Before I get to my latest frustrations with Apple...

One of my favorite movie franchises is Kingsman. It's James Bond films for a new age and the first one was sublimely good. Smart, funny, thrilling... it had it all. The second movie faltered quite a lot, but was still good entertainment. Now there's a prequel called The King's Man which, despite the shitty kerning on the title logo, looks very good indeed. And now a trailer has landed...

I talked about the logo here... but this is what's so horrific to design-minded people...

But anyway...

Apple has built a business around making computers easier and more seamless to use than other computer manufacturers. "It just works" is the mantra that they bash you over the head with over and over again. And that's a pretty compelling reason to get a Mac, and a very cool perk which comes from owning one.

Until it isn't.

That's when it makes you want to hop a flight to Cupertino and start throat-punching people.

My photo cataloging software is Adobe Lightroom. The full-resolution original photos themselves are stored on my NAS file server, but Lightroom keeps a catalog of thumbnails on your local drive to speed things up. It's a pretty great system which allows me to have terabytes of photos... but only have to keep around 100MB on my local hard drive.

Last night I decided to install Lightroom on Lemon (my new iMac). I was originally just going to AirDrop my catalog files from my MacBook Pro to Lemon. But since the MacBook Pro doesn't have WiFi 6, it was going to take nearly an hour to copy. No thanks. Instead I grabbed the USB-C power cable off my MacBook Pro charger and thought I'd just put the laptop into "Target Disk Mode" which turns it into a big hard drive.

Easy, right?

Not really. I fired up the MacBook Pro in "Target Disk Mode" and it wouldn't mount. For whatever reason, Lemon couldn't see it.

What the hell?

A quick Google search reveals that Macs can, in fact, do "Target Disk Mode" over USB-C... but only if you use a special designated Firewire cable.

And the cable Apple includes with their pricey charging brick... isn't.

This meant I had to dig through a big box of cables until I found a USB-C that was Firewire compatible. Which is tough because manufacturers other than Apple don't seem to mark their cables with a little thunderbolt logo. Eventually I found one in an old hard drive box that had a Firewire logo on the tag that tied it together. I plugged it into my MacBook Pro in "Target Disk Mode" and the hard drive came up.

Eventually.

It took several moments. It started working just as I was going to unplug the thing.

So surely it should be easy now, right?

Lord, no.

Using the MacOS Finder to copy the Lightroom catalog files took frickin' forever because it was stuck on "Preparing to Copy"...

Time to install ChronoSync to see if my backup software would go any faster.

The answer is yes and no.

Yes it was faster to initiate the copy... but the copy itself? It never went over 70MB/second. Even though the Firewire 3 port on my MacBook Pro and Thunderbolt 4 port on Lemon can (theoretically) transfer 40GB/second. Yes, you read that right... I'm getting less than 70 MEGAbytes a second when I should be getting 40 GIGAbytes a second.

I mean, yeah it was faster over cable... 20 minutes instead of an hour via WiFi... but still, this is really shitty. Factoring in the 30 minutes it took for me to get "Target Disk Mode" working, and I ended up saving a whopping 10 minutes over just AirDropping the stupid thing over WiFi.

So... uh huh... somebody at 1 Infinite Loop needs a throat punch. Bad.

I'm not ruling out that it was the cable that was the limiting factor, but a hardwire transfer of any kind that can only sustain 70MB/second transfer is pathetic and embarrassing.

But oh well. Despite the monumental waste of time, Adobe Lightroom is functioning flawlessly... and it positively flies on the M1 chip in my iMac thanks to Adobe investing the time to make it run natively on the hardware. It really is astounding to contrast and compare using the software on my MacBook Pro vs. my decidedly non-Pro, consumer-model iMac.

There's good news though. It only took Lemon 6 minutes to backup the new data to the attached Time Machine Thunderbolt 3 SSD backup drive. Much more inline with my expectations of how long it should have taken to get the data to be transferred to Lemon in the first place.

   
Ugh. Not this shit again.

UPDATE: Well, wow. This just made my Monday suck a magnatude less!

Holy crap! I had no idea that Doctor Strange was going to be such a big part of the movie! Thrilled with it!

COVID may be spiking again, but you're never really alone when stuck at home... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Air! When I saw this Emirates commercial, I assumed it was made with computer effects...

But NOPE!

I would crap myself to death if I even attempted this.

   
• FINALLY! Netflix has finally allowed us to disable the annoying as shit "ARE YOU STILL WATCHING" screens that pop up. Not sure if it's just for the current session or not (I'm assuming so), but I'll take what I can get. This is monumentally stupid. IF I WEREN'T STILL WATCHING, WHY WOULD BE TELEVISION BE ON?!?

