This week will feature all the various camping adventures/stories/mishaps/tragedies that occurred during roughly a 10 to 15 year period, from the early mid ’80’s to the early ’90’s. In the coming days, I will speak of events that occurred in Whitewater Wisconsin and a nearby selection of camp sites. 

There will be talk of plots. Of schemes. Invented sports. The drinking of beer. Waste management. Joe Pesci. Rain. Sun. Fire. Animal attackers. A hoity-toity prince of mattresses. Other things.

The only real oddity that won’t get any traction is the time I dressed as Bomba the jungle boy. Because that crew never. Even. Noticed. (Or more likely pretended not to)

But the rest of the highlights will be there.

Keep an eye out for the exact moment this week when I realize that this year of blogging is in reality my memoirs. 

I don’t know if that’s great, sad, or ominous. 

Did you turn your clocks ahead? Have you sprung forward? If so, I commend you for forging ahead in these trying, Covid-19, post apocalyptic times, and bumping up that digital number up by one. If you haven’t, you could be exposed as a Luddite, I suppose. Half of the temporal expression devices in our home change automatically, DVR’s, our cells, the CRV, but we’ve got a few items we still have to change manually. The most ridiculous assemblage is in our kitchen, where, within a span of six feet, we have a giant clock on the wall, the microwave and the oven. Matthew drives the Saturn, never looks at the clock, nor changes it, so it’s wrong half the year and no one cares.

I’ve raved at length in the past about how much I HATE when we “fall back” in November, and the inevitable getting dark at 3pm the next day. Well, it was a pleasant surprise when my wife told me yesterday that we were springing ahead last night. Sadly, that wasn’t a metaphor. Seemed earlier than ever this year. I always expect it to be around Easter but Easter’s utterly useless to me in every way. 

Easter, the floating holiday. 

“Oh when is the wedding?”

“It’s right before Easter!”

“Oh, it’s *sometime* during the possible six week period when Easter might pop up but we never ever know? That’s great. Don’t forget to also get weather input for the big day from the groundhog.” 

Saying something’s happening “around Easter” is helping no one. You may as well say, “Okay, I’ve scheduled the surgery for right around Flibberty-jibbet day. Wish me luck.” I also find I don’t really care that much about eggs or rabbits and I’m not religious. When the hell is it even happening this year? I think in early April. I’m sure there’ll be a casserole to mark the celebration, BUT I DIGRESS!

Back to the time change thing. I *used* to instinctively know when it was happening, not needing any prompting from anything or anyone. All part and parcel of my “temporal sense”. But then, they scooted the spring ahead earlier by a few weeks and the fall back to after Halloween and that’s all well and good but ever since, this one kinda springs up at me unawares, excuse the pun.

Then last year, I heard rumblings from a couple different people who heard that once we change the clocks this spring, they’d do away with the time changes all together and we’d stick with the summer time permanently. This was excellent news! Finally! We’d no longer have to deal with that shock to the system in the fall, anymore. 

But no, we’re not there yet. There’s been a lot of legislation proposed in a lot of states to just “Lock the Clock”, and there are already a few states that don’t go with the change and stick with standard time year round, such as Arizona and Hawaii.

I think it’s something like 34 states that want to do away with it. So I’m not clear on all of the specifics that are blocking it but I do know that some oppose dumping the change because of the delayed sunrise in the winter. Kids going to school in the dark, people going to work in the dark, etc. If we stick with daylight savings time year round, in December and January, in places like Seattle and Indianapolis, the sun won’t rise until after 9am. In Chicago and New York, after 8:30am. Which, admittedly, would be a bit bizarre. 

All this time, I thought the whole time change thing was for the farmer’s sake. Hell, they’ve been mostly opposed to it forever! A Boston department store owner, Lincoln Filene, made up a big BS list of why it helped the farmers (in actuality, his sales), it caught on and no one ever questioned it! Nope, can’t blame the farmers. 

