About hyenas - March 31

Let us talk briefly about hyenas. PBS Eons have recently released yet another one of their YouTube videos, this time about the hyena evolution, but somehow I do not think that they have done those animals justice. Therefore, let us talk.

For a start, people tend to get an incorrect idea about the modern hyenas because of the reasons listed below.

To begin, we must put all of the four modern and existing hyena species into a row, from the biggest to the smallest: we got the spotted, the striped, the brown and the aardwolf. Though we have not professional biologists, but if we look at this quartet, we get to see that the spotted hyena stands out from the rest of its’ kin. Why and how?

First, because it is spotted, while the other hyena species have stripes. Seriously, the striped hyena is named after its’ coloration pattern, while the aardwolf looks like a miniature version of the striped hyena, and the brown hyena may be mostly brown, but it still has some stripes, albeit mostly on its’ legs; still, they’re stripes, not spots.

Second, the spotted hyena has a differently shaped jaws and muzzle from the other three species: it is shorter and broader than in the other three species. This is more than justified: the structure of the spotted hyena’s jaws and skull, as well as its’ postcranial skeleton is what gives it strength and power to crush bones and to get through flesh so easily; the spotted hyena is the stereotypical bone crusher, put otherwise.

The other hyenas, conversely, well… The aardwolf has become an obligate insectivore instead: it feeds only on insects, mostly social insects such as ants and termites; it has lost most of its’ teeth, though its’ canines are still large and formidable for its’ size – the aardwolf uses them for defence.

…Yes, this is a reference to the Thylacosmilus, the marsupial sabretooth. Initially it was thought to be a marsupial counterpart to the better-known sabretooth cats such as Smilodon, but now it is known that Thylacosmilus led a very different life-style, which just do not know which one. Maybe it was an atypical insectivore such as the modern aardwolf…or the bat-eared fox – more about that below.

Anyways, the striped and the brown hyenas are more formidable than the aardwolf is, but they still fall short to their spotted cousin – and they look much more canine, or maybe lupine, than the spotted hyena does, (whose appearance is pretty unique in the mammal kingdom). The same can be also said for the aardwolf, who is called a ‘wolf’ for that reason: it does look like a wild dog of some sorts on the surface. More succinctly, while the spotted hyena does not look anything like a wild dog, the other three species do.

In behavior, however, the situation appears to be reversed: the spotted hyena is a pack hunter, just as the wild dog species are, while the other three hyena species are not. Fair enough, but how do they live?

In family groups – small in the case of the aardwolf, larger in the case of the striped and the brown hyena, but whereas the spotted hyena is loud and brash and in your face, the other hyena species are shyer and more retiring and aren’t encountered by humans very often. (Especially the aardwolf, for the obvious reason). Consequently, while most people know of the spotted hyena, (especially thanks to Disney’s Lion King Movie from the 1990s and beyond); the other three species of hyena tend to be more overlooked, especially by the non-scientific crowd. What next?

…The hyenas are accused of having lost to the dogs in the evolutionary race. There’s some justification there, as only the striped hyena occurs outside of Africa; the brown hyena in particular is restricted to the countries in the African south, and is a rather shy animal when compared to its’ spotted cousin, but…

However, what an evolutionary win is? From a human point of view, (and we don’t have anyone else’s, ‘cause we’re still the only sentient species on planet Earth, regardless of what the Yetis and co. think), this means that your species continues to thrive, if not outright flourish, on the face of the planet, and here the hyenas…well, make do – they might not be as widespread as the wolves are, but…

However, if we look at the wild dogs, which have supposedly beaten the hyenas, then we see a picture that is not too different from the hyenas. The pack-forming canines are not all that numerous: we got the wolf, (whose main success is in the north, where there are few other large carnivores, save for bears, and the bears are more omnivorous instead). There is the African wild dog that is not found outside of Africa, the dhole, which lives mostly in Southeast Asia, and the Australian dingo, which is found only in Australia, and whose taxonomic status is still debated – is it a wild dog or merely a ‘feral’ one? The rest of the wild canids, including the jackals of the Old World, the coyote of the Americas, and the singing dog of Papua New Guinea tend to live in much smaller family groups – just as the non-spotted hyenas do. So, what does prevent the hyenas from leaving Africa and succeeding elsewhere?