The lapse in logic just boggles the mind.

   
• CODA! Apple's original film, CODA (Children of Deaf Adults) is fantastic, and you should go watch it immediately...

As if Ted Lasso wasn't reason enough to subscribe to AppleTV+

   
• Brand Management. Well, this is heartbreaking...

It's frickin' 2021. Who gives a shit what another person's sexuality is? IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU! And the idea that you can't hang out with LGBTQ persons because it will "affect your brand?" How does that even make sense to rational-thinking humans? But here we are.

   
• WANG! There are few things I love more than discovering a new comedian that's hilarious in all the right ways and somebody I hadn't heard of before... Phil Wang's new special Philly Philly Wang Wang on Netflix is EXACTLY THAT...

Highly recommended.

   
• Modern! I read reviews that made me take a pass on Modern Love... but then I heard somebody talking about how much they are enjoying the second season and decided to give it a try. I really like this one. The first season was wonderful, and the first episode of the second is my favorite yet...

Worth a look if you have Amazon Prime and have a box of Kleenex available.

   
• Setting Sail! The show is good... and the theme song is really good...

It's Love, Victor all over again!

   
And now back to your regularly-scheduled pandemic.

I may be late to post, but that won't stop the bullets... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Squad! The Suicide Squad was bloody good. After the abomination that was Wonder Woman '84 and whatever the fuck Zack Snyder's shitty "movies" were supposed to be... I had given up hope that we'd ever see another good DC Comics film. Alas, the person I most wanted to survive didn't, and the person I most wanted to die didn't. And the person I knew wouldn't be killed (predictably) survived...

Interestingly enough, I actually think this was a better film than either of the Guardian of the Galaxy flicks, and I *loved* those. So good on you, James Gunn! 10 out of 10. Exactly what we needed out of a Suicide Squad film... and the big bad was exactly what they needed to be to close out the film. Would not be mad if Gunn wanted to give us another one!

   
• Kindness! You guys. YOU GUYS...

I love seeing things like this!

   
• Italicized! Yeah, italics are important, yo...

Thanks to texting and Facebook and the like, italics are a lost art. As is the understood meaning of what we're trying to say.

   
• Walking! Hey... don't be a hater...

This guy's TikTok is seriously funny.

   
• Doggo! I once joked about the saying "all men are dogs" because that's clearly a disservice to doggos. And promptly got banned from Facebook for 24 hours. And then there's this...

Uh huh. Pretty much sums it up.

   
• Huh?! This is perfect...

Those puppies better get all that or they're going to revolt!

   
• Destroyer of Lives! When I was prescribed oxycontin, it was a serious consideration made by my doctor. At the time I was getting 2 or 3 kidney stones a year. After I had an excruciating kidney stone attack on an airplane which resulted in my going to the hospital on a layover, my doctor said that he understands I travel a lot and doesn't want me to be screaming in agony at 30,000 feet where nothing can be done. So he pulled out the prescription pad. THEN he gave me a 15 minute lecture on the dangers of using oxycontin, explained how it should only be used as a last resort in emergency situations, and how easy it is to develop a life-destroying addiction to it. Hence scaring the shit out of me, and guaranteeing that I would use it rarely and in only the most dire circumstances (like when I was hit by a van in the South of France and ended up flying home with cracked ribs). The three times I've used it was three times I was in so much pain that it felt like I would die without relief. And that's how it should be used. But, thanks to the heinous developers of the drug... The Sackler Family... that's NOT how it was sold. It was passed out like candy and pushed on doctors to prescribe in cases when it absolutely shouldn't have been. Despite knowing of the dangers, The Sacklers gleefully and illegally pushed its use to the absolute maximum and destroyed lives in exchange for billions of dollars. Then admitted it and became a family of felons. Now there's a debate going on as to how many of those billions they should have to give back to clean up the mess they made. My answer? Every damn dollar. But that's not how it's going to go. Wealth protects itself, and that's how it's always worked. Don't like the justice you're being dealt? Just buy your own justice! That's America for you! Billionaires get all the breaks... everyday Americans rarely do. Just try to keep your rage intact when you watch this. Just try...

If you can, you're a better person than I am.

   
And that's all the bullets I got. I'm spent, yo.

I'm just going to get this out of the way... I am a fan of David Lynch's Dune movie. The novel itself is so vast, nuanced, and complicated that a film adaptation is a tough go of it... no matter who you are. So if you can't have a complete representation of the source material, you might as well hire a visionary director like David Lynch to put his unique take on the material. As a fan of David Lynch, I got exactly what I was expecting from the movie and have watched it dozens of times. If I have a critique, it's that Paul and Chani are too old. Part of what makes the story so good is that they start out as kids.

