With the year having managed to wear along to fall, I've returned to the season I've often watched through the Star Wars movies in. ("Once a year" doesn't feel too obsessive to me; I can at least tell myself I haven't read the novels or comics extending the franchise for a long time now, and I don't even know what possibly premium channel "Rebels" airs on up in Canada; however, I am conscious I've piled up plenty of other movies I don't get around to watching at all...) This year, too, I'd been thinking ahead that things could be a bit different. For all that I let a chance to buy a cheap used copy of The Force Awakens from a discount store across the corner go by and have been letting the Netflix-offered chance to see it for just the second time in total slide by week by week, I did ask for a copy of Rogue One for my birthday, and my brother carried a Blu-Ray across the Atlantic in his luggage so he could hand it to me on the day itself. I then had to carry the disc back across the Atlantic before I could get back to a Blu-Ray player or even redeem the digital copy code in the case, but I took the digital copy home the first chance I got only for my brother to mutter he wasn't really that interested in seeing the movie again...

Having spent a fair length of time by now not watching The Force Awakens again without quite managing to articulate my feelings much beyond "the backstory felt depressing and the rest of the film just seemed sort of pinched and uninspiring", I accepted that and let months pass until the fall. I could at least remember Rogue One had seemed to offer grander vistas and the chance to claim I'm not just resentful whatever ideas George Lucas sold to Disney got locked up (although I might then be accused of resenting having worked so hard not to convince myself I wasn't offended by the previous Star Wars movies, only for the new order to charm everyone with snappy dialogue). After I'd watched the Blu-Ray for the first time and the movie for the second time in total, though, I was conscious it wasn't easy to put my fresh thoughts together.
( If you haven't seen the movie, things may be given away )

The small shopping mall in my neighbourhood, trending downwards for years even before Target moved in to close down two years later, is scheduled to be demolished and replaced by a self-storage facility, squeezed out of existence by changes in retail. (There are promises the grocery store attached is going to stay open as a standalone building, anyway.) Just about all of the handful of stores left open when I saw that in the newspaper this spring have cleared out, but one of the cell phone stores that were the last new developments is still open, its future location not quite ready yet. One day, I decided I'd look in it on my way to the grocery store to see if it had iPhone 8s on display, and if those phones had iOS 11 running on them. Knowing that new revision of the operating system would mean having to give up some of my oldest games did add just a little bit of reluctance towards upgrading.

On seeing the new phones did have the new operating system, I looked into their "Settings" to see what backgrounds were available; every major revision does seem to mean just about everything there being replaced. As I looked down the list of thumbnails, some rainbow stripes caught my attention. Then, I realised the colours weren't "ROY G. BIV," but rather "green-yellow-orange-red-purple-blue," the order of the stripes in the Apple Computer logo of the 1980s. After that, upgrading my iPod Touch just as a beginning was much on my mind. I was at least a little conscious this had some element of "being influenced by emotions," but "clinging to a different past out of concern" might be being influenced by emotions too.

I did wonder a bit how many other people would make the connection I had, it having been almost twenty years since the stripes were phased out around the time of the very first iMacs. There was the ambiguous thought that at least some of the people who'd used Apple IIs as particular machines with six-colour logos must have clung to their embitterment over the impression that platform hadn't been eked along as long as it could have and found philosophical objections with the Apple products that followed. Still, I can remember a "Macintosh thirtieth anniversary" tribute and a commercial about putting stickers on MacBook Airs that had alluded to the six-colour logo before. I can suppose the next revision of the operating system will take out those backgrounds (I know you can keep an "obsolete" background, but only so long as you don't change it to anything else), but even this much is a small but interesting bit of history returned.
( A small bit of evidence )

My copy of the thirty-eighth official DVD collection of Mystery Science Theater 3000 waited a long time to be opened. It had arrived just before the revival of the series got under way, and I suppose I was thinking a bit of potential unfortunate reactions and returning to known experiences as one way to get over them. Fortunately, the revival worked out pretty well for me in the end, and as I finished its last episode I could think ahead to opening the collection at last, and of the plans I'd made while waiting for that.

All the episodes in the collection were "Mike shows," and that did get me thinking of working backwards in episode-number order from the single "Sci-Fi Channel" instalment to the three sixth-season shows, not quite just "for a change." On starting with "Track of the Moon Beast," though, I did find myself thinking there was a sort of "comforting familiarity" to things. Before I could really distract myself considering how it compared to the revival episodes (with no intention of trying to put them down somehow), I was pretty well engaged with the episode's humour as it took on a 1970s monster movie (with an ultimate undercurrent of bleakness I can associate with a lot of the movies from that decade that wound up on the series), and I went on from it to a bonus interview with the actress who'd played the female lead, who did go to slight lengths to say she'd been leery about the whole thing to start with but did seem to have had a positive reaction to the MST3K version.

