Bex’ Struggle Last October on EastEnders

On TV, the soap #EastEnders has brought, to the screen, life in Albert Square, in London, since 1985.

Other than on BBC iPlayer, #EastEnders airs here in my region of the world late-nights on the weekend, months behind its latest broadcast in England.

There are confrontations and there are obstacles.  If nothing else, it’s a bit of fun.

Watching EastEnders in October 2019, not long before the thirty-fifth anniversary of the show, I can remember a little how it was watching the thirtieth anniversary, five years ago, when the soap revealed that the Beale girl, Ian’s daughter, had been murdered, a mystery.

What interested me in particular now, to the extent I am saying something about it here, is the going away party for Bex to celebrate her acceptance to Oxford.  Bex, before she relented, was a Gothic girl, ranking in the subculture of the disenchanted.  I think Bex had interests in high school theatre, and in playing the guitar, as when she did at the Vic.

https://heatworld.com/entertainment/tv-movies/eastenders-teenage-suicide-bex-fowler/

She is pretty while presenting emotionally adrift.  EastEnders characterizes Bex as an intellectual, artsy teen, moody and pointedly smarter than her peers, conflicted.

She performs songs in an earlier episode, taking the stage in the Vic, when she is beginning to take on the role of a neighbourhood talent, a bright artistic girl struggling, given her ability to make waves.  What I’m moved to write about is the character’s decision, the night of her party before she goes away to school, her friends and family celebrating her acceptance to Oxford, to pen a suicide note, and to overdose on pills, tears in her eyes, by herself in her bedroom.

Often EastEnders diverges from its responsibilities as a soap, presenting sometimes troubling storylines, while entertaining.

The suggestion that a brilliant, youthful, and gifted character, with circumstance thumping for herself, would settle on the extraordinary choice to end her own life, made me think.  Youth suicide is extremely sad, and it perplexes me that Bex would make that decision, bringing hurt on herself, and on everyone who knows and loves her.  The song that soundtracks the tragedy for Bex is the Gary Jules version of the Tears for Fears song Mad World, music adding to a sense of despair and confusion that Bex is experiencing.

“The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had,” the song presents lyrically, as Bex drifts into near-death sleep.  Time-lapse photography shows the lights going out in the Vic, and the encompassing night sky giving way to a cloudy morning, when Bex may be lying there dead in her bedroom.

Elsewhere in the TV landscape, that tapestry of storytelling that is compelling, the song Mad World has received another place of honour in a TV soundtrack, in another show, in another nation.  Maybe strangely, but provocatively, Season 2 of the CW’s Riverdale has likewise presented Mad World.

https://www.insider.com/riverdale-veronica-archie-varchie-relationship-timeline-2019-1#archie-goes-to-the-semi-formal-dance-with-betty-and-veronica-2

By Episode 8 of Season 2, the Riverdale character Jughead has risen in the ranks of bikers, the Serpents. Archie and Veronica are presenting Mad World to their friends and family until the tension between them hits a breaking point, and they leave without finishing the song.

The group, a significant number of who are Serpents, are disappointed.  Betty thinks fast and takes the stage, picking up where Archie and Veronica stopped.  Betty quickly takes Mad World to a different level, assuming the role of dancer and drawing the Serpents in.

Jughead watches with shock, and maybe with interest. With his yearnings to use the Serpents, it isn’t unusual that Betty would in like manner expect another job.  Both EastEnders and Riverdale hit big audience numbers, and anyone who sees TV could note a similarity between the two Mad World scenes.

For Bex, it is about an early closure, and for Betty, it is tied in with seeing Jughead order the Serpents.  Bex’s mistake in EastEnders reflects a character who feels alone, despairing so much that she decides to take her life.

Perhaps it could even be derived that she knows about Riverdale from TV.  EastEnders is set amid reality.  The EastEnders characters watch “real world” TV and hear real-world music in the Vic.

Bex, simply, doesn’t deserve death.  She is a beautiful, intelligent, talented young woman, for who opportunity is knocking.

https://stocksnap.io/author/kristinhardwick

I like both shows, but there is a kind of question of how appropriate Bex’s act of self-destruction is.

The Mad World scene in Riverdale could, I see, be haunting, if it is relatable.  In EastEnders, the pendulum has swung away from the physical, to become a forebear of doom.  Both shows have a sense of appreciation for popular music, when songs present loud and clear.

