Kenneth Buff's Blog

Derby needs change. Everyone I’ve met in the district agrees on that. People are tired of what appears to be complacency on the part of the of our negotiators and leaders in the union.

Things I personally will fight for when elected:

I will train the district via the union negotiators to always factor step and column movement into the budget before they even come to the negotiating table.

Yes, this is considered a “negotiated item” but this is the only district I’ve worked in where the assumption is always you’re not going to have your college credits honored for column movement. I’ve experienced step freezes (but not as long and icy as Derby’s), but Derby is on another level with only honoring column movement for new hires.

I’d like to eradicate the sense of fear that my colleagues throughout the district feel. Teachers should not have to be worried that their union will not have their back in the event of employer retaliation. We pay dues for a reason. We act collectively for a reason. Under my leadership teachers will have no need to fear their jobs are in jeopardy simply because they disagree with the district.

Under my leadership, communication with members will be key. I will strive for transparency in all communication, and will listen to members of their wants and demands of the district, and of their union leadership.

Members interested in taking on bigger roles in the union (via rep positions, etc.) will be trained. They will be able to inform their colleagues in their buildings of their rights as employees. The goal here is to have a strong, healthy body of teachers across the district who are ready to work towards achieving our goals of better pay and working conditions as a solid, well oiled machine.

These are just some of my top plans for improvement of DNEA once elected. That said, I am the type of person who doesn’t like to stop improving. So, once these goals have been met, undoubtedly new goals will have risen, and the work will continue.

And, one final thought. Some people look at this work, the work of organizing, the work of unpaid labor to better the working conditions of you and your fellow co-workers as tedious, time consuming, and potentially stressful. I do not. I find this work fulfilling. When elected, I will not tire of fighting along side my colleagues for a better tomorrow for all of us.

I don’t believe in destiny. Not one that’s preordained in anyway. That said, there sure is enough things—things that I consider little but maybe when held together add up more than I give them credit for—that do seem to suggest the title of this post.

I am statistically an anomaly. I’m 1/5 of my mother’s kids, and only me and my youngest brother are still alive. I no longer live in poverty. I have a house, with a finished basement, a couple of cars (one even has an infotainment system). Things I thought I’d never see.

I grew up getting yelled at a lot. Never beaten or abused. But yelled at. We moved a lot. We lived in other people’s houses often. At one point in my childhood I could count the houses we lived in, but I don’t know if I still could. Typically we’d move every 3-6 months. The longest span was three years in one home. Money was typically the issue. Suddenly, somehow, we couldn’t afford to pay the rent anymore, and we would be off. To live with Pa (my sort of grandfather), before moving again to some place a couple months before not being able to afford it anymore.

My dad usually didn’t have a job. He just spent my mother’s disability checks on pot or guitars, or whatever else. He often wasn’t there. As in not in the state. He’d be in Las Vegas working with my uncle at a brass factory that provided railings for the casinos. He’d get laid off and would “come home” after a few months.

My mom during certain years was angry about this. Angry he was gone. Angry that she was given the duty by my father to stay behind with us to go to Haysville schools. She yelled at me about this sometimes. When my dad returned he spent a lot of his time yelling at my mom about being stupid, and the source of many (if not all) of his problems.

At school I worried about being outed as being poor. I was really ashamed of it. I knew other people’s families didn’t live in their mother’s ex-husband’s living rooms. I knew their dad’s weren’t absent for 2/3 of the year, and that their mother’s didn’t blame them for this fact. I knew their parents bought them clothes from a store, instead of from Goodwill. Kids are smart.

The ripples of this stuff, of this chaotic world I lived in, would color the rest of my life. Like a shadow that I couldn’t get away from. There would be replacement families along the way. Mental breakdowns. Tragic deaths (my childhood best friends’ dad drowned underneath me in the Arkansas River), and eventually, somehow, normalcy. It was simultaneously a lot easier and a lot harder than I ever thought it would be.

For a long time I chose to run from all of this. I never pretended that it didn’t happen, I just pretended that it didn’t matter. That my life was the future, and the past was just this thing that happened, and was now done. I think this started when I was around 19 or 20, and some friends were swapping stories of their childhood and I gave one of mine and there was just silence. At that moment I realized, “Oh…my childhood makes people feel weird. I need to never talk about it.” Which was basically my motto for the next decade and a half.

