Bruna Marquezine

            On Saturday morning I worked out the chords for the second verse of “La vie grise” (The Grey Life) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished transcribing from Ultimate Guitar the chords for “Aux enfants de la chance” (To the Children of Chance) by Serge Gainsbourg and looked for more but the few other sites that posted them had the same ones. I started working them out on my own. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar for the second session of two and it looks like Gian at L’il Demon was right and that the volume problem yesterday was because of my cable. Once I’d made sure the plug was securely inserted the guitar worked fine.

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning in a week. I had the last of my Montreal style bagels with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon. 

            Around midday I went to Freedom to pay for my January phone plan. Then I went to No Frills where I bought five bags of grapes, bananas, a pack of back ribs, skyr. Miss Vickie’s chips, and a pack of toilet paper. I notice that stores never call it “toilet paper” but does any individual ever wipe their ass with “bathroom tissue”?

            I weighed 86.6 kilos before lunch. I had Triscuits with artichoke and asiago dip and a glass of half calamansi lemonade and half pomegranate juice. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos at 17:30. 

            I didn’t get caught up on my journal until after dinner. 

            I made a new batch of beef gravy and had some on oven-fish and chips with a glass of beer while watching Blue Beetle. This was the least interesting and least engaging of all the super hero movies I’ve watched this year. 

            Kord Industries finds the Blue Scarab in Antarctica and takes it back to their headquarters.

            Jaime Reyes is returning home after graduating from law school only to find that his family are losing their house and have lost their business. His sister Milagro gets him a job as a servant in Victoria Kord’s mansion. Victoria’s niece Jennifer, the daughter of the founder of Kord Industries, confronts Victoria about the military direction she is taking the company since her father has gone missing and the development of the OMAC (One Man Army Corps). 

            The original OMAC was created by Jack Kirby in 1974 and meant to be DC’s version of a Captain America type super soldier but set in the future. The version in later comics and in this film is very different. 

            While at work Jaime sees Victoria’s bodyguard step towards Jennifer and tells him to back off. As a result Victoria fires both Jaime and Milagro. Jennifer tells Jaime to meet her at Kord Tower about another job. The next day Jennifer sneaks into the Kord lab and steals the Scarab and puts it in a Belly Burger box that the technician had left there. When he comes back he sounds the alarm before Jennifer can get out. On her way out Jaime comes up to her to ask about her offer. She hands him the box, tells him to not open it and to guard it with his life. Back at home his family: his father, mother, grandmother, uncle and sister encourage him to open it. Various family members hold it but when it comes into Jaime’s hand it begins to move and emit energy. It seems to like Jaime and then attaches itself to his face. Then it goes down his back and finally inside him. It burns off his clothes and covers him in the Blue Beetle exoskeleton. Then there is feminine computer voice in his head which announces the beginning of a systems check just before he blasts through the ceiling and into space. Then as another test it lets him fall only to sprout insect wings just before impact. There’s a test of speed and he finally crashes back into his house naked. When he recovers he goes to find Jennifer for answers. He finds her being chased by Kord soldiers and they escape in Uncle Rudy’s car. Jennifer tells him her father found the Scarab when she was a child and it has never been active. It has to choose a host and it has chosen Jaime. She says they need to get the key from the Kord building but there is security. Rudy says he might have a work around. Suddenly he’s a tech genius and he puts together something that causes a cartoon he’s made to appear on all the security cameras at the Kord building. They get the key but are attacked by OMAC. Jaime allows Khaji-da the sentient being in the suit to take over and she fights OMAC. She defeats him and wants to kill him but Jaime stops her. But then when Jaime’s guard is down OMAC attacks again and Jaime gets a concussion. Rudy drives his truck towards OMAC at top speed then slams on the brakes so the truck spins and the heavy equipment on back slams into OMAC. They get Jaime and escape. 

            They go to Jennifer’s father’s abandoned mansion and it’s full of tech. We also see that Ted Kord was the original Blue Beetle but without the powers. Like an amateur Batman. Rudy researches the Scarab with Ted’s computer and says that Jaime is stuck with the Scarab for the rest of his life. Meanwhile Kord soldiers invade the Reyes family home. In the struggle the house catches fire and is gutted. Jaime comes to rescue them His father has a heart attack and dies. This distracts Jaime and OMAC is able to snag him with a neutralizing device called The Claw. Jaime is taken to a special facility where they plan to drain his power and transfer it to OMAC. Jaime’s family go with Jennifer to her father’s house where they get hold of a lot of his high tech weaponry. Milagro gets a shape changing force field glove and grandma gets a big gun which it turns out she knows how to use because she used to be a militant revolutionary in Mexico. They invade the facility while Jaime is being drained. The transfer is complete and Jaime’s consciousness goes to a place where his father meets him and tells him it’s not his time to die. He returns and the suit surges with power again. He breaks free and fights OMAC after Khaji takes a few minutes to power back up. He can make any weapon he imagines in the Beetle suit. After another tedious battle Jaime gets the upper hand and starts beating OMAC to death but for some reason Khaji tells him to stop. Earlier he had to stop her so that doesn’t make much sense. She gives him access to OMAC’s thoughts and learns that he was taken as a child by Victoria, then experimented on and trained. Now he spares OMAC and he sees the light. OMAC goes to Victoria and self destructs, killing them both. 

            Jennifer is now the head of Kord and she says they’ll rebuild and pay for the Reyes house. 

            In the mid credits scene we learn that Ted Kord is still alive. 

            This was really not a very good movie especially considering all the hype. It had a bit of humour around the family that was entertaining. George Lopez was good and funny as Rudy. But this had a made for TV feel like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers or The Beetle Borgs. 

            Jennifer was played by Bruna Marquezine, who at the age of five began working as an interviewer on the Brazilian children’s TV program Gente Inocente. She started acting in telenovelas at the age of 8 and the same year she appeared in the film Xuxa Abracadabra. As a teenager she played Flor de Lys on the soap opera Negocio de China. She moved to adult roles in 2012 starting with the soap opera Salve Jorge. In 2016 she did her first television nude scenes. In 2018 she was a star of Dolce and Gabbana Fashion Week in Milan. She became a poster girl for Karl Lagerfeld. She came in second in the audition to play Supergirl in Flash, Blue Beetle was her first Hollywood role.