The haunting going on in these TV episodes has to be executed within the context of plot devices, or else it isn’t effective.  It needs to make ideas click for an audience, or it falls short.  I think both shows want to present specific circumstances to get viewers feeling haunted.

“I find it kind of funny; I find it kind of sad…” Curious that the song lends itself to drama.  You’re welcome to comment and/or follow.  Thanks for visiting.

My Most Graceful and Honest Intentions with the findingenvirons Blog

A TikTokker followed me, this weekend, with the offer of a shoutout if I were to follow her account, and to tag three friends and to share her video to get an upswing started https://vm.tiktok.com/JN4odUw/

“Are blogs still popular in 2020?”

“Yes, blogging in 2020 is still popular and is serving even more purpose than ever before.  …68% of marketers now see blogging as a useful marketing tool.”

https://techjury.net/blog/blogging-statistics/

Just so we’re on the same page.  🙂  It’s a decent rivalry.

It is now summer.  Even though the winter doesn’t usually get too severe here in Southern Ontario, we have summer which feels pretty scorching, and that is surreal.  That aspect is well-intensified by strange circumstances.  Writing this, in July 2020, I am beginning year no. 9 of writing my blog.

time and tide wait for no man

Photo by donterase from StockSnap

A blog, as you know, is long-form writing.  It’s the opposite of microblogging, like how blogging is on Twitter.  A Personal Plan on WordPress, an option on the blogging platform, lets you design a blog by choosing from among a variety of special themes, that shape how your blog looks.

On WordPress, as mine is, a regular domain doesn’t look bad, but a more ambitious blogger might start with a Personal Plan if you want a more professional-looking blog.  In fact, in WordPress, the Block Editor is the design page that helps you put together blocks of paragraphs, to make writing a post easy.

I use a lot of white space, to keep my blog readable, and to keep it feeling like typewriter text transported to a computer screen, which is what early word processing programs were like.  If you know about adventure games in the nineteen-seventies and -eighties, like, for example, the game company Infocom’s game Zork, or a different, earlier, hit game called Adventure, you know they consist of a paragraph of descriptive text followed by a blinking parser, at which you would enter a two-word command to play.  I have that period of gaming as a primary concern, one wellspring of motivation.

My intention presently is to reach several dozen people or so with each post, possibly a hundred visitors per post, which is the typical reach I have at present.  I appreciate that the odd post I’ve composed gets a couple of guests, to boot.  With WordPress, the stats dashboard gives you an idea of how many visitors have turned up for your blog posts, and what they are saying their country of origin is.

I have had this blog for eight years.  That’s the level of expertise I have with it, Level Nine, you might put it.

In the first edition of the former game company TSR’s classic game Dungeons & Dragons, Level Nine was known as Name Level.  That is the famous tabletop game.  It features in the plot of the Netflix hit Stranger Things.

Photo by Freestocks.org from StockSnap

Name Level means that your Dungeons & Dragons character has made a name for himself, as in “Merlin” becoming “Merlin the Wizard,” to take from Arthurian mythology an example.  In Arthurian mythology, Merlin is the wizard who helps King Arthur rule at Camelot.  Like Merlin and King Arthur, here on WordPress, I am leet.

Likewise, with different parts of life, you have goals with your blog, and blogging makes unobtrusive notoriety for yourself (as it is the Name Level guidelines in Dungeons & Dragons sway interaction.)

On occasion, I draw extra thoughts from patterns I see via web-based media, stages like Twitter and YouTube, and TikTok.  On WordPress, I get to blog as much as I make time for it, which is a luxury I know many aspiring writers would enjoy themselves if they had it.  With that sort of extravagance, I am happy with the opportunity to continue without too many time limitations.  I am not too hard on myself.

My intentions, also, are to keep posting in a way that other people might relate to.  When WordPress offered a fourteen-day prologue to composing verse, quite a long while back, I composed through that fourteen-day arrangement.  Actually, at the time, I was kind of pleased with a few of the ideas I came up with, as I think my approach is a touch singular.

I in some cases loan support to other little bloggers.  I have seen that quite a few bloggers do that.  Those are probably the kind of people that I am trying to reach.