I am failing to mention the bizarreness. It’s coming off like it was mostly just sad, and yeah, I suppose in retrospect it was, but a lot of it was also really weird. Just crazy stuff. Bathing in trashcans because there’s no running water inside (they were new trashcans), your grandfather being your mom’s ex-husband, poop seeping out of the drains whenever it rained (because the septic tank would fill with the rain), and other weird shit like that. My brother and I would just laugh our asses off about it (during our teen years). Just how crazy and ridiculous it all was. My parents, also had incredibly bad reasoning skills which often made them come off goofy and unserious. They were always stuck in a loop. Well, more my dad was, and my mom’s only concern ever was to be sure that he never wanted to divorce her. But my dad was always scheming on how he was going to defeat poverty. Some crazy new plan every other month. And, eventually these crazy plans would mean we’d have to move to go realize it. Shit. I guess it mostly is sad, lol. But trust me, my brother and I laughed a lot. That is a weird part, that overall, I think fondly of my childhood. I liked being a kid. I always had friends (wherever we were) and I was always happy, despite whatever crazy stuff was happening at home. Did I sometimes cry when my parents told me (yet again) we would be moving? Yes, I did. Very hard, I’d bury my face into pillows. Did I cry when my mother told me it was my fault she couldn’t be with my dad? Yeah. That one hurt. I was old enough when she said it so bluntly to know it wasn’t true, but it still hurts when your mom accuses you of ruining her marriage by existing.

There was a point where I was angry. As an adult. I wanted my parents to know what they did was wrong, and to get some kind of an apology. But I couldn’t have that. My mom would just cry. She didn’t remember any of it. Not the yelling. Not the mean things she’d said. It was like it was all blank for her. Often, my mom (now) seems like a child when you speak to her. It just ends up making me deeply sad when I speak to her, and there is no resolution. Only sadness. My dad I’ve spoken to as little as possible since I learned about some of the more sinister things he’s done and/or threatened to do. He’s not a good person, and I can’t pretend that he is and try to hold any kind of conversation with him.

Again, in my late teens I was very angry. And it would come up again here or there I suppose in my 20s. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair my parents had denied me a loving home. That I was taught nothing about the world of adults. About how money works. How anything works. But anger can only last so long. It burns out, and you feel hollow. When the other party doesn’t even remember what happened, you don’t even know what you’re mad at anymore. You’re mad at a ghost.

Then, came a sort of distant sadness. A sadness for what wasn’t. Because as you age, and you start to have a family, and your friends all have families, you see how useful, and how nice it must be to have an original family to incorporate your new family into. Grandparents. Aunts. Uncles. I have none of that to give my children. For a long time that really hurt. I felt that I wasn’t providing for them in that respect. But, I’ve been very fortunate to have great in-laws, and great friends. And, I’ve kept that glass half full attitude from my childhood. It’s never left me.

Lately, as I’m edging closer and closer to my life’s likely half point, I have been thinking more about the ways my experiences have shaped me, and my ongoing behaviors. For good and for bad. And, it’s strange. It’s a new feeling I’ve had about the memories of my life. I think it might be some kind of sense of pride. But not a sense of pride for having survived it, but maybe simply a sense of pride for no longer being ashamed of it. I think that’s it.

I enjoy getting older. I’ve known this for a long time. I’d say it basically started around the time I started weight lifting. This took place a few years ago at this point. I would have been around 35 at the time, I’m now 38. A comfortable, awesome 38.

For me, getting older means getting wiser. You accumulate knowledge as you experience life. But more than that, it’s the comfort that comes with age I enjoy most. I do have to be honest and say that this is partially induced by my anxiety reducing supplement I take, Rhodiola Rosea . It takes a huge load off for me. But, I can’t attritbute all of my growth onto it. It’s not magic. Time has done a lot of the heavy lifting. Time. And self reflection.

I take Rhodioila Rosea for the overthinking problem I have with ADD. I used to see someone in a grocery store and wonder about their entire life. I’d paint a picture in my head of what their backstory was. And I would do this with everyone. I’d get directions from my boss, and wonder what the meaning was behind the words they just said. In retrospect, it was exhausting, and wasted a lot of time and energy, but when it’s how you think it’s how life works, you grind through it. The supplement ended all that for me, almost immediately, making it possible for real growth to start for me.

