Over at Quartz Media, there is an article by Ashley Rodriguez which points out the amount of money Netflix is spending on comedy/stand up shows and how they are paying so much that HBO, who used to have plenty of stand up comedy shows, is now falling back (though they did just sign Jon Stewart):
In the article linked above, this paragraph is worth noting:
(Chris) Rock’s two specials and Chappelle’s three reportedly cost Netflix $20 million apiece, for a whopping total of $100 million. And Netflix reportedly spent another $100 million on Seinfeld’s pair of specials, combined with his full series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. That’s roughly what HBO spent on the entire sixth season of Game of Thrones.
That expenditure doesn’t even account for the nearly $295 million Netflix supposedly spent to make some four movies, Death Note, Will Smith’s Bright, Brad Pitt’s War Machine, and Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman.
I admire the fact that Netflix is trying to create their own entertainment “world”, and clearly at this point they are so flush with cash that they can afford to make the investments.
However, I also wonder just how long this magic ride of theirs can last. Death Note and War Machine, for example, didn’t seem to create much in the way of buzz. While War Machine did receive some critical kudos, Death Note seemed to do the exact opposite and I don’t know if either property made Netflix a profit or broke even.
The amount of monies spent on these comedy specials, too, seems rather crazy. Spending $100 million for Jerry Seinfeld’s two specials and Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee cost the same as the entire sixth season of Game of Thrones?!
Game of Thrones features a large cast and special effects and one can understand it needing funds to be made… though it seems the investment was worth it given the fact that Game of Thrones is one of the most talked about -not to mention successful– shows out there. On the other hand, the Sienfeld material, as good as it may be, involves no special effects, minimal staff to film or have before the cameras, and therefore a product that has to be done very cheaply… yet it merits a payment in the range of a Game of Thrones?!
Look, I like Jerry Seinfeld and the fact that he’s still earning that kind of money is a tribute to his talent. Further, I’ve heard his Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee is quite good.
Having said all that, does the show do Game of Thrones business?!
I may be wrong, but I don’t think so.
I guess the bottom line is this: I worry for Netflix. No, I don’t own stock in them or have family or friends working in the company nor any personal reason to care what happens to them other than as a consumer… but I do feel they are way too free in their expenditures and think that one day they will suddenly find they’ve wasted on hell of a lot of money on stuff that (perhaps) will never give them back their return.
Over on deadspin.com I found the following… interesting, to say the least… article by Patrick Redford. I believe the link and its title are quite self explanatory:
Truly, the article is a mix of genius and madness… In brief, there is some lady who clearly has a grudge (or something) against people in a certain area of Colorado Springs and she’s been… uh… relieving herself in front of certain properties.
The video provided in the article is hilarious, as are many of the quotes.
Then there’s this article, presented on Huffingtonpost.com and written by Lee Moran:
If there’s one thing you have to admire about Kong: Skull Island it is that the film knows what it is and gets right down to the action/adventure and monster mayhem without wasting our time on needless subplots or attempts to create something more “elevated”.
The characters these actors play, by and large, don’t have a whole lot of depth but in this film, it doesn’t matter all that much. Just know that Hiddleston’s character is the intrepid and independent jungle tracker/explorer. Larson’s character is the journalist and anti-war person, which puts her squarely up against Jackson’s military commander of the ops and, as the movie progresses, more and more deranged Kurtz-like personality. John Goodman is the brains behind the operation, the one who sets things in motion and carries his own secrets. Finally, Reilly is the castaway and -perhaps- crazy veteran of WWII who has survived on Skull Island all this time.
Basically, the movie goes like this: The Vietnam War is ending and the U.S. has a tight window of opportunity to explore a mysterious -and unexplored- island that locals in the area have avoided. A permanent cloud bank/hurricane shields the island from outsiders and, when our assembled group head over there, they find more than (most) of them bargained for.
Kong: Skull Island isn’t 2001: A Space Odyssey or Citizen Kane. Neither is it the best “monster” movie I’ve ever seen (that distinction would probably go to the original King Kong and Godzilla). While it doesn’t necessarily deliver the best monster movie evah, it delivers on the thrills and gives us engaging characters to both root for and boo. It is, in the end, a supremely competently done Americanized version of the old Toho monster movies and, as such, hits its target well.