And here comes Denis Villeneuve with his take.

Talk about a visionary director.

What he did with Arrival and, even more spectacularly... Blade Runner 2049... is a take that I am very interested in seeing applied to Dune. And, to his credit, he's already got off on the right foot with his remarkable casting. Everybody is sublimely perfect, and the fact that Paul (Timothée Chalamet) and Chani (Zendaya) are kids is just icing on the cake.

My favorite bit of casting, however, is Stephen McKinley Henderson as Thufir Hawat. But we'll get to that in a minute. Because a new trailer just dropped for the movie (coming in October to theaters and HBO Max)...

Interesting to note that, once again, Thufir Hawat is almost entirely absent. The only noticeable look is from one shot where he's not even the focus...

He was barely noticeable in the first trailer either. All we got was this...

And when the Dune character posters were dropped last week? No Thufir... at first! Couldn't be found in any of the news stories I saw. Eventually I found his poster though, so that was a happy discovery...

Now, in the books, Thufir Hawat is a major character. As Mentat to the House Atreides and one of Paul's teachers he's important. Then, later on, he ends up being critical... but not as a major character. Since Villeneuve has (wisely) split the first Dune novel into two parts, maybe he is trying to keep Thufir under wraps so he can be featured in the sequel movie? I guess that could be an explanation, though I'd argue that the first movie should be where he's most important.

My fear, of course, is that Thufir has been shoved to the background and doesn't have enough of a contribution to the film to be featured. Which would be a darn shame.

We don't even know if a sequel is going to happen. Dune is a tough sell to begin with... and with the pandemic and an uncertain future for theaters, expensive projects like this will be the first to get dropped. Unless something crazy happens and the movie explodes acorss the world.

But anyway... could not possibly be more excited for October. Denis Villeneuve will absolutely make the movie worth watching... good or bad... successful or unsuccessful... so I will absolutely be renewing my HBO subscription to see it.

On December 23rd, 2015 I was more tired than I had ever been.

My mother was declining ever faster into dementia and taking care of her was becoming a full-time job. A full-time job that I was trying to balance with my actual full-time job. I had bought a house where I could better take care of her, and was mired in month two of renovating it so that it was safe for her to live in. Christmas was coming in two days. The new mattresses I ordered were being delivered, but were running late. There were a million things that all needed doing and I was struggling to juggle everything.

Then I got a call from the nursing home that my grandmother didn't have much time left.

She had been slipping away little by little all week and I had increased my visits from twice a week... to daily... to multiple times a day once she stopped eating over the weekend. At that point there was nothing I could do except make sure that she wasn't suffering, so that's what I did. She meant the world to me, and I was grateful that I was in a position where I could look out for her. When I stopped by on my way to work that morning she was resting comfortably thanks to the morphine that was being regularly administered. I thought it was going to be a day just like the day before.

And it was.

Until it wasn't.

After I got the call I dropped everything and ran to the nursing home. There I met with the hospice nurse who said that the staff should have explained that she was in her last stages, yes, but it could be hours yet before she passed. She assured me that it was safe for me to go back to work and that she would call if grandma started to pass.

After work I checked in on mom. Then ran back to check on grandma. Then continued going back and forth. Once mom had settled in for the night, I turned on all the security cameras and decided I'd spend the night at the nursing home and keep tabs on mom remotely.

I was all alone.

As I had been all along.

Nobody would be helping me keep watch. Nobody ever helped. Nobody wanted to be there at the end. Not even me. Because watching somebody you love die is tough. But there was no way I'd be leaving her alone. She would never have left me alone.

So it was just me holding my grandmother's hand and talking to her as she lay slowly fading away.

Earlier that month a friend had known I was struggling and forwarded me an article from Esquire titled The Friend. It's about a guy who's young wife was dying from cancer and how a friend moved in for two years to help him take care of his wife and two daughters. It was a beautiful and touching story that was meant to bring me comfort. But all I could think about was how the author of the article had a friend willing to help but I had nobody.

Which begs the question... How can life have a happy ending when you're dead at the end of it?

It wasn't until years later that I happened across the article again while preparing for my mom's death that I managed to truly appreciate it. Even though I was all alone. Again. I read the article so many times that I practically had it memorized. That's how much it meant to me.

Needless to say, I was a little excited when I read that the article was being made into a movie...

And this past weekend I finally watched it because it was free with Amazon Prime.

