Hawkeye

 

Clint Barton takes center stage in Hawkeye. He is one of the less flashy Avengers because he doesn't have super powers per se, so his character typically is in the background and doesn't get as much attention as the other Avengers. However, he clearly had a close relationship with Natasha Romanoff, and with the recent release of Black Widow, it makes sense to make Clint's Hawkeye character the main protagonist in this story.

Clint's actions as Ronin in Avengers: End Game catch up to him in this series. He murdered the father of mafia member Maya/Echo, and she is out for revenge. We're introduced to Kate Bishop, a college archery student and fanboy of Clint. Kate's mother is in debt to mafia ruler Kingpin. Her fiance (Jack) is a sword collector, and Kate stumbles upon a black market auction where Jack buys Ronin's sword. The auction is interrupted by members of the Tracksuit mafia, who is run by Kingpin, looking for an Avengers Rolex watch. Ronin's costume is also up for auction, and Kate puts it on as a disguise to escape the auction and the Tracksuit mafia. The mafia, however, discover her identity and think Kate is Ronin. Clint becomes aware of the situation after seeing a Ronin story on the news, and joins Kate to protect her and calm the situation with Kingpin and the Tracksuit mafia. To complicate matters, Natasha's sister Yelena shows up (as foretold in the credits scene of Black Widow), trying to kill Clint because she believes Clint killed Natasha. All of this occurs in a brisk, 6 episode series that takes place over a week in New York City during Christmas time. 

Hailee Steinfeld plays Kate Bishop. She is a person I've heard of before, but prior to Hawkeye I've never seen her in anything or heard her music. I initially found Kate's character a bit annoying, but as the series evolved, so did her character, and as she transformed from fanboy to an actual superhero, I found her less annoying and liked her more. As the series ends, Kate is searching for a superhero nickname for herself, and Clint hints that she could use Hawkeye as her alias. When you read about Kate's character, she is referred to as Hawkeye in the comics, so I get the feeling that we will be seeing more of Kate Bishop as the MCU progresses. Additionally, I hope they put Natasha's sister Yelena in every MCU project moving forward. Florence Pugh nearly stole the show from Scarlett Johansson in Black Widow, and she was fantastic in Hawkeye.

The biggest mystery remaining surrounds the Avenger's Rolex. Apparently it belonged to Clint's wife Laura. But the number on the watch was associated with a different person from Agent Carter, so maybe more to come on this topic and Laura's standing as a SHIELD agent.

The Grand Tour Presents: Carnage A Trois

 

This episode was vintage Top Gear from the guys. They spent most of the episode taking a proper dump on French car culture. They don't sell French cars in the United States, and thus I don't have a huge opinion on them, but France isn't known for their cars, and so probably most of what was said about them is true. I was literally laughing out loud during the segment where they were driving their sedans up the hillside to prove the point that French car manufactures don't need to make SUVs because their cars can go off road without trouble. So silly, yet entertaining.

City Journal: London, An Introduction

 One of the few complaints that I have with SimCity 4 is the few number of regions to develop that come with the game. Sure, you can customize and build your own region, or import a user created one, but it would be nice to have a bigger selection out of the box. I've built cities on most of the default regions over the years. The biggest exception to this is the London region. The London region is large and flat, with the River Thames the only large geographical obstacle to navigate. With that being said, it is a region that is prime for developing a large city.  I usually pick my cities based on previous visits to the actual city or because of some affiliation with the city. None of this is true for London. While I think it is a cool city, I've never been there and thus don't have any real connection. In this case, I selected London just because of the region availability on the game.

When viewing a map of London, it appears to be an incredibly complex city. Unlike most cities in America, and unlike most cities I've developed in SimCity, its city streets do not follow a grid. This isn't surprising as most European cities don't follow a grid. SimCity is setup to follow a grid (there is literally a grid on screen when you build) and I think it is the best way to maximize space, so I decided to nix the European layout for a more familiar grid. You don't have to build in a grid layout, but the buildings are squared and don't always line up to the street correctly if you build diagonally. 

The region has a larger, central plot where London proper will be located. I will use the surrounding plots of land to build the boroughs of London, using a map to approximate their location. I also plan to build the major landmarks found within London and its boroughs, though the exact location will be of my choosing. The highway system will be based on my own design, not following the real highway system of London. I've decided to omit the Underground and rail system until later when the city is larger, but it will likely be of my own design as well. The Underground in London is incredibly complex, and I don't know if I could follow it even if I wanted to.

