Avengers: Infinity War (spoilers)

Been keeping up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)? Hope so, since pretty much all of it shows up in Avengers: Infinity War.

Whatever themes in the MCU movies you may have liked, you'll probably find bits of it in Infinity War. Star-hopping shenanigans from Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor, time bending from Doctor Strange, alien invasions from the earlier Avengers films, Wakandan technology and home turf defense from Black Panther, and so on. If it feels like a bunch of different pieces stitched together, that's because it basically is.

The general arc of the plot is pretty easy to follow for the theoretical viewer who hadn't seen any other MCU films, as best I can tell. Big bad guy is gathering nasty weapons and killing people, try to stop him. But there's a lot of detail that would be missing. Most of that is in terms of character development - there's very little because all the time is being spent on jumping back and forth between all the different groups of heroes doing their separate things. In that way, Infinity War is more like a television series season finale than it is a stand-alone movie.

And like many good season finales, Infinity War ends on a cliff hanger. The heroes don't win, lots of people die, the bad guy is happily retired. Which is very different from the vast majority of MCU films, at least if you think of Infinity War as a stand-alone movie. But it's really part one, with a second part scheduled to come along in 2019. That will be the first episode of the next season, to continue the television series analogy, resolving that cliffhanger and setting things up for the next big storyline.

Like almost all big-budget films that I've seen in the last decade or so, I thought Infinity War was about 30-40 minutes too long. Plenty of character bits that were clearly there just to call back to the earlier movies could have been skipped. Stuff like Drax's "invisible" scene, or some of the Tony-Peter banter...not enough there to define the character relationships, just reminders of what we already know. And of course just about all the fight scenes are extended to show off more explosions and special effects. A bunch of that stuff could have been cut from the theatrical release and put into a director's cut, in my opinion. And was it really necessary to put the post-credits teaser scene (which sets up the Captain Marvel movie) at the very end of the credits?

Despite those annoyances, Infinity War is a fun ride, particularly if you've kept up with all the other MCU films over the last decade or so. It certainly did the job of setting up for the next Avengers film.

Nightwish Decades Tour at the Kalamazoo State Theatre

Two years ago, I had to travel a couple of hours east to Royal Oak to see Nightwish in concert. This year they made a stop in Kalamazoo, just about an hour south.

The Kalamazoo State Theatre is an interesting venue, but I wasn't terribly impressed with it as a concert hall. It has an old-time theatre feel inside, and it appeared that all the seats have a good view. There's a small open area in front of the stage, but most of the place is filled with standard seating. I was up in the second level, where I could see the stage just fine, but felt very cramped. The acoustics weren't great at all, in my opinion, particularly on the first couple of songs. Perhaps I got used to it as the concert went on, or maybe they made some adjustments, since things sounded much better later on. I think I'd enjoy seeing plays at this theatre, but it's definitely not my top choice for concerts.

Fortunately, the band is great and overcame the drawbacks of the venue. Nightwish has great stage presence and got the crowd into the show quickly, which is especially impressive when there's no opening act to warm things up. The stage backdrop was a screen playing various song-specific images, which I thought really added to the experience. They played for almost exactly two hours and I enjoyed every minute of it.

The set list was pulled from all across the Nightwish catalog, all 20+ years of it (thus the "Decades" tour name). I recognized all but one song pretty much right away, but then I've been listening to the band for more than 10 years myself. (That one was Slaying the Dreamer...looked it up later and found it was on Century Child, the one album I haven't listened to very often.) I particularly enjoyed the tracks from Once, including Ghost Love Score and Wish I Had An Angel.

Everyone who attended got a Decades CD to take home, which feels a bit 1990s. Probably that was the point. I may never open mine, since I do all my listening to music digitally these days. Nice to have a souvenir, though.

Irish Jig 5k 2018

It's time to end the Michigan winter hibernation, and get back to running.

OK, so I haven't exactly been hibernating. Even did a run up at Perrin Brewing back in January. But the Irish Jig 5k around St. Patrick's Day always feels like the turning point from winter to spring. This year the calendar cooperated so that the race fell squarely on the holiday.

Parking is a bit of a challenge any time there's a race in East Grand Rapids. I got there about an hour before race time, and got just about the very last spot in the parking structure that's right across the street from the race start. Any later and I'd have had to roam the side streets looking for a spot. Next year I might just go straight to the side streets, since it seems there's more and more people every year.

