The, uh, what? The NCU

So...Corrie was watching a Rom-Com the other day, and I thought I recognized one of the supporting character's actor. The story seemed like it had characters from a different movie I remember her watching, but it seemed like it would be, like, the sixth act of the story. I mentioned that and she laughed, telling me it was actually the sequel to that first movie I mentioned.

Before I go on, I feel like mentioning a few things about watching habits. Specifically, our solo watching habits, Corrie and me. Corrie, when taking a few moments to put eyes on something and vegetate, tends to put on rom-coms, and until this holiday season came along, had a stable of a few repeaters that highlight the continent of Oceana, strong-willed ladies, and Adam Demos. I, on the other hand, used to put on The X-Files, but since that's gone, I lean towards Chernobyl, The Sopranos, True Detective (first season only), or other nifty bad-vibe movies---think Zodiac, Shattered Glass, or even Nightcrawler. Basically, movies Corrie would never put on herself, but so what, since I'd be hard-pressed to put on a rom-com if I was by myself. 

Anywho, the movie looked like it was all shot on location, as the exteriors were of a grand palace, while the interiors were too spectacular to be from a sound stage, and made me think of Versailles. As I paid a modicum of attention to the movie, I kept wondering out-loud: "Where was this filmed? It's beautiful..." Once it ended, I perked up and asked Corrie to re-center the credits on the screen. I was going to try and look at the names and see what I could see...maybe I could suss out where it was filmed by checking the names of the crew. 

It took me about five seconds past the main actors names to make an educated guess. (I was totally right. I guess there are weirder and even less useful superpowers, but here we are.) Take a look at a screen grab from IMDB:

Do you see it? European, forested, palatial grounds...near the end of the credits, the producers thanked the "Benevolent Graces of King Michael the 1st."

I was like, really? My guess had nothing to do with any monarchy. That lead to a deep dive.

Those names there are all the Thracian remnants you'll find in today's Romanian population. King Michael was the last sovereign monarch of Romania. He ascended to the throne a few months before his 6th birthday in 1927, reigned until 1930, and then again in 1940 until 1947. During that time he was part of a staged coup against the Hitler-allied dictatorship, and eventually forced into abdication by Groza's communist movement, moved into exile in Switzerland as the monarchy was abolished and all of his palaces were nationalized. They were returned in the late 1990s after a protracted legal battle, and now serve as both museums and filming locations.

While looking all this up, I learned that the actor I thought I was seeing was not whom I thought it was. But I did learn that this sequel was the middle movie of a trilogy. As Corrie marveled at my name-to-place-recognition skills, she started the third movie.

Something that caught my eye as I scrolled through the detail list was that these were the first movies of the extended Netflix Christmas rom-com universe. The first of the trilogy was the first of the extended universe, but the second in the established timeline...and it went on like that for a few more lines. 

WTF?

Corrie giggled at the jokes and hackneyed writing as my brain reeled. THERE IS A CONNECTED ROM-COM NETFLIX UNIVERSE? WITH AN ESTABLISHED TIMELINE?

I found this more fascinating than A Christmas Prince 3, which is what Corrie was watching. There are, by today's count (Winter 2024...and I can't believe I'm writing it like that) I believe 18 movies in what is affectionately called the NCU, for Netflix Christmas Universe, anchored by two trilogy series: A Christmas Prince; and The Princess Switch.

I can't vouch for too many of these movies. I did see plenty of the third Princess Switch movie last night. Those three movies are basically a showcase for Vanessa Hudgens, as she plays two separate characters in the first film, and three separate characters in the second and third films. At different times, she plays a character trying to impersonate one of the doppelgängers, and as contrived as the story sounds (and it is obviously so contrived) she does a reasonably good job embodying the three distinct ladies, and then those ladies learning how to impersonate each other. It's a nice mix of stupid and marvelous, and would be total dreck if she couldn't act at all. 

Those movies I've seen enough of. I caught possibly half to three quarters of the last two Christmas Prince entries. Supposedly characters roam all over the NCU, which interconnects fictional Central Europeans kingdoms, fashionably named Aldovia, Penglia, Belgravia, and Montenaro.

This seems like the thing to do now, as regular, non-rom-com fans like me perk up and start telling other people about it: this NCU is having a moment.

These aren't links, but you can check them out if you'd like:

Let's careen towards critical mass.

How Small Can You Get?

I just learned about micro wasps. Parasitic wasps find other insect eggs to lay their eggs inside of, because just setting your egg on the buffet line to hatch and pupate and develop is a pretty good idea. But because of this, the wasps are SO FREAKING TINY. Like...holy hell:

Courtesy of the Interwebs

Here is one next to a paramecium and an amoeba TO SCALE! Those are single-celled organisms! 200 microns is one-fifth of a millimeter. Their wings are more feather duster than proper insect wing. Their brains have only 7,400 neurons, and most have lost their nucleotides.

I dunno...this world remains endlessly fascinating.

Best. Halloween. Ever.

I like Halloween, I guess.

I'm not a gung-ho, holy-crap-it's-finally-October, horror-movie-marathon kinda guy. People where I work ask me what my costume will be, and I'm like, "Eh...same as last year, maybe? Chef gear? Or whatever my daughter wants us to dress up as...?" I just don't care that much. Plus, I spent so many Halloween nights working that I kinda lost the internal drive to care. The same thing happened with the Super Bowl.