December 31, 1993: Nancy went psychotic on me in the pizza parlour

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday Nancy’s mother brought my daughter down in the early afternoon. I got her ready to go out and then we went to Coxwell and Queen where I bought beer and fries. Nancy had said she wanted us all to go to a movie together on New Year’s Eve but she didn’t show up until 18:00 and so it was too late for anything but Cool Runnings, which I didn’t want to see. We went instead to the pizza place where Nancy went psychotic on me but later apologized. I took her home for a while but Nancy came to pick her up later because her parents wanted to take her to visit Apollonia's brother in Hamilton on New year’s Day.

Ezra Miller

            On Friday morning I worked out the chords to half the second verse of “La vie grise” (The Grey Life) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished memorizing “Aux enfants de la chance” (To the Children of Chance) by Serge Gainsbourg and looked for the chords. I found a set on Ultimate Guitar and started transcribing them.

            During song practice I played my Kramer electric guitar for the first of two sessions but halfway through, the volume started kicking out. I thought it was the amp but I plugged in the acoustic and the other electric and they all had steady volume so the problem must be with the Kramer. I’ll have to take it to L’il Demon today if they’re open. 

            I weighed 86.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I took my Kramer to L’il Demon. He’s supposed to open at noon but he’s sometimes late and so I went at around 12:30 but he still wasn’t there. I had to wait about twenty minutes. He plugged my guitar in and the volume was fine. He said that the problem might be the cable. He saw that my neck needed adjusting and did it for free. He suggested that I invest in a room humidifier and that’s something I’ve been considering for a while. I told him my place has those old style radiators and he said those are the worst. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos before lunch.

            In the afternoon took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos at 17:30. 

            I roasted a beef sirloin tip and had a slice with a potato and butter while watching The Flash movie. 

            This was another overly long superhero film but some parts were entertaining. The beginning was a little boring though. Flash is on his way to work and really low on food energy because super speed obviously burns up a lot of calories. Batman calls him to Gotham where there seems to be an Earthquake. Batman is car chasing terrorists while Flash has to clean up. A hospital is collapsing and several babies are falling. Flash finds food falling as well and snacks at super speed before saving the babies. 

            Barry’s father is on trial for murdering Barry’s mother. There is closed circuit footage of his father in a store at the time of the murder but the image is not clear and that’s the only evidence that could save him. Barry is angry and starts to run faster than he ever has with the result that he breaks the time barrier. He begins considering going back in time to save his mother but Batman advises against it. He reminds him of the Butterfly Effect as presented in the 1952 Ray Bradbury story “A Sound of Thunder” in which even stepping on a blade of grass while time travelling to the past could change the future. Barry remembers that his father went to the store to get a can of tomatoes and while he was gone the murder of Barry’s mother occurred. His mother was at the store earlier but forgot the tomatoes. Barry thinks that it would be a small thing to simply go back to that earlier shopping trip and slip a can of tomatoes into his mother’s cart and so that’s what he does. On his way back to the present he is pushed by someone out of the time stream a few years earlier than the present. Barry goes to see his parents and they are surprised that he cut his hair. Then Barry looks out the window and sees his younger self coming up the walk. He intercepts him so his parents won’t know there are two of them. The younger Barry is in college and Flash explains to him the situation. Then Flash hears thunder and realizes that today is the day when the lightning struck the chemicals near him when he was working in the lab and he got his powers. This younger Barry has no interest in science but Flash thinks that he has to put him in the same situation he experienced or else he will lose his own powers. They go to the lab and Flash recreates the circumstances of the lightning event by arranging the chemicals as they were for him. But the younger Barry is freaking out about letting himself be struck by lightning and they struggle a bit with the result that the lightning hits Flash from behind and goes through him to hit Barry. This causes Flash to lose his powers while the young Barry gains them. 

            Now the older and powerless Barry has to train the younger Barry on how to use his powers. Meanwhile he also learns that this timeline has changed. The Back to the Future movies starred Eric Stolz and not Michael J. Fox. More seriously he learns that there are no super heroes. He sees on the news that Zod’s ship has arrived on Earth and is looking for Superman but there is no Superman to fight him. If he is on Earth he has yet to reveal himself. Barry also can’t find Aquaman or Wonder Woman. He tries to track down Victor Stone but he hasn’t become Cyborg yet. But then he learns there is or was a Batman but no one has seen him for years. Older Barry takes younger Barry to Wayne Manor where the door is unlocked. Inside they are attacked by a long haired and bearded and drunk late middle aged Bruce Wayne played by Michael Keatan. So Barry has even changed some of the sequences of the timeline so that even though the other Barry is younger, this Bruce is older. When Bruce calms down and learns the situation he gives a tutorial in temporal physics. He says going back in time doesn’t create a branched timeline but rather a fulcrum of timelines. It’s retrocausal. If you change the future you change the past and you end up with a multiverse. 