Good turnout again this year for the race - just under 4000 participants, according to the results page. It was pretty cold, down around freezing at race time, but that's far from the worst we've seen in West Michigan around this time of year. I remember running through a fairly heavy snowfall one year, and nearly slipping on ice another time. No snow, only minor wind, no icy spots...pretty good for mid-March in these parts.

The course around East Grand Rapids has a lot of up and down, but no really big hills. Still, for someone who has been running almost entirely on a treadmill for the last 4-5 months, it's a bit of a challenge. I purposely lined up quite a ways back from the front, as I figured I might be a little slower than normal, and ended up being near the front of the second wave of runners. That worked out nicely since it meant that I didn't have a whole lot of traffic for most of the way, though I did catch up to the tail end of the first wave on the second half of the course. I was pretty happy with my just-under-26-minute time, right about top third for my age group.

So that's the first race of the Triple Crown series done. Looking forward to the Diemer and Reeds Lake runs later on this year.

Michigan Brewers Guild Winter Festival 2018

That was some serious beer.

I went with a group of friends to the Michigan Brewers Guild Winter Festival this past weekend. It was supposed to be a week earlier, but the weather didn't cooperate. They've held this festival in freezing temperatures and blizzards in the past, but this year a rising river forced a delay over flood concerns. (Good thing, too, since I hear there was a couple of feet of water in the area last week.) The weather was awesome this past weekend, though. And the delay didn't thin out the attendees much...it was still plenty crowded!

Our group took a car service up to Fifth Third Ballpark where the festival was held. I highly recommend this approach, if you can get a group together to split the cost. No crowded public transport, no waiting on cabs or Uber, no worries about surge pricing. And you can easily contact them if you happen to lose something, which I did - left my phone in the car on the way home. Got it back easily enough, which probably wouldn't have happened with a bus or cab!

This festival is a big one, with dozens of breweries and hundreds of beers. (At least - the ads actually say thousands!) I tried around a dozen, almost all browns or stouts, and the majority were great. A few weren't, but that's to be expected with such a huge variety. I was particularly impressed with the number of barrel-aged brews. I'm used to thinking of those as premium, limited-edition runs that aren't generally available for long. But they were plentiful at this show!

With so many breweries to choose from, I had to narrow it down somehow. So I tried to focus on places away from Grand Rapids, since I can always visit the nearby ones at other times. There were still plenty of choices! If I had to pick one favorite beer from the afternoon, I think I'd go with One Well Brewing's Scheming and Plotting - a bourbon barrel aged chocolate imperial stout. But honestly, there were probably half a dozen that were so good that it's hard to choose.

It took me a few hours to recover after all that beer, but again, the car service was great for getting out of there after the festival. Spent a while on a considerate friend's couch and ended up no worse for wear. Next year I think I'll have more food - I only ate a bunch of pretzels this time. Which were fine, but a burger or two would have balanced out the beer a bit.

All told, the Winter Festival was a great time and I'm definitely going to keep it in mind for next year. Can't expect the weather to always be as nice as it was, but even if we'd had to deal with snow it would be worth it!

Favorite Moments - Winter Olympics 2018

Another Olympic Games have come and gone. For the last couple of weeks, one sport or another has been a near-constant background presence on my TV. Picking a top three is the Olympic tradition, so here's my personal list of favorite moments from the 2018 games.

Ester Ledecka winning gold in the Super-G: Ledecka is a snowboarder first, not a skier. Pretty much everyone considered the medals to already be determined by the time she went down the hill. Ledecka herself didn't believe it at first when she saw the time after her run. It's worth a few minutes of your time to search for her interview shortly afterward, clearly still shocked at her own performance. Oh, and then she won gold in snowboard parallel giant slalom, too.

The hockey finals: I'm cheating a bit here by combining these because both the men's and women's gold medal games were amazing in their own way. The USA vs Canada women's final match-up was a surprise to approximately no one, and it lived up to the hype with a well-played and hard-fought match that went all the way through overtime and into a shootout. I'm not a big fan of the shootout to decide games, but the incredible move by Jocelyne Lamoureux to score for the USA and big save by Maddie Rooney to seal the win was epic. The men's final, on the other hand, was not as expected: Germany vs the-team-who-can't-say-they're-Russian. The Russians were supposed to be there, but the Germans had to beat two powerhouses in Sweden and Canada. Then Germany almost had the gold medal in hand, with a lead inside two minutes left in regulation and even a man advantage, but somehow the Russians came back and tied it, then won in overtime. Crazy and incredibly entertaining games, both of them.

