NorsePlay.

As I looked up at the New Year's sky yesterday, I saw something very much like this goat trotting its way across the firmament. In the Norse Cosmology, the clouds are long-dead Ymir's giant brains, possibly post-mortem thoughts unfolding themselves into shapes, maybe still functionally reflecting things that came into being after his necessary demise to form them. Or this is us catching a glimpse of  Tanngrisnir or Tanngnjóstr out for a solo run , and if you're lucky enough to have the sight of Heathen Worldview you have to believe it to be able to see it. [photo by David McDermott, inverted & bold italicized point in the last line from Netflix's 2022 Troll .] #    #    # Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there was something special in  the Norse Lore when he picked up a copy of the d'Aulaires'  Norse Gods and Giants  at age seven. Since t hen he's been fascinated by the truthful potency of Norse Mythology, passionately read & studied, embr...

Watching Taika Waititi's Thor: Love and Thunder is about 65% like watching Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin . What they share are the deep flaws of when a director runs the material into a self-indulgent lampooning direction, and loses sight of what originally makes it Mighty . Understandably no film is ever going to translate a comic directly. The medium is different, so adjustments & liberties necessarily must be taken. Yet anyone who has read the very dramatic terminally-ill Jane Foster as Thor comic book run, and the seriously pathos-laden & doom-filled Gorr the God Butcher storylines should realize that these two things are absolutely not foils for comedy. They're stories that deal with peace-making one's own mortality juxtaposed with carrying on an immortal legacy, while the other addresses faith in the divine being justified or not and what the expectations of that belief are. Those are amazing and weighty things that move and push boundaries for com...