High School Life In 2018

It’s been a weird week at my daughter’s school.

 

Randie is in her senior year and is within a few months of following the advice Garrison Keillor gave her two years ago: get out of high school as fast as you can.

 

Randie has no problem wanting to escape high school but where to escape to, that has been the question.

 

Slowly and in fits and starts, applications have been made for financial aid and reviews of universities have begun. It’s still a bit nebulous, focusing on what her post high school future is going to look like. She knows she wants to be an animator which is good. When I was her age and staring down what life was going to be like after taking leave of high school, I had no clue what I wanted to be. 

 

I still don’t.

 

But whatever the future holds, the present day life of high school is fraught with tension and worry.

 

About a week ago, two white a-hole dudes from her school posted a video online of the two of them ranting the most heinous, racist bulls**t. The video went viral across the country and even internationally.

 

Randie was horrified to discover her school’s name in a headline on the BBC World Service News.  

 

Randie has observed there has always been an undercurrent of racism at her school. Her high school is located in an outlying corner of our county. It is essentially a rural school surrounded by a predominantly white population. 

 

But she has noticed that in the last year or so, that racism has moved from an undercurrent to being more overt. Racist words and actions that used to be kept on the down low in deference to a polite society that abhorred such things are not expressed more openly. Like it’s OK to be racist now.

 

Well, that’s what those two punks in there obscenity filled video seemed to think. But they found out differently when they were suspended from school and may now be the target for investigation for hate crimes. 

 

Tension at school was rising. Around 10:30 Tuesday night, Randie told me that there was a threat going around, that someone might start shooting. 

 

Someone did a screen grab of a student’s text that seemed quite ominous but a bit vague. Still, it was enough to give one pause that perhaps something sinister was going on.

 

It was enough to make the 11 o’clock news as the lead story. School administrators and law enforcement had been alerted to the message.   

 

Logically, as ominous and threatening as the message sounded, there really wasn’t a lot to go on. Even the time frame of the alleged intended attack was not specific, just that something bad was going to go down “soon”.  Soon as in tomorrow? Next week? “Soon” could mean anything.

 

Randie was a bit distressed. She could clearly understand that as far as threats go, this was not very specific. People have made empty threats before and nothing came of them.

 

But people have died in gun violence in schools. The threat may be empty but the possibility of violence is very real. 

 

I strongly felt that the odds of anything happening as a result of this message were slim. But I didn’t feel 100% comfortable with that assessment. If I told my daughter to go to school and then something happened, I would never forgive myself.

 

But in this day and age, we all live with that risk every day, with or without a specific threat.

 

Randie’s network of friends was reporting parents in a tizzy, determined to not let their children go to school.

 

(You may wonder where my wife Andrea was in all this. It was late, she was asleep and I saw no good coming from waking her up just to upset her. I opted to wait to see what the morning would bring.)

 

The next morning, the story of the threat was still on the news with a reporter named Heidi on the scene with not much to report since it was before the school opened. But Heidi said the sheriff’s department had advised additional officers would be in the campus that day. (“Additional” in that the sheriff’s dept. was already eyeballing the school for any trouble springing out of the tension caused by the super racist video.)

 

Andrea, when informed of the threat, reacted completely as I expected she would: with complete and utter fear, emphatically insisting that Randie should not go to school that day. 

 

I made my case: the threat was vague. It just said “soon”. There was nothing to indicate any action that soon meant that day. What about the next day? And the day after that? And next week? And so on?

 

And there’s going to be a lot of sheriff deputies on the scene.

 

And Heidi’s there! 

 

That day would probably be the safest day at school with law enforcement everywhere and Heidi with her TV camera watching the place. 

 

So Randie went to school and the day was uneventful. Besides the deputies, FBI agents were also on the scene.

 

High school life in 2018. What are you gonna do? 

Matilda

Last week, we stayed in at the Fortress of Ineptitude to watch a movie from 1996, Matilda.






If all you know of Roald Dahl’s working is watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, you can see that Matilda is firmly and clearly a product of Dahl’s imagination with extremely bizarre actions involving impossibly clueless adults.



Matilda Wormwood is born to two parents who are the most oblivious individuals you may ever see.  Her father (played by Danny Devito who also directed the film and provides narration) is an unscrupulous car salesman focused on illegal ways to cheat his customers. Illegal enough that he is under surveillance by the FBI but he is oblivious to their very obvious presence staked outside his house.  Her mother (Rhea Perlman, Danny’s real life wife) is distracted by bingo and celebrity pop culture. The FBI outside the house have fooled her mother into thinking they are speed boat salesmen. Both of Matilda’s parents have zero concern about anything outside of their own interests and whatever happens to be on TV.




