Rambles by Drew

A few years ago, House of Cards  was one of my favorite TV shows. The first two seasons were exciting, and dramatic, and sexy - all the things you want a political thriller to be. But the third season was underwhelming, and the fifth season was a total mess. Around the same time, my favorite actor was none other than Kevin Spacey. Since then, we've learned just how much of an absolute piece of shit that man is (if you're curious, my new favorite is a Mr. Samuel L. Jackson). This all goes to say that I wasn't too keen on a new season of House of Cards . I was pleased to hear that all known pedophiles were fired from the show, and that Robin Wright's character would be the new lead. I was intrigued - could the show work without its main character? How would the writers handle the changeover? Being a real Zoe Barns/Tom Hammerschmidt/Janine Skorksy type myself, I was determined to find out. I'm going to try my best to keep this review spoiler-free. There may be a few

I'm a big James Bond fan. I'm not entirely sure why - most of those movies are pretty silly. But I love them all the same, and so do you, and so does everyone else in the world. There's a real joy in comparing the different actors who've played the role; the unique quirks, the different methods of violence and/or seduction, and so on. This gives audiences a special appreciation for that character, and distances him from your Tony Starks and Jack Sparrows. There's also a great joy in speculating who would play a good Bond. My top picks are Tom Holland, John Boyega, and Henry Cavill. But the name that's been tossed around more than any is Idris Elba. And for good reason: he'd be pretty perfect for the role, especially a more suave Bond. Unfortunately, some folks just can't seem to wrap their little minds around the concept of Black Bond. Here's an example. Katie Hopkins (a journalist and media personality, according to Google) recently tweeted

Folks seemed to enjoy my last batch of stories, so I thought I'd continue on. Big thanks to everyone who reached out! You all know how to make a guy feel pretty good about himself. Shall we? Crater Lake (Lodge) For those who don't know, Crater Lake National Park is located in southwest Oregon. Essentially, it's a once-active volcano that's now filled with water. In the middle of the lake, there's a small island - another volcano beginning to form. Apparently, there's another even smaller lake inside that volcano. Oh, and the island is called Wizard Island. So now, I can truthfully say that I didn't get to visit Wizard Island, but I did hike up the volcano that surrounds it. A first for me, if you can believe that. At this point on the trip, breakfast (or at least coffee) had become a necessary part of our morning ritual. The Crater Lake Lodge is a gorgeous hotel complete with a restaurant, right on the edge of the volcano. Perfect, right? We're seat

A few months ago, my good friend Chase told me he was planning a cross-country road trip that would take the entirety of July 2018. He asked me if I was interested in joining him. I said yes, of course. Then, on June 30th, we set off: Chase, Raven, Tripp, Curtis and myself piled into a rental Dodge Caravan and began the drive. Chase and Rave were (and are) two of my closest friends. I knew Tripp, but not particularly well. Apparently, Curtis and I had met before, but neither of us remembered. Oh well. We all got to know each other quite a bit better over the course of the following month. I knew I wanted to write something about the trip - I'd be an idiot not to. Originally I'd planned to just give a summary - where we went, what we saw, etc. But that sounded both vague and dull. I instead decided to share some short stories from the trip: any of the strange or funny things we did, or people we met along the way. If you are interested in more detail, I believe Chase and Curti

A few weeks ago, I wrote something defending the character of Rose Tico from The Last Jedi . It got a lot of positive feedback from some very nice people, which I very much appreciate. A coworker of mine even told me, "That's what you should be doing with your life." High praise. So I thought to myself, "Maybe I should keep doing this sort of thing - tackling a real-life issue through the lense of movies (pun intended). Maybe I could actually make a small difference, and leave the world a bit better than I found it." But THEN I thought to myself, "Oh wait, I wanna talk about The Incredibles ." So here we are. As you definitely already know, The Incredibles 2  has just been released in theaters. And it's doing pretty alright for itself. In just one weekend, it's made over $180 million, making it the 8th biggest movie opening ever, and the biggest animated opening. Ever. Sources say, "That's pretty good." According to a VERY r

You're probably heard all about the Kelly Marie Tran/Star Wars news of late. If not - Tran (who played Rose Tico in The Last Jedi ) has been dealing with online harassment for over a year, even before the movie was released. The offenders are all the usual bigots: sexist, racist, probably insecure, etc. Tran has since removed all of her Instagram posts, and isn't much active on any other social media. Of course, the good guys of the internet have come to her defense in waves. Co-stars, directors, and fans alike have publicly reached out. It's a comforting thing to see. But, it doesn't change what's already happened. So why did it happen? I think there's more than one reason. The first, and probably the more important, is because she's an Asian-American woman who doesn't have the "Hollywood body type." This is somehow an issue for some idiots. I'm not going to discuss this much - I don't think we need any more straight white dudes weig