Just emotional all around. I got emotional seeing the Obamas enter. (Also, Michelle won Best Dressed.) I got emotional seeing Officer Eugene Goodman announced, as he was escorting Kamala Harris as she entered. I got emotional seeing Joe and Dr. Jill. And then once they were sworn in the tears started coming.
I hope this is the dawn of a better time in this country, after the last four years under a wannabe authoritarian. I hope the Democrats can do the big stuff while they have the control of the House, the Senate, and the Executive branch.
But for today, I'll leave with National Youth Poet Laureate of 2017, Amanda Gorman.
Today is the day that Javicia Leslie dons the cowl as Batwoman.
There have been episodes or short arcs of someone becoming the Green Arrow and the Flash, but this is the first time in superhero television that there is going to be a full on handing off of the mantle. This happens regularly for a lot of comic book characters, especially in DC that are not the trinity of Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman, barring one of those small arcs in Batman's case. So, to finally see it happen in television is great. Normally when we get someone new to play a hero, it's a full on reboot years later. We did have Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, but it didn't feel like a handing off of a mantle because of all the alternate universe spider people like Peter B. Parker and Spider-Gwen alongside Miles. And it's a movie, so it's not a long-term relationship that we have with Miles that we had with Kate Kane and that we will have with Ryan Wilder, the new Batwoman.
And it'll be interesting to see the new relationships that form with all of the returning characters to Ryan Wilder, especially because all but one of the characters were Kate's family and her first love. So to see who they react to losing her and having someone new put on the cowl and become the figurehead of this operation.
But I'm optimistic that the show can handle it. When Batwoman is on its game, it's amazing. And with Alice as the main antagonist, it has one of the most interesting villains on superhero television. And they really know and understand the relationships characters have with each other, so I'm certain they'll know how to position Ryan into this motley crew of people, and I can't wait to see how it all shakes out.
I'm not typically a breakfast eater, so I don't have breakfast foods a lot. And I love breakfast foods. Pancakes. Belgian Waffles. Scrambled eggs that aren't burnt. Cereal. The rare fancy brunch at Bonefish where I get surf n' turf eggs benedict that is *chef's kiss*.
So I decided to have breakfast for dinner.
A week ago I had pancakes. Tonight, I decided to make myself some scrambled eggs for dinner, and that was a great decision. I don't have these foods often, and on top of that, it's fun to have breakfast for dinner! It feels like you're breaking a rule but you're not, because who cares what you eat for dinner? It makes me happy. And I got a waffle maker for Christmas so I'm definitely gonna be breaking that out more often.
So my sister came over yesterday for food and good vibes, and a movie, and we settled on Almost Famous, because somehow I was the only one in my family who had never seen it. The one who is obsessed and in love with the music of the '70s, especially rock music of the 70s, had never seen Almost Famous. I don't know how that happened. It was always one of those movies that I just never got around to, always on the list of older films to check off.
I'm so glad I finally watched it. It was just amazing, I don't know what else to say.
Because I love the '70s so much, I've often wondered what it would have been like and what I would have been like if I had been in my teens and early 20s during that decade. To be able to see some of these artists live. To remember the first time I listened to their albums, to go to the record store to buy the first printing of Tapestry or Rumours. Not to mention the fashion. Oh my god, the shoes. I want all of it.
I know people usually announce their New Year's Resolutions on New Year's Day, but I wanted to think deeply about mine. Read: I forgot people do this until I started writing this yesterday and thought it would make a great journal entry on my blog. But also, I think after the hell of 2020, we should really think about what we can reasonably do to make 2021 a better year.
Read more books
Last year I set what seemed to be an achievable goal of 20 books. At the rate of reading I was doing at the time, I felt I could feasibly do it. Then in August I stopped reading. So this year I set a goal of 10 books, with the hope I'll go above and beyond. And I've got my goodreads to keep track of my progress.
Eat more fruits & vegetables
I have texture issues with foods, which mainly comes into play with fruits and veggies. I know in order to be healthy you have to have your three servings a day, so I'm going to try to find fruits and veggies that I won't get tired of to get my servings in.
Exercise
Once it gets to walking weather this will be easier to accomplish, but I do like to walk to places and not take any kind of transportation so we'll see if I do any other forms of exercising. I am also purposely not setting an exercise goal, because unlike books, there is no endpoint, so I'm just going to take it day by day.
Yeah, basic resolutions. But they're pretty reasonable things for me to accomplish that I also need to do. And also blog more, because I have this site, might as well do things with it.
2020 in movies is always gonna be remembered as a weird year. The coronavirus shut everything down for a bit, so a good chuck of movies that were coming out in the winter and spring were postponed. And I don’t have the money to get every movie I wanted to see on VOD, so this is what I could watch.
What a year it has been. I spent a lot of it watching new and new-to-me television to get through it. It's a mix of prestige dramatic television, genre fare, and the best laughs you can find, and, in some cases, all of the above.
Here's the best of what I watched, in alphabetical order.
And thus ends one of the worst years of all time. I don't even know what else there is to say. I know every year lately we've been saying "20xx was the absolute worst", but it's true of 2020.
I hope with our new President, Veep, and administration, we'll actually be able to get out of the whole we've been in as a country this last year and get back to our regularly scheduled lives.
A toast to 2021, may you bring an end to this horrid year and bring us into the Roaring 20's Redux we were hoping for this time last year.
