Bag of Randomness for Monday, April 29, 2019

  • It was an entertainingly emotional weekend for me. It all started on Thursday night watching Hamilton. The play does an extraordinary job in the scene Hamilton loses his son. It pulls on your heartstrings. In particular, you start to realize the beat of the song is actually his heartbeat, then all other accompanying music fades until eventually, it’s only the heartbeat and then it stops. On Friday I watched Avengers: End Game (more on that later) and then there was last night’s ‘Game of Thrones’, but personally no deaths last night were major or suprising to me. When I was in high school and college, I never understood how people could become emotionally attached to storytelling and cry. Now, as an adult with a certain degree of life experience and obtaining some perspective, well, I’m tearing up while eating my humble pie.
  • I actually watched Endgame twice. Once with a friend and once with the family. I really wanted to watch it the first time fully invested without the interruption of taking a child to the restroom or answering questions. I’m glad I did it this way, and in some ways, it was even better watching it the second time with my family – I like to see their reactions to certain scenes. Yet, I’m surprised I cried more the second time since I knew what was coming. As I said, I like to find commonalities with the characters, especially when it comes to adversity, and once I do I get emotionally invested and connect, I feel as if I’m pulled into the story. It was one of those cries in which you either want to blow your nose or make a take a deep breath in with your nose (which just might release an onslaught of tears), but the theater was so quiet during those scenes I did all I could do to hold it in because I didn’t want my wife and kids to look over.
  • Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about Endgame, but if you aren’t interested in them I have included other typical BoN fodder after them.
  • Spoiler heavy Endgame thoughts:
    • WifeGeeding noticed Black Widow was wearing a silver arrow necklace from Tiffany’s, I bought her one last Christmas.
    • If you have issues with losing loved ones and wishing you could have just one more conversation with them, this is the movie for you. Need to cry on your mom’s shoulder? Thor has you covered. Wish you could spend some time with your dad and show tell him you love him without actually saying you love him? Tony has you covered. How about wanting to dance or reconnect with the love of your life? Cap has you taken care of.
    • I didn’t catch it the first time, but I absolutely loved it when Falcon said, “on your left” when everyone comes back for the final battle, just like Cap said to him at the beginning and end of Winter Soldier. It’s the little things, that small attention to detail, which totally makes it great. It would have been neat if he said it again when he approached Cap when he was sitting on the bench.
    • I had a decent chuckle when Hope called Steve Rogers “Cap” after chiding Scott for doing so in Antman and The Wasp.
    • I thought Cap, Bruce, and Tony should have visited Wakanda and take advantage of their advanced technology to work on their machine.
    • I felt the movie used Carol Danvers just the right amount in just about the perfect way.
    • In Spider-Man: Homecoming, Peter gave Tony a hug with Tony stating, “It’s not a hug, I’m just opening the door. We aren’t there yet”. After Peter comes back with the rest of The Vanished, Tony gives Peter a hug, which I guess means there are definitely there now.
    • I expected a Coulson appearance and was surprised it didn’t happen.
    • Drax actually wore a shirt for Tony’s funeral, but he was so still I almost didn’t notice him.
    • I thought Pepper could have said something a bit more poignant other than, “We’ll be okay.”
    • I bet Cap stealing the Pym particles inside Shield is probably why Hank accuses Howard Stark of stealing the particles in the Eighties at the start of the first Ant-Man movie.
    • Seeing Cap returning the Soul Stone would have been interesting, talking to Red Skull and all.
    • I swear they used my body for Thor.
    • The Asgardians chasing Rocket called him a rabbit was a nice touch. I guess all rabbits look like raccoons on Asgard.
    • Jarvis was the same actor as the one in ‘Agent Carter’.
    • I like the evolution of Tony’s Iron Man suits Tony’s suits, he has learned from every failure. There was the icing problem in his first movie. In Iron Man 2, Whiplash electrocuted the suit and damaged it. Then in the first Avengers film, Thor hit him with lightning and it was running on 400% power. Now, then in this film, Tony built something into his suit specifically to take Thor’s lightning blast and use it without damaging anything. He incorporated nanotechnology so Ant-Man could get inside, melee weapons and shields for hand to hand combat with Cap in Civil War, and a parachute for Peter Parker’s new suit because of what happened to Rhodes when his suit failed.
    • Yes, Howard the Duck was in the final battle, here he is bottom rightish.
  • Running Out of Children, a South Korea School Enrolls Illiterate Grandmothers
    • Here’s the one part of the article I chose to try to encourage you to take the time to read this story, “My memory, hand and tongue don’t work like I wish,” Ms. Park (age 75) said. “But I am going to learn to write before I die.”
  • Jeopardy! producers have stripped contestants of their god-given right to bet $69 on Final Jeopardy
  • I was a teenager when I learned that I am the direct descendant of a slave owner. – How should I think about my great-great-grandfather and his legacy? What is the path to healing in our nation?
  • BYU student commencement speaker comes out as gay during speech
  • This low-cost version of The Matrix is funny and clever.
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One Response to Bag of Randomness for Monday, April 29, 2019

  1. Bryan B. says:

    I used to never get emotional watching movies or tv shows, but it happens more often the older I get. The last installment of Band of Brothers gets me every time I watch it. The scene where Shifty tells Winters that he doesn’t know how he’s going to explain what he’s been a part of and the final interview with the real Winters are tear jerkers. I also lose it any time I see the scene on The West Wing where CJ “tells” the president that Leo died. I use the quotation marks because she never actually tells him. He knows by the look on her face and their reactions are gut wrenching. I recently re-watched The Shield and got a little misty when Shane killed Lem.

    Confession time: I’ve only watched one of MCU movies: the first Captain America. I fully intend to do it at some point, probably once Disney inevitably puts the entire series on their streaming service.

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