So, the drive from Westport to Ballina was quite nice. A bit cloudy but dry. The Irish landscape is really interesting, reminds me a bit of our alps, minus the mountains. It‘s green, with lots of hills and many rocks. So far I haven‘t seen that many crop farms, I‘ve seen sheep and peat but the farms are probably in the other part of the island.
Lough Conn
I stayed in the town of Ballina for one night, nice little Hotel/B&B, later I‘m moving to my other Hotel in town, Belleek Castle. Yes, I‘m staying in a castle. I might post pictures later and detail my impressions.
But let‘s focus on something else. SDCC. Damn do I miss that place. Yesterday Marvel had their Hall H thing and boy did they deliver. Part of me worries about the omnipresence of Disney/Marvel in our media landscape but there‘s another part of me that just goes wild and excited upon hearing about their new slate. I like that they are trying to diversify and at this point they can probably turn everything into gold but you have to admire their (probably Kevin Feige‘s) balls. „Doctor Strange – Multiverse of Madness“, what the? „Shang-Chi“ with an asian Mandarin and an asian Lead? We knew about the Disney+ shows so I‘ll leave it at that but „Blade“. I loved Blade, at least 1 and 2 but I hope they can deliver on that but I think at the end of the day, I‘m most excited about „Thor: Love & Thunder“. Why? There are a few things to consider there but I‘m just going to be honest, there‘s a real chance that Natalie Portman as Thor could be the most badass thing ever. She was my first celebrity crush and if her as Thor is only half as good as I think it will be, sorry JLaw, a guy never forgets his first love.
The thing that bugs me the most though is that whole Disney+ thing. I get it, it‘s capitalism. They want me to subscribe which I probably will, I can afford it and everything, but in the long run I‘m not sure if hiding your essential MCU TV, which these shows seem to be, behind a paywall. It reminds me of football, the Champions League for example. Back in the day, those games were special, there weren‘t that many and they got shown of free-tv. If you were a boy (or girl) into football you could watch that, wether your parents were into it or not. Today there‘s too much football, but most of in on pay-tv. So if your dad doesn‘t pay for sky, you can‘t watch the games and I think that has hurt football fandom among children a bit. I might be wrong but I just hope that a similar thing doesn‘t happen to the movies I love.