German Madrazo of Mexico finishes last in cross-country skiing: Last place usually isn't newsworthy, but this finish was heartwarming. In the men's 15k cross-country race, Madrazo came in dead last. But not alone, as fans and several of his fellow competitors stayed to cheer him on across the finish line and carry him off in a hero's exit. One of those was Pita Taufatofua, the athlete from Tonga famous for marching shirtless in the opening ceremony, who had finished the race just a few places ahead. The elite athletes with medal chances get the headlines, but there's a lot of others attending and competing, and it's good to sometimes stop and spare a thought for the rest of the field.

Every Olympic Games has a long list of great moments, of course, way too many to attempt to list them all. Nearly every event had something exciting, emotional, incredible, or all of the above. Looking forward to the next installment, in the summer in 2020.

Bonfire by Krysten Ritter

Bonfire by Krysten Ritter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I listened to an interview with Krysten Ritter (on NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me), I was expecting some discussion of her acting, from shows like Jessica Jones and Breaking Bad. There was some of that, but I was surprised to also hear that she was promoting a book called Bonfire. So I had to check it out.

Bonfire is set in rural Indiana, where Chicago lawyer Abby Williams is returning to her hometown to investigate the local industrial firm for failing to comply with environmental regulations. It's not a happy homecoming for Abby, who left behind unhappy memories and broken relationships when she left after high school. Conducting the investigation dredges up the unwelcome
past, and in the end reveals both current and past misdeeds.

Abby's mental state is just as important in Bonfire as the facts of her investigation. There are points in the book where she seems on the brink of complete collapse, and she certainly leans heavily on the booze to deal with her situation. Abby is a flawed character who doesn't always choose the best option for dealing with her problems, but I thought Ritter did a fine job of bringing her feelings and struggles to life.

I enjoyed Ritter's writing style, which I found easy to read and engrossing. She makes good use of short chapters that encourage the reader to keep going for just one more...and one more, and one more. The momentum of the storyline built fairly consistently, such that I never felt impatient for something new to happen. I did feel that the last twist that revealed the final villain was a bit obvious, but I enjoyed the journey enough that it didn't bother me.

I already knew that I liked Krysten Ritter's work in front of a camera. Now I'll be keeping an eye out for her work with a pen as well.

Thor: Ragnarok

It occurs to me that Marvel Studios has set a really high bar with their MCU movies. Thor: Ragnarok is a solid effort, well above average and miles better than anything that I'd have expected a decade or so ago. And yet I found myself disappointed.

(Warning: Spoilers below, on the off chance that anyone else is as late to the party as me.)

This is the third Thor movie, and the seventeenth in the MCU. All the usual things that I've come to expect from MCU movies are here: impressive effects, interesting characters, plenty of interpersonal drama, and a plot that holds together if you don't think too hard about it. There's plenty of appearances by other Thor-adjacent characters, most notably Loki and Odin from earlier films, and new introductions of their long-lost sister Hela and a new Valkyrie ally. The Hulk plays a big role as well, which is nice since he's been missing since Avengers: Age of Ultron. And there's a bit of Doctor Strange, following up from the teaser bit at the end of his movie.

So why the disappointment? First, my expectations were sky-high. Several people in my circle of friends raved about this movie, calling it the best to date in the MCU and possibly the best superhero movie of all time. Critics loved it, ratings were high, hardly a bad thing to be said about it anywhere. Thus, I was expecting incredible things. When I got only above-average, it felt disappointing, even though I know that's not really fair.

Second, the primary reason that I think Thor: Ragnarok falls short of excellent and thus below my expectations: the overdone, constant slapstick humor. The first few times it's funny: someone falls flat on their face, accidentally knocks themselves over, insults their opponent to his face, etc. But after you see it again and again, you start to expect something embarrassing, and then it's just tiresome. By the time Bruce Banner does a belly flop out of a spaceship near the end, it was so obvious what was coming that I was cringing. Clearly I'm in the minority on this, given how much everyone else seems to love the movie, but the humor aspects just felt excessive to me...and it's not funny when it's overdone.

There were a few other minor things that didn't click with me. Jeff Goldblum's Grandmaster character annoyed me, largely because I felt that Goldblum's style clashed with the role of manipulative, heartless tyrant. The loss of Mjolnir (that's the hammer) felt almost trivial in how easily it happened. The mighty Thor begging Stan Lee not to cut his hair was pathetic. And there wasn't nearly enough of Fenris (the giant wolf).

Having said all that, Thor: Ragnarok is a fine movie. I'm glad that I've seen it, and likely will watch it again someday when I happen across it on a streaming service or something. Don't avoid it, just temper your expectations a bit going in.