If you do catch the film, make sure to stay through to the end credits. Like the Marvel films, there’s a very amusing end sequence that hints at the direction future movies set in this “monsterverse” may go.
I’ll give the movie’s makers this much: They really want to pursue those old Toho features!
Recommended… especially to fans of monster movie mayhem.
As someone posted on the comments to the article, the premise is incorrect: Rotten Tomatoes takes critical reactions and makes a simple average of them. Thus, if seven out of ten critics liked Movie X, then the movie receives a 70% approval rating. On the other hand, if a movie finds favor in only 2 out of 10 critics, you get a 20% approval rating.
Got it?
Ok then!
Now, ignoring the incorrect premise of the article (It probably should have been 26 Films The Critics Rotten Tomatoes Uses To Average Films Out Got 100% Wrong), it offers some interesting food for thought, especially for someone who loves reading opinions as much as I do.
While I won’t go over every film in the list (that would take way too much time and effort… not to mention there are some films I haven’t seen and therefore could not offer an opinion about), I do think there is a fascinating element articles like this point out: How opinions on films (and, for that matter, anything artistic) can change over time.
Sometimes, its a matter of audiences not necessarily “getting” the film when it was originally released. Sometimes, it may be a more superficial reaction.
When I saw Star Trek: Into Darkness, I recall being entertained by the film and liking it well enough. In fact, I found it more enjoyable than the first of the “New” Star Trek films, which to me had a tremendous amount of plot holes (not that Into Darkness didn’t). Still, I liked it enough to write up a recommended review.
But as time passed and I thought about what I just saw, the film’s merits became… less. In fact, I found myself thinking less and less of the film and, today, feel it was no more than mediocre at best.
Then there’s the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds (no, this movie is not listed in the article above). I’m a fan of Mr. Hitchcock’s films (and let’s just ignore his weird personal issues), but I couldn’t understand what people liked about that film. It didn’t scare me, it didn’t intrigue me, and I felt the movie’s non-ending was frustrating.
And then, in a flash, I suddenly realized something: The Birds was Mr. Hitchcock doing his version of what in the 1950’s and into the early 1960s was a very popular sci-if/horror genre: The “oversized” monster terrorizing humanity films. Godzilla, Them!, Mothra, etc. etc.
These films had developed certain storytelling cliches: The monster was often a smaller, pretty ugly creature rendered monstrously large and dangerous. There are usually plenty of military hardware present. The handsome leads persevere. The films usually ends with some kind of new, “killer” formula or explosive that saves humanity’s bacon.
What Mr. Hitchcock did, ingeniously, was to take every single one of those genre cliches and invert them. There was no “colossally” large menace. In fact, the menace was an animal humanity essentially takes for granted: The common bird. There was no military presence. At all.
The spunky leading lady is left so shaken as to barely be able to walk or talk. The handsome leading man is left in a similar predicament, happy to get his loved ones out of dodge.
And the ending? There is no secret weapon that saves everyone. There is no clever scientific solution. We’re screwed. The end.
With that realization, a film I thought was no good suddenly became incredibly good to me. Excellent, even. Easily one of Mr. Hitchcock’s last true masterpieces.
So read the list and check out the opinions. Of the films I’ve seen, I mostly agree they may have received either too good or too bad a review. But again, that’s on the critics and not necessarily on Rotten Tomatoes.
When the list of 2017 summer movie releases was made, I listed the ones I found interesting and possibly worth checking out (you can read the full list here).
One of the films that was most certainly on my radar was the Edgar Wright written/directed Baby Driver. Of the movie I said this:
I’m a sucker for well done car chase movies and this film, directed by fan favorite Edgar Wright, looks interesting… though I really don’t like the “main character has to listen to music to get into the zone” thing.
Even with the caveat regarding needing to listen to music to get into his “zone” (something which was, by the way, used before by Jessica Biel’s character when she “got into a zone” to fight in the 2004 movie Blade: Trinity… yes, my head is just chock full of useless trivia!), I was interested in catching the film. I have generally enjoyed the films of Mr. Wright and feel he’s always trying hard to give audiences something unique and good.
When the movie was finally released to theaters, I unfortunately never found the time to go see it. But my interest in the film grew stronger as the reviews were almost uniformly positive. To this date and over on Rottentomatoes.com, the film has a pretty spectacularly high 93% positive among critics and an equally impressive 88% positive among audiences.