…Because they have already succeeded in Africa, that is why. The non-human mammals, as well as the other animals, tend to lack ambition, especially in human terms; whereas humans often cannot be sated until they have it all, the other mammals can get along with each other under the sun; yes, the prehistoric hyenas have existed outside of Africa and now they’re gone, but so’s their world; the prehistoric wild dogs might’ve displaced them at one point, but now they’re also largely gone; all that’s left are the people, (and the domestic dogs, but they’re something else), and they’re the ones keeping the hyenas, well, subdued, and the same goes for the wild dogs.

The bat-eared fox, incidentally, is the canine counterpart to the aardwolf: it is bigger than fennec, (made famous by the Zootopia movie), but not unlike the aardwolf it lacks most specialized adaptations of a ‘professional’ insectivore, save for teeth and extra-large ears. It lives… alongside the aardwolf, actually, but it does not outcompete the hyena, cough. Therefore, I feel safe to say that the concepts of the canine success and hyena failure are coined human terms and thus should be treated with a grain of doubt when applied to the actual animals.

End

 

Moon Knight, series premiere - March 30

 

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, hence why I kept on down low for several months now. However, I have come back, (and with a new haircut), and I feel like discussing something new for the moment.

The problem is, what do I want to discuss? Given my blog’s latest tendencies, people might assume that I want to talk about MCU’s ‘Moon Knight’ premiere, ‘The Goldfish Problem’. Fair enough, but for the moment there’s nothing to discuss: MCU has made a wide choice by making ‘Moon Knight’ separate from the rest of MCU – for the moment – but it does leave us rather bare-handed and flat-footed as to where to go from here; so far, there’s nothing, except…

Except for Ammit, also known as Ammut, (and Ahemait, apparently). As a matter of fact, she was an Egyptian deity, but the thing is that the ancient Egyptians did not worship her/it; instead, Ammut was an underling of Anubis, who was the divine judge of their afterlife, and if an ancient Egyptian was found to be unworthy, Ammut would it his heart, and the ancient Egyptian would be ‘dead a second time’, according to the official sources. As such, the ancient Egyptians did not worship Ammut, and in the religion of mainly animal-headed deities, Ammut was a completely bestial chimera, with the head of a crocodile, the main and the forequarters of a lion, and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus: whereas the Greek Chimera was just three random animals jumbled together, the Egyptian Ammut personified three of the deadliest animals known to the ancient Egyptian culture and society. Neat, but she/it still was not worshiped… unlike in MCU. That is not a problem, actually, but a while back there was an article about how the team Moon Knight criticized Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins as to how they handled the Egyptian angle in WW1984, calling their approach… retrograde and backwards, basically. The irony here is that MCU seems to be treating the ancient Egyptian mythology very similarly, especially when you look at the episode’s monster.

Let us roll back. At the episode’s finale, the show’s main villain, Arthur Harrow, have conjured up some sort of a demon creature with a humanoid body and the head-skull of a jackal, (for simplicity’s sake, let’s treat it as such). Well, given the strong influence of the ‘Mummy’ trilogy (of the late 1990s and the early 2000s) in the monster’s depiction and actions, I feel that MCU have repeated the trilogy’s confusion and conflation of Anubis and Set.