Now, this isn’t an advertisement for my favorite wonder drug (but if you struggle with running thoughts, get it checked out…I cannot stress enough how happier I am now), this is my waxing on the wonders of time. On the gift of age.

Like any bonafide old person will tell you, getting old sucks for the body. There’s no arguing that. Yes, weight lifting, and eating a good diet can get you into great shape for your entire life if you choose, but no amount of creatine or progressive overload can help me with my dry eye disease, or my wife’s sjogren's syndrome. Those are things you have to learn to live with. But, aside from that real trade off, getting old is awesome.

All those old people you know who are cool as shit because they don’t care about what other people think? That becomes you. It’s so cool. Those old people who give great advice because they’ve lived, and understand that 80-90 years really isn’t that long, that also becomes you.

And appreciating. Trying to slow yourself down to enjoy things, that has become me. Burning through life, trying to get to something in the future instead of enjoying what’s right in front of you (the only time you will ever have), it’s no way to live.

Getting old, it’s something we should all strive for. And, as we do it, we’ve gotta make sure we’re good stewards to the young people. Yeah, they have terrible taste in TikTok videos, and couldn’t overseed a lawn to save their lives, but still, they too will one day be old, and we have to help guide them on that journey, as the awesome old people we remember from our youths once did for us.

So, I like saving a buck. I also enjoy high quality coffee. Luckily, Wichita is a blue collar working class town. We’re the home of Boeing, Cessna, Spirit, Hawker Beach Craft, and probably other ones. But the days of settling for your daddy’s Folgers are down. We demand good coffee. And the Reverie’s locally roasted coffee is definitely not Folgers. It’s great coffee. But, the price of the stuff at the shop is not great. That’s why I like to get it at these other places. Here are my favorites:

#1: The Donut Whole

God I love this place. All of their donut flavors are so good. My favorite is anything with a citrus flavor. But, hey, this post is supposed to be about the coffee, so let’s get back on track. They serve Reverie coffee here, but instead of giving you the baby cups they sell at Reverie, here you get a big ass cup, and you pay the same price (about four bucks). That’s for the large. I think it’s three something for the smaller size. A much better deal. Plus the donuts are amazing. Definitely go to the Donut Whole.

#2: Jump Start

This is a gas station chain that has recently started sprouting up in the Wichita area. I’ve mostly seen it in suburbs of Wichita (Haysville and Clearwater). But here, you can get a Reverie coffee in a large cup for a $1.09 (with tax!). The Reverie has some partnership with them. Reverie has set up these coffee machines in them that they call “Rev by Reverie.” The coffee isn’t as delicious as a traditionally brewed cup from any of the other shops on this list…but it’s still pretty good…and it’s a buck!

#3: Frost

This is an ice cream/dessert shop on Douglas. It’s right next to the Andy’s Frozen Custard (bastards came to College Hill to kill Frost…but they haven’t succeeded yet!). Much like Donut Whole you can get a large coffee cup of Reverie coffee for around $4.00. That’s how much you pay for a much smaller sized cup from Reverie itself.

#4: Any of the Hipster Restaurants in Town

Home Grown, Public at the Brickyard, etc. I really hate paying $4 for a tiny cup of good coffee (it’s only Reverie that I’ve seen do this), so I prefer getting their coffee almost anywhere else, lol, including any of the local hipster joints. Home Grown will even fill you up with some Reverie coffee to go, so, again, a much better deal than Reverie proper…and you’ll also get a delicious breakfast too!

This has really snuck up on us, and there’s even more coffee available to Wichitans then the shops I frequent or have visited. But I’m going to speak on what I know and my list of top 4 favorites.

Number 1: The Reverie

This is probably no surprise to anyone who lives in Wichita. This place’s stuff is everywhere. If you got a local resteraunt in town that also serves coffee roasted here in Wichita, it’s going to be serving Reverie coffee. You can get their coffee at Donut Whole, Frost, Home Grown, Brickyard Brewery, Jump Start (the gas station!) and probably a bunch of other places I don’t know about. It’s good coffee.