It was mainly instituted during WWI for energy conservation, was repealed after, brought in again for WWII, repealed after, but some folks got to like the switch over. Some didn’t. This eventually resulted in a bunch of cities going one way, a bunch going the other. In some cases, you could take a state wide road trip and end up changing your watch seven times in a couple of hours. It became clock chaos. They finally structured the Unified Time Act in 1966, which those states partaking in Daylight Savings time had to stick to one time, statewide. 

So, anyway, I have no idea if there’ll be some huge change or not. If ever.

We’re due to “fall back” again on November 1st this year. >sigh<

IS it a “Limbo of Madness?” I don’t know. Sounds intriguing though, no?

Back in the ’90’s, I was the primary Coca Cola illustrator at Impact, the promotional division of Foote, Cone and Belding. This was my first and last professional full time, salaried gig and it lasted from September 1992 to April 15th, 1998.

I worked with some of the kindest, loveliest people ever. There were a ton of meetings, work and many parties. There were party-parties, official parties, going away parties, you name it. There was fun to be had and we had about as much as was allowed by law. Maybe a bit more. 

Our proclivity for partying broke out of the work place and we decided to make a yearly weekend out of it. Since a good chunk of us were married and another good chunk weren’t, we figured it’d be best for the guys and gals to have their own weekends. There were already enough rumors flying around. 

The ladies called their get together the BVD weekend. I have no clue what went on there, but there was an off chance of liquor being present. 

For us men, we had Shorty Robe weekend. No doubt inspired by radio personality Kevin Matthews who had a running bit about men spending the weekend together, sleeping together, cooking steaks, wearing shorty robes…IS IT WRONG?!?!?

We said no, it wasn’t! Some of us may even have brought shorty robes with. In fact, to  extend the bit, each year that we did it, there was always one junior account guy who just started and wasn’t that familiar with us, so of course, we played on that. We’d invite the new kid along on the big weekend and then once in awhile in the weeks leading up to the event, at lunch or out of the blue, –when the new kid happened to be around– one of us would ask, “Hey, who’s Vaseline Boy this year?” and of course another would respond “gosh, who *was* the last hired?” 

And each year, the new kid would get extremely worried, sometimes bowing out, but the entirety of the bit was just naming the new guy Vaseline boy. We let their imaginations do the rest. Us, Hitchcock, we use people’s imaginations. 

But the yearly weekend was held at a couple places over the years. We rented a big beautiful house on Lake Delevan the first year.  The was football, poker, beer and films being shown, us making commentary on all of it. Great acoustics in that house, prompting us to start letting loose with YEEEEHAAAAAH quite a bit (me being the worst offender by far) and I’m pretty sure we broke two of the three toilets in the first hour– I’m not even sure how that was possible but there you go. Still, we had a good time.

Second year we couldn’t get the house again so Dave Becker was kind enough to host at his house, which we filled up, played football on wet grass, exhausted ourselves, played poker, drank copious amounts and passed out from the football as much as the beer.

The next couple years was held out at a cabin in Ottawa, some 2 hours southwest of Chicago. The cabin was sequestered inside a deserted farm that for all intents and purposes could have been the setting for any and all slasher films since 1973. I was giving Scott Wheatley a ride to the event and we thought we’d gotten lost, until we saw a youth standing in a field. We pulled up and asked for directions. He was probably about 10 years old and sucking on something. Lollipop, turkey leg, human femur, I don’t know —  but he was no help and we got a simultaneous Shining *and* Deliverance vibe from him at the same time, so we motored on, through the murder farm.

The cabin was nice enough though when we got there. I guess after the farm and the kid, anything else looked pretty good. They had a giant stack of mats in the corner to pull down and put sleeping bags on. This was a place that seemed really perfect for big camp outs fir larger crowds. We had a great time, as there was drinking, a fire pit out back, drinking, some occasional wildlife, we ordered a pizza, there was some drinking and one enterprising gent actually went to the trouble of making pot brownies and bringing them to the get together. 

