Derik Badman's Journal

Not sure where yesterday went or what I spend most of the day doing. Ended up doing a bit of cooking (hummus, tabouli, coleslaw, though I guess only one of those actually involved "cooking" anything), and some chores and some reading and some movies...

I rewatched Ozu's Tokyo Story. While there a number of his movies I've seen multiple times, Tokyo Story is one I had only watched once despite it being the film of his that is most highly regarded (it's always very high on the BFI list, #3 in the most recent one). When I first watched it (after I guess watching some of his other films) I was not hugely moved by it, and since then never revisited. And after rewatching it yesterday, I'm not sure my opinion has changed. There is something missing from it, that I find in his other films. I'm not totally sure what it is though. There are a lot of characters, like many of his films, but the primary focus is on the old parents. We never get much of a sense of the various children. They have lives and are a bit neglectful when their parents come to Tokyo to visit, but we really get no insight into their lives other than that they are busy. In comparison, a lot of the other films have a lot more balance between the generations, often even a conflict between the two. It is perhaps odd for me to say, but maybe I find Tokyo Story too slow and uneventful even for an Ozu film. Even from a visual perspective, I didn't notice as much the formal beauty of the shots and sequences as I do in many of his other works.

I'm running a session of Mausritter, a rules light Into the Odd variation, that is basically a setting much like Mouseguard. Not even sure why it struck me as something to run, perhaps a combination of the very light and simple rules along with the numerous GM side generators for inspiration. I was able to quickly generate a small hex map with various spots of interest, a few settlements, a few NPCs. I'm trying not to overprep. I do have 1 small dungeon keyed out, which a bit of a hook for it. We'll see what happens. We've been trying to stick to about 2 hours, which doesn't require a ton of prep considering we're also making characters.

As I was walking this morning, I saw the fox run through a yard. I think I surprised him, probably hunting squirrels or rabbits. The ducks were also back in the creek, though they also swam off when I got to the bridge and looked down on them.

Feeling a bit... out of sorts this week. As has happened a lot recently (longer than the quarantine), I'm often not sure what I want to or should be doing. I've stalled a bit on my writing, and then I start feeling like I should be working on that, rather than doing something else. But there's no external reason for me to do that, so why do I feel the need to feel obligation to doing it. I could just read and watch movies all weekend, why not? I ordered a couple books yesterday, which is probably a sign of my restlessness too, considering I haven't finished the last ones I ordered (which just arrived this week) or even the ones before that from a few weeks ago.

As I prep this past week's posts for posting, I notice how much I repeat myself even with the span of a week. How is my memory that poor?