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This year I decided to go back to the German-American Festival that’s held at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium. I had decided to do what I’ve done other years: Take my car to the North Linthicum light rail station, then take the Baltimore Light Rail all the the way to the stop at the fairgrounds. I know it’s a little bit longer than driving directly to the fairgrounds but I like taking the light rail because I could use less gas, spend less time behind the steering wheel, and have less stress and relax because I wouldn’t have to deal with the crazy drivers on the Baltimore Beltway as much.
The day I attempted to go it was raining and I thought it would be easier to ride the light rail than to deal with the crazy drivers in the rainstorm. (I could do a separate rant on the appalling amount of people I’ve seen who don’t exercise much caution in inclement weather, which is insane. They seem to forget what they’ve learned in Driver’s Ed about how one is more likely to end up in an accident in inclement weather if the driver doesn’t slow down when it’s raining or snowing.)
So I arrived to the light rail station and waited. And waited. And waited. No light rail train arrived. Other would-be passengers also arrived, with most of them heading to Camden Yards so they could see the Baltimore Orioles play baseball. We waited for nearly an hour as the electronic signs at the station announced that there were slight delays due to track maintenance issues but a train would arrive soon. As time grew longer and no train arrived, some people decided to leave and just drive into the city.
I eventually grew tired of waiting and decided to leave the light rail station. I was just not in the mood to drive on the Baltimore Beltway to Timonium due to the rain so I decided to just head out to nearby Glen Burnie for the heck of it. I grew up in that town and it would be the first time I set foot in it this year.
I was famished because I had originally planned on eating lunch at the festival. I went to Crabtowne USA and ate a crab cake sandwich.
After lunch I stopped by Crabtowne USA’s famed video arcade room, which has mostly vintage video games from the 1970s-1990s. (I once devoted an episode of my online travel series to Crabtowne USA.) I noticed that they had got a new pinball machine that was based on the popular Disney+ streaming series Star Wars: The Mandalorian.
Here’s a closeup of that series’ cutest character, who’s known alternatively as Baby Yoda, The Child, and Grogu.
I played a few other pinball machines and video games until I began to run out of quarters. I decided to go to Ann’s Dari-Creme to get some ice cream only to discover that each year that place closes down for 10 days around the Fourth of July holiday in order to give their employees some time off. I think it’s a pretty nice thing they do for their employees even if it’s an inconvenience from my point of view due to the fact that I don’t get to Glen Burnie that often because of the 30-minute drive from my home.
I still had a hunkering for ice cream so I decided to go to Bruster’s Ice Cream instead. It had stopped raining but it was still too wet outside to sit on one of the benches so I ended up eating my ice cream in the car. Across the street from Bruster’s Ice Cream is the Arundel Christian Church, which is in the former location of the old Harundale Cinema where I used to go to the movies with my mother and grandmother as a child. (I originally wrote about my memories of that cinema back in 2016.) I noticed that the church looked different since the last time I visited Bruster’s but I wasn’t 100 percent sure if the church had looked different than before. I took a photo of that church and compared it to a previous photo I shot and I found that there are some differences between the two. Here is the photo of the church that I shot in 2016.
Here is a more recent photo of that same church building that I shot in 2022.
The outside of the church had apparently undergone a full remodeling. I can’t really comment on whether they had also remodeled the inside because I haven’t been inside of that building since the old days when it was the Harundale Mall. But it’s obvious that the outside is radically different. One thing is for certain: All of the external vestiges of that building’s former incarnation as a movie theater are now completely gone.
I also stopped at Curmudgeon Books for the first time since it held that haute couture fashion show last year. I didn’t take any photos of the store on this trip but I purchased a couple of books. I really like that book store because it seems like the owner is trying to model it after the now-defunct Borders Books. The only major difference is that, unlike Borders, Curmudgeon doesn’t have a cafe that serves coffee, tea, and snacks. Otherwise Curmudgeon Books is a really nice bookstore. I should make an effort to go there more often, especially since it is a locally-owned bookstore that’s not part of a corporate chain of stores.