Young Matilda, by contrast, is very much aware of the men outside her home, who they are and why they are and why they are there. 




Matilda is extraordinarily intelligent, spelling her own name while she’s still an infant. Desperate to learn and to read, young Matilda navigates her own way to the local library and proceeds to read every book in the children’s section, then she moves on to the rest of the library.  Besides absorbing every book she gets her hands on, Matilda is preternaturally gifted at math, capable of doing the most complex sums in her head. Matilda is also capable of intellectually discerning reasoning more than most alleged adults.


And there’s the weird stuff that happens. Things move or explode around Matilda, usually when she’s under stress. She finally figures out she has some kind of psychokinesis and becomes more and more proficient in the use of her powers,


Matilda is in every way superior to her moronic parents and to most everybody else.  But all Matilda dreams of is going to school, to be with other kids. Matilda’s dream looks more like a nightmare when she’s enrolled in the Crunchem Hall Elementary School located in a dank and dilapidated building that suggest more of a fortress than a school for children and overseen by Agatha Trunchbull, a large hulking woman with a fierce temper and a really intense dislike of children.  






All the hallmarks of Roald Dahl are in display with clueless adults in positions of authority they have no business being in, a fact that the kids in the story are all to brutally aware of.


But Matilda Wormword is more than just aware; she has an uncanny grasp of not just how the world works but why it is the way it is and furthermore, she has the smarts and the power to do something about it.


I suppose if Stephen King were at the helm of this story instead of Roald Dahl, Matilda would well be on her way to a life of rage and vengeance, using her power and intelligence force her will on the world. But Matilda, for all her amazing gifts, is remarkably humble. Her desires are relatively small: to love, be loved and be free to learn.  


To this end, it is fortunate that there is one adult Matilda’s world who is not clueless and selfish, Miss Jennifer Honey, her teacher at the school, Miss Honey is a woman of incredible kindness and empathy compared to the standards of the real world, never mind compared to the heartless and brainless oafs that populate Matilda’s world. If the Wormwoods and Miss Trunchbull are excessively selfish and brutish beyond belief, Miss Honey is also beyond belief herself, gifted with almost limitless grace and empathy, despite a tale of  childhood woe. Miss Honey was 2 when her mother died, only 5 when her father died as well, reportedly of suicide.  Then she came to be under the ruthless and vicious care of her aunt, Agatha Trunchbull who relentlessly separated Miss Honey from her parents’ legacy, their home and all the possessions within.





This is when Matilda gets to do something new. Up until now, Matilda’s gifts had been in service to surviving a life bereft of kindness, love and attention. Now she has a chance to use her gifts for others. With the help of her increasing control of her telekinetic powers, Matilda leads a takedown of Agatha Trunchbull that drives her from Miss Honey’s childhood and from the school. Miss Honey is happy to have her home back and the kids are happy that someone who hates children is no longer running the school (Miss Honey takes over running the school.


And Matilda gets her own happy ending when her parents finally notice that the guys watching their house are cops and they have to flee to Guam. But not before signing adoption papers (which Matilda had drafted up years earlier and hid in her mother’s purse for this eventuality) to let Miss Honey become Matilda’s mom. 


To paraphrase Willy Wonka, “Do you know what they say about the girl who got everything she ever wanted? She lived happily ever after.” 






Matilda is very much a fairy tale. Not just for Matilda’s powers but the absurd limits pushed when it comes to the world she lives in.  The fact that Matilda is even alive after the absurd lack of attention from her parents strains credibility.


Although set in what looks like sunny California, the story’s British roots show through. Crunchem Hall and Agatha Trunchball would be very much at home under the grey skies of Lancashire or some other dreary British locale. But the Wormwood’s penchant for self-gratification, aversion to learning and obsession with TV is a definitively American.  



My daughter Randie discovered this movie years ago when she was much younger. Given the cluelessness of the adults around her (and I’m counting myself in that number), I can see how Matilda appealed her imagination. 

Stephen Hillenburg

I was completely shocked to hear this news, that Stephen Hillenburg, the creator of  "SpongeBob SquarePants” had died on Monday.

He was 57.  The cause of death was ALS which Hillenburg was diagnosed with last year.