            Bruce explains that he no longer needs to be Batman because Gotham is one of the safest cities in the world. He tells Barry he won’t help them. The Barrys go to leave but older Barry decides to access the Bat Cave. All of Batman’s vast technology is still there. Barry works at Batman’s computer to try to find Clark Kent. He falls asleep and wakes up with a file next to him that reveals that an alien was discovered and is being held in a facility in Siberia. Batman agrees to take them to Siberia in the Bat Jet and he helps them infiltrate the facility. They fight their way in with Batman doing most of the fighting. They find the person being held but it is a young woman and not Kal-El. They rescue her anyway and escape but outside they are all captured. But the young woman who is now out in the sun turns out to be Supergirl and she attacks the soldiers. They all go back to the US and Wayne Manor where the young woman explains that Kal-El is her cousin and her name is Kara. She was sent to protect Kal-El because he was a baby when they left Krypton. They take her to the roof to recharge her powers in the sun and she puts on her Supergirl costume. Older Barry gets Batman to help him recreate the lightning strike that gave him his powers. He does so but the electrical system is not enough and so Kara flies him up into the storm. It works and now there are two Flashes. They all go to fight Zod. Batman flies air support, the two Flashes fight Zod’s army and Kara goes after Zod. Zod has already started terraforming to turn Earth into a new Krypton but he tells Kara that the code for fulfilling that task is in the blood of a Kryptonian child. He says they intercepted Kal-El’s pod but he did not survive the extraction and they learned it wasn’t his blood they needed but hers. Kara fights Zod. It seems odd that a teenager who has been stuck in a chamber for years would be able to hold up so well against a trained warrior with the same powers. Batman gets shot down but deliberately crashes into the main war ship to take it out before he dies. Kara seems to have beaten Zod but it’s a ruse and when her guard is down he impales her. Then her blood is extracted. The Flashes find Kara dead. Young Flash tries to change the timeline to save everybody but in each new timeline Kara and Batman die. They meet a middle aged version of the young Flash who has been trying over and over again for years to change everything and now he has lost his mind. He’s the one that knocked Flash out of the time stream into 2013 at the beginning of the story. Flash sees all of the alternatives of versions of Superman and Batman that have appeared in the past and they are all possibilities in the multiverse. But this particular version of Earth is doomed to be destroyed by Zod in every scenario. Young Barry dies. Flash decides to correct his mistake and to recreate the circumstances for his mother to be murdered. He takes the can of tomatoes out of her shopping cart. 

            Barry returns to the present in time for his father’s murder trial. Technology developed by Wayne Industries has enhanced the closed circuit footage of the supermarket camera to prove that Barry’s father was in the store at the time of his wife’s murder. Barry then meets Bruce Wayne but it is not the Ben Affleck Bruce Wayne but the George Clooney version from the Batman and Robin movie. This movie had some very engaging moments but they lingered way too long on a lot of them. Just like with Wakanda Forever it could have stood to lose an hour. Ant Man: Quantumania and Guardians of the Galaxy 3 were just as long but they were engaging and exciting and interesting all the way through without any useless moments and boringly executed and drawn out battle scenes. The action was repetitious. 

            Ezra Miller put in an amazing performance as the two very different Barry Allens. They started to train as an opera singer at the age of six. They have sung with the Metropolitan Opera and in the premiere of Philip Glass’s White Raven. They starred in the movie Afterschool at the age of 16 and dropped out of school the same year. They co-starred in City Island, We Need to talk About Kevin, and Every Day. They starred in Beware The Gonzo. They played Damien in the series Californication. They co-starred in The Perks of Being a Wallflower. They are a singer and the drummer for the band Sons of an Illustrious Father. They co-starred in three fantastic Beasts movies. They played Flash in several DC superhero films.

December 30, 1993: I just junkfooded out all day

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I just junkfooded out. Nancy was supposed to bring my daughter down but she didn’t show up.

Pom Klementieff

            On Thursday morning I worked out the chords for the first verse of “La vie grise” (The Grey Life) by Boris Vian. 

            I memorized the sixth verse of “Aux enfants de la chance” (To the Children of Chance) by Serge Gainsbourg and finished revising my translation. I might have the whole song nailed down tomorrow.

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the second session of two. 

            I weighed 87.1 kilos before breakfast and it’s been a long time since I’ve been that heavy in the morning. 

            I worked on updating my journal. 

            I weighed 87 kilos before lunch and I’m not going to bother scrolling back far enough to find out when I last weighed that much. 

            I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back passed that preacher who sometimes busks and sings like Springsteen. He was talking about having been in a psyche ward with herpes before he found Jesus. He claimed Jesus cured his herpes. I assume the symptoms went away but that he still has herpes. 

            On the way back I stopped at Freshco where I bought five bags of grapes, a pack of blueberries, two packs of raspberries, bananas, a pack of five year old cheddar, three bags of 1% milk because they were out of skim, two packs of Full City Dark coffee, and I bought hair gel for the first time in years. 

            I weighed 86.4 kilos at 18:00, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening in over five months. 

            I didn’t finish updating my journal until just before dinner. 

            I had a potato with the rest of my gravy and the last porkchop while watching Guardians of the Galaxy 3. 

            Peter is depressed because the Gamora he saved from the time before her death has no experience of being in love with him and so he’s drinking a lot. 

            Kraglin tries win a game with his yaka arrow manipulated by whistling like his late mentor Yondu as it runs an obstacle course to hit various targets but he fails. His talking dog Cosmo levitates a pebble and wins easily. Kraglin calls Cosmo a bad dog and for the rest of the movie Cosmo is obsessed with getting Kraglin to take it back. 

            Adam Warlock attacks their headquarters to retrieve Rocket for the High Evolutionary. He defeats Nebula and beheads Groot. He breaks Mantis’s arm. Peter is shooting at him when he learns that Rocket has been mortally wounded and so all of his attention goes to saving him. Warlock is beating the crap out of Drax when Nebula recovers and runs him through with her arm-sword, knocking him unconscious. All focus goes to saving Rocket but normal methods won’t save him. He was built with an internal kill switch by the High Evolutionary. They have to go to his company Orgocorp to find the code to override it. 

            Meanwhile Rocket’s life is flashing before him as he relives his origin from being a baby raccoon until his DNA was manipulated by the High Evolutionary. Rocket develops into a highly intelligent creature who solves the Evolutionary’s main problem. He has a chamber that in a matter of seconds can evolve any animal into a humanoid but each one turns out violent. Rocket fixes the problem but the Evolutionary resents him for it and still considers him to be imperfect. He plans on removing and studying Rocket’s brain and killing the rest of the animals that have become his friends. Rocket uses his mechanical aptitude to construct a swipe card to get out and he tries to free his friends. But they are attacked and only he survives and escapes in a rocket. 