Last month I purchased a special edition of Pepperidge Farms Goldfish Crackers that were based on the Disney+ streaming series Star Wars: The Mandalorian on impulse. The crackers were cute enough for me to take a few quick pictures.
It was cute seeing crackers shaped like the Mandalorian and Grogu interspersed among the goldfish-shaped crackers. The taste was pretty much the same as a regular bag of goldfish crackers.
So now I’ve eaten the goldfish crackers and I own the animatronic Grogu and the Bop It! version of Grogu. The big irony is that, as of this writing, I still haven’t seen Star Wars: The Mandalorian mainly because I can’t really consider subscribing to a streaming service until I do the following: 1) Find a new steady job that pays well enough for me to afford luxuries, 2) Get reliable high-speed Internet service in my home so I won’t have to go to the library or the local cafe to enjoy streaming episodes, 3) Start subscribing to Disney+. I’ve seen all of the main Star Wars movies (including the prequel trilogy, the original late 1970s-early 1980s trilogy, and the sequel trilogy) so I’m not totally in the dark about the characters. But I would love to be able to watch not only The Mandalorian but also The Book of Boba Fett series that’s also only on Disney+. I also would love to re-watch the original late 1970s-early 1980s trilogy for old time’s sake along with the stand-alone movies that I haven’t seen that aren’t part of the three trilogies that I have seen (such as Rogue One) since all of the Star Wars movies are now on Disney+ for streaming anytime.
Last year I ended up not observing Christmas. I just wasn’t in enough of the holiday spirit to motivate me to take down all of my decorations from the attic and decorate my home. A total of seven friends and relatives (including my mother, the minister who officiated at my wedding, a former neighbor, and four friends) passed away. My church’s Board of Trustees who asked the minister for her resignation. A longtime friend had been diagnosed with breast cancer and she soon moved to her daughter’s home in North Carolina. Add the Coronavirus pandemic on top of it and I was too emotionally depleted by December to even care about Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Yule, or any other winter holiday.
This year was slightly better for me. I got vaccinated and I also received a booster shot. I managed to evade the Delta variant that swept the nation. Only four of my friends have died this year, which is slightly better than seven but I would like to have a year with no deaths in my personal life.
I decided to do something that would put me back into the Christmas spirit despite the fact that the Omicron variant have arrived just in time for the holidays. Earlier this year I started getting into the Disney Nuimos. I thought of a fun idea: What if I created a series of short videos called Countdown to Christmas With the Disney Nuimos where they did things like decorate a small Christmas tree and opened the windows of an Advent calendar. I did a daily series of videos that started on November 29 and the last one ended yesterday on Christmas Day. I uploaded a new video each day on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. I wanted to experiment to see if people would actually watch a series of videos showing Disney Nuimos opening an Advent calendar each day until Christmas. I didn’t get around to writing a new blog post about each day because it would’ve been too time-consuming and I had other things in my personal life that I needed to deal with.
After I uploaded the last short video in this series I decided to create another video that compiles all of the short videos that I created and uploaded online for nearly a month. I uploaded that video on to YouTube since it runs almost 11 minutes long and it’s the only platform that can accept videos of that length. I made that video for those who either hadn’t seen any of the short videos or had seen a few of them but they missed a few videos as well. I’ll embed the video here first then write about the making of it.
The first thing I did was to find an appropriate Christmas graphic to serve as a title card for each video in the series. I did a screenshot of a Christmas tree graphic from OpenClipArt.org on my smartphone, imported it into the InShot app and created a title card for each video.
I filmed most of the entire series (with the exception of December 25) in one day last month. It was an unusually warm day in November (the temperature was in the high 60’s) and I decided to shoot everything in my backyard. I used a folding backdrop that I created earlier this year to stage the videos. I would film each scene then quickly edit it using the InShot app (while also adding the title card to each video). It took a little over two hours to film and edit everything. By the time I finished the battery was running low on my smartphone camera and it was sunset. (It was the time of the year when the sun starts to set at 4:30 p.m.)
