"Mostly-weekly"

Haha! Maybe on average, given that I was posting daily for a good stretch in March, but it's now been almost three months since my last post.

There are several reasons for that.

One, I just couldn't keep pace with the MCU reflections and reviews when we were watching a film each day. That was especially true once we returned to "remote learning" following spring break.

It wasn't a break at all for me; I spent several hours each day of it prepping materials that were then shared through Google Classroom with my 9 classes of students once the break was done.

The weeks that followed that were full identifying the students who qualified to participate in the program for academically talented students that I coordinate and teach. A great deal of the data and processes usually used for that were unavailable, so considering alternatives, sharing and discussing those with our district leaders, and then communicating (and, when questioned, justifying) those to many teachers, principals, and parents were all huge untertakings.

Communicating with the parents and teachers of qualifying students took me all the way through early June.

Whew.

Also: there's Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It's been about a decade since I dove into an AC game. Our copy was shipped to us on March 25th, and it's been a comfortable and captivating second life since. I can't think of another game that's had a more tragically fortuitous release - an escapist game with intentional community components, arriving right at the time that gamers were given carte blanche to stay at home for days and weeks and months at a time. I sense the intensity with which many played it is waning - for us, too - but I still log at least a couple hours every day, sometimes much more than that if I am up early and Melanie is watching something at night in which I'm not interested.

Plans for Geek Fire Oil in these summer months:

1. I have notes on all the remaining MCU movies that we watched. I will compile those into posts at least once a week, in a looser format probably won't lend itself to as much structure or detail as those posts that came before. Our lives were ultra-structured in those weeks.

2. Comics are starting to release again. The 11th issue of my current favorite, Die, comes out today. I would like to get on a schedule where I respond to one individual comic or series every week, too.

3. Tech stuff. We are cutting the cable cord, and have started using alternatives already. I'll share what is and isn't working for us. There will probably also be posts about New Horizons since it's such a significant part of our recreation time right now.

4. I am playing in a Tales from the Loop online game with friends and also prepping work for a long, exciting, quirky Pathfinder 2nd Edition campaign (the Extinction Curse Adventure Path), so expect occasional posts about one or the other.

5. Noah and I have started collecting Marvel Legends again, so we'll share what's new with those - maybe some unboxing photos and videos that will be cross-posted to his YouTube.

6. Rasslin'. We watched Undertaker: The Last Ride on WWE Network and I have some thoughts on that, as well as the production of their shows through this pandemic/LEFTIST HOAX.

That should lead to at least a couple posts a week!

I'm also struggling to get started on the work of a distance learning Learners Edge course - much prefer in-person classes, but they are also significantly more costly, both from price and time perspectives - so there might be lapses in activity here when I am making headway on that work.

I hope these words find all who read them in good health and high spirits. Geek On.

Wrestlemania 36

And now, a brief interlude to the Marvel Cinematic Reviews.

I can't mar peoples' opinions of me much more than I already have, so I'll go ahead and admit that in addition to collecting comics and for most of my life obsessing over Star Wars, I am also a decades-long fan of professional wrestling.

To be fair, most of us were in the 1980s, when Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling shared cartoon airtime and toy shelf space with G.I. Joe and Transformers.

And again in the late 1990s, when the screens of sports bar TVs in college towns featured Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock, the nWo and Goldberg, I was part of the "in" crowd.

The difference being: in the time between, I was a high schooler hosting pay-per-view parties with betting pools for vents that featured characters such as Mantaur.

I can tell you the differences between him, The Barbarian, The Warlord, and The Berzerker, and have an opinion on which of them was the better pro wrestling character.

When few were still watching in the mid-2000s, I was geeked to see independent wrestler CM Punk among the pinstriped gangsters that came to the ring with John Cena.

There have been times when interest waned and years that I did not watch at all, but for the better part of the time I have been alive, I've loved rasslin'.

Our 8-year old son Noah has adopted and elevated that fandom. When we cleaned the top level of our home yesterday, it took him about 20 minutes to clear out the custom-built arena and 50-odd figures (a fraction of his collection) that crowded the floor of his bedroom before we could vacuum it. He can tell you, in ascending order, the Top 10 Heaviest Wrestlers Ever. He knows in which year The Rock's cousin Umaga died. He's made and bonded with some of his best friends over their shared love.

Really, pro wresting is just superheroes and supervillains brought to sweaty, spandexed life - with less property destruction, more chair shots, and the battles contained within a squared circle and only the loosest of rules.

Melanie has also gotten into the goofy fun of it, and has strong opinions on the performers and story lines. Ask her about Ricochet and management's handling of him.

So, this past weekend, we watched Wrestlemania 36 together. Not on one night, but two - nominally because it was "the only Wrestlemania too big for one night, but more likely so that World Wrestling Entertainment didn't have to produce an NXT show on Saturday.

Not on pay-per-view, but streaming on the WWE Network. Not with a cash pool attached to our picks of winners, but bragging rights - though I teased Noah that if I had the most points, I would be awarding myself a T-shirt of his most hated wrestler, King Corbin. Not with fellow B.O.-oozing teenage boys, but with a couple rambunctious cats.

But, man, did it stink. Melanie and I agree that the biggest takeaway of it was that the live crowd is a much bigger part of pro wrestling than any of us realized. The athletes can pull off the high-risk, devastating-looking maneuvers as usual, they can deliver impassioned promos and cheer victories and mourn defeats, but without an audience surrounding them and reacting, it falls flat. The crowd is in on it (usually) and plays its part. With all respect to the performers and their talents, I just don't have any desire to watch if they continue the programs as they've been these past few weeks.

An exception: The Boneyard Match between The Undertaker and A.J. Styles. Instant camp classic. We are big fans of "The Fiend" Bray Wyatt in our home, but mixed on The Firefly Funhouse Match. I liked what I saw, but with it coming near the end of Night Two, have to admit to being somewhat tuned out while nearing the end of boarding and bagging a few dozen comics. Maybe I will watch it again more closely instead of any of their new shows this week. We still have to watch R-Truth 24, and I want to see Chronicle-Drew McIntyre.