Dark (Seasons 1-3)

Dark, a German Netflix series, was pitched to me as the antithesis of Stranger Things Season 5–well planned, dense, and thoughtful in comparison to action and nonsense said repeatedly to cater to the second-screen generation. Dark features an ensemble cast of characters who discover they are trapped in a time loop in which events repeat every 33 years. Among other past and future years, it takes place in 2019, 1986, and 1953, hitting the nostalgia and atmosphere of both the 80s and the 50s as is popular in media these days.

How did this time loop happen? In the present year 2019, one of the protagonists Jonas discovers that he is the son of his love interest Martha’s 11-year-old missing brother Mikkel. Mikkel went through a hidden portal in a cave where he found himself trapped 1986. Meanwhile, another boy Mads from 1986 goes through the portal and reappears in 2019 dead with his eyes and ears exploded, intriguing other 2019 characters who knew Mads as a boy. Mikkel would grow up to become Jonas’ father, making his sister Martha Jonas’ aunt. Distraught that he and Martha can’t be together, Jonas becomes determined to rescue Mikkel or otherwise stop the time loop from coming to be.

Despite how it was pitched, I spent most of Dark waiting for something to happen. Yes, yes, there’s a time loop. Then, what happened? Ultimately, the entire show is the most frustrating manifestation of pointless, space-time continuum bullshit I’ve ever seen. The first season features the 2019 cast of characters discovering and investigating the time loop and the portal. At the end of the season, Martha is murdered in front of Jonas by his future self (for reasons) just as another Martha from another dimension appears and takes 2019 Jonas to her world. The alternate 2019 is the dimension where everyone has cleft pallets and emo hair… I mean, it has an identical but slightly different cast of 2019 characters who discover and investigate the time loop and the portal… as if the creators had given up on the first dimension and were rebooting the story in another. It reminded me of that quote from Fairly Odd Parents: “It’s the show about nothing! …How do we know when it’s over?” Instead of “it’s the show about nothing” though, it’s the show where every season is the same plot and same discoveries but taking place in a slightly different world.

Several reiterations of the same explanation later, we thoroughly understand that yes, yes, Martha and Jonas are the origin of the time loop, Adam and Eve, and there is no escape. Then, what? Our 2019 protagonist Jonas is then murdered in front of alternate dimension 2019 Martha. I nearly rage quit when her future self reveals that Martha and Jonas still have an opportunity to be together. There are two timelines in their alternate dimension: one in which Jonas went to their dimension and one in which he remained in the original 2019 dimension from season one. So his death is meaningless, and we go back to the original world’s 2019 where we left off at the end of season one. The creators can reboot this show with as many timelines and dimensions as they want without consequence!

I probably should have rage quit because nothing ever did happen, although I suppose the time loop did end. It’s a clever idea somebody discovering that they are the son of a boy who has just gone missing, yes, but then what? All the show had to do was explain the dead birds and why Mads’ eyes and ears exploded.

If you do watch it, however, German with subtitles is superior to dubbed.

Black Phone 2

Black Phone 2 takes place four years after The Black Phone and features the same characters and child actors, now four years older. This I thought was really cool, both the growth of the actors and the realistic treatment of the characters in the aftermath of their experience with the serial child murderer the Grabber. Naturally, Finney is scarred, self-medicated, and angry from his kidnapping and imprisonment and having to murder his tormentor to escape. The caring and protective relationship he and his sister Gwen have, however, has also grown. When Gwen begins having the same dreams their mother had about a series of murders that took place at Alpine Lake Camp in 1957, Gwen with Finney in tow travel to the Colorado mountain camp to find the missing bodies and uncover a mystery regarding their mother’s suicide.

Watching Black Phone 2 made me want to rewatch The Black Phone. It looked like it was really good, which it was once I revisited it. The first half of Black Phone 2 is also good and has the same realism and subtle supernatural elements as its prequel. Unfortunately, the second half falls into the common trope many horror movies do where the ending gives up on living up to its expectations and devolves into ridiculousness.

Throughout the movie, Gwen is tormented in her dreams by the perpetrator of the 1957 murders, who turns out to be the Grabber. His spirit has returned from death, and he reveals that he can harm and even kill her in her dreams. Eventually, Gwen overpowers him in her sleep by lucid dreaming. Gwen’s found ability to overpower him in her sleep somehow translates to her having this ability to do so in reality where his spirit has been gaining power from the missing bodies of murdered campers. This leads to Gwen being overpowered and undefeatable by the final fight scene, which also features the Grabber on ice skates and imagery suggestive of a horse-drawn Zamboni.