The next step was to find Christmas music as a backdrop to my video series. I spent about an hour on TikTok looking up snippets of Christmas songs that I could use and I bookmarked them.
Finally I decided to pair each video with a song. I did this in a one-hour period about a week and a half before the series officially began where I saved each video to my Drafts folder on my TikTok app.
It took a lot of work on the front end but it was worth it because when the series formally began, all I had to do each morning was to load the TikTok app, go into my Drafts folder, select the video that I designated for that day, upload it on to TikTok, then share that same video on to my other social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube). The whole daily process took no more than about 15 minutes total.
The series could be divided into the following parts, which I’ll describe in more detail:
November 29: I had the Disney Nuimos decorate a small Christmas tree. It was a miniature tree that I purchased at Target last year for $5. I used it as a decorative prop in this Christmas video I did last year featuring the animatronic Baby Yoda/The Child/Grogu.
After the holidays I kept the tree in the kitchen because I couldn’t be bothered with putting it up in the attic with the rest of the holiday decorations. (It’s not like I was entertaining company since a raging pandemic was going on.) I went on a shopping expedition to Walmart where I saw a small box of tiny ball ornaments for only $3. They were perfectly scaled for that tiny tree so I purchased it. I decided to devote a day to the Disney Nuimos decorating that tree. I have to admit that the results were cute.
November 30: I did a formal unveiling of the Advent calendar filled with chocolates that I would be using in this series. I wanted to shoot the calendar as it was before the windows were all opened. I didn’t want to spend too much time finding the right calendar. My only requirement was that it had to be a Disney calendar since I was using Disney Nuimos. I initially went to Five Below where I found calendars related to the Disney movie Frozen and Baby Yoda/The Child/Grogu from Star Wars: The Mandalorian series that streams on Disney+. I ended up choosing the latter thinking that he was cute.
But then I went to Target where I found more Advent calendars on sale. I saw a Disney one that had Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Goofy, Pluto, Donald Duck, Chip, and Dale. That one was even more appropriate for what I was doing since I have the Nuimos versions of Mickey and Minnie yet I had already bought the Star Wars calendar at the other store. I ended up buying the Target one as well and I decided that I would just keep the Star Wars Advent calendar for myself. (I later purchased a third chocolate Advent calendar on impulse from Lidl just a few days later. So each day of Advent I was eating chocolate from three different Advent calendars. The Lidl one tasted the best while the others tasted okay but the Lidl was the best.)
It was just as well that I didn’t use the Star Wars one for this series because each chocolate was either an oval or rectangular shape that only had the words “Star Wars” printed on each one. That would not have made for a visually interesting series. (Although the Star Wars calendar did have a tiny Christmas line drawing graphic of either Grogu or the Mandalorian printed on the inside of each window, which became visible when opened. I have to at least credit the makers of that calendar for that one.) At least the Disney Advent one had different design variations on the chocolate so it was less repetitive than just opening one chocolate after the other that only said “Star Wars” on it.
So I devoted a day to showing the Disney Advent calendar in its unopened state. The design was pretty cute and I thought it would be cool to shoot it for posterity before I opened it.
December 1-24: This took up the bulk of the series. Each day a different Nuimos would open a different window, pull out a chocolate, then display it. The plastic pink chairs in the videos are ones that I found at a Dollar Tree that only cost $1 for a bundle of two chairs. Unfortunately that store only had one bundle in stock because I would’ve bought more and I haven’t seen any of them in stock since. I had the Nuimos stand on one or two chairs stacked together (depending on how high the window was located).