            In the present, Peter, Nebula, Drax and Mantis break through the shields that surround the organic satellite that houses Orgcorp but are boarded by Ravagers. Peter is surprised that Nebula arranged this with Gamora who is now with the Ravagers. Nebula has promised to pay for Gamora’s help and so they don Orgcorp uniforms in order to infiltrate the facility. Gamora forces an employee to find Rocket’s file. Meanwhile Drax and Mantis are discovered and have to fight. Mantis has martial arts skills but when she gets close to whoever she’s fighting she can control their minds to defeat them. She makes one person think he’s a kitty cat and another start dancing. The others are also discovered and Gamora holds the employee at gunpoint. They try to shoot their way out but Drax is badly wounded. Peter charms the employee into letting him into the computer system and then he removes gravity so everyone is floating. Then Groot smashes through with the ship and rescues the team. But when they access Rocket’s file they find the override code was removed that very day by Recorder E2H6. A picture is shown of his profile and Peter remembers bumping into him at Orgcorp. He has a computer implanted on his head and so they have to find him to save Rocket. They are given the Evolutionary’s coordinates and Gamora wants nothing to do with it because she knows it’s a trap. Gamora stays behind with Rocket but she sends a message for the Ravagers to pick her up that is intercepted by the leader of the Sovereign, which is an aesthetically perfect race created by the Evolutionary. The leader of the Sovereign is Warlock’s mother. The Evolutionary’s War Pig is sent to grab Rocket. Gamora fights him or her. Warlock arrives and says he needs the credit for delivering Rocket and so he kills War Pig. While he is doing so Gamora escapes with Rocket. Peter, Drax, Groot and Nebula land on Counter Earth which is a replica of Earth but populated by the Evolutionary’s people that he made from animals and they all have human bodies but the heads of various beasts. They commandeer an 80s Dodge Diplomat and drive to the Evolutionary’s headquarters. The Evolutionary reveals that he is about to destroy Counter Earth and his headquarters begins to take off. Parts of Counter Earth begin to detonate. Gamora carries Rocket back to the ship while Warlock flies to save his mother but the place where she is explodes. Warlock returns and collapses at the Guardian’s ship. Peter and Groot begin shooting up the Evolutionary’s headquarters. Groot grows multiple arms, each one wielding a gun. Nebula, Drax and Mantis run to escape the exploding planet and jump onto the outside of the Evolutionary’s slowly rising ship. Peter grabs Recorder E2H6 and jumps from the ship which is now high above the ground. Groot follows and when he reaches Peter he grows glider wings. When they land Peter kills the Recorder and cuts the computer off his head. Gamora flies the ship to where Peter and Groot are. Nebula, Drax and Mantis are still on a platform outside the Evolutionary’s ship as it is leaving Counter Earth’s atmosphere. The air is getting thin and the temperature low. Drax breaks through the door where they find hundreds of children in cages. Peter applies the code but Rocket flatlines. Peter starts using CPR and eventually Rocket comes back. The Evolutionary captures Nebula, Mantis and Drax and tells Peter to bring him Rocket. 

            Meanwhile Kraglin, Cosmo, Howard the Duck and some others are playing cards. Cosmo tells her origin as a Russian cosmonaut dog they put into orbit in a capsule in 1966. He says the Russians never called him a bad dog. Peter calls for Kraglin to help save the others. 

            Mantis understands multiple languages but she doesn’t understand the children. Somehow Drax speaks their language and shows himself to have a way with kids. 

            Kraglin fires on the Evolutionary’s ship. 

            Nebula, Drax, and Mantis are surrounded by giant menacing monsters but Mantis makes friends with them. 

            Peter and Gamora are on a shuttle and Warlock smashes into their ship but he seems to be on their side now. They make it into the Evolutionary’s ship. Then so do Rocket and Groot. 

            Kraglin’s ship is under attack by the Evolutionary’s mutant army. He is finally able to successfully use the yaka arrow to fight. But the arrow gets stuck in a wall and one of the mutants is closing in. Cosmo uses her levitation powers to cause two stone walls to smash together on the creature. Kraglin calls her a good dog. 

            The Evolutionary’s people mutiny against him as he is irrationally obsessed with getting Rocket back. The Evolutionary kills them all. 

            The team is reunited and Peter says they are leaving but Mantis says they have save the children. All but Gamora agree, but she helps anyway. There’s a big battle with the Evolutionary’s forces. The children are rescued. Groot saves Warlock too. Nebula takes control of the ship by connecting her body directly to it because the regular controls have been destroyed. Rocket gets the last of the children out of the cages but then sees the animals that have yet to be transformed and rescues several baby raccoons. Suddenly he is attacked by the Evolutionary and his gravity manipulation powers. Rocket shoots him and then the rest of the Guardians arrive to fight him as well. Gamora mortally stabs him and then peels off his mask to show the grotesque face of a being obsessed with perfection. Peter says they have to leave but Rocket says they need to save all the animals too and so they do. 

            They all escape but Peter is last and he drops his Walkman and goes back for it. He jumps through space to the Guardian’s ship but is held back by debris. He begins to freeze while his friends can only watch. But at the last minute Warlock saves him. 

            Gamora goes back to the Ravagers. Peter decides to go back to Earth. Nebula and Drax are going to take care of the children. Mantis is going off to find herself with her new pet monsters. Rocket will be the new leader. Groot says “I love you guys” and it’s the first time he says it without saying , “I am Groot”. 

            Later we see the new Guardians: Rocket, Groot, Kraglin, Cosmo, Warlock, Warlock’s pet Blurp, and Phyla (one of the rescued children) discussing the best music. Warlock says he has to go with Adrian Belew both solo and with King Crimson. Rocket plays Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love” and they all start fighting a stampede of beasts that are threatening a planet. 

            This was a great movie with a pretty satisfying combination of action, humour and sadness. My favourite character is Mantis, because she is so innocent, caring, and naïve and yet powerful. She is played by Pom Klementieff, who was born in Quebec but does not have Canadian citizenship because her father was a French diplomat serving his own government in Canada. She started acting at 19 while attending the Cours Florent drama school in Paris. She won a theatre competition with the prize of two years of free classes with the top drama teachers. Her first acting job was in the movie Après Lui in 2007. Her first starring role was in Loup in 2009. Her first Hollywood film was a supporting role in Spike Lee’s Oldboy in 2013. In 2017 she co-starred in Ingrid Goes West. She played Martel in the HBO series Westworld. She played Paris in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning and will appear in the sequel.