Now, I think the statute of limitations has passed on pot related affairs since this happened 25 years ago and hell, it’s legal now, but I’ll protect the anonymity of the baker. Although I’m sure he’d survive the scrutiny, he’s a very able man. 

The thing IS….. up until that point, I’d never had pot in any form. No one believes a 34 year old guy had never tried it but as of that weekend, the point was moot. Never liked the smell of it and I’ve never been a smoker in any form. But brownies… well, especially after copious amounts of beer, brownies are always in my wheel house, so I munched big time. Probably half the pan. It was a big pan. In the meantime, there was poker and films about wildlife and eventually, I had my first case of dry mouth ever. It was horrible! And since I was already buzzed, I sensed nothing else out of the ordinary. Until the next day. I had a good night’s sleep. I don’t even think I had much, if any hangover. But I was very tired. 

It came time to leave and Wheatley and I were driving back. A very long and boring drive, where the endless vista of flat land was broken up only by blinking. Suddenly, I was more tired than I’d ever been in my life. I seemed to have all my faculties in order but mother of god, there were times when I just wanted to pull off to the side of the road and sleep. Or just drive into the corn, to see what happened. Wheatley had no clue what was going on in my head. Thankfully, I had the life giving caffeine of Coca Cola. 

Coke. I’d like to teach the world to sing. 

After finally getting home and sleeping further, I went to work on Monday. And here’s why I’ll likely never try pot again in any form, even if it is in brownies. I couldn’t draw! At all! All of Monday, all of Tuesday, I could not get anything on paper. Thankfully, there was a lull in the workload. I happened to be in the facilities when the baker himself showed up and we talked about his product. When I mentioned I ate about half the pan, good old Heisenberg literally hit the ground laughing. Evidently, there was an extremely large amount of product in those squares, no *wonder* I couldn’t draw, I think I was still high on Tuesday. 

The only other memorable event from I think the last time we went to the cabin for the last big weekend– we got it in our heads to get a pizza delivered. It was a beautiful night and seating was sparse around the campfire, so I went into the cabin, picked up the couch, and lifting it over my head, proceeded to march down the hilly incline to the campfire. What’s interesting to me is that I’m pretty sure I could never do that sober but we needed seating. Eventually, I went in to order the pizza on the cabin phone. I was having difficulty reading the phone book for some reason. I was trying to phone the local pizza establishment in the yellow pages, “Little Diana’s” but somehow, I kept calling the standard white pages entry for “Little, Diana”. 

I also seemed to have a very difficult time forming words to get the order right, not that the Little family was ever going to come through on delivery. I think someone else eventually made the right call to the right place. But that was our last Shorty Robe weekend. As always, a good time was likely had by all. 

The moral of the story? 

Don’t do any of the bad stuff. 

Thank you, good night and god bless. 

Fantastic Friday note: FF action figures

I’ve always appreciated a quality sculpt on an action figure. The mechanics and design that go into action figures these days is crazy. The quality has made a quantum leap, or two, or three, since the ’80’s and early ’90’s. Back then, you’d be lucky to get an arm to bend. Now, quite often, there are 22 points of articulation on a lot of these figures. In some cases, they look like statures that can also move. So, for Fantastic Friday, we’re taking a look at two recent sets of figures of the FF. First up is a series of figures that were Walgreens exclusive’s. 

Marketing-wise, this was unfortunate on many levels, as Walgreens doesn’t really give a crap about action figures—but you may ask then, why are they getting exclusives? Well, I’m guessing someone in corporate loves action figures and set it up. But if you take our neighborhood Walgreens for example, you’ll find that since the manager didn’t sell out of the Invisible Woman figures he had in stock, he wasn’t going to bother getting the next figure in line, Mr. Fantastic. Poor Sue has been sitting on that shelf for over two years, with no discount in sight. 