From there, it was back to the "Comedy Central era" and "High School Big Shot," just about as bleak in its own juvenile-delinquency-meets-degenerate-film-noir sort of way (even including the short subject "Out of This World," which takes a unique theological viewpoint on the delivery of bread) but which seems just about as funny in the series. Its bonus feature was the original movie, which have been included on a few discs before but which are perhaps a bit too much for me to take in. "Colossus and the Headhunters," the "Mike era" echo of the muscles-and-mythology Hercules movies from the "Joel years" (just as the revival included a Hercules movie of its own), was a cheerful change from what I'd just seen, and while a bonus feature where Joel talked about Mike wasn't directly connected to the movie it had some interesting moments, such as Mike's determination as a standup comic and Joel having contemplated the "Best Brain" Bridget Jones replacing him as a "genderswapped Joel" only to be told everyone else had come to their own conclusion. The DVD menu for "Invasion USA" just happened to reference the "host segments" of "Colossus and the Headhunters," which just might be seen as my backwards viewing order paying off in the end. I've seen other people unimpressed with the episode and its Cold War-agitprop movie put together with a great deal of stock footage, but I do have to admit a number of the sixth season episodes can impress me in a "bricks made without straw" sort of way. There's also the memorable short "A Date With Your Family," of course. The extras included a little documentary about the movie's producer Albert Zugsmith, who'd started in Hollywood with this production. (The documentary did mention how just before that he'd represented Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in their attempt to get the rights to Superman back, if not Shuster's later suspicion, reported in Gerard Jones Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangster, and the Birth of the Comic Book that Zugsmith had made his nest egg to finance the picture by betraying his clients...) Following a career path that some of the other documentaries in the Shout! Factory sets have included, Zugsmith went on to make some fairly respectable movies, only to then then step off that path by going back to exploitation (including "Girls Town," which should be included in the next and possibly concluding collection).

Netflix made fewer new episodes of Voltron Legendary Defender available for the show's "third season" than it had for the first and second groups, but as I'm not really into watching lots of half-hour doses of one single program one after another, to the point of noting some trying to pack gluttonous overtones into the perhaps joking term "binge-watching," the shorter season didn't bother me too much. Once I'd watched my way through those new episodes at a measured once-a-week pace, I wound up feeling a bit impressed by how much seemed to have been put into them.
( Some of those things )

While trying to come up with the next thing to post to this journal, I happened to think back to an article in the August issue of Scientific American about "inner speech," talking to yourself in your head. That a part of thought is unvoiced speech is an idea I've seen before, but all of a sudden I happened to wonder about the times I've just been trying to think only to find everything in my mind fragments, breaking off and jumping to something else. It felt a lot less involved than the "dialogues" I remembered seeing mentioned in the article, along with comments that reading dialogue in fiction can key into inner voices. I have been conscious for quite a while now of not reading fiction as regularly as I could. Even going back to the article and seeing a comment that inner speech can be telegraphic in brevity didn't quite help. The question is how to concentrate and stay focused.

I did take my time watching through the fourteen episodes of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 revival, which wound up putting me well behind even the measured-out organized discussions I'd seen about them. I suppose I went on to resolve that, as in certain other cases, I'd rather have my first reactions and reflections be my own (although there could also have been the half-acknowledged awareness that a single negative comment disagreeing with my own thoughts, even if not in response to me, can weigh heavier on me than any amount of positive agreement...) Deciding not to get too distracted from taking in the full experience by trying to scribble down memorable "riffs" to go in "episode thoughts" posts also meant keeping most of my first reactions that much more to myself.
( General and specific thoughts )

Along with the countdown to the solar eclipse, I've managed to pick up on another occurrence in space by hearing we've reached the fortieth anniversary of the launch of the Voyager probes. This was further distinguished by the probe launched Voyager 2 having been launched on August 20, 1977, only to be passed on the way to Jupiter by Voyager 1, which didn't leave Earth until September.

The Voyagers were "the more detailed follow-up" at Jupiter with Pioneer 10 and 11 having made it past that gas giant's dangerous radiation belts years before the launch we're now marking, and Pioneer 11 took a slow route to Saturn to take a few not especially compelling pictures still in advance of its successors. However, the Voyagers had their own important and impressive part in turning "dots in the sky" into a succession of worlds. I suppose I did experience "these first and once-ever revelations" at Jupiter and Saturn after the fact through National Geographic cover stories (although Voyager 1 had opened up enough of a lead to Saturn the second article only included its pictures, leaving the drama of Voyager 2's camera-aiming gear jamming to books I managed to find later). It wasn't until Voyager 2 got to Uranus (even that had seemed a carefully underplayed "maybe it'll last that long" possibility in the early coverage I've seen) that I was following along in the newspaper. That encounter was unfortunately followed by the fatal last launch of space shuttle Challenger, although getting to Neptune three years later made for a better ending. I have heard Voyager 1 could have been sent to Pluto had it not been sent close by Titan (an important enough target Voyager 2 could have traded Uranus and Neptune for it); in one of the books I've found, though, some program scientists were asked if they "regretted" having taken close-up pictures of a satellite shrouded in peach-coloured clouds only to explain there was more to detect close up than just surface pictures. Whether some pictures of Pluto would have made it harder to dismiss in the next decade as "not big enough to really count, and obviously not interesting," I don't know, but I suppose they wouldn't have been as good as the pictures from the brief encounter of New Horizons.