December 29, 1993: My daughter was saying "K-Q" for "Thank you"

Thirty years ago today 

            On Wednesday I had my daughter for a little while. She had started saying “K-Q” for “Thank you”.

Meagan Good

            On Wednesday morning I worked out the chords for half of the first verse of “La vie grise” (The Grey Life) by Boris Vian. 

            I memorized the fifth verse of “Aux enfants de la chance” (To the Children of Chance) by Serge Gainsbourg and revised my translation. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. 

            I weighed 85.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            At 12:30 I headed up to Bacan, the Venezuelan restaurant at 369 Roncesvalles to meet my old friend Donna, who I haven’t sat down with in about 25 years. I was fifteen minutes early and she was ten minutes late. She used to perform at my writers open stage The Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy and did some very interesting little one person plays combining singing, speech and dance. I’ve uploaded a couple of videos of her work from that time to YouTube. I played a supporting role in a piece that she performed at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. On another occasion I helped her out by videotaping another one of her performances. At that time I met her mother and we hit it off. When Donna arrived at Bacan today she said her mother said to say “Hi” and Donna added that her mother never says that. She says her mother hates everybody but loves me. I used to have a real thing for Donna and now it’s blossomed into a siblingly affection. Donna lives with and takes care of her parents. Her father is 91 and doesn’t need a lot of care but her 84 year old mother is not very mobile. Her sister in law is a born again Christian who thinks that “Knock Three Times” by Tony Orlando and Dawn is a Satanic song. I said that’s ironic since the whole idea of knocking three times is an ancient Christian tradition, representing the Trinity. Lunch was on me. Donna had some kind of sandwich and I had the cachapa (folded corn pancake stuffed with cheese) with added chorizo sausage and a pint of Creemore. We talked about the current state of art, and of the inherent songs that exist inside of every poem. I sent her the videos I’ve recently created and she thinks my song Sleep in the Snow could be a hit. We were there for a little over two hours and then I walked Donna to Dundas West Station. 

           I rode east on Dundas to the African Drum shop but it was still closed. I went home and took a siesta at 16:05. I didn’t wake up until just before 19:00. 

            I weighed 86 kilos at 19:00, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening in two weeks.

            I had oven fish and chips with a beer while watching Shazam: Fury of the Gods. 

            It’s four years since Captain Marvel (They’re not allowed to call him that but he’s the original) used the Wizard’s magic staff to share his powers with the other kids in his foster home and then broke the staff. 

            The broken staff is in a museum. Two people in Greek armour enter the museum and reveal themselves to be Hespera and Kalypso, two of the daughters of Atlas. Hesperia and Calypso were nymphs and daughters of Atlas but probably by different mothers because Hesperia was an evening nymph and Calypso was an ocean island nymph. They take the staff and go to where they have the Wizard imprisoned and force him to repair the staff. 

            Captain Marvel goes to see his alter ego Billy’s pediatrician and treats him like a psychiatrist.

            Later there is a disaster situation as the Ben Franklin Bridge is falling apart. Billy and his five foster siblings turn into their superheroic counterparts and save the people but not the bridge. They still have the minds of children and teenagers and so they are shown to not have full control of their powers.

            Freddie meets a new girl at school named Anne. Then two bullies come up and pick on Freddie, even bending his crutch. We didn’t have anyone on crutches in my high school but I can’t imagine even the bullies we had picking on them. Maybe it happens in the States though. Anne tells Freddy he’s a hero. Later she mentions that she’s heard that he knows some superheroes and so to impress her he offers to introduce her to one of them. He goes behind a wall and comes back as Captain Marvel Junior. But then Hespera and Kalypso arrive and Hespera uses the staff to turn him back to Freddy. Then Freddy’s teacher Mr. G comes onto the roof and Kalypso takes control of his mind to cause him to walk off the roof and kill himself. Captain Marvel flies in to rescue Freddy but Anthea causes the buildings to move and two of them slam together around him. Hespera turns part of the roof into a flying platform and they escape with Freddy as a captive. Captain Marvel follows but Hespera puts a dome around the downtown core of Philadelphia and Captain Marvel is just inside and can’t break through. 

            Billy is having a fantasy about Wonder Woman when the Wizard takes her place in her skimpy uniform and warns Billy about the daughters of Atlas. Captain Marvel tells the others about it in their club house in the Rock of Eternity. 

            The caverns of their lair have not been fully mapped. Pedro shows them that he’s found a library where the books fly like birds and there’s a magic pen that he’s named Steve and which has access to all knowledge and writes things down. He even writes his essays for school. They learn that when Captain Marvel broke the staff he broke the barrier between worlds. They also learn there is a third daughter of Atlas named Anthea. But Anthea was not a daughter of Atlas but of Chronos because Anthea was another name for Hera the queen of the Greek gods and the wife of Zeus. What the daughters want is for the powers of Atlas that were given to Captain Marvel and his family to be returned to them. They already have Freddy’s. Captain Marvel proposes that they offer to give up their powers in exchange for Freddy but then take one of the daughters hostage and turn the tables. 

            Freddy and the Wizard are imprisoned but Anthea helps them escape. 

            Captain Marvel meets with Hespera. He has planned an ambush but she has seen that coming and so when his family shows up behind Hespera, her family shows up behind his and Pedro’s powers are taken away. The rest fight Hespera and almost lose but Captain Marvel knocks her out and they escape with her into a porta potty. It seems any doorway can lead to the Rock of Eternity. Then when Kalypso opens the door she only finds a construction worker sitting on the toilet. They lock Hespera up but she immediately escapes with the apple of life which was why she allowed herself to be caught in the first place. She traps them inside the rock by rearranging the doors so that it becomes a labyrinth. But Captain Marvel smells the one that was a porta potty and they escape. They find the sisters and rescue Freddy. He gets his powers back. 

            Now that the sisters have the apple they can restore their own world which was their goal but Kalypso decides to use it to destroy the human world. She takes control of the staff and summons the wooden dragon Ladon, who guards the golden apples. In this story it has the ability to induce fear beyond its other powers. 