Meanwhile, in countless other Walgreens, plenty of douchebags would go into their neighborhood stores, steal, or buy up every last one of the figures, then go home and sell them on eBay for quadruple the price. Walgreens runs a business, they don’t care enough to limit each person to a couple figures only, etc., and really, I can’t blame them. They want to get rid of product, but bottom line, it was more difficult than usual get the figures. But get them I did. 

This set features the old school, original FF blue uniforms with black trim and they are my favorite. The sculpts are very nice and detailed, along with the multiple points of articulation I mentioned before. 

Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic), comes with replaceable stretching arms, so you can opt for those or the regular versions. 

Sue Richards (the Invisible Woman), comes with replaceable hands but has both arms starting to go transparent. 

Johnny Storm (the Human Torch) is represented on fire and comes with extra fireballs, etc. 

Ben Grimm, (the Thing) is a solid piece of work with some good heft. He’s got well designed and sculpted features like the rest. It’s all the more impressive when you can manage articulation on a larger, bulkier figure but mostly keep the natural lines of the figure. They do a great job across the board. Sadly, this is still not the Thing as designed by Jack Kirby, but it’s a pretty great version on its own.

Then, we have the new era, modern day FF, headlining a Build-a-figure collection. With this set, each of the six figures comes with a piece of the Super-Skrull, which you can assemble once you complete the group. This build-a-figure deal has been going on for many years but until now, I’ve never wanted to bother with them. But these figures, at least initially, are very cheap, and the sculpts are partially based on the Walgreens exclusive set, with certain differences, depending on the character. 

First is the over all look, based on the current costumes and style in the comic today. This means the black costumes with blue trim. Of the different variations that have been tried with the FF’s costumes over the years—most not that great—this design is not bad at all.

They all have the same level of articulation as the Walgreens figures of course but as I mentioned, there are differences. Instead of the long arm, this Reed sports an alternative stretchy hand, plus he has the beard, which is also part of his look in the current comics.

Sue comes with an invisible force shield, and like the rest, she’s got not only the current costume but they’ve got nice rubber tread on their boots which makes them easier to stand and display. Good designing there.

Johnny is the most drastic change, as he comes without the flames but with the option for some flame attachments to his arms. 

The Thing sports a slightly different paint job and a new bottom jaw to give his mug a different look.  He also has the new era trunks and belt on, emblazoned with the “4”.

The two extra figures that come as part of the build a figure set includes Hulk (formerly known as She-Hulk), which is a very nice sculpt…

…and maybe the best action figure I’ve ever seen of Dr. Doom. The fabric, mask, detail, armor, all pretty much perfect. 

Finally, the object of the Build-a-figure, The Super Skrull, an alien warrior of the sinister Skrull race, who was given all the powers of the Fantastic four to go forth and wreak vengeance upon the team for imagined threats against his homeward. The SS comes with a stretching, invisible arm, a rocky, flaming fist and an ugly mug. In other words, the perfect Super Skrull. 

This was in the mid ’80’s, when life was carefree, meaningful job free and partially responsibility free. We can’t say for certain how it happened. We can’t say for sure where it happened, but we do have suspicions and circumstantial evidence. 

I got sick. Sicker than I’d ever been. I may have either already moved back in with my folks or was staying there for some kind of moderate care but I was in a bad way. For two weeks. 

I couldn’t eat, and keep things down. I couldn’t eat, period. About all I could consume was room temperature cherry Kool Aid. Probably why I won’t drink the stuff today. Day in and day out, I lay there, in and out of consciousness. One time, I went to the bathroom and simply passed out. I regained consciousness sometime later not knowing where I was. In bed, sometimes I was drenched in sweat. Sometimes I was freezing. My teeth were getting loose. I lost 25 pounds. I very seriously thought I was going to die. Until last year, this was about the worst I ever felt. 

There were times, drifting in and out of delirium, where I wondered– why hasn’t Linda called? It’s been a couple weeks, why hasn’t she checked in on me? I was irritated at this more than anything. 

Eventually, I got better and slowly rejoined the world, went back to work, etc. Sometime later, I got in touch with Linda only to find out she was exactly in the same boat as me, so deathly ill that she was staying at her parents for a couple of weeks. She was pissed that *I* hadn’t checked on *her*!  