…If there are people who are not too versed in the ancient Egyptian myths, then while Anubis was the divine judge of the ancient Egyptian underworld, Set was a god of evil instead; the two are depicted similarly – Anubis has the head of a jackal, whereas Set has the head of… a Set beast or a sha, a creature that hasn’t been fully identified yet, (though some people associate it with the saluki, an ancient dog breed; the fact that Set was also Anubis’ father in the ancient Egyptian canon doesn’t help things either. Still, the ancient Egyptians had no problem in keeping the two gods apart, and they did not consider Set wholly bad; he was one of the strongest lieutenants of Ra, the sun god, and regularly helped Ra with fighting Apep, the chthonic demon-snake of the ancient Egyptian myths. More precisely, Rick Riordan got the facts down flat in his ‘Kane Chronicles’ trilogy, and since Mr. Riordan is associated with Disney just as the MCU is, there’s no reason as to why MCU had to conflate the two gods and throw Ammut/Ammit into the mix as well. I wonder as to how they will treat Khonshu the moon god now…

Did we digress, or rather ramble? Well yes, we have. In my defence, it has been a while since I wrote in my blog and I have a lot under my belt, but an article entry about the ‘Moon Knight’ series’ premiere isn’t it, sadly. Therefore, I am ending my rant for now.

See you all soon (hopefully)!

 

TBOBF - Jan 16

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and you can always count on your family to make it worse, so let us briefly talk about Boba Fett instead. We are already 2 or 3 weeks into 2022, so it is time for me to make my first blog entry of the year anyhow…

…Well, here is the tricky part – there is not much to talk about in regards to ‘The Book of Boba Fett’: like almost anything that is associated with Disney, the technical side of things is done perfectly, but otherwise…

But otherwise, if you look at the Disney/SW situation, then you will notice something else: it is stuck. It is stuck within the framework of the first two trilogies, done without Disney’s involvement and investment in Lucasfilm™, and while ‘The Mandalorian’ tested those borders, ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ – not so much, at least not in the first three episodes; ‘The Book of Boba Fett is taking place sometime around the original trilogy…ok, sometime after the SW6 film, but so far it is ignoring the greater galaxy far away and is centered around a certain town on Tattooine instead. In ‘The Mandalorian’, we travelled all over the place, but then… first, Gina Carano made a daft and a politically inapt statement, she was fired, her SW character Cara Dune was scrapped, the end. Where did this leave us?

…With the titular character handling over Grogu the Yoda Baby over to Luke Skywalker, leaving fans wondering, just what has happened to the tyke between ‘The Mandalorian’ S2 finale and the SW7-9 films that he either sat out Luke Skywalker getting his ass handed over to him practically by everyone else, or else Grogu was in the posse that joined the Dark Side and handed Luke Skywalker his ass. Neither possibility is good, so for the moment Grogu and the rest of the remaining ‘Mandalorian’ cast are benched, and we got ‘The Book of Boba Fett’, which is detached – in a large part - from the rest of the SW universe. The fan community is not too impressed, and so ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ is not flourishing as much as it could have been. Anything else?

Yes, the AoS, for I would not be talking about Disney’s latest SW misadventure without it. Yes, DC seems to have come up with its’ own take on the show’s initial premise in the ‘Peacemaker’ series, which is actually the redemption arc Grant Ward should’ve had; the titular character is his variant, the rest of the crew are the variant AoS, save for the Vigilante, who is essentially a Deadpool variant instead. Marvel’s loss is DC’s gain – if Deadpool was a regular on the AoS show, it would have been much more popular and successful than how it was. Instead, we got Ms. Ming-Na Wen making a smooth and a casual reply to the question – is AoS coming back? – that amounts to her saying nothing and promising nothing, which is much more diplomatic than anything that Chloe Bennett would’ve said, but I digress.

First, Ms. Ming-Na is a talented actress, who knows that who pays for the music dances the girl, and does not go against Disney/MCU’s grain, as Chloe Bennett seems to have had. Second, AoS is over for good. Whatever it was supposed to be initially, in the end it was a clunky Frankenstein’s monster of a show, which had cannibalized the other cancelled MCU shows, such as ‘InHumans’, ‘Ghost Rider’, and even the cancelled third season of AC, but we’ve discussed it in the past.

