Quick Rant About Monarch: Legacy of Monsters That Is Four Weeks Late

Note: I originally wrote this a few weeks ago on my phone, then forgot I had it on there. I rediscovered it the other day and I'm getting it up now. Thanks!

Apple TV+ recently started airing a television show called Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. It is a spinoff of the MonsterVerse franchise. The American Godzilla franchise. Set in 2015, it followed the events shown in 2014’s Godzilla. Basically, after what happened to San Francisco, a woman went to Tokyo in search of her father. What she found that her father had another family. She teamed up with her father’s son, her half-brother, to figure out what happened to her father, and what Monarch, a Titan research branch of the government, had to do with it.

The show is alright. It dives into the mysteries and back stories behind how the titans could come out of nowhere and wreak such devastating havoc upon the world. Within those back stories are flashbacks to characters connected to other characters throughout the franchise. One of the characters is the grandmother of the two half-siblings. Another character is a younger version of a character John Goodman played in Kong: Skull Island. But it is the third character that piques my interest the most.

Lee Shaw was a military officer in the 1950s. What got me most interested in the show was the casting for Lee Shaw. In the 2015-set portion of the show, Lee Shaw was played by Kurt Russell. In the flashbacks of the 1950s, he was played by Wyatt Russell. Father and son were playing the same character. They wouldn’t share the screen, but to see this use of father and son was a fun casting choice. I liked the idea of having both Kurt and Wyatt Russell playing the same guy.

Yet… It left a couple lingering questions. The two timeframes in which the show took place were the 1950s and the 2010s. That put them 50 years apart. What took me out of this distance in time was the ages of the character during each time period. I don’t believe Wyatt Russell was born when Kurt Russell was 50. That would put Wyatt Russell in his mid 20s. Not even his mid 20s. Kurt Russell is currently 72 years old. If we were to take 50 years off of that, Wyatt Russell would be 22.

That’s just not the case. Wyatt Russell is 37. If we look at this from the other direction, and add 50 years to Wyatt Russell’s age, that would make the older version of Lee Shaw 87. If you do the math, Lee Shaw is either 15 years younger than Wyatt Russell or 15 years older than Kurt Russell. If we were to go off years. But this is TV. Streaming TV. It’s like a movie. Especially when the TV show is in the same universe as movies. The age could flux 5 to 10 years either way. So maybe Kurt Russell played five years older, and Wyatt Russell played 10 years younger. That could be the case. However, no makeup was done to make Kurt Russell look older, or to make Wyatt Russell look younger. They look their current ages.

I know what you might be saying while reading this. This guy is insane. This guy is nitpicking the smallest detail about a show where you just need to check your brain at the door and watch espionage about giant monsters. And you might be right. I need to turn my brain off. But… And this might be a pretty big butt in here… They brought up the age thing on the show. I don’t mean they brought up exact ages on the show. They may have at the point I’m at. I’m only three episodes in. There could’ve been a paper with an exact age on it. The thing I caught was when a character mentioned that Lee Shaw must be almost 90. Then Kurt said something about “Oh, you know, good genes.” The show addressed the age issue with a throwaway line of dialogue.

That line of dialogue didn’t really make sense to me. Sure, good genes could make a person look younger than they should. But this is supposed to be a 90-year-old man. He shouldn’t be able to move nearly as easily in an action setting as Kurt Russell can. I don’t know. Seems a little unbelievable to me. Even if I’m checking my brain at the door, I don’t know I can buy Kurt Russell as a 90-year-old man when he is flying and crashing planes and walking out without scratch. It just breaks the reality of the show.

There’s not much more I have to say about the show. Again, I’m only three episodes in. There could be a better explanation for the age discrepancy later on. I don’t know. What I do know is the show is pretty good. I’ll keep watching it. And that’s kind of all I have to say.