I originally thought about having the Nuimos “eat” a chocolate that he or she retrieved from the window but I wasn’t able to keep the chocolate in the Nuimos hand so he/she could raise it to his/her mouth, end the shot, then remove the chocolate and shoot again to simulate “eating”. I didn’t want to use artist tape to attach the chocolate to each Nuimos hand because I had planned on eating it myself later and I didn’t think it would be good for me to eat chocolate with a possible coating of adhesive residue from the tape. I initially had each Nuimos balance the chocolate in his/her hand but it only worked with Mickey on the first day of Advent. I finally found success when I placed the chocolate on the chair and I had each Nuimos prop up the chocolate square with his/her hand.
At the time I owned eight Nuimos and the Advent calendar had a total of 24 chocolates. It worked out to having each Nuimos character open three different windows and display three different chocolates throughout the series. I didn’t have any particular order for displaying each Nuimos other than that I didn’t want to feature the same Nuimos for two consecutive days in a row. The only order I had was that I felt that Mickey and Minnie should be featured on the first two days since they were featured prominently on that calendar. I also decided to have Mickey and Minnie show up on the last two days of opening the Advent calendar because I thought that since Mickey and Minnie opened the series, it would be appropriate to have them close it out as well.
So once I had Mickey and Minnie for the first two days, I placed the rest of the Nuimos in a cloth bag and I simply pulled one out at random, featured him/her in a video, then place that Nuimos off to the side. Once I pulled out all of the Nuimos, I placed them back inside of the cloth bag and pulled one out at random again until I emptied the bag. Then I repeated the process one last time while taking care to leave Mickey and Minnie for the last two days of Advent.
So for each day I had a different Nuimos simulate opening a window, pulling out a chocolate, and displaying that chocolate. Once I finished shooting, I placed the chocolate back inside of that window and closed the door since I intended to eat that chocolate at a later date. Each chocolate was the same size square with the head of a different Disney character. There were only the following Disney characters that were printed on the chocolate squares: Mickey Mouse facing front, Mickey Mouse facing to the left, Minnie Mouse, Scrooge McDuck, Daisy Duck, and Goofy. Strangely Donald Duck, Pluto, Chip, and Dale weren’t represented on the chocolate even though they were depicted on the Advent calendar itself. And Scrooge McDuck was on a few of the chocolates even though he wasn’t included on the Advent calendar itself.
December 25: I had originally thought about a Christmas Day finale where I would attend various Christmas events that were going on in the Baltimore-DC area, bring my Disney Nuimos with them, take pictures of them, then create a Christmas Day slideshow featuring the Nuimos doing all kinds of fun holiday-themed stuff.
But I had to give up that idea after taking pictures of the Disney Nuimos at the Christmas Village in Baltimore for two reasons. One was that I had an incredible struggle with trying to renew my drivers license in the middle of a raging pandemic that I’m going to go into at a later date because this post will end up being extremely long if I go into details right now. The other reason was the arrival of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, which is even more contagious than the previous variants. There have been cases of fully vaccinated people catching this virus and I just didn’t want to risk getting the Coronavirus.
Instead I decided to pose each Nuimos with various Christmas tree ornaments and decorations that I had taken down from the attic in an attempt to show them “helping out” with decorating my home for the holidays.
So that’s it for the Countdown to Christmas With the Disney Nuimos. This morning was the first morning where I didn’t have to worry about uploading a new video online and it felt strange since I had been doing it for a little over two weeks. I’m sure that by tomorrow I’ll have completely adjusted to not uploading a new video on a daily basis.
One of the reasons for doing this video series was that I was curious to see if people would actually want to watch something like this. I’ll admit that there is a sameness to each Disney Nuimos getting a piece of chocolate for 24 days in a row so I wasn’t sure how others would respond. I didn’t get much reaction on Facebook and Twitter. But YouTube and TikTok were another story. I got plenty of views on TikTok with a bunch of likes. YouTube was more varied. Some days I got less than 10 views while other days I would get 300 views or more.