Third, Disney/MCU has re-started that issue themselves in ‘Hawkeye’ – yes, we’ve talked about this before, but again, I’ll note that given how the audience’s/the fans’ reaction to the suggestion that Laura was the ‘true’ Mockingbird all along was ambiguous, Disney/MCU quickly squashed the discussions on this topic, and used the latest ‘Spider-Man’ movie to cover-up its’ tracks. However,

…However, there are traces of AoS in ‘No Way Home’ as well; the way that team Spider-Man deals with the extradimensional villains isn’t too different from the Tahiti method that AoS used on Cal, so clearly, the way that AoS had re-used its’ recycled ideas has spread to the rest of MCU by now. Oh dear, we will have to wait and see as to what will come out of it.

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

Hawkeye, 'Christmas' - Dec 22

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks - just ask Noth, who’s been declared a sex offender throughout the week, and everyone else is dropping him like hot shite. I can’t say that I blame them- team Carrie can’t afford to go against the flow: already their core base is fracturing because of AJLT take on their characters, and unlike SW they don’t have Disney to back them up; any more pressure, and they will become just 3 more washed-up actresses instead with AJLT being the albatross on their collective necks.

Ditto for RR - he got involved with Peloton, not with Noth, and he has his own problems, as the ‘Red Notice’ film turned out into a 200 million USD flop. So, let’s go to the greener pastures of ‘Hawkeye’.

…Actually, I’d rather not, since it’s not much of an improvement; sadly, JWD’s latest Input is a poster of Owen being harassed by an Atrociraptor- the franchise stopped making dinosaur hybrids and is just reimagining them from the get-go. Still better than ‘Hawkeye’.

Where to begin? Fisk’s big return was a joke - he didn’t do much and was killed-off by Lopez - supposedly, but still. It’s rather underwhelming, but then again, the conclusion of Maya’s story arc was underwhelming- she killed Kazi without much of a fight, and then just turned on to her uncle/surrogate father with nary a struggle. Not impressive character development, let me tell you; not to mention that Fisk cannot die - he is just too important for the Marvel universe.

Getting back to Ronin… Clint burned the suit; so much for my prediction that Maya will be the next Ronin, just as Kate is the next Hawkeye. As I said before, the entire Maya story arc appears to be rushed through here, so maybe we won’t see an Echo mini-series after all, authenticity and equal opportunity or not. Instead, we got a hint that Laura might have been a Mockingbird…only MCU already has/had a Mockingbird- Bobbi Morse; already there are people upset about this decision, and Disney doesn’t like controversies after the SW mess… so odds of the watch vanishing now that the ‘Hawkeye’ mini-series are done aren’t bad.

And yes, AoS has started it by ‘spoilers’ - in the series’ last season they’ve explored the multiverse, sort of, thanks to the Chronicons, but this sort of backwards-engineering in ‘Hawkeye’ still stings.

Finally, The fact that ‘Hawkeye’ is done has also left a bad taste in my mouth - it itself feels rushed, you know? At least Clint had the good taste to bring Kate to his family’s home for further mentoring, thus tying into the ‘Endgame’ epilogue, but still…I expected fewer cliffhangers… and Yelena’s resolution… well…

This brings us back to transitions. ‘Hawkeye’ has followed this theme - the mantle has passed from Clint to Kate, (even though in 'Endgame' it was implied that it would be Clint and Laura's own biological daughter instead - ouch!), we got an update on Yelena, and maybe Echo will reappear in the future. However, the rushed story arcs and the unnecessary twists - it was Elinor all along, etc. - have rather ruined the impact. Still better than real life, though.

This is it for now; see you all soon.

Spider-Man, 'No Way Home' - Dec 17

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the latest Spider-Man movie instead.

