national anime club was run by a woman, women have been there since forever. Of course, Star Trek fans don't need me telling them this.
What else did we do? We took a little out of town trip- our first overnight trip since COVID started - to Kingston. Kingston is weirdly kind of like Savannah - there's an old downtown on the waterfront, a lot of historical buildings, and a lively restaurant/tourist vibe. The antiquing and kitschin' selection is not the greatest, though. Our route took us down Hwy 7 through Perth and Perth had the best stuff of any of the places we visited. I had a week off so I rode my bike, caught up on naps, got the free meal at Denny's on my birthday (the first & so far only indoor restaurant we've been to since COVID). On Shain's birthday we went to the drive in and saw TENET, which is a po-faced James Bond movie crossed with either Dr. Who or that Tom Cruise movie based on the manga. TENET is a fine movie, not up to the hype every Nolan movie has these days (none of them are), but drowns under both a confusing storyline and a climax of three teams of identical masked SpecOpsTactiCool Seal Team warfighters all running around shooting at each other, daring the audience to care.
We finished watching XABUNGLE and are now watching DUNBINE, and boy, that DUNBINE blu-ray looks terrific. I'm enjoying the show, even if it does meander a little. It's refreshing to watch an anime series starring adults that are allowed to be adults; the emo teens are there, but they're secondary characters. The outright thirst Show Zama is showing for Marvel Frozen is something else; he's not embarrassed or shy or awkward, either. Of course the Tomino names are a distraction.
We rented ONCE A UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD and THE PLAYER and BETTER TOMORROW II, one of these films is not like the others. I'd watch an entire movie of Steve McQueen and Joey Heatherton standing around the Playboy Mansion dishing gossip on Laurel Canyon celebrities, but at the end of the day Tarantino's movie is about cowboys vs hippies; the hippies lose. I guess that tracks. THE PLAYER's more cynical than I remembered but that movie might be peak Hollywood for me, that time where I knew pretty much every face, even if it's distracting remembering who's playing themselves and who's playing an Altman character. BETTER TOMORROW II is a movie I can remember liking more than the first one on first watch, but the sequel kind of lets its goofy side run away with things, defusing the drama, maybe? I mean, the movie stops dead to remind us of how awesome Chow Yun Fat's character was in the first movie, ask us how cool it would be if Chow Yun Fat came back, and then gives us concept illustrations of how it's going to happen, before it happens. It's a bold move that almost works.
worldwide deaths: 869,331
US cases: 6,151,253
US deaths: 186,806
Canada cases: 132,527
Canada deaths: 9,189
Ontario cases: 44,720
Ontario deaths: 2,859
COVID-19 is still a thing, everybody! Ontario's cases per day dipped below 100 for about two weeks, and now we're back up in the 130 per day range. Not great; my guess is that we're seeing a rise due to summer travel, summer get-togethers, restaurants starting to reopen, people getting out there and forgetting to wash their hands or sanitize or mask.
In the past month or so, what have we been up to? I wrote a Let's Anime column about a 1987 catalog of anime merchandise from an import company started by three Florida ladies who were instrumental not only in the anime fan community but in getting me into anime fandom.
http://letsanime.blogspot.com/2020/08/1987-catalog-of-dreams-and-vhs-tapes.html
The conversation about women in fandom has been an ongoing thing in nerd circles lately, but where I'm from, Japanese cartoon nerds, women were always a part of it. The first ongoing Japanese anime convention was started by a woman, the longest running national anime club was run by a woman, women have been there since forever. Of course, Star Trek fans don't need me telling them this.
What else did we do? We took a little out of town trip- our first overnight trip since COVID started - to Kingston. Kingston is weirdly kind of like Savannah - there's an old downtown on the waterfront, a lot of historical buildings, and a lively restaurant/tourist vibe. The antiquing and kitschin' selection is not the greatest, though. Our route took us down Hwy 7 through Perth and Perth had the best stuff of any of the places we visited. I had a week off so I rode my bike, caught up on naps, got the free meal at Denny's on my birthday (the first & so far only indoor restaurant we've been to since COVID). On Shain's birthday we went to the drive in and saw TENET, which is a po-faced James Bond movie crossed with either Dr. Who or that Tom Cruise movie based on the manga. TENET is a fine movie, not up to the hype every Nolan movie has these days (none of them are), but drowns under both a confusing storyline and a climax of three teams of identical masked SpecOpsTactiCool Seal Team warfighters all running around shooting at each other, daring the audience to care.
We finished watching XABUNGLE and are now watching DUNBINE, and boy, that DUNBINE blu-ray looks terrific. I'm enjoying the show, even if it does meander a little. It's refreshing to watch an anime series starring adults that are allowed to be adults; the emo teens are there, but they're secondary characters. The outright thirst Show Zama is showing for Marvel Frozen is something else; he's not embarrassed or shy or awkward, either. Of course the Tomino names are a distraction.
We rented ONCE A UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD and THE PLAYER and BETTER TOMORROW II, one of these films is not like the others. I'd watch an entire movie of Steve McQueen and Joey Heatherton standing around the Playboy Mansion dishing gossip on Laurel Canyon celebrities, but at the end of the day Tarantino's movie is about cowboys vs hippies; the hippies lose. I guess that tracks. THE PLAYER's more cynical than I remembered but that movie might be peak Hollywood for me, that time where I knew pretty much every face, even if it's distracting remembering who's playing themselves and who's playing an Altman character. BETTER TOMORROW II is a movie I can remember liking more than the first one on first watch, but the sequel kind of lets its goofy side run away with things, defusing the drama, maybe? I mean, the movie stops dead to remind us of how awesome Chow Yun Fat's character was in the first movie, ask us how cool it would be if Chow Yun Fat came back, and then gives us concept illustrations of how it's going to happen, before it happens. It's a bold move that almost works.