Another source of inspiration, outside WordPress, is the real world Nashville Tennessee writer Jeff Goins, an inspiring voice in blogging circles.  I think Jeff Goins worked in marketing when he decided he wanted to begin writing.  In fact, for his first book, he presented the title You Are A Writer.  

The Art of Work is a book that explores all kinds of inspired case studies, of people who bring a special touch to the work they do.  It became a bestseller. I think Goins wrote that unless your heart is in your work, it isn’t right.

As well, my father’s sister’s husband, Rick, and his wife Sue, both residing in Nashville, have written some books.  They are my godparents.

To the reader, if you have ever read my blog and are returning, by all means, thank you.  Such a great hobby.  You’re welcome to comment or to follow.

Have a wonderful day and a terrific summer.  I wish you well!

I’m on Twitter, https://twitter.com/findingenvirons …but you won’t find that verified.

WordPress Discover: Instrument

For April 2020, the WordPress Discover prompts have returned, which are thoughts that have as their starting point a solitary word, the brief.  This week Krista Stevens is organizing them.

Krista’s prompt today is “instrument.”  When I think through what would be the challenges of learning to play an instrument, I think of the 2000s, and what the English pop band McFly did to celebrate breaking up. I think McFly did a few albums that were successful and, oddly I’d say, for young successful musicians, they finished with an album of self-parody, renaming themselves Son of Dork, what I think is a reference to the 1985 Robert Zemeckis motion picture Back to the Future, where Michael J. Fox and Crispin Glover both play characters with the name McFly.

SAMSUNG

One of the songs on the Son of Dork album is the ditty “Boy Band,” a woefully self-deprecating song that addresses the interest of a young man who day-dreams of being in a band.  That said, “Boy Band” does have a nice beat.

Anytime I feel like satirizing day-dreaming of being in a band, one listen “Boy Band” helps cool my heels.  I like the tune, as well.

Self-parody isn’t something I explore to get satisfaction with, it is just something neurotic that certain people play with.  Sometimes people who are both creative and successful resolve their neuroses with acts of self-parody, but I suspect too wide a foray into that avenue of thought is self-sabotage.

I try to keep an attitude to music that The Four Hour Work Week author Tim Ferriss describes.  Music is in, he writes.

When the Son of Dork CD was on my shelves, I’d arrived at the finish of the time in my life that I was finding myself and what my identity was, and I had unexpected interests in comparison to when I was more youthful and when I’d been bound to wander off in fantasy land, of playing an instrument.

WordPress Discover: Open

Great news, I saw this evening, the WordPress Discover challenges are back.  Every day of April 2020, there will be a Discover prompt to help people keep blogging when there is so much consternation about them, and throughout the world.

The Discover prompts invites bloggers to give their handle on the idea of “open,” when something you wish open is in fact closed.  I guess that sounds obvious.

I have a persistent interest in what’s happening behind the scenes at Disney.  I was there once as a kid, in 1991, with my mom and dad and my brother and sister.  As you probably suspect, both Disneyland and Walt Disney World are closed.

I hear Disney talked about on YouTube, and actually, the channel Clownfish TV talks about Disney quite a bit.  I take it the two Clownfish TV hosts are into movies and that kind of thing.

Photographer:
Brandon Mowinkel

Actually, the other day, they reminded their audience that they have taken no interest in watching The Rise of Skywalker.  To me, that’s strange because a general interest in Disney would usually include an interest in Star Wars, but they are just so discouraged at Clownfish TV with the sequel trilogy that they have zero anticipation for at last seeing Episode IX.  They said it didn’t get the greatest reviews, but for me, it’s hard to relate to the idea that they could just never see it and live happily after.

I just like to think about how nice it must be spending a day at one of the Disney parks and that kind of thing.  I don’t believe much that I’ll ever return to Disney World, and perhaps to them at Clownfish that reality might not be a reality, that they could possibly relate to.

I was really surprised by some people afoul of the Star Wars backlash, which I presume will never end.  I thought the worst of the incalcitrant attitude to what happened with the sequel trilogy might fade away, but maybe that won’t be the case.  To be more honest, I imagined that the backlash would rear its head occasionally when new Star Wars stories were put to film and video, but it really is a pervasive phenomenon, I think now.