"SpongeBob SquarePants” is an indelible part of the story of my daughter’s childhood. "SpongeBob SquarePants” wasn’t just fun to watch, it was weird in a way that appealed to my daughter’s unique sensibilities. It wasn’t just a silly little show that Randie watched on her own; her mom and I enjoyed watching with her. "SpongeBob SquarePants” was her thing and it was our thing. 

The idea that the mind and the imagination that created this strange magic known as "SpongeBob SquarePants” is no longer with us leaves me despondent beyond words.

Stephen Hillenburg graduated from Humboldt State University in 1984 with a bachelor's degree in Natural Resource Planning and Interpretation, with an emphasis on marine resources. He then became a marine biology teacher at the Orange County Marine Institute (now the Ocean Institute) in Dana Point, California. This interest, combined with his artistic talent and love of the sea and its creatures, led him to write and illustrate stories as teaching tools with characters that would later become the denizens of SpongeBob's home, Bikini Bottom.

His career in animation career began in 1987 when he pursued a degree in Experimental Animation at the California Institute of Arts in Valencia and earning his Master of Fine Arts in 1992. That same year he won an award for Best Animated Concept at the Ottawa International Animation Festival for his animated short "Wormholes", which went on to be shown at various international animation festivals. From 1993 to 1996 he worked as a director and writer on Nickelodeon's series "Rocko's Modern Life."

Then came "SpongeBob SquarePants”, the first episode airing on Nickelodeon on May 1, 1999 and now, nearly 20 years later and 250 episodes to date, "SpongeBob SquarePants” is a pop culture icon, beloved by people of all ages. In addition to the TV show, "SpongeBob SquarePants” has starred in two motion pictures and a Broadway musical. 

Stephen Hillenburg created something wonderful and weird that brought joy and laughter to millions. This world can always use more wonderful and weird, joy and laughter. I am grateful for Hillenburg’s contribution to making the world a brighter, happier place.

My heart is sad that Stephen Hillenburg is gone. I am glad that he made a difference in his short time upon this earth, a difference that my family and I are most thankful for. 

Report From Mars

Monday afternoon, shortly before 3 p.m. ET on Monday, scientists at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA were very happy to report that NASA’s InSight landed safely on Mars and is sending back pictures.   

I'm So Glad My Suffering Amuses You is proud to present some of those images now. 

Now it is cool that we are seeing images from another world but is fairly unremarkable terrain just strewn with rocks.  

Really, not much to see here. 

Nope, nothing to see here. 

Ralph Breaks the Internet

On Sunday, the family ventured forth from the Fortress of Ineptitude to go see Ralph Breaks the Internet, the sequel to 2012’s Wreck-It Ralph where Ralph and Vanellope von Schweetz saved the arcade game Sugar Rush from Turbo's revenge. 

Six years later, Ralph and Vanellope are still friends, working their respective arcade games by day, hanging out in Tappers at night after work.

For Ralph, life is sweet. For him, the predictability of life and its routines are comforting to him, 

For Vanellope, the predictability of life and its routines are  source of frustration. She knows all the ins and outs of Sugar Rush by heart. She wants something new.

To help make his friend happy, Ralph goes into the Sugar Rush game and creates a secret bonus track for her.  Vanellope loves the new track but overriding the player controls causes the steering wheel on the arcade game to get stuck, then break off and then break apart.

Mr. Litwak, the arcade owner, discovers that getting a replacement steering wheel for Sugar Rush is prohibitively expensive so he unplugs the game, leaving Vanellope and her fellow racers homeless.  

Ralph and Vanellope venture onto the Internet via the arcade's newly installed Wi-Fi router in order to obtain a new wheel on eBay. They find one and place a winning bid but whoops! They must pay for it within 24 hours.  Yikes! They’re just arcade game characters! They don’t have money! (No pockets.) 

Ralph and Vanellope hook up with a pop-up advertiser named Spamley who sends them to steal a valuable car from the online game Slaughter Race to earn money.

Ralph and Vanellope steal the car but its owner Shank objects, taking the car back after a high-speed chase throughout Slaughter Race. Shank is impressed with Vanellope's driving skills so she points the pair towards the video sharing site BuzzzTube and its chief algorithm Yesss. Ralph decides to raise money by creating a series of videos that play off popular trends, earning money to buy the wheel and return Vanellope to Sugar Rush.

Ralph's videos become a viral sensation, and Yesss sends her staff into the Internet to spam users with pop-up ad to promote them. Vanellope volunteers for this job and is assigned to a Disney fansite, where she meets the Disney Princesses and gains from them the inspiration to return to Slaughter Race.