The shop itself is that rustic hipster style. There’s an old timey bicycle with a giant front wheel hung up on the wall (that’s the logo on their Jump Start coffee too). Overall a nice clean vibe. It feels like the yuppy coffee shop and the prices reflect that. Out of all the places you can get their coffee you will pay the most for the smallest cup at the official Reverie coffee shop. That said, it is my favorite place to get work done in town. Plenty of tables, even when it’s crowded I can find a place to work. The Rye Chocolate Chip cookie is the best cookie in town. They’ve got this little oven that warms it up that looks REAL expensive. Leaves the cookie warm but still crispy. Just top notch.

Number 2: Leslie’s Coffee

This place is like the Reverie’s angry sister. She’s a little hipper, a little edgier, a little dirtier. Leslie’s has good coffee. I like the location better than the Reverie (it’s in the heart of Delano). It also has a to-die-for cookie. Leslie’s is the shortbread cookie that is always shaped in a heart with varying colored home-made frosting. Their coffee is a little cheaper than Reverie’s, but not cheap-cheap. Normal coffee shop prices instead of the inflated Reverie price. Leslie’s is big into giving back. They have a fridge for the homeless filled with food provided by community donations. The homeless also get free coffee. If you’re more into ignoring poverty and pretending the homeless don’t exist, probably not the shop for you. If you like supporting a business that makes the world a little bit better, Leslie’s is the shop for you.

Leslie’s is also into plants. There’s a lot of plants decorating the shop. It’s also got a hipster vibe (it’s a coffee-shop thing, guys), but the more dirty version. It’s got rougher edges than the Reverie, but that’s what makes it lovable. It’s the slightly poorer-man’s coffee shop, and that’s cool.

Number 3: Milkfloat

Milkfloat is firstly a dessert place, but they also do coffee. What I love about Milkfloat (other than the awesome desserts) is that it’s open late. Where I come from (I come from here…but I did live in Stillwater for a decade) coffee shops are open late. They close early around here. Reverie shuts their doors at like 4pm. Leslie’s used to stay open later, but Leslie herself needed a better work life balance, so now they close up around 5pm most days. Milkfloat is open till like 8pm, so you can grab a late night brew if you’re needing it. I am a coffee addict, and could drink it all the time, but have been choosing to cut back recently to avoid the irritability I get when I slam the stuff down my throat all day. But, occasionally when the stars align I still do have a late night coffee, and I often get it from Milkfloat.

It’s also a cool place to just hangout. It’s filled with community tables as well as some smaller individual ones you’ll see young people typing away at, or enjoying the company of a friend or date. As I said before, the dessert options are pretty good. A lot of weird things they make up. My favorite being the donut muffin. It’s a giant muffin, but with the texture and taste of a cake donut. Just top notch stuff.

Number 4: Watermark Books and Cafe

This is foremost a bookshop, but, it also has a really nice coffee shop. They have their own blend called the Watermark blend that has a cinnamon flavor to it. They get the beans from a local roaster in town, The Spice Merchant, and then add their secret spice mix that makes it the most popular brew they carry. This is my second favorite place to do work after the Reverie. They’ve got nice little tables to work at, and it’s real quiet. Mostly old people meet other old people to have lunch, discuss books, etc. And, of course, there’s a bookstore when you’re needing a break! I honestly just love looking at all the cool stuff they sell that aren’t books (as you might know, I’m a big library guy) but I do look at their displays to get ideas for things I need to read. They also have a great candle selection if you’re into that.

Honorable Mention: Donut Whole

So, obviously this is a donut shop. And, I’d argue THE donut shop of Wichita. You just can’t beat their donuts. That said, they also sell Reverie coffee in a much bigger cup at a lower price. Outstanding. I love going here to grab a donut for myself and the kids while also enjoying a delicious coffee. This place doesn’t really have the coffee shop vibe…though, it also kind of does. It’s like a weird hybrid, so I’m tacking in on here as an honorable mention. You should definitely go here though. Hard recommend.