…I mean, sure, it isn’t as straightforward, for example, the discovery of a brand new millipede specie in RL is really exciting, while the new JWD posters are something else: on the first, we have Claire stuck in a swamp, driven there by a therezinosaurus; again, I’ve no idea what a therezinosaurus would do in a swamp, plus the entire poster is too reminiscent of the ones done for the first film in the Jumanji reboot; and now we have the second poster, where Owen has lassoed a Parasaurolophus instead. A Parasaurolophus was a hadrosaur (duck-billed) dinosaur that lived during the Cretaceous around the inland sea of the prehistoric North America, in a time, and a place, that was pretty much opposite to the boreal forest in which Chris had lassoed it on the poster, so clearly, the world of the JWD movie has a lot of issues to work out – by people, by dinosaurs, by both, and by anyone else. And the latest (Tom Holland) Spider-Man movie?

…And the latest (Tom Holland) Spider-Man movie is something else. When we talked about the ‘Ronin’ episode of ‘Hawkeye’, I said that ‘Hawkeye’ has becoming nothing more than by the numbers Marvel TV series, whereas ‘No Way Home’ has become a by the numbers… Sony Spider-Man movie.

No, seriously, the advantage of MCU over its’ competitors was that it had a greater picture, so to speak: every film was a step on the path to… the ‘Endgame’. No, seriously the ‘Endgame’ film was the endgame to the first three phases of MCU; just consider them the bigger and more derived cousins to the three seasons of a typical Disney property, and you’ll be set. Now, however, MCU is moving – has moved – onto Phase 4, and out of Disney’s comfort zone, so no wonder that it is meandering all over the place – and then it came back to Sony. Their previous collaboration with each other – the ‘Far From Home’ film – resulted in Sony and Disney/MCU fighting, and the latter was forced to retreat, and now…

…And now, we got another Sony & Disney/MCU collaboration on Spider-Man, and it is something else from what I have predicted. I predicted that it is going to launch the concept of the multiverse in the Disney/MCU universe for real, now that the previous Disney+ Marvel TV series have teased it – ‘Loki’ began to explore it – and so it had. By the final scene, where we see Dr. Strange encounter Wanda Maximoff after the events of WV, dismiss the events in Westview easily enough, and talk to her about exploring the multiverse for real: ‘No Way Home’ was a glorified pre-run instead.

It was also a reboot of the Sony Spider-Man universe, as we got to see Norman Osborn/the Green Goblin stab ‘his’ Spider-Man rather than be impaled by his glider before everyone was able to go home; Electro from the ‘second’ Spider-Man universe also got redesigned; and so on. Given that Sony is continuing its’ own Spider-Verse, (the upcoming Morbius film, etc.) this does bring possibilities – but not to MCU. Instead, in case of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, he lost everyone and almost everything, and is clear to start from a clean slate. MCU is done with the Web-Head, so the odds of him having to deal with threats from only ‘his’ universe are fairly good.

In addition, there are signs that MCU has moved onto from Spider-Man: I am talking about ‘Hawkeye’, who has no mention of Wall-Crawler at all: seriously, you have adventures in a Marvel-verse NYC and no mention of the Spider-Man? That is just wrong. But that is also real life business politics: Sony, (including Spider-Man), and Disney/MCU are done with each on this level, and so Spider-Man got send out of MCU with a big fanfare, Sony got to demonstrate its’ past and present Spider-Man properties in a more tasteful way of HBO’s ‘Space Jam 2’ film, which has little in common with the original movie, and is worse than the original ‘Space Jam’ had been, which is just sad. Where were we?

Oh yeah, with the realization that ‘No Way Home’ was just a side-quest, an ejection from the otherwise slim and streamlined MCU phase 4, (no sarcasm intended). ‘What if?’ might be ‘What if?’, but it is apocrypha for a reason; there we saw situations that could have happened in MCU, but did not… just because. And even so, the end result of ‘What if?’ S1 was a variant of ‘Endgame’, a mix of the first and the last ‘Avengers’ films – nothing more. Disney/MCU always returns to its’ comfort zone… Pause.