And it was fantastic. Really did the original article justice, which was surprising to me for some reason. And the performances were better than you could even hope for.

Fast-forward to tonight.

Gwendoline Christie has a small part in Our Friend. It's wonderful. And it's haunted me ever since I saw the movie. So I pulled it up on Amazon Prime so I could rewatch her scenes.

I knew I'd be watching the movie again... but I also knew that I couldn't watch it again right away. It's just too exhausting. But here I am. Turns out it was impossible to just watch one small part of it without being compelled to watch the whole thing all over again.

So, yeah, if you've got Amazon Prime, it's worth a look.

After being delayed over a year... Black Widow is finally here!

Well, I say "over a year" but it's actually more like eleven years because I've been waiting for a solo movie ever since the character first appeared in Iron Man 2 back in May of 2010. Instead she appeared in just about every other character's movie without getting her own. At least until now.

No, I did not go to a theater to watch it. I paid $30 to watch it at home, which is something I was thrilled to do. I would never step foot in a movie theater ever again if it was the option. Partly because I've got a great big-screen TV and sound-system at home... but mostly because I hate sitting in a theater with a bunch of selfish, inconsiderate assholes who feel the need to light up the theater with their cell phones, talk, and exist while I'm trying to concentrate on the movie. And, yes, I will undoubtedly buy the film on iTunes when it's released as well. Though it sure would be nice if Premiere Access customers got a bit of a discount on it! I love Marvel Studios movies, watch them over and over again, so I buy them.

As a non-spoilery review, about all I can say is that I liked it quite a lot. Don't know that I'd go so far as to say I loved it, because Natasha did get a little short-changed in her own film... but it was darn entertaining and continues Marvel's unfathomable streak of awesome movies...

Since Black Widow is... well... dead... in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (thanks to Avengers: Infinity War), they pretty much had no choice but to go back in time. Conveniently, there's a period after Captain America: Civil War where some of the characters are on the run for violating the Sokovia Accords, and that's when Black Widow is set. The story, in a nutshell, is that Natasha has to confront her past which is having a scary relevance to what's happening in her present (which is our past). Along the way we meet her former "family" of spies, including her father (David Harbor), mother (Rachel Weisz), and sister (Florence Pugh). All of whom are likely not done in the MCU.

So... yeah. Kudos to Marvel for not only finally giving Black Widow a film of her own... but for investing enough money to make it really cool as well.

I already watched the movie once. I am going to watch it again right now and live-blog it as I go. You can read that (along with other thoughts) in a spoiler-filled extended entry...

Instead of cable, I subscribe to a lot of streaming services. I pay money to streaming services in order to watch the content that they offer. And with all of them I get what I pay for. All of them except one. Paramount+ rarely... rarely... allows me to watch the content I pay for.

Old shows will NEVER stream. Want to watch an old season of Ink Master or a Comedy Central Roast? Tough shit. It will not happen. Not on my GoogleTV. Not on my AppleTV. Not on my iPhone. Not on my iPad. Not on my Mac. Nowhere. You either get a spinning wheel that never ends... or you get told to disable cookie blocking and other stupid shit that I don't have on in the first place.

Newer shows will sometimes stream. Sometimes. Not always... but sometimes. Can't stream a single fucking minute of Drag Race All Stars for some reason... but the last episode of Magnum P.I. streams fine. It makes no sense. And when you complain to Paramount+??? They don't give a fuck. They have their money, so why should they? They blame my AppleTV. They blame my internet. They blame my Mac. I've reset my AppleTV so many times that I'm surprised it still works because that's what they tell you to do. Nothing ever works. Paramout+ blames EVERYTHING EXCEPT THEMSELVES because that would mean they have to do something.

It doesn't matter that EVERY OTHER FUCKING SERVICE I SUBSCRIBE TO WORKS WITHOUT INCIDENT... with Paramount+, it's my fault somehow.

Look. I want to pay for the shows I watch. I want to support the actors and directors and writers and networks which are producing the shows and movies I want to see. But Paramount+ has some kind of stupid tracking or protection or other stupid shit which prevents me from paying for what I want to see. As usual, PAYING CUSTOMERS get 100% fucked in an attempt to punish pirates... who are only ever minorly inconvenienced, because they are always smarter and always a step ahead.

Well, lesson learned. Since Paramount+ won’t lift a fucking finger to give me what I’m paying for, I guess I ask for my money back and just don’t watch their shit anymore. I’ll just keep buying series I want to watch directly from iTunes (Like Magnum P.I.) and fuck the rest. There’s plenty of other content out there to occupy my time, and I’m not going to keep jumping through hoops or begging Paramount+ to actually give me what I’m paying for when it never works.

Happy 4th, my fellow Americans! Please let the sun go down on me, because the heat is just beyond comfortable right now... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Old is New! HEADLINE: Charlize Theron Says Old Guard Sequel Script Complete, Filming to Begin Early Next Year. My favorite movie of 2020, by a wide margin, was The Old Guard, and I've been dying for a sequel... and here it comes! My hope is that Charlize can also get a sequel to Atomic Blonde happening, because that remains another favorite.

   
• Comedy! This is the funniest joke I've heard in a minute...

This is the third or fourth comedian I've never heard of popping up on TikTok and making me an instant fan.

   
• Fast! Look, I'm the last person who is going to say that the Fast & Furious movies are anything akin to high art... sometimes the acting is downright atrocious. But that's not why I love these films. That's not why ANYBODY loves these films. We love them because they are outrageously entertaining. Though I maintain that the pinnacle of F&F movies was Fast Five, which is about as good as a popcorn movie gets. And now this. I think I love them even more!

   
• No Tomorrow! I am more than a little salty over wasting my life watching the embarrassing Amazon Prime Original The Tomorrow War starring Chris Pratt. Sublimely stupid with logic gaps big enough for a semi-truck to pass through, I was rolling my eyes through most of it. And then comes Ryan with his hilarious "Pitch Meeting" take and it's perfect...

Honestly... Ryan is so dead-on in these things that he should be paid to read Hollywood scripts so he can point out all the stupid shit to people before they film it.

   
• Apple Quality! A big thank you for Apple completely fucking up Finder Search in MacOS. Find a file you need and click on it? Another file opens. Search for a file you KNOW exists? MacOS can't find it. Search for a part of a name of a file? MacOS doesn't return it in search if it's part of a bigger filename. Completely fucking useless. And, yes, I HAVE REBUILT MY SPOTLIGHT DATABASE ABOUT SIX TIMES NOW... IT DOESN'T WORK!!!

   
• All Good Things! On the opposite side of the Apple spectrum... Steve Jobs is a personal hero of mine. This short article illustrates why: Steve Jobs in Kyoto.

   
And I guess I'm done with bullets since I have no more Sunday left and the sun is, in fact, going down.

It's really weird to think that after a year of no new Marvel Studios films, we're making up for lost time by getting four of them in the second half of this year. I just prepaid my Premier Access fee for Black Widow last night so I'm all set for July 9th. I think the other three are all theaters-only, so I guess that's the end of the road for new releases at home.

After some social media posts this morning promising that the first full trailer for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings would be released... and here we go...

That cast tho! I honestly didn't know what to think of Simu Liu in the lead since all I knew him from was Kim's Convenience, but it looks like he's going to be the super-hero action type juuuuuust fine. Then, of course, there's Michelle Yeoh, Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, Fala Chen, and... Awkwafina! This film drops on September 3rd.

Then it's a one-two punch with Eternals on November 5th and Spider-Man: No Way Home on December 17th. On the Disney+ side, we've got What If? and Hawkeye and Miss Marvel also coming up sometime in the back-half of 2021.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe will be going into 2022 without half of its six original Avengers since Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Widow are all out of play. My guess is that Hawkeye will die or retire in his series, which would leave just Thor and Hulk (plus Nick Fury, of course). Black Panther was tragically lost to us, which leaves Ant-Man & The Wasp, War Machine, Okoye, Shuri, Nakia, Doctor Strange, Wong, Spider-Man, Captain Marvel, Vison, and The Scarlet Witch remaining from the second wave. Along with Falcon (the new Captain America) and Bucky. And then there's The Guardians of The Galaxy, which may be a very different team after the third movie of the trilogy wraps.

As for the future?

It's confirmed that we're getting (or have already spotted) Shang-Chi, The Eternals, The Black Knight, Lady Thor (Jane Foster), Photon (Monica Rambeau), Miss Marvel, Kate Bishop (Hawkeye II), She-Hulk, Moon Knight, Blade, Ironheart, Stature (Young Avengers—Cassie Lang), Patriot (Young Avengers—Elijah Bradley), Wiccan (Young Avengers—Billy Kaplan/Maximiff), Speed (Young Avengers—Tommy Shepherd/Maximoff), Falcon (Young Avengers—Joaquín Torres)... plus there's a rumor that the Netflix heroes will be integrated (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and The Punisher)... plus Fantastic Four (and most likely X-Men) as well. Deadpool will be back, but how he'll fit into things is anybody's guess.

That's a lot.

But where's Alpha Flight, Namor, Wonder Man, Nova, Captain Britain, and The Silver Surfer?