Alpine Lake Camp also has an identity crisis. The camp and counselors are all constructed as if it were going to be a typical summer camp. One of the camp counselors even has a stereotypical Texas drawl. It’s the dead of winter, however, and it’s miserable outside to the point where the camp is canceled due to road conditions. It’s so miserable in fact that it’s hard to believe the camp is located in Colorado. My friends and I kept wanting to say the characters were in Alaska. It wouldn’t have been out of place for the Texan counselor to say, “I’m just a Texas girl in the wild Alaskan mountains of Colorado.”

The Black Phone

I watched The Black Phone back when it came out in 2021. Between then and now, it became buried in my memories among so many other horror movies my friends and I have watched, although I remembered it being really good. When I watched Black Phone 2 recently, my main thought through the whole movie was, “Man, The Black Phone looks like it was really good.” I’ve since revisited it.

It’s a shame that I forgot about it because it is indeed really good. The protagonist, 13-year-old Finney is kidnapped and held in a basement by a psycho, serial child killer known as the Grabber. Finney has subtle psychic abilities that allow him to communicate with the spirits of the Grabber’s previous victims, all of whom give Finney suggestions on how escape the basement. Finney’s younger sister Gwen also has subtle psychic abilities, which she uses to lead the police to Finney’s location.

The film is plausibly supernatural and realistic in a satisfying way. Finney and Gwen’s abilities have limitations and never make them superhuman. The film’s ghosts are subtly horrifying, not screaming, throwing people or objects across the room, or jump-scaring the audience. The Grabber has the sense that his house is haunted, but the spirits never rise up in a ridiculous show of revenge. I appreciate a film that treats ghosts more realistically. Ultimately, Finney escapes the basement and even kills his tormentor by his own cleverness and physical strength in a plausible way. The film’s supernatural elements, while they are key to Finney’s escape, don’t overshadow the story, the characters, or the ending.

Spoilers! Its plot twists are great as well. The Grabber’s brother, who is obsessed with finding the Grabber and even lives in the same house, is briefly entertained as Finney’s savior until his idiocy gets him killed. As another example, Gwen and the police discover a house with a dirt basement unlike the one most of the movie takes place in. This basement contains the Grabber’s buried victims. The audience is briefly led to believe that Finney is dead and buried among these bodies, and the scene of him overpowering the Grabber was a dream too good to be true. This makes it all the more satisfying when Finney walks out of the house across the street, the house with the basement where the Grabber tortured his victims.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

Considering the only Nintendo console my family has or I have owned was a Game Boy Color, I have very rarely played Mario Party or Mario Kart games. Having acquired a Nintendo Switch 2, however, one of my friends gave me their Nintendo Switch. This was so that I could play Mario Kart 8 with six of my friends to celebrate another friend’s birthday.

That’s how I learned how many of Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth‘s minigames are rip offs of Mario Kart games. That just makes them seem even more pointless to put in a Final Fantasy game. If I wanted to play Mario Kart, I would have just played Mario Kart!

Eldest

Despite killing a major character and disappearing another within the first ten pages, Eldest by Christopher Paolini is much slower than its predecessor Eragon. No more do paragraphs summarize weeks worth of events. The book occasionally, however, forces odd topics into character conversations. I can almost hear Paolini saying, “I need these characters to talk about this thing now.”

Another enhancement is that Eldest has multiple narrators. Eragon and his adopted brother Roran are the primary narrators. Nasuada, the leader of the Varden resistance, also narrates a couple chapters, but it feels random, like she’s a narrator only because Paolini found no other way to introduce important characters and concepts. I also had the feeling that Roran was a narrator to slow the book down and prevent Eragon from plowing through the plot as he had in the first book, but overall, the pair of them swapping chapters as narrators feels fitting and intentional.

I believe Paolini also reveals himself as a fan of Weird Al Yankovic’s UHF when a side character exclaims, “Barges? Barges? We don’t want no stinking barges!” It sounds so out of place and suspiciously similar to a quote from UHF, that it has to be an allusion to, “Badgers? Badgers? We don’t need no stinking badgers!”

As my final random thought… I’ve read Eldest at least three times now. I’ve always accepted that it made sense for the elves to reject eating meat. It was an admirable lifestyle even. I’ve since been spoiled, however, with keto and lion diet ideology, fitness nutrition, and conservative talking points. How can the elves possibly get enough protein from plants to maintain their inhuman strength? They would need to have industrial-level production of soy and beans. Even Mark Boyle, who recounted his experience living off the land and rejecting modern technology in his autobiographical account The Way Home, conceded that he had to give up his vegetarian diet and eat meat to survive. He would no longer have access to all those canned beans and soy products from distant lands to supplement his vegetables. I suppose the elves have magical abilities that include speeding up and manipulating the growth of plants, but it’s still ridiculous. I’ll save most of my complaints about this point for the next book in the series Brisingr though, where Eragon’s choice to also abstain from eating meat makes even less sense.