            The Shazamily show up in their hero forms in their foster parents bedroom and reveal their identities. Pedro takes that opportunity to come out as gay but is surprised that his entire family already knows. Just then the dragon attacks and destroys their house. They escape and the dragon follows with Kalypso on its back. Freddy’s powers are taken again as well as Darla and Eugene’s. Mary flies away with the golden apple and Kalypso pursues her. Her powers are taken while in the sky and she falls while Kalypso retrieves the apple. Captain Marvel saves Mary. Captain Marvel is now the only one left with powers. 

            Kalypso plants the apple in the stadium and from the tree that grows there also emerge monsters of mythology like the Cyclops. Hespera and Anthea try to stop Kalypso but Hespera is mortally wounded and Anthea’s powers are taken away. The monsters are destroying the city and Darla asks Steve the pen what monsters are afraid of. He writes “the king of beasts” but the Wizard explains that is the unicorn. He says unicorns are not the sweet and gentle creatures that little girls love in their fantasies. They are fierce beings that hate humanity. She asks what unicorns like and Steve writes “dark caverns and ambrosia”. Meanwhile Captain Marvel fights the dragon that breaths magical fire that even burns his invulnerable costume. He realizes that Kalypso’s staff is absorbing his powers and flies away.

            Then Darla finds a unicorn in a parking garage transformed into a cavern by the tree. She beckons to it and offers it Skittles. It loves them and they become friends. It calls to the other unicorns and then next we see the Marvel family charging into battle on the backs of the unicorns as they impale the monsters with their horns and Darla shouts, “Taste the rainbow motherfuckers!”

            Captain Marvel revives Hespera with lightning even though she is still dying. Kalypso tries to kill Freddy and Anne with the dragon’s breath but Captain Marvel pulls the dragon back. Then he steals the staff and flies away. Then as part of his plan Hespera uses the last of her strength to begin shrinking the dome around the city so it’s closing in on Kalypso. He begins calling down lightning in order to overload the staff with electricity. The dome is reacting like one of those Tesla globes. He flies into the dragon with the staff and shouts “Shazam”, causing the magical lightning to strike. The tree, the dragon, Kalypso and Hespera turn to dust and the dome is destroyed. But in the moment he shouted “Shazam” Captain Marvel turned into Billy and died. 

            Later the family mourns at Billy’s grave in the dead realm of the gods. The Wizard says that only the spark of a god can restore it but there are no gods left. Then a voice says there is one and Wonder Woman steps forward. In the comics Wonder Woman is never referred to as a god. Maybe she’s half like Hercules since her father is Zeus. But Ares is also her grandfather who is the son of Zeus so that’s fucked up because that means her mother had a child with her own grandfather. So anyway Wonder Woman takes the staff and drives it into the ground. It crackles with power again and the land begins to come alive. Anthea gets her powers back. Captain Marvel emerges from Billy’s grave and hits on Wonder Woman. She brushes him off while at the same time praising him for his sacrifice. She leaves and Captain Marvel gives everyone their powers back. 

            This was an engaging film although a little silly sometimes but I think it was geared for younger audiences. Helen Mirren did a good job as Hespera because Helen Mirren can do no wrong but Lucy Lieu’s performance as Kalypso was the weakest part of the film. 

           The Marvel family are interesting because they are children who become physically adult superheroes. The youngest and most naïve is Darla and she is the most charming in her hero form. She is played by Meagan Good, who started acting at the age of 4 with her mother as her manager. She worked as an extra on TV shows for years and then appeared in her first film, Friday, at the age of 13. She received critical acclaim for her role in Eve’s Bayou. She co-starred in Biker Boyz, D.E.B.S., Venom, Stomp the Yard, The Love Guru, Think Like a Man, Think Like a Man Too, and Roll Bounce. Her first true lead role was in Waist Deep. She starred in the prime time soap opera Deception. She considers herself to be a sexy Christian. She is dating the currently controversial actor Johnathan Majors whose ex has accused him of abuse.

December 28, 1993: I gave Mary Milne a drawing of my daughter and I for Christmas

Thirty years ago today

            On Tuesday I hadn’t seen Angeline for a few days. She didn’t come to Mudds Cabaret that night for my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage. There were about five of us there. As a Christmas I gave Mary Milne a copy of a drawing that someone had done of my daughter and I. We went to Darlene’s place for a drink and her daughter was there but she didn’t come in.

Millie Gibson

            On Tuesday morning I didn’t hear the alarm and woke up at 5:22. My ears felt plugged so maybe that’s why the crowing of the electronic rooster didn’t make it through, and I’ll need to flush them out sometime today. 

            I worked out the chords for the intro of “La vie grise” (The Grey Life) by Boris Vian. 

            I didn’t have enough time to memorize the fifth verse of “Aux enfants de la chance” (To the Children of Chance) by Serge Gainsbourg. I just worked on re-remembering the verses I’d already memorized but had partly lost because I’d skipped working on them on Christmas day. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the last of what would normally have been four sessions in a row but I skipped it on Christmas. 

            I weighed 86.5 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning in a month.

            I spent at least an hour writing my review of Ant Man: Quantumania and was still far from finished at lunchtime. That’s the problem with these long movies. It takes so long to watch them that there is less time to write about them. 

            I weighed 86 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon it was raining lightly but I decided to see if I could ride to the African Drum store at 618 Dundas without getting wet to see if I could get the tonga drum repaired. But the place was closed. 

            I weighed 85.9 kilos at 17:00. That’s the most I’ve weighed in the evening in nine days. 

            I worked on finishing my journal and was done just before dinner. I had a pork chop and a potato with gravy while watching the first story of the new Doctor Who series: "The Church on Ruby Road". 

            In the story a baby is left in front of a church on Ruby Road on Christmas Eve and is named Ruby. She is taken in as a foster child by Carla and her mother Cherry and eventually adopted. 

            Carla has fostered a total of 33 children. Ruby is now in her twenties and has begun experiencing accidents. But we see that little green hands are reaching out from hiding places and causing them. Ruby plays with a band in a dance club where the Doctor is tearing up the dance floor with his moves. She meets him when he suddenly steps up to catch a glass that she knocks over. 