I have to admit that it was kind of a fun series to do and it made me enjoy the winter holiday season all over again. Like I wrote earlier, I had replaced each chocolate square back in its original window then shut the window cover before shooting a new day. When Advent began for real I basically reopened each window on the allotted day and ate the candy (along with the chocolates in the other two Advent calendars I bought this year). After December 24 I put the calendar in the recycling bin since it was opened and empty so I no longer have it in my home.
Would I do it again next year? I don’t know. I probably won’t be doing another chocolate Advent calendar again unless I find something that had Winnie the Pooh and his friends on it (since half of my Nuimos are Pooh and friends) or if the chocolate calendar was somehow very unique. I’m just not into doing the same thing each year because it can get pretty repetitive.
But there are other kinds of Advent calendars out there that include ones devoted to makeup, cologne, small bottles of alcohol, small toys, and other non-chocolate items. I would do one of those only if I could afford to buy it (the chocolate calendars are pretty cheap compared to the other types) and if it was something that I was personally interested in. I have a full year to decide on this so I’m in no big rush right now.
And speaking of Advent calendars, there was a TikTok user named Elise Harmon who was such a big Chanel fan that she decided to buy the $825 limited-edition Advent calendar. She filmed herself opening each window only to end up getting things like stickers that didn’t really justify the hefty $825 price and her video series went viral on TikTok.
I’m spending my second Thanksgiving Day under the specter of COVID-19 and there are no signs that it is going away soon. In Europe there has been such a resurgence that some countries are undergoing lockdowns again while people there are protesting the latest restrictions.
Lately I’ve been reconsidering this whole Thanksgiving thing. Ever since I was a child I was taught that we celebrate Thanksgiving because the kind Native American tribe have saved the Pilgrims from starvation and death by sharing their feast. This year is the 400th anniversary of this first Thanksgiving, which is such a lovely heartwarming story.
Unfortunately most of that narrative is a total myth. Earlier this month I attended a virtual statewide meeting of the Maryland Poor People’s Campaign on Zoom where someone gave a presentation on the real origins of Thanksgiving and it’s far uglier than that Thanksgiving fairy tale that’s usually told to school children. For the past couple of years I’ve heard the occasional snark on social media that calls that holiday “Thankstaking” and now I understand why. For Native Americans it’s a day of mourning because it marks the beginning of the relocation and genocide of the First Nations peoples.
Thanks to learning about the real origins of Thanksgiving, I don’t feel bad celebrating the holiday alone this year. Once again I purchased a pre-made Marie Callender’s frozen turkey meal along with some sauerkraut, pumpkin pie, and whipped cream. It’s similar to what I showed off in this video that I made last year where I featured the interactive version of Baby Yoda/The Child/Grogu.
The only way that Thanksgiving can even be redeemed is maybe get away from that whole “Native Americans fed the Pilgrims” fairy tale and just focus on the things that we are grateful for. For me, I’m grateful that I still haven’t caught the Coronavirus, I have a roof over my head, I’m moving along quite nicely in getting that IT certificate through the joint Google/Coursera program in the hopes that I can find a job to support myself, and I still have friends.
I found this at a local Target a few weeks ago.
That’s right, it’s a Grogu/Baby Yoda/The Child Chia Pet. At least the plants grow from this infant’s bassinet instead of his head or ears.
For the last few years May the 4th has become an unofficial minor Star Wars holiday. Except last year it was totally subdued due to the Coronavirus and it was mostly subdued this year for the second year in a row. But there was one cool thing that I noticed this year and it was all because I happened to see this ad posted on Twitter.
Apparently it was unveiled on May 4 but it’s still available anytime. You can do this via Google but only on a smartphone or tablet. (I tried doing this on the desktop with no success.) Basically you do a search for Grogu on Google. Among the returns is a link that says “See the Child in Your Space” along with a 3D animated gif of Grogu (who’s also known as The Child and Baby Yoda) and a button that says “View in 3D.” When you tap on it, you get a 3D Grogu against a white background. If you tap on the bottom button that says “View in your space,” you’ll get Grogu appearing in your real-life background in an example of augmented reality.