4/5 stars

I’ve watched Harrison Ford play the serial throwback hero Indiana Jones my entire life. My first introduction to Indy was with 1989’s The Last Crusade. This is the third film in the series, and is the one people often argue between being the best or the second best (it’s a contest between Raiders of the Lost Arc and Last Crusade). Next up was Raiders (quite some time later), and eventually Temple of Doom (my least favorite of the original trilogy). In 2008, shortly after I graduated high school, for some reason we got a fourth movie that completely ignored that Indy was 65 years old when the movie was filmed. Instead, it had him do his usual shenanigans (punching Nazis, swinging around on a whip, etc.) and threw in a bunch of CGI and a weak script. To most fans it was a massive misfire and we went along pretending it didn’t exist.

Fast forward 15 years later. Harrison ford is now 80. And, we’ve gotten a 5th Indiana Jones film. You wouldn’t be wrong if you said this sounds like a terrible idea. But, you would also be wrong, as it turns out the movie is actually the most fun anyone’s had with Indiana Jones in a theater since 1989. Yeah, the movie blows Krystal Skull out of the water, and gives Temple of Doom a run for its money on third best Indy Film. It sounds crazy, but, somehow it happened. Here’s what makes the movie work:

It doesn’t pretend Indy’s still in his 30s. The fact that Dr. Jones is now as old as dirt plays into everything the character does. He’s a cranky old man. This is what any hero who’s made it to his 80s ought to be.

James Mangold directs. This is the guy who directed Logan, Copland, and Identity. The dude knows how to make a good movie. And he doesn’t bring the weird baggage with him that Spielberg would have since he’d feel obligated to involve George Lucas, who just doesn’t have the stuff anymore (Nothing wrong with that. You had a great run, Lucas. No one could say different).

Harrison Ford is giving it his all. This may be the most important factor. Or, at least up there close to the top. Ford is fully awake in this movie, and he’s giving it his all. I remember watching Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in the theater and thinking, “Man, Harrison Ford sure seems like he forgot how to act” while I watched Area 51 employees scrub radioactivity off his body with a push broom and a water hose. That never happens here. I fully buy that he’s an old grumpy man that used to do cool shit when he was younger, but now shuffles between his office, his classroom, and his apartment, and not much else.

Indy goes on the adventure out of necessity, not out of desire. Indy’s pulled into the adventure, and the way it’s done makes it believable. Ford’s character never does anything we can’t believe an 80 year old Indiana Jones couldn’t do under the circumstances. They do a great job with this, and it’s exactly what Crystal Skull was missing.

Plenty of Practical effects and practical set pieces. Yeah, there’s more CGI here than in all three original Indy movies combined (did CGI even exist back then? Do matte paintings count as CGI, lol?), but there’s less than Crystal Skull, and the CGI is used better here too.

The script is solid. No aliens this time, guys. Just the Nazis trying get a relic with magical powers so they can rule the world. You know, classic Indiana Jones stuff.

Overall, if you’re a fan of the series, this is a worthy entry. If you’re a newcomer to the Jones Saga, this is probably not for you. Go home and fire up Disney+ and check out Last Crusade and Raiders of the Lost Arc, if you fall in love with ‘em, grab the kids and head to the theater. If not, maybe wait for TMNT to come out next month.

I love to “pick on” the hipsters. You know, the guys who love tight shorts, form fitting shirts, cool facial hair, man buns, bad beer and coffee.

I love to to “pick on” them, because I check most of those boxes (minus the tight shorts, man buns and beer. I also don’t have a mustache). I really like the sentiment this faux hippie seems to expel. Which is, we’re alive now. You might as well have the good stuff.

Now, my mother-in-law, Nancy Jane Cain (who DOES NOT buy the good stuff) would say I spend too much money. And, she would have been right a few months ago. (I’ve since read MR. MONEY MUSTACHE and have become a convert to the FIRE movement…but that’s another post). I now look at my money as my Life Energy (Thanks YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE), so I don’t want to get rid of it for just anything. It has to be something I really want or something I need.

I now go cheap on what I can, so I can get the good stuff on the things I want. For instance, you can get a pocket notebook for free if you really tried. They give ‘em away at tables at events when you wander around town, or you could grab one for a buck from Walmart. But those notebooks suck. I use mine every day, and I write cool ass shit that will later be sold on Amazon inside my little notebook. So, I bought (or, rather my wife bought it because she’s so sweet) The Leuchtturm 1917 pocket size notebook. Man, this thing is so cool. Yeah, I know, it’s just a notebook. But it’s a cool notebook, guys!. It cost way more than $1, but I get a lot for those dollars. I use it daily. Take it with me everywhere. I found out it has a slot in the back the other day, and now I carry my business cards in there and I don’t need a business cardholder!