So, for both of us to be hit like that with the exact same devastating illness, we concluded it had to be the result of us dining together at a certain place, and the best candidate was a recent visit to an old restaurant chain, now defunct, called Salvador’s. We had frequented the place together many a time, usually for the 44 oz fish bowl margarita. We had to conclude that what got us sick was likely the salsa they served on that certain night, them possibly not properly washing the vegetables. It’s our best guess. 

It continued to wreak physical havok on me for a while, as a few weeks later, I started losing my hair. I think I lost about 50% of it as it was thinning and falling out pretty badly. Thanks to some medication, it eventually stopped falling out and rebounded, mostly regrowing but it was never as full as it had been. 

The moral of the story? Don’t eat unwashed vegetables? Best to stay away from vegetables from strangers, surely…

Sometime in — I want say 1981, so I will– 1981, I was turned on to an amazing little restaurant. It’s very possible it may also *originally* have been a death trap that was probably breaking health code violations, situated in a sketchy neighborhood. None of that can be proven though, except maybe the status of the neighborhood at the time. The point is, once you maneuvered your way past the broken front door and sidled up to the counter, you had the opportunity to buy a steak burrito as big as your head. Side note: that term “burrito as big as your head” was bandied about years later referring to many other places that came *after* El Faro. As far as I can tell, El Faro was the first in the Chicagoland area. 

Located in Summit, Il., this mecca of Mexican cuisine was THE go-to place, 24 hours a day, but quite often, after you had a few drinks and needed to get your system right, an El Faro burrito would hit the spot. You could also get a chicken burrito, tacos, various other dishes but the steak burrito was the way to go. You would stand there and watch as they cooked up giant piles of steak, chicken, etc, and assembled the various orders. You could eat there or take them to go, having them load you up with extra containers of hot sauce and peppers. Beware traveling home with the burritos because the smell has been said to drive people mad with hunger before you actually got home. If you ate there, you had the nice, giant, hot burrito in a basket, along with a giant squirt bottle of hot sauce and an RC cola. Some say this is exactly what heaven’s like. They’re probably right. 

The burritos back in 1981 were $2, and that was an excellent deal for this pound (or two) of meaty delight. Today, it’s $5.50 and *still* an excellent deal for what you get. And rest assured, after the initial state of the place, within a year or so, El Faro remodeled and fixed up the place and eventually expanded. Oh sure, there were jokes about horse meat, cat meat, dog meat, etc. because of the original environment, but I laughed all the way. Because A) the burritos were delightful, B) they would have been shut down 40 years ago had any of those allegations been true and C) Neither I, or anyone I know have ever gotten sick after eating there. The same can’t be said for almost every other Mexican food establishment we’ve frequented over the years. My wife, kids, friends, have all had issues with other places at one time or another, including one of the El Faro copycat places, El Famous. This bland pretender to the throne is a chain that was allegedly started by former employees of El Faro. I went there once or twice. My wife and friend got sick, we never went back. 

I think I only ever got really sick from one meal in my life and that was from a Mexican restaurant I used to frequent a lot in the ’80’s for their margaritas. But that was serious. So much so, that’s a different blog post all together. 

As for El Faro, probably the wackiest story involving the place was the time I ditched a Halloween party to go for a burrito. It was the early to mid ’80’s, I was hungry, and dressed as Gumby, (Eddie Murphy, Gumby, SNL, look it up, kids), with the giant foam head and green face paint. Unfortunately, this just happened to be the night where the place that was open 24 hours a day WASN’T because that was when they remodeled. So there I stood, at 3am, in a sketchy neighborhood, banging on the door that wouldn’t open, dressed as Gumby, damnit. Thus, it was in a foul mood that I jumped back in my 1970 Mustang, with the .302 V8 engine and bucket seats and proceeded to open her up for the first time ever on highway 55. This is something I would usually never do but when it’s 3am, there’s absolutely nobody on the highway, you’ve got a car like that, it’s Halloween and you’re dressed like Gumby, you open that bitch up. Got her up to 110 mph before I saw signs of life a mile down the road and powered down. Felt good. The El Faro burrito would have been better. That fact still stands true today. 