What’s more, if you press on a white-ringed circle on the bottom of your screen, you can shoot a very short video of up to 30 seconds. How cool is that? Here’s a quick video I shot of Grogu among the blooming bleeding heart fuchsias in my backyard. I added the theme song from The Mandalorian through TikTok (Google itself doesn’t provide any music). I uploaded it on to TikTok and YouTube.
It’s a pretty cute effect that Google has provided. I highly recommend this for all Star Wars fans.
It was Inauguration Day and I was still feeling great about the fact that we have a new president in office and Donald Trump is now an ex-president. I decided to celebrate by going up to Arundel Mills Mall for the first time since last year on St. Patrick’s Day (which was very early in this pandemic when half of the stores were closed and the mall itself would shut down the very next day while not reopening until late May).
Most of the stores were open this time around (although the Disney Store had closed earlier than its usual hours for some reason—I found a sign posted on the door) but half of the benches have been removed, which definitely put a dent into walking around this huge mall since it was hard finding a place to sit, unlike last year. I decided to cut the walk short this time around. I managed to stay long enough to visit the LEGO store, where I took photos of a couple of Star Wars-themed LEGO sculptures. One was a life-sized Stormtrooper while the others were smaller sculptures of Yoda and The Child/Grogu/Baby Yoda.
The one thing I love about TikTok is that you can use someone else’s sound in your project if you feel inspired to do so. If you click on the sound directly, you get a list of all the videos that use that same sound. I was perusing the For You page on TikTok when I found this hilarious sound that I decided that I just had to use.
So I filmed my interactive The Child animatronic (also known as Baby Yoda and Grogu) then I incorporated that sound before uploading it on to TikTok. I later downloaded it on to my own phone so I could upload it on to YouTube.
It was pretty funny, especially since with the animatronic’s moves, which makes it look like he is reacting to the man’s voice. It was a quick project and I had fun doing it.
After I uploaded my previous Christmas Day blog post I decided to try to make the most of the holiday despite not doing any kind of decorating this year.
I started by opening another blind box package. Here’s some background. A few weeks ago I went to Target where I purchased two blind box packages in two different sizes that were supposed to be Barbie dolls as a mermaids. The taller package has Barbie herself while the smaller package has her kid sister Chelsea. Both were supposed to be mermaids but I wouldn’t know exactly what they looked like (such as hair and skin color) until after I opened them.
December 15 was my birthday so I opened the smaller Chelsea mermaid package in the presence of my electronic interactive Grogu/The Child/Baby Yoda animatronic while I filmed the whole thing for posting online later. (I was definitely mixing Barbie, fantasy, and Star Wars fandoms for the video. LOL!)
I saved the taller package for Christmas itself. Once again I brought Grogu/The Child/Baby Yoda out while, this time, he was joined by the Chelsea mermaid doll that I had unboxed just 10 days earlier. I made a video while I unboxed the Barbie mermaid and I posted it on TikTok and YouTube.
Way back in February, when I saw Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) at the local AMC Theater that’s located near my home, I saw a preview for the upcoming movie Wonder Woman 1984. I saw the first Wonder Woman movie and I enjoyed it immensely. I was eager for the chance to see it when it arrived. I also wanted to see it because the new film was actually shot on location in both Washington, DC and Arlington, Virginia so I wanted to see what places I would recognize in the film since I live in that area.
But then the Coronavirus showed up and all of the movie theaters in my area were closed. A few theaters in Maryland and Northern Virginia have since been reopened but all of the theaters that are located the closest to my home have been shut since March. I even made a short video about the one AMC Theater that’s nearest to my home that still have the posters for the movies that were playing at the time it was closed back in March. (As of this writing these posters are still up at that theater.)