That’s really one of the few expensive things I’ve bought that could be argued doesn’t come with better utility then the cheap version (though, it definitely does come with more utility too. The thing is built like a bible. Takes a beating in my pocket and it keeps on going…me and the kids actually call it my “GRAIL DIARY” after Sean Connery’s Grail Diary in INDIANA JONES: AND THE LAST CRUSADE). The rest of the items on my the HIPSTERS ARE RIGHT list have better utility than the cheap versions, and SAVE YOU MONEY in the long run. One of my favorite things. Saving money. It’s so awesome.

I make my own coffee in a bad ass French Press. Yeah, seems like a lot. But it’s so much smoother than the cheap one I got from TJ Maxx I’ve been using the last year and a half. This thing taste so good I don’t even buy coffee outside my house MOST of the time anymore. For the first several months of owning it I didn’t buy anyone else’s coffee at all. For those of you who aren’t coffee drinkers, a coffee out and about is usually a minimum of $3. More if you up the size from small to anything else. It’s around a buck at most gas stations, but gas station coffee isn’t great, even if it’s Quick Trip. The best gas station coffee in my metro is actually in Haysville. You can get Reverie Coffee (this gourmet roaster in town) for a buck there. It’s a crazy cheat to get great coffee at a low price while away from your French Press. But, overall, this bad boy has cut down on me buying coffee out, as I’ll just make a cup before I go and take it with me in one of those reusable plastic travel coffee mugs.

I use safety razors. I recommend these things to everyone. Men. Women. Anyone who shaves. You should use a safety razor. The blades are sharper (they get a closer shave and last longer), and insanely cheaper. I get the most expensive blades (because I like to live, people!) and it costs me 30 bucks for 50 blades. I buy blades twice a year. So, 60 bucks for a year of shaving. But, I shave my head every two days, so that dulls them a lot quicker than if you were just doing your face. I have a buddy who buys a different brand and he gets 100 blades at once, and I think he pays like $20. Just insane, people. Stop giving Gellette you’re money. They make an inferior product and they charge out the ass for it.

I wear Chaco sandals. These things have been my summer time shoes for years now. They hold up like a monster truck on your foot. The sole is literally about an inch of rubber. They let your foot breath (thank god! My feet love to sweat!), and they last forever. They come in all kinds of colors so you can express your inner you on your outer you, and there’s different styles for the straps to fit what feels good to you (I don’t go with the toe strap, bugs me too much). They’re cleanable (just Google how and you’ll find plenty of easy and effective methods) and repairable. Chaco has a repair section on their site, and they’ve actually given me a free pair before because mine weren’t repairable once.

I buy the cheaper airpods. I still go with Apple Airpods, but I didn’t actually know I was buying the cheap ones until some kid pointed out I had “the old model.” Doesn’t bother me. I already thought I was paying too much, but again, I use these things every day for everything. I use them in the gym. I use them to make phone calls and receive calls (I refuse to hold the phone to my ear), I listen to podcasts on them while doing the dishes sometimes, I use them when I play chess and I don’t want to bother anyone with the sound of the digital pieces clicking on the fake wooden board (such a satisfying sound!). They’re pretty awesome guys. Not sure why you’d need an “updated” version, other than I’d like to be able to replace the battery at some point, which is why I’ll probably start using this site: https://www.theswapclub.com/collections/airpod-swaps. They figured out how to get the batteries out of AirPods, and will send you a new set when you send them your old ones (and, by “new set,” I mean a different used set that they’ve replaced the batteries in). Pretty sweet deal. It’s like getting a new one, only $40 cheaper.

It’s quick, impossible to screw up, and delicious.

Come on, guys. You know you want to stick it to Gillette.

I’m thinking of getting another pair with brighter straps. I’m thinking about it, guys. This pair has still got another good 5 years left in them before they become my mowing sandals. And, I could just get the soles replaced and not even do that…tough choices, guys.

Oh the Grail Diary.

If I drop it somewhere, please return it. It’s got some banger ideas in it.