My Bubly Flavour Journey - Merryberry

I’m back to take a look at another flavour of Bubly with a brand new post! You know that, though. You’re looking at it right now. It’s the holiday season and Bubly released a limited time flavour to commemorate the festive time of year. At least, here in Canada they released a new flavour. It might be a permanent flavour elsewhere. Who knows? I can only speculate at what the flavour is, since they don’t actually state it on the can.

Merryberry Bublé was released a while ago to mild fanfare. The fanfare was mostly in the advertising and merchandising. You see, I didn’t make a mistake in calling it Bublé. The can has an é covering up the y in the brand name. The flavour is actually called Merryberry Bublé. As always, Michael Bublé was tied into the commercials and things like that. There has been a running gag that he kept saying it was called Bublé instead of Bubly. That’s why I usually compare the flavours to a specific song of his. He has become synonymous with the brand in Canada.

Now, Merryberry definitely has a berry tinge to it. There’s a slight hint of some sort of berry. I initially thought it was similar to blackberry before it clicked in. One berry is associated with the holiday season more than others. Cranberries are a frequent holiday dish. More accurately, cranberry sauce is a holiday dish. Once that clicked, I knew that was what I tasted. At least, I knew that was likely what I tasted. I might still be wrong. But it did taste like cranberries and that would make a lot of sense.

I quite enjoy this flavour of Bubly. It’s not overwhelming. Yet there’s enough there to latch onto. It doesn’t just taste like sparking water. The berry flavours tend to sit well within the sparkling water of Bubly. I don’t think there’s a berry flavour I don’t like. Spoiler alert for later on in my journey through the Bubly flavours.

The holiday theme of Merryberry Bublé narrows down what Michael Bublé song I’m going to choose for it. The guy has made a few Christmas albums and he’s proud of it. I’m obviously going to go with one of the Christmas songs. I’m going to go with his rendition of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, based solely on the cozy vibes that it brings. Every can of Merryberry Bublé I’ve had has brought me the same cozy feeling. There’s also the can, which looks like a cozy ugly Christmas sweater. It’s the perfect feel for this flavour.

My current order of Bubly flavours would be peach, blackberry, merryberry, pineapple, watermelon, lime, coconut pineapple, and then cherry. That top five could shake up after I have some more of each of them. I’m not one hundred percent confident that merryberry is above pineapple or watermelon.

Three Positive Things About Each of the Four Seasons

I’ve seen and heard a few people complaining about summer recently. We’re into some of the warmest days of the year. Of course people aren’t going to be taking that well. People like to be comfortable. They don’t like to sweat it out to the 80°C temperatures. Yeah, that’s a bit of an exaggeration.

Why are we all constantly complaining about the weather? Why can’t we take time to appreciate the things that come along with each of the seasons? There’s too much negativity going around. I’m a part of it. But I want to change that a little bit. That’s why I decided to write about some of the positive takeaways from each of the year’s four seasons. For me, at least. Let’s bring some positivity into our lives, mmkay?

Spring

There’s a sort of awakening that comes with spring. We put the drab colours of winter behind us. The grey gloom, the stark whiteness of the snow, the shorter daytime… It all starts to go away. We get into that muddy time as the thaw happens, and then the first great thing of spring occurs. Things start to grow. Colour starts to pop up. You get the green grass. Flowers burst into yellows, purples, and reds. The sky feels a little bluer. This colour is like a wake-up call, breathing new life into a world waking from hibernation. I love it.

Along with the colour comes water. Lots and lots of water. I’m not a huge fan of that early spring rain. You’re still used to the cold temperatures of winter. Things haven’t warmed up yet. The rain is cold. But it brings something along with it. The thaw and the added rain of spring (usually) puts more water on the ground. Yeah, it makes things muddy. But it also brings back the waterfalls. I’m not talking a waterfall like the Niagara Falls, which tends to always be flowing. It has only frozen over once or twice since the history of this area started being recorded. No no. I’m talking the smaller waterfalls. I’m talking the waterfalls you have to seek out. The waterfalls that take a little bit of work and adventure to get to, rather than just being a drive-by attraction that you happen to be able to stand next to. All the smaller waterfalls come back to life the same way the colour does. And, boy, do I like spending time near waterfalls.

