Friday, 15 November 2019

Knife or Death - Nov 15


Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Sometimes it sucks because of your family, sometimes it sucks because you are the Donald, you are the 45th president of the United States but are getting impeached all the same, sometimes it sucks because you have voted for him but he is getting impeached all the same, and sometimes it is simply hard to pin down a precise reason. Hate to sound self-centered, but look at me – at this moment, (Nov 15, 2019), my life really shouldn’t be that bad, technically speaking, and it isn’t, but yet it feels flat and uninspired – right now I should be honestly writing, creating something, but all I have is a great big zero: I got nothing and I don’t care.

…Only I do. Given our family’s life, such moments tend to be few and far between and are should be treasured, not wasted, yet when I sit down and try to write something down, all I have is nothing. Therefore, in order not to make this blog entry completely self-centered and vapid, I try to talk about what I see on TV…and what is there, but reality shows… and reality sucks.

Oh, sure, I could try to talk about the new ‘Batwoman’ show, (well, new-ish, I suppose), but the truth is that so far it is a gender-bent version of, well, Batman. From what I could glean, the S1 of ‘Batwoman’ the TV show is based on a comic-arc when the titular character went against a villain named Alice because she was sort-of based on Lewis Carrol’s Alice, (from the ‘Wonderland’ duology – read it), which possibly makes her some sort of a female analogue to Batman’s more obscure villain the Mad Hatter, but the truth is that I’m not as big on DC TV shows these days so again I cannot honestly make much of a comment on ‘Batwoman’ or any other live-action component of ‘Arrow-verse’.

With the cartoons it is slightly different: the upcoming cartoon adventures of Harley, Ivy, and ‘their crew’ (Dr. Psycho, Clayface, and King Shark, apparently), seem poised to make the live-action movie about ‘the fantabulous emancipation of Harley Quinn’ redundant at best: the live-action movie and the cartoon series’ aren’t intended to compete, (the top heads of the DC franchise aren’t that stupid), but because they cover the same material, they will be regardless compared and contrasted with each other by the fans. In the DC comics Harley has been ‘emancipated’ for a while now: she is her own woman, (or she is with Ivy) for several years in real life, and so odds favor the cartoon TV series’ format over the single-shot movie; plus, the DC franchise has had problems with live-action films in the past, (the ‘Justice League’ movie, for example), so I’m being pointedly pessimistic here. Anything else?

…Jared Leto is apparently out of DC as the Joker and is coming to Marvel/Sony as Morbius, the ‘living vampire’; considering that Mr. Phoenix appears to be content in making his Joker a one-shot movie, this can mean more trouble to DC, because with Leto out, and Phoenix no longer in, DC is left Joker-less again, which just isn’t right; the fact that they got a new Batman coming already in 2021 might put DC back into its’ pre-Wonder Woman days, and that would be just sad. Can we get back to the reality shows?

Last night, (Nov 14, 2019), I got to see ‘Knife or Death’, sort of a special addendum to the previously-discussed ‘Forged in Fire’ show, and all that I can say is… what did I watch? As we discussed previously, ‘Forged in Fire’ itself is a mixed beast, kind of like ‘Chopped’ for bladesmithing, with elements of DW and ‘Man at Arms’ from YouTube mixed-in. It is not a flawless show by far, but it got variety and can be okay to watch sometimes. ‘Knife or Death’ is a different beast of a show: the knives/blades get forged beforehand, pre-show, and the show itself is an obstacle course, or several, where the bladesmiths run through it, hacking and slashing various objects to demonstrate their blades and blade-forging skills. The result is a much more repetitious and monotonous show than the actual ‘Forged in Fire’ show is, and that is not a good thing, in my opinion. Anything else?

A new exhibition is opening in ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) this weekend in real life, so I am off to there to see it. It is supposed to be about bats and the like, so the reason as to why it has opened now, in the middle of November, post-Halloween, as opposed to pre-Halloween escape me for now. Maybe after I will look at it this weekend it will make more sense.

...This is it for now; see you all soon!

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