I am glad for the Discover challenges to have reopened, and I just wanted to say that the businesses I would have most liked to overcome the difficulties posed by the crisis are the Disney theme parks.  It just wasn’t possible, it is clear.  I hope to get in on the Discover challenges some more, while we continue this quarantine.

Why Holden Caulfield Thinks Social Media Jobs are Phony

Portent is a content generation tool that helps creators come up with unique ideas. While it is not a good idea for a writer to plagiarize the work of others, as the writer’s reputation can easily become sullied by that kind of dishonesty, using the Portent Generator site can occasionally light a brilliant idea. This specific title was devised with the help of Portent.

The story I’m telling is is true, that the girl I befriended handwrote a Salinger quotation in her second or third letter to me. I thought I was lucky to get such a nice letter, because in the Y2K era, the 2000s, snail mail was already rare.

I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful. If I’m on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I’m going, I’m liable to say I’m going to the opera. It’s terrible.

J. D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye

Perhaps Holden Caulfield in Chapter 3, in the wake of deceiving, might have a little like me.

    When I was in my early twenties, I paid a return visit to Kingston, Ontario, where I noticed one cold winter evening a girl dressed like a punk rocker, sitting on the sidewalk, asking pedestrians coming near to spare their change.  She was pretty, if I do say so myself, her hair dyed bright blue the way a girl raving might wear her way, the colour that matching the fishnets tights not doing a whole lot to keep her legs warm in the winter night, a petite little thing, and completely on her own.

    I thought I would say hi to her.  Kingston is a college town, and there are bright young girls everywhere.  I think this particular girl was a singer in a band, or would be soon.

    We began to chat, we watched the street, we had some laughs.  I would have liked to get off the street, but where were we going to go?  I’d just met her and I didn’t know her style.

    It took every ounce of confidence I had to keep passing off charm, given the circumstances, but not too demanding on my part.  It became a sort of a nice time.

    By morning I got from her an address, for her mom, in Scarborough, from where she had run away from, and I think it was probably the second one from her to me where she inked the above quotation from The Catcher in the Rye.  Almost everybody lies.

    Since The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger’s character Holden Caulfield has become a symbol for insubordination, and tension, and now has become identified among the most significant characters of twentieth-century American writing, The Catcher in the Rye a powerhouse of a book.  The excellent TV character Jughead, in the Archie comics’ adaptation Riverdale, gives the line in Season 4, Episode 8 The Catcher in the Rye, to Mrs. Burble.  Jughead hasn’t applied to any schools, and when he stops by Riverdale High to get his transcript, he gets a meeting with Mrs. Burble, regardless of what he tell her is his “Holden Caulfield stance on phony small talk.”

The CW Network

    I wonder how Holden would feel about Facebook if The Catcher in the Rye were set in the year 2020.  Well, actually, I guess I know–he would hate it.

    Millennials are an astute lot, and they’ve been on the internet since right back when they were youngsters.  Would Holden hate the specific act of asking a girl about the suffering that young girls go through when they run away, for an economic system necessitating young girls to go on the run, for the fact of a college town such as Kingston even existing… given that the tools of education are extensively available?

     It didn’t appear to get her down.  She had good karma.

    I believe being a runaway was what she needed to be.  I finally cried when I returned home the following day.  Nothing was wrong, though.

    I’d had a comforter in my backpack.  When I noticed the cold, I let her wrap it around her shoulders.

    We went into a Burger King fast food joint.  There were muddy tracks on it from the slush on the floor when we left.  Those mud stains came out in the wash.

    In the nineteen-nineties, we didn’t have Facebook.  However, I wish I’d learned more when I got around to signing in my last time in a study hall.  It took me years beyond the nineties to cross that finish line, by the way.

    Years later, while it was appalling that the confidence everybody had, to flex on Facebook and evaluate business page metrics, kind of ended with what happened between the White House and Cambridge Analytica, I think the popularity of Facebook will remain a victor. The David Fincher film The Social Network is one of my favourite films.  The Wall Street Journal ran an idiosyncratic feature for its tech segment the third week of March, 2020.

Joanna Stern

    Here an American journalist is trying to rekindle the enjoyment we had getting on Facebook before the Trump administration in the White House made it seem so senseless.  Personally, I am a modest Canadian.