Once the water and the colour come back, the temperatures begin to warm up. It usually goes bit by bit. The average temperature goes up slightly each week. Though, I guess global warming has made that ascension more erratic than it once was. As it gets warmer, you start to shed the layers you wore all winter. The heavy coats come off and get replaced by lighter jackets or sweaters. The boots get packed away in favour of shoes. And, my favourite of the layers coming off… pants eventually get switched out for shorts. That feeling of putting on shorts for the first time of the year. Hoo-ee! That’s a feeling like few others. You have to appreciate the smaller things in life, and I truly appreciate that.

Summer

I’ve already mentioned the higher temperatures that come as spring progresses. That continues into the summer where we, normally, reach the highest temperatures of the year. I’m not here to praise the high temperatures. The heat can be a little too much sometimes. That’s why people love air conditioning. But the heat does one thing that’s great for someone like me, who likes to go out on hikes. It dries up the trails. Now, I do like me a waterfall and would love to have enough rainfall to get that water flowing. I also prefer to hike when there’s not as much mud. With the higher temperatures comes less mud, which makes hiking that much easier. It allows you to get to places that may be inaccessible when things are wet and muddy. It makes the rocks safer. All around, less mud is a better experience and summer brings less mud than spring. Plus, none of that slippery, dangerous winter ice either.

That’s not to say I want the summer to be bone dry. I enjoy myself a thunderstorm. I like watching the dark clouds roll across the sky. I enjoy the lightning and the thunder, as long as it’s from a distance or I’m not outside when it’s close. I like watching and hearing the rain pour down. The taps on the windows. The bouncing off the cars. The splashing through the puddles. The whole aesthetic of a thunderstorm is great. I don’t want anything more than a thunderstorm, though. The weather can refrain from hurricanes and tornadoes and lightning that starts forest fires. I could sit by the window and watch thunderstorms all day
long.

When there’s not a thunderstorm, however, something else I like to watch is a bonfire. Nothing speaks summer weather like a group of friends sitting around a bonfire, watching the flaming tendrils touch the night sky while they talk about anything and everything and nothing all at once. Poking sticks through marshmallows or hotdogs and roasting them over the fire. That one person who inevitably gets too inebriated and stumbles around, worrying everyone that they’ll fall into the pit. The music, the laughter, the good times. Everything about a bonfire is peak summer. Just be careful to not let the fire out of the pit.

Fall/Autumn

As summer ends and autumn begins, we all expect the temperatures to go down. The days start getting shorter. Winter is coming, as those Stark people are prone to say. Within the daylight that remains, there is still a last lingering sign of colourful beauty. As the changing weather settles in, the leaves on all the deciduous trees begin to change colour. What had been a summer of mostly green foliage turns yellow, red, orange, and brown as the trees shed their leaves. The branches hold the colours, as does the ground. There are only a couple weeks where the true beauty of these changing colours shines, but that couple weeks is one of the best stretches of the year.

With that change in colour comes the change in temperature. Things start to cool down. There’s a crispness to the breeze in the air. You need to start throwing on layers. You start small. Shorts turn to pants. But the real nice feeling is tossing on that cozy sweater. It’s sweater weather in autumn. It signifies all the best aspects of the season, all in one little event. The moment you toss on that sweater, you know that all the other things you love are going to rush right back into your life. It’s such a warming feeling.

One of those things that comes with the warm and fuzzy sweater weather is the horror movie genre. Halloween falls in October, right smack dab in the middle of autumn. Spooky season, as the cool kids call it. Horror movies are abundant. Michael Myers stalks the streets of Haddonfield. Jason Voorhees stalks the campers at Crystal Lake. You’re sitting on your couch or in the theater or at the drive-in, watching it all go down. You might be cuddled up to someone else for comfort because you’re scared of what’s happening. They could be cuddled up to you. The chills run down your spine, yet you’re entertained by it. I love horror movies. I love watching them at this time of year. They help make autumn something special.