I was certainly interested enough -and figured this was such a no-brainer- that I pre-purchased the film through VUDU figuring this would be a film worth owning. It was only the second time I’ve ever pre-purchased a film (the previous one being Batman v Superman which blah blah you already know how much I like it blah blah).
Last night and along with my wife we put it on, fully expecting a night of enjoyment and fun.
Ho boy.
To say I was disappointed with this film is a gross understatement.
Mr. Wright undeniably continues to show great skill as a director, but the fact of the matter is that Mr. Wright, the movie’s writer, let down Mr. Wright, the movie’s director.
Big time.
Baby Driver doesn’t need all that much explaining: It is a crime film cum musical which features Ansel Elgort as “Baby”, escape driver supreme with a severe case of tinnitus which he got as a result of a bad car accident which left him an orphan, who has to do jobs for Doc (Kevin Spacey) who he owes while having to deal with low lifes like Buddy (Jon Hamm, quite good here), his psycho girlfriend Darling (Eliza Gonzalez), and the deranged Bats (Jamie Foxx, also quite good).
Baby longs for paying his debt to Doc and, when he finally does, things look bright for him as he meets the love of his life, Debora (Lily James) and looks forward to a straight life.
This is not to be because Doc knows he has a great driver in Baby, and the last job turns out not to be so final and Baby is forced into another job, one that could upend his life as well as Debora’s.
Watching Baby Driver I felt it was as if Mr. Wright was combining two Walter Hill films, the 1978 film The Driver (not to be confused with the Ryan Gosling film with the similar name) and 1984’s Streets of Fire. The former is about a driver (duh) who is just like Baby and ferrets criminals out of their heists and eventually having to deal with the consequences. The later was a criminally underperforming rock n’ roll “fable” that featured some gruff characters and a very young, and absolutely stunning, Diane Lane in a musical milieu.
Both films, IMHO, are much, much better than Baby Driver, even if one could argue that technically (i.e. The way Mr. Wright mixes sound and visuals) is on a level of its own.
The problem, as I stated before, is that while the film exhibits technical brilliance, the movie’s story is ultimately weak. To begin with, why have the revolving cast of bad guys Baby has to drive? Why not stick with the consistent cast, then have the jobs turn more and more deadly and present the moral quandary to Baby that things are slowly, inevitably, getting out of hand? This would work better than what we’re given as it would allow us to feel some sympathy for Doc… he’s the brains behind everything but he’s becoming powerless to stop the bloodbaths and, when (MILD SPOILERS) he finally sides with Baby, it would make a hell of lot more sense than the “I was in love once” absolute -pardon my French- bullshit we’re given.
Also, had Mr. Wright used the same group of thugs, he could can have more organically shown the progression of Buddy from what appears to be a “decent” criminal into a violent, blood-lusting creep he eventually became.
But there’s so much more. How convenient the group happen to drive by and decide to go to the diner Debora is working at. Really!? There were no other diners in all of Atlanta? Also, why exactly did the thugs leave Joseph alive? These “hardened” thugs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Finally, at one point toward the film’s climax Buddy becomes Jason and/or Freddy Kruger all rolled up in one and that, to me, became silly rather than a genuine threat to Baby and Debora.
Finally, given all the carnage, are we really to believe the movie’s ultimate resolution regarding Baby? Wouldn’t he merit pretty stiff punishment as an accessory to multiple murders and untold property damage? How can we sympathize with him by the movie’s end?
When the movie was over and I looked over at my wife, she wasn’t happy to have wasted her time on this film. Yet she, like me, couldn’t help but acknowledged the direction was quite great and there are some extended sequences, especially one toward the movie’s beginning, that are eye-popping.
But good -hell, great– direction takes you only so far. There is a great deal of talent on display in Baby Driver. I just wish the story was as good as the rest of it.
Needless to say, during the run up to and following the passing of Hurricane Irma I didn’t get much time to do anything other than try to secure my home and buy the essentials (water, batteries, etc).
I nonetheless somehow managed to find the time to do two new sketches.
Here’s the first one, of Peter Lorre in the mostly forgotten 1935 horror/mystery/suspense film Mad Love (which, in turn, was a remake of The Hands of Orlac, 1924. A third version of the same story would be made in 1960 and also under the title of The Hands of Orlac)…
I’ve always loved this image, an almost art deco-ish horror image from the film, which involved a concert pianist losing his hands -and thus his livelihood- and how new hands are grafted onto him… but the hands are those of a murderer.
