Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, Lena's Seafood, Coca-Cola Orange Cream, Blue Spring State Park, Angelina's Diner & Orlando Colon

My apologies for posting this hours later than planned; this weekend was best described as “blah” and best left forgotten.

Yes, there's plenty for me to mention today so let's get going immediately. Around my birthday (February 22^nd; I am now 44!) one night was spent w/ family, which was nice. The big day itself, the evening was spent at a wrestling show, around 7 miles south of where I live, at the Showcase of Citrus. Yes, it was outdoors when the temperature was perhaps not even 60 degrees. That was OK; some real nitpicks could be made and I would have in the old days where I had a page for reviewing wrestling shows, which was a real source of drama but let's not dwell on that. What I'm saying is that no nitpicks will be made and thankfully it was not like modern wrestling where everything is overly choreographed and comes off as fake, not to mention a real overkill of everything. The main event featured Orlando Colon, i.e. Epico Colon for those that watched WWE from 2011 through 2019... which I certainly did not.

A family friend was down here for almost a week, as they've done for the past several years now. It is always nice seeing them; one Friday was an epic day as several locations were visited. Blue Spring State Park was first; it is a scenic location even without the manatees that congregate during the winter months to the warm water. However, they were present and it was a thrill to see a number of them out in the wild. Then, onto Daytona Beach to connect with A1A, the highway right beside the beach; we were on it right up to St. Augustine, with a stop in Ormond Beach at a random local eatery known as Angelina's Diner. Someone wanted to eat at a diner so that was the first one spotted. Fortunately, that establishment had great food.

In St. Augustine, the old downtown area was visited, along with the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument. It was a masonry fort built by the Spanish in the late 17^th century; there are people and signs which explained the great history of the fort and how it was occupied by different peoples throughout the centuries. On the way back, a rural seafood dive to the east of Silver Springs was visited; Lena's Seafood was visited by my dad before and while it is a popular place which is like most restaurants post-COVID in lacking enough staffing, otherwise does make tasty food and has the benefit of presenting quite the cross-section of white people, including individuals covered w/ tattoos.

Otherwise, some days have been better than others yet overall I can't complain. When I can drink new drinks like Coca-Cola Orange Cream & Sunkist's Blood Orange Raspberry and both “are bangers” (to speak like “the kids”) that sometimes is enough to satisfy me. Some places and restaurants have been visited for the first time in ages; this includes a Red Robin. One was not that far from me but the lease ended and the dissolution between the chain and the building was a rather messy one. Thankfully-at least where I visited-they still have decent food.

Not too much else for me to say—at least I don't recall needing to mention anything interesting. Oh, one day there was a tornado that landed in an Orlando suburb but that wasn't anywhere near me. Sometime in April, I will return.

Conclave, Mickey 17, Black Bag, & Airing My Grievances

As sometimes happens, this will be a two-parter, the second half coming around this time tomorrow. I will mention the negative experiences I’ve had then the trio of theatrical pictures I’ve seen since the last time, one of which I didn’t really like.

On the 7^th of this month, the plan for the evening was to visit the food trucks that are in downtown Clermont, an activity that’s been done on several occasions previously. Now, parking has always been an issue and it’s only become worse as of late. On the evening of the 7^th, what I discovered was that some mental giant made the problem worse—I could write for paragraphs about it but I’ll be brief instead. This included requiring to pay to park in certain areas! What, now I need to get there a long time before the event stars to assure that a spot less than a mile away could be had for free? I said, “to heck with that!” (only, the phrase was stronger than that) and went to a fast food place instead for dinner. As nice as the downtown of my city is, this and other reasons are why I rarely visit it… there isn’t the mood to visit that area again anytime soon.

To air another grievance, recently I returned to a Dave’s Hot Chicken for the first time in months. Don’t visit the location in Altamonte Springs, which I’ve been to before. Perhaps never again! The service was bad and somehow, they found a way to create a bad chocolate milkshake! I didn’t know such a thing was possible; if it has way too much syrup, then it will be no good.

On a lighter note, two of the three films on the big screen I really enjoyed. Conclave is wacky because the format was of a political drama that you’d see in the 70’s, but the subject was “Cardinals feuding with each other over the election of a new Pope.” The plot was full of dialogue but that was no problem with me. The story becomes far-fetched by the end but I was still invested. Thus, it was a movie I highly recommend.

Black Bag is a spy thriller which is not about James Bond antics or action scenes. Rather, it’s another movie centered around dialogue; spy Michael Fassbender thinks that his spy wife Cate Blanchett is involved in something nefarious-that is a problem as they actually have a strong marriage. Naturally, the truth is quite a bit more complicated than that. The movie felt mature & retro, was nicely-acted and had an awesome jazzy score. Henceforth, it’s another film I recommend.

Unfortunately, Mickey 17 was one I didn’t care for; many do, but I didn’t. Bong Joon Ho is hit or miss with me. His Korean movies The Host and especially Parasite are well worth seeing, IMO. However, his Snowpiercer was a shrill, irritating, obvious satire about how bad capitalism is, a constant refrain from the director. Sadly, Mickey 17 was also a shrill, irritating, obvious satire about how bad capitalism is. The fact that the focus turned out to be on (far left) Mark Ruffalo doing an OBVIOUS Trump impersonation was unfortunate. I won’t state my political opinions here; what I can say is that especially now, it’d be nice to forget about politics and all the turmoil while watching a film. Instead, it seems like Hollywood likes making divisive movies in recent years; I do get why “the right” has some complaints about that.

As for Mickey 17, despite the best efforts of Robert Pattison and supporting character Anamaria Vartolomei (who showed up for like 20 minutes and seemed like a pivotal role… only for her to vanish completely until the ending), the movie started off fine then became worse and worse into a truly awful final 20 or 30 minutes before end credits. It committed many modern movie sins, from “constant F-bombs” to “not knowing when to end.” Unfortunate. No one seems to know why some dude was in a PIGEON costume for a few scenes, not even the movie’s supporters!

Fortunately, when I return tomorrow, plenty of positive moments will be discussed, from my birthday to a day trip done with Dad and a family friend to St. Augustine.