This week’s theme: Recovery. Currently bed-ridden from my surgery and enjoying comfortable media. Also, god willing, on July 17th I will have 11 years sober. My gratitude is immeasurable.

Watching

My enjoyment of the The Omen series of movies might be the most sinusoidal I’ve ever encountered. The original The Omen from 1976 was kinda “meh”, almost tickling the occult thriller genre more than any direct horror themes.

Then Damien: The Omen II really surprised me. It was better than the original in every way. Really leaning into the thriller aspects set up previously. Cool kills and child actors that are not annoying. I loved it.

But The Omen III: The Final Conflict is such a missed opportunity for the series.

::Spoilers::

The movie starts strong with a cool kill, Damien arranging his political chess pieces and there is even an infant killing montage. Yes, an INFANT KILLING MONTANGE that manages to be effective and even deliberately funny. I cannot describe how they pulled this off, you just need to see the movie for yourself.

My problem with other critiques of the series is that they all saw the original Omen and thought it was about a creepy kid. While a creepy kid is a cool part of that movie; The main thesis of the first 2 Omen movies is that the Christian God is absent or worse, ambivalent to the tribulations of man. God definitely exists in these movies but he is either uncaring or impotent to stop the Satan. It’s dark and rad as hell.

Unfortunately, in the last 2 minutes of The Omen III, the movie manages deus ex machina (literally) a trite “Christians were right all along” ending that shits all over the first two films.

I am disgusted by this ending.

Reading

In my recovery from surgery I have been digging into The Deathwatch Omnibus as a sort of comfort-food read. It’s pulpy Warhammer 40k at it’s peak. The best 40k books understand that they are not sci-fi critiques of fascism but a full on embrace of fascism and what it will do to society if taken to it’s logical end. It’s why 40k is so fun to read as opposed to depressing and preachy.

40k omnibuses are always good buys but the Deathwatch Omnibus in particular contains 3 full novels, a novella and 12 short stories so there is definitely a lot of value here.

Other Notables

** The real Havana Syndrome is a bitcoin farm in Texas