July 2026: Epic
Odysseus, the statue.
You want it all, but you can’t have it.
The World Cup wrapped while the world burned up. Wildfires ripped through parts of Europe and North America while the entire northern hemisphere boiled in sweltering heat and humidity. July was fun.
Two-fiddy
Here in the U.S., we celebrated our nation’s 250th birthday.
This was a bittersweet celebration in my opionion simply because our country has been divided for so long. We have awesome people here, but there are forces at work all around us, turning us against each other.
We’ve made a lot of social progress in two-hundred and fifty years, but we are moving backwards right now.
Epic Movies
Haven’t seen the new Spider-Man movie as of today. It just came out this week, and it’s getting good reviews and making a bunch of money. No surprises there. I did see The Odyssey, and boy did that movie get some folks riled up. For the past year, there has been a lot of online chatter about the wokeness of the casting.
How could you ruin the story by including black people? How dare you?!
I am of the who cares opinion. We are talking about someone’s interpretation of someone else’s work of fiction. We’re not talking about Denzel Washington playing Jimmy Carter. It’s clear to me that Christopher Nolan’s latest movie was yet another piece of media being spun into some weird social experiment. It felt like there was a specific agenda behind pushing the narrative that the only way The Odyssey could be any good is if it honored the make believe history of white Greeks. The people bothered by Lupita Nyongo playing Helen of Troy (and her twin sister) must think that black people weren’t invented yet.
The Odyssey is a fantastic spectacle that has some breathtaking scenes and a few outstanding performances. Eight out of ten.
Summer Has Gone
Oh, the season still has some legs in it, and the heat usually stretches into the early fall down here in the American Southwest. However, twilight descends on the summer break in my household. I work all year, despite working in higher ed. My wife is a public school teacher, so she has had two months off with the kids, but the dream ends next week.
We got in some fun excursions this summer: road trips, beach visits, county fairs, baseball games, movies, pool days, hangouts with friends. Good stuff, and it kind of wasn’t enough. I’m grateful, Lord, you know I am, but the days flashed by. We continue to move into the second half of 2026, with some uncertainty as to whether or not the national condition will improve. Hopefully you put in some work making good memories if you were fortunate enough to take a breather and kick it.
Saturday Night Special
The biggest movie of the summer, The Odyssey, at least until Spider-Man swings into cinemas.
SNS 106
“Outback Odyssey”