In fact, it might be time for another run soon….. they also have chorizo……

Not even sure what I meant by the title—I’ve re-written portions of this about 7 times while it’s been in the queue, so here it finally is. Play Ball! That might have been a better title….

So I’m curious to see how grandpa Rossi manages the Cubbies. Pretty much the  same Cubbies from last year. Well not exactly the same. Hamel’s gone but then again, you were never quite sure what you were going to get. Strop’s gone to Cinci, but he’s been off ever since the first hamstring injury. Kinzler’s gone and he was the most consistent guy out of the pen last year. Still got Ryan, Wick and Wieck.

It’d be great if Hendricks had a banner year again, no reason why he shouldn’t. All Q needs to do is stay aggressive and consistent. Hopefully Lester can double down on workouts and really transform himself into the horse for one more year, go out on top. And Darvish… if he can hold onto that magic he grabbed the second half of last year, no one will be able to touch him.

I expect career years from both Contreras and Caratini this year. I expected Ross to do the smart thing and keep Anthony at lead off and let him have fun with it, but it looks like Bryant is going to be top of the order. Okay then. Javy– I never know what to expect from Javy. 

Russell’s gone, so if that dark cloud was causing discomfort, he’s no longer an excuse. Let’s hope Jay Hey gets another tiny bump in his average. Castellanos is gone. Also to the Reds. They were already beating the crap out of us, now they got arguably our best guy. When I say best guy, I’m talking bat and balls and energy. Poof, he’s gone. Time for Bote and Happ to step the hell up and have career years. Come ON already. 

Oh. And Schwarbs. You *kinda* promised us a legend back in ’16. You delivered the *start* of it in the World Series. We’ve now waited three additional years. I’m already fine if they trade you, because you haven’t been that impressive — which is why they’re also not getting as many bites. Come ON. 

Lot of people saying they’ve gotten fat and lazy over the past couple years– I just refer to it as complacent. Still same cause and effect. I think Ross can only be good for some of these guys. They’ve had all the tools they’ve needed for the past three years to get right back to the World Series, but they’ve just folded up faster each year.

Maybe less swagger and more professionalism and dedication. Maybe more smart baseball. 

The players are already saying Ross is great, everyone needs to be accountable, yada yada. Great. They’ve been saying all the right things since ’16 but not *doing* the right things. We’ll see. 

I look forward to seeing it. Whoops! No, it’ll be on Marquee network, which I won’t pay for. Like I say, I’ll look forward to hearing it on the radio, because the thing IS.

Spoilers ahead as always… but in a nutshell, the big reveal was that the Doctor is really an ancient being that predates the civilization of the Time Lords, is billions of years old, and is THE source of how Time Lords regenerate. She just doesn’t remember any of that. Anyway, on with the review….

I’m a man of my word. He answered some questions. Good for Chibs and good for us. I must say, even though Nutty McMaster is a fruit loop and a psychotic anarchist, he does think on his feet. Grabbing the Cyberium and building a Cyberman army that can regenerate using Gallifreyan corpses, basically immortal Cybermen…as far as power crazed, frothing mad dog plans go, it was fairly solid. And leaving the death particle for the Doctor to find was a win win for him. Either the Doctor would kill them all and in his mind, he wins, or she wimps out and he still wins. 

HOWEVER. While I applaud us getting answers, and the majority of the ep chugged along fairly well…… I mean, the ep had about as weak an ending as we’ve seen.

The Doctor getting saved by another age old cliche was ridiculous. “You go, Doctor, the cliched bomb simply can’t be armed by remote control! I will sacrifice my cliched self for YOU!” That was incredibly weak and we’ve seen it a million times. Surely there was a better, more original way for them to pull that off. Limitations of the Chib.