Winter

Now that autumn is out of the way, we get to winter. The dead of winter might be one of the most depressing, bland times of the year. But there are some wonderful things that come with the season. That first snowfall of the year comes to mind. The small flakes sputtering out of the clouds, drifting their way to the ground. They might not stay on the ground. They’re delightful to watch anyway. That little bit of white among the brown and orange and yellow of late autumn. Sure, the first snowfall tends to happen in autumn. It’s associated with winter, though. People tend to talk about seasons by the weather, not by the actual times that the seasons start and end.

It's kind of like the growth of holidays. Specifically, the growth of Christmas beyond a day into an entire chunk of the year. That holiday isn’t one of my three things for winter. However, what I want to point out as a positive thing is something associated with Christmas. It’s the lights. Now, I live in Niagara Falls, a city that prides itself in light displays. There’s a whole Festival of Lights that happens every winter. During those days where the dark feels so much longer than the light, it’s nice to bring a little bit of light into the pitch black. Especially when the lights could be things like boats, moose, words of encouragement, and even the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. These lights are as much a part of winter as the snow and the cold, though they’re much more exciting to be around.

Speaking of the cold, one of the best feelings in the winter is sitting down with a nice cup of hot chocolate. Yum yum. It warms that chill right out of you, and it tastes good, too. I don’t know how many drab and dreary winter days have been made better by hot chocolate. I’d put mine in the hundreds. It could be regular old hot chocolate, dark hot chocolate, hot chocolate with marshmallows, or white Tim Horton’s hot chocolate with a shot of raspberry. No matter your taste preference, there’s no cozier feeling on a cold winter day than a nice hot chocolate in front of you. Okay, maybe if you drank it in front of the fireplace while the fire was burning… But you’re still drinking the hot chocolate.

And there we have it. I went through all four seasons of the year and discussed things I enjoyed about them. Of course, not the entire thing was positive. There were a couple digs in there at the coldest days of the year and the hottest days of the year. There was a dig at mud. I couldn’t help myself. The important thing is I tried something with this post. That’s a start.

There’s always a positive way to look at things. It might not be the easiest way to look at things. You might think you’ll feel better to complain. You know what? That only works for so long. Eventually, you come to the realization that you spend too much of your time complaining. You should look at things in a different light. Like things. Enjoy things. It just might pull you out of a spiral of negativity. We could all use less negativity in our lives.

My Bubly Flavour Journey - Blackberry

I am back. It has been a while, but I’m back. Today I’ve got another can of Bubly with me. I have another flavour that I’m going to be breaking down. I have worked my way through six flavours so far, including one that was a limited time flavour released at the beginning of the summer. That was actually the last post I made about Bubly. Coconut pineapple.

This time, I’ll be taking on the first of the three berry flavours I need to cover. I’m starting with blackberry because I feel like it. This is a staple of gas stations and convenience stores that stock the tall cans. You can almost guarantee you’ll see lime, cherry, and blackberry in the tall cans. I’ve grabbed a few of those, myself, through the years. The can I’m drinking today isn’t a tall can, though. It’s the last in a case I bought a little while back.

Blackberry is a flavour I always go back to. It’s a dependable Bubly flavour. It has a nice hint of the berry, not overwhelming, but also not lacking. It hits that sweet spot of saturation. The smell comes through nicely with every sip, as long as you haven’t eaten something right before and left part of that something on your face. I just had a bunch of salted cashews, so I’m dealing with the salt smell in my facial hair. Oops. Part of taste is smell. I should have seen this coming.

I don’t really have too much to say about this one. I like the blackberry flavour. It’s not my favourite, but it’ll surely be up there when all is said and done. It doesn’t taste exactly like a blackberry. That might be the biggest knock against it. If I were to blindly taste this flavour, I might not immediately point to it being blackberry. That doesn’t make it bad. That just makes one of the least recognizable flavours so far.