In terms of gameplay, I've decided to use a few enhancements. I don't consider this cheating at all. I've played this game for 20 years, and at this point I feel like I can do what I want. Plus, the regions are so large it takes forever to build even with the enhancements, let alone if you have to wait for money to be generated. The biggest optimization I use is the bank mod that I downloaded, which gives you a cool $50 million in cash. This is plenty to build everything you need/want in your city, without having to wait for your city to generate the money through taxes. It also allows you to build infrastructure like highways when your city is small, which is much easier because you don't have to navigate around structures if building later when your city is populated. Currently that is the only mod I am using. I have used numerous mods in the past, but at the present time this is the only one I have loaded into the game. I may search for more as I further develop the city.

The other big enhancement I am using is the "howdryiam" cheat, which removes water requirements for buildings. This region has numerous plots of land without any water, so supplying those cities with water would require a complex water infrastructure linking city-to-city until you reach a water source. This is incredibly cumbersome and complex. I've done it before, and don't really enjoy it, so for this city I decided to use the cheat instead.

Below, I've posted a few pictures of my city. There's a regional map and satellite view, as well as an aerial view of London and the north London borough of Hackney. As I develop the region and individual boroughs, I will provide updates in these City Journal posts.

X-men: Days Of Future Past (2014)

This movie also had several interesting talking points, so I'm scrapping the idea of lumping all of these movies together into a single post like I did with the first three X-Men movies.

The movie starts in the distant future, where a war pitting Sentinel robots against humans and mutants has developed. The humans and mutants are losing, so the X-Men develop a plan to send Wolverine back into time to stop the event that allowed the Sentinel's to be created. The war is so bad, Xavier and Magneto actually work together to allow Wolverine to time travel.

Wolverine travels to the 1970s to stop Mystique from murdering Dr. Bolivar Trask. Trask is developing Sentinel robots to fight mutants, and Mystique is trying to stop him to protect mutants. During this process, Mystique is captured and her DNA is studied, allowing for the creation of Sentinels that can adapt and acquire mutants powers, similar to how Mystique can change her appearance. 

When Wolverine arrives in the '70s, Xavier is a drug addict (using Hank McCoy's serum to block Xavier's ability to listen to people's thoughts, which also gives him the ability to walk) and Magneto is in prison for killing JFK (wait, what?). To make a long story short, Wolverine is able to convince Xavier and Magneto to work together to prevent Mystique from being captured. This despite their hatred for each other because of their feelings for Mystique and different opinions on mutants. 

I've listed a few additional points of interest below.

• Peter Dinklage is great as Dr. Trask. I've never seen anything that he is in where he wasn't fantastic.
• Peter Maximoff makes an appearance as Quicksilver, helping Wolverine free Magneto from his Pentagon prison. Sadly, there was no Wanda.
• We're introduced to a young William Stryker, and learn how Stryker acquires Wolverine to enhance his body with metal. When Stryker turns to the camera after discovering Wolverine, it's revealed that Stryker is actually Mystique. I'm a bit confused by this as I know Stryker isn't always Mystique, so I don't know the complete meaning of this.
• The scene at the end where Magneto picks up the old RFK Stadium in Washington and places it around the White House seems completely random and unnecessary.
• Magneto claims he didn't kill JFK on purpose, he was actually trying to save him because he was a mutant. Interesting.

The Golden Era of Streaming Is Over

 We switched from Dish Network satellite TV to streaming in 2019 and I haven't regretted it once. The main reason was cost. Our Dish bill would go in excess of $200 per month at times. The straw that broke the camel's back is when Dish got into a contract dispute with Bally Sports, making it impossible to watch the Pacers. YouTube TV had all the channels we wanted, including Bally Sports, at a fraction of the cost so we made the jump. YouTube TV eventually lost Bally Sports as well, so that point became moot. Regardless, I've found the YouTube TV (YTT) experience and streaming in general to be better than traditional TV.  The DVR on YTT is the best DVR I have ever experienced. It never misses any recordings, and is smart enough to adjust the time if the show is extended or starts late. The biggest advantage streaming has over traditional TV, however, is the large volume of content available through various apps. As it turns out, this has also become streaming's biggest disadvantage.

YTT is now in a contract dispute with the ESPN family of channels. Last night, the contract ended and the channels went off the app. This is a reminder that despite being a streaming app, YTT acts and functions just like cable. While it used to be cheaper to stream and the apps could avoid such contract disputes, that era has come to an end. The interesting thing about streaming that makes it different from traditional TV, is that when these disputes happen, the content is usually still available. Previously, if a dispute happened, you'd be forced to switch TV providers if a contract wasn't agreed upon. Now, if ESPN is pulled from YTT, you can just subscribe to ESPN+. To YTT's credit, they actually discount our bill when these contract disputes happen, which is unheard of. But while the content is still available, the fear is that apps like YTT, which is great, will cease to exist because the channels will push their content to their own streaming apps. We've already heard rumors of this happening with NBC Sports shutting down and that content being pushed to Peacock. This gives the channels a lot of leverage in these negotiations, leverage they didn't have when they relied on cable distributors to deliver their content. The fear is that while the content will be available, it will be fragmented across several different apps that will require a subscription, making TV watching more complicated and possibly just as expensive as traditional cable. If this occurs, maybe traditional TV wasn't so bad after all?