Ralph earns enough money to cover the eBay bid which is good but he makes the mistake of reading the video comments which is usually a bad idea.  Adding to Ralph’s blue mood is an overheard conversation between Vanellope and Shank; Vanellope says she wants to leave the arcade.

In a desperate bid to keep Vanellope as a friend and get her to return to the arcade and to Sugar Rush, Ralph turns again to Spamley who sets up a meeting with Double Dan, a virus designer hiding in the dark web. Double Dan gives Ralph a virus that can replicate and broadcast any insecurity it finds. The idea is to slow down Slaughter Race, making it unplayable so Vanellope will want to go back home to the arcade. 

You know this is not a good idea.

Ralph unleashes the virus in Slaughter Race which homes in on Vanellope's insecurity and spreads it, causing the game to crash and nearly killing Ralph and Vanellope in the process.

Ralph admits to Vanellope what he did.  This is not something that Vanellope reacts well to at all, angrily demanding Ralph leave her alone.

At this moment, hurt, alone and confused, Ralph is feeling very insecure.

Guess what virus picks now to slip out of Slaughter Race? 

Suddenly there are countless clones of Ralph destroying the internet, lashing out in pain and confusion. The whole internet is going down. 

An attempt by Ralph, Vanellope and Yesss to lure the clones into an anti-virus traps fails.  After trying to fight off the clones unsuccessfully, Ralph goes for a different tactic other than brute strength.  He lays some truth on the clones, calling out his selfish possessiveness and admits that Vanellope's desire to enter Slaughter Race does not mean that their friendship must end. With his insecurities resolved, the giant Ralph virus monster disintegrates underneath Ralph and drops him! Uh oh! But the Disney Princesses save him from the fall.

The Internet is restored but the happy ending is a little bittersweet as Vanellope does opt to stay in Slaughter Race while Ralph goes back to the arcade without her. Ralph is coming to terms with the new status quo of his life, engaging with  other game characters, while staying in touch with Vanellope through video chats. Ralph and Vanellope are still friends but in different worlds now. 

I gotta admit, the ending hurts. I know first hand the stupidity that ensues when doing desperate things to keep someone you care about from leaving, only to force that person away. That's what Ralph very nearly does to Vanellope: his obsessive need to keep her as his friend almost destroys their friendship. 

The cliche in a movie like this would be to end up with the two friends still side by side. The fact they are not side by side is a surprisingly realistic ending. We fade out with Ralph and Vanellope still friends but they're on different paths now. That happens.  

Some other stuff of note: I am in love with Shank! a drop dead gorgeous car racer with the warm, exotic voice of Gal Gadot! 

I am so in love.

So she's animated!  Big deal!   

The set piece in the middle where Vanellope meets the Disney princesses is very funny. 

Later when the princesses show up to use their various powers to save Ralph like their the Avengers or something is a pretty cool sequence. 

Watch out for Cinderella, though! She will straight up cut you. 

Vanellope and the Disney princesses do have some trouble understanding Merida from Pixar's Brave. But she is from the "other studio".    

Ralph Breaks the Internet is a flurry of sight gags and puns but it has a surprising emotional depth to it. I really enjoyed this movie a lot even it did make me sad. 

Dave-El goes on the internet to search for cure to his sadness.

So she's animated! Big deal!  

Doctor Who Is NEW!: The Witchfinders

So we're up to week eight of Doctor Who Series 11. 

This week finds the Doctor and her friends materializing in 1600's England swept up in witch hunt hysteria.  

Could the Doctor face a special level of danger? A strangely garbed woman who possess incredible knowledge and a strange silver magic wand might be regarded as a witch. 

We'll find out more after the break. 

Look out for spoilers.  

The Witchfinders

by Joy Wilkinson

The Doctor and crew find themselves in Lancashire in the 1600's where a woman named Becka Savage with a mad on against Satan and witches in Bilehurst Cragg has just sent a 36th woman to her death on accusations of witchcraft.  Any efforts by the Doctor to bring some sanity to the proceesings in Bilehurst Cragg while stopping more women from being chained to a log and drowned in a lake are curtailed by the arrival of King James I who has an even bigger mad on for rooting out Satan and witches. 

There is some weird stuff going down as dead bodies are rising up out of the ground animated my mud. Alien mud, it seems. 