Anyway, I have a nice Indian suit---like a nice dressy suit from India---that Corrie brought home from her trip 20+ years ago that I wore this year. People where I work said, "Eh, what're you supposed to be, Sherwood?"

I answered, "I'm a cultural appropriator." Half the people I told that to said, "Huh?" They other half laughed uproariously and said, "Good one!" That was worth it just for that.

But this year marked the first year since the kids were born that we had to figure trick-or-treating out for ourselves. Each year so far we've just taken part in Linda's Daycare trick-or-treat event, which tended to be on, like, October 28th at the sunny hour of 3:30 pm. The kids would walk up and down Nipomo Ave (where the home daycare resided) and knock on the obviously-pre-arranged neighbors' doors and that would be that. Now that Camille and Cassius are at the same school, we kinda had to figure it out.

Before the real festivities of the evening occurred, there was the "parade" at school, where the kids can dress up fully in their costumes (masks too, whereas masks are otherwise verboten) and walk around the grounds and be cheered on and photographed by parents. I missed this, Corrie was there to snap a picture of Cass, wearing both his normal costume (Ghostface, from the movie Scream (which he's yet to see)), as well as showing off his love for the newly vanquished:

Corrie wasn't really feeling up to it, but we pushed through. It got dark enough by 6, and we corralled the babies just well enough to get their costumes ready and them into the car. See, we can't trick-or-treat around our place, since we live in an urban hellscape environment with very little obvious front-door action. That was just another reason to keep going to Linda's for as long as we did.

So instead of our neighborhood, we drove up Atlantic to Cal Heights, a nice neighborhood where Corrie has some clients:

The drive was about ten or fifteen minutes. Corrie took the right turn into the zone and we slowed down. "Do you seen any groups of kids?" she asked. After slowly rolling through a few intersections, we spotted some walkers, Corrie pulled a nearly reckless U-turn and Ace Ventura-ed her Subaru up to the curb. "Let's do this!" she exclaimed as the kids' excitement was just beginning to burble.

All of a sudden, it turned out, we were surrounded by a few hundred people, clogging all sidewalks on all streets around where we'd parked. We just got out, started right at that house, and it was on. 

We followed the few houses before heading left with the sidewalk, and followed it all the way to a school. Nearly every place was decorated and buzzing. The air was just cool enough to feel like Fall, but not to where you'd be chilly.

Some houses had displays that were unmanned, like the witches coven above. Corrie took all of these photos and I grabbed them from her. There was so much color and charm and music and excitement all along the entire street and, really, all the streets in Cal Heights on this evening that it made me long for that kind of thing for our kids. Raising urban, city-kids is cool and all, but you'll never get THIS kind of excitement. 

Anyway, one house had a whole group of adults handing out candy like they were waiting for the bus:

Cass ditched the jersey (on the left)

As we were walking away, we asked Camille, "What do you say?" She got back into line, but not to get candy, arther to say 'thank you' to each person individually. The last person was laughing so hard he gave her another handful of candy.

Pretty soon after this, Camille was tearing ass from house to house, leaving us in the dust, screeching as she went along, "They gave me MORE candy!" and soon after, "I HAVE SO MUCH CANDY!"

This skeleton is at least 10' tall

It was hard enough work keeping up with her. Eventually I trailed her as Corrie and Cass brought up the rear. Camille is at an age and gender that is socially allowed to disregard social etiquette when it comes to queuing for candy. Since it was so crowded, the littlest, blondest girls were kinda allowed to run amok, despite their own parents' protests.

I was not in costume at this time, but I did have on my large union affiliated hoodie, and I got plenty of compliments and shout-outs, which was very nice.

The whole thing took less than 20 minutes. We went a few houses, turned left with the sidewalk, went up a few blocks to the school, came back down the opposite side, crossed our first street, and went up and back a few houses and absconded to the car. Hit almost all three of the Tao of Steve's rules.

We got home just after 7, put on some Treehouse of Horror episodes, and sifted through SO MUCH CANDY, to quote the littlest blond one, for what we all liked.

It was easily my new favorite Halloween.

[[Totally unrelated aside: (as seen in the map above) notable Poly High alums: Billie Jean King, Tony Gwynn, Snoop Dogg, and Cameron Diaz, amongst many others.]]

"It's a kind of chicken, daddy."

My daughter, reciting a long-standing children's rhyme: One, two, buckle my shoe.

Three, four, shut the door.

Me: Nice.

Five, six, pick up sticks.

Seven, eight, lay them straight.

Me: For sure. Gotta organize 'em.

Nine, ten, a big hat fen.

Me: (Raises eyebrows)

Her: It's a kind of chicken, daddy. A hat fen.

That Was Over Fast

Dodgers in 5, just like in 1988. Dodgers end game 1 with a walk-off with two outs down at least a run when a hobbled hitter parks a shot to center-right, just like 1988. The only difference was this year Freddy Freeman crushed a grand slam (the first walk-off grand slam in WS history).

I watched that first game standing almost the entire time. When we scored in the top of the 10th without getting the ball out of the infield, I was sure would steal a game in LA. Joke was on me.

Congrats to the Dodgers, whose relentless nature and conquest of the fundamentals proved to be the undoing of my Yankees.