As for the Wonder Woman 1984 movie it was originally scheduled to be open in the spring but it got pushed to the summer. As the Coronavirus still raged the movie’s release date kept on getting pushed to a later date. Finally Warner Brothers decided to just release the film on Christmas Day both in the theaters that were still open and online on the streaming service HBO Max. I currently don’t subscribe to any streaming service and I don’t have Internet service at my house other than my cell phone carrier but I have a data plan that doesn’t really allow for me to stream feature-length movies. If I wanted to see Wonder Woman 1984 I would have to go to a theater.
So I did an online search to see if there were any open movie theaters at all since going to any of the ones closer to my home was out of the question. There were a few theaters in Northern Virginia carrying Wonder Woman 1984. I found that there was an AMC Theater in Columbia, Maryland that was still open but at 40% capacity. I would have to drive at least 30 minutes but that was the one open theater that was closest to my home.
There was a part of me that was leery about going to a movie theater in the middle of a pandemic so I did some online research and found that the modified seating arrangement was such that there would be at least one seat that was blocked off on both sides next to any seat that I selected. Everyone would be required to wear masks inside of the theater with the exception of eating and drinking. Once you finished with consuming your food, you were expected to put your mask back on.
Since I would be commuting at least 30 minutes to a theater with a 40% capacity that was showing Wonder Woman 1984 I decided to preorder my ticket online. I selected the standard screen for 12:30, which was the earliest movie showing available. (This theater also had an IMAX option but tickets cost around $30 per person, while I only paid $15 for the regular ticket, which also included a “convenience fee” since I ordered it online.) Since the movie ran for 2 and a half hours, it was starting during lunchtime and there were very few restaurants open on Christmas Day, I bit the bullet and spent another $15 for food and drink so I wouldn’t starve while watching the movie. Paying $30 for a day at the movies is a bit extravagant for me (in recent years I generally skipped the refreshments because of the high prices) but it’s my first movie in a movie theater since February and it’s Christmas Day.
Since going to the movies in a pandemic was a new experience for me, I took some photos to document it all. Here’s an outside shot of AMC Theaters in Columbia, Maryland.
Here’s the poster for the movie itself that was posted outside of the IMAX part of the theater. (Like I wrote earlier, I went for the regular screen because the IMAX tickets cost $30 per person versus $15 for the regular screen.)
This display was right by the entrance at it served as a reminder that there is still a pandemic going on and masks were required.
This particular theater looked pretty elegant and classy compared to the theaters closer to my home. I took a shot of one of the hallway leading to the theaters and restrooms.
Here is what I looked like the entire time that I watched the movie. I wore one of my festive Christmas masks while holding a large sized soda.
Here is what the seating arrangement in front of me was like. The spacing was definitely wide enough in order to enforce social distancing. There was a couple who sat near me to my right but there was one chair that separated us. There were no one else in my row.
Here are a couple shots of the pepperoni flatbread pizza that I ordered ahead of time. Picking the food up was pretty easy. The food was tasty even though I can get pizza that tastes just as good for far less money than the $15 I spent for the combo (which included just the pizza and a large soda).
I also preordered a special Wonder Woman 1984 popcorn tin that was empty for only $2.99. The only reason why I didn’t order it filled with popcorn because that would’ve cost $15.
The popcorn tin was an impulse buy but these things are actually quite useful. There is a nonprofit makerspace and art studio called The Space that’s located across from the currently shuttered AMC Theater in Greenbelt, Maryland. Back when AMC was still operating, it used to donate old movie posters, popcorn tins, and other movie-themed stuff to The Space in order to make room for newer movie promo items. During one of my visits to The Space last year I was given an empty Toy Story 4 popcorn tin because they had received so many of them from AMC that they wanted to get rid of some of them. That popcorn tin sat in my bedroom empty for the next few months until the pandemic struck. I now use it to store my collection of face masks.
Once I wear a face mask I generally put the used one in a basket in the bathroom, where once a week I soak all of the used masks in hot water mixed with Woolite. Then I rinse the masks in hot water and hang them over the bathtub to drip dry.