2/5 stars

“Probably one of the greatest superhero movies ever made,” James Gunn, when asked about The Flash. James Gunn…the dude lied. Let’s go through the whys on why The Flash is in fact not “one of the greatest superhero movies ever made” and is somewhere in the middle. Above DC and Marvel’s worst movies, but way below their best, and even below most of Marvels mediocre movies.

The Flash opens with CGI babies falling out of a building and the Flash saving them in a weird comedy bit. He throws one in a microwave. The audience gets that this is supposed to be funny because, “Hey, microwaves are for cooking things! He’s not going to cook that baby though, he’s saving it! Isn’t this so funny! Hahahaha! A baby in a Microwave!”

There’s a lot of dumb humor like that throughout the movie that just doesn’t land. A lot of pausing the forward momentum of the story, and action scenes to discuss “the science” of being the Flash to his younger self. They’re in the middle of a big battle trying to save their friends, Batman and Super-Woman, and they stop fighting so Older Flash can tell Younger Flash to “complete the circuit” so he can shoot lightning from his fingers. This takes a good 15 seconds to explain, killing the kinetic energy that was supposed to be happening in a movie about a guy who runs faster than the speed of light.

Putting aside Ezra Miller’s toxicity in the real world, in the movie, he doesn’t fit the part. He’s not charismatic, he’s not funny, and just comes off grating the whole time. It gets even worse when a second version of himself shows up and then never leaves.

Luckily Michael Keaton is back as Batman. Most of this is great. The only bit that wasn’t great was his introduction (there’s more of that weird middle school humor here on display). Keaton shows up in one flip flop, and he ends on top of Miller with his crotch over Miller’s face. Miller makes some middle school level joke about it. Haha, Batman-penis-in-face-funny hahaha!

All the Batman iconography is great. We get a couple scenes of Tim Burton’s Batmobile sitting in the cave, collecting dust (it never gets fired up…but we get to look at Younger Flash sleep in it, hahaha!), we get lots of Batman symbol shaped things doing cool things (lots of Bat-kites floating in storms, Batplanes sitting over the moon, Batarangs knocking people out…you know, important cool Batman shit). We get Keaton repeating three of his iconic one-liners from 1989’s Batman, which was oddly satisfying, because I too am still a small child trapped inside this man body. Damn you corporate America for understanding this!

Keaton does a good job with the character. He’s not phoning it in. He seems to get the character, and brings a gravitas to the movie that it other wise doesn’t have and probably doesn’t deserve. His lines and character seem better written than the Flash’s. I wonder if that’s because Keaton is just that much of a better actor, or if he helped workshop his lines and character (I would believe either one, or both).

Super-Woman is also awesome. Her character is interesting, and her performance is good. You believe that this woman really was being held in a secret government cell underground, and she’s now freed and ready to murder some people.

But, sadly, those two characters are not the main character. The Flash is, and he’s miscast, so he’s either annoying, or just “off.” He’s not funny. And the characters who interact with him also come of weird too. His roommates, the guy who makes his sandwich. All these characters seem to borrow the weird humor and misfiring that happened in that opening baby scene, and all the scenes Miller’s in where he isn’t talking to Batman, Super-Woman, or his mom (the mom scenes also work).

It’s just a weird hot mess. And I haven’t even complained about the CGI (it’s not great. The stuff in “the speed force” where he sees rubbery-looking versions of Christopher Reeve, Nic Cage Superman, etc. It all looks bad). To me, the CGI was the least of this movies problems. The script doesn’t even work. The lead duel performances don’t work. Without that you don’t have a movie that works.

2/5 stars.

So, it goes without saying that ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE was great, go see it. 4/5 stars. Maybe 4.5/5. I will say that I enjoyed it even more on the rewatch than I did on my initial watch. I caught more of the foreshadowing in acts 1 and 2 that I missed the first time (you really can’t catch some of the stuff if you don’t know the ending…which you wouldn’t know on your first watch, lol).