You can guess where things go from there!
I distinctly recall when I started making this image my hands were trembling, and this makes the image so ironic in so many ways. The anxiety my wife and I were going through at that time was nearly unbearable and we weren’t sure if the storm would hit us directly or pass us by (in the end, it sorta did both, though we were lucky to never get the full effect).
Regardless, I knew I really, really needed to get my mind off the anxiety I was feeling and do something productive. So I worked through my nerves and there you have the image above.
Love it!
The second image, done post Irma, isn’t quite as successful IMHO. I like it enough, and it certainly captures Robert Mitchum, one of my favorite actors, but it just seems too… simple. As I said before, not all of ’em are going to be home runs!
After Irma passed and like many, we lost electrical power.
We also lost electricity after Wilma back in October of 2005. However, that storm was pushed into and away from us by one of the season’s first strong cold fronts so losing electricity proved, at least for four days or so, not such a big deal given the air outside was crisp and cool and we could open windows and not sweat to death.
Unfortunately for us, we would go on to have two full weeks without electricity and, once the cold air from that front was gone and we returned to temperatures in the high 80’s, trying to get by in our house was horrible.
With Irma, folks around these parts didn’t have the benefit of that cold front. The temperatures around these parts were in the 90’s and with the humidity it feels like its in the 100’s before Irma’s arrival and after she left us we’re… still there.
Needless to say, these very hot temperatures are a potentially very dangerous thing and the recent, shocking news regarding the nursing home deaths points out just how dangerous the lack of electricity -and AC- can be.
Fortunately for us, we got our electricity back on Tuesday, only a couple of days after Irma’s departure and all the more incredible considering the damage around us both near and far. We found this sight, for example, a little ways from our home…
Yup, that’s a power line wrapped around a palm tree. Both were obviously knocked down and onto the road. This damage, btw, is fairly minor compared to some of the truly large trees I’ve seen knocked into homes.
Last night proved to be the first night since early last week that we were finally, finally able to have a truly restful night’s sleep given that our daughters were back where they belonged (they are both in college within Florida and, out of an abundance of caution, made what turned out to be very long trips through very crowded roads to friends’ houses to be away from the storm).
Anyway, they were back and all seemed well and we were back to having electricity and some semblance of our old life and its moments like this, when your life is potentially disrupted beyond repair, that you realize just how good life is.
I don’t mean to minimize the hardships of others. Indeed, I sympathize greatly with those who suffered much more thanks to Irma (and Harvey, for that matter), than I ultimately did.
I was lucky. I know that.
And like I wrote before, let’s hope this proves to be the “storm of the century” and we see nothing more of this type in our lifetimes.
One of my biggest fears as a writer is that whatever I spend my time, blood, sweat, and tears on is no good… and because I’m so close to the product I won’t even know it.
Understand, my novels/stories are my babies. I devote so much energy to them and love them to death while, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, try to look at them with as harsh an eye as I can to make sure that when they are eventually released, they’re the absolute best thing I could have done.
I also recognize opinions on entertainment are just that, and what to you may “rock your world” to some others might be a complete dud (I’ve pointed it out many times before that I loved Batman v Superman while so many savaged it and I found the original Guardians of the Galaxy complete crap, while so many loved it!)
Thus, I know that if someone doesn’t like any of my works (while, hopefully, a whole bunch of others do!), I can rest easy in the knowledge that I did the best I could at the time I wrote my latest work. I scrutinized every chapter, paragraph, sentence, and word. I checked and re-checked the plot and the delivery of the story. If it didn’t work for you, it simply wasn’t meant to be.
But going back to my biggest fear: Because I’m so intimately involved in my stories/novels, there is the danger that I might miss something. There might be this big plot whole right there which I’ve somehow missed, being so focused on a tree and not seeing the forest around me. Or, worse, the story simply isn’t all that good, and I should probably let it go and do something else.
Which, in a roundabout way, brings us to the latest Ridley Scott directed Alien film, Alien: Covenant.
Mr. Scott created an incredible stir, and elevated himself into the pantheon of “A” list directors, with his original Alien film, released in 1979. He would follow that up with Blade Runner, a not at all bad one-two combination for a then up-and-coming director.
