Monday Musings 1/5

Two random thoughts this morning.

I’m pretty sure that about 2/3 of the battery-operated devices that I own exist solely so I can steal the batteries from them for my TV remote control.

The world of sports has a lot of stupid discussions but nothing is dumber than “Legacy” debates/questions. ESPN asked, How will the Raiders stint affect Pete Carroll’s legacy? The same way that Hakeem Olajuwon’s Toronto stint affects his legacy. Not at all. Vince Lombardi actually had a fairly successful and impactful year in Washington before he passed away and nobody mentions that either.

2026 Karaoke Playlist

One of my sillier goals for 2026 is to try all new songs or, at least, never do the same song twice at karaoke. I live next to a bar The Mermaid that has karaoke nights on Tuesday and Thursday and on Wednesday nights, down the road a bit, Uncle Ollie’s Penthouse (one of the better new bars in LA imo) has Gong Show Karaoke - three comedians watch you perform, can gong you off stage, and if they let you finish, they then give you a review kind of American Idol-style. The night I went, the winner of the evening went home with a fancy new bong.
My recent go-to’s have been Mr. Brightside, Say It Ain’t So, and Lonely Boy but I want to try to mix things up in 2026 so I’ve been compiling a Spotify list of potential karaoke options. At first, I went for a lot of deep cuts until I remembered that a lot of songs aren’t available for karaoke so I nixed those from the list. The Mermaid and Prime Time Pub (another fave karaoke spot) both go with the modern version of karaoke which is just pulling up videos from YouTube so there are far more options than the standard karaoke that has books of song choices but, even then, some deeper cuts aren’t on YouTube yet.
I’m added some of my standards to the list but the rule - if I stick to it - will be to delete a song from the playlist after I sing it and then it is off-limits for the rest of the year. Listen, I said it was one of my sillier goals!

New Thing #2: No Other Choice

New Thing #2 is No Other Choice from Park Chan-Wook, director of Oldboy and The Handmaiden (which I still haven’t seen.) Whenever I think of The Handmaiden, I think of a date I went on. I think I “met” the woman on Hinge and when she arrived at the roof bar at Mama Shelter, I immediately saw that she was out of my league and I think I saw that she saw that as well. She wanted to move to one of the daybeds - she laid back, I tried to awkwardly sit/lay on my side and never got comfortable at all - and we talked for a bit about movies and she brought up “The Handmaiden” she said “Oh, it’s the most…” and then had a very awkward pause as if she suddenly questioned whether she wanted to continue the sentence but then powered through, “erotic movie I’ve ever seen.” Her hesitance at saying “erotic” did not come off at all like shyness; it was more like she didn’t like the idea of even the word erotic and myself being in close proximity, so I knew that the date was a one and done. We went to see a show at The Pantages and afterwards I walked her to her car and when I hugged her goodnight she gave an “Awwww.” that wasn’t exactly emasculating but definitely made me feel like she was wrapping up her charitable deed for the month.

As for No Other Choice, it’s the rare movie that put together a trailer that doesn’t totally ruin the movie for you. If you want to go in mostly blind, it’s a dark comedy about a man who loses his job and finds himself unable to care for his family so he considers walking down a dark path to get back to financial security.

No Other Choice is a very interesting movie. I feel like it could have gone deeper into some of these stories and characters but, at the same time, I’m not quite sure if I would have been all that interested to go much further. It might have been some of the slapstick humor in the film but by the midpoint, I felt like a lot of the film’s tension was gone. I wasn’t watching a man struggle with a horrible decision. Everyone in the film seemed to think there was truly no other choice so the film was more watching what people would do when they had to act in a way they might not want to. It was less “What will they do?” and more “Dark hijinks ensue.”

I’m a huge fan of variations on a theme and I wouldn’t mind seeing Americans remakes of this film from different angles. A full-on dark comedy. A more dramatic reading of it. Versions that take on the perspectives of different characters. This isn’t to say that this version isn’t worth watching. No Other Choice is in my Top 20 of 2025 and would be on the same tier as Sentimental Value, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, A House of Dynamite, and Marty Supreme; films I admired and respected but I wouldn’t say that I enjoyed them and I had a level of disengagement from them for some reason.

New Thing #1: The Plague

Well, I’m sorry to report that my first film of 2026 will go down as one of my least favorite films of 2025. “The Plague” is a movie about bullying and the struggle to fit in but with a tinge of body horror that, in my opinion, only detracts from the main point of the film. This is a film made by and for grownups who have been bullied in the past. This movie is more “Been there, that sucked” than teaching any lessons for the kids who are actually dealing with bullying. In fact, I wouldn’t be stunned if it had adverse effects on younger audiences. I get how the body horror element and the over-the-top score will hit a sweet spot for indie film fans and critics but, for me, it added an open-endedness that I think would leave many kids with the wrong ideas.

Tomorrow’s movie is “No Other Choice” by Oldboy director Park Chan-wook. I’m a little nervous about this one because I was not a fan of his last film, “Decision to Leave”.

New Year, New Blog

2025 was a wasted year for me. I don’t think I’ve slept more in my life. Even as an infant, I probably didn’t sleep as much as I did last year. I’m pretty sure that I accomplished a grand total of zero of my goals so the goal/resolution for 2026 is to just be a functioning human being as I close out my 40s.

I’m going to reboot the 500 Things Challenge and also try to fill up my RecomMendos; I feel like a lot of my recommendations are from years ago. I also want to try to reach out to people more and set up more dinners or events. I feel like I’ve fallen off on that front. Honestly, the only front I was committed to last year was seeing movies - I don’t think I’ve ever seen 70 new movies before. So sleeping and films were the big winners in 2025.

This post is just to kick off the blog. Hopefully, I’ll have more nteresting things to say in the future,

Happy New Year!