But it looks like witchcraft to Becka Savage and King James I and guess who get accused of being a witch? Yep, the Doctor. She gets chained to a log and dunked under water. 
Don't worry, the Doctor's fine. She's well versed in holding her breath a long time and knowing how to get out of chains thanks to a long, wet weekend she once spent with Harry Houdini.  

it seems the weird stuff going down with the mud zombies involves alien criminals being held in prison inside Pendle Hill near Bilehurst Cragg. And thanks to Becka Savage, they have a chance to escape their prison and take over the Earth.  The Morax are filled with anger and hate so this isn't going to be pretty. 

The Doctor finagles the Morax back into their prison inside the hill, saving the people of Bilehurst Cragg and the whole planet for that matter.  

In a rarity for this season, we have aliens in an episode of Doctor Who that are the actual menace. Yes, we are once more seeing that humans are very capable of creating their own suffering but it is good to see the Doctor being able to take a big honking swing against the backside of an alien threat, something that has been in short supply this season. 

For the first time this season and since the Doctor regenerated into a female form, sexism hinders the Doctor's efforts to solve a problem. She even comments at one point, "If I was still a bloke, I could focus on solving the real problem instead of having to defend myself."  

While the Doctor's psychic paper convinces Becka Savage that the Doctor is a witchfinder, King James I only allows himself to see the Doctor as a witchfinder's assistant. King James assumes Graham is the true witchfinder in charge.  

Team TARDIS is a bit sidelined in this episode. Still, we see Yaz's immediate emathy for the granddaughter of the last victim of Savage's witch hunt. This continues to be Yaz's go to move in any situation, finding the innocent who needs help and comfort.  

King James keeps putting the moves on Ryan. Despite overseeing a Bible translation that is decidedly anti-homosexual, James himself reportedly had at male lovers in his lifetime.  





There is a lot of expositorial info dumps in the last quarter of the episode as the Morax gets identified and what exactly their role is.  

The horrific appearance of the Morax mud zombies are quite scary. With Alan Cummings portrayal of King James I as an over the top dandy and basically devours all of the scenery, The Witchfinders is an entertaining episode. It might lack something in depth or nuance but sometimes, you just need a story with scares and laughs.  

Doctor Who: Future's End?

The rumor mill has been running full tilt when it comes to what's going with Doctor Who and it's future. 

What's up with Series 12? There has been speculation Doctor Who may not return for it's next season until 2020.  

But Wikipedia has this to say on the subject. 

The twelfth series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who is set to premiere in late 2019, with production for the series having commenced in November 2018. The series will be the second to be lead by Chris Chibnall as head writer and executive producer. 

The source for this information comes from an item written by Jordan Royce  on 11/17/2018 from Starburst magazine which reportedly has been in touch with the series’ production office. The BBC was happy to go on the record about the programme’s short-term future. Series 12 went into production this week, and that it will definitely be broadcast next year, as part of the autumn 2019 TV schedule.

I should point out that this information has not be independently corroborated by the BBC. But the Starburst report does seem to be solid.

Another rumor going around concerns the long term prospects of Chris Chibnall and Jodie Whittaker, that both may not last more than another year on Doctor Who. 

It seems that after the relative lack of oversight from ITV on Broadchurch, it seems Chris Chibnall is chafing under the closer watchful eye of the BBC over it's biggest cash cow.  And the word is that if Chibnall walks, Whittaker will walk with him. 

The new series of Doctor Who with Chris Chibnall as the head writer and showrunner with Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor has enjoyed a considerably high level of success so it seems hard to imagine either of them looking to exit the show so soon. Still, success on the screen does not necessarily translate to happiness behind the camera.

Chibnall by all accounts really had to be convinced to take on this job and he may not find it worth it to stay on if he's being second guessed by the BBC. And as much as Jodie Whittaker is crushing it as the Doctor, portraying the Doctor takes a lot of time and energy which leaves one less inclined to deal with back stage drama.

All of this scuttlebutt is just that. There is no basis in fact for any of this speculation.  Doctor Who is always it seems the subject of scurrilous speculation. It does seem to be that the rumor mongering seems more pronounced as of late.

Back in the present....

We have three more episodes of Series 11 to go. Tonight, we encounter The Witchfinder and tomorrow, I will have a write up about it here.

Far Side Saturday

Here are some Far Side cartoons. 

Today's theme: life is Hell.  

Thanksgiving Post Mortem 2018

Hi there! Welcome to another post here at I'm So Glad My Suffering Amuses You, a cranberry blog in a turkey dinner internet. I'm Dave-El and I may nor may not be lip syncing. 