            It’s Christmas Eve again and a new baby named Lulubelle is brought to Carla. Ruby is left with Lulu while Carla goes shopping. She hears strange laughter on the baby monitor and goes to the nursery in time to see someone carrying the baby up through the skylight. She follows to the roof where she sees the goblins taking the baby up a ladder hanging from the sky. She grabs the ladder and hangs on as it moves forward. The Doctor runs along the rooftops and jumps onto the ladder with her. He has gloves that help one climb effortlessly and gives her one. They ascend to the goblin ship that looks a lot like an old pirate ship. The Doctor figures out that the knots in the ropes that hold the ship together are a complicated technology and he learns to manipulate them to open doors like one would push buttons. Looking down to the lower deck through the floor they see Lulubelle on a conveyor belt advancing toward the mouth of the gigantic goblin king while the smaller goblins sing and dance to a goblin rock band that sings the praises of eating babies. The Doctor and Ruby fall down on the belt just before Lulu reaches the king’s mouth. The Doctor and Ruby start dancing and singing along with the goblin song as they are rescuing Lulu. They descend with her down the ladder and back to Ruby’s home. A few minutes later they hear goblin voices and a crack appears in the ceiling. When the Doctor looks for Ruby she is gone. When he asks where she is Carla has never heard of Ruby. The Doctor concludes that the goblins have gone back in time to take Ruby as a baby on Christmas Eve. He takes the Tardis to the moment when the mother, who we only see from the back, leaves Ruby in front of the church. Then he sees the goblins grab Ruby and climb the ladder. The Doctor puts on his special gloves and shifts them from light to heavy then he begins pulling the ladder down and the ship along with it. The king is about to eat Ruby when the ship is pulled down so that it is pierced through by the church steeple and the king is impaled. The ship dissolves and Ruby falls into the Doctor’s arms. He places her in front of the church and returns to the present where Ruby has been wondering what happened to him. After he leaves, Ruby begins to wonder about some things he said about meeting Houdini and about going back to save her. She goes after him and finds the police box. The door opens and she goes inside. The Tardis disappears. The neighbour Abdul is shocked while the other neighbour Mrs. Flood who is always sitting outside her home and watching, looks at the fourth wall and says, “Never seen a Tardis before” then winks. I assume we will learn more about Mrs. Flood as the series unfolds. Is she a former companion or maybe even a Timelord? 

            Ruby is played by Millie Gibson, who attended Oldham Theatre Workshop in Manchester where she was spotted by Scream Management and they began to represent her. Her first professional acting job was on the TV series Jamie Johnson and she became the star of the second and third seasons. She played Mia in the series Love Lies and Records. She played Lili in the series Butterfly. In 2019 she joined the cast of Coronation Street as Kelly Neelan. At the 2022 Soap Awards she won the award for best young actor.

December 27, 1993: I bought a pair of Harley boots

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday I took my daughter downtown and I bought myself a pair of Harley Davidson boots. I also had some photocopies made. I didn’t take my daughter back to Scarborough and so she either spent the night at my place again or Nancy picked her up.

Kathryn Newton

            On Christmas morning I finished memorizing “La vie grise” (The Grey Life) by Boris Vian. I looked for the chords but no one has posted them and so tomorrow I’ll start working them out. 

            I didn’t do my usual song practice but just played certain songs I particularly like and some that particularly need practice. I also played the dark verse from “We Three Kings”. 

            I weighed 86.4 kilos before breakfast. I had bacon and five-year-old cheddar on a Montreal style bagel with Tzatziki. 

            For lunch I had eight mini-quiches and a beer. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. The streets were pretty quiet but there were lots of pedestrians on Yonge Street. The cops had Yonge Street blocked off for several blocks from Bloor down and so I had to take the lane to the west of Yonge until there were no police cars. I found out later that there’d been a stabbing. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos at 17:30. 

            I uploaded my acoustic performance of “The Accordion”, my translation of "L'accordion" by Serge Gainsbourg, to YouTube and posted it on Twitter and Facebook. 

            I downloaded the Greta Garbo montage that had the one clip I needed to match my line, “it brushed against my soul”. I converted it to WMV and imported it into my “Angeline” Movie Maker project. I isolated the clip and tomorrow I’ll insert it into the main video. 

            I started another project called “Lucy Tames the Cat Women” and imported the 1946 film Ziegfeld Follies. I isolated the segment in which Lucille Ball is cracking a whip to tame several dancing cat women. Sometime soon I’ll publish it and upload it to YouTube. 

            I made beef gravy and had it with some oven made fish and chips and two beers while watching Ant Man: Quantumania. I found it much more entertaining, action packed and visually interesting than Wakanda Forever. I really don’t understand why it wasn’t as popular. 

            The story begins with Scott bailing his daughter Cassie out of jail. She’s become an activist and she’s also been given some of Hank Pym’s technology. She shrunk a police car down to toy size because the cops were tearing down a homeless camp. 

            She reveals a new invention, which is a mechanism for observing the Quantum Realm. But when Janet hears her say that it is sending a signal to the Quantum Realm she fearfully shouts for her to shut it down. But it’s too late as they and everything in Hank’s lab, including his ants are sucked down into the Quantum Realm. 

            It’s a visually fantastic place with strange creatures. Scott and Cassie become separated from Hope, Hank, and Janet. Janet has never spoken about her many years in the Quantum Realm and even implied that there was barely anything there. But it turns out to be a highly populated and lush world full of strange creatures and she seems to know her way around. She immediately takes on the role of guide and protector for her family. Scott and Cassie are attacked by a sun bright globe with tentacles. Much of the life in this world seems to be modeled on sea jellies. They are attacked by another type and then rescued by quantum people, which was another thing Janet never mentioned. They are taken captive and separated. Scott is panicking because of this and adding to the confusion is the fact that everyone is speaking alien languages he doesn’t understand. Then Cassie calls to him and there is red liquid running from her mouth. She says for him to “drink the ooze”. Meanwhile Janet, Hank and Hope come across people in a desert. Janet steps up to meet them and is attacked with a knife by their leader, but she takes the knife away and cuts off his arm. His arm immediately grows back and he and Janet laugh and embrace like they are old friends. He gives them one of the flying creatures to use as a vehicle. Meanwhile red ooze is forced down Scott’s throat and suddenly he understands what everybody is saying. 