SimCity 4: City Journal

 

I have been playing SimCity 4 off and on since it was released in 2003. I've had it on several different computers and operating systems and have been lucky that it has been ported and thus remains easy to play. It's been my favorite version of SimCity, and the biggest reason is the regional gameplay. Previous versions of the game focused on one individual city that was built on a square of land represented as a floating island, and thus had no connection to the rest of the world. In SimCity 4, instead of developing individual cities, you develop entire regions. This allows you to build cities in the context of the rest of the world, and thus develop urban vs suburban areas, plan transit systems accordingly (my favorite part of the game), etc. The regions are huge, too. I've spent years developing an individual region, and I've never completely built a region because typically I get a new computer or just lose interest before I have time to build everywhere. There have been newer versions of SimCity, and though I haven't played any of them, I have read that they are a bit of a disaster, and thus have never moved on to a newer version. I have Cities: Skylines on Steam (I think) but haven't started playing it, yet. That has been the only subsequent game that has tempted me to leave SimCity 4.

One of the cool aspects of SimCity 4 is that it has (or had) a large modding and online community. This allows the game to remain fresh with new buildings and landmarks, as admittedly building the same buildings over and over again can become a bit dull. I've used the Simtropolis site numerous times in the past to download new buildings and regions. One of the interesting aspects of the site is the City Journals message board, where people upload updates to their cities. This is a great way to track progress as your city expands and updates arrive. I've always thought about doing this in the past but never have done so. A recent trip to Chicago has inspired me to play the game again, and I've decided to do a bit of City Journaling to track progress as I build and expand my city and region. Chicago is a great inspiration for this game, as it has a complex highway and rail system. The best city I have ever built on the game was named Scien and based loosely on Chicago.  It had 4.4 million people if I remember correctly. I am basing my current city on the city of London, and my goal is to build a larger and more complex city than Scien. More to come as I introduce my city of London and update as it grows and expands.

X-Men: First Class (2011)

Part one of my X-Men series covered the Hugh Jackman films. Part two was supposed to cover the Jennifer Lawrence films up to the most recent X-Men film. However, after watching First Class, I had a lot to say about the movie, so I decided to do a dedicated post just for it.

First Class tells the origin story of X-Men. There are several interesting events that occur in this film, starting with a young Charles Xavier discovering a young Raven/Mystique (what a coincidence) when she is breaking into his house to get food. Charles welcomes Mystique into his family and they essentially  become siblings. Xavier and Raven join the newly formed CIA Division X for mutants. They cross paths with Erik/Magneto, and go after a common enemy - Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon). They have different reasons for going after Shaw, however. Erik wants to get revenge for killing his mother. Xavier, working with the CIA, is trying to prevent Shaw from starting World War III to allow the mutants to rise above the humans. Shaw creates a helmet to prevent Xavier from reading his mind.  Erik gets his wish and kills Shaw, stealing his helmet and becomes Magneto. This occurs during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fearing the mutants, both the United States and the Soviet Union fire their missiles at the mutants. Magneto uses his powers to turn the missiles around to land on the US and Soviet boats. A CIA agent tries to stop Magneto, but he deflects her bullets, one of which hits Xavier in the spine causing paralysis, thus ending their friendship as they do not share the same view of the relationship between humans and mutants.

Mystique, unhappy with her blue appearance and disagreeing with Xavier's view on mutants, leaves Charles to join Magneto. Also on Magneto's team are Emma Frost (January Jones) and Azazel. Frost is a mutant telepath, similar to Xavier. This is the first time I've seen Jones in anything besides Mad Men. I enjoyed the Frost character, and hope to see her in upcoming X-Men films, though I though Jones seemed a bit robotic.

The teleporting Azazel is also an interesting character. None of this was explained in the movie, but when reading about the character he has an interesting backstory. Apparently he is the father to Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler seen in X2 and the mother is none other than Mystique.

The final portion of this film I want to talk about is the X-Men's plane. The movie is set in the Cold War era, so it makes sense that their plane would be the spy plane SR-71 Blackbird. For my money, the Blackbird is the coolest plane ever made. Everything about it is just awesome, from its looks to its speed and construction. I've always been a big fan of the plane.