One Christmas Eve during the Trump administration

The family business where I’ve been working has a Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/LouthUnited

A Difficult St. Patrick’s Day

It’s the end of March and two weeks ago was St. Patrick’s Day for 2020. The weather in Southern Ontario was reasonable in light of expectations. I found myself spending less time on Facebook. My sister telephoned me a couple of times.

A cousin of my mother, Cathie, along other lovely people, with a hobby of genealogy, ending with a nice account of the Irish my mother’s side of the family has. It looks like this St. Patrick’s Day, 2020, I’ll be a little less Irish.  It looks grim.

Photographer:
Tiago Almeida

change

the act or instance of making or becoming different.

I wish a lot of things were different, but I never would have chalked up the possibility of experiencing our pandemic catastrophe in my own life.  I read of environmental warnings, like that there could be, say, eight years until the damage to the planet caused by humans becomes irreversible, or that global warming will cause sea levels to rise, however active God is on the picture at large. I don’t know how human beings will fare.

To consider attacks between warring groups the world over, hellbent on decreasing each other to iotas, to very small pieces, I think also police and military unfairly treat peaceable citizens, because the police loathe the skin colour or addiction, behaviour that doesn’t toe the line for the safety of the public.  I think about these now and again, yet I hadn’t thought of what really descended three months ago. It is hard to contextualize that.

I always do my best to enjoy St. Patrick’s Day, as so many do with aplomb and style.  I welcome the end of winter. We are all called on to be, not so much Godfearing, as instead socially distant from one another.

Good on us all the same, that we can find solidarity in separating from one another, in a fashion that, like the lot of the unlucky addict, is no fault of our own.

Photographer:
Peter Hershey

We will have to come up with new measures to survive, and we have to do it at a time when I am sure many of us would be happier celebrating St. Patty’s in the usual fashion, wearing the colour green, and staying out late.  We’re told to stay out of bars and restaurants and nightclubs and still young people want to go to those kinds of haunts. I want to be young myself, but not to the extent I want to risk sacrificing growing old.

I wanted to think about a superb St. Patrick’s Day, and although I recall it every year, I don’t know I could say that any specific March festivity was better than some other.  A number of them were beautiful and left me feeling blessed. I am grateful to The Lord.

1998 occurs to me, becoming 21 years of age.  However, against how this spring is going, I don’t think the excitement of taking a visit back in time is going to especially cause me to feel better. I like to enjoy speaking a kind word at certain times, because a little kindness sprinkled in the mix, while not reversing the uncertainty that we’re facing, does help temper the darkness.

I would like to wish you a happy St. Patrick’s Day, dreadful or not.

St. Patrick’s Day isn’t to be overlooked, obviously.  Go with the luck of the Irish! Let’s have a safe spring!

You’re of course welcome to comment and to follow.  All the best to you, and to your loved ones.

Find us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/LouthUnited

We’re also on Twitter https://twitter.com/findingenvirons

I enjoy social media.

The Less Flummoxed Companionship of the Child’s Imagination, Echoed in Dreams

There is no pain you are receding

A distant ship, smoke on the horizon.

You are only coming through in waves.

Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re saying.

When I was a child I had a fever

My hands felt just like two balloons.

Now I’ve got that feeling once again

I can’t explain you would not understand

This is not how I am.

Comfortably Numb

(Gilmour, Waters)

http://www.pink-floyd-lyrics.com/index.html

564 x 376

What did you want to talk about, as a child?

    Maybe it just didn’t seem to be as fulfilling without your imaginary friend, but the fellow sure was a good listener.  He agreed with everything you decided, he brought up things that you might not yourself have thought of, and he was quick with ready suggestions that prevented all kinds of problems.

    There were just matters that needed to be talked through, and the others weren’t really familiar with the notion or just how formidably commanding your friend felt about it.  It was such a vivid feat of the imagination that it had a kind of form to it where it fed back everything you put in.

    That was childhood.  As the years passed and adolescence went to the sincere young man, he saw less and less of his fanciful companion.  He hadn’t learned nearly so much now like yourself, what with the weeks and weeks and months and years of school, where the education was dull in comparison with the empty yard and the imaginary friend among the trees.

    Holding model spaceships with a balled hand and indicating the stretch of the domestic yard around the house could take you from here, inspired by George Lucas’ famed films.  I favoured the Rebel Alliance.