Only my hairdresser knows for sure. 

The Wednesday night before Thanksgiving is usually when the El family puts up the Christmas tree. It is a beloved family tradition as my wife Andrea, my daughter Randie and I gather around to put the ol' Christmas tree while we listen to Christmas music. 

Randie takes the lead on getting the damn tree up because as I get older, I'm less and less in the mood to get the damn tree up. The fact that I refer our family Christmas tree as "the damn tree" should give you some idea of my decided lack of enthusiasm for this endeavor.  And at some point, I will inevitably complain the Christmas music is too loud, annoying and shut it off.  

Good times with family. I cherish these times.  

Our Christmas tree is an artificial tree that my wife Andrea and I bought at Wal-Mart the first year we were married which was 24 years ago. This tree has seen way better days. But by the hoary hosts of Hoggoth, it still retains most of its artificial pine needles so it goes back up. 

Thursday morning, we get up for Thanksgiving Day with the traditional breakfast of waffles which I make from an old family recipe.

We turn on the TV to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. In the 9:00 hour, the show is a series of performances from current Broadway shows. This year there was a song and dance number from a show called The Prom. 

Image of The Prom casr is not from the Macy's Parade  

Randie, musical theater aficionado, honorary New Yorker and certified gay person, brought me up to speed. The Prom is a pastiche of your basic coming of age 1980s sex comedy where the nerd kid is helplessly infatuated with a girl who is typically way out of the nerd kid's league. But in this case, the leads are both female and the musical number ends with those two crazy kids sharing a kiss because love is love is love, y'all, and any excuse to blow the tiny minds of the MAGA hats is OK by me. 

The hour ends with the Rockettes to settle down heterosexual America that all is right with the world and the parade commences. 

Apparently the 2018 Macy's Thanksgiving Parade was watched by people who were watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade for the first time ever. It seems people on social media were shocked... SHOCKED, I say!   Shocked that Rita Orr and John Legend were lip syncing. 

Musical performances during the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade are lip synced. This is not a new thing and hardly a scandal. From the logistics of performing from moving floats to the hazards of trying to sing in frigid call air, Rita Orr and John Legend as well as ALL the other performers in this parade are not going to screw up their voices singing live in the open air, particularly when that air is below freezing. 

When the show started at 9:00 AM, the temperature in New York City was 19 degrees.   

I wanted to show the Pikachu balloon because that reminds me that I might actually have to go see a Pokemon movie next year. I've see the trailer for Detective Pikachu which features Ryan Reynolds as the voice of Pikachu. It looks like it might be fun. Here's a link to the trailer on You Tube.
  
After the parade, we were due to head off to have dinner with Andrea's family but Randie and I got caught up a bit in the 2018 Westminster Dog Show that usually airs after the parade. We both love Corgis and we were very happy to see this Pembroke Welsh Corgi win before we had to leave. 

Dinner with the family went well. We actually had turkey this year which is unusual for this family. Except for a few items, most of the food was courtesy of the fine folks at Cracker Barrell. 

It seems our gracious hosts had been out of town out west on business and did not have time to do their usual fine job of cooking. I'm cool. I love Cracker Barrell. And I was being plied with wine so I'm really, really cool. 

In fact, I ate way too much. Here now is a montage of some funny animal memes on the subject of over eating. 

I was worried that that politics might come up but it did not except for one brief mention by my father in law. We were discussing the terrible situation in California with the raging wildfires and my father in law said, "Especially in Pleasure."  You may recall that "Pleasure" is what Trump called the town of "Paradise" that was destroyed in the fire. Thankfully, no one took the bait and we moved on with our day. 

The plan for Andrea, Randie and I was that after dinner, we were going to go see Ralph Breaks the Internet. However, between wine and a bad case of "ATE TOO MUCH", I needed to go home to the Fortress of Ineptitude where wound up crashing on the couch and watching the "Chimpsgiving" marathon on BBC America, a series of nature documentaries narrated calmly and wryly by David Attenborough as nature spends an inordinate amount of time eating itself. 

I did a quick search for images under "Chimpsgiving BBC America" and I got matches to these pictures.

Graham Norton with a bunch of celebrities and the Pting from Doctor Who.

The internet is weird. 

At some point during "Chimpsgiving", I pried myself from the couch and deposited myself into bed and slept for several hours. 

It was the best Thanksgiving ever! 

Rockettes, take us out!

Thanks for dropping by and remember to be good to one another