            A red blobby creature comes up to say “Hi” and says, “My name is Veb, you just drank me”. Veb has no orifices and is obsessively interested in how many holes Scott has. Then he meets a human looking guy named Quaz who can read minds but wishes he couldn’t because people are disgusting. They meet the rebel leader Jentorra who also looks human. She refers to “Him” and says that he is The Conqueror and because they come from above like him he will be hunting them. 

            Meanwhile Janet, Hope and Hank fly to a city carved into mountains. Janet opens a complicated door and they enter a bar. Janet orders glasses of ooze for the three of them and now they can understand everybody else. Janet arranges a meeting with Krylar who is played by Bill Murray. Krylar was a freedom fighter like she was but she finds out he now serves the Conqueror. He plans to give them all to Him. 

            Meanwhile when Jentorra hears Scott mention Janet she knows her and says she shouldn’t be there. 

            When the Conqueror’s soldiers come for Janet, Hope attacks and the rest follow. They commandeer of the ships. At the same time the Conqueror’s ships attack the rebel camp. There is a ground fight Cassie joins in revealing that she has a Pym particle suit for shrinking. Scott is surprised but gives her some pointers on how to fight while changing size. The Conqueror’s forces are overwhelming and Jentorra is captured. 

            Scott and Cassie are captured by the leader of the attack, MODOK who turns out to be the mutated and later partly mechanized former protégé of Hank Pym, Darren Cross. Darren was the villain Yellowjacket in the previous story. He was defeated by Scott in the Quantum Realm but found and rebuilt by the Conqueror. It was MODOK who found Cassie’s signal and used it to pull them down.

            Meanwhile Janet tells Hank and Hope about meeting Kang when she was first stranded in the Quantum Realm. He was stranded as well because his multiverse traversing ship was broken, sabotaged by those who’d exiled him. He promised that if his power core was repaired he could take her home. They worked together for years until it finally worked but when Janet touched the core she read Kang’s mind and saw that he had indifferently destroyed trillions of lives and annihilated entire universes. She refuses to go with him and blows up his core to gigantic size so he can’t use it in his ship, thus trapping him in the Quantum Realm and inadvertently causing him to become the Conqueror of that universe.

            Back in the present Kang comes to Scott where he and Cassie are imprisoned. He wants him to retrieve his core and shrink it back down and says he will kill Cassie if he doesn’t. He then almost kills her to show he means business and Scott agrees to help him. Kang says he is the only one who can save the multiverse from what is coming, which is an army of all of the multiversal versions of Kang. 

            Kang takes Scott to the core which is surrounded by a storm and jumps in at the same time as Janet, Hope and Hank arrive in their ship and enter from the other side. When Scott gets to the core he is confronted by first one and then multiple versions of himself. He is in a probability storm with every choice he could make existing all at once. Hope enters the core and faces the same multiple versions of herself. Scott’s possibilities are in chaos until they hear the voice of Cassie urging Scott on and then they all work together to make a mountain of Scotts to raise him up to the core. He shrinks it back down and gets it. Janet arrives and tells him he can’t give it to Kang. Kang arrives and easily takes it.

            MODOK attacks Hank whose still in the ship and it crashes. When Scott and Hope find him he has already been found by his ants. When they arrived in the Quantum Realm his ants passed through time dilation and lived thousands of years in one day, developing into a highly advanced civilization.

            Meanwhile Cassie comes to where Jantella is being held and rescues her. Kang plans to now transport his entire empire and army to conquer the other Kangs. Cassie sends a message to all the oppressed of Kang’s empire to come to the tower and fight. Scott makes himself bigger than he ever has and attacks Kang’s stronghold. He’s under fire by an onslaught of air ships like King Kong on the Empire State Building and it’s too much but then the rebels arrive to help. 

            Veb is among the rebels and while at the front of the charge is shot full of holes. But to everyone’s surprise he is happy to now have holes and it gives him the ability to suck his enemies into his newly acquired orifices and he becomes monstrous. 

            MODOK attacks Cassie and she becomes giant to beat the crap out of him. Then she tells him it’s never too late to stop being a dick. 

            They manage to break the core again just before Kang is about to leave. Kang single handedly forces the rebels back. He easily beats Scott, Hope, and Cassie but then Hank’s giant ants attack and there are millions of them. Kang puts up a force field but MODOK breaks through, now deciding not to be a dick. MODOK dies both a tragic and a slapstick death. 

            Janet temporarily fixes part of the core enough for them to get home. They all go through the portal but Scott who is held back at the last minute by Kang. Kang tries to get through but Scott stops him and they fight. Kang is a better fighter in hand to hand combat. He smashes Scott’s helmet so he can’t use his powers. He beats Scott up but Scott says, “I don’t have to win. We both just have to lose” then he throws Pym particles into the core to destroy it. Kang runs for the portal but Hope blasts him back. He falls into the core as it explodes. But now Scott and Hope are stranded as the portal closes.

            Scott and Hope have a tender moment but what is conspicuously absent is that they don’t kiss in the type of moment when romantic couples would normally do so in a movie. I wonder if it was because they shot this during covid. 

            Anyway Cassie opens the portal and they go home. In a post credits scene we see an arena full of thousands of Kangs. Every variation planning a conquest of the multiverse. 

            Cassie Lang started out as Ant Girl in the comics and then changed her name to Stature. Cassie played a major role in this story and she was played by Kathryn Newton. She started acting at the age of four in All My Children and appeared in her first movie Abbie Down East at five. She began playing golf tournaments at the age of eight. She won two young artist awards for her role in Gary Unmarried. She starred in Bad Teacher and Paranormal Activity 4. She played Claire Novak on Supernatural. She was a regular on the series Big Little Lies. She co-starred in Pokemon Detective Pikachu. She starred in the Netflix series The Society. She starred in the movies Freaky and The Map of All Tiny Perfect Things.