But, what I really want to talk about here is not the movie as a whole, but one specific character, and that character is Spider-Punk, better known as Hobie Brown, well, actually he’s better known as Spider-Punk. He first came to existence in the Spider-Verse comic (the comic book the first movie sort-of based the movie off of…but not really, it’s way different). The movie version of Spider-Punk is way cooler than the comic version, at least the version we meet in the first Spider-Verse comic. In the comic Hobie’s a comedic buddy of Miles Morales (Miles is not the lead of the comic, Peter Parker is) and they go off and do cute buddy-movie stuff together, cracking jokes and beating up bad guys. In Across the Spider-Verse, Hobie is a smart-mature-dude. He’s a real rebel, who understands powerful systems are not to be trusted, and immediately tells Miles this, and in fact tells him this subtely over and over again. In essence, he’s not just a punk in name and costume, but in spirit. This guy is fucking cool. Anti-establishment to the bone. And lo and behold, he turns out to be right about everything.

And, on top of warning Miles about the evils of the Spider Society, he also teaches Miles how to properly use his electric powers. And, since this is Hobie’s style, he does it simply and subtly. I didn’t even catch that he did it the first watch. Spider-Punk is the opposite of Peter B. Parker, which makes him even more damn cool. The writing, god, it’s so good. In this movie, Hobie Brown is secretly Miles Moraleses new mentor. But since Hobie doesn’t believe in labels, he would say he’s not (but he totally is).

So, how does he teach Miles to use his powers? So, when Hobie first meets Miles, Miles is trying to blow up a forcefield by abosorbing it’s power and shooting it back at it. Hobie shows up and destroys the forcefield with the power of punk rock (also a cool power, right?). Afterwards, he tells Miles, “You gotta use your whole palm, not just your fingertipes.” And then, later in the movie when Miles is trapped by Miguel O’Hara’s forcefield, Hobie spreads his palm out to remind the kid what he needs to do to free himself. Just king shit right there. It’s so subtle I missed it the first time.

He also one of the best lines in the movie. Miles is getting all worked up as Miguel tells him his dad is going to have to die so the timeline gods don’t get angry. Miles is getting rightfully pissed off. Hobie cheers him on with something like, “That’s it.” Jessica Drew, the new Spider-Woman who’s a loyal follower of Miguel O’Hara says, “Hobie, you’re not helping.”

Hobie responds with the bad ass line, “Good.”

God he’s so cool.

So, today we went to a pride parade. I believe we’ve gone to them before. We’ve definitely done gay events before (we went to a Rainbow Reading at the library a couple weeks ago. It was fun). But, if we had gone to a pride parade before, I somehow didn’t notice, or had since forgotten, the absolute absurdity of the industries and institutions who involve themselves in the parade. These institutions are not part of the community, and have historically been opposed to the LGBTQ community.

These groups are:

The police.

Corporations

Churches.

None of these groups have historically been on the side of gay and trans people. They’ve been opposed to them. And here they are now, conveniently present when the majority of Americans now accept LGBTQ people as actual humans. It feels very cheap, and a result of capitalism doing what capitalism does. Which is searching out every last dollar to insure quarterly growth. To me, that is clearly the “why” for the bottom two groups on the list. Corporations are looking for more dollars via sold products or services, and churches are looking for more dollars via new members. It’s really as simple as that.

Walmart had a van in the parade with the word “PRIDE” taped to the side of it. T-Mobile was also “there” as well as Cox Communications and Hawker Beachcraft. At one point there was a banner carried out in the middle of the parade that said “PRIDE IS SPONSORED BY” and then listed their corporate sponsors.

It’s just so…bizarre.

I get it. If I were a member of the LGTBQ community who was organizing the parade, I’d take that corporate money too. I’m sure it makes it all easier, and you can basically mock them while you put on your parade. One guy with a punk rock spike haircut held a sign with cool punk-rock-like text that read: “THEY WON’T BE HAPPY UNTIL WE’RE ALL FUCKING DEAD.” Hell yeah, brother.

The “they” who won’t be happy “until we’re all fucking dead” are the groups and institutions who are there looking for new rubes or dollars. The groups of power. Churches are on a down swing (which is why they’re seeking membership from groups they used to condemn), but they’re still more powerful than a lone individual. Corporations rule the world. And police enforce their will. Surprise, surprise, when you treat people like shit for generations, they’re conclusion is you hate them and want them dead.

And, with that thought, I leave you with the King of England reminding America he’ll kill our friends and family to remind us of his love: