Saturday, March 30, 2019

MotM Special: Endgame


I may not be devoting all of my time and effort to covering movies – bad, good or otherwise – these days, but that doesn’t mean I stopped loving them. So once a month, I’ll spread a little bit of that love…




Ha ha no, not that Endgame.

After years and years of covering bad films, I woke up the other day to discover that the end game had found me. There it was, just sitting there among my Recommendations on YouTube, without a care in the world. 

What had taken me about 12 years of movie-watching blood, sweat and tears, Wisecrack knocked out in about 12 minutes.

(Okay, clearly the Wisecrack folks put the hellova lot more time than 12 minutes into their videos, but the video is only 12 minutes long so just go with it.)

Over the course of those 12 minutes, the folks at Wisecrack eloquently make the same argument I’ve been making for years – that there’s something beautiful in bad movies – and they make their case so definitively that I am both impressed and very, very bitter.

So check out this video by Wisecrack (as a side note, you should generally check out videos by Wisecrack anyway), and you too can get a bit of an understanding of why I spent so many years tilting at windmills.




Thursday, March 28, 2019

Adventures in Leaving the House: Winter Brooding Edition


I work from home. I’ll never complain because there are more advantages to that arrangement than I can even count, but there is one down-side: I don’t get out much. So on those occasions where I do leave the house to visit people or get away for the weekend or pick up a loaf of bread, it opens the door for



Destination: Lake Placid, NY


I recently spent a long weekend in Lake Placid with my better half and some friends, staying in an Airbnb for the ECAC Men’s Hockey Championship tournament. Below is a very lightly edited version of the entries I left in the apartment’s guest journal.


3/22/19

Traveler's Tip: If the store or dwelling
doesn't have a wooden bear in front,
you're not in the Adirondacks.
Snowfall suffocates the land, ignorant of the fact that the calendar says it’s spring. Maybe such things are ignored in the Adirondacks? My companions tell me that this place is surrounded by mountains – a sight to behold – but you wouldn’t know it today by the way the relentless snow shower obscures everything around us. As we bundle up to take on the elements (and watch the ECAC semi-finals), we can’t help but wonder: Will it ever be warm again?

Will it ever be warm again?

(At least it’s warm in the apartment. This place is cozy and clean.)



3/23/19

The snow continues. It is never-ending.

We sip our tea and try to think back to a time known as summer. Summer! I can just barely recall the warmth of the sun on my face, the sounds of children playing, the smell of suntan lotion and grilled hot dogs. Now those things are but a shadow of a memory, like something passed down in legend.
Soon we will venture out into the stark, merciless cold. Cold, like the idea that Cornell might win tonight’s ECAC Championship. Damn you, Cornell. Damn you to hell.



3/24/19

We were out numbing ourselves at microbreweries and wine-tastings when, like a miracle, it all ended. The snow subsided, the clouds cleared, and winter’s icy hand of death finally, finally loosened its grip.

And behold! There are mountains out there! Whiteface Mountain loomed over us like a stern parent, but those blue skies! It was like something out of a picture book. 

Above: Mountains that were not at all visible 24 hours prior.


I had fully expected to add another entry yesterday, one full of looming dread. But no: We stayed out on the impossibly sunny streets of Lake Placid all day, shopping, frolicking and making merry. My love bought a fur Cossack hat, which looks quite fetching on her. I bought chocolate-covered espresso beans and ate too many of them. It was a grand time.

To cap off the day, it was back to the Herb Brooks Arena where, after an excellent game, the Clarkson Helmet Heads defeated the dirty, damned Cornell Big Red Entitlement with a score of 3-2 in overtime. Our throats sore from cheering and our faces aglow with delight, I began to dare to think for the first time in a while that maybe, just maybe, this isn’t the darkest timeline after all.

(Also, this place was perfect for us for the weekend, thank you.)
 



First Post: The Story So Far

Hallo. I’m Scot Nolan, though you might know me from reviewing and discussing bad movies over the past ten years as “Nolahn.” But this ...