I plan on using the Wonder Woman 1984 tin to store small stuff, although I haven’t yet decided which small stuff I’ll put in it.
As for the movie itself, I loved it. I got a kick out of recognizing the various parts of DC and Arlington since I have been to them myself. I also got a kick out of seeing the 1980’s themed clothes and music since I was in college back then. Once I saw that there was social distancing and everyone was cooperating in wearing masks I was able to relax and just enjoy the movie. I especially loved the villain in that film who was obviously patterned after Donald Trump. The only thing that wasn’t realistic is that this person later had a change of heart because the real Donald Trump has a history of never apologizing for anything or admitting that he was wrong. His niece, Mary Trump, wrote in her book that her grandfather strongly discouraged admitting being wrong because he considered that to be a weakness.
I was able to forget about what was going one and just enjoy the movie. I was stunned to see it get slammed on Twitter afterwards because I didn’t think it was bad. It was basically escapist fun with decent acting and great special effects. It’s not Citizen Kane but I’ve seen far worse movies than Wonder Woman 1984.
It’s been two days since I went to the movie theater. So far I seem fine. It’s very likely that I won’t catch anything from the movie theater. But I still intend to limit moviegoing to once in a while and only if it’s a movie that I’m really dying to see. (Last year I wrote a rant about the movies where I complained about the lack of original movies that would encourage me to go to a movie theater more often.)
Yes, today is my birthday. I knew it was going to be an ambivalent birthday for me because it’s the first one since my mother died earlier this year so both of my parents are now dead. But adding this Coronavirus pandemic on top of it has made it even more of a mixture of I’m happy that I’m still alive with I’m sad that 300,000 Americans are now dead from this virus due completely to Donald Trump’s mishandling of this whole pandemic. The Electoral College has met yesterday and Joe Biden will become the next President of the United States next month. While I’m not a major die-hard Biden fan, he was definitely a better choice than Trump. If Trump had been re-elected for another four-year term, who knows how many more Americans would ultimately end up dead due to his negligence.
As it is I have limited options of how I want to celebrate because there’s a new surge of cases, which is leading to more closures. Baltimore has closed all in-dining at bars and restaurants and most of the Baltimore-DC area will follow suit soon. I decided to make a return trip to Tysons Corner Center because I just want to have a few hours of seeing Christmas decorations, listening to Christmas music, and do some window shopping before I have to start being hardcore about staying in my immediate area as much as possible.
I’m trying to make the most of celebrating my first birthday in a pandemic all by myself. A few days ago I purchased a half of a birthday cake from the local Amish market (a whole cake didn’t make sense for one person) along with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. I purchased a blind box package that has the mermaid version of a Chelsea doll. (Chelsea is Barbie’s kid sister.) I made a short video showing off my recent purchases while opening the blind box package. (I even added my interactive Baby Yoda/The Child/Grogu animatronic as a witness.) I uploaded it on to TikTok and YouTube.
I am grateful that I managed to make it to another year despite the pandemic. Here’s how I have been able to avoid getting this virus so far. First, I wear a mask whenever I go out anywhere. Second, I maintain social distancing from others as much as possible. Third, I avoid crowds as much as possible. I’ve been following the guidelines that’s been put forward by various health professionals and it has worked for me.
Another thing that has helped is seeing most people in the Baltimore-Washington, DC area take this virus seriously enough to wear masks and practice social distancing. I feel fortunate to live in an area where people are taking this pandemic seriously because I’ve read too many posts on social media from people living in other parts of the country where this is not the case (such as Florida, South Dakota, Texas, and Utah). I haven’t heard about anyone having major meltdowns in public places over wearing masks in the Baltimore-DC area.
So I think I”m going to count my blessings and just continue with walking around the mall and enjoy what’s left of being able to eat out before the serious lockdown begins again.
Sagittarius Dolly 
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