Had Mr. Scott not released another film after those two, his legend would be set. He continued though, amassing a mind-boggling amount of produced and directed works. Some haven’t been terribly good while others have been outstanding (Blackhawk Down and Thelma and Louise are two which, IMHO, are among his better works).
Recently, Mr. Scott returned to the world he created in Alien, first with the 2012 film Prometheus, and now in 2017 with Alien: Covenant.
And I really, really wish he hadn’t bothered.
Prometheus was a gorgeous film. It featured a powerhouse cast and scenes that you could stare at for hours. It also featured a lackluster story, characters doing mind-bogglingly stupid things, and an ending that promised a far better story than the one delivered in this film.
Walking out of the theater when I saw that film, the writer in me thought Prometheus was little more than a prologue, something done away with in maybe half an hour and that the film proper should have started afterwards, when Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw headed out to the stars, to find out what those pesky aliens were up to with their weird genetic works.
With Alien: Covenant, whatever story was supposed to happen afterwards with Shaw was almost totally jettisoned, which proves if nothing else how almost completely irrelevant the whole endeavor was.
Alien: Covenant plays out like three films smashed into one. Given the lukewarm response to Prometheus, perhaps Mr. Scott realized his original grand vision of, who knows, five to six Alien films which would form a long saga had to be wrapped up much quicker and therefore we get a film that is chock full of story…
…which, unfortunately, is not very good.
Mr. Scott does away with Elizabeth Shaw’s character (don’t believe IMDB’s statement that she’s in the film… if she is actually in the film it was cut out of the theatrical version) and her search for answers in flashback and sticks us with yet another bunch of victims and potential victims on their way to colonizing a world but, after your by now cliched emergency, are re-routed to another, tantalizing world from which a mysterious signal is coming.
On this world they find David (Michael Fassbender), the android from Prometheus. The crew has their own android, Walter (also played by Mr. Fassbender), which -how can I put this delicately?- only makes sense given where the story goes in the end.
It seems logical that if you’re going to create automatons that look eerily like people, you might want them to look different from each other, no? I mean, your David is my Walter or Jim or Charlie. Wouldn’t that just open things right up to a lot of confusion?
See where I’m going here?
Tell you who didn’t: The survivors of this wretched film.
So the crew of the Covenant (that’s the name of their ship) heads to the weird planet and is amazed at how it looks so good but you know things will go sideways soon… and of course they do. But, like Prometheus, as an audience you’re once again marveling (if I could use that word) at the sheer stupidity of their actions. They encounter David and ignore all the many megawatt neon lit “DANGER” signs flashing all over him and allow themselves to simply follow along where he takes them, then split up (idiots) to then be picked off one by one, leading to the “exciting” climax back on the ship with that one last alien you just knew would somehow mysteriously (and without explanation) get on board their ship.
I didn’t like Prometheus much. I thought it was a misfire from a story standpoint but could admire the fact that Mr. Scott was trying, though ultimately failing, to do something new and different within the Alien universe. With Alien: Covenant, my patience with the story he’s determined to follow (Let’s just call it what it is: David’s story) was at its end. The now two part story is silly when its not cliched and the villain of this piece (who I suppose was becoming the villain in the first) is all the more annoying because we simply can’t root for the people around him… they’re so dumb you can be forgiven for hoping they get what they deserve.
And then there’s the odd casting choices, which make me wonder just how serious Mr. Scott was when making the film.
Why exactly was James Franco here? I know he was given some actual “present day” dialogue in the “prologue” stuff that was released to the internet before the film’s debut but here he literally says nothing -except in a video- and his role maybe lasts like a minute, if that.
There’s also Danny McBride. Known for mostly playing stoners and/or in your face morons (likable or not), I think he’s a good comedic actor and he certainly isn’t terrible in this film and in this more serious role but, like all the rest of the Covenant crew, he is a walking piece of cardboard and not a fully fleshed being. Thus his role, like James Franco’s, screams stunt casting. I could never quite remove myself from him being just a second away from lighting up and/or doing something silly.
Finally, there’s an opening scene involving Fassbender’s David and Guy Pearce’s Peter Weyland that, like was ultimately done in Prometheus, probably should have been left on the cutting room floor, even if it was visually striking.
Supposedly Mr. Scott plans to make a third, concluding chapter to his Alien prologue films. Perhaps that one will finally be good, because the first two, in my opinion, haven’t been.
