Jack of Harts

Some of you know that I like Transformers. The big robots from Cybertron, not the electrical grid thingies. Some of you have had learned more about Transformers than you ever wanted to know while talking to me. It is the danger of tripping into something I really enjoy. I go from zero stop not talking to talking about nothing else, and doing so until the subject is exhausted. Or the people talking about it are. And I rarely exhaust first. 😉

Well…I’m off to Dairycon this weekend. It’s a little gathering of a couple hundred close friends who happen to like Transformers as much or more than I do. Yes. It is possible. And yes, we will all be together in one location. In sunny Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Do not blame us if anything odd happens there. 😉

It’s game night tonight, so we’ll have all kinds of Transformers related games provided for people to play. Come on over to the Cow Palace in the Fairgrounds and have some fun with us. You might even be able to ogle the collections some of the dealers are setting up at the same time. Not that any of us would cut the line early and buy anything tonight before the show opens. That would be totally unfair to all the people only arriving on Saturday. And we would never take advantage of our position in such an underhanded and…

Oh, who am I kidding? We would. We so TOTALLY would… 😉

Dairycon, here I come…

Some of you may know that I recently acquired a new puppy. Well, she’s eleven years old, so puppy may be a bit of an exaggeration. And she was 19 pounds when we got her, so…maybe a bit big as well. My uncle died though, and she needed a home, so she found one with my mom. And since I live next door, she got me in the package deal.

Well, it’s been a few months, and the insanity of winter is melting away, and it was time for her to go in for a claw cutting, some hair trimming, and stuff like that. The basics you need to do for something that is on the Poodle-mix side of the dog spectrum. We asked my cousin where she went to the vet and walked in to find out what they knew about her. Turns out most of her vaccinations went poof in March, so she needs those before anybody will cut her hair. Those aren’t cheap. Two hundred bucks kind of “not cheap.”

But, what are you going to do? So we found a time to get her vaccinated before the hair cutting appointment, and then I went to sleep because I work overnights. And my Mom ended up driving her out to the pet hospital.

Now, the last time this girl was in a car, she screamed. She hadn’t seen her person in days, and while she knew us and liked us, we weren’t her people. And we were dognapping her from her home. From the one place she knew her person would have to come back to. And she screamed and fought and pleaded with us as we took her away.

It’s been months since then, and she noticed when I took her crate out into the car. And then Mom grabbed the leash that her person always used to take her on walks with. And she walked out happily with my mom, walked up to the car, and asked for help to get up into the crate. And then she quietly rode all the way to the pet hospital. There she said hello to all the people and dogs she could, had a good time meeting new people, and got a new wellness exam. She’s 16 pounds now. Lost three pounds under our care. The vet wants her to lose another pound if possible, but that’s a good improvement right there. So she got her shots, said hello to everybody as she left, and then led Mom right back to the car so she could ride back…home.

Tomorrow she gets to go back for a haircut and claw trimming. And I’m hopeful that she will have another good ride in the back of the car while doing so. And then she can come back home again.

I watched Unplanned this weekend. Yes, that is the movie filmed from the perspective of a Planned Parenthood manager who became a Pro-Life activist after seeing an abortion in action. You may have heard that they Unplanned was banned from Twitter. Or that their ads were banned from major television networks Lifetime, HGTV, and Hallmark. Those banishments from major electronic media of the current day appear to have done nothing to hurt the film.

Unplanned sold far more tickets than expected, cresting well over six million dollars domestic, and appearing to slot into an impressive number five at the box office. Considering this was opening weekend for Dumbo, and the blockbusters US and Captain Marvel are still on screens, that’s an impressive hall in my book. One interesting bit I’ve noticed from scouring the Internet is that while Unplanned is in a quarter of the theaters that Captain Marvel is in, it actually is averaging more money per theater than the comic book movie. That’s an eye opener right there. And the movie that narrowly beat it for the number four slot made a third of the revenue per theater that Unplanned did. Another tidbit is that the only movie in the top ten with fewer theaters than Unplanned was Hotel Mumbai, which dominated the airwaves with ads and brought in half the haul.

Another point of interest is that most of the States where it did the best are in the Midwest or the South. You may now all don your shocked faces. Unplanned never tried to hide its message or its politics. So one would never expect it to do well or be accepted in places that are most mocking of its core values. What this movie does prove though is that there is a major market out there for movies that Hollywood and New York Do Not Approve Of. Other movies have come out in the last few years that have done similarly well, but few major movies to hit the theaters have been as staunch as this one on this particular issue. And a Christian movie that gains the Rated R status is rather rare. Even that did not stop it from having a very successful first weekend.

Reports I’ve read suggest that the company is going to put it in 600 more theaters next weekend based on this weekend’s results. That’s a bold strategy. We’ll see how that works out for them.

Now in all of this, I haven’t said what I thought about it. The shortest of all possible reviews would be to say that it is a powerful movie.

I think one of the best things it does is show people on both sides of the issue who are human and just want to help others. Not everyone who supports abortion is a baby-killing monster. And not everyone who opposes it has dreams of Handsmaid Tales dancing in their heads. Yes, there are monsters on both sides, and this movie shows them. But the people who inhabit most of the movie are the nice people with infectious smiles and joyful welcomes who are simply trying to help people. Which makes the monsters all the more stark in their portrayal.

It is a worthy movie to see. It made me laugh. It made me cry. Sometimes it made me do both at the same time. And considering the subject matter, that is I suppose the most fitting reaction to have.