Ah yes, the Daredevil (Charlie Cox) cameo. Now that the agreement between Disney/MCU & Netflix has ended, MCU is cautiously (re)-introducing the ‘Defenders’ characters, starting with the Kingpin and his archenemy Daredevil…apparently. What will come out of that we will have to see…

Therefore, for now, this is it. See you all soon!

Hawkeye, 'Ronin' - Dec 15

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let’s talk about’Hawkeye’ instead. We’ve reached the penultimate episode, and where we are?

On one hand, Clint has confessed to Maya, admitting that he had killed her father, but also claiming that he was set-up by her father’s boss, (probably the Kingpin), so that makes it all ok… or not, ‘cause Maya’s father is still dead, and Clint isn’t off the hook entirely yet.

Speaking of the Kingpin? Kate’s family seems to be in cahoots with him, and so Luke and Leia (Skywalker) tell Kate “hi”. Fisk also appears to be the power behind contessa Val, so no Hydra either, most likely. Of course, this brings us not just to ‘Black Widow’, but also to Sam&Bucky, whose former enemy John Walker was also recruited by the good contessa; is Fisk trying to fill the void left by Hydra? That’s atypical for him in the comics, (and also Netflix’s ‘Defenders’), but MCU has played fast and loose with Marvel canon before, so no surprises here.

Coming back to the Bishops, their turnaround isn’t surprising either- in the comics, Kate’s mother was a villain, so ‘Hawkeye’ is just building on that. I.e., ‘Ronin’s’ action sequences were superb, and the dialogue/plot progression were better than in ‘Partners’, but it is still a by the numbers live action adaptation of the comics with its’ mostly black and white morality; plus…

…Plus we know that Echo/Maya Lopez will join the roster of Marvel heroes that have their own live action TV series and/or films, so we know that she will turn white hat eventually- Disney/MCU has shot itself in the foot there as well, and without unpredictable twists and turns ‘Hawkeye’ is - see above. Anything else?

No, not really. I, for one, have enjoyed watching ‘Ronin’; it was a good episode to watch, but nothing more- ‘Hawkeye’ is delivering, but its’ delivery is still rather predictable, if not outright lacklustre.

Therefore, this is it for now - see you all soon!

And Just Like That - Dec 14

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and I am still unsure about the reviews of the last two ‘Hawkeye’ episodes, (let alone anything else, cough), so while I have the chance, let us talk about something different, (genre speaking). Let us talk, however briefly, about ‘And Just Like That’.

This particular mini-series – so far, there’s only 1 season, with 8 episodes, and two of them were aired already – is a reboot of the much earlier ‘Sex and the city’, and that is already a problem. Why? Well, let us rewind a few years back, in real life, to the ‘Gilmore Girls’ reboot, called ‘Gilmore Girls: A Year in Life’, or something like that. Not unlike SATC, this seemed to be a solid hit, since the GG series had had a secure fan following back in the heyday, but instead…

…But instead, it was discovered that the entire GG franchise has not aged well, and that keeping in mind that its’ characters/actors kept their actual ages out of focus. They had plenty of problems – such as the fact that Rory seems to have become an entitled brat, her mom, Lorelei, isn’t too far from an average Karen, and that the entire four-part revival is a mix of ASP’s original epilogue, (never aired), and the conclusion of the original series’ S7, and the two main components didn’t mix well… The result is that the GG fandom has sunk back into slumber, having been briefly woken in a manner of a hibernating bear, and not unlike a prematurely awoken hibernating bear, the result was more negative than positive, but what about AJLT?