One of the startling things one realizes after going through an event like Hurricane Irma and the subsequent loss of both power and internet is that when you emerge from that non-electric coma, you feel like Rip Van Winkle… and there’s so much you’ve missed out on.
One of the more startling things to read about, and I’m certainly not trying to ignore all the incredible destruction around us and subsequent human suffering which will linger in these post-hurricane times, is the announced passing on Sunday the 10th of September of Len Wein.
To the public at large, that name may not mean all that much.
Arguably, Mr. Wein is in the pantheon of the all time greatest contributors to the comic book medium.
Two of his better known co-creations are Wolverine (yes, that Wolverine!) and, along with also recently passed artist Bernie Wrightson, Swamp Thing.
But Mr. Wein’s career was so very much more. His fingerprints are all over a plethora of comic books from the early 1970’s, when he emerged primarily as a writer, to the earlier 1990’s, when it seemed he took a step back.
He was, famously, the editor of the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons mini-series The Watchmen. He was the one who first worked on the new X-Men. He crafted literally thousands of stories and created or co-created many, many comic book characters who are still very popular today.
To me, Mr. Wein’s crowning achievement has to be Swamp Thing. Along with Bernie Wrightson, Mr. Wein wrote 13 issues -the first 10 of which were illustrated by Mr. Wrightson- of absolute to near-absolute brilliance. There was perhaps only one issue among those 13, after Wrightson left, that I thought wasn’t all that good, but in those 13 issues Mr. Wein wrote a brilliant saga with a brilliant beginning, middle, and end.
He left the book with many of the major plot lines closed yet offered a path for future writers to continue with the character, and given the year it was released, the early to mid-1970’s and long before the idea of a “mini-series” came to be known, this was something almost unheard of.
I wrote the following when Mr. Wrightson passed. It applies equally to Mr. Wein, so I’ll repost it here:
When I was very young, there were four works that influenced/inspired me.
For the movies, it was Steven Spielberg’s Duel, the first film I recall seeing and understanding, even at the very young age of 5 or so. It helped that the film was essentially a silent movie!
For TV, there was the original Star Trek, then on its first wave of reruns. For comedy, there was Get Smart! For books, I recall being hospitalized with a kidney problem while very young and being given the very first of the many Hardy Boy books released and, though it was hard at the time, I read through it and that first step lead to me becoming a voracious reader and wanting to be a writer.
For Comic Books, it was Swamp Thing #10…
The book mesmerized me and made me realize comic books, like movies, like TV shows, and like books, could be works of art. It took me several years but over time I managed to get the other 9 issues of the run and found the pairing of Len Wein’s writing and Berni Wrightson’s illustrations among the absolute best runs of ANY comic book series. To this day, it remains one of my very favorites.
There’s not much more to add than that. My admiration and respect for the works of both Mr. Wein and Wrightson hold no bounds and their influence on me, to this day, is beyond enormous.
Rest in peace, Mr. Wein. Even if the public at large may not be familiar with your name, they certainly know the mark you left on the entertainment industry.
Last time I posted, on September 7th, we were waiting for Hurricane Irma. Today, September 12th, we’re done.
The hurricane, as of September 7th, looked like it might go to our east. However, then the models changed and, if you’ve ever had to put up with that sort of things, you’re in a constant state of panic as the predictive “cone” starts to move.
In my case, the cone shifted toward us, and for a while there it looked like we might get a direct hit. Luckily for us, and not so luckily for others, the cone kept shifting and soon the models were predicting it would go to our west rather than east.
And that’s what it did, hitting the lower keys before moving north towards Marco Island, Naples, and, eventually, Tampa Bay and parts even further north.
Though we weren’t hit by the eye wall, Irma was a big enough beast that we were within its northeast quadrant, the second deadliest section of a hurricane, and experienced many, many, many hours of hurricane gusts, though thankfully they weren’t sustained.
Notheless, when it was done, we were out of power (still are) and found considerable tree damage around us.
But in the end and without trying to sound overly dramatic, we’re alive. We survived. The power will eventually come back. The remains of the broken trees will be cleared up and the streets will be passable. We’ll be back to where we all were before and, with any luck, Irma (and, for that matter, Harvey) will be one of those once in a lifetime hurricanes no one alive today will ever have to face again.