    My concept of life after the Star Wars films galaxies reduced fewer resources, got myself and others out in the yard the same way when the other empty, pithy children were game.  It was always after the events of Episode VI for me, never previous to the destruction of the second Death Star and the corporeal Emperor, settled for good until, incongruently, 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker.

    At the point when I took a gander at the shores of Lake Erie, the lake took Princess Leia in her practical white Cloud City clothing that Lando thought to allow her to wear. She no longer tore such a beautiful image.  Like Anakin said about his disgust for sand in the Star Wars films of the prequel trilogy… It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.    Her dignity.  You’re free to like, follow, and additionally buy-in. It’s February tomorrow!

The Hunger Games Guide to Holiday Shopping

Notable actor Donald Sutherland received one of Canada’s highest honors, I read the other day, on Facebook, in an article in The Atlantic. Sutherland has a role in The Hunger Games. That’s the adaptation of the Suzanne Collins novel, about older adolescents who become tributes to patriarchal figures, for the sake of honor.

“Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor.”

Josh and Manda’s son, Mack, though older, is still approximately the age of the tributes, in the film. While we know he is committed to being his own man, I have heard that Mack has taken an interest in theatre, playing stage roles. In his first few months of uni, I saw a video Mack helped do.

I would enjoy buying a Christmas present, for when he returns in late December, but it is tough to think what the boy could want, given that I haven’t seen him in many moons. Was it last year I got him a few issues of comics? Yeah, I got him Star Wars comics.

I could do that again. It would be fun. Younger than Mack is Clara, who I would also like to buy a gift, and at her young age of nine, it will be far easier to get Santa’s approval.

Manda, Clara and Mack

Last winter, I remember, I went to that one beautiful mall in town, to get her a children’s book. A book clerk, who was a pretty young lady, helped me decide which book would be right for my niece, of all the titles in the children’s section of the store. It would be nice to get a number once in a while, wouldn’t you know?

Cough. There is no real Hunger Games shopping guide, but a few remarks can be drawn from the possibility that you’ve read the novel, or you would like to read it. I haven’t myself, so I am in the dark, but I watched the first half of the film, on Netflix, between yesterday morning and today.

Mom’s picture of their backyard after the unusual November snowfall

I’m interested, particularly now because when the trailer for The Rise of Skywalker went up on YouTube, the channel Geeks + Gamers threw away an observation that The Rise of Skywalker looks like The Hunger Games. Geeks + Gamers has dismissed the new Star Wars trilogy completely, while still bringing attention to Star Wars news, often with a very sneeringly critical attitude, but I was interested to hear what Jeremy says about the Rise of Skywalker trailer.

By the way, fans of the films, again this year went out in search of toy purchases, for Force Friday, the shopping day. The original Force Friday event was held on September 4, 2015. Remembering my interest, in a YouTube video, I saw a couple of Star Wars guys find an all-night WalMart and go in to see what toys they wanted.

In the WalMart in the video I watched, the staffers hadn’t yet constructed the display for the new Star Wars toys, and when they began to dig out the boxes of toys, the dozen or so people who were at the WalMart, at midnight, for Force Friday, competed with some heat for the most desirable action figures.

It is to be noted that the games, in the story, in The Hunger Games are part of a competitive honor, and I am sure that the coolest Christmas gifts are sold first and make the best impressions when they are bestowed. I take it, while not having read the Suzanne Collins novels, that patriarchs select tributes for their ability with the range of a bow, and it implies they are wanted for their strength, and also for their beauty. I don’t want to spoil too much more.

I hope the next few weeks are splendid for you, and that you’ll be back to see that all’s well. You’re welcome to like, to follow, and/or to subscribe to.

We’ll see you again during this festive time of year.

Why A Winter’s Night Will Change Your Life

The theatrical release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is two months away and today is Force Friday, a retail shopping day for Star Wars fans.

Photographer: Matt Moloney

The Rise of Skywalker is one of the biggest film releases of 2019, as you probably know. Movie director J. J. Abrams has returned, who in 2015 helmed Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The Force Awakens resumes after the original trilogy in 1977, 1980, and 1983, and the Star Wars prequel trilogy, in 1999, 2002, and 2005.

