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Post by The Captain on Apr 19, 2021 12:27:51 GMT -5
Ice cream, no question.
My favorite "normal" flavor is Rocky Road, with mint chocolate chip a close second.
My favorite "specialty" flavor was at Bruester's (it's a chain, but I'm not sure how widespread they were in the US) and it was Chocolate Raspberry Truffle. There is only one location still in the Pittsburgh area to my knowledge, but it's about 35 minutes away, which is a bit far to travel for an ice cream cone.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 19, 2021 11:23:41 GMT -5
They sold me on this 100% when I saw Razorfist in the trailer.
Only way they could make me more excited is if they were also utilizing The Cat and/or Zaran.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 17, 2021 6:49:50 GMT -5
WandaVision and Falcon & Winter Soldier have shown that "comic book cinema" doesn't have to be mindless strings of fights and explosions and witty one-liners that take the place of actual story and character development. If Disney can continue to put out series like these, they are going to find themselves being very successful long-term. As for this episode: {TheCaptains Episode 5 Thoughts}That opening fight scene between Walker, Sam, and Bucky was BRUTAL, but not just the physical action. You could just see the mental agony that John was in trying to justify his killing of one of the Flag-Smashers as "justice" for Lamar's death. It was this moment that he realizes that he is in way over his head, and that while he was an exemplary soldier, he would never measure up to Steve Rogers.
The scene between Sam and Isaiah was heartbreaking. Yeah, it's fictional, but it really isn't, is it?
My daughters loved "Domestic Bucky". They enjoyed seeing him smile and not look miserable the entire time.
Nice scene between Sam and Bucky where Sam tells Bucky what he has to do to make the nightmares stop. The writers are really doing a good job developing the relationship/friendship between the two, which, to be honest, they never had the chance to do with Steve and Sam. Sure, we see Sam helping Steve in Winter Soldier and Civil War, but how did they become so close that Steve would entrust the shield to Sam? This medium, with the longer structure, has allowed more character development and can show things that the movies just couldn't.
The scene between Bucky and Zemo was understated but powerful. I liked how Zemo knew his only option was to surrender, but he knew that his work had been done. Much better than the comic book version, who I've always felt was essentially a knock-off combination of Red Skull and Baron von Strucker, used as a break from bringing out them yet again.
Julie Louis-Dreyfus killed it as The Countess, and her introduction obviously opens up whole new avenues of plotlines. Agree with @mrp that this could easily get a second season or even a film. So much to build on.
Post-credit scene was nice. Walker isn't going to go down quietly, which is how they need him to be.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 15, 2021 11:20:51 GMT -5
Super excited to see how this turns out. Will be keeping track regularly.
My friends and I did something similar to this about 20 years ago, just with Magic The Gathering cards. There was one guy in our group who could sell space heaters on the Equator, so we would go to MTG tournaments with a simple proposition for him. We would give him 5 junk rare cards (typically valued at $1 or less), cards that had niche usage at best but usually just sat in trade binders forever, and we would see how much value he could trade up to using just those five cards over the course of the day. He couldn't make any trades unsupervised (dude was a serious shyster), but if he reached a certain $ value in return, we'd cover his portion of the gas and his meal on the way home.
At one tournament, he wound up generating close to $150 in excess value from his starting point. Just found the right people at the right time, made one deal and then another and then another, ending up with two cards worth roughly $75 each after starting with $5 in assets.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 15, 2021 10:31:01 GMT -5
Iron Man #8 The Korvac storyline drags on, and I do mean DRAGS on. This issue focuses primarily on Hellcat and her getting some psychic assistance from Moondragon in order to restore her previously-removed mental abilities (picking up a plot point from Defenders #77).
These scenes are intermixed with a spaceship chase battle between Tony's Legion of Losers and Korvac's Kut-Rate Krew. It's not very exciting, and Korvac gets some weird vision in the middle of it that will probably take six months to resolve.
Finally, Patsy sums it up best at the end of the issue when she asks "Where the hell is Tony?" Good question. An entire issue of Iron Man and not a single glimpse of the titular character.
Dropping this title. So bad and so boring. Used to love IM, but this just sucks. 2/10
Darkhawk: Heart of the Hawk One-Shot I have to come clean that I am a long-time DH fan. When his original solo series was released back in 1991, it was the first Marvel book that I ever started collecting from issue #1. Sure, there were a lot of parallels with Spider-Man, but they were trying to create a new character that wasn't a mutant, which was nice.