True Crime Stories You Won’t Believe: Omnibus Edition (Book 1-3)

An omnibus is a volume containing several novels or items that were previously published separately. In the introduction to True Crime Stories You Won’t Believe: Omnibus Edition, author Romeo Vitelli justifies his choice of publishing the book as an omnibus by claiming that together his books form a more coherent whole. Each book is a collection of assorted true crime stories based on posts from Vitelli’s blog. If he means that together they form a more complete history of all crimes that have ever been committed, I suppose.

His writing reminds me of David Paulides’ Missing 411 series in which he chronicles missing person cases with strange circumstances and commonalities and seemingly supernatural elements. At the end of each case, he has a tendency to insert himself as the researcher, tying the case to similar cases, reiterating his confusions or amazement with the circumstances, or describing his frustrations with the authorities. It comes off as amateurish and repetitive. While Vitelli isn’t as egregious in self-referencing his research efforts, his writing still sounds amateurish. His style is inappropriately belittling and informal for the subject matter. Using phrases and words like “somehow” and “for some reason,” it’s like listening to a narrator who finds his own stories and the people in them ridiculous.

What attracted me to listen to True Crime Stories You Won’t Believe, however, was the narrator “Virtual Voice,” a computer-generated narrator for audiobooks as Audible explains. I’d never listened to narration produced by AI and was curious what it sounded like.

Well… with all the time they saved by having AI read a 17-hour-long audiobook, they could have at least listened to it and revised their prompts accordingly. Or maybe the producer of True Crime Stories You Won’t Believe did listen to it and, despite all the pronunciation inconsistencies and other signs of Virtual Voice lacking comprehension of the English language, decided to dump it on Audible anyway.

Here are a few highlights:

Virtual Voice pronounced EEG (electroencephalogram) as “eeeeeeg.”

A few stories included excerpts from song lyrics or poems. Virtual Voice ended each line with a verbal “slash” rather than a pause.

Vitelli snarkily wrote something like, “Why would he be there in the first place?” Virtual Voice read this as if “the first place” was an actual place rather than a phrase.

“etc. etc.” was pronounced as “Et See. Et See.”

One story featured a legend about wendigos. It also featured every possible pronunciation of “wendigo”: WENdigo, wenDIgo, WINdigo, etc.

Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World

Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World is an audiobook written and narrated by Michael Pollan that I forgot I’d listened to and Audible kept hawking it at me. So, I’ve listened to it twice now. Oh, you want to know the content? It tells the story of, as the subtitle suggests, how our population’s addiction to and dependence on caffeine created the modern world.

A fact about caffeine that I’ve always remembered since my first listen to this book: because of low water quality in the past, boiled coffee or tea was one of the safest things to drink alongside alcohol. People were more likely to live if they drank caffeine, helping to perpetuate its addictiveness.

Another fun fact: the minute hand of the clock was introduced alongside caffeine.

I don’t drink coffee, energy drinks, soda, or caffeinated tea. My caffeine primarily comes from chocolate, but I doubt my daily fix contains enough caffeine to compare to that consumed by caffeinated beverage drinkers. The world seems fast to me. There’s always a billion things to do. In some ways, I do a billion things everyday, but in other ways, I look at other people and feel incredibly slow. I tend to think that I process some information slower that other people; I prefer to process some information slowly and completely; I need more recharge time in comparison to other people; or I get slowed down by perfectionism and anxiety. After reading this book a second time, however, I wonder if the world seems fast because so many people are drinking caffeine and genuinely doing more than people who abstain from it like me could possibly do.

IT: Welcome to Derry (Season 1)

I don’t know if I can fairly judge IT: Welcome to Derry because I was extremely distracted by things that had nothing to do with it for half to a third of the episodes. Does it say something about the show that it failed to distract me from my distractions? Probably not. Getting into a political argument with a friend and ordering Doordash to the wrong address is extremely distracting. I saw enough of the show, however, to have no desire to revisit any of it, so these thoughts are as close to a review as I’ll get.

IT: Welcome to Derry is reminiscent of Stranger Things in that it features a cast of kids and adults in a seemingly normal town until they become entangled in supernatural events. Welcome to Derry, however, takes place in the 50s instead of the 80s, so it doesn’t have the charming nostalgia. In fact, as with other media that takes place in the 50s–such as the Bioshock video games… and Stranger Things–the 50s-theme is instead used to create a creepy, horrific atmosphere. Additionally, while Stranger Things preserves the lives of its cast, Welcome to Derry begins violently murdering and maiming its child characters within the first episode.

Sure, Welcome to Derry is a horror series. I should have expected everything to be gross, horrific, and creepy, and comparing it to Stranger Things, an adventure series, isn’t fair. Still, I didn’t find the horror elements conducive to sympathizing or bonding with the kids or wider cast. It felt like it wanted to be a Stranger Things with a cast that could endure for eight episodes and beyond, but it was also obligated to kill its characters and disgust its audience. Maybe it wasn’t for me, or maybe while I was distracted I missed the good bits.