While this is familiar film history, what’s striking is that the Disney company, which now owns the brand, is launching Disney+ in November, when Star Wars will again be newly available. Disney+ is an offering of classic animated features, as well as reboots and the Avengers franchise. Both Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Wars: The Last Jedi were tremendous hits, but the box office failure of the expensive one-off Solo: A Star Wars Story diminished the profitability of the franchise for Disney, and the success of Disney+ would surely benefit from the continued success of Star Wars.

Disney+ will have much better chances of lasting if Star Wars is reinvigorated by another blockbuster film. There isn’t much question that Star Wars: The Last Jedi divided the fan base. Last Jedi director Rian Johnson dispelled some of the magic of Star Wars by reinventing Mark Hamill’s character of Luke as an old cynical hermit, rather than staying true to the bold Jedi warrior hero who defeats the Empire in Return of the Jedi.

Star Wars fans turned out for Mark Hamill’s reprise of Luke Skywalker after what happened in the original Star Wars trilogy, and instead, Luke in The Last Jedi nearly couldn’t be roused to continue the fight against the Dark Side of the Force.

YouTube’s Looper has tapped into a mega-spoiler: by their account, actor Harrison Ford has returned as Han Solo for a scene in The Rise of Skywalker. It’s understood that Ford had been reluctant to return to Star Wars without a movie script handling his character adequately, as the actor was absent from the cast of The Last Jedi.

There have been announcements about Star Wars that fans ate up. Prequels actor Ewan McGregor will be in the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi, not for The Rise of Skywalker, but a Disney+ series picking up after the events of the prequels.

Disney has also announced that Kevin Feige will do a Star Wars film. Feige’s involvement is good news for people who believe in Star Wars, as the Avengers films largely speak for themselves in terms of popularity and quality. With the promise of a bang-on Star Wars film after the Skywalker Saga, there is more reason to believe that Star Wars will again succeed, and if it does, a future with Disney+ is all the more likely.

The other spoiler from Looper is that, contrary to expectations, at least expectations I had, the Force will redeem the character of Kylo Ren when he gives up his allegiance to the Dark Side. Based on the love-hate intensity of their relationship, I held the impression that in The Rise of Skywalker Rey will defeat Kylo Ren and destroy him. The trailer for The Rise of Skywalker seems clear that the final battle will be highly personal.

If instead Kylo Ren changes his allegiance, it will make for a different future in Star Wars. Although audiences believe that the Light Side of the Force triumphs in Return of the Jedi, this time, in 2019, it is possible to think, the Light Side will, at last, have victory.

Photographer: Leeroy

If you have the opportunity to enjoy The Rise of Skywalker, I hope you have one of the best nights you have ever had in the company of Star Wars’ villains and heroes. It should be a wonderful occasion. I appreciate you very much thinking about it with me. Maybe I’ll see you again come wintertime as momentum for The Rise of Skywalker continues to build.

Summer Crowds for Disneyland’s Galaxy Edge Fail to Appear

I found a 2019 discussion of Disneyland in California and Walt Disney World in Florida

https://www.disneytouristblog.com/star-wars-land-crowd-predictions/

Even if summer crowds at Disneyland were on the “light” side, I have a hunch they have been reinvigorated by Rise of Skywalker on Christmas Day.

Since Star Wars: The Force Awakens, in 2015, I’ve realized it’s very interesting to look deeper into how Star Wars is going. The people who are dismayed by what has happened, The Fandom Menace, observe all manners of affairs characteristic of the unparalelled sci-fi film franchise, and I thought I would point attention here and now to Star Wars Land.

In the summer, Disney theme park enthusiasts were only beginning to look forward to the Rise of the Resistance attraction.

“It’s a trap!” – Admiral Ackbar Erik Bauersfeld dead: Voice of Admiral Ackbar in Star Wars dies at 93

Oliver Gettell 

The Geeks + Gamers vlog showing Star Wars fans embracing the Rise of the Resistance exhibit could well be read as an admission, finding Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker suspect, referring to the likelihood that the film will be wild.

As I understand it, Disney+ includes the existing ten Star Wars films, two directed by master film director George Lucas, seven by others, and the brief series The Mandalorian. If the franchise pales, Star Wars could be more of a hindrance for Disney rather than a gold mine. Never mind Annual Passholder blackouts.

Photographer: Park Troopers

I wrote a few words about a couple of leaks for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker that are kind of characteristic of what the Internet is doing in terms of how perceived discontentment with Star Wars will return to the same passion that other Star Wars have generated.