As far as the Doctor wimping out and not even pulling the trigger…..Here, it would have been a clean action. No one would have suffered except all the bad guys and her. The thing that stopped her was the Master saying she’d be like him? Come ON. Was she willing to sacrifice herself for the universe or not?  Sorry, that was very lame. Again, limitation of the Chib.

Regarding the reveal of the Timeless Child. At first, all these revelations basically amounted to a “so what?” So the Doctor’s got a secret past history. So what? I mean, why did this cause the Master to destroy Gallifrey? 

But then it comes out that Gallifrey, all Time Lords, owing their existence to the Doctor, he just couldn’t cope with that “indignity”, and we come back to Nutty McMaster. He’s an unstable goober in the cereal bowl. I guess that stays true to this version of the Master. He gets upset, he just kills everyone. Not many ways to go with this character. He’s limited by his mania. 

The Cybermen in general, I still didn’t care about, but they served their purpose.

The excess humans, same. I just was curious about the Gaillfrey revelation and the whole Timeless Child thing. 

My wife and I were actively either telling Ryan to shut up or stay out in the open where the Cybermen could kill him. Graham was wonderful as always and Yaz is from Yorkshire, so that must explain her many limitations?

Does this retcon “ruin” Doctor Who? No. It does stick a nasty Chibnall earworm in our head but it can’t logically interfere with the past 57 years. It actually puts a whole new spotlight on Brain of Morbius though!

So on balance, I think there were more positives than negatives here. They didn’t even really leave us hanging. Hopefully the “fam” is gone for good. That’d be a huge victory. And the Doctor being thrown in prison — that was rather slap dash and unlikely but whatever– I’m perfectly happy with her locked up. You know she’ll get out, you know Nutty’s still alive. All in all, a decent enough ending. Certainly not magnificent or amazing (I wasn’t wrung out by any means or even emotional) but I think it was at least an acceptable finale over all. *Definitely* better than last series’.

But what is the aftermath for the rest of fandom? Has the Doctor’s secret past history set the internet on fire? Or does it matter? Did this finale salvage the Chibs era, or at least validate this season? Or, has Chibs just finally blown it, you considered this as absolutely the last straw and you’re walking away? How find ye?

I approach each episode of new era Doctor Who (Series 12 final ep tonight), as an amateur sociologist, one of a million critics, a 40 year fan, and a would be writer. 

Showrunner Chris Chibnall wasted half of Series 11 which served no one. Not the fans, the BBC, no one but himself, leaving some guest writers to add a tiny bit of characterization to the regular cast. He also threw one tiny line about “The Timeless Child” way back in S11.2, “Ghost Monument”, a horrible, dreary, 50 minute mistake. No other mentions or allusions to Chibnall’s grand plan. Evidently he *has* a grand plan, though. Yes, definitely.

In fact, after the show’s ratings continued a slide throughout all of S11, he may have been prompted by the BBC to speed things up a bit. Because of the 9 episodes of this 10 ep season so far, he’s spent 5 of them setting up prologues and precursors, not telling us anything but getting ready for the big finale! He’s brought back the Master who has big secrets THAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING…….AND EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS A LIE! Gallifrey’s been destroyed by the Master, but why? WAIT FOR THE FINALE! Evidently there’s a whole other Doctor we never knew about! Who is she? What is she? Why is she? WAIT FOR THE FINALE! Are Time Lords the descendants of humans? WAIT FOR THE FINALE! Etc., etc. 

For context, of the 9 eps so far:

Skyfall part 1 – Good *set up* for

Spyfall pt 2 – a bunch of rehashed ideas from RTD and the Moff & more *set up* for the finale!

Orphan 55 – just a crap ep with endless preachy speeches hammered in over and over

Nicola Tesla’s Night of Terror – average but good ep!

Fugitive of the Judoon – very exciting ep that dazzles as a big *set up*!