Shows like Dark, Welcome to Derry, and Stranger Things have evoked the nostalgia of the 50s and the 80s. What someone really needs to do is make a show about the good old days of the mid-2000s when the Internet and technology was young but fun. That seems like prime real estate to piggyback off the popularity of Stranger Things!

Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026

I thought the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics was doomed to be disappointing in comparison to the previous three Olympics. No one would try to win an event by doing a butt spin as they had in the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics’ Break Dancing debut. Italy also didn’t have to clean the Seine River of over a century’s worth of hazardous waste nor would its opening ceremony feature said river and dozens of boats carrying the Olympians. It didn’t have to shut down power plants to make the air breathable as China did for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics nor was it postponed for a year due to COVID-19 as the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics had.

Someone of Raygun’s experience and skill also wouldn’t make an appearance. Summer Olympics 2028 will be sad without Break Dancing.

I was also disappointed to find that the Hulu PS5 app still sucks. It’s been two years at least, Hulu! The PC app also sucks but not as much. The phone app is just okay. Maybe one of these Olympics I’ll use something other than Hulu + TV, or I’ll use the Hulu app on my TV, which I would hope actually works.

The Milano Cortina Olympics did remind me of the Turin 2006 Winter Olympics though, which gave me reason to hope. I was excited for the Turin, Italy Olympics because one of my favorite bands Bloom 06 (2/3rds of Eiffel 65) had created the official theme for that year. I was expecting to see them at the opening or closing ceremonies, but I don’t even remember hearing the theme anywhere. Considering they hadn’t made any music since 2009, I doubted I’d see or hear Bloom 06 during the 2026 Olympics. “But maybe Gabry Ponte (the other 1/3 of Eiffel 65)?” I dared to hope during the whole opening ceremony. Nope. There was a lot of electronic music though.

Lindsey Vonn, a favorite for alpine skiing despite an ACL injury, fell down and broke her leg within 15 seconds.

The winner of Men’s Giant Slalom took his time taking off all his shirts before screaming and flexing at the crowd.

The 90s theme for the Rhythm Dance was pretty great. Still no Eiffel 65 though.

The winner of the Men’s Slopestyle beefed it on what was supposed to be his victory run. The NBC commentator’s reaction encapsulated this moment well, “Dude, what are you doing?”

The NBC commentators look so ridiculous standing and sitting an awkwardly far distance apart while talking to one another in front of a screen.

Every time Picabo Street appears as an NBC commentator, it reminds me of that Front Page Sports: Ski Racing video game from the 90s. It played audio of her breaking her leg whenever you failed to ski down the course.

Snoop Dog looks so old.

Women’s Half Pipe NBC commentators: “That’s the first time anyone has landed the double cork 1080!”
Judges: “Eh. I guess that’s like an 88.”

After all the hype, Ilia Malinin got 8th in the Men’s Free Skate. The guy from Kazakhstan deserved the gold though. He did a good job.

Interesting. The most efficient way to team pursuit skate is to stay in one order for the whole race and physically push the leaders from behind.

During the Women’s Giant Slalom, three skiers tied for first place at one point on Run 1. On Run 2, two women tied for 2nd place.

Poor George Savaricas. I took to laughing at him every time he appeared as an NBC commentator just because he swallowed loudly mid-sentence once.

I agree with the NBC commentators: the Women’s Snowboarding Slopestyle judging was bizarre. The woman who won seemed like she was out-boarded by several others.

The debut sport for Milano Cortina 2026 was Ski Mountaineering. It involves cross-country skiing uphill with sticky skins on the underside of the skis, removing the skis and running up stairs, removing the sticky skins from the skis and downhill skiing, and replacing the sticky skins to cross-country ski uphill again. It reminds me of that bizarre event in summer Olympics with horse riding, fencing, swimming, shooting, and running.

One of the Women’s Free Skate competitors had a Stranger Things-themed skate. The music included an audio clip of Vecna saying, “You’ve already lost,” a brutal reminder considering she’d already fallen down. Meanwhile, Amber Glenn, the American favorite, went from 13th to 5th place between the Short Program and the Free Skate. Good for her.

Women’s Halfpipe Skier: *flails down the half pipe*
Judges: “I guess that’s like an 80.”

The figure skating gala was fun. The skaters may not have spun on their butts, but they did the macarena and YMCA. Another group dressed as Kung Fu Panda, Deadpool, and Mortal Combat characters. The panda even succeeded in doing a triple spin.

Gabry Ponte appeared for two minutes during the Closing Ceremonies! It’s 20 years later, but I finally got to see part of Eiffel 65 at an Olympics in Italy! Yes! Best two minutes of the 2026 Olympics!