Why, it is the same problem, as GG – the material didn’t age well, nostalgia alone isn’t enough to placate or to satisfy all of the critics or the audience members, and so instead of having an easy journey, team AJLT is dealing with an increasingly dissatisfied and fracturing fan base, which may – or may not – pull the entire franchise down under instead. This has happened before, just look at the SW Sequel trilogy or at AoS, but unlike them, AJLT does not have Disney’s gold parachute to keep on going; instead…

…Instead it has an albatross of its’ own, one that GG did not have – the fight, (such as it is), between SJP and Ms. Cattrail. Everyone is downplaying it, but the fight did happen, and as such, SATC’s character Samantha is not in AJLT at all; since she was one out of the big four, her absence is really glaring, and the way it was handled on screen? It was just pitiful, Ms. Cattrail’s fans are outraged, (and they are not in the wrong), and so are her character’s. What was that about a fracturing fan base that we were talking about?

And then came the death of Mr. Big, (played by Mr. Noth) – and it hit… team Peloton right in the balls. I have been half-following Peloton through the years – first it was their ‘Peloton family’ ad misadventure, one where a husband gave his wife a gift – a Peloton cycle, (or something like that) – and she was happy. Supposedly. Instead, the actress fungled the role, (sort of), and everyone began to compare the ad to a ‘Black Mirror’ episode and things like that; the company’s stock tumbled.

In swooped Ryan Reynolds, who gave ‘the Peloton wife’ a new role – one that promoted his own personal brand of booze, and the woman made a fortune. Nothing like that happened to her male counterpart, but hey, that is the modern values; you either roll with them, as RR does, and you prosper, or you don’t, as Chloe Bennet hasn’t, and you don’t prosper.

…No, this is not about AoS, not entirely. Earlier this year, Ms. Bennet made it clear, that she was not a part of the Live-Action Powerpuff girl remake, nor was she going to return as Daisy Johnson/Quake in the upcoming Marvel ‘Secret Invasion’ franchise, and Disney/MCU were looking for someone else to play the latter character. Considering that Chloe Bennett was THE actress to play Daisy, this is strange and weird, in a sad and disappointing sort of way. My only theory is that Chloe didn’t go with the flow; while working at Disney/MCU, which is increasingly about representing the various social, racial, sexual and other minorities in the American society, Chloe Bennett… well, identified herself as Bennett, rather than as Wong, (seriously, look at her Wiki page), and didn’t look, or behave, very Asian-American – and we got the message that Disney/MCU were looking for a female Asian-American to play Daisy Johnson/Quake… ouch!

Of course, AoS has also the honor of being Disney/MCU’s subtlest failure: among other things, it was supposed to introduce several new heroes to MCU, including Deathlok and Mockingbird, with the latter being important as being Hawkeye’s ex. There were rumors of Mockingbird, (in MCU, she’s Bobbi Morse), coming to Hawkeye…I mean, ‘Hawkeye’, but those rumors were quickly squashed: apparently, AoS and all that is associated with it can stand buried and gone, (or as Britney Spears has told Diane Sawyer, ‘she can kiss my white ass’). What is left?

Ah yes, AJLT and the Peloton. After the Peloton family misadventure… and another misadventure – apparently, another Peloton ad made some children believe that the Peloton exercise bikes were indoor jungle gyms or something; some children, not surprisingly, got hurt and the company suffered; well, this time, after Peloton got associated with AJLT in a big bad way, Peloton was ready: they contacted RR, and he quickly made them a new ad, one were a very much alive Mr. Big is enjoying himself with his Peloton instructor, (played by a RL Peloton personality), and that’s it, really. Peloton had had enough with being the butt of the business world, and is striking back; AJLT is not likely to suffer from this fallout, but the fact that they have killed-off another major character may. Even GG didn’t go that far – Richard Gilmore died because his actor died for real – but then again, AJLT is just getting started, maybe it’ll be able to shake-off its’ lackluster – to put it mildly – beginning and shine for real. I am not rooting for it, though – the original series were fun enough, but the movies not so much and the cast was proportionally younger and more vibrant back then as well due to the obvious reasons…

Well, this is it for now; see you all soon.