Beyond that actual ending, of course, the Voyagers have kept sending back information, enduring not just years but decades after their first estimates of longevity to reach uncertain stellar terrain. Beyond that, there's contemplation of the time capsule records attached to them, although I can also consider that in a mere four decades they've gone from "a durable record not quite like one you'd play at home" to "at least they'd long outlast a CD, and they might be easier for even extraterrestrials of unknown mentality to decipher" to "and now vinyl's not just a statement, but an accessible one again."

In acknowledging news of a new and "different" Robotech comic had sharpened a personal interest hardly dulled to oblivion before, I went so far as to say that should I happen to see some of the more amusing alternative covers at a local comic shop, I might go so far as to buy the first issue. It was raining on "new releases day," so I didn't get to the shop until a day later. Once there, I just saw a few of what I gather to be the "regular" cover, perhaps not quite "photorealistic" but a long way from the "anime-esque" variants that had looked more amusing in the previews. I can't say rarer covers hadn't been picked over the day before, but it is easy to suppose there weren't many issues ordered to start with. Even as my previous thoughts bumped against a lack of options, though, with an awareness of disdain from slices of whatever was left of the series-specific fandom and an assumption of unrelieved hostility from the anime fandom just "outside," the thought of buying a copy to form my own independent opinion did wind up unshakeable.
( From one comic to another )

As the Roman numerals that take up most of the slipcase fronts of Shout! Factory's official Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVD collections have grown ever more elaborate, I've seen the speculation about what episodes might yet be released begin to dwell on a group of "problem episodes," whose rights are controlled by what seems absolutely intractable groups or people. A collection of the "Cinematic Titanic" movies (which I'm afraid I still can't shake suspicion to get around to watching) being released did get me thinking things would be wrapping up with the original series. Then, though, I was surprised to see the announcement of a thirty-ninth collection, but the notice went ahead to say that one of the four discs will be the "host segments" of a dozen episodes from the problem group.

At the same time, the three episodes in the upcoming collection can still catch my attention. It's been a while since I've watched "Girls Town," which seems to stand outside the most generous boundaries of "mystery science" and perhaps doesn't quite feel just like "juvenile delinquency exploitation" either, but has an eclectic cast famous both within and without the MST3K canon. "The Amazing Transparent Man" is more "conventional" at least compared to the rest of the series, but it will mean we'll get the second "Union Pacific safety short," a personal standout for me. As well, if this is to be the end it's appropriate that the super-criminal action (adapted from an European comic) of "Diabolik" is included; it even got me remembering Shout! Factory's first collection had included the previous series-closing-out episode.

With all of that to look forward to, I'm reminded I've been waiting to open the thirty-eighth collection. It had shown up right around when the revival was beginning to stream, and I suppose I'd contemplated the possibility "if I disagree with these new episodes..." That the dark outcome hasn't come to pass yet (even with three revival episodes still to watch) is a little heartening by now.

After all the dire portents and seemingly narrow escapes just in the English-language publication of Makoto Yukimura's Viking manga Vinland Saga, every new volume's become a relief in itself to see. What with the cliffhanger the eighth volume had ended on, the ninth was that much more welcome. Where I'd just been intrigued before by the introduction of the threatening bear huntress Hild, though, the revelation she'd been an inventor to begin with and had rigged up a circular saw did have me thinking all over again of "anachronism"; the author's note midway through, mentioning a Swedish children's book series that had been animated in Japan and had just happened to include the same invention in its own Viking times, did manage to offer a bit more perspective.

That plot arc's flashbacks, in invoking the violent past the manga's protagonist Thorfinn keeps trying to find a way to leave, did have me thinking we were being reminded of significant parts of the story. Those thoughts strengthened as more old characters returned and Thorfinn got deeper into trouble, although I could begin to wonder if this might end up being turned into a way to keep the story from having to travel all the way through Russia to Byzantium and back before the presumable endgame of heading for Vinland. With the English releases now seeming to be quite close to the Japanese ones, the feeling "this could go on for quite a while yet" was hard to shake. I wouldn't say I'm "weary" of the impressive-looking manga by any means, but the constant tension between Thorfinn's ideals and the reality he's stuck in and the toll that exacts on him can be harrowing in itself.