This book, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the character, has three stories in it from content creators from his history. The first story, done by Danny Fingeroth and Mike Manley, tells a story that probably slots into the end of the first year of the original continuity and uses Savage Steel, one of DH's original foes, as the antagonist.
The second story is by Dan Abnett and takes place after the War of Kings storyline. I didn't keep up with that story when it was released, but Abnett does a good job of working in enough details to explain the situation without impeding the story, which finds Chris Powell on a remote planet just trying to keep his head down but somehow finding some serious trouble.
The last story, by Kyle Higgins (whose work I'm not familiar with), is basically a set-up for the bumper page at the end of the book. It catches us up with what is happening to Chris right now and sets the stage for the return, in some form or fashion, of Darkhawk later this year.
For a fan of Darkhawk, this was a fine little walk down memory lane while also giving some hint of a future.
7/10
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Post by The Captain on Apr 14, 2021 19:48:35 GMT -5
Did wind up ordering the second Conan the Barbarian Epic Collection from Amazon on Sunday, and it was delivered on Tuesday. Have the first 26 issues in collected format, as well as 15-26 as floppies, then 27-115 in floppie only.
Also bought The Doll's House TPB today, collecting Sandman 9-16, marking this as my Sandman TPB purchase for April.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 14, 2021 14:05:00 GMT -5
Trying a new hazelnut flavoured brand that's been imported from Malaysia....details soon. Sounds fantastic. I will only buy my coffee from one roaster in my city. My go-to year-round flavor is hazelnut, while ﹰI rotate between secondary flavors like pumpkin spice, amarettto, and sea salt caramel mocha, usually dependent on season.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 12, 2021 20:30:20 GMT -5
Arrive early, no doubt.
My parents taught me that if you aren't at least 5 minutes early, you're late. Stuck with that my entire life, it's how my wife and I operate to this day, and it's how we're teaching our girls to treat time and events.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 12, 2021 17:00:53 GMT -5
Reading, I just started Conan the Barbarian from #1 and will read straight through to #115, which is where the main part of my run ends (I have a handful of issues higher than #200 that I will eventually read).
Collecting, I'm committed to buying one Sandman TPB per month this year starting with March. I've read it previously from borrowed editions from my local library, but I wanted to own my own copies of the series so I can go through it at my leisure.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 12, 2021 12:40:33 GMT -5
I don't remember ever hearing of Black Sheep Squadron, must not have played on our channels at the time. Looking it up, I see it starred Robert Conrad - is this what made him well-known as an actor? I was aware of him as a celebrity a few years later on but had never seen him in anything that I recall, unleess perhaps in some old movie or something. I do remember Rat Patrol from when I was a very small kid, though. It was a favourite show of us kids, though I was so young all I remember now is the jeep driving around in the desert. Conrad knocked around for a bit until he appeared on the private eye show "Hawaiian Eye," which was on for a couple of years. It crossed over occasionally with another Warner Bros. detective show, "77 Sunset Strip." But what really put him on the map were his years as agent Jim West on "The Wild Wild West," a show that combined the Old West and super-heroics and gave it a James Bond vibe: world-threatening villains (some pretty campy), gimmicks galore (including a utility belt), beautiful women working both sides of the street and fight scene upon fight scene. It was a fun show for all of those reasons, but what put it over the top was Ross Martin's superb portrayal of West's witty, wry compadre, disguise whiz and technical genius Artemus (Artie) Gordon. I remember watching Wild Wild West on Saturday afternoons with my dad when I was younger. On one of our UHF stations, there would be some cheesy 70s horror movie on from 1 to 3, then back-to-back episodes of WWW at 4 and 5. I didn't always get what was going on (I think I was maybe 7-9 years old) but it was interesting enough to keep me watching.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 11, 2021 12:05:33 GMT -5
Yeah, that's kind of been an issue all along there have been some really cool looking fight scenes but they don't do a whole lot plot wise. As an aside though, I absolutely love the guy who plays Zemo. Every scene he's in is just fantastic. That's Daniel Bruhl, one of Germany's leading actors. He's been in 7 Days at Entebbe, Inglourious Basterds, The Bourne Ultimatum, and Joyeux Noel (about the 1914 Christmas truce). He is starring in a new version of All Quiet on the Western Front. Inglourious Basterds is probably my favorite Tarantino film, and Daniel Bruhl is so good in that.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 11, 2021 6:37:54 GMT -5
I left the house today!!! The last time I had been outside of my house was when I got home from the hospital on Thursday, April 1. I had a couple of errands I wanted to run, so after eating breakfast, shaving, and pulling myself together, I got in the car and went on my way. Quick trip to the bank (used the drive-thru), then I went to my LCS for the first time in a month to pick up the few books on my pull list. After that, still feeling pretty good, I drove down into the city and went to the big comic book shop down there to look for one specific book (which they unfortunately did not have), then I went to another comic shop to look at Magic cards for a little while and see if they might have the book I wanted (which they did not either). My wife insisted I take my pulse oximeter so that I could monitor my oxygen levels and adapt accordingly, which was a small price to pay; they were a little lower than usual but still better than they have been recently. All in all, I was gone for about 6 hours. I am a little tired tonight, but I'm not exhausted like I have been for the past two-plus weeks, so hopefully the worst is behind me and it will just be steady improvement from here on out. Good to hear, but now I am curious what specific book you are on the hunt for. -M Conan the Barbarian #14, with Elric. After having a good think about it last night and checking prices for it on eBay, I've decided I'm just going to buy the second Conan Epic Collection so I have the story rather than keep hunting. Beat-up copies (things I would almost NEVER put in my collection) are $25 or more, while Fine copies push $75 or more. I can use an Amazon GC I got from a former employer and get the Epic for less than $30, which also gives me the option of selling the othet books in that collection (except the Red Sonja appearances, because I want to keep those). Then I have something nice and portable to take with me to read on vacation or to sit out on my deck, rather than worrying about the floppie.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 10, 2021 19:06:54 GMT -5
I left the house today!!!
The last time I had been outside of my house was when I got home from the hospital on Thursday, April 1. I had a couple of errands I wanted to run, so after eating breakfast, shaving, and pulling myself together, I got in the car and went on my way. Quick trip to the bank (used the drive-thru), then I went to my LCS for the first time in a month to pick up the few books on my pull list. After that, still feeling pretty good, I drove down into the city and went to the big comic book shop down there to look for one specific book (which they unfortunately did not have), then I went to another comic shop to look at Magic cards for a little while and see if they might have the book I wanted (which they did not either).
My wife insisted I take my pulse oximeter so that I could monitor my oxygen levels and adapt accordingly, which was a small price to pay; they were a little lower than usual but still better than they have been recently. All in all, I was gone for about 6 hours. I am a little tired tonight, but I'm not exhausted like I have been for the past two-plus weeks, so hopefully the worst is behind me and it will just be steady improvement from here on out.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 10, 2021 8:53:31 GMT -5
Well, that was a huge step in the right direction. {Spoiler: Click to show}The quiet scenes between Sam and Zemo (discussing the nature of "supremacy") as well as between Sam and Karli (discussing what her and the Flag-Smashers' goals were) were really well-done. Even the phone call between Karli and Sam's sister was subtly effective, as it pointed more to the similarities in their situations than the differences.
Also enjoyed the decent, albeit too brief, encounter between Walker and the Dora Milaje. The arrogance that he displayed and how he questioned THEIR right to be there, even though he had no more than they, was pretty telling. Loved seeing them hand him his ass.
Sorry to see Lamar gone. I actually liked him and felt he was a reasonable character, which served as a nice counterpoint to Walker, who is obviously not terribly stable.
Not surprised that John Walker wound up taking the Super-Soldier Serum, seeing as he is under incredible pressure to fill Steve's shoes. However, as Dr. Erskine said way back in CA:TFA, all it does is magnify what was already inside the man (or woman), and the conversation between Lamar and John about what they "had to do" in Afghanistan to earn their medals merely foreshadowed that it was likely going to turn out terribly wrong.
That last scene was really jarring. The image of the blood smearing the shield was incredibly powerful, at least in my household. My older daughter was especially moved by it, as she just said "that's not Captain America. He doesn't do that."
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Post by The Captain on Apr 8, 2021 17:40:41 GMT -5
Since my little bout with COVID started, coffee has just not tasted good to me at all. Tried to have some this morning and it didn't do anything for me.
Been drinking a lot of tea with honey instead. It's a lot more soothing.
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