Praxeus – bland ep with more messages, felt like a filler. (a filler in only a 10 ep series? eh.)

Can you hear me? – message show, told poorly, with added insults to everyone watching. Horrible. 

Haunting of Villa Diodati – not a bad *set up* story for the two part finale.

Ascension of the Cybermen – part one of the two part finale, naturally, a *set up* for pt 2.

To be clear, I’m used to Series long arcs that usually, mostly pay off in the end. In past seasons, showrunners Russel T Davies and Steven Moffat have done that, to varying degrees of success but at the same time, told many successful stand alone stories in the series leading up to it, with well developed Doctors and companions.

Chibs is doing nothing more than playing for time. He’s tap dancing and hiding most of his stuff behind the curtain. He’s hoping the pleasing fireworks he’s setting off amaze and entertain enough that you don’t notice he’s saying nothing, showing nothing, stalling….stalling, until he gets to tonight’s finale. This means he’s going to have to deliver *something*. He’s already said we’ll get *some* answers– which is good, and hey, maybe that’ll be enough! But some things will be continued in S13, which is another measly ten eps that won’t be shown until autumn 2021 at the very earliest. 

What I would like, would be a bit of closure on something, but maybe *without* Chibs just stealing more ideas from Davies and Moffat and other past Who adventures again to tell his story, albeit it in a lesser fashion. He doesn’t even copy well, he just copies. 

There’s still a spark of hope that he might pull it off. According to Chibs, it will leave us emotional, wrung out, open mouthed and in need of a stiff drink. 

Well, going by his history, those are the effects of a typical Chibs written episode. But will it be any good?

Anything’s possible. Good, bad or ugly, I can’t look away yet. 

When my wife convinced me to do a blog, I thought that I should do an entry each day for one year. That’s 365 days to you and me.  I figured that during that time period, I should be able to get everything out. Every story, confession, theory, experience, you name it. Although that’s not entirely true. There are a few things I’ll keep to myself that are none of your beeswax. 

“Beeswax”. Ha! I’m old. 

But Leap Year Day adds a 366th day X factor to the proceedings. After all the past complaining about how my mother never tells me anything about her past life (you’ll see), I shouldn’t hold back, so fair enough kids, everything must go. Let’s make Leap Year Day memorable.

Okay, here are two bits for Leap Year Day. A rather mild remembrance and then a confession.

One:  In junior high (?) one time I was accosted by this one older kid who I think may have been nuts. While it was mostly my pride that was hurt, in future, it did give me a greater hatred for bullies and caused me to really go nuclear on a couple kids that bullied some other victims after that. When *I* was bullied, I was slow to react at all, or get mad, because usually I was just totally mystified as to why anyone would want to pick on me of all people. But I guess there’s not a lot of rhyme or reason to it. Really, this was small potatoes, as it only happened a couple times. 

Two:  Way back in the early ’90’s, I got a D.U.I. A stupid act that–had it been worse, or if anyone had gotten hurt or killed, it could have easily destroyed my life. *That* terrified me. Still does. Never been angrier with myself. Color me far luckier than I deserve to be. True, this was almost 30 years ago but it doesn’t make it any less egregious. In fact, several years ago, I was called up for jury duty and they were determining who was to serve on a case regarding a guy who got a DUI and whatever else was involved. 

The judge asked if there was anyone who felt they couldn’t be impartial about the case. I raised my hand told them that years earlier, I’d gotten a DUI. The prosecution and defense both started scribbling on their pads, while the judge commented “So you feel you’d be sympathetic toward the defendant?” 

“Sympathetic? No.” I said “It was stupid and unacceptable when *I* did it. I’m certainly not going to go any easier on some stranger, especially if someone was hurt.” More frantic scribbling on paper. They excused me from duty. 

Interesting that the judge naturally assumed I’d side with the other DUI guy. 

Okay, got that off my chest. Anyway, that’s my Leap Year day post, with another gander at how my mind works. You can consider this a bonus or #366, whatever works for you.

Leap Year.