This is better than eighth grade arts classes. Thanks for reading. You’re welcome to “like,” follow, and/or comment.

How Halloween Resolutions are Making the World a Better Place

In What Ways Might We Find a Little Magic in Affirming Halloween?

Guy Fawkes Day, Bonfire Night and Firework Night, is a yearly remembrance on 5 November, in the United Kingdom. I was there twenty years ago, in 1999, and the festivities I saw that fifth of November delighted me. I drifted among village people carrying an effigy of the infamous Guy Fawkes in procession and then setting him ablaze, burned.

He had been a traitor. Here, back in Canada, on Halloween, 31 October, of course, I get a little remorseful that I have let some fine moments pass by since, without being in the same kind of high spirit that night in the English village I was visiting.

Years later, I continue to enjoy seeing the leaves change colour, and I like seeing candy on store shelves, and spooky house decorations. I always think I could get myself a few costume elements–maybe this year will be the year I make good on my promise. I experience occasional brief pangs of regret for having spent years with less beauty and sensation as I would have liked, in my youth.

Even with as much opportunity as we have in the West, fiscal and personal and soul-satisfying, too, the calendar pages keep turning. There could be so much in the world that invigorates. I can think of one example in particular.

On the off chance that you’re visiting Iceland in winter, you are most likely wanting to see the Northern Lights, or the aurora borealis. The Northern Lights can be seen from pre-winter to spring, with the most obvious opportunity being during the nighttimes of the winter months.

Photographer: Hunter Bryant

I think of a kind of magic there could be, viewing a sky like that. If I think of seeing that, but never, I can start to feel sad. If you have the calling, you may need to go somewhere like that, to feel as though you have lived properly.

Where I live, we enjoy Halloween candy and costumes. Halloween is not officially celebrated in Iceland, so it can be thought of a blessing that in this culture, in Canada, we celebrate Halloween, Americanized Halloween. In the United Kingdom, individuals hold Halloween parties where they take on the appearance of phantoms, skeletons or other frightening figure. In that respect, Canada’s the same as there.

I tweet occasional content that I think could be valuable for the right reader, lots of it trending and about my life and yours. If you want to share in these riches, click me up at https://twitter.com/findingenvirons

Happy autumn!

Why Our World Would End If A Daft Misconception Disappeared

Were the pyramids built by slaves?

No. As the Pyramids are understood by many, trembling and fearful ranks of Egyptian slave men pushed and hauled giant blocks to mark tremendous points of energy on Earth, triangle-shaped tombs for departed leaders. We can imagine slave girls in leather brassieres and skirts of bird-feather and twine, Egyptian beauties shimmering with flesh soaked by the never-shrinking sun, drunk on wine, a vision of an apparatus with no more technology than what could float a raft in the river or raise a shelter in the vast desert.

All false, and hung on a myth that keeps humans organizing themselves like a slave assembly, where all power and competence are enacted as though by the living hand of God–it is a design conceived with the Pharaohs’ tombs in the mind’s eye.

Photographer: The Lazy Artist Gallery

As Ancient Egypt exerted its dominance, so too did reigning attitudes about a solidarity of people which became absolutely entrenched by the Pyramid’s sway, infiltrating the essence of the civilized world, as many understand it, an effort of many slaves.

The most earnest high school history teacher, the librarian who holds a catalog of records in disruptively accurate bookshelves, the Egyptian fantasist with his movie monster posters; all three present the mythology that the Pyramids were built with an outpouring of sweat and single-mindedness, the impossible, expansive tombs built from heavy rocks in cubes, hoisted by rope and ancient pulleys. Into the shape of three-dimensional Pyramids were constructed elaborate tombs, laid for departed Pharaohs of renown. Gizeh is the best-known.

It is the same will to organization and legacy throughout the Western world in the twenty-first century, where gentlemen in running shoes or luxury cars or perhaps dining in a capacity to manage what others might characterize as savage, to have plates and pints brought round by pleasant servers, the bosom and the heart. Gizeh’s tomb marked the first wine-and-dine.

Where will it end? As long as there are workers who are unsung, the dominion of the ancient Pharaohs will maintain its control. Update your browser.

The above is intended as an aside only. The International Day of Charity is observed annually on 5 September.