It took me a few Michael Bublé songs to find one that fit with the concept of blackberry Bubly. I think I found one in After All. It’s off his album To Be Loved. After All featured Bryan Adams. He and Michael Bublé are two distinct voices that bring their own feel to any song. However, they sang in harmony throughout After All, which took something away from the distinct flavour promised by their presence. You know what Michael Bublé is like. You know what Bryan Adams is like. But you don’t really get the full impact of either. It was still a good song. It just lacked that certain something because it didn’t live up to the promise. Sort of like how blackberry Bubly didn’t quite taste like blackberry, but was still a good time.

The current ranking for Bubly flavours would be peach, blackberry, pineapple, watermelon, lime, coconut pineapple, and then cherry at the bottom.

My Three Least Favourite Teams in the NHL

The NHL is a fairly big league. There are 32 teams split into two conferences of 16, each with two divisions of 8. That means there are a lot of teams to choose from when you’re trying to figure out a favourite team. Most people go local, meaning they root for a team located around where they’re from. That’s not the case for me.

The team I choose to root for is the Seattle Kraken. Now, I’m from Canada, about an hour and a half away from Toronto, so this choice of team has nothing to do with location. It has everything to do with the name. I would say my second favourite team right now is probably the Buffalo Sabres, which are actually closer to where I live than the Toronto Maple Leafs, the closest Canadian team. Then maybe the Colorado Avalanche or the Anaheim Ducks.

The thing about hockey is that no matter how many teams you like, there will always be teams that you dislike. For me, there are three teams that I dislike more than any of the other NHL teams. I wanted to take some time and explain why I dislike those three teams. I get that some people might not want more negativity thrown out there, but like most of my posts this is just something I feel I need to write. For my own sake.

The Edmonton Oilers

I don’t have much to go on for my dislike of the Edmonton Oilers. This one is just a gut reaction whenever I think about the team. They have a lot of players that I like, but that is not enough to get me to actually like the team. I like Leon Draisaitl, Zach Hyman, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Stuart Skinner, and even Connor McDavid, to an extent. But then there’s also Evander Kane, a player that I outright hate.

The players aren’t really the issue with my dislike for Edmonton. Yes, I hate Evander Kane. Yes, I think Connor McDavid might not be the best player in the league because his effort is only there for a small amount of the game. I can’t deny his talent, though. These players are not my issue.

The issue I have with Edmonton is the same issue I have with Toronto, except that I don’t live near Edmonton. I grew up a Toronto fan until I fell off hockey when I went to university. That meant the oversaturation of the media in Canada with Toronto Maple Leafs coverage never really bothered me in the same way it does other people. However, as a fan of Seattle now, when I am trying to watch a feed of a Seattle game, it typically comes from a western Canada market. Those Sportsnet feeds tend to focus all their attention on Toronto and Edmonton. The Toronto stuff has simply become a part of my life living near Toronto. I have no relevance to Edmonton, Edmonton has no relevance to me, so I don’t need to hear about the Edmonton Oilers every five minutes. This is what bothers me.

Add to that the fact that everyone thinks Connor McDavid is the greatest player to ever live, aside from Wayne Gretzky, and you have the same team being brought up in almost every hockey situation. It’s just the amount of hearing about Edmonton. That makes me hate Edmonton. if they weren’t talked about during every hockey broadcast as if they were the most important team in the world, aside from Toronto, I probably wouldn’t care. But they are, and I do, and I don’t like them. That’s that.

The Vegas Golden Knights

I have seen a lot of people complaining about the Vegas Golden Knights winning the Stanley Cup simply because the Vegas Golden Knights were brought into the NHL only six years ago. I have no problem with that. My team is the Seattle Kraken. They came in two years ago. If I had a problem with a new team winning the cup, I wouldn’t be rooting for a new team.

My issue with the Vegas Golden Knights is how they treat their players. Don’t get me wrong, it was a winning formula, but that doesn’t mean they don’t treat their players poorly. The team has no loyalty to anyone that is a part of the team. They will get rid of a good player, a fan favorite, if that means they can get a different good player who might be a bigger name. They are a team who has been around for six years and currently only has five players from that first season.

The misfits, as they were called, as they are still called, are mostly not even there anymore. As soon as the team won the Stanley Cup, they traded Reilly Smith, one of the original misfits. There was that whole debacle with Marc-André Fleury, including his agent sending out a picture of the goaltender with a sword in his back, which led to Marc-André Fleury being traded for basically nothing. And it’s not just the misfits that get this treatment. As soon as Max Pacioretty got injured, he was shipped off for nothing to Carolina. The upper management is ruthless and has created an atmosphere where no one feels safe signing a contract in Vegas. (I’ve actually heard from someone who knows Logan Thompson that no one really feel safe in Vegas because of how they are so willing to just get rid of players quickly.) For a business that acts like a player’s loyalty to a team is important above almost anything else, it would be nice to see reciprocation. Vegas doesn’t have that reciprocation.

I do feel it’s important to mention that, although I hate Vegas for how they treat the players, I appreciate the showmanship that they’re bringing into the league. Their pre-shows are setting a standard that most NHL teams should strive to achieve. The All-Star game and skills competition that was held in Vegas was far more entertaining than most that I’ve seen. And that castle that they have at the top of their arena is a special something that you don’t really get at other arenas. I appreciate that stuff, but I hate how the team is run, which makes me hate the team.

The Boston Bruins

Oh, look at this guy, a former Leafs fan who hates the Boston Bruins. Well, guess what? When the Leafs fans started hitting the Bruins was 2011. I stopped watching the Leafs in 2009. Take that!

My hate for the Boston Bruins started two years after that, because of their fans during the playoffs. But to fully understand, we have to go back a little further. We must go back to two weeks before the playoffs began. That was when the Boston marathon took place in 2013, and if you remember that event, you may also remember that there was a bombing. It was a big tragedy that everyone knew about. Everyone probably still knows about it. The people of Boston came together in the aftermath with the phrase, “Boston strong.” They were telling people that even through the tragedy they were going to stay strong, they were going to overcome, they were going to persevere. It was a beautiful moment in the aftermath of a tragedy.

Two weeks later, we got the NHL playoffs. Boston won their first-round match up. Boston won their second-round match up. Boston won their third-round match up, and they made it to the Stanley Cup finals. The fans in the arena were shouting “Boston strong” through the entire playoff run. That is what made me hate the Boston Bruins.

I get that the city camr together after the tragedy of the bombing. This phrase showed how strong the city was, and how anybody who did something as horrific as that marathon bombing would not break the Boston people’s will. However, the phrase was not meant as a hockey cheer. It was not meant to say that your hockey team was going to be better than another hockey team. To bastardize the phrase in that way is to lessen the loss of the people who died in the bombing. I fucking hate that. It became a hockey chant. I fucking hate that Boston Bruins fans took such a meaningful phrase and a tragic moment and made it about a fucking Stanley Cup run. That they didn’t even win. They lost to Chicago in the finals.

I don’t hate the Boston Bruins because they beat another team in the playoffs or in the regular season. They’ve got good players. They’ve got Patrice Bergeron. They’ve got David Pastrňák. They’ve got Brad Marchand. They’ve got Charlie McAvoy. The team is good, or at least was until they lost half the players this off-season. But their fans ruined them. I hate the team because of their fans.

Those are my thoughts about the three teams that I dislike in the NHL. There are other teams that I’m not a fan of. And there are the teams that I like. But these three teams, for whatever reason, rub me the wrong way. Two of them, a little more obviously than the other one.

This post might’ve been a little too negative for some of the people who decide to open it up. I can understand that. A lot of it was just me ripping on teams, or their fans. I just wanted to write a little something about hockey. This is what came to mind. For those who did read it, I hope you enjoyed. Check out some of the other stuff I’ve written. I’ll see you next time.