Sunday Night in February

    The Patriots won Super Bowl LI over the Atlanta Falcons in overtime, 34-28. It was the first time the game was tied after regulation, and the best commercial was the preview for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, which looks fantastic, but that doesn't say much for the actual ads.
     Bob Costas is being replaced as host of the Olympics, starting in Korea next February. This is extremely saddening.
     Kevin Durant and the Warriors were back in Oklahoma City last night. It was rough to watch. Facebook was full of angry fan posts all day leading up to tipoff. And we lost, but we hung in there for most of the game. But like Russell Westbrook said in an interview, sometimes you just have to move on with life as best you can. A PBS special on Mary Tyler Moore made for a good antidote when I got too frustrated with the game.

     Psychology test tomorrow afternoon, not sure how that will go, so I've been studying most of the night. Capstone is going okay, better than Seminar was, that's for sure. Starting to get a better idea of what Gothic stories aren't, so that's something. Pop Market is going well so far, so far we've written flashfiction romances, Westerns and suspense/thrillers. (Flashfiction is generally capped at a thousand words, so not much room to tell a story, which makes it very difficult, but a fun challenge.)
     In general, things this semester are not good, though not quite as bad as last semester was. I just have to get through to May.

     Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is going well, though the last couple episodes have been a little slow in setting up the next section of the plot. AIDA is a wonderfully-awful character, and there's been lots of interesting multiple roles being played lately with the L.M.D.s.
     Ashland and I have been teasing Mrs. Boyer about her lack of keeping up with MCU news (though that's our job). Guardians Vol. 2 (much-anticipated) comes out on May 5, Spider-Man: Homecoming (also much-anticipated) on July 7, and Thor: Ragnarok (meh) on November 3. They just started production on Avengers: Infinity War, which is exciting. And Doctor Strange (also meh) comes to DVD in a couple weeks, so I can catch up on it, and then I'll be current on all fourteen chapters of the story so far.
     DC, obviously, but The LEGO Batman Movie looks funny. And I'm excited for Cars 3 in July, of course.

     Auditions for the RSU Theater Program's adaptation of Tom Sawyer were the week before last; the cast hasn't been revealed yet. So of course I galloped through the novel, because any excuse to read Mark Twain is a good one. (And besides, a change of pace was needed after depressing/frightening Gothic stories.) The adaptation was written by a lady named Laura Eason, who apparently is a producer or something of the huge Netflix show House of Cards.  (I haven't seen it, though of course I know about it - violent political thrillers aren't my wheelhouse. Robin Wright plays the First Lady.)
     Also reread Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow, which was probably better the second time, because it's one of those kinds of books. There's always more to dig out than can be noticed all at once.
     A Walk to Remember was on TV the other night, and I'd never seen it, so I watched because it was a good time for a break from studying. It stars Mandy Moore, and it worked pretty well, though I liked The Notebook better when it comes to the first two movie adaptations of Nicholas Sparks novels. This sets the tale up in the late 90's, which wouldn't have worked at all in print, but telling the movie version of the story in the 50's would have been equally awful structurally, so I was fine with that change. The Longest Ride, a newish book, sounded like an interesting story when the movie came out about a year ago, and the campus bookstore had it on sale for a dollar, so I scooped it up. A dollar isn't much to waste if it's not worth rereading. And I also got a William Faulkner novel called Light in August, also for a dollar. I've been meaning to read him for a while, because I think I'd really like him if I could slowly explore through Yoknapatawpha County, based on short stories of his that I've read. And Faulkner is like one of the great writers of Southern fiction, inspiring Wendell Berry, Harper Lee